still it was a future thing Christ is often called the Expectation of the world but it was all that while but an Expectation but a reversion of a future thing So God fed that old world with expectation of future things as that that very name by which God notified himself most to that people Exod. 3.14 in his commission by Moses to Pharaoh was a future name howsoever our Translations and Expositions run upon the present as though God had said Qui sum my name is I am yet in truth it is Qui ero my name is I shall be They had evidences enow that God was but God was pleased to establish in them an assurance that he would be so still and not only be so still as he was then but that hee would be so with them hereafter as he was never yet he would be Immanuel God with us so as that God and man should be one person It was then a faire assurance and a blessed comfort which the children of Israel had in that of Zechary Zech. 9.9 Ecce venit rex Rejoyce ye daughters of Sion and shout ye daughters of Ierusalem Behold thy King commeth riding unto thee upon an Asse But yet this assurance though delivered as in the present produced not those acclamations Mat. 21.9 and recognitions and Hosannaes and Hosanna in the highest to the Son of David as his personall and actuall and visible riding into Jerusalem upon Palme-Sunday did Amougst the Jews there was light enough to discern this future blessing this comming of Christ but they durst not open it nor publish it to others We see the Jews would dye in defence of any part of their Law were it but the Ceremoniall were it but for the not eating of Swines flesh what unsufferable torments suffered the seven brothers in the Maccabees for that But yet we never finde that any of them dyed or exposed themselves to the danger or to the dignity of Martyrdome for this Doctrine of the Messias this future comming of Christ Nay we finde that the Septuagint who first translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek for King Ptolome disguised divers places thereof and departed from the Originall rather then propose this future comming of the Son of God to the interpretation of the world A little Candle they had for themselves but they durst not light anothers Candle at it So also some of the more speculative Philosophers had got some beames of this light but because they saw it would not be beleeved De verarelg cap. 4. they let it alone they said little of it Hence is it that S. Augustine sayes si Platonici reviviscerent if Plato and his Disciples should rise from the dead and come now into our streets and see those great Congregations which thrust and throng every Sabbath and every day of holy convocation to the worship of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus Hoc fortasse dicerent This it is likely they would say sayes he Haec sunt quae populis persuadere non ausi consaetudini cessimus This is that religion which because it consisted so much in future things we durst not propose to the people but were fain to leave them to those present and sensible and visible things to which they had been accustomed before lest when we had shaked them in their old religion we should not be able to settle and establish them in the new And as in civill government a Tyranny is better then an Anarchy a hard King better then none so when we consider religions Idolatry is better then Atheisme and superstition better then profanenesse Not that the Idolater shall any more be saved then the Atheist but that the Idolater having been accustomed to some sense and worship of God of God in his estimation is therefore apter to receive religious impressions then the Atheist is In this then consists this second act of Christs mercy to us in this word veni I am actually really personally presentially come that those types and figures and sacrifices which represented Christ to the old world were not more visible to the eye more palpable to the hand more obvious to the very bodily senses that Christ himself hath been since to us Therefore S. Iohn does not only rest in that That which was from the beginning 1 John 1.1 Christ was alwayes in purpose in prophecy in promise nor in that That which we have heard the world heard of Christ long before they saw him but he proceeds to that That which we have seen and looked upon with our eyes and handled with our hands that declare we unto you So that we are now delivered from that jealousie that possessed those Septuagint those Translators that they durst not speak plain and delivered from that suspition that possessed Plato and his disciples that the people were incapable of that doctrine Wee know that Christ is come and we avow it and we preach it and we affirm that it is not onely as impious and irreligious a thing but as senslesse and as absurd a thing to deny that the Son of God hath redeemed the world as to deny that God hath created the world and that he is as formally and as gloriously a Martyr that dyes for this Article The Son of God is come as he that dyes for this There is a God And these two acts of his mercy enwrapped in this one word veni I came first that he who is alwayes present out of an abundant love to man studied a new way of comming and then that he who was but betrothed to the old world by way of promise is married to us by an actuall comming will be farther explicated to us in that which only remaines and constitutes our third and last part the end and purpose of his comming That they might have life and might have it more abundantly And though this last part put forth many handles wee can but take them by the hand and shake them by the hand that is open them and so leave them First then in this last part we consider the gift it self the treasure Life 3. Part. Vita That they might have life Now life is the character by which Christ specificates and denominates himselfe Life is his very name and that name by which he consummates all his other names I am the Way the Truth and the Life John 14.6 And therefore does Peter justly and bitterly upbraid the Jews with that Ye desired a murderer an enemy to life to be granted unto you and killed the Prince of Life Acts 3.14 It is an honour to any thing that it may be sworn by by vulgar and triviall things men might not sweare Jer. 5.7 How shall I pardon them this sayes God They have sworn by things that are not gods And therefore God who in so many places professes to sweare by himself and of whom the Apostle sayes Heb. 6.13 That because he could sweare by no greater he
grace in this world I shall have that more abundantly in Heaven for there my terme shall bee a terme for three lives for those three that as long as the Father and the Son and the holy Ghost live I shall not dye And to this glorious Son of God and the most almighty Father c. SERMONS Preached upon Candlemas-day SERMON VIII Preached upon Candlemas Day MAT. 5.16 Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorifie your Father which is in heaven EIther of the names of this day were Text enough for a Sermon Purification or Candlemas Joyne we them together and raise we only this one note from both that all true purification is in the light corner purity clandestine purity conventicle purity is not purity Christ gave himself for us Tit. 2.14 sayes the Apostle that he might purifie to himself a peculiar people How shall this purification appeare It follows They shall be zealous of good works They shall not wrangle about faith and works but be actually zealous of goods works For purification was accompanied with an oblation something was to be given A Lamb a Dove Levit. 12.6 a Turtle All emblemes of mildnesse true purity is milde meek humble and to despise and undervalue others is an inseparable mark of false purity The oblation of this dayes purification is light so the day names it Candlemas-day so your custome celebrates it with many lights Now when God received lights into his Tabernacle hee received none of Tallow the Oxe hath hornes he received none of Waxe the Bee hath his sting but he received only lampes of oyle And though from many fruits and berries they pressed oyle yet God admitted no oyle into the service of the Church but only of the Olive the Olive the embleme of peace Our purification is with an oblation our oblation is light our light is good works our peace is rather to exhort you to them then to institute any solemne or other then occasionall comparison between faith and them Every good work hath faith for the roote but every faith hath not good works for the fruit thereof And it is observable that in all this great Sermon of our Saviours in the Mount which possesseth this and the two next Chapters there is no mention of faith by way of perswasion or exhortation thereunto but the whole Sermon is spent upon good works For good works presuppose faith Mat. 6.30 and therefore he concludes that they had but little faith because they were so solicitous about the things of this world O ye of little faith And as Christ concludes an unstedfastnesse in their faith out of their solicitude for this world so may the world justly conclude an establishment in their faith if they see them exercise themselves in the works of mercy and so let their light shine before men that they may see their good works and glorifie their Father which is in heaven These are words spoken by our Saviour to his Disciples in the Mount Divisio a treasure deposited in those disciples but in those disciples as depositaries for us an Oracle uttered to those disciples but through those disciples to us Paradise convayed to those disciples but to those disciples as feoffees in trust for us to every one of us in them from him that rides with his hundreds of Torches to him that crawles with his rush-candle our Saviour sayes Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works c. The words have two parts so must our explication of them first a precept Sic luceat Let your light so shine before men and then the reason the purpose the end the effect ut videant that men may see your good works and c. From the first bough will divers branches spring and divers from the other all of good taste and nourishment if wee might stay to presse the fruits thereof We cannot yet in the first we shall insist a while upon each of these three First the light it self what that is Sic luceat lux Let your light so shine And then secondly what this propriety is lux vestra let your light shine yours And lastly what this emanation of this light upon others is coram hominibus let your light shine before men The second part which is the reason or the effect of this precept ut videant that men may see your good works and glorifie your Father which is in heaven abounds in particular considerations and I should weary you if I should make you stand all the while under so heavy a load as to charge your memories with all those particulars so long before I come to handle them Reserving them therefore to their due time anon proceed we now to the three branches of our first part first the light in it self then the propriety in us lastly the emanation upon others Let your light so shine before men First 1 Part. Lux. John 1.9 for the light it self There is a light that lightneth every man that commeth into the world And even this universall light is Christ sayes S. Iohn He was that light that lighteth every man that commeth into the world And this universall enunciation He lightneth every man moved S. Cyril to take this light for the light of nature and naturall reason John 1.3 Colos 1.16 For even nature and naturall reason is from Christ All things were made by him sayes S. Iohn even nature it self And By him and for him all things visible and invisible were created sayes the Apostle And therefore our latter men of the Reformation are not to be blamed who for the most part pursuing S. Cyrils interpretation interpret this universall light that lightneth every man to be the light of nature Divers others of the Fathers take this universall light because Christ is said to be this light to be Baptisme For in the primitive Church as the Nativity of Christ was called the Epiphany Manifestation so Baptisme was called Illumination And so Christ lightens every man that comes into the world that is into the Christian world by that Sacrament of Illumination Baptisme S. Augustine brought the exposition of that universall proposition into a narrow roome That he enlightned all that came into the world that is all that were enlightned in the world were enlightned by him there was no other light and so he makes this light to be the light of faith and the light of effectuall grace which all have not but they that have have it from Christ Now which of these lights is intended in our Text Let you light shine out is it of the light of nature at our comming into the world or the light of Baptisme and that generall grace that accompanies all Gods Ordinances at our comming into the Church or the light of faith and particular grace sealing our adoption and spirituall filiation there Properly our light is none of these three and yet
the Laver in the Tabernacle of the looking glasses of women Exod. 38.8 Scarce can you imagine a vainer thing except you will except the vaine lookers on in that action then the looking-glasses of women and yet Moses brought the looking-glasses of women to a religious use to shew them that came in the spots of dirt which they had taken by the way that they might wash themselves cleane before they passed any farther There is not so poore a creature but may be thy glasse to see God in The greatest slat glasse that can be made cannot represent any thing greater then it is If every gnat that flies were an Arch-angell all that could but tell me that there is a God and the poorest worme that creeps tells me that If I should aske the Basilisk how camest thou by those killing eyes he would tell me Thy God made me so And if I should aske the Slow-worme how camest thou to be without eyes he would tell me Thy God made me so The Cedar is no better a glasse to see God in then the Hyssope upon the wall all things that are are equally removed from being nothing and whatsoever hath any beeing is by that very beeing a glasse in which we see God who is the roote and the fountaine of all beeing The whole frame of nature is the Theatre the whole Volume of creatures is the glasse and the light of nature reason is our light which is another Circumstance Of those words Iohn 1.9 That was the true light Lux rationiâ— that lighteth every man that commeth into the World the slackest sense that they can admit gives light enough to see God by If we spare S. Chrysostomes sense That that light is the light of the Gospel and of Grace and that that light considered in it self and without opposition in us does enlighten that is would enlighten every man if that man did not wink at that light If we forbear S. Augustines sense That light enlightens every man that is every man that is enlightned is enlightned by that light If we take but S. Cyrils sense that this light is the light of naturall Reason which without all question enlightneth every man that comes into the world yet have we light enough to see God by that light in the Theatre of Nature and in the glasse of Creatures God affords no man the comfort the false comfort of Atheism He will not allow a pretending Atheist the power to flatter himself so far as seriously to thinke there is no God He must pull out his own eyes and see no creature before he can say he sees no God He must be no man and quench his reasonable soule before he can say to himselfe there is no God The difference betweene the Reason of man and the Instinct of the beast is this That the beast does but know but the man knows that he knows The bestiall Atheist will pretend that he knows there is no God but he cannot say that hee knows that he knows it for his knowledge will not stand the battery of an argument from another nor of a ratiocination from himselfe He dares not aske himselfe who is it that I pray to in a sudden danger if there be no God Nay he dares not aske who is it that I sweare by in a sudden passion if there be no God Whom do I tremble at and sweat under at midnight and whom do I curse by next morning if there be no God It is safely said in the Schoole Media perfecta ad quae ordinantur How weak soever those meanes which are ordained by God seeme to be and be indeed in themselves yet they are strong enough to those ends and purposes for which God ordained them And so for such a sight of God as we take the Apostle to intend here which is to see that there is a God The frame of Nature the whole World is our Theatre the book of Creatures is our Medium our glasse and naturall reason is light enough But then for the other degree the other notification of God which is The knowing of God though that also be first to be considered in this world the meanes is of a higher nature then served for the sight of God and yet whilst we are in this World it is but In aenigmate in an obscure Riddle a representation darkly and in part as we translate it As the glasse which we spoke of before was proposed to the sense Scientia Dei and so we might see God that is see that there is a God This anigma that is spoken of now this darke similitude and comparison is proposed to our faith and so far we know God that is Beleeve in God in this life but by aenigmaes by darke representations and allusions Therefore saies S. Augustine that Moses saw God in that conversation which he had with him in the Mount Sevocatus ab omni corporis sensu Removed from all benefit and assistance of bodily senses He needed not that Glasse the helpe of the Creature And more then so Ab omni significativo aenigmate Spiritus Removed from all allusions or similitudes or representations of God which might bring God to the understanding and so to the beliefe Moses knew God by a more immediate working then either sense or understanding or faith Therefore saies that Father Per speculum aenigma by this which the Apostle cals a glasse and this which he cals aenigma a dark representation Intelliguntur omnia accommodata ad notificandum Deum He understands all things by which God hath notified himselfe to man By the Glasse to his Reason by the aenigma to his faith And so for this knowing of God by way of Beleeving in him as for seeing him our Theatre was the world the Creature was our glasse and Reason was our light Our Academy to learne this knowledge is the Church our Medium is the Ordinance and Institution of Christ in his Church and our light is the light of faith in the application of those Ordinances in that Church This place then where we take our degrees in this knowledge of God our Academy our University for that Academia Ecclesia is the Church for though as there may be some few examples given of men that have growne learned who never studied at University so there may be some examples of men enlightned by God and yet not within that covenant which constitutes the Church yet the ordinary place for Degrees is the University and the ordinary place for Illumination in the knowledge of God is the Church There fore did God who ever intended to have his Kingdome of Heaven well peopled so powerfully so miraculously enlarge his way to it The Church that it prospered as a wood which no felling no stubbing could destroy We finde in the Acts of the Church five thousand Martyrs executed in a day Acts 4.4 And we finde in the Acts of the Apostles five thousand brought
use the Law lawfully Let us use our liberty of reading Scriptures according to the Law of liberty that is charitably to leave others to their liberty if they but differ from us and not differ from Fundamentall Truths Si quis quaerat ex me quid horum Moses senserit If any man ask me which of these which may be all true Moses meant Non sum sermones istiâ—â—onfessiones Lord sayes hee Ibid. This that I say is not said by way of Confession as I intend it should if I doe not freely confesse that I cannot tell which Moses meant But yet I can tell that this that I take to be his meaning is true and that is enough Let him that findes a true sense of any place rejoyce in it Let him that does not beg it of thee Vtquid mihi molest us est Why should any man presse me to give him the true sense of Moses here or of the holy Ghost in any darke place of Scripture Ego illuminem ullum hominen venientem in mundum 1.13 C. 10. saies he Is that said of me that I am the light that enlightned every man any man Iohn 1.9 that comes into this world So far I will goe saies he so far will we in his modesty and humility accompany him as still to propose Quod luce veritatis quod fruge utilitatis excellit such a sense as agrees with other Truths that are evident in other places of Scripture and such a sense as may conduce most to edisication For to those two does that heavenly Father reduce the foure Elements that make up a right exposition of Scripture which are first the glory of God such a sense as may most advance it secondly the analogie of faith such a sense as may violate no confessed Article of Religion and thirdly exaltation of devotion such a sense as may carry us most powerfully upon the apprehension of the next life and lastly extension of charity such a sense as may best hold us in peace or reconcile us if we differ from one another And within these limits wee shall containe our selves The glory of God the analogie of faith the exaltation of devotion the extension of charity In all the rest that belongs to the explication or application to the literall or spirituall sense of these words And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters to which having stopped a little upon this generall consideration the exposition of darke places we passe now Within these rules we proceed to enquire who this Spirit of God is or what it is Spiritus whether a Power or a Person The Jews who are afraid of the Truth lest they should meete evidences of the doctrine of the Trinity and so of the Messias the Son of God if they should admit any spirituall sense admit none but cleave so close to the letter as that to them the Scripture becomes Liter a occidens A killing Letter and the savour of death unto death They therefore in this Spirit of God are so far from admitting any Person that is God as they admit no extraordinary operation or vertue proceeding from God in this place but they take the word here as in many other places of Scripture it does to signifie onely a winde and then that that addition of the name of God The Spirit of God which is in their Language a denotation of a vehemency of a high degree of a superlative as when it is said of Saul Sopor Domini A sleepe of God was upon him it is intended of a deepe a dead sleepe inforces induces no more but that a very strong winde blew upon the face of the waters and so in a great part dryed them up And this opinion I should let flye away with the winde if onely the Jews had said it But Theodoret hath said it too and therefore we afford it so much answer That it is a strange anticipation that Winde which is a mixt Meteor to the making whereof divers occasions concurre with exhalations should be thus imagined before any of these causes of Winds were created or produced and that there should be an effect before a cause is somewhat irregular In Lapland the Witches are said to sell winds to all passengers but that is but to turne those windes that Nature does produce which way they will but in our case the Jews and they that follow them dreame winds before any winds or cause of winds was created The Spirit of God here cannot be the Wind. It cannot be that neither which some great men in the Christian Church have imagined it to be Operatio Dei The power of God working upon the waters so some or Efficientia Dei A power by God infused into the waters so others August And to that S. Augustine comes so neare as to say once in the negative Spiritus Dei hic res dei est sed non ipse Deut est The Spirit of God in this place is something proceeding from God but it is not God himselfe And once in the affirmative Posse esse vitalem creaturam quâ universus mundus movetur That this Spirit of God may be that universall power which sustaines and inanimates the whole world which the Platoniques have called the Soule of the world and others intend by the name of Nature and we doe well if we call The providence of God Spiritus Sanctus But there is more of God in this Action then the Instrument of God Nature or the Vice-roy of God Providence for as the person of God the Son was in the Incarnation so the person of God the Holy Ghost was in this Action though far from that manner of becomming one and the same thing with the waters which was done in the Incarnation of Christ who became therein perfect man That this word the Spirit of God is intended of the Person of the Holy Ghost in other places of Scripture is evident undeniable unquestionable and that therefore it may be so taken here Where it is said The Spirit of God shall rest upon him Esay 11.2 upon the Messiah where it is said by himselfe The Lord and his Spirit is upon me And the Lord and his Spirit hath anointed me there it is certainly and therefore here it may be probably spoken of the Holy Ghost personally It is no impossible sense it implies no contradiction It is no inconvenient sense it offends no other article it is no new sense nor can we assigne any time when it was a new sense Basil The eldest Fathers adhere to it as the ancientest interpretation Saint Basil saies not onely Constantissimè asseverandum est We must constantly maintaine that interpretation for all that might be his owne opinion not onely therefore Quia verius est for that might be but because he found it to be the common opinion of those times but Quia à majoribus nostris approbatum because it is accepted for the true
Man as to calumniate him to blaspheme him was an inexcusable sin To say of him who had fasted forty dayes and forty nights Mat. 11.19 Mar. 12.14 Ecce homo vorax Behold a man gluttonous and a wine-bibber To say of him of whom themselves had said elsewhere Master we know that thou art true and carest for no man that he was a friend of Publicans and sinners That this man who was The Prince of Peace Heb. 12.3 should indure such contradiction This was an inexcusable sin If any man therefore have had his good intentions mis-construed his zeale to assist Gods bleeding and fainting cause called Innovation his proceeding by wayes good in themselves to ends good in themselves called Indiscretion let him be content to forgive them any Calumniator against himselfe who is but a worme and no man since God himselfe forgave them against Christ who was so Filius hominis The Son of Man as that he was the Son of God too There is then forgivenesse for sin for all sin even for blasphemy Infuturo for blasphemy against the Son but it is Infuturo remittetur It shall be forgiven It is not Remittebatur It was forgiven Let no man antidate his pardon and say His sins were forgiven in an Eternall Decree and that no man that hath his name in the book of life hath the addition sinner that if he were there from the beginning from the beginning he was no sinner It is not in such a sense Remittebatur It was forgiven nor it is not Remittitur that even then when the sin is committed it is forgiven whether the sinner think of it or no That God sees not the sins of his Children That God was no more affected with Davids adultery or his murder then an indulgent Father is to see his child do some witty waggish thing or some sportfull shrewd turne It is but Remittetur Any sin shall be that is may be forgiven if the meanes required by God and ordained by him be entertained If I take into my contemplation the Majesty of God and the uglinesse of sin If I devest my selfe of all that was sinfully got and invest my self in the righteousnesse of Christ Jesus for else I am ill suted and if I clothe myself in Mammon the righteousnesse of Christ is no Cloke for that doublet If I come to Gods Church for my absolution and the seale of that reconciliation the blessed Sacrament Remittetur by those meanes ordained by God any sin shall be forgiven me But if I relie upon the Remittebatur That I had my Quietus est before hand in the eternall Decree or in the Remittuntur and so shut mine eyes in an opinion that God hath shut his and sees not the sins of his children I change Gods Grammer and I induce a dangerous solecisme for it is not They were forgiven before they were committed nor They are forgiven in the committing but They shall be by using the meanes ordained by God they may be And so They shall be forgiven unto men saies the Text and that is first unto every man The Kings of the earth are faire and glorious resemblances of the King of heaven Omni homini they are beames of that Sun Tapers of that Torch they are like gods they are gods The Lord killeth and maketh alive He bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up 1 Sam. 2.6 This is the Lord of heaven The Lords anointed Kings of the earth do so too They have the dispensation of judgement and of mercy they execute and they pardon But yet with this difference amongst many other that Kings of the earth for the most part and the best most binde themselves with an oath not to pardon some offences The King of heaven sweares and sweares by himselfe That there is no sinner but he can and would pardon At first Illuminat omnem hominem He is the true light John 1.9 which lightneth every man that commeth into the world Let that light because many do interpret that place so let that be but that naturall light which only man and every man hath yet that light makes him capable of the super-naturall light of grace for if he had not that reasonable soule he could not have grace and even by this naturall light he is able to see the invisible God in the visible creature and is inexcusable if he do not so But because this light is though not put out brought to a dimnesse by mans first fall Therefore Iohn Baptist came to beare witnesse of that light that all men through him might beleeve Ver. 7. God raises up a Iohn Baptist in every man every man findes a testimony in himselfe that he draws curtaines between the light and him that he runs into corners from that light that he doth not make that use of those helpes which God hath afforded him as he might Thus God hath mercy upon all before by way of prevention thus he enlightneth every man that commeth into the world but because for all this men do stumble even at noon God hath given Collyrium an Eye-salve to all Apoc. 3.18 by which they may mend their eye-sight He hath opened a poole of Bethesda to all where not only he that comes at first but he that comes even at last he that comes washed with the water of Baptisme in his infancy and he that comes washed with the teares of Repentance in his age may receive health and cleannesse For the Font at first and the death-bed at last are Cisterns from this poole and all men and at all times may wash therein And from this power and this love of God is derived both that Catholique promise Quandocunque At what time soever a sinner repents And that Catholique and extensive Commission Quorum remiseritis Whose sins soever you remit shall be remitted All men were in Adam because the whole nature mankinde was in him and then can any be without sin All men were in Christ too because the whole nature mankinde was in him and then can any man be excluded from a possibility of mercy There were whole Sects whole bodies of Heretiques that denied the communication of Gods grace to others The Cathari denied that any man had it but themselves The Novatians denied that any man could have it again after he had once lost it by any deadly sin committed after Baptisme But there was never any Sect that denied it to themselves no Sect of despairing men We have some somewhere sprinkled One in the old Testament Cain and one in the new Iudas and one in the Ecclesiastique Story Iulian but no body no Sect of despairing men And therefore he that abandons himself to this sin of desperation sins with the least reason of any for he prefers his sin above Gods mercy and he sins with the fewest examples of any for God hath diffused this light with an evidence to all That all sins may be forgiven unto men that is
the father of Musique And so Horace calls Ennius the father of one kind of Poeme how absolutely is God our Father who may I say invented us made us found us out in the depth and darknesse of nothing at all He is Pater and Pater luminum Father and Father of lights of all kinds of lights Lux lucifica Iam. 1.17 as S. Augustine expresses it The light from which all the lights which we have whether of nature or grace or glory have their emanation Take these Lights of which God is said to be the Father to be the Angels so some of the Fathers take it and so S. Paul calls them Angels of light And so Nazianzen calls them Secundos splendores primi splendoris administros 2 Cor. 11.14 second lights that serve the first light Or take these Lights of which God is said to be the Father to be the Ministers of the Gospel the Angels of the Church so some Fathers take them too and so Christ sayes to them in the Apostles Mat. 5.14 You are the light of the world Or take these Lights to be those faithfull servants of God who have received an illustration in themselves and a coruscation towards others who by having lived in the presence of God in the houshold of his faithfull in the true Church are become as Iohn Baptist was burning and shining lamps as S. Paul sayes of the faithfull Phil. 2.15 You shine as lights in this world And as Moses had contracted a glorious shining in his face by his conversation with God Or take this light to be a fainter light then that and yet that which S. Iames doth most literally intend in that place The light of naturall understanding That which Plinie calls serenitatem animi when the mind of man dis-encumbred of all Eclipses and all clouds of passion or inordinate love of earthly things is enlightned so far as to discerne God in nature Or take this light to be but the light of a shadow for umbrae non sunt tenebrae sed densior lux shadows are not darknesses shadows are but a grosser kind of light Take it to be that shadow that designe that delineation that obumbration of God which the creatures of God exhibit to us that which Plinie calls Coelilaetitiam when the heavens and all that they imbrace in an opennesse and cheerefulnesse of countenance manifest God unto us Take these Lights of which S. Iames speaks in any apprehension any way Angels of heaven who are ministring spirits Angels of the Church who are spirituall Ministers Take it for the light of faith from hearing the light of reason from discoursing or the light flowing from the creature to us by contemplation and observation of nature Every way by every light we see that he is Pater luminum the Father of lights all these lights are from him and by all these lights we see that he is A Father and Our Father So that as the Apostle uses this phrase in another place Si opertum Euangelium 2 Cor. 4.3 If the Gospel be hid with wonder and admiration Is it possible can it be that this Gospel should be hid So it is here Si invocatis If ye call God Father that is as it is certaine you doe as it is impossible but you should because you cannot ascribe to any but him your Being your preservation in that Being your exaltation in that Being to a well-Being in the possession of all temporall and spirituall conveniencies And then there is thus much more force in this particle Si If which is as you have seene Si concessionis non dubitationis an If that implyes a confession and acknowledgement not a hesitation or a doubt That it is also Si progressionis Si conclusionis an If that carryes you farther and that concludes you at last If you doe it that is Since you do it Since you do call God Father since you have passed that act of Recognition since not onely by having been produced by nature but by having beene regenerated by the Gospel you confesse God to bee your Father and your Father in his Son in Christ Jesus Since you make that profession Of his owne will begate he us Iames 1.18 with the word of Truth If you call him Father since you call him Father thus goe on farther Timete Feare him If yee call him Father feare him c. Now Timete for this feare of God which is the beginning of wisedome and the end of wisedome too we are a little too wise at least too subtile sometimes in distinguishing too narrowly between a filiall feare and a servile feare as though this filiall feare were nothing but a reverend love of God as he is good and not a doubt and suspition of incurring those evils Prov. 8.13 that are punishments or that produce punishments The feare of the Lord is to hate evill It is a holy detestation of that evill which is Malum culpae The evill of sin and it is a holy trembling under a tender apprehension of that other evill which we call Malum poenae The evill of punishment for sin God presents to us the joyes of heaven often to draw us Origen and as often the torments of hell to avert us Origen sayes aright As Abraham had two sons one of a Bond-woman another of a Free but yet both sons of Abraham so God is served by two feares and the later feare the feare of future torment is not the perfect feare but yet even that feare is the servant and instrument of God too Quis tam insensatus Chrysost Who can so absolutely devest all sense Qui non fluctuante Civitate imminente naufragio But that when the whole City is in a combustion and commotion or when the Ship that he is in strikes desperately and irrecoverably upon a rock hee is otherwise affected toward God then then when every day in a quietnesse and calme of holy affections he heares a Sermon Gehennae timor sayes the same Father regni nos affert coronam Gen. 15.12 Exod. 3.6 Even the feare of hell gets us heaven Upon Abraham there fell A horrour of great darknesse And Moses hid his face for he was afraid to look upon God And that way towards that dejected look does God bend his countenance Vpon this man will I look Esay 66.12 even to him that is poore and of a contrite spirit and trembleth at my word As there are both impressions in security vitious and vertuous good and bad so there are both in feare also There is a wicked security in the wicked by which they make shift to put off all Providence in God and to think God like themselves indifferent what becomes of this world There is an ill security in the godly when for the time in their prosperity they grow ill husbands of Gods graces and negligent of his mercies In my prosperity sayes David himself Psal 30.6 of
to doe as the salvation of soules he would make use of my tongue And being to save the world by his word that I should speak that word Docendo vos quod per se faciliùs suaviùs posset That he calls me up hither to teach you that which he could teach you better and sooner at home by his Spirit Indulgentia ejus est non indigentia It is the largenesse of his mercy towards you not any narrownesse in his power that he needs me And so have you this Angel in our text in all the acceptations in which our Expositors have delivered him It is Christ It is the Angels of heaven It is the Ministery of the Gospel And this Angell whosoever whatsoever S. Iohn saw come from the East I saw an Angel come from the East which was our second Branch and fals next into consideration This addition is intended for a particular addition to our comfort Ab oriente it is a particular endowment or inlargement of strength and power in this Angel that he comes from the East If we take it to goe the same way that we went before first of naturall Angels even the Westerne Angels Qui habuere occasum Those Angels which have had their Sun-set their fall they came from the East too Quomodo cecidisti decoelo Lucifer filius orientis Esay 14 12. How art thou fallen from heaven O Lucifer the Son of the morning He had his begetting his Creation in the East in the light and there might have stayed for any necessity of falling that God laid upon him Take the Angel of the text to be the Angel of the Covenant Christ Jesus and his name is The East he cannot be knowne he cannot bee said to have any West Zech. 6.12 Ecce vir Oriens nomen ejus so the vulgat reads that place Behold the Man whose name is the East you can call him nothing else for so the other Zachary the Zachary of the New Testament cals him too Luke 1.78 Per viscera misericordiae Through the tender bowels of his mercy Visitavit nos Oriens The East the day spring from on high hath visited us And he was derived à Patre luminum He came from the East begotten from all eternity of the Father of lights Iohn 16.28 I came out from the Father and came into the world Take this Angel to be the Preacher of the Gospel literally really the Gospell came out of the East where Christ lived and dyed and Typically figuratively Paradise which also figured the place to which the Gospel is to carry us Heaven that also was planted in the East and therefore S. Basil assignes that for the reason why in the Church service we turne to the East when we pray Quia antiquam requirimus patriam Wee looke towards our ancient country where the Gospel of our salvation was literally acted and accomplished and where Heaven the end of the Gospel was represented in Paradise Every way the Gospel is an Angel of the East But this is that which we take to be principally intended in it That as the East is the fountaine of light so all our illumination is to be taken from the Gospell Spread we this a little thinner and we shall better see through it If the calamities of the world or the heavy consideration of thine own sins have benummed and benighted thy soule in the vale of darknesse and in the shadow of death If thou thinke to wrastle and bustle through these strong stormes and thick clouds with a strong hand If thou thinke thy money thy bribes shall conjure thee up stronger spirits then those that oppose thee If thou seek ease in thy calamities that way to shake and shipwrack thine enemies In these crosse winds in these countermines to oppresse as thou art oppressed all this is but a turning to the North to blow away and scatter these sadnesses with a false an illusory and a sinfull comfort If thou thinke to ease thy selfe in the contemplation of thine honour thine offices thy favour thy riches thy health this is but a turning to the South the Sun-shine of worldly prosperity If thou sinke under thy afflictions and canst not finde nourishment but poyson in Gods corrections nor justice but cruelty in his judgements nor mercy but slacknesse in his forbearance till now If thou suffer thy soule to set in a cloud a dark cloud of ignorance of Gods providence and proceedings or in a darker of diffidence of his performance towards thee this is a turning to the West and all these are perverse and awry But turne to the East and to the Angel that comes from thence The Ministery of the Gospel of Christ Jesus in his Church It is true thou mayst find some darke places in the Scriptures Basil and Est silentii species obscuritas To speake darkly and obscurely is a kinde of silence I were as good not be spoken to as not be made to understand that which is spoken yet fixe thy selfe upon this Angel of the East the preaching of the Word the Ordinance of God and thine understanding shall be enlightned and thy beliefe established and thy conscience thus far unburthened that though the sins which thou hast done cannot be undone yet neither shalt thou bee undone by them There where thou art afraid of them in judgement they shall never meet thee but as in the round frame of the World the farthest West is East where the West ends the East begins So in thee who art a World too thy West and thy East shall joyne and when thy Sun thy soule comes to set in thy death-bed the Son of Grace shall suck it up into glory Our Angel comes from the East Angelus Ascendens a denotation of splendor and illustration of understanding and conscience and there is more he comes Ascending I saw an Angel ascend from the East that is still growing more cleare and more powerfull upon us Take the Angel here of naturall Angels 1 Sam. 28.13 and then when the Witch of Endor though an evill Spirit appeared to her yet saw him appeare so Ascending she attributes that glory to it I see gods Ascending out of the earth Take the Angel to be Christ and then his Ascension was Foelix clausula totius itinerarii Bernar. The glorious shutting up of all his progresse and though his descending from Heaven to earth and his descending from earth to hell gave us our title his Ascending by which he carried up our flesh to the right hand of his Father gave us our possession His Descent his humiliation gave us Ius ad rem but his Ascension Ius in re But as this Angel is the Ministery of the Gospel God gave it a glorious ascent in the Primitive Church Psal 19.6 when as this Sun Exultavit ut gigas ad currendam viam ascended quickly beyond the reach of Heretiques wits and Persecutors swords and as glorious an ascent in the
there is wholesome meat before too The cleare light is in the Gospel but there is light in Nature too Revel 19.9 At the last Supper the Supper of the Lambe in Heaven there is no bill of fare there are no particular dishes named there It is impossible to tell us what we shall feed upon what we shall be feasted with at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb Our way of knowing God there cannot be expressed At that Supper of the Lambe which is here here in our way homewards that is in the Sacramentall Supper of the Lambe it is very hard to tell what we feed upon How that meat is dressed how the Body and Blood of Christ is received by us at that Supper in that Sacrament is hard to be expressed hard to be conceived for the way and manner thereof So also in the former meale that which we have called the Dinner which is The knowledge which the Jews had in the Law it was not easie to distinguish the taste and the nature of every dish and to finde the signification in every Type and in every Ceremony There are some difficulties if curious men take the matter in hand and be too inquisitive even in the Gospel more in the Law most of all in Nature But yet even in this first refection this first meale that God sets before man which is our knowledge of God in Nature because wee are then in Gods House all this World and the next make God but one House though God doe not give Marrow and fatnesse Psal 63.6 81.16 as David speaks though he doe not feed them with the fat of the wheat nor satisfie them with honey out of the Rock for the Gospel is the honey and Christ is the Rock yet even in Nature hee gives sufficient meanes to know him though they come to neither of the other Meales neither to the Jews Dinner The benefit of the Law nor to the Christians Supper either when they feed upon the Lamb in the Sacrament or when they feed with the Lamb in the possession and fruition of Heaven Though therefore the Septuagint in their Translation of the Psalms have in the Title of this Psalme added this A Psalme of Ieremy and Ezekiel when they were departing out of the Captivity of Babylon intimating therein that it is a Psalme made in contemplation of that blessed place which we are to go to as literally it was of their happie state in their restitution from Babylon to Jerusalem And though the ancient Church by appropriating this Psalme to the office of the dead to the service at Burials intimate also that this Psalme is intended of that fulnesse of knowledge and Joy and Glory which they have that are departed in the Lord yet the Holy Ghost stops as upon the way before we come thither and since we must lie in an Inne that is Lodge in this World he enables the World to entertaine us as well as to lodge us and hath provided that the World the very world it selfe before wee consider the Law in the World or the Church in the World or Glory in the next World This very World that is Nature and no more should give such an universall light of the knowledge of God as that he should bee The confidence of all the ends of the Earth and of them that are a farre off upon the Sea And therefore as men that come to great places and preferments when they have entred by a faire and wide gate of Honour but yet are laid downe upon hard beds of trouble and anxiety in those places for when the body seemes in the sight of men to go on in an easie amble the minde is every day if not all day in a shrewd and diseasefull trot As those men will sometimes say It was better with me when I was in a lower place and fortune and will remember being Bishops the pleasures they had when they were Schoole-boyes and yet for all this intermit not their thankfulnesse to God who hath raised them to that height and those meanes of glorifying him so howsoever we abound with joy and thankfulnesse for these gracious and glorious Illustrations of the Law and the Gospel and beames of future Glory which we have in the Christian Church Let us reflect often upon our beginning upon the consideration of Gods first benefits which he hath given to us all in Nature That light Iohn 1.9 by which he enlighteneth every man that commeth into the World That he hath given us a reasonable soule capable of grace here that he hath denied no man and no other creature hath that That he hath given us an immortal soul capable of glory hereafter and that that immortality he hath denied no man and no other creature hath that Consider we alwaies the grace of God to be the Sun it selfe but the nature of man and his naturall faculties to be the Sphear in which that Sun that Grace moves Consider we the Grace of God to be the soule it self but the naturall faculties of man to be as a body which ministers Organs for that soule that Grace to worke by That so as how much soever I feare the hand of a mighty man that strikes yet I have a more immediate feare of the sword he strikes with So though I impute justly my sins and my feares of judgements for them to Gods withdrawing or to my neglecting his grace yet I looke also upon that which is next me Nature and naturall light and naturall faculties and that I consider how I use to use them whether I be as watchfull upon my tongue that that minister no tentation to others and upon mine eye that that receive no tentation from others as by the light of Nature I might and as some morall Men without addition of particular Grace have done That so first for my selfe I be not apt to lay any thing upon God and to say that hee starved me though he should not bid me to the Jews dinner in giving me the light of the Law nor bid me to the Christians Supper in giving me the light of the Gospell because he hath given me a competent refection even in Nature And then that for others I may first say with the Apostle Rom. 1.20 11.33 That they are without excuse who doe not see the invisible God in the visible Creature and may say also with him O altitudo The wayes of the Lord are past my finding out And therefore to those who doe open their eyes to that light of Nature in the best exaltation thereof God does not hide himselfe though he have not manifested to me by what way he manifests himselfe to them For God disappoints none and he is The confidence of all the ends of the Earth and of them who are a farre off upon the Sea Commit thy way unto the Lord Psal 37.5 sayes David And he sayes more then our Translation seemes to expresse The Margin hath
addition of comelinesse His aspect was cheerfull and such as gave a silent testimony of a cleere knowing soule and of a conscience at peace with it selfe His melting eye shewed he had a soft heart full of noble pity of too brave a spirit to offer injuries and too much a Christian not to pardon them in others His fancie was un-imitable high equalled by his great wit both being made usefull by a commanding judgement His mind was liberall and unwearied in the search of knowledge with which his vigorous soule is now satisfied and employed in a continuall praise of that God that first breathed it into his active body which once was a Temple of the holy Ghost and is now become a small quantity of Christian dust But I shall see it re-inanimated Iz Wa IOHANNES DONNE SAC THEOL PROFESSOR POST VARIA STUDIA QVIBUS AB ANNIS TENERRIMIS FIDELITER NEC INFELICITER INCUBUIT INSTINCTU ET IMPULSU SPIR S ti MONITU ET HORTATU REGIS IACOBI ORDINES SACROS AMPLEXUS Aº SUI JESU 1614. ET SUAE AETATIS 42. DECANATU HUJUS ECCLESIAE INDUTUS XXVII NOVEMBRIS 1621. EXUTUS MORTE ULTIMO DIE MARTII 1631. Hic licet in Occiduo Cinere Aspicit Eum Cujus Nomen est ORIENS A Table directing to the severall Texts of SCRIPTURE handled by the Author in this BOOK SERM. I. COLOS. 1.19 20. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulnesse dwell And having made peace through the bloud of his Crosse by Him to reconcile all things to himselfe by Him whether they be things in earth or things in heaven page 1 SERM. II. ESAIAH 7.14 Therefore the Lord shall give you a signe Behold a Virgin shall conceive and beare a Son and shall call his name Immanuel pa. 11 SERM. III. GALAT. 4.4 5. But when the fulnesse of time was come God sent forth his Sonne made of a woman made under the Law to redeeme them that were under the Law that we might receive the adoption of Sons pa. 20 SERM. IV. LUKE 2.29 30. Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word For mine eyes have seene thy salvation pa. 29. SERM. V. EXOD. 4.13 O my Lord send I pray thee by the hand of him whom thou wilt send pa. 39 SERM. VI. Lord who hath beleeved our report pa. 52 SERM. VII JOHN 10.10 I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly pa. 62 SERM. VIII MAT. 5.16 Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorifie your Father which is in heaven pa. 77 SERM. IX ROM 13.7 Render therefore to all men their dues pa. 86 SERM. X. ROM 12.20 Therefore if thine enemie hunger feed him if he thirst give him drink for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head pa. 96 SERM. XI MAT. 9.2 And Iesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsie My son be of good chear thy sins be forgiven thee pa. 102 SERM. XII MAT. 5.2 Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God pa. 112 SERM. XIII JOB 16. ver 17 18 19. Not for any injustice in my hands Also my prayer is pure O earth cover thou not my bloud and let my cry have no place Also now behold my Witnesse is in heaven and my Record is on high pa. 127 SERM. XIV AMOS 5.18 Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord what have ye to doe with it the day of the Lord is darknesse and not light pa. 136 SERM. XV. 1 COR 15.26 The last Enemie that shall be destroyed is Death pa. 144 SERM. XVI JOHN 11.35 Iesus wept pa. 153 SERM. XVII MAT. 19.17 And he said unto him Why callest thou me Good There is none Good but One that is God pa. 163 SERM. XVIII ACTS 2.36 Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly That God hath made that same Iesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ pa. 175 SERM. XIX APOC. 20.6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first Resurrection pa. 183 SERM. XX. JOHN 5.28 29. Marvell not at this for the houre is comming in the which all that are in the graves shall heare his voice And shall come forth they that have done good unto the Resurrection of life And they that have done evill unto the Resurrection of damnation pa. 192 SERM. XXI 1 COR. 15.29 Else what shall they do that are baptized for dead If the dead rise not at all why are they then baptized for dead pa. 120 SERM. XXII HEB. 11.35 Women received their dead raised to life againe And others were tortured not accepting a deliverance that they might obtaine a better Resurrection pa. 213 SERM. XXIII 1 COR. 13.12 For now we see through a glasse darkly But then face to face Now I know in part But then I shall know even as also I am knowne pa. 224 SERM. XXIV JOB 4.18 Behold he put no trust in his Servants and his Angels he charged with folly pa. 233 SERM. XXV MAT. 28.6 He is not here for he is risen as he said Come See the place where the Lord lay pa. 242 SERM. XXVI 1 THES 4.17 Then we which are alive and remaine shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the ayre and so shall we be ever with the Lord. pa. 254 SERM. XXVII PSAL. 89.47 What man is he that liveth and shall not see death pa. 267 SERM. XXVIII XXIX JOHN 14.26 But the Comforter which is the holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my Name He shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you pa. 277. 286 SERM. XXX JOHN 14.20 At that day shall ye know That I am in my Father and you in me and I in you pa. 294 SERM. XXXI GEN. 1.2 And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters pa. 303 SERM. XXXII 1 COR. 12.3 Also no man can say that Iesus is the Lord but by the holy Ghost p. 312 SERM. XXXIII ACTS 10.44 While Peter yet spake these words the holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the Word pa. 321 SERM. XXXIV ROM 8.16 The Spirit it selfe beareth witnesse with our spirit that we are the children of God pa. 332 SERM. XXXV MAT. 12.31 Wherefore I say unto you All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men But the Blasphemy against the holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men pa. 341 SERM. XXXVI XXXVII JOHN 16.8 9 10 11. And when he is come he will reprove the world of sin and of righteousnesse and of judgement Of sin because ye beleeve not on me Of righteousnesse because I goe to my Father and ye see me no more Of judgement because the Prince of this world is judged pa. 351. 361 SERM. XXXVIII 2 COR. 1.3 Blessed be God even the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ
qui jam invocamus te deliver us O Lord who do now call upon thee Et libera eos qui nondum invocant ut invocent te liberes eos and deliver them who do not yet call upon thee that they may call upon thee and be farther delivered by thee But it is time to passe from this first part the consideration of the Persons Ille Illis that God who is infinitely more then All would come to man who is infinitely lesse then nothing that God who is the God of peace would come to man his professed enemy that God the only Son of God would come to the reliefe of man of all men to our second generall part the action it self so far as it is enwrapped in this word Veni I came I came that they might have life Through this second part veni I came we must passe apace because upon the third 2 Part. the end of his comming that they might have life we must necessarily insist sometime In this therefore wee make but two steps And this the first that that God who is omnipresent alwayes every where in love to man studyed a new way of comming of communicating himselfe to man veni I came novo modo so as I was never with man before The rule is worth the repeating lex loquitur linguam filiorum hominum God speakes mans language that is so as that he would be understood by man Therefore to God who alwayes fills all places are there divers Positions and Motions and Transitions ascribed in Scriptures In divers places is God said to sit Sedet Rex The Lord sitteth King for ever Howsoever the Kings of the earth be troubled and raysed Psal 29.10 and throwne downe againe and troubled and raised and throwne downe by him yet the Lord sitteth King for ever Habitat in Coelis sayes David Psal 102.13 and yet sedet in circulis terrae sayes Esay The Lord dwelleth in the heavens and yet hee sits upon the compasse of this earth Where no earth-quake shakes his seat Esay 40.22 for sedet in confusione as one Translation reads that place Psal 29.10 The Lord sitteth upon the flood so wee reade it what confusions soever disorder the world what floods soever surround and overflow the world the Lord sits safe Other phrases there are of like denotation Esay 26.21 Exit de loco Behold the Lord commeth out of his place that is he produces and brings to light things which he kept secret before And so Revertar ad locum I will goe Hose 5.15 and returne to my place that is I will withdraw the light of my countenance my presence my providence from them So that heaven is his place and then is he said to come to us when he manifests himself unto us in any new manner of working In such a sense was God come to us when he said I lift up my hands to heaven and say I live for ever Deut. 52.40 Where was God when he lifted up his hands to heaven Here here upon earth with us in his Church for our assurance and our establishment making that protestation denoted in the lifting up of his hands to heaven that he lived for ever that he was the everliving God and that therefore we need feare nothing God is so omnipresent as that the Ubiquitary will needs have the body of God every where so omnipresent as that the Stancarist will needs have God not only to be in every thing but to be every thing that God is an Angelin an Angel and a stone in a stone and a straw in a straw But God is truly so omnipresent as that he is with us before he comes to us Qâ—id peto ut venias in me August qui non essem si non esses in me why doe I pray that thou wouldst come into me who could not only not pray but could not bee if thou wert not in me before But his comming in this Text is a new act of particular mercy and therefore a new way of comming What way by assuming our nature in the blessed Virgin That that Paradoxa virgo as Amelberga the wife of one of the Earls of Flanders who lived continently even in mariage and is therfore called Paradoxa virgo a Virgin beyond opinion that this most blessed Virgin Mary should not only have a Son for Manes the Patriarch of that great Sect of Heretiques the Manichees boasted himselfe to be the son of a Virgin and some casuists in the Romane Church have ventured to say that by the practice and intervention of the devill there may be a childe and yet both parents father and mother remain Virgins But that this Son of this blessed Virgin should also be the Son of the eternall God this is such a comming of him who was here before as that if it had not arisen in his own goodnesse no man would ever have thought of it no man might ever have wished or prayed for such a comming that the only Son of God should come to die for all the sons of men August For Aliud est hîc esse aliud hîc tibi esse It is one thing for God to be here in the world another thing to be come hither for thy sake born of a woman for thy salvation And this is the first act of his mercy wrapped up in this word Veni I came I who was alwayes present studied a new way of comming I who never went from thee came again to thee The other act of his mercy enwrapped in this word Veni actu veni I came is this that he that came to the old world but in promises and prophecies and figures is actually really personally and presentially come to us of which difference that man will have the best sense who languishes under the heavy expectation of a reversion in office or inheritance or hath felt the joy of comming to the actuall possession of such a reversion Christ was the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world appointed for a Sacrifice from that first promise of a Messias in Paradise long before that from all eternity For whensoever the election of the elect was date it when you will Christ was at that election and not only as the second person in the Trinity as God but Christ considered as man and as the propitiation and sacrifice for man for whosoever was elected was elected in Christ Christ was alwayes come in Gods purpose and early come in Gods promise and continually comming in the succession of the Prophets with such a confidence as that one of them sayes Esay 9.6 Puer datus filius natus A childe is given unto us a Son is born unto us Born and given already because the purpose of God in which he was born cannot be disappointed the promise of God by which he was given cannot be frustrated the Prophets of God by whom he was presented cannot be mistaken But yet
the Gospell above the law Not onely in that the blessings of God are presented in the Old Testament in the name of Milke and Hony and Oyle and Wine all temporall things and in the New Testament in the name of Joy and Glory things in a manner spirituall But that also in the Old Testament the best things are limited and measured unto them a Gomer of Manna and no more Mat. 25.21 Heb. 12.2 Iohn 15.11 Iohn 16.21 for the best man whereas for the joy of the Gospell we shall enter In Gandium Domini Into our Masters Ioy and be made partakers with Christ Jesus of that Ioy for which he endured the Crosse And here in this world Gaudium meum erit saies Christ My Ioy shall be in you in what measure Implebitar saies he Your Ioy shall be full How long for ever Nemo tollet your Ioy shall no man take from you And such as the Joy is such is the glory too Eph. 1.18 2 Cor. 4.17 1 Pet. 5.4 How precious Divitiae Gloria The Riches of the Glory of his Inheritance How much Pondus gloriae A waight of glory How long Immarcescibilis Corona A crowne of Glory that never fadeth We might I say take occasion of making this comparison betweene the Old and the New Testament out of this Text because this charity enjoyned here in this text to our enemy in that place from whence this text is taken in the Proverbs is but Lachem and Maiim Bread and Water But here in S. Paul it is in words of better signification feed him give him drinke But indeed the words at the narrowest as it is but bread and water signifie whatsoever is necessary for the reliefe of him that stands in need And if we be enjoyn'd so much to our enemy how inexcusable are those Datores cyminibiles as the Canonists call them that give Mint and Cummin for almes a roote that their Hogs will not a broth that their Dogs will not eate Remember in thy charity the times and the proportions of thy Saviour After his Death in the wound in his side he poured out water and bloud which represented both Sacraments and so was a bountifull Dole provide in thy life to doe good after thy death and it shall be welcome even in the eyes of God then But remember too that this dole at his death was not the first almes that he gave his water was his white mony and his blood was his gold and he poured out both together in his agony and severally in his weeping and being scourged for thee What proportion of reliefe is due to him that is thy brother in Nature thy brother in Nation thy brother in Religion if meate and drinke and in that whatsoever is necessary to his sustentation bee due to thine enemy But all this bountifull charity Si esurierit is Si esurierit si sitit If he be hungry if he be thirsty To the King who beares the care and the charge of the publique wee are bound to give Antequam esuriat Antequam sitias before he be overtaken with dangerous and dishonorable and lesse remediable necessities not onely substantiall wants upon which our safety depends but circumstantiall and ceremoniall wants upon which his Dignity and Majesty depends are alwaies to bee not onely supplied but prevented But our enemy must be in hunger and thirst that is reduced to the state as hee may not become our enemy againe by that which we give before wee are bound by this text to give any thing No doubt but the Church of Rome hungers still for the money of this land upon which they fed so luxuriantly heretofore and no doubt but those men whom they shall at any time animate will thirst for the blood of this land which they have sought before but this is not the hunger and the thirst of the enemy which we must feed The Commandement goes not so far as to feed that enemy that may thereby be a more powerfull enemy But yet thus far truly it does goe deny no office of civility of peace of commerce of charity to any onely therefore because hee hath beene heretofore an enemy There remaines nothing of those two branches which constitute our first part 2. Part. the person that is an enâ—â—â— reduced to a better disposition and the duty that is to relieve him with things necessary for that state And for the second part we must stop upon those steps laid downe at first of which the first was That God takes nothing for nothing he gives a Reward When God tooke that great proportion of Sheep and Oxen out of his subjects goods in the State of Israel for Sacrifice that proportion which would have kept divers Kings houses and would have victualed divers navies perchance no man could say I have this or this benefit for this or this Sacrifice but yet could any man say God hath taken a Sacrifice for nothing Where we have Peace and Justice and Protection can any man say he gives any thing for nothing When God saies If I were hungry I would not tell thee that 's not intended which Tertullian saies Psal 50.12 Scriptum est Deus non esuriet nec sitiet It is written God shall neither hunger nor thirst for first Tertullians memory failed him there is no such sentence in all the Scripture as he cites there And then God does hunger and thirst in this sense in the members of his mysticall body neither is that onely intended in that place of the Psalme though Cassiodore take it so That if God in his poore Saints were hungry he could provide them without telling thee but it is If I were hungry I need not tell thee for Psal 24.1 The earth is the Lords and the fulnesse thereof and they that dwell therein God does not alwaies binde himselfe to declare his hunger his thirst his pressing occasions to use the goods of his subjects but as the Lord gives so the Lord takes where and when he will But yet as God transfuses a measure of this Right and power of taking into them of whom he hath said you are Gods so he transfuses this goodnesse too which is in himselfe that he takes nothing for nothing He promises here a reward and a reward arising from the enemy which puts a greater encouragement upon us to doe it Super caput ejus In so doing thou shalt heape coales of fire on his head God is the Lord of Hosts and in this Text Ex Inimicis he makes the seate of the warre in the enemies Country and enriches his servants Ex manubiis out of the spoyle of the enemy In caput ejus It shall fall upon his head Though all men that go to the war goe not upon those just reasons deliberated before in themselves which are 〈◊〉 defence of a just cause the obedience to a lawfull Commandment yet of those that do goe without those conscientiense deliberations none goes therefore
bottomelesse Sea of the blood of Christ Jesus so they would know as well what God hath done for my soule as what my soule and body have done against my God so they would reade me throughout and look upon me altogether I would joyne with Iob in his confident adjuration O Earth cover not thou my blood Let all the world know all the sins of my youth and of mine age too and I would not doubt but God should receive more glory and the world more benefit then if I had never sinned This is that that exalts Iobs confidence he was guilty of nothing that is no such thing as they concluded upon of nothing absolutely because he had repented all And from this his confidence rises to a higher pitch then this Nec clamor O Earth cover not thou my blood and let my cry have no place What meanes Iob in this Doubtfull Expositors make us doubt too Some have said Clamor that Iob desires his cry might have no place that is no termination no resting place but that his just complaint might be heard over all the world Stunnica the Augustinian interprets it so Some have said that he intends by his cry his crying sins that they might have no place that is no hiding place but that his greatest sins and secret sins might be brought to light Bolduc the Capuchin interprets it so according to that use of the word Clamor God looked for righteousnesse ecce clamorem behold a cry that is Esay 5.7 sins crying in the eares of God But there is more then so in this phrase in this elegancy in this vehemency of the Holy Ghost in Iobs mouth Let my cry have no place In the former part Iobs Protestation he considered God and man righteousnesse towards man in cleane hands and in pure prayers devotion towards God In this part his Manifest he pursues the same method he considers man and God Though men knew all my sins that should not trouble me sayes he and that we have considered yea though my cry finde no place no place with God that should not trouble me I should be content that God should seeme not to heare my prayers but that hee laid me open to that ill interpretation of wicked men Tush he prayes but the Lord heares him not he cries but God relieves him not And yet when wilt thou relieve me O thou reliever of men if not upon my cries upon my prayers Yet S. Augustine hath repeated that more then once more then twice Non est magnum exaudiri ad voluntatem non est magnum Be not over-joyed when God grants thee thy prayer Exauditi ad voluntatem Daemones sayes that Father The Devill had his prayer granted when he had leave to enter into the Heard of Swine And so he had sayes he exemplifying in our present example when he obtained power from God against Iob. But all this aggravated the Devils punishment so may it doe thine to have some prayers granted And as that must not over-joy thee if it be so if thy prayer be not granted it must not deject thee God suffered S. Paul to pray and pray and pray yet after his thrice praying granted him not that he prayed for God suffered that si possibile if it be possiblle and that Transeat calix Let this Cup passe to passe from Christ himselfe yet he granted it not But in many of these cases a man does easilier satisfie his owne minde then other men If God grant me not my prayer I recover quickly and I lay hold upon the hornes of that Altar and ride safely at that Anchor God saw that that which I prayed for was not so good for him nor so good for me But when the world shall come to say Where is now your Religion where is your Reformation doe not all other Rivers as well as the Tiber or the Poe does not the Seine and the Rhene and the Maene too begin to ebbe back and to empty it selfe in the Sea of Rome why should not your Thames doe so as well as these other Rivers Where is now your Religion your Reformation Were not you as good run in the same channell as others doe This is a shrewd tentation and induces opprobrious conclusions from malicious enemies when our cries have no place our religious service no present acceptation our prayers no speedy return from God But yet because even in this God may propose farther glory to himselfe more benefit to me and more edification even to them at last who at first made ill constructions of his proceedings I admit as Iob admits O Earth cover not thou my blood let all the world see all my faults and let my cry have no place let them imagine that God hath forsaken me and does not heare my prayers my satisfaction my acquiescence arises not out of their opinion and interpretation that must not be my triall but testis in coelis My witnesse is in heaven and my record is on high which is our third and last Consideration We must doe in this last as we have done in our former two parts crack a shell 3 Part. to tast the kernell cleare the words to gaine the Doctrine I am ever willing to assist that observation That the books of Scripture are the eloquentest books in the world that every word in them hath his waight and value his taste and verdure And therefore must not blame those Translators nor those Expositors who have with a particular elegancy varied the words in this last clause of the Text my witnesse and my record The oldest Latine Translation received this variation and the last Latine even Tremellius himselfe as close as he sticks to the Hebrew retaines this variation Testis and Conscius And that collection which hath been made upon this variation is not without use that conscius may be spoken de interno that God will beare witnesse to my inward conscience and testis de externo that God will in his time testifie to the world in my behalfe But other places of Scripture will more advance that observation of the elegancy thereof then this for in this the two words signifie but one and the same thing it is but witnesse and witnesse and no more Not that it is easie to finde in Hebrew nor perchance in any language two words so absolutely Synonymous as to signifie the same thing without any difference but that the two words in our Text are not both of one language not both Hebrew For the first word Gned is an Hebrew word but the other Sahad is Syriaque and both signifie alike Levit. 5.1 and equally testem a witnesse He that heares the voyce of swearing and is a witnesse sayes Moses in the first word of our Text and then the Chalde Paraphrase intending the same thing expresses it in the other word Sahad So in the contract between Laban and Jacob Gen. 31.47 Laban calls that heap of stones which he had
cals the Firmament that great expansion from Gods chaire to his footstoole from Heaven to earth there was a defect which God did not supply that day nor the next but the fourth day he did for that day he made those bodies those great and lightsome bodies the Sunne and Moone and Starres and placed them in the Firmament So also the Heaven of Heavens the Presence Chamber of God himselfe expects the presence of our bodies No State upon earth can subsist without those bodies Men of their owne For men that are supplied from others may either in necessity or in indignation be withdrawne and so that State which stood upon forraine legs sinks Let the head be gold Dan. 2.31 and the armes silver and the belly brasse if the feete be clay Men that may slip and molder away all is but an Image all is but a dreame of an Image for forraine helps are rather crutches then legs There must be bodies Men and able bodies able men Men that eate the good things of the land their owne figges and olives Men not macerated with extortions They are glorified bodies that make up the kingdome of Heaven bodies that partake of the good of the State that make up the State Bodies able bodies and lastly bodies inanimated with one soule one vegetative soule all must be sensible and compassionate of one anothers miserie and especially the Immortall soule one supreame soule one Religion For as God hath made us under good Princes a great example of all that Abundance of Men Men that live like men men united in one Religion so wee need not goe farre for an example of a slippery and uncertaine being where they must stand upon others Mens men and must over-load all men with exactions and distortions and convulsions and earthquakes in the multiplicity of Religions The Kingdome of Heaven must have bodies Kingdomes of the earth must have them and if upon the earth thou beest in the way to Heaven thou must have a body too a body of thine owne a body in thy possession for thy body hath thee and not thou it if thy body tyrannize over thee If thou canst not withdraw thine eye from an object of tentation or withhold thy hand from subscribing against thy conscience nor turne thine eare from a popular and seditious Libell what hast thou towards a man Thou hast no soule nay thou hast no body There is a body but thou hast it not it is not thine it is not in thy power Thy body will rebell against thee even in a sin It will not performe a sin when and where thou wouldst have it Much more will it rebell against any good worke till thou have imprinted Stigmata Iesu Gal. 6.17 The Markes of the Lord Iesus which were but exemplar in him but are essentiall and necessary to thee abstinencies and such discreete disciplines and mortifications as may subdue that body to thee and make it thine for till then it is but thine enemy and maintaines a warre against thee and war and enemie is the Metaphore which the holy Ghost hath taken here to expresse a want a kind of imperfectnesse even in Heaven it selfe Bellum Symbolum mali As peace is of all goodnesse so warre is an embleme a Hieroglyphique of all misery And that is our second step in this paraphrase If the feete of them that preach peace be beautifull And Vestig 2. Pax bellum O how beautifull are the feete of them that preach peace The Prophet Isaiah askes the question 52.7 And the Prophet Nahum askes it 1.15 and the Apostle S. Paul askes it Rom. 10.15 They all aske it but none answers it who shall answer us if we aske How beautifull is his face who is the Author of this peace when we shall see that in the glory of Heaven the Center of all true peace It was the inheritance of Christ Jesus upon the earth he had it at his birth he brought it with him Glory be to God on high peace upon earth Luke 2.14 Colos 1.20 It was his purchase upon earth He made peace indeed he bought peace through the blood of his Crosse It was his Testament Iohn 14.27 when he went from earth Peace I leave with you my peace I give unto you Divide with him in that blessed Inheritance partake with him in that blessed Purchase enrich thy selfe with that blessed Legacy his Peace Let the whole world be in thy consideration as one house and then consider in that in the peacefull harmony of creatures in the peacefull succession and connexion of causes and effects the peace of Nature Let this Kingdome where God hath blessed thee with a being be the Gallery the best roome of that house and consider in the two walls of that Gallery the Church and the State the peace of a royall and a religious Wisedome Let thine owne family be a Cabinet in this Gallery and finde in all the boxes thereof in the severall duties of Wife and Children and servants the peace of vertue and of the father and mother of all vertues active discretion passive obedience and then lastly let thine owne bosome be the secret box and reserve in this Cabinet and then the best Jewell in the best Cabinet and that in the best Gallery of the best house that can be had peace with the Creature peace in the Church peace in the State peace in thy house peace in thy heart is a faire Modell and a lovely designe even of the heavenly Jerusalem which is Visio pacis where there is no object but peace And therefore the holy Ghost to intimate to us that happy perfectnesse which wee shall have at last and not till then chooses the Metaphor of an enemy and enmity to avert us from looking for true peace from any thing that presents it selfe in the way Neither truly could the holy Ghost imprint more horror by any word then that which intimates war as the word enemy does It is but a little way that the Poet hath got in description of war Iam seges est that now that place is ploughed where the great City stood for it is not so great a depopulation to translate a City from Merchants to husbandmen from shops to ploughes as it is from many Husbandmen to one Shepheard and yet that hath beene often done And all that at most is but a depopulation it is not a devastation that Troy was ploughed But when the Prophet Isaiah comes to the devastation to the extermination of a war Esay 7.23 he expresses it first thus Where there were a thousand Vineyards at a cheape rate all the land become briars and thornes That is much but there is more Esay 13.13 The earth shall be removed out of her place that Land that Nation shall no more be called that Nation nor that Land But yet more then that too Not onely not that people Esay 13.19 but no othe shall ever inhabit it It shall
be strong enough to make benefit of that assistance And so death adheres when sin and Satan have weakned body and minde death enters upon both And in that respect he is Vltimus hostis the last enemy and that is Sextum vestigium our sixth and next step in this paraphrase Death is the last and in that respect the worst enemy In an enemy Novisssnsâ—s hostis that appeares at first when we are or may be provided against him there is some of that which we call Honour but in the enemie that reserves himselfe unto the last and attends our weake estate there is more danger Keepe it where I intend it in that which is my spheare the Conscience If mine enemie meet me betimes in my youth in an object of tentation so Iosephs enemie met him in Putifars Wife yet if I doe not adhere to this enemy dwell upon a delightfull meditation of that sin if I doe not fuell and foment that sin assist and encourage that sin by high diet wanton discourse other provocation I shall have reason on my side and I shall have grace on my side and I shall have the History of thousand that have perished by that sin on my side Even Spittles will give me souldiers to fight for me by their miserable example against taht sin nay perchance sometimes the vertue of that woman whom I sollicite will assist me But when I lye under the hands of that enemie that hath reserved himselfe to the last to my last bed then when I shall be able to stir no limbe in any other measure then a Feaver or a Palsie shall shake them when everlasting darknesse shal have an inchoation in the present dimnesse of mine eyes and the everlasting gnashing in the present chattering of my teeth and the everlasting worme in the present gnawing of the Agonies of my body and anguishes of my minde when the last enemie shall watch my remedilsse body and my desconsolate soule there there where not the Physitian in his way perchance not the Priist in hi shall be able to give any assistance And when he hath sported himselfe with my misery upon that stage my death-bed shall shift the Scene and throw me from that bed into the grave and there triumph over me God knowes how many generations till the Redeemer my Redeemer the Redeemer of all me body aswell as soule come againe As death is Novissimus hostis the enemy which watches me at my last weaknesse and shall hold me when I shall be no more till that Angel come Who shall say and sweare that time shall be no more in that consideration in that apprehension he is the powerfullest the fearefulest enemy and yet evern there this enemy Abolebitur he shall be destroyed which is Septimum vestigium our seventh and last step in this paraphrase This destruction this abolition of this last enemy is by the Resurrection Abolebieur for the Text is part of an argument for the Resurrection And truly it is a faire intimation and testimony of an everlasting end in that state of the Resurrection that no time shall end it that we have it presented to us in all the parts of time in the past in the present and in the future We had a Resurrection in prophecy we have a Resurrection in the present working of Gods Sprit we shall have a Resurrection in the finall consummation The Prophet speaks in the furture He will swallow up death in victory there it is Abolebit Esay 25.8 All the Erangelists speak historically of matter of fact in them it is Abolevit And here in this Apostle it is in the present Aboletur now he is destroyed And this exhibites unto us a threefold occasion of advancing our devotion in considering a threefold Resurrection First a Resurrection from dejections and calamities in this world a Temporary Resurrection Secondly a Resurrection from sin a Spirituall Resurrection and then a Resurrection Secondly a Resurrection A calamitate When the Prophets speak of a Resurrection in the old Testament 1. A calamitate for the most part their principall intention is upon a temporall restitution from calamities that oppresse them then Neither doth Calvin carry those emphaticall words which are so often cited for a proofe of the last Resurrection Job 19.25 That he knows his Redeemer lives that he knows he shall stand the last man upon earth that though his body be destroyed yet in his flesh and with his eyes he shall see God to any higher sense then so that how low soeve he bee brought to what desperate state soever he be reducedin the eyes of the world yet he assures himself of a Resurrection a reparation a restitution to his former bodily health and worldly fortune which he had before And such a Resurrection we all know Iob had In that famous and most considerable propheticall vision which God exhibited to Ezekiel where God set the Prophet in a valley of very many and very dry bones and invites the severall joynts to knit again tyes them with their old sinews and ligaments clothes them in their old flest wraps them in their old skin and cals life into them again Gods principall intention in that vision was thereby to give them an assurance of a Resurrection from their present calamity not but that there is also good evidence of the last Resurrection in that vision too Thus far God argues with them áre nota from that which they knew before the finall Resurrection he assures them that which they knew not till then a present Resurrection from those pressures Remember by this vision that which you all know already that at last I shall re-unite the dead and dry bones of all men in a generall Resurrection And them if you remember if you consider if you look upon that can you doubt but that I who can do that can also recollect you from your present desperation and give you a Resurrection to your former temporall happinesse And this truly arises pregnantly necessarily out of the Prophets answer God asks him there Son of man cna these bones live And he answers Domine tu nósti O Lord God thou knowest The Prophet answers according to Gods intention in the question If that had been for their living in the last Resurrection Ezekiel would have answered God as Martha answered Christ John 11.24 when he said Thy brother Lazarus shall rise again I know that he shall rise again at the Resurrection at the last day but when the question was whether men so macerated so seattered in this world could have a Resurrection to their former temprorall happinesse here that puts the Prophet to his Domine tu nósti It is in thy breast to proposeit itis in thy hand to execute it whether thou do it or do it not thy name be glorisied It fals not within our conjecture which way it shall please thee to take for this Resurrection Domine tu nósti Thou
no man would ever have thought of of himself nor might have prayed for if he could have imagined it this Mercy of the Father is the object of our Thankfulness The Merit of the Son That into a man but of our nature and equall to us in infirmities there should be superinfused such another nature such a divinity as that any act of that Person so composed of those two natures should be even in the rigour of Justice a sufficient ransome for all the sins of all the Werld is the object of our admiration But the object of our consolation which is the subject of this Text is this That the Holy Ghost by his presence and by inanimating the Ordinances of Christ in the Ministery of the Gospell applies this mercy and this merit to me to thee to every soul that answers his motions In that Contract that past between Solomon and Hiram for commerce and trade between their Nations 1 Kâ—â—g 5. That Solomon should send him Corne and Oyle and Hiram should send him Cedar and other rich materials for Building that people of God received an honor and an assurance in that present Contract for future trade and commerce So did the World in that Contract which past betweene the Father and the Son That the Father should send downe God and the World should deliver up Man The nature of Man to be assumed by that Son and so a Redemption should be wrought after in the fulnesse of Time And then in the performance of this Contract when Hiram sent downe those rich materials from Libanon to the Sea and by Sea in Flotes to the place assigned Ver. 9. where Solomon received them that people of God received a reall profit in that actuall performance of that which was but in contract before So did the World too when in the fulnesse of Time and in the place assigned by God in the Prophet Micah which was Bethlem the Son of God came in our flesh and after dyed for us His Blood was the Substance the Materials of our ransome and actually and really delivered and deposited for us which was the performance of the former Contract between his Father and him But then was the dignity of that people of God accomplisht when those rich Materials so sent were really imploied in the building of the Temple when the Altar and the Oracle were cloathed with that Gold when the Cherubim and the Olive-Trees and the other Figures were made of that rich stuffe which was provided when certaine chiefe Officers and three thousand three hundred under-Officers Ver. 15. Ver. 14. were appointed to over-see the Work and ten thousand that attended by monthly courses and seaven score ten thousand that were alwaies resident upon the Work And so is our comfort accomplisht to us when the Holy Ghost distributes these materials the Blood and the Merits of Christ upon severall Congregations and that by his higher Officers Reverend and Vigilant Bishops and others that have part in the Government of the Church and then by those who like Solomons ten thousand performed the service by monthly courses and those who like his seaven score and ten thousand are alwayes resident upon fixt places that salvation of soules so decreed at first by the Father and so accomplished after by the Son is by the Holy Ghost shed and spred upon particular men When as the world began in a community that every thing was every bodies but improved it selfe to a propriety and came to a Meum Tuum that every man knew his owne so that which is Salus Domini The Salvation of the Lord as it is in the first Decree and that which is Salus Mundi The Salvation of the World as it is in the accomplishment of the Decree by Christ may be Mea Tua My Salvation and thy Salvation as it is applyed by the Holy Ghost in the Ministry of the Church Salvation in the Decree is as the Bezar stone in the maw of that creature there it growes Salvation in Christs death is as that Bezar in the Merchants or Apothecaries provision But salvation in the Church in the distribution and application thereof by the Holy Ghost is as that Bezar working in my veines expelling my peccant humours and rectifying my former defects The last work the Seale and Consummation of all is of the Holy Ghost And therefore as the Manifestation of the whole Trinity seemes to have been reserved for Christ so Christ seemes to have reserved the Manifestation of the Holy Ghost for his last Doctrine For this is the last Sermon that Christ preached And this is a Sermon recorded only by that last Euangelist who as he considered the Divine Nature of Christ more then the rest did and so took it higher so did he also consider the future state and succession of the Church more then the rest did and so carried it lower For S. Iohn was a Prophet as well as an Euangelist Therefore in this last and lasting Euangelist and in this last Sermon Christ declares this last work in this world that is the Consummation of our Redemption in the application of the Holy Ghost For herein consists our comfort that it is He the Holy Ghost that ministers this comfort Christ had told them before that there should be a Comforter sent Ver. 16. But he did not tell them then that that Comforter was the Holy Ghost Here he does at last he does and he ends all in that that we might end and determine our comfort in that too This God gives me by the Holy Ghost For we mistake false comforts for true We comfort our selves in things that come not at all from God in things which are but vanities and conduce not all to any true comfort And we comfort our selves in things which though they doe come from God yet are not signed nor sealed by the Holy Ghost For Wealth and Honour and Power and Favour are of God but we have but stolne them from God or received them by the hand of the Devil if we be come to them by ill meanes And if we have them from the hand of God by having acquired them by good meanes yet if we make them occasions of sin in the ill use of them after we lose the comfort of the Holy Ghost which requires the testimony of a rectified conscience that all was well got and is well used Therefore as Christ puts the Origination of our Redemption upon the Father I came but to doe my Fathers will and as he takes the execution of that Decree upon himselfe I am the way and the truth and the life and the Resurrection I am all so he puts the comfort of all upon the Holy Ghost Discomfort and Disconsolation Sadnesse and Dejection Damnation and Damnation aggravated and this aggravated Damnation multiplied upon that soule that findes no comfort in the Holy Ghost If I have no Adventure in an East-Indian Returne though I be not the
whom they defame by the name of Heretiques with beginning this doctrine which was amongst themselves before we were at all if they did date us aright Attestatur spiritus ei damus fidem inde certi sumus sayes that Bishop The holy Ghost beares witnesse and our spirit with him and thereby we are sure but sayes he they will needs make a doubt whether this be a knowledge out of faith which doubt sayes he Secum fert absurditatem There is an absurdity a contradiction in the very doubt Ex Spiritu sancto humana Is it a knowledge from the holy Ghost and is it not a divine knowledge then But say they as that Bishop presses their objections The holy Ghost doth not make them know that it is the holy Ghost that assures them This is sayes he as absurd as the other For Nisi se testantem insinuet non testatur Except he make them discern that he is a witnesse he is no witnesse to them He ends it thus Sustinere coguntur quod excidit and that is indeed their case in very many things controverted Then when it conduced to their advantage in argument or to their profit in purse such and such things fell from them and now that opposition is made against such sayings of theirs their profit lyes at stake and their reputation too to make good and to maintain that which they have once how undiscreetly soever said Some of their severest later men even of their Jesuits acknowledges that we may know ourselves to be the children of God with as good a knowledge as that there is a Rome or a Constantinople And such an assurance as delivers them from all feare that they shall fall away Vegas Pererius and is not this more then that assurance which we take to our selves We give no such assurance as may occasion security or slacknesse in the service of God and they give such an assurance as may remove all feare and suspition of falling from God It was truly good counsell in S. Gregory when writing to one of the Empresses bed-chamber a religious Lady of his own name who had written to him that she should never leave importuning him till he sent her word that he had received a revelation from God that she was saved for sayes he Rem difficilem postulas inutilem It is a hard matter you require and an impertinent and uselesse matter for I am not a man worthy to receive revelations and besides such a revelation as you require might make you too secure And Mater negligentiae solet esse securitas sayes he Such a security might make you negligent in those duties which should make sure your salvation S. Augustine felt the witnesse of The Spirit but not of his spirit when he stood out so many solicitations of the holy Ghost and deferred and put off the outward meanes his Baptisme In that state when he had a disposition to Baptisme he sayes of himselfe Inferbui exultando sed inhorrui timendo Still I had a fervent joy in me because I saw the way to thee and intended to put my selfe into that way but yet because I was not yet in it I had a trembling a jealousie a suspition of my self Insinuati sunt mihi in profundo nutus tui In that halfe darknesse in that twi-light I discerned thine eye to be upon me Et gaudens in fide laudavi nomen tuum And this sayes he created a kinde of faith a confidence in me and this induced an inward joy and that produced a praising of thy goodnesse Sed ea fides securum me non esse sinebat But all this did not imprint and establish that security that assurance which I found as soon as I came to the outward seales and marks and testimonies of thine inseparable presence with me in thy Baptisme and other Ordinances S. Bernard puts the marks of as much assurance as we teach in these words of our Saviour Surge tolle grabatum ambula Arise Take up thy bed and walk Surge ad divina Raise thy thoughts upon the next world Tolle corpus ut non te ferat sed tu illud Take up thy body bring thy body into thy power that thou govern it and not it thee And then Ambula non retrospicias Walk on proceed forward and looke not backe with a delight upon thy former sins Remigius And a great deale an elder man then Bernard expresses it well Bene viventibus perhibet testimonium quòd jam sumus filii Dei To him that lives according to a right faith the Spirit testifies that he is now the childe of God Et quòd talia faciendo perseverabimus in ea filiatione He carries this testimony thus much farther That if we endeavour to continue in that course we shall continue in that state of being the children of God and never be cast off never disinherited Herein is our assurance an election there is The Spirit beares witnesse to our spirit that it is ours We testifie this in a holy life and the Church of God and the whole world joynes in this testimony That we are the children of God which is our last branch and conclusion of all The holy Ghost could not expresse more danger to a man then when he calls him Filium saeculi Luk. 16.18 Ephes 5.6 Acts 13.10 The childe of this world Nor a worse disposition then when he cals him Filium diffidentiae The childe of diffidence and distrust in God Nor a worse pursuer of that ill disposition then when he calls him Filium diaboli as S. Peter calls Elymas The childe of the devill Nor a worse possessing of the devill then when he calls him Filium perditionis John 17. Mat. 23.15 The childe of perdition Nor a worse execution of all this then when he calls him Filium gehennae The childe of hell The childe of this world The childe of desperation The childe of the devill The childe of perdition The childe of hell is a high expressing a deep aggravating of his damnation That his damation is not only his purchase as he hath acquired it but it is his inheritance he is the childe of damnation So is it also a high exaltation when the holy Ghost draws our Pedegree from any good thing and calls us the children of that Iohn 12.36 Mat. 9.15 As when he cals us Filios lucis The children of light that we have seen the day-star arise when he cals us Filios sponsi The children of the bride-chamber begot in lawfull marriage upon the true Church these are faire approaches to the highest title of all to be Filii Dei The children of God And not children of God Per filiationem vestigii so every creature is a childe of God by having an Image and impression of God in the very Beeing thereof but children so as that we are heires and heires so as that we are Co-heires with Christ as it follows in the next verse
the Schoolemen have called all these six not without just reason and good use by that heavy name And some of the Fathers have extended it farther then to these six S. Bernard in particular sayes Nolle obedire To resist lawfull Authority And another Simulata poenitentia To delude God with relapses counterfait repentances and another also Omne schisma All schismaticall renting of the peace of the Church All these they call in that sense Sins against the Holy Ghost Now all sins against the Holy Ghost are not irremissible Stephen told his persecutors Acts 7.51.60 They resisted the Holy Ghost and yet he prayed for them But because these sins may and ordinarily doe come to that sin stop betimes David was far from the murder of Vriah when he did but looke upon his Wife as she was bathing A man is far from defying the holy Ghost when he does but neglect him and yet David did come and he will come to the bottome quickly It may make some impression in you to tell and to apply a short story In a great Schisme at Rome Ladislaus tooke that occasion to debauch and corrupt some of the Nobility It was discerned and then to those seven Governors whom they had before whom they called Sapientes Wise men they added seven more and called them Bonos Good men honest men and relied and confided in them Goodnesse is the Attribute of the Holy Ghost If you have Greatness you may seeme to have some of the Father for Power is his If you have Wisdome you may seeme to have some of the Son for that is his If you have Goodnesse you have the Holy Ghost who shall lead you into all truth And Goodnesse is To be good and easie in receiving his impressions and good and constant in retaining them and good and diffusive in deriving them upon others To embrace the Gospel to hold fast the Gospel to propagate the Gospel this is the goodnesse of the Holy Ghost And to resist the entrance of the Gospel to abandon it after we have professed it to forsake them whom we should assist and succour in the maintenance of it This is to depart from the goodnesse of the Holy Ghost and by these sins against him to come too neare the sin the irremissible sin in which the calamities of this world shall enwrap us and deliver us over to the everlasting condemnation of the next This is as much as these words do justly occasion us to say of that sin and into a more curious search thereof it is not holy sobriety to pierce SERM. XXXVI Preached upon Whitsunday JOHN 16.8 9 10 11. And when he is come he will reprove the world of sin and of righteousnesse and of judgement Of sin because ye belceve not on me Of righteousnesse because I goe to my Father and ye see me no more Of judgement because the Prince of this world is judged OUr Panis quotidianus Our daily bread is that Iuge sacrificium That daily sacrifice of meditating upon God Our Panis hodiernus This dayes bread is to meditate upon the holy Ghost To day if ye will heare his voice to day ye are with him in Paradise For wheresoever the holy Ghost is Luk. 23.43 he creates a Paradise The day is not past yet As our Saviour said to Peter Hodie in nocte hac Mar. 14.10 This day even in this night thou shalt deny me so Hodie in nocte hac Even now though evening the day-spring from on high visits you Esay 38.8 God carries back the shadow of your Sun-dyall as to Hezechias And now God brings you to the beginning of this day if now you take knowledge that he is come who when he comes Reproves the world of sin c. The solemnity of the day requires Divisio and the method of the words offers for our first consideration the Person who is not named in our text but designed by a most emphaticall denotation Ille He He who is all and doth all But the word hath relation to a name proper to the holy Ghost for in the verse immediatly preceding our Saviour tels his disciples That he will send them the Comforter So forbearing all other mysterious considerations of the holy Ghost we receive him in that notion and function in which Christ sends him The Comforter And therefore in this capacity as The Comforter we must consider his action Arguet He shall reprove Reprove and yet Comfort nay therefore comfort because reprove And then the subject of his action Mundum The world the whole world no part left unreproved yet no part left without comfort And after that what he reproves the world of That multiplies Of sin of righteousnesse of judgement Can there be comfort in reproofe for sin Or can there lie a reproofe upon righteousnesse or upon judgement Very justly Though the evidence seem at first as strange as the crime for though that be good evidence against the sin of the world That they beleeve not in Christ Of sin because ye beleeve not on me yet to be Reproved of righteousnesse because Christ goes to his Father and they see him no more And to be Reproved of judgement because the Prince of this world is judged this seemes strange and yet this must be done and done to our comfort For this must be done Cum venerit Then when the holy Ghost and he in that function as the Comforter is come is present is working Beloved Reproofes upon others without charity rather to defame them then amend them Reproofes upon thy selfe without shewing mercy to thine own soule diffidences and jealousies and suspitions of God either that he hated thee before thy sin or hates thee irremediably irreconciliably irrecoverably irreparably for thy sin These are Reproofes but they are Absente spiritu In the absence of the holy Ghost before he comes or when he is gone When he comes and stayes He shall reprove and reprove all the world and all the world of those errours sin and righteousnesse and judgement and those errours upon those evidences Of sin because ye beleeve not on me c. But in all this proceeding he shall never devest the nature of a Comforter In that capacity he is sent in that he comes and works I doubt I shall see an end of my houre and your patience before I shall have passed those branches which appertaine most properly to the celebration of this day the Person the Comforter his action Reproofe the subject thereof the world and the Time Cum venerit When he comes The inditement of what the accusation is and the evidence how it is proved may exercise your devotion at other times Acts 2.2 This day the holy Ghost is said to have come suddenly and therefore in that pace we proceed and make haste to the consideration of the Person Ille When he He the holy Ghost the Comforter is come Ille Spiritus sanctus Gen. 3.15 Ille alone He is
of mercy to the poore and breaking off his sinnes And after all this hee had a yeares space to consider himselfe Dan 26. before the judgement was executed upon him But now beloved Voluntas perversa all that we have said or can be said to this purpose conduces but to this That though this reproof which the Holy Ghost leads us to be rather in convincing the understanding by argument and other perswasions then by extending our power to the destruction of the person yet this hath a modification how it must be and a determination where it must end for there are cases in which we may we must go farther For for the understanding we know how to worke upon that we know what arguments have prevayled upon us with what arguments we have prevailed upon others and those we can use so far Vt nihil habeant contra si non assentiantur That though they will not be of our minde yet they shall have nothing to say against it So far we can go upon that faculty the understanding But the will of man is so irregular so unlimited a thing as that no man hath a bridle upon anothers will no man can undertake nor promise for that no Creature hath that faculty but man yet no man understands that faculty It hath beene the exercise of a thousand wits it hath beene the subject yea the knot and perplexity of a thousand disputations to find out what it is that determines that concludes the will of man so as that it assents thereunto For if that were absolutely true which some have said and yet perchance that is as far as any have gone that Vltimus actus intellectus est voluntas That the last act of the Understanding is the Will then all our labour were still to worke upon the Understanding and when that were rectified the Will must follow But it is not so As we feele in our selves that we doe many sins which our understanding and the soule of our understanding our conscience tels us we should not doe so we see many others persist in errors after manifest convincing after all reproofe which can be directed upon the understanding When therefore those errors which are to be reproved are in that faculty which is not subject to this reproofe by argument in a perverted will because this wilfull stubbornnesse is alwaies accompanied with pride with singularity with faction with schisme with sedition we must remember the way which the Holy Ghost hath directed us in Eccles 10.16 If the iron be blunt we must either put to more strength or whet the edge Now when the fault is in the perversenesse of the will we can put to no more strength no argument serves to overcome that And therefore the holy Ghost hath admitted another way To whet the iron Gal. 5.12 And in that way does the Apostle say Vtinam abscindantur I would they were even cut off which trouble you There is an incorrigibility in which when the reproofe cannot lead the will it must draw blood which is where pretences of Religion are made and Treasons and Rebellions and Invasions and Massacres of people and Assasinates of Princes practised And this is a reproofe which as we shall see of the rest in the following branches is from the Holy Ghost in his function in this text as he is a Comforter This therefore is our comfort That our Church was never negligent in reproving the Adversary but hath from time to time strenuously and confidently maintained her truths against all oppositions to the satisfying of any understanding though not to the reducing of some perverse wils So Gregor de Valentia professes of our arguments I confesse these reasons would conclude my understanding Nisi didicissem captivare intellectum meum ad intellectum Ecclesiae But that I have learnt to captivate my understanding to the understanding of the Church and say what they will to beleeve as the Church of Rome beleeves which is Maldonats profession too upon divers of Calvins arguments This argument would prevaile upon me but that he was an Heretique that found it So that here is our comfort we have gone so far in this way of Reproofe Vt nihil habeant contra etsi nobiscum non sentiant This is our comfort that as some of the greatest Divines in forraine parts so also in our Church at home some of the greatest Prelates who have beene traduced to favour Rome have written the most solidly and effectually against the heresies of Rome of any other But it must be a comfort upon them that are reproved And this is their comfort that the State never drew drop of blood for Religion But then this is our comfort still that where their perversnesse shall endanger either Church or State both the State and Church may by the holy Ghosts direction and will return to those means which God allows them for their preservation that is To whet the edge of the Iron in execution of the laws And so we passe from our second consideration The Action Reproofe to the subject of Reproofe The world He shall reprove the world It is no wonder that this word Mundus should have a larger signification then other words for it containes all embraces comprehends all But there is no word in Scripture Mundus that hath not only not so large but so diverse a signification for it signifies things contrary to one another It signifies commonly and primarily the whole frame of the world and more particularly all mankinde and oftentimes only wicked men and sometimes only good men As Dilexit mundum God loved the world John 3.16 John 4.42 Rom. 11.15 And Hic est verè salvator mundi This is the Christ the Saviour of the world And Reconciliatio mundi The casting away of the Iews is the reconciliation of the world The Jews were a part of the world but not of this world Now in every sense the world may well be said to bee subject to the reproofe of God as reproof is a rebuke for He rebuked the winde Luk. 8.14 Psal 106.17 Gen. 3.17 Psal 105.14 and it was quiet And He rebuked the red Sea and it was dryed up He rebuked the earth bitterly in that Maledicta terra for Adams punishment Cursed be the ground for thy sake And for the noblest part of earth man and the noblest part of men Kings He rebuked even Kings for their sakes and said Touch not mine anointed But this is not the rebuke of our Text for ours is a rebuke of comfort even to them that are rebuked Whereas the angry rebuke of God carries heavy effects with it Increpat fugiunt Esay 17.13 God shall rebuke them and they shall flie far off He shall chide them out of his presence and they shall never return to it Increpasti superbos maledicti isti Thou hast rebuked the proud Psal 119.21 and thy rebuke hath wrought upon them as a
envy God that glory We reade of divers great actors in the first persecutions of the Christians who being fearefully tormented in body and soule at their deaths took care only that the Christians might not know what they suffered lest they should receive comfort and their God glory therein Certainly Herod would have been more affected if he had thought that we should have knowne how his pride was punished with those sudden wormes Acts 12.23 then with the punishment it selfe This is a self-reproofe even in this though he will not suffer it to break out to the edification of others there is some kinde of chiding himself for some thing mis-done But is there any comfort in this reproofe Consolatio Truly beloved I can hardly speak comfortably of such a man after he is dead that dyes in such a dis-affection loath that God should receive glory or his servants edification by these judgements But even with such a man if I assisted at his death-bed I would proceed with a hope to infuse comfort even from that dis-affection of his As long as I saw him in any acknowledgement though a negligent nay though a malignant a despitefull acknowledgement of God as long as I found him loath that God should receive glory even from that loathnesse from that reproofe from that acknowledgement That there is a God to whom glory is due I would hope to draw him to glorifie that God before his last gasp My zeale should last as long as his wives officiousnesse or his childrens or friends or servants obsequiousnesse or the solicitude of his Physitians should as long as there were breath they would minister some help as long as there were any sense of God I would hope to do some good And so much comfort may arise even out of this reproofe of the world as the world is only the wicked world In the last sense the world signifies the Saints the Elect the good men of the world Mundus sancti John 14.31 John 17.21 beleeving and persevering men Of those Christ sayes The world shall know that I love the Father And That the world may beleeve that thou hast sent me And this world that is the godliest of this world have many reproofes many corrections upon them That outwardly they are the prey of the wicked and inwardly have that Stimulum carnis which is the devils Solicitor and round about them they see nothing but profanation of his word mis-imployment of his works his creatures mis-constructions of his actions his judgements blasphemy of his name negligence and under-valuation of his Sacraments violation of his Sabbaths and holy convocations O what a bitter reproofe what a manifest evidence of the infirmity nay of the malignity of man is this if it be put home and throughly considered That even the goodnesse of man gets to no higher a degree but to have been the occasion of the greatest ill the greatest cruelty that ever was done the crucifying of the Lord of life The better a man is the more he concurred towards being the cause of Christs death which is a strange but a true and a pious consideration Dilexit mundum He loved the world and he came to save the world That is most especially and effectually those that should beleeve in him in the world and live according to that beliefe and die according to that life If there had been no such Christ had not died never been crucified So that impenitent men mis-beleeving men have not put Christ to death but it is we we whom he loves we that love him that have crucified him In what rank then of opposition against Christ shall we place our sins since even our faith and good works have been so farre the cause why Christ died that but for the salvation of such men Beleevers Workers Perseverers Christ had not died This then is the reproofe of the world that is of the Saints of God in the world Psal 84.10 that though I had rather be a doore-keeper in the house of my God I must dwell in the tents of wickednesse That though my zeale consume me because mine enemies have forgotten thy words Psal 119.138 I must stay amongst them that have forgotten thy words But this and all other reproofes that arise in the godly that we may still keep up that consideration that he that reproves us is The Comforter have this comfort in them that these faults that I indure in others God hath either pardoned in me or kept from me and that though this world be wicked yet when I shall come to the next world I shall finde Noah that had been drunk and Lot Gen. 9.21 Gen. 19.33 Numb 11.11 that had been incestuous and Moses that murmured at Gods proceedings and Iob and Ieremy and Ionas impatient even to imprecations against themselves Christs owne Disciples ambitious of worldly preferment his Apostles forsaking him his great Apostle forswearing him And Mary Magdalen that had been I know not what sinner and David that had been all I leave none so ill in this world but I may carry one that was or finde some that had been as ill as they in heaven and that blood of Christ Jesus which hath brought them thither is offered to them that are here who may be successors in their repentance as they are in their sins And so have you all intended for the Person the Comforter and the Action Reproofe and the Subject the World remaines only that for which there remaines but a little time the Time Cum venerit When the Comforter comes he will proceed thus We use to note three Advents three commings of Christ Cum venerit An Advent of Humiliation when he came in the flesh an Advent of glory when he shall come to judgement and between these an Advent of grace in his gracious working in us in this life and this middlemost Advent of Christ is the Advent of the Holy Ghost in this text when Christ works in us the Holy Ghost comes to us And so powerfull is his comming that whereas he that sent him Christ Jesus himself Came unto his own and his own received him not John 1.11 The Holy Ghost never comes to his owne but they receive him for onely by receiving him they are his owne for besides his title of Creation by which we are all his with the Father and the Son as there is a particular title accrewed to the Son by Redemption so is there to the Holy Ghost of certaine persons upon whom he sheds the comfort of his application The Holy Ghost picks out and chooses whom he will Spirat ubi vult perchance me that speake perchance him that heares perchance him that shut his eyes yester-night and opened them this morning in the guiltinesse of sin and repents it now perchance him that hath been in the meditation of an usurious contract of an ambitious supplantation of a licentious solicitation since he came hither into Gods
house and deprehends himselfe in that sinfull purpose now This is his Advent this is his Pentecost As he came this day with a Manifestation so if he come into thee this evening he comes with a Declaration a Declaration in operation Pater meus usque modo operatur ego operor John 5.17 My Father works even now and I work was Christs answer when he was accused to have broken the Sabbath day that the Father wrought that day as well as he So also Christ assignes other reasons of working upon the Sabbath Luke 14.5 Cujus Bos Whose Oxe is in danger Mat. 12.3 5. and the owner will not relieve him Nonne legistis Have ye not read how David ate the Shew-bread And Annon legistis Did not the Priests breake the Sabbath in their service in the Temple But the Sabbath is the Holy Ghosts greatest working day The Holy Ghost works more upon the Sunday then all the week In other dayes he picks and chooses but upon these dayes of holy Convocation I am surer that God speakes to me Tertul. then at home in any private inspiration For as the Congregation besieges God in publique prayers Agmine facto so the Holy Ghost casts a net over the whole Congregation in this Ordinance of preaching and catches all that break not out If he be come into thee he is come to reprove thee to make thee reprove thy selfe But doe that Cum vencrit when the Holy Ghost is come If thou have beene slack in the outward acts of Religion and findest that thou art the worse thought of amongst men for that respect the more open to some penall Laws for those omissions and for these reasons onely beginnest to correct and reprove thy selfe this is a reproofe Antequam Spiritus vener it before the Holy Ghost is come into thee or hath breathed upon thee and inanimated thine actions If the powerfulnesse and the piercing of the mercies of thy Saviour have sometimes in the preaching thereof entendered and melted thy heart and yet upon the confidence of the readinesse and easinesse of that mercy thou returne to thy vomit to the re-pursuite of those halfe-repented sins and thinkest it time enough to goe forward upon thy death-bed this is a reproofe Postquam abierit Spiritus After the Holy Ghost is departed from thee If the burden of thy sins oppresse thee if thou beest ready to cast thy selfe from the Pinacle of the Temple from the participation of the comforts afforded thee in the Absolution and Sacraments of the Church If this appeare to thee in a kinde of humility and reverence to the Majesty of God That thou darest not come into his sight not to his table not to speake to him in prayer whom thou hast so infinitely offended this is a reproofe Cum Spiritus Sanctus simulatur when the Holy Ghost is counterfaited when Satan is transformed into an Angel of light and makes thy dismayed conscience beleeve that that affection which is truly a higher Treason against God then all thy other sins which is a diffident suspecting of Gods mercy is such a reverend feare and trembling as he looks for Reprove thy selfe but doe it by convincing not by a downe-right stupefaction of the conscience but by a consideration of the nature of thy sin and a contemplation of the infinite proportion between God and thee and so between that sin and the mercy of God for thou canst not be so absolutely so intirely so essentially sinfull as God is absolutely and intirely and essentially mercifull Doe what thou canst there is still some goodnesse in thee that nature that God made is good still Doe God what hee will hee cannot strip himselfe not devest himselfe of mercy If thou couldst doe as much as God can pardon thou wert a Manichaean God a God of evill as infinite as the God of goodnesse is Doe it Cum venerit Spiritus when the Holy Ghost pleads on thy side not cum venerit homo not when mans reason argues for thee and sayes It were injustice in God to punish one for another the soule for the body Much lesse Cum venerit inimicus homo when the Devill pleads and pleads against thee that thy sins are greater then God can forgive Reprove any over-bold presumption that God cannot forsake thee with remembring who it was that said My God my God why hast thou forsaken me Even Christ himselfe could apprehend a dereliction Reprove any distrust in God with remembring to whom it was said Hodiè mecum eris in Paradiso Even the thiefe himselfe who never saw him never met him but at both their executions was carryed up with him the first day of his acquaintance If either thy cheerefulnesse or thy sadnesse bee conceived of the Holy Ghost there is a good ground of thy Noli timere feare neither So the Angel proceeded with Ioseph Feare not to take Mary for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost Feare not thou that a chearefulnesse and alacrity in using Gods blessings feare not that a moderate delight in musique in conversation in recreations shall be imputed to thee for a fault for it is conceived by the Holy Ghost and is the off-spring of a peacefull conscience Embrace therefore his working Qui omnia opera nostra operatus est nobis Thou O Lord hast wrought all our works in us Esay 26.12 And whose working none shall be able to frustrate in us Operabitur quis avertit Esay 43.13 I will worke and who shall let it And as the Son concurred with the Father and the Holy Ghost with the Son in working in our behalfe so Operemur nos let us also worke out our Salvation with feare and trembling by reproving the errors in our understanding and the perversenesses of our conversation that way in which the Holy Ghost is our guide by reproving that is chiding and convincing the conscience but still with comfort that is stedfast application of the merits of Christ Jesus SERM. XXXVII Preached upon Whitsunday JOHN 16.8 9 10 11. And when he is come he will reprove the world of sin and of righteousnesse and of judgement Of sin because ye beleeve not on me Of righteousnesse because I goe to my Father and ye see me no more Of judgement because the Prince of this world is judged IN a former Sermon upon these words we have established this That the Person whom our Saviour promises here being by himselfe promised in the verse before the text in the name and quality of The Comforter All that this Person is to do in this text is to be done so as the World upon which it is to be done may receive comfort in it Therfore this word Reproof admitting a double signification one by way of authority as it is a rebuke an increpation the other as it is a convincing by argument by way of instruction and information because the first way cannot be applied to all the
This is my beloved Son this day have I begotten him And with such Copies it seemes both Iustin Martyr and Irenaeus met for they reade these words so and interpret them accordingly But these words are misplaced and mis-transferred out of the second Psalme where they are And as they change the words and in stead of In quo complacui In whom I am well pleased reade This day have I begotten thee S. Cyprian addes other words to the end of these which are Hunc audite Heare him Which words when these words were repeated at the Transfiguration were spoken but here at the Baptisme they were not what Copy soever misled S. Cyprian or whether it were the failing of his own memory But S. Chrysostome gives an expresse reason why those words were spoken at the Transfiguration and not here Because saies he Here was onely a purpose of a Manifestation of the Trinity so farre as to declare their persons who they were and no more At the Trans-figuration where Moses and Elias appeared with Christ there God had a purpose to preferre the Gospel above the Law and the Prophets and therefore in that place he addes that Hunc audite Heare him who first fulfills all the Law and the Prophets and then preaches the Gospel He was so well pleased in him as that he was content to give all them that received him Eph. 1.6 power to become the Sons of God too as the Apostle sayes By his grace he hath made us accepted in his beloved Beloved That you may be so Come up from your Baptisme as it is said that Christ did Rise and ascend to that growth which your Baptisme prepared you to And the heavens shall open as then even Cataractae coeli All the windowes of heaven shall open and raine downe blessings of all kindes in abundance And the Holy Ghost shall descend upon you as a Dove in his peacefull comming in your simple and sincere receiving him And he shall rest upon you to effect and accomplish his purposes in you If he rebuke you as Christ when he promises the Holy Ghost though he call him a Comforter John 16.7 sayes That he shall rebuke the world of divers things yet he shall dwell upon you as a Dove Quae si mordet osculando mordet sayes S. Augustine If the Dove bite it bites with kissing if the Holy Ghost rebuke he rebukes with comforting And so baptized and so pursuing the contract of your Baptisme and so crowned with the residence of his blessed Spirit in your holy conversation hee shall breathe a soule into your soule by that voyce of eternall life You are my beloved Sonnes in whom I am well pleased SERM. XLIV Preached at S. Dunstanes upon Trinity-Sunday 1627. REV. 4.8 And the foure Beasts had each of them sixe wings about him and they were full of eyes within And they rest not day and night saying Holy Holy Holy Lord God Almighty which was and is and is to come THese words are part of that Scripture which our Church hath appointed to be read for the Epistle of this day This day which besides that it is the Lords day the Sabbath day is also especially consecrated to the memory and honour of the whole Trinity The Feast of the Nativity of Christ Christmas day which S. Chrysostome calls Metropolin omnium festorum The Metropolitane festivall of the Church is intended principally to the honour of the Father who was glorified in that humiliation of that Son that day because in that was laid the foundation and first stone of that house and Kingdome in which God intended to glorifie himselfe in this world that is the Christian Church The Feast of Easter is intended principally to the honour of the Son himselfe who upon that day began to lift up his head above all those waters which had surrounded him and to shake off the chaines of death and the grave and hell in a glorious Reserrection And then the Feast of Pentecost was appropriated to the honour of the Holy Ghost who by a personall falling upon the Apostles that day inabled them to propagate this Glory of the Father and this death and Resurrection of the Son to the ends of the world to the ends in Extention to all places to the ends in Duration to all times Now as S. Augustine sayes Nullus eorum extra quemlibet eorum est Every Person of the Trinity is so in every other person as that you cannot think of a Father as a Father but that there falls a Son into the same thought nor think of a person that proceeds from others but that they from whom he whom ye think of proceeds falls into the same thought as every person is in every person And as these three persons are contracted in their essence into one God-head so the Church hath also contracted the honour belonging to them in this kinde of Worship to one day in which the Father and Son and Holy Ghost as they are severally in those three severall dayes might bee celebrated joyntly and altogether It was long before the Church did institute a particular Festivall to this purpose For before they made account that that verse which was upon so many occasions repeated in the Liturgy and Church Service Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost had a convenient sufficiency in it to keep men in a continuall remembrance of the Trinity But when by that extreame inundation and increase of Arians these notions of distinct Persons in the Trinity came to be obliterated and discontinued the Church began to refresh her selfe in admitting into to the formes of Common Prayer some more particular notifications and remembrances of the Trnity And at last though it were very long first for this Festivall of this Trinity-Sunday was not instituted above foure hundred yeares since they came to ordaine this day Which day our Church according to that peacefull wisedome wherewithall the God of Peace of Unity and Concord had inspired her did in the Reformation retaine and continue out of her generall religious tendernesse and holy loathnesse to innovate any thing in those matters which might bee safely and without superstition continued and entertained For our Church in the Reformation proposed not that for her end how shee might goe from Rome but how she might come to the Truth nor to cast away all such things as Rome had depraved but to purge away those depravations and conserve the things themselves so restored to their first good use For this day then were these words appointed by our Church Divisic And therefore we are sure that in the notion and apprehension and construction of our Church these words appertaine to the Trinity In them therefore we shall consider first what these foure creatures were which are notified and designed to us in the names and figures of foure Beasts And then what these foure creatures did Their Persons and their Action will be our two
he had meant to doe you good he would never have gone thus farre in heaping of evills upon you Upon what doest thou ground this upon thy selfe Because thou shouldest not deal thus with any man whom thou mean'st well to How poore how narrow how impious a measure of God is this that he must doe as thou wouldest doe if thou wert God! God hath not made a week without a Sabbath no tentation without an issue God inflicts no calamity no cloud no eclipse without light to see ease in it if the patient will look upon that which God hath done to him in other cases or to that which God hath done to others at other times Saul fell to the ground but he fell no lower God brings us to humiliation but not to desperation He fell Caecus Iohn 9.39 he fell to the ground And he fell blinde for so it is evident in the story Christ had said to the Pharisees I came into the world that they which see might be made blinde And the Pharisees ask him Have you been able to doe so upon us Are we blinde Here Christ gives them an example a reall a literall an actuall example Saul a Pharisee is made blinde He that will fill a vessell with wine must take out the water He that will fill a covetous mans hand with gold must take out the silver that was there before sayes S. Chrysostome Christ who is about to infuse new light into Saul withdrawes that light that was in him before That light by which Saul thought he saw all before and thought himselfe a competent Judge which was the onely true Religion and that all others were to be persecuted Ier. 51.17 even to death that were not of his way Stultus factus est omnis homo à scientia sayes God in the Prophet Every man that trusts in his owne wit is a foole 1 Cor. 3.18 But let him become a foole that he may be wise sayes the Apostle Let him be so in his own eyes and God will give him better eyes better light better understanding Saul was struck blinde but it was a blindnesse contracted from light It was a light that struck him blinde as you see in his story This blindnesse which we speak of which is a sober and temperate abstinence from the immoderate study and curious knowledges of this world this holy simplicity of the soule is not a darknesse a dimnesse a stupidity in the understanding contracted by living in a corner it is not an idle retiring into a Monastery or into a Village or a Country solitude it is not a lazy affectation of ignorance not darknesse but a greater light must make us blinde The sight and the Contemplation of God and our present benefits by him and our future interest in him must make us blinde to the world so as that we look upon no face no pleasure no knowledge with such an Affection such an Ambition such a Devotion as upon God and the wayes to him Saul had such a blindnesse as came from light we must affect no other simplicity then arises from the knowledge of God and his Religion And then Saul had such a blindnesse as that he fell with it There are birds that when their eyes are cieled still soare up and up till they have spent all their strength Men blinded with the lights of this world soare still into higher places or higher knowledges or higher opinions but the light of heaven humbles us and layes flat that soule which the leaven of this world had puffed and swelled up That powerfull light felled Saul but after he was fallen his owne sight was restored to him againe Ananias saies to him Brother Saul receive thy sight To those men who imploy their naturall faculties to the glory of God and their owne and others edification God shall afford an exaltation of those naturall faculties In those who use their learning or their wealth or their power well God shall increase that power and that wealth and that learning even in this world You have seene Sauls sicknesse 3 Part. and the exaltation of the disease Then when he breathed threatnings and slaughter Then when he went in his triumph And you have seen his death The death of the righteous His humiliation He fell to the earth And there remaines yet his Resurrection The Angel of the great Counsell Christ Jesus with the Trumpet of his owne mouth rayses him with that Saul Saul why persecutest thou mee First Vox he affords him a call A voyce Saul could not see Therefore he deales not upon him by visions He gives a voyce and a voyce that he might heare God speaks often when we doe not heare He heard it and heard it saying Not a voyce only but a distinct and intelligible voyce and saying unto him that is appliable to himselfe and then that that the voyce said to him was Saul Saul why persecutest thou me We are unequall enemies Thou seest I am too hard for thee Curtu me why wilt thou thou in this weakenesse oppose me And then we might be good friends Thou seest I offer parly I offer treaty Cur tu me Why wilt thou oppose me me that declare such a disposition to be reconciled unto thee In this so great a disadvantage on thy part why wilt thou stirre at all In this so great a peaceablenesse on my part why wilt thou stirre against me Cur tu me Why persecutest thou me First then God speakes For beloved we are to consider God not as he is in himselfe but as he works upon us The first thing that we can consider in our way to God is his Word Our Regeneration is by his Word that is by faith which comes by hearing The seed is the word of God sayes Christ himselfe Even the seed of faith Luke 8.11 Carry it higher the Creation was by the word of God Dixit facta sunt God spoke and all things were made Carry it to the highest of all to Eternity the eternall Generation the eternall Production the eternall Procession of the second Person in the Trinity was so much by the Word as that he is the Word Verbum caro It was that Word that was made Flesh So that God who cannot enter into bands to us hath given us security enough He hath given us his Word His written Word his Scriptures His Essentiall Word his Son Our Principall and Radicall and Fundamentall security is his Essentiall Word his Son Christ Jesus But how many millions of generations was this Word in heaven and never spoke The Word Christ himself hath been as long as God hath been But the uttering of this Word speaking hath been but since the Creation Peter sayes to Christ To whom shall we goe Thou hast the words of eternall life It is not onely Iohn 6.68 Thou art the word of eternall life Christ is so But thou hast it Thou hast it where we may come to thee for it
I am made Judge and when I have cleare evidence then is the time to passe my judgement for this world But for a finall condemnation in the world to come the Apostle expresses himselfe fully in that place Iudge nothing before the time untill the Lord come who both will bring to light the hidden things of darknesse and manifest the counsels of the heart It was a wise and a pious counsel that Gamaliel gave that State Abstinete Acts 5.33 forbeare a while give God sea-roome give him his latitude and you may finde that you mistook at first for God hath divers ends in inflicting calamities and he that judges hastily may soone mistake Gods purpose It is a remarkeable expressing which the holy Ghost hath put into the mouth of Naomi Call not me Naomi sayes she there Naomi is lovely Ruth 1.10 and loving and beloved But call me Mara sayes she Mara is bitternesse But why so For sayes she The Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me Bitterly and very bitterly But yet so he hath with many that he loves full well It is true sayes Naomi but there is more in my case then so The Almighty hath afflicted me and the Lord hath testified against me Testified there is my misery that is done enough given evidence enough for others to beleeve and to ground a judgement upon it that he hath abandoned me utterly forsaken me for ever Yet God meant well to Naomi for all this Testification and howsoever others might mis-interpret Gods proceeding with her That Ostracisme which was practised amongst the Athenians and that Petalisme which was practised amongst the Syracusians by which Laws the most eminent and excellent persons in those States were banished not for any crime imputed to them nor for any popular practises set on foot by them but to conserve a parity and equality in that State this Ostracisme this Petalisme was not without good use in those governments If God will lay heaviest calamities upon the best men If God will exercise an Ostracisme a Petalisme in his state who shall search into his Arcana imperii into the secrets of his government who shall aske a reason of his actions who shall doubt of a good end in all his waies Our Saviour Christ hath shut up that way of rash judgement upon such occasions Luke 13.2 when he sayes Suppose ye that those Galileans whom Herod slew or those eighteen whom the fall of the Towre of Siloe slew were greater sinners then the rest It is not safely it is not charitably concluded And therefore he carries their thoughts as far on the other side That he that suffered a calamity was not only not the greatest but no sinner for so Christ sayes Iohn 9.3 Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents speaking of the man that was born blinde Not that he or his Parents had not sinned but that that calamity was not laid upon him in contemplation of any sin but onely for an occasion of the manifestation of Christs Divinity in the miraculous recovery of that blinde man Therefore sayes Luther excellently and elegantly Non judicandum de cruce secundùm praedicamentum Quantitatis sed Relationis We must not judge of a calamity by the predicament of Quantity How great that calamity is but by the predicament of Relation to what God referres that calamity and what he intends in it For Deus ultionum Deus Psal 93.1 as S. Hierome reades that place God is the God of revenge And Deus ultionum liberè agit This God of revenge revenges at his owne liberty when and where and how it pleases him And therefore as we are bound to make good constructions of those corrections that God layes upon us so are we to make good interpretations of those judgements which he casts upon others First for our selves that which is said in S. Matthew Mat. 24.30 That at the day of judgement shall appeare in heaven the signe of the Son of Man is frequently ordinarily received by the Fathers to be intended of the Crosse That before Christ himselfe appeare his signe the Crosse shall appeare in the clouds Now this is not literally so in the Text nor is it necessarily deduced but ordinarily by the Ancients it is so accepted and though the signe of the Son of Man may be some other thing yet of this signe the Crosse there may be this good application That when God affords thee this manifestation of his Crosse in the participation of those crosses and calamities that he suffered here when thou hast this signe of the Son of Man upon thee conclude to thy selfe that the Son of Man Christ Jesus is comming towards thee and as thou hast the signe thou shalt have the substance as thou hast his Crosse thou shalt have his Glory For this is that which the Apostle intends Phil. 1.29 Vnto you it is given not laid upon you as a punishment but given you as a benefit not onely to beleeve in Christ but to suffer for Christ Where the Apostle seemes to make our crosses a kinde of assurance as well as our faith for so he argues Not onely to beleeve but to suffer for howsoever faith be a full evidence yet our suffering is a new seale even upon that faith And an evident seale a conspicuous a glorious seale Cyprian Quid gloriosius quam Collegam Christi in passione factum fuisse What can be more glorious then to have been made a Collegue a partner with Christ in his sufferings and to have fulfilled his sufferings in my flesh For that is the highest degree which we can take in Christs schoole as S. Denys the Areopagite expresses it A Deo doctus non solùm divina discit sed divina patitur which we may well translate or accommodate thus He that is throughly taught by Christ does not onely beleeve all that Christ sayes but conformes him to all that Christ did and is ready to suffer as Christ suffered Truly if it were possible to feare any defect of joy in heaven all that could fall into my feare would be but this that in heaven I can no longer expresse my love by suffering for my God for my Saviour A greater joy cannot enter into my heart then this To suffer for him that suffered for me As God saw that way prosper in the hands of Absalom 2 Sam. 14.30 he sent for Ioab and Ioab came not he came not when he sent a second time but when he sent Messengers to burne up his corne then Ioab came and then hee time but when he sent Messengers to burne up his corne then Ioab came and then hee complied with Absalom and seconded and accomplished his desires So God cals us in his own outward Ordinances and a second time in his temporall blessings and we come not but we come the sooner if he burne our Corne if he draw us by afflicting us Now as we are able to argue thus in our
there is Dolus in spiritu Guile in his spirit the craft of the Serpent eyther the poyson of the Serpent in a self-despaire or the sting of the Serpent in an uncharitable prejudging and precondemning of others when a man comes to suspect Gods good purposes or contract Gods generall propositions for this forgiving of transgressions is Christs taking away the sins of all the world by taking all the sins of all men upon himselfe And this Guile this Deceit may also be in the second in the Covering of sins which is the particular application of this generall mercy by his Ordinances in his Church He then that without Guile will have benefit by this Covering must Discover Covering Qui tegi vult peccata detegat is S. Augustines way He that will have his sins covered let him uncover them He that would not have them known let him confesse them He that would have them forgotten let him remember them He that would bury them let him rake them up There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed and hid Mat. 10.26 that shall not be knowne It is not thy sending away a servant thy locking a doore thy blowing out a candle no not though thou blow out and extinguish the spirit as much as thou canst that hides a sin from God but since thou thinkest that thou hast hid it by the secret carriage thereof thou must reveale it by Confession If thou wilt not God will shew thee that he needed not thy Confession He will take knowledge of it to thy condemnation and he will publish it to the knowledge of all the world to thy confusion Tufecisti absconditè sayes God to David by Nathan Thou didst it secretly 2 Sam. 12.12 but I will doe this thing before all Israel and before the Sun Certainly it affects and stings many men more that God hath brought to light their particular sins and offences for which he does punish them then all the punishments that he inflicts upon them for then they cannot lay their ruine upon fortune upon vicissitudes and revolutions and changes of Court upon disaffections of Princes upon supplantations of Rivalls and Concurrents but God cleares all the world beside Perditio tua ex te God declares that the punishment is his Act and the Cause my sin This is Gods way and this he expresses vehemently against Jerusalem Behold I will gather all thy Lovers with whom thou hast taken pleasure Ezch. 16.37 and all them that thou hast loved with all them that thou hast hated and I will discover thy nakednesse to all them Those who loved us for pretended vertues shall see how much they were deceived in us Those that hated us because they were able to looke into us and to discerne our actions shall then say Triumphantly and publiquely to all Did not we tell you what would become of this man It was never likely to be better with him I will strip her naked and set her as in the day that she was borne Hos 2.3 Howsoever thou wert covered with the Covenant and taken into the Visible Church howsoever thou wert clothed by having put on Christ in Baptisme yet If thou sin against me sayes God and hide it from me I am against thee and I will shew the Nations thy nakednesse and the Kingdomes thy shame Nahum 3.5 To come to the covering of thy sins without guile first cover them not from thy self so as that thou canst not see yester-daies sin for to daies sin nor the sins of thy youth for thy present sins Cover not thy extortions with magnifique buildings and sumptuous furniture Dung not the fields that thou hast purchased with the bodies of those miserable wretches whom thou hast oppressed neither straw thine alleys and walks with the dust of Gods Saints whom thy hard dealing hath ground to powder There is but one good way of covering sins from our selves Si bona factamalis superponamus Gregor If we come to a habit of good actions contrary to those evils which we had accustomed our selves to and cover our sins so not that we forget the old but that we see no new There is a good covering of sins from our selves by such new habits and there is a good covering of them from other men for he that sins publiquely scandalously avowedly that teaches and encourages others to sin Esay 3.9 That declares his sin as Sodom and hides it not As in a mirror in a looking glasse that is compassed and set about with a hundred lesser glasses a man shall see his deformities in a hundred places at once so hee that hath sinned thus shall feele his torments in himselfe and in all those whom the not covering of his sins hath occasioned to commit the same sins Cover thy sins then from thy selfe so it be not by obduration cover them from others so it be not by hypocrisie But from God cover them not at all Prov. 28.13 He that covereth his sin shall not prosper but who so confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy Even in confessing without forsaking there is Dolus in spiritus Guile and deceit in that spirit Noluit agnoscere maluit ignoscere S. Augustine makes the case of a customary sinner He was ready to pardon himselfe alwaies without any confession But God shall invert it to his subversion Maluit agnoscere noluit ignoscere God shall manifest his sin and not pardon it Sin hath that pride that it is not content with one garment Adam covered first with fig-leaves then with whole trees He hid himselfe amongst the trees Then hee covered his sin with the woman she provoked him And then with Gods action Quam tu dedisti The Woman whom thou gavest me And this was Adams wardrobe David covers his first sin of uncleannesse with soft stuffe with deceit with falshood with soft perswasions to Vriah to go in to his Wife Then he covers it with rich stuffe with scarlet with the blood of Vriah and of the army of the Lord of Hosts And then he covers it with strong and durable stuffe with an impenitence and with an insensiblenesse a yeare together too long for a King too long for any man to weare such a garment And this was Davids wardrobe But beloved sin is a serpent and he that covers sin does but keepe it warme that it may sting the more fiercely and disperse the venome and malignity thereof the more effectually Adam had patched up an apron to cover him God tooke none of those leaves God wrought not upon his beginnings but he covered him all over with durable skins God saw that Davids severall coverings did rather load him then cover the sin and therefore Transtulit He tooke all away sin and covering for the coverings were as great sins as the radicall sin that was to be covered was yea greater as the armes and boughs of a tree are greater then the roote Now to this extension and growth and largenesse of
thy strength and thy labors in Then when the dishes upon thy table are doubled and thy cup overflows and the hungry and thirsty soules of the poore doe not onely feed upon the crums under thy table and lick up the overflowings of thy cup but divide dishes with thee and enter into the midst of thy Bolls Then when thou hast temporall blessings that is Gods silver and his grace to use those blessings well that is Gods gold then is the best time of finding the Lord for then he looks upon thee in the Sun-shine and then thy thankfull acknowledgement of former blessings is the most effectuall prayer thou canst make for the continuance and enlargement of them In a word then is a fit time of finding God Nunc. whensoever thy conscience tells thee he calls to thee for a rectified conscience is the word of God If that speake to thee now this minute now is thy time of finding God That Now that I named then that minute is past but God affords thee another Now he speaks againe he speaks still and if thy conscience tell thee that he speaks to thee now is that time This word of God thy conscience will present unto thee but that one condition which Moses presented to Gods people and that is That thou seeke the Lordwith all thy heart and all thy soule It is a kinde of denying the Infinitenesse of God to serve him by pieces and ragges God is not Infinite to me if I thinke a discontinued service will serve him It is a kinde of denying the Unity of God to joyne other gods Pleasure or Profit with him He is not One God to me if I joyne other Associates and Assistants to him Saints or Angels It is a kinde of diffidence in Christ as though I were not sure that he would stand in the favour of God still as though I were afraid that there might rise a new favorite in heaven to whom it might concerne me to apply me selfe If I make the balance so eaven as to serve God and Mammon if I make a complementall visit of God at his house upon Sunday and then plot with the other faction the World the Flesh and the Devill all the weeke after Jor. 9.13 The Lord promised a power of seeking and an infallibility of finding but still with this totall condition Ye shall seeke mee and ye shall finde me because ye shall seek mee with all your heart This he promised for the future that he would doe This he testified for the house of Iudah 2 Chro. 15.15 that he had done Iudah sought him with a whole desire and he was found of them and the Lord gave them rest round about And the Lord shall give you rest round about rest in your bodies and rest in your estates rest in your good name with others and rest in your consciences in your selves rest in your getting and rest in your injoying that you have got if you seeke him with a whole heart and to seek him with a whole heart is not by honest industry to seeke nothing else for God weares good cloathes silk and soft raiment in his religious servants in Courts as well as Cammels haire in Iohn Baptist in the Wildernesse and God manifests himselfe to man as well in the splendor of Princes in Courts as in the austerity of Iohn Baptist in the Wildernesse but to seeke God with the whole heart is to seeke nothing with that Primary and Radicall and Fundamentall affection as God To seek nothing for it selfe but God not to seeke world things in excesse because I hope if I had them I should glorifie God in them but first to finde established in my selfe a zealous desire to glorifie God and then a modest desire of meanes to be able to doe it And for this every one that is holy shall pray unto thee in a time when thou maist be found And so we have done with our first Part and the foure pieces that constitute that The Person Omnis sanctus Every godly man that is Sanctificatus and Sanctificandus Hee that is godly enough to pray and prayes that he may be more godly And the Object of prayer Ad te God alone for God alone can heare and God alone can give And then the Subject of prayer Hoc This this which David expresses forgivenesse of the punishment and of the iniquity of fin In which respect that David proposes and specificates the subject of prayer wee are fairely directed rather to accustome our selves to those prayers which are recommended to us by the Church then to extemporall prayers of others or of our owne effusion And lastly the Time of finding God that is Then when we seeke him with a whole heart seeke him as Principal and then receive temporall things as accessory and conducible to his glory Thus much hath fallen into the first Part the duty of Prayer A little remaines to be said of the benefit here assured Surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him Taking these waters 2. Part. Hâ—â—r Aquae either Distributively to every one that is godly or Collectively as S. Hierome does to the whole Church the use will be all one The Holy Ghost who is a direct worker upon the soule and conscience of man but a Metaphoricall and Figurative expresser on himselfe to the reason and understanding of man abounds in no Metophor more then in calling Tribulations Waters particularly He would bring in waters upon Tyrus Eâ—â—k 26.3 Hosâ—â— 5. And He would poure out his wrath upon his enemies like waters Neither doth he onely intimate temporall but spirituall afflictions too in the name of Waters And as S. Hierome understands this whole place of the Church Hieron August collectively so S. Augustine understands these waters to be Varia Doctrinae those diverse opinions that disquiet and trouble the Church And though the Church of God were built upon a hill and compassed and environed and fenced with the blood of him that built it and defended and guarded by the vigilancy of the Apostles yet into this Jerusalem did these waters breake even in the Apostles time as we see by those severall those manifold those contradictory Heresies that sprung up them Christ and his Apostles had carried two Waters about his Church The water of Baptisme that is Limen Ecclesiae and Ianua Sacramentorum Argust The first Ferry by which we passe into the Church and by this Water came three thousand and five thousand at once to the Church upon particular Sermons of S. Peter And then Christ gave another Water by which they came to another Ablution to Absolution from actuall fins the water of contrite teares and repentance which he had promised before Eâ—â—k 24.35 I will poure cleane water upon you and you shall be cleane And by this water came Peter himselfe when his faith had failed And by this water came Mary Magdalen when her life had
nothing to the Gospel and then Euangelium totum Preach the Gospel intirely defalke nothing forbeare nothing of that First then we are to preach you are to heare nothing but the Gospel And we may neither postdate our Commission nor interline it nothing is Gospel now which was not Gospel then when Christ gave his Apostles their Commission And no man can serve God and Mammon no man can preach those things which belong to the filling of Angels roomes in heaven and those things which belong to the filling of the Popes Coffers at Rome with Angels upon earth For that was not Gospel when Christ gave this commission And did Christ create his Apostles as the Bishop of Rome creates his Cardinals Cum clausura oris He makes them Cardinalls and shuts their mouths they have mouths but no tongues tongues but no voice they are Judges but must give no Judgement Cardinalls but have no interest in the passages of businesses till by a new favour he open their mouths againe Did Christ make his Apostles his Ambassadors and promise to send their instructions after them Did he give them a Commission and presently a Supersedeas upon it that they should not execute it Did he make a Testament a will and referre all to future Schedules and Codicills Did he send them to preach the Gospel and tell them You shall know the Gospel in the Epistles of the Popes and their Decretals hereafter You shall know the Gospel of deposing Princes in the Councell of Lateran hereafter and the Gospel in deluding Heretiques by safe conducts in the Gospel of Constance hereafter and the Gospel of creating new Articles of the Creed in the Councell of Trent hereafter If so then was some reason for Christs Disciples to thinke when Christ said Verily I say unto you there are some here who shall not taste death Mat. 16. ultim till they see the Sonne of man come in glory that he spake and meant to be understood literally that neither Iohn nor the rest of the Apostles should ever die if they must live to preach the Gospel and the Gospel could not be knowne by them till the end of the world And therefore it was wisely done in the Romane Church to give over preaching since the preaching of the Gospel that is nothing but the Gospel would have done them no good to their ends When all their preaching was come to be nothing but declamations of the vertue of such an Indulgence and then a better Indulgence then that to morrow and every day a new market of fuller Indulgences when all was but an extolling of the tendernesse and the bowells of compassion in that mother Church who was content to set a price and a small price upon every sinne So that if David were upon the earth againe and then when the persecuting Angel had drawne his sword would but send an appeale to Rome at that price he might have an inhibition against that Angel and have leave to number his people let God take it as he list Nay if Sodome were upon the earth againe and the Angel ready to set fire to that Towne if they could send to Rome they might purchase a Charter even for that sinne though perchance they would be loath to let that sinne passe over their hills But not to speake any thing which may savour of jeast or levity in so serious a matter and so deplorable a state as their preaching was come to with humble thankes to God that we are delivered from it and humble prayers to God that we never returne to it nor towards it let us chearfully and constantly continue this duty of preaching and hearing the Gospel that is first the Gospel onely and not Traditions of men And the next is of all the Gospel nothing but it and yet all it add nothing defalke nothing for as the Law is so the Gospel is Res integra a whole piece and as S. Iames sayes of the integrity of the Law Whosoever keeps the whole Law James 2.10 and offends in one point he is guilty of all So he that is afraid to preach all and he that is loath to heare all the Gospel he preaches none he heares none And therefore if that imputation which the Romane Church layes upon us were true That we preach no falshood but doe not teach all the truth we did lacke one of the true marks of the true Church that is the preaching of the Gospel for it is not that if it be not all that take therefore the Gospel as we take it from the Schoole that it is historia and usus the Gospel is the history of the Gospel the proposing to your understanding all that Christ did and it is the appropriation of the Gospel the proposing to your faith that all that he did he did for you and then if you hearken to them who will tell you that Christ did that which he never did that he came in when the doores were shut so that his body passed thorough the very body of the Tymber thereby to advance their doctrine of Transubstantiation or that Christ did that which he did to another end then he did it that when he whipt the buyers and sellers out of the Temple he exercised a secular power and soveraignty over the world and thereby established a soveraignty over Princes in his Vicar the Pope These men doe not preach the Gospel because the Gospel is Historia usus The truth of the History and of the application and this is not the truth of the History So also if you hearken to them who tell you that though the blood of Christ be sufficient in value for you and for all yet you have no meanes to be sure that he meant his blood to you but you must passe in this world and passe out of this world in doubt and that it is well if you come to Purgatory and be sure there of getting to heaven at last these men preach not the Gospel because the Gospel is the history and the use and this is not the true use And thus it is if wee take the Gospell from the Schoole but if we take it from the Schoole master from Christ himselfe the Gospell is repentance and remission of sinnes For he came That repentance and remission of sinnes should be preached in his Name Luk. 24.47 If then they will tell you that you need no such repentance for a sinne as amounts to a contrition to a sorrow for having offended God to a detestation of the sinne to a resolution to commit it no more but that it is enough to have an attrition as they will needs call it a servill feare and sorrow that you have incurred the torments of hell or if they will tell you that when you have had this attrition that the clouds of sadnesse and of dejection of spirit have met and beat in your conscience and that the allision of those clouds have brought forth a