there is ablutiâ— pedum a washing of our feet of our steps and walkes in this world and that 's by repentance sealed in the other Sacrament and properly that is for actuall sinnes Thirdly in this ablution there is an Ego lavi there is a washing and I my selfe doe something towards this cleansing of my selfe And fourthly it is Lavi it is I have washed not Lavabo it is not I will wash it is already done it is not put off to mine age nor to my death bed but Lavi I have washed And lastly it is Pedes meas I have washed mine owne feet for if by my teaching I cleanse others and remaine by my bad life in foule ways my selfe I am not within this text Lavi pedes meos I have not washed my feet But if we have sincerely performed the first part we shall performe the other too Quomodo we shall come into a religious detestation and indignation of falling into the same foulenesse againe To passe then through all these for of all these that 's true which Saint Basil says of all words in the Scriptures Habent minutissime particulae suae mysteria Every word hath force and use as in Pearle every seed Pearle is as medicinall as the greatest so there is a restorative nature in every word of the Scriptures and in every word the soule findes a rise and help for her devotion To begin with the first the necessity of washing consider us in our first beginning Concepti in peccatis our Mothers conceived us in sin and being wrapped up in uncleannesse there can any Man bring a cleane thing out of filthinesse There is not one for as we were planted in our Mothers wombe in conception so we were transplanted from thence into this world in our Baptisme Nascimur filii â—rae for we are by nature the children of wrath as well as others And as in the bringing forth and bringing up of the best and most precious and most delicate plants Men employ most dung so the greatest persons where the spirit and grace of God doth not allay that intemperance which naturally arises out of abundance and provocation and out of vanity and ambitious glory in outward oftentations there is more dung more uncleannesse more sinne in the conception and birth of their children then of meaner and poorer parents It is a degree of uncleannesse to fixe our thoughts too earnestly upon the uncleannesse of our conception and of our birth when wee call that a testimony of a right comming if we come into the world with our head forward in a head-long precipitation and when we take no other testimony of our being alive but that we were heard cry and for an earnest and a Prophecy that we shall be viri sanguinum et dâ—losi bloudy and deceitfull Men false and treacherous to the murdering of our owne soules we come into this world as the Egyptians went out of it swallowed and smothered in a red sea Pueri sanguinum infirmi weake and bloudy infants at our birth But to carry our thoughts from materiall to sptrituall uncleannesses In peccatâ— concepti we were conceived in sinne but who can tell us how That flesh in our mothers wombe which we are having no sinne in it selfe for that masse of flesh could not be damned if there never came a soule into it and that soule which comes into that flesh from Godâ— having no sinne in it neither for God creates nothing infected with sinne neither should that soule be damned if it came not into that body The body being without sinne and the soule being without sinne yet in the first minute that this body and soule meet and are united we become in that instant guilty of Adams sinne committed six thousand years before Such is our sinne and uncleannesse in Originall sinne as the subtillest Man in the Schooles is never able to tell us how or when we contracted that sinne but all have it And therefore if there be any any any-where of that generation that are pure in their owne eyes and yet are not washed from their filthinesse as Solomon speakes Erubesce vas stercorum says good Saint Bernard If it be a vessell of gold it is but a vessell of excrements if it be a bed of curious plants it is but a bed of dung as their tombes hereafter shall be but glorious covers of rotten carcasses so their bodies are now but pampered covers of rotten soules Erubescat vas stercorum let that vessell of uncleannesse that barrell of dung confesse a necessity of washing and seeke that and rejoyce in that for thus farre that is to the pollution of Originall sinne in peccato concepti and nasâ—imur filii iraâ— wee are conceived in sinne first and then we are borne the children of wrath But where 's our remedy Why for this for this originall uncleannesse is the water of Baptisme Opâ—rtet nos renasci we must be borne againe we must There is a necessity of Baptisme As we are the children of Christian parents we have Ius ad rem a right to the Covenant we may claime baptisme the Church cannot deny it us And as we are baptized in the Christian Church we have Ius in re a right in the Covenant and all the benefits thereof all the promises of the Gospell we are sure that we are conceived in sinne and sure that we are borne children of wrath but not sure that we are cleansed or reconciled to God by any other meanes then that which he hath ordained Baptisme The Spirit of God moved first upon the water and the spirit of life grew first in the water Primus liquor quod viveret edidit The first living creatures in the first creation were in the waters and the first breath of spirituall life came to us from the water of baptisme In the Temple there was Mare aeneum a brasen sea In the Church there is Mare aureum a golden sea which is Baptisterium the font in which we discharge our selves of all our first uncleannesses of all the guiltinesse of Originall sinne but because we contract new uncleannesses by our uncleane ways here therefore there must bee Ablutio pedum a washing of our feet of our ways of our actions which is our second branch Cecidimus in lutum super acervum lapidum says Saint Bernard we fell by Adams fall into the durt but from that we are washed in baptisme but we fell upon a heape of sharpe stones too and we feel those wounds and those bruises all our lives after Impingimus meridie we stumble at noone day In the brightest light of the Gospell in the brightest light of grace in the best strength of Repentance and our resolutions to the contrary yet we stumble and fall againe Duo nobis pedes says that Father Natura Consâ—eâ—â—do we stand says he upon two feet Nature and Custome and we are lame of one foot hereditarily
found in all the Scriptures Tremellius hath mollifyed it in his translation there it is but Confodere to pierce And yet it is such a piercing such a sapping such an undermining such a demolishing of a fort of Castle as may justly remove us from any high valuation or any great confidence in that skinne and in that body upon which this Confoderint must fall But in the great Bible it is Contriverint Thy skinne and thy body shall be ground away trod away upon the ground Aske where that iron is that is ground off of a knife or axe Aske that marble that is worn off of the threshold in the Church-porch by continuall treading and with that iron and with that marble thou mayst finde thy Fathers skinne and body Contrita sunt The knife the marble the skinne the body are ground away trod away they are destroy'd who knows the revolutions of dust Dust upon the Kings high-way and dust upon the Kings grave are both or neither Dust Royall and may change places who knows the revolutions of dust Even in the dead body of Christ Jesus himself one dram of the decree of his Father one sheet one sentence of the prediction of the Prophets preserv'd his body from corruption and incineration more then all Iosephs new tombs and fine linnen and great proportion of spices could have done O who can expresse this inexpreffible mystery The foul of Christ Jesus which took no harm by him contracted no Originall sin in coming to him was guilty of no more sin when it went out then when it came from the breath and bosome of God yet this soul left this body in death And the Divinity the Godhead incomparably better then that soul which soul was incomparably better then all the Saints and Angels in heaven that Divinity that God-head did not forsake the body though it were dead If we might compare things infinite in themselves it was nothing so much that God did assume mans nature as that God did still cleave to that man then when he was no man in the separation of body and soul in the grave But full we from incomprehensible mysteries for there is mortification enough and mortification is vivification and aedification in this obvious consideration skinne and body beauty and substance must be destroy'd And Destroyed by wormes which is another descent in this humiliation and exâ—anition of man in death After my skinne wormes shall destroy this body I will not insist long upon this because it is not in the Originall In the Originall there is no mention of wormes But because in other places of Iob there is They shal lye down alike in the dust and the worms shall cover them The womb shal forget them and the worm shal feed sweetly on them because the word Destroying is presented in that form number Contriverint when they shall destroy they and no other persons no other creatures named both our later translations for indeed our first translation hath no mention of wormes and so very many others even Tremellâ—s that adheres most to the letter of the Hebrew have filled up this place with that addition Destroyed by worms It makes the destruction the more contemptible Thou that wouldest not admit the beames of the Sunne upon thy skinne and yet hast admitted the pollutions of sinne Thou that wouldst not admit the breath of the ayre upon thy skinne and yet hast admitted the spirit of lust and unchast solicitations to breath upon thee in execrable oathes and blasphemies to vicious purposes Thou whose body hath as farre as it can putrefyed and corrupted even the body of thy Saviour in an unworthy receiving thereof in this skinne in this body must be the food of worms the prey of destroying worms After a low birth thou mayst passe an honourable life after a sentence of an ignominious death thou mayst have an honourable end But in the grave canst thou make these worms silke worms They were bold and early worms that eat up Herod before he dyed They are bold and everlasting worms which after thy skinne and body is destroyed shall remain as long as God remains in an eternall gnawing of thy conscience long long after the destroying of skinne and body by bodily worms Thus farre then to the destroying of skinne and body by worms all men are equall Thus farre all 's Common law and no Prerogative so is it also in the next step too The Resurrection is common to all The prerogative lies not in the Rising but in the rising to the fruition of the sight of God in which consideration the first beam of comfort is the Postquam After all this destruction before by worms ruinous misery before but there is something else to be done upon me after God leaves no state without comfort God leaves some inhabitants of the earth under longer nights then others but none under an everlasting night and those whom he leaves under those long nights he recompenses with as long days after I were miserable if there were not an Antequam in my behalfe if before I had done well or ill actually in this world God had not wrapped me up in his good purpose upon me And I were miserable againe if there were not a Postquam in my behalfe If after my sinne had cast me into the grave there were not a lowd trumpet to call me up and a gracious countenance to looke upon me when I were risen Nay let my life have been as religious as the infirmities of this life can admit yet If in this life onely we have hope in Christ we are of all men most miserable For for the worldly things of this life first the children of God have them in the least proportions of any and besides that those children of God which have them in larger proportion do yet make the least use of them of any others because the children of the world are not so tender conscienced nor so much afraid lest those worldly things should become snares and occasions of tentation to them if they open themselves to a full enjoying thereof as the children of God are And therefore after my wanting of many worldly things after a penurious life and after my not daring to use those things that I have so freely as others doe after that holy and conscientious forbearing of those things that other men afford themselves after my leaving all these absolutely behind me here and my skin and body in destruction in the grace After all there remaines something else for me After but how long after That 's next When Christ was in the body of that flesh which we are in now sinne onely excepted he said in that state that he was in then Of that day and houre no man knoweth not the Angels not the Sonne Then in that state he excludes himselfe And when Christ was risen againe in an uncorruptible body he said even to his nearest followers Non est
a sense a mysterious signification of the union of the soule with Christ when both persons professe the Christian Religion in generall there arises some signification of that spirituall union But when they both professe Christ in one forme in one Church in one Religion and that the right then as by the Civill Contract there is an union of their estates and persons so as that they two are made one so by this Sacramentall this mysterious union these two thus made one between themselves are also made one with Christ himself by the Civill union common to all people they are made Eadem caro The same flesh with one another By this mysterious this Sacramentall this significative union they are made Idem Spiritus cum Domino The same Spirit with the Lord. And therefore though in the Resurrection they shall not mary because then all the severall uses of mariage cease yet till the Resurrection that is as long as this world lasts for the sustentation of the world which is one Body and Mariage the food and aliment thereof for the reparation of the world which is one Building and Mariage the supply thereof to maintaine a second eternity in the succession of children and to illustrate this union of our soules to Christ we may and in some Cases must marry We are come in our order proposed at first to our second Part Erimus sicut Angeli we shall be as the Angels of God in heaven where we consider first what we are compared to those Angels And then in what that Comparison lies wherein we shall be like those Angels And lastly the Proposition that flowes out of this proposition In the Resurrection we shall be like them Till the Resurrection we shall not and therefore in the meane time we must not looke for Angelicall perfections but beare with one anothers infirmities Now when we would tell you what those Angels of God in heaven to which we are compared are we can come no nearer telling you that then by telling you we cannot tell The Angels may be content with that Negative expressing since we can express God himselfe in no clearer termes nor in termes expressing more Dignity then in saying we cannot expresse him Onely the Angels themselves know one another and one good point in which we shall be like them then shall be that then we shall know what they are we know they are Spirits in Nature but what the nature of a spirit is we know not we know they are Angels in office appointed to execute Gods will upon us but How a spirit should execute those bodily actions that Angels doe in their owne motion and in the transportation of other things we know not we know they are Creatures but whether created with this world as all our later men incline to think or long before as all the Greeke and some of the Latin Fathers thought we know not we know that for their number ◠and for their faculties also there may be one Angel for every man but whether there be so or no because not onely amongst the Fathers but even in the Reformed Churches in both sub-divisions Lutheran and Calvinist great men deny it and as great affirme it we know not we know the Angels know they understand but whether by that way which we call in the Schoole Cognitionem Matutinam by seeing all in God or that which we call Verspertinam by a clearer manifestation of the species of things to them then to us we know not we know they are distinguished into Orders the Apostle tells us so but what or how many their Orders are since S. Gregory and S. Bernard differ from that Designe of their nine orders which S. Denis the Areopagite had given before in placing of those nine and Athanasius addes more to those nine we know not But we are content to say with S. Augustine Esse firmissimè credo quaenam sint nescio that there are distinct orders of Angels assuredly I beleeve but what they are I cannot tell Dicant qui possunt si tamen probare possunt quod dicunt saies that Father Let them tell you that can so they be able to prove that they tell you true They are Creatures that have not so much of a Body as flesh is as froth is as a vapor is as a sigh is and yet with a touch they shall molder a rocke into lesse Atomes then the sand that it stands upon and a milstone into smaller flower then it grinds They are Creatures made and yet not a minute elder now then when they were first made if they were made before all measure of time began nor if they were made in the beginning of Time and be now six thousand yeares old have they one wrinckle of Age in their face or one sobbe of wearinesse in their lungs They are primogeniti Dei Gods eldest sonnes They are super-elementary meteors they hang between the nature of God and the nature of man and are of middle Condition And if we may offencelessely expresse it so they are anigmata Divina The Riddles of Heaven and the perplexities of speculation But this is but till the Resurrection Then we shall be like them and know them by that assimilation We end this branch with this consideration If by being like the Angels we shall know the Angels we are more then like ourselves we are our selves why doe we not know our selves Why did not Adam know that he had a Body that might have been preserved in an immortality and yet submitted his body and mine and thine and theirs who by this union are to be made one and all that by Gods goodnesse shall be derived from them to certaine to inevitable Death Why doe not we know our owne Immortality that dwells in us still for all Adams fall and ours in him that immortality which we cannot devest but must live for ever whether we will or no To know this immortality is to make this immortality which otherwise is the heaviest part of our Curse a Blessing unto us by providing to live in Immortall happinesse whereas now we doe so little know our selves as that if my soule could aske one of those Wormes which my dead body shall produce Will you change with me that worme would say No for you are like to live eternally in torment for my part I can live no longer then the putrid moisture of your body will give me leave and therefore I will not change nay would the Devill himselfe change with a damned soule I cannot tell As we argue conveniently that the Devil is tormented more then man because the Devill fel from God without any other Tempter then himselfe but man had a Tempter so may it be not inconveniently argued too that man may be more tormented then he because man continued and relapsed in his rebellions to God after so many pardons offered and accepted which the Devill never had Howsoever otherwise their torments
may be equall as the Devill is a Spirit and a condemned soule a spirit yet that soule shall have a Body too to be tormented with it which the Devill shall not How little we know our selves which is the end of all knowledge But we hast to the next branch In the Resurrection we shall be like to the Angels of God in Heaven But in what lies this likenesse In how many other things soever this likenesse may ly yet in this Text and in our present purpose it lies onely in this Non nubent In the Resurrection they shall not mary But did Angels never mary or as good or at least as ill as mary How many of the ancients take those words That the sonnes of God saw the daughters of Men that they were faire and they tooke them wives of all which they chose to be intended of Angels They offer to tell us how many these maried Angels were Origen saies sixty or seventy They offer to tell us some of their names Aza was one of these maried Angels and Azael was another But then all those who doe understand these words The sonnes of God to be intended of Angels who being sent downe to protect Men fell in love with Women and maried them all I say agree that those Angels that did so never returned to God againe but fell with the first fallen under everlasting Condemnation So that still the Angels of God in Heaven those Angels to whom we shall be like in the Resurrection doe not mary not so much as in any such mistaking they doe not because they need not they need not because they need no second Eternity by the continuation of children for says S. Luke they cannot die Adams first immortality was but this Posse non mori that he needed not to have died he should not have died The Angels immortality and ours when we shall be like them in the Resurrection is Non posse mori that we cannot die for whosoever dies is Homicida sui sayes Tertullian he kills himselfe and sinne is his sword In heaven there shall no such sword be drawn we need not say that the Angels in heaven have that we when we shall be like them in the Resurrection shall so invest an immortality in our nature as that God could not inflict Death upon them or us there if we sinned But because no sinne shall enter there no Death shall enter there neither for Death is the wages of sinne Not that no sinne could enter there if we were left to our selves for in that place Angels did sinne And fatendum est Angelos natura mutabiles saies S. Augustine Howsoever Angels be changed in their Condition they retaine still the same nature and by nature they are mutable But that God hath added another prerogative by way of Confirmation to that state so as that that Grace which he gives us here which is that nothing shall put a necessity of sinning upon us or that we must needs sinne God multiplies upon us so there as that we can conceive no inclination to sinne Therein we shall be like the Angels that we cannot die And the nearer we come to that state in this life the liker we are to those Angels here Now beloved onely he that is Dead already cannot die He that in a holy mortification is Dead the Death of the righteous dead to sinne he lives shall we dare to say so yes we may he lives a blessed Death for such a Death is true life And by such a heavenly Death Death of the righteous Death to sinne he is in possession of a heavenly life here in an inchoation though the consummation and perfection be reserved for the next world which is our last circumstance and the Conclusion of all At the Resurrection we shall be like the Angels Till then we shall not and therefore must not looke for Angelicall perfections here but beare one anothers infirmities It is as yet but in Petition fiat voluntas Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven And as long as there is an Earth it will be but in Petition His will will not be done in Earth as it is in Heaven when all is Heaven to his Saints all will be well but not all till then In the meane time remember all especially you whose Sacramentall that is Mysterious and significative union now is a Type of your union with God in as neare and as fast a band as that of Angels for you shall be as the Angels of God in Heaven That the office of the Angels in this world is to Assist and to supply Defects You are both of noble extraction there 's no defect in that you need not supply one another with Honour you are both of religious Education there 's no defect in that you need not supply one another with fundamentall instructions Both have your parts in that testimony which S. Gregory gave of your Nation at Rome Angli Angeli you have a lovelinesse fit for one another But though I cannot Name no nor Thinke any thing wherein I should wish that Angelicall disposition of supporting or supplying defects yet when I consider that even he that said Ego pater unum sumus I and the Father are one yet had a time to say utquid dereliquisti My God my God why hast thou forsaken me I consider thereby that no two can be so made one in this world but that that unity may be though not Dissolved no nor Rent no nor Endangered yet shaked sometimes by domestique occasions by Matrimoniall encumbrances by perversnesse of servants by impertinencies of Children by private whisperings and calumnies of Strangers And therefore to speake not Prophetically that any such thing shall fall but Provisionally if any such thing should fall my love and my duty and my Text bids me tell you that perfect happinesse is to be staid for till you be as the Angels of God in heaven here it is a faire portion of that Angelicall happinesse if you be alwaies ready to support and supply one another in any such occasionall weaknesses The God of Heaven multiply the present joy of your parents by that way of making you joyfull parents also and recompense your obedience to parents by that way of giving you obedient Children too The God of heaven so joine you now as that you may be glad of one another all your life and when he who hath joined you shall separate you againe establish you with an assurance that he hath but borrowed one of you for a time to make both your joies the more perfect in the Resurrection The God of Heaven make you alwaies of one will and that will alwaies conformable to his conserve you in the sincere truth of his Religion feast you with the best feast Peace of conscience and carry you through the good opinion and love of his Saints in this world to the association of his Saints and Angels and one
another in the Resurrection and everlasting possession of that kingdome which his Sonne our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible Blood Amen SERMON II. Preached at a Mariage GEN. 2. 18. And the Lord God said It is not good that the man should be alone I will make him a Helpe meet for him IN the Creation of the world when God stocked the Earth and the Sea with those creatures which were to be the seminary and foundation and roote of all that should ever be propagated in either of those elements and when he had made man to rule over them he â—â—oke to man and to other creatures in one and the same phrase and forme of speech Crescite Multiplicamini Be fruitfull and multiply and thereby imprinted in man and in other creatures a naturall desire to conserve and propagate their kinde by way of Generation But after God had thus imprinted in man the same naturall desire of propagation which he had infused into other creatures too after he had communicated to him that blessing for so it is said God blessed them and said Be fruitfull and multiply till an ability and a desire of propagating their kinde was infused into the creature there is no mention of any blessing in the creation after God had made men partakers of that blessing that naturall desire of propagation he takes a farther care of man in giving him a proper and peculiar blessing in contracting and limiting that naturall desire of his He leaves all other creatures to theâ— generall use and execution of that Commission Crescite et multiplicamini the Male was to take the Female when and where their naturall desire provoked them but for man Addâ—xit Deus ad Adam God left not them to goe to one another but God brought the woman to the man and so this conjunction this desire of propagation though it be naturall in man as in other creatures by his creation yet it is limited by God himselfe to be exercised onely between such persons as God hath brought together in mariage according to his Institution and Ordinance Though then societies of men doe grow up and spread themselves into Townes and into Cities and into Kingdomes yet the root of all societies is in families in the relation between man and wife parents and children masters and servants so though the state of the children of God in this world be dignified by the name of a Kingdome for so we pray by Christs owne institution Thy kingdome come and so Christ saies Ecce Regnum The kingdome of God is amongst you and though the state of Gods children here be called a City a new Ierusalem comming downe from heaven and in David Glorious things are spoken of thee O City of God yet for all these glorious titles of City and Kingdome we must remember that it is called a family tooâ— The Houshold of the faithfull And so the Apostle says in preferring Christ before Moses That Christ as the sonne was over Gods house whose house we are So that both of Civill and of Spirituall societies the first roote is a family and of families the first roote is Mariage and of mariage the first roote that growes out into words is in this Text And the Lord God said It is not good c. If we should employ this exercise onely upon these two generall considerations first that God puts even his care and his study to finde out what is good for man and secondly that God doth provide and furnish whatsoever he findes to be necessary faciam I will make him a Helper though they be common places we are bound to thanke God that they are so that it is a common place to good that he ever does it towards us that it is a common place to us that we ever acknowledge it in him But you may be pleased to admit a more particular distribution For upon the first will be grounded this consideration that in regard of the publique good God pretermits private and particular respects for God doth not say Non bonum homini it is not good for man to be alone man might have done well enough so nor God does not say non bonum hunc hominem it is not good for this or that particular man to be alone but non bonum Hominem it is not good in the generall for the whole frame of the world that man should be alone because then both Gods purposes had been frustrated of being glorified by man here in this world and of glorifying man in the world to come for neither of these could have been done without a succession and propagation of man and therefore non bonum hominem it was not good that man should be alone And then upon the second consideration will arise these branches first that whatsoever the defect be there is no remedy but from God for it is faciam I will doe it Secondly that even the workes of God are not equally excellent this is but faciam it is not faciamus in the creation â—f man there is intimated a Consultation a Deliberation of the whole Trinity in the making of women it is not expressed so it is but faciam And then that that is made here is but Adjutorium but an accessory not a principall but a Helperâ— First the wife must be so much she must Helpe and then she must be no more she must not Governe But she cannot be that except she have that quality which God intended in the first woman Adjutoriam simile sibi a helper fit for him for otherwise he will ever returne to the bonum esse solum it had been better for him to have been alone then in the likenesse of a Helper to have had a wife unfit for him First then that in regard of the publique good God pretermits private respects if we take examples upon that stage upon that scene the face of Nature we see that for the conservation of the whole God hath imprinted in the particulars a disposition to depart from their owne nature water will clamber up hills and ayre will sinke down into vaults rather then admit Vacuity But take the example nearer in Gods bosome and there we see that for the publique for the redemption of the whole world God hath shall we say pretermitted derelicted forsaken abandoned his own and onely Sonne Do you so too Regnum Dei intra nos the kingdome of God is within you planted in your election watred in your Baptisme fatned with the blood of Christ Jesus ploughed up with many calamities and tribulations weeded with often repentances of particular sins The kingdome of God is within you and will ye not depart from private affections from Ambition and Covetousnesse from Excesse and voluptuousnesse from chambring and wantonnesse in which the kingdome of God doth not consist for the conservation of this kingdome will ye not pray for this kigdome
a fair latitude Between the opinion of the Manichean hereticks that thought women to be made by the Devil and your Colliridian hereticks that sacrificed to a women as to God there is a fair distance Between the denying of them souls which S. Ambrose is charged to have done and giving them such souls as that they may be Priests as your Pepution hereticks did is a faire way for a moderate man to walk in To make them Gods is ungodly and to make them Devils is devillish To make them Mistresses is unmanly and to make them servants is unnoble To make them as God made them wives is godly and manly too When in your Roman Church they dissolved mariage in naturall kindred in degrees where God forbids it not when they dissolve mariage upon spitituall kindred because my Grandfather Christned that womans Father when they dissolve mariage upon legall kindred because my Grandfather adopted that womans Father they separate those whom God hath joyned so as to give leave to joyn in lawfull mariage When men have made vows to abstain from mariage I would they would they would be content to try a little longer then they doe whether they could keep that vow or no And when men have consecrated themselves to the service of God in his Church I would they would be content to try a little farther then they doe whether they could abstain or no But to dissolve mariage made after such a Vow or after Orders is still to separate those whom God hath not separated The Persons are he and she man and woman they must be so much he must be a man she must be a woman And they must be no more not a brother and a sister not an unckle and aneece Adduxit od eum was the cause between Adam and Eve God brought them together God will not bring me a precontracted person he will not have me defraud another nor God will not bring me a mis-beleeving a superstitious person he will not have me drawn from himself But let them be persons that God hath made man and woman and persons that God hath brought together that is not put asounder by any Law of his and all such persons are capable of this first this secular mariage In which our second Consideration is the Action Sponsabe where the Active is a kinde of Passive I will mary thee is I will be maried unto thee for we mary not our selves They are somewhat hard driven in the Roman Church when making mariage a Sacrament and being prest by us with this question If it be a Sacrament who administers it who is the Priest They are fain to answer the Bridegroom and the Bride he and she are the Priest in that Sacrament As mariage is a civill Contract it must be done so in publick as that it may have the testimony of men As mariage is a religious Contract it must be so done as that it may have the benediction of the Priest In a mariage without testimony of men they cannot claim any benefit of the Law In a mariage without the benediction of the Priest they cannot claim any benefit of the Church for how Matrimonially foever such persons as have maried themselves may pretend to love and live together yet all that love and all that life is but a regulated Adultery it is not mariage Now this institution of mariage had three objects first In ustionem it was given for a remedy against burning And then In prolem for propagation for children And lastly In adjutorium for mutuall help As we consider it the first way In ustionem every heating is not a burning every naturall concupiscence does not require a mariage may every flaming is not a burning though a man continue under the flame of carnall tentation as long as S. Paul did yet it needs not come presently to a Sponsabo I will mary God gave S. Paul other Physick Gratia mea sufficit grace to stand under that tentation And S. Paul gave himself other Physick Contundo corpus convenient disciplines to tame his body These will keepa man from burning for Vriest desideriis vinci desideria pati illustris est perfecti To be overcome by our concupiscences that is to burn but to quench the fire by religious ways that is a noble that is a perfect work When God at the first institution of mariage had this first use of mariage in his contemplation that it should be a remedy against burning God gave man the remedy before he had the disease for mariage was instituted in the state of innocency when there was no inordinatenesse in the affections of man and so no burning But as God created Reubarb in the world whose quality is to purge choler before there was any choler to purge so God according to his abundant forwardnesse to doe us good created a remedy before the disease which he foresaw comming was come upon us Let him then that takes a wife in this first and lowest sense In medicinam but as his Physick yet make her his cordiall Physick take her to his heart and fill his heart with her let her dwell there and dwell there alone and so they will be mutuall Antidotes and Preservatives one to another against all forein tentations And with this blessing blesse thou ô Lord these whom thou hast brought hither for this blessing make all the days of their life like this day unto them and as thy mercies are new every morning make them so to one another And if they may not die together sustain thou the survivor of them in that sad hour with this comfort That he that died for them both will bring them together again in his everlastingnesse The second use of mariage was In prolificationem for children And therefore as S. August puts the case To contract before that they will have no children makes it no mariage but an adultery To deny themselves to another is as much against mariage as to give themselves to another To hinder it by Physick or any other practise nay to hinder it so far as by a deliberate wish or prayer against children consists not well with this second use of mariage And yet in this second use we dòe not so much consider generation as regeneration not so much procreation as education nor propagation as transportation of children For this world might be filled full enough of children though there were no mariage but heaven could not be filled nor the places of the fallen Angels supplied without that care of childrens religious education which from Parents in lawfull mariage they are likeliest to receive How infinite and how miserable a circle of sin doe we make if as we sinned in our Parents loins before we were born so we sin in our childrens actions when we are dead by having given them either example or liberty of sinning We have a fearfull commination from God upon a good man upon Eli
need not the Scriptures reason will evict it forceibly enough against all the world but when I come beyond all Philosophy that for Adams fault six thousand year agoe I should be condemned now because that fault is naturally in me I must find reason before I beleeve this and my reason is because I find it in the Scrpiture Nascimur filii Irae and therefore nifi renatus we are borne children of wrath and therefore must be borne againe That a Messias should come to deliver Mankind from this sinne and all other fins my reason is the Semen mulieris the seed of the woman for the promise and the Ecce agnus Dei Behold the Lambe of God for the performance That he should come I reft in that The seed of the woman shall bruise the Serpents head And that he is come I rest in this that Iohn Baptist shewed the Lambs of God that taketh away the sinnes of the world That this merit of his should be applied to certaine Men my reason is in the Semini two Gods Covenant to Abraham and to his seed That we are of that number included in that Covenant to Abraham my reason is in spiritu adoptionis the spirit of adoption hath ingraffed us inserted us into the same Covenant When my reason tells me that the Seale of that Covenant Circumcision is gone I am not circumcised and therefore might doubt my reason tells me too that in the Scriptures there is a new Seals Baptisme when my reason tells mee that after that regeneration I have degenerated againe I have fallen from those graces which I received in Baptisme my reason leades mee againe to those places of Scripture where God hath established a Church for the remession and absolution of sinnes If I have been negligent of all these helpes and now my reason beginnes to worke to my prejudice that I beginne to gather and heape up all those places of the Law and Prophets and Gospell which threaten certaine condemnation unto such sinners as I find my selfe to bee yet if my reason can see light at the Nolo mortem peccatoris at the Quandocunque resipiscct That God would not the death of any sinner That no time is unseasonable for repentance That scatters the clands of witnesses againe and to till my reason can tell me which it can never doe that it hath found places in Scripture of a measure and finitenesse in God that his mercy can goe no farther and then of an infinitenesse in Man that his finne can goe beyond God my reason will defend me from desperation I meane the reason that is grounded upon the Scripture still I shall find there that Quia which David delighted in so much as that he repears it almost thirty times in one Psalm For his mercy endureth for ever God leaves no way of satisfaction unperformed unto us sometimes he workes upon the phantasie of Man as in those often â—isions which he presented to his Prophets in dreames sometimes he workes upon the senses by preparing objects for them So he filled the Mountaine round about with horses and chariots in defense of Elisha but alwayes he workes upon our reason he bids us feare no judgment he bids us hope for no mercy except it have a Quia a reason a foundation in the Scriptures For God is Logos speech and reasone He declares his will by his Word and he proved it he confirmes it he is Logos and he proceeds Logically It is true that we have a Sophistry which as farre as concerns our owne destruction frustrates his Logique If Peter make a Quia a reason why his fellowes could not bee drunke Because it was but nine a Clocke wee can find Men that can overthrow that reason and rise drunke out of their beds If Christ make a Quia a reason against fashionall and Circumstantiall christians that doe sometimes some offices of religion out of custome or company or neighborhood or necessity because no man peecethan old garment with new cloth nor puts new wine into old vessells yet since S. Augustine says well Carnalitas vetustas gratia novitas our carnall delights are our old garments and those degrees and beames of grace which are shed upon us are the new we do peece this old with this new that is long habits of sin with short repentances flames of concupiscence with little sparks of remorse and into old vessells our sin-worne bodies we put in once a year some drops of new wine of the bloud of our Saviour Christ Iesus in the Sacrament when we come to his table as to a vintage because of the season and we receive by the Almanack because it is Easter and this new wine so taken in breakes the vessells as Christ speakes in that similitude And his breaking shall be as the breaking of a Potters pot which is broken without pity and in the breaking thereof is not found a shard to take fire at the hearth nor to take water out of the pit No way in the Church of God to repaire that Man because he hath made either a Mockery or at best but a Civil action of Gods institution in the Church To conclude this all sin is but fallacy and Sophistry Religion is reason and Logique The devill hides and deludes Almighty God demonstrates and proves That fashion of his goes through all his precepts through all his promises which is in Esay Come now and let us reason together that which was in Iob is a bundantly in God That he did not contemne the judgment of his servant nor of his maid when they did contend with him Nec decet Dei judicium quicquid habere affine tyrannidi we may not think that here is any thing in God like a Tyran and it is a Tyrannicall proceeding as to give no reason of his cruelties so to give no assurance of his benefits and therefore God seales his promises with a Quia a reason an assurance Now much of the strength of the assurance consists in the person whose seale it is and therefore as Christ did we aske next Cujus inscriptio whose Image whose inscription is upon his seale who gives this assurance And it is the Lambe that is in the midst of the throne If it werethe Lion the Lion of the tribe of Iuda is able to perform his promises but there are more then Christ out of this world that beare the Lion The devill is a Lion too that seeketh whom he may devoure but he never seales with that Lambe with any impression of humility to a Lambe he is never compared in the likenesse of a lambe he is never noted to have appeared in all the Legends It is the Lambe that is in the midst thereby disposed to shed and dispense his spirituall benefits on all sides The Lambe is not immured in Rome not coffined up in the ruines and tubbidge of old wals nor thrust into a corner in Conventicles The Lambe
Christ which is Baptistrisum the font the Sea into which God flings all their sinnes who rightly and effectually receive that Sacrament These fountaines of waters then in the text are the waters of baptisime and if we should take them also in that sense that waters signifie tribulations and afflictions it is true too that in baptisme that is in the profession of Christ we are delivered over to many tribulations The rule is generall Castigat omnes he chastiseth all The example the precedent is peremptory Opertuit pati Christ ought to suffer and so enter into glory but howsoever waters be affictions they are waters of life too says the text Though baptisme imprint a crosse upon us that we should not be ashamed of Christ crosse that we should not be afraid of our owne crosses yet by all these waters by all these Crosse ways we goe directly to the eternall life the kingdome of heaven for they are lively fountaines fountaines of life And this is intended and promised in the last words Absterget omnem Lachrymam God shall wipe all teares from our eyes God shall give us a joyfull apprehension of heaven here in his Church in this life But is this a way to wipe teares from the childes face to sprinkle water upon it Is this a wiping away to powre more on It is the powerfull and wonderfull way of his working for as his red bloud makes our red soules white that his rednesse gives our rednesse a candor so his water his baptisime and the powerfull effect thereof shall dry up and wipe away Omnem â—achrymam all teares from our Eyes howsoever occasioned This water shall dry them up Christ had many occassion of teares we have more some of our owne which he had not we must weep because we are not so good as we should be we cannot performe the law We must weepe because we are not so good as we could be our free will is lost but yet every Man findes he might be better if he would but the sharpest and saltest and smartest occasion of our teares is from this that we must not be so good as we would be that the prosanenesse of the Libertine the reproachfull slanders the contumelious scandalls the seornfull names that the wicked lay upon those who in their measure desire to expresse their zeale to Gods glory makes us afraid to professe our selves so religious as we could find in our hearts to be and could truly be if we might Christ went often in contemplation of others foreseeing the calamities of Ierualem he wept over the City comming to the grave of Lazarus he wept with them but in his owne Agony in the garden it is not said that he weps If we could stop the stood of teares in our afflictions yet there belongs an excessive griefe to this that the ungodly disposion of other Men is slacking of our godlinesse of our sanctification too Christ Jesus for the joy that was set before him endured the Crosse we for the joy of this promise that God will wipe all teares from our eyes must suffer all this whether they be teares of Compunction or teares of Compassion teares for our selves or teares for others whether they be Magdalens teares or Peters teares teares for sinnes of infirmity of the flesh or teares for weaknesse of our faith whether they be teares for thy parents because they are improvident towards thee or teares for thy children because they are disobedient to thee whether they be teares for Church because our Sermons or our Censures pinch you or teares for the State that penall laws pecuniary or bloudy lie heavy upon you Deus absterget omneni lachryman here 's your comfort that as he hath promised inestimable blessings to them that are sealed and washed in him so he hath given you security that these blessings belong to you for if you find that he hath govened you bred you in his visible Church and led you to his fountaine of the water of lifein baptisme you may be sure that he will in his due time wipe all teares from your eyes establish the kingdome of heaven upon you in this life in a holy and modest infallibility SERMON V. Preached at a Christning EPHES. 5. 25 26 27. Husbands love your wives even as Christ loved the Church and gave himselfe for it that he might sanctisie it and cleanse it by the washing of water through the Word That he might make it unto himselfe a glorious Church not having spot or wrinkle on any such thing but that it should be holy and without blame ALmighty God ever loved unity but he never loved singularity God was always alone in heaven there were no other Gods but he but he was never singular there was never any time when there were not three persons in heaven Pater ego unum summi The father and I are one says Christ one in Esseuct and one in Consent our substance is the same and our will is the same but yet Tecum fui ab initio says Christ in the person of Wisdome I was with thee disposing all things at the Creation As then God seemes to have been eternally delighted with this eternall generation with persons that had ever a relation to one another Father and Sonne so when he came to the Creation of this lower world he came presently to those three relations of which the whole frame of this world consists of which because the principall foundation and preservation of all States that are to continue is power the first relation was between Prince and Subject when God said to Man Subjecite dominamini subdue and govern all Creatures The second relation was between husband and wife when Adam said This now is house of my bone and flesh of my flesh And the third relation was between parents and children when Eve said that she had obtained a Man by the Lord that by the plentifull favour of God she had conceived and borne a sonne from that time to the dissolution of that frame from that beginning to the end of the world these three relations of Master and Servant Mans and Wife Father and Children have been and ever shall be the materialls and the elements of all society of families and of Cities and of Kingdomes And therefore it is a large and a subtill philosophy which S. Paul professes in this place to shew all the qualities and properties of these several Elements that is all the duties of these severall callings but in this text he handles onely the mutuall duties of the second couple Man and Wife and in that consideration shall we determine this exercise because a great part of that concernes the education of Children which especially occasions our meeting now The generall duty that goes through all these three relations is expressed Subditi estate invicevs Submit your selves to one another in the feare of God for God hath given no Master such imperiousnesse
a slumbring of our Religion for a time and that excludes the temporisers the Statist the Politician And so beloved I recommend unto you Integritatem Iesu Jesus and his truth and his whole truth and this whole Truth in your whole lives SERMON VII Preached at a Christning GAL. 3. 27. For all yee that are baptized into Christ have put on Christ. THis text is a Reason of a Reason an Argument of an Argument The proposition undertaken by the Apostle to prove is That after faith is come we are no longer under the Schoolmaster the law The reason by which he proves that is For yee are all the Sonnes of God by faith in Christ Jesus And then the reason of that is this text for all yee that are baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Here then is the progresse of a sanctified Man and here is his standing house here is his journey and his Lodging his way and his end The house the lodging the end of all is faith for whatsoever is not of faith is sinne To be sure that you are in the right way to that you must find your selves to be the Sonnes of God And you can prove that by no other way to your selves but because you are baptized into Christ. So that our happinesse is now at that height and so much are we preferred before the Iews that whereas the chiefest happinesse of the Jews was to have the law for without the law they could not have known sinne and the law was their Schoolmaster to find out Christ we are admitted to that degree of perfection that we are got above the law It was their happinesse to have had the law but it is ours not to need it They had the benefit of a guide to direct them but we are at our journies end They had a schoolmaster to lead them to Christ but we have proceeded so farre as that we are in possession of Christ. The law of Moses therefore binds us not at all as it is his Law Whatsoever binds a Christian in that law would have bound him though there had been no law given to Moses The Ceremoniall part of that law which was in the institution Mortale it was mortall It might die and by Christs determination of those Typicall things Mortuum It did die is now also Mortiferum deadly so that it is sinne to draw any part of that law into a necessity of observation because the necessary admission of any Type or figure implies a confession that that which was signified or figured is not yet come So that that law and Christ cannot consist together The Iudiciall law of Moses was certainly the most absolute and perfect law of government which could have been given to that people for whom it was given but yet to thinke that all States are bound to observe those lawes because God gave them hath no more ground then that all Men are bound to goe clothed in beasts skinnes because God apparelled Adam and Eve in that fashion And for the morall part of that law and the abridgement of that morall part the decalogue that begunne not to have force and efficacy then when God writ it in the tables but was always and always shall be written in the hearts of Men And though God of his goodnesse was pleased to give that declaration of it and that provocation to it by so writing it yet if he had not written it or if which is impossible that writing could perish yet that morall law those commandements would bind us that are Christians after the expiration of that law which was Moses law as it did de Iure bind all those which lived before any written law was So that he that will perfectly understand what appertaines to his duty in any of the ten Commandements he must not consider that law with any limitation as it was given to the Iews but consider what he would have done if he had lived before the Tables had been written For certainely even in the Commandement of the Sabbath which was accompanied with so many Ceremonies amongst the Iews that part onely is morall which had bound us though that Commandement had never been given and he that performes that part keepes the Sabbath the Ceremoniall part of it is not onely not necessary but when it is done with an opinion of necessity it is erroneous and sinfull For neither that Commandement nor any other of the ten began to bind them when they were written nor doth bind now except it bound before that Thus far then we are directed by this Text which is as far as we can goe in this life To prove to our selves that we have faith we must prove that wee need not the law To prove that emanecipation and liberty we must prove that we are the sonnes of God To prove that ingraffing and that adoption we must prove that we have put on Christ Iesus And to prove that apparelling of our selves our proofe is that we are baptized into him All proofes must either arrest and determine in some things confessed and agreed upon or else they proceed in infinitum That which the Apostle takes to be that which is granted on all sides and which none can deny is this that to be baptized is to put on Christ And this putting on of Christ doth so far carry us to that Infinitissimum to God himselfe that we are thereby made Semen Dei the seed of God The field is the world and the good seed are the Children of the kingdome And we are translated even into the nature of God By his pretious promises we are made partakers of the Divine nature yea we are discharged of all bodily and earthly incombrances and we are made all spirit yea the spirit of God himselfe He that is joyned to the Lord is one spirit with him All this we have if we doe put on Christ and we doe put on Christ if we be baptized into him These then are the two actions which we are now to consider Baptizari To be washed Induere To be cloathed Induere is to cover so far as that Covering can reach A hat covers the head a glove the hand and other garments more But Christ when he is put on Covers us all If we have weake heads shallow brains either a silexce and a reservednes which make the foole and the wise equall or the good interpretation of friends which put good Constructions upon all that we say or the dignity of autority and some great place which we hold which puts an opinion in the people that we are wise or else we had never been brought thither these cover our heads and hide any defect in them If we have foule hands we can cover them with excuses If they be foule with usurious Extortion we can put on a glove an excuse and say He that borrowed my money got more by it then I that lent it If with bribery in an office we
bed that he in the name of the dead man might answer to all the questions usually asked in administring of Baptisme But this was a corrupt effect of pure and sincere doctrine which doctrine is That Baptisme is so necessary as that God hath placed no other ordinary scale nor conveyance of his graces in his Church to them that have not received that then buptisme And they who doe not provide duly for the Baptisme of their children if their children die have a heavier accompt to make to God for that child then if they had not provided a Nurse and suffered the child to starve God can preserve the child without Milke and he can save the child without a sacrament but as that mother that throwes out and forsakes her child in the field or wood is guilty before God of the Temporall murder of that child though the child die not so are those parents of a spirituall murder if their children by their fault die unbaptized though God preserve that child out of his abundant and miraculous mercy from spirituall destruction When the custome of the Christian Church was to baptize but twice in the year at Easter and Whiâ—sontide for the greater solemnity of that action yea when that ill custome was grown as it was even in the Primitive Church that upon an opinion that all sins were absolutely forgiven in Baptisme Men did defer their Baptisme till their death-bed as we see the Ecclesiasticall histories full of such examples even in some of the Christian Emperors and according to this ill custome we see Tertullian chides away young children for comming so soon to Baptisme quid festinat innocens aetas ad remâ—ssionem peccatorum why should this child that as yet hath done no sinne make such hast to be washed from sinnce which opinion had got so much strength that Saint Basil was faine to oppose it in the Easterne Church and both the Gregories Nazianzen and Nissen and Saint Ambrose in the Western yet in the height of both their customes of seldome baptizing and of late baptizing the case of insants that might be in danger of dying without baptisme was ever excepted So that none of those old customes though some of them were extreamly ill went ever so farre as to an opinion that it were all one whether the child were baptized or no. I speake not this as though the state of children that died without baptisme were desperate God forbid for who shall shorten the Arme of the Lord God is able to raine downe Manna and Quailes into the soules of these children though negligent parents turne them out into the wildernesse and put God to that extraordinary work They may have Manna and Quailes but they have not the Milke and Hony of the Land of promise They may have salvation from God but they have not those graces so sealed and so testified to them as God hath promised they should be in his Sacraments When God in spirituall offences makes Inquisition of bloud he proceeds not as Man proceeds for we till there appear a Man to be dead never inquire who killed him but in the spirituall Murder of an unbaptized child though there be no child spiritually dead though Gods mercy have preserved the child from that yet God imputes this as such a murder to them who endangered the child as farre as they could by neglecting his ordinance of baptisme This is then the necessity of this Sacrament not absolutely necessary but necessary by Gods ordinary institution and as it is always necessary so is it always certaine whosoever is baptized according to Christs institution receives the Sacrament of baptisme and the truth is always infallibly annexed with the signe Nec fieri potest visio hominis ut non sit Sacramentum quod figurat Though the wicked may feele no working by the Sacrament yet the Sacrament doth offer and present grace as well to the unworthy as to the worthy Receiver Nec fallaciter promittit The wicked may be a cause that the Sacrament shall doe them no good but that the Sacrament become no Sacrament or that God should be false in his promises and offer no grace where he pretends to offer it this the wicked cannot doe baptisme doth truly and without collusion offer grace to all and nothing but baptisme by an ordinary institution and as an ordinary meanes doth so for when baptisme is called a figure yet both that figure is said there to save us The figure that now saveth us baptisme and it is a figure of the Arke it hath relation to it to that Arke which did save the world when it is called a figure So it may be a figure but if we speake of reall salvation by it baptisme is more then a figure Now as our putting on of Christ was double by faith and by sanctification so by this Sacrament also we are baptized in Nomen Christi into the Name of Christ and in mortem Christi into the death of Christ we are not therefore baptized into his Name because names are imposed upon us in our baptisme for that was not always permanently accustomed in the Christian Church to give a name at baptisme To men who were of years and well known in the world already by their nameâ— if they were converted to the Christian faith the Church did not use to give new names at their baptisme neither to Children alwayes but sometimes as an indifferent thing they left them to the custome of that country or of that family from which they were derived When Saint Augustine sayes that he came to Milan to S. Ambrose at that time quâ— dari nomina oportuit when Names were to be given it is true that he speaks of a time when Baptisme was to be administred but that phrase of Giving of Names was not a receiving of Names at Baptisme for neither Ambrose nor Augustine received any new name at their Baptisme but it was a giving up of their Names a Registring a Matriculating of their Names in the book of the profession of the Christian Religion and a publique declaration of that profession To be baptized therefore into the name of Christ is to be translated into his Family by this spirituall adoption in which adoption when it was legall as they that were adopted had also the name of the family into which they were adopted as of octavius Octavianus and the rest so are we so baptized into his name that we are of Christus Christiani and therefore to become truly Christians to live Christianly this is truly to be baptized into his name No other name is given under heaven whereby we can be saved nor must any other name accompany the name of God in our Baptisme When therefore they teach in the Romane Church that it is a good Baptisme which is administred in this forme I baptize thee in the name of the Father and Sonne and holy Ghost and the virgin Mary if he which baptizes so
doe not meane in his intention that the virgin Mary is equall to the Trinity but onely an assistant this is not onely an impertinent but an impious addition to that God that needs no assistant And as in our baptisme we take no other name necessarily but the name of Christ So in our Christian life we accept no other distinctions of Iesuits or Franciscans but onely Christians for we are baptized into his name and the whole life of a regenerate man is a Baptisme For as in putting on Christ sanctification doth accompany faith so in baptisme the imitation of his death that is mortification and the application of his passion by fulfilling the sufferings of Christ in our flesh is that baptisme into his death Which doe so certainly follow one another that he that is truly baptized into the name of Christ is also baptized into his death as that Saint Paul couples them together Was Paul crucified for you or were you baptized into the name of Paâ—l If you were not baptized into his name then you have no interest no benefit by his death nor by any thing which he suffered that his merits or his works of supereragation should be applied to you And if he did not suffer for you if all that any Paul much lesse any Ignatins could doe were but enough and too little for himselfe then you are not baptized into his name nor to be denominate by him This is then to be Baptized into Christs death Habere reddere testimonium Christam pro me mortuum to be sure that Chirst dyed for me and to be ready to dye for him so that I may fulfill his sufferings and may think that all is not done which belongs to my Redemption except I finde a mortification in my selfe Not that any mortification of mine works any thing as a cause of my redemption but as an assurance and testimony of it 〈◊〉 sit pignus sigilluâ— redemptionis It is a pledge and it is a Seale of my redemption Christ calls his death a Baptisme So Saint Augustine calls our Baptisme a death Quod crux Christo Sepâ—lcrâ—m id nobis Baptisma Baptisme to us says he is our Croffe and our passion and our buriall that is in that we are conformed to Christ as he suffered dyed and was buried Because if we be so baptized into his Name and into his death we are thereby dead to sinne and have dyed the death of the righteous Since then Baptisme is the death of sinne and there cannot be this death this conquest this victory over sinne without faith there must necessarily faith concurre with this baptisme for if there be not faith none in the child none in the parents none in the sureties none in the Church then there is no baptisme performed Now in the Child there is none actually In the sureties we are not sure there is any for their infidelity cannot impeach the sacrament The child is well baptized though they should be misbeleevers for when the Minister shall aske them Doest thou beleeve in God dost thou renounce the Devill perchance they may ly in their owne behalfes perchance they doe not beleeve they doe not renounce but they speake truth in the behalfe of the child when they speake in the voyce of the Church who receives this child for her childe and binds her selfe to exhibit and reach out to that child her spirituall paps for her future nourishment thereof How comes it to passe says Saint Augustine that when a man presents another mans child at the font to be baptized if the Minister should aske him Shall this man child be a valiant man or a wise man shall this woman child be a chast and a continent woman the surety would answer I cannot tell and yet if he be ask'd of that child of so few dayes old Doth that child beleeve in God now will he renounce the Devill hereafter the surety answers confidently in his behalfe for the beleefe and for the renouncing How comes this to passe says Saint Augustine He answers to this that as Sacramentum Corporis Christi est secundum modum Corpus Christi so Sacramentum fidei est fides As the Sacrament of the body and bloud of Christ is in some sense and in a kinde the body and bloud of Christ says Augustine so in the sacrament of faith says he that is Baptisme there is some kinde of faith Here is a child borne of faithfull parents and there is the voyce of God who hath sealed a Covenant to them and their seed Here are sureties that live by Gods gratious spirit in the unity and in the bosome of the Church and so the parents present it to them they present it to the Church and the Church takes it into her care It is still the naturall child of her parents who begot it it is the spirituall child of the Sureties that present it but it is the Christian child of the Church who in the sacrament of Baptisme gives it a new inanimation and who if either parents or sureties should neglect their parts will have a care of it and breed it up to a perfection and full growth of that faith whereof it hath this day an inchoation and beginning As then we have said that Baptisme is a death a death of sinne and as we said before sinne dyes not without faith so also can there be no death of sinne without sorrow and contrition which onely washes away sinne as therefore we see the Church and Christs institution furnishes this child with faith which it hath not of it selfe so let us bring to this action that sorrow and that condoling that we produce into the world such miserable wretches as even by peccatum involuntarium by that sinne to which no act nay no will of theirs concurred that is Originall sinne are yet put into the state of damnation But let us also rejoyce in our owne and this childes behalfe that as we that have been baptized so this child that shall be have and shall put on Christ Jesus in Baptisme Both as a garment for Sacramenta sunt vestimenta As Christ is a garment so the Sacraments are Christs garment and as such a garment as Ornat militem and convincit desertores It gives him that continues in Gods battailes a dignity and discovers him that forsakes Gods tents to be a fugitive Baptisme is a garland in which two ends are brought together he begins aright and perseveres so Ornat militem It is an honour to him that fights out in Gods battaile but Convincit Desertorem Baptisme is our prest-money and if we forsake our colours after we have received that even that forfaits our lives our very having been baptized shall aggravate our condemnation Yea it is such a garment as those of the children of Israel in the wildernesse which are by some expositors thought to have growne all the forty yeares with their bodies for so by Gods blessed provision
us First therefore let us find that we are in our bed that we are naturally unable to rise We are not born Noble Saint Paul considers himselfe and his birth and his Title to grace at best That he was a Iew and of the Tribe of Benjamin and of holy parents and within the Covenant yet all this rais'd him not out of his bed for sayes he we were by nature the Children of wrath as well as others But where then was the rising that is in the true receiving of Christ. To as many as received him he gave Potestatem praerogativae to be the sons of God yea power to become the sons of God as it is in our last Translation Christianus non de Christiano nascitur nec facit generatio sed regeneratio Christianum A Christian Mother does not conceive a Christian onely the Christian Church conceives Christian Children Iudaeus circumcisus generat filium incircumcisum A Jew is circumcised but his child is born uncircumcised The Parents may be up and ready but their issue abed and in their bloud till Baptisme have wash'd them and till the spirit of Regeneration have rais'd them from that bed which the sins of their first Parents have laid them in and their own continuing sins continued them in This rising is first from Originall sin by baptism and then from actuall sin best by withdrawing from the occasions of tentation to future sins after repentance of former But it is not Arise and stand still But Surgite ite arise and depart But whither Into actions contrary to those sinfull actions and habits contrary to those habits Let him that is righteous be righteous still and him that is holy be holy still and that cannot be without this for it is but a small degree of Convalescence and reparation of health to be able to rise out of our bed to be able to forbear sin Qui febri laborat post morbum infirmior est though the fever be off we are weake after it though we have left a sinne there is a weaknesse upon us that makes us reel and leane towards that bed at every turne decline towards that sinne upon every occasion And therefore according to that example and pattern of Gods proceeding at the creation who first made all and then digested and then perfected them Primò faciamus deinde venustemus says Saint Ambrose first let us make us up a good body a good habitude a good constitution by leaving our beds our occasions of tentations and then venustemus let us dresse our selves adorne our selves yea arme our selves with the whole armour of God which is faith in Christ Jesus and a holy and sanctified conversation Memento peregisse te aliquid restare aliquid Remember and do not deceive thy selfe to remember that which was never done but remember truely that thou hast done something towards making sure thy salvation already and that thou hast much more to doe Divertisse te ad Refectionem non ad defectionem that God hath given thee a bayting place a resting place peace in conscience for all thy past sinnes in thy present repentance but it is to refresh thy selfe with that peace it is not to take new courage and strength to sinne againe Let not the ease which thou hast found in the remission of sinnes now embolden thee to commit them againe not to trust to that strength which thou hast already recovered but arise and depart avoid old tentations and apply thy selfe to a new course in the world and in a calling for there may be as much sinne to leave the world as to cleave to the world and he may be as inexcusable at the last day that hath done Nothing in the world as hee that hath done some ill Now we noted it to be a particular degree of Gods mercy that he insisted upon it that he pressed it that he urged it with a reason doe thus says God for it stands thus with you It is always a boldnesse to aske a reason of those decrees of God which were founded and established onely in his owne gratious will and pleasure In those cases Exitiales vaculae our quomodo to aske why God elected some and how it can consist with his goodnesse to leave out others there the how and why are dangerous and deadly Monosyllables But of Gods particular purposes upon us and revealed to us which are so to be wrought and executed upon us as that we our selves have a fellow-working and co-operation with God of those it becomes us to aske and to know the reason When the Angell Gabriel promised such unexpected blessings to Zachary Zachary askes whereby shall I know this and the Angel does not leave him unsatisfied When that Angel promises a greater miracle to the blessed Virgin Mary she says also Quomodo how shall this be and the Angel settles and establishes the assurance in her Whatsoever we are bid to beleeve whatsoever we are bid to doe God affords us a reason for it and we may try it by reason but because that sinner whom in this text he speakes to to arise and depart is likely to stand upon false reasons against his rising to murmur and ask Cur or quomodo why should I arise since me thinkes I lye at my ease how shall I arise that am already at the top of my wishes God who is loath to lose any soule that he undertakes followes him with this reason Quia non requies Arise and depart for here is not your rest Now this rest is in it selfe so gratefull so acceptable a thing as all the service which David and Solomon could expresse towards God in the dedication of the Temple which was then in intention and project is described in that phrase Arise O Lord and come into thy rest thou and the Arke of thy strength God himselfe hath a Sabbath in our Sabbaths It is welcome to God and it is so welcome to Man as that Saint Augustine preaching upon those words Qui posuit fines tuos pacem He maneth peace in thy borders as we translate it he observed such a passion such an alteration in his auditory as that he tooke knowledge of it in his Sermon Nihil dixeram nihil exposuerans verbum pronunciavi exclamastis says he I have entred into no part of my text I have scarce read my text I did but name the word Rest and Peace of conscience and you are all transported affected with an exultation with an acclamation in the hunger and ambition of it That that the naturall that that the supernaturall Man affects is Rest Inquire pacem persequere eam it is not onely sequeâ—t but persequere seek peace ensue it follow this rest this peace so as if it fly from you if any interruption any heavinesse of heart any warfare of this world come between you and it yet you never give
imploys the hand of sicknesse the hand of poverty the hand of justice the hand of malice still it is his hand that breakes the vessell and this vessell which is his own for can any such vessell have a propriety in it selfe or bee any other bodies primarily then his from whom it hath the beeing To recollect these if I will have joy in suffering it must be mine mine and not borrowed out of an imaginary treasure of the Church from the works of others Supererogation mine and not stollen or enforced by exasperating the Magistrate to a persecution mine by good title and not by suffering for breach of the Law mine in particular and not a generall persecution upon the Church by my occasion And mine by a stranger title then all this mine by resignation mine by disavowing it mine by confessing that it is none of mine Till I acknowledge that all my sufferings are even for Gods glory are his works and none of mine they are none of mine and by that humility they become mine and then I may rejoyce in my sufferings Through all our sufferings then there must passe an acknowledgement that we are unprofitable servants towards God utterly unprofitable So unprofitable to our selves as that we can merit nothing by our sufferings but still we may and must have a purpose to profit others by our constancy it is Pro vobis that Saint Paul says hee suffers for them for their souls I will most gladly bestow and be bestowed for your soules says he But Numquid Paulus crucifixus pro vobis was Paul crucified for you is his own question as he suffered for them here so we may be bold to say he was crucified for them that is that by his crucifying and suffering the benefit of Christs sufferings and crucifying might be the more cheerfully embraced by them and the more effectually applyed to them Pro vobis is Pro vestro commodo for your advantage and to make you the more active in making sure your own salvation We are afflicted says he for your consolation that 's first that you might take comfort and spirituall courage by our example that God will no more forsake you then he hath done us and then hee addes salvation too for your consolation and salvation for our sufferings beget this consolation and then this consolation facilitates your salvation and then when Saint Paul had that testimony in his own conscience that his purpose in his sufferings was Pro illis to advantage Gods children and then saw in his experience so good effect of it as that it wrought and begot faith in them then the more his sufferings encreast the more his joys encreast Though says he I be offered up upon the service and sacrifice of your faith I am glad and rejoyce with you all And therefore hee calls the Philippians who were converted by him Gaudium Coronam his Joy and his Crown not onely a Crown in that sense as an auditory a congregation that compasses the Preacher was ordinarily called a Crown Corâ—na In which sense that Martyr Cornelius answered the Judge when he was charged to have held intelligence and to have received Letters from Saint Cyprian against the State Ego de Corona Domini says he from Gods Church 't is true I have but Contra Rempublicam against the State I have received no Letters But not onely in this sense Saint Paul calls those whom he had converted his Crown his Crown that is his Church but he cals them his Crown in heaven What is our hope our joy our Crown of rejoycing are not even you it and where even in the presence of our Lord Iesus Christ at his coming says the Apostle And therefore not to stand upon that contemplation of Saint Gregories that at the Resurrection Peter shall lead up his converted Jewes and Paul his converted Nations and every Apostle his own Church Since you to whom God sends us doe as well make up our Crown as we doe yours since your being wrought upon and our working upon you conduce to both our Crowns call you the labour and diligence of your Pastors for that 's all the suffering they are called to till our sins together call in a persecution call you their painfulnesse your Crown and we shall call your applyablenesse to the Gospel which we preach our Crown for both conduce to both but especially childrens children are the Crown of the Elders says Solomon If when we have begot you in Christ by our preaching you also beget others by your holy life and conversation you have added another generation unto us and you have preached over our Sermons again as fruitfully as we our selves you shall be our Crown and they shall be your Crowns and Christ Jesus a Crown of everlasting glory to us all Amen SERMON XVII Preached at Lincolns Inne MATTH 18. 7. We unto the world because of offences THe Man Moses was very meeke above all the men which were upon the face of the Earth The man Moses was so but the Child Iesus was meeker then he Compare Moses with men and Moses will scarce be parallel'd Compare him with him who being so much more then man as that he was God too was made so much lesse then man as that he was a worme and no man and Moses will not be admitted If you consider Moses his highest expression what he would have parted with for his brethren in his Dele me Pardon them or blot my name out of thy book yet Saint Pauls zeale will enter into the balance and come into comparison with Moses in his Anathema pro fratribus in that he wished himselfe to be separated from Christ rather then his brethren should be But what comparison hath a sodaine a passionate and indigested vehemence of love expressed in a phrase that tasts of zeale but is not done Moses was not blotted out of the book of life nor Saint Paul was not separated from Christ for his brethren what comparison hath such a love that was but said and perchance should not have been said for we can scarce excuse Moses or Saint Paul of all excesse and inordinatenesse in that that they said with a deliberate and an eternall purpose in Christ Jesus conceived as soon as we can conceive God to have knowen that Adam would fall to come into this world dye for man and then actually and really in the fulnesse of time to do so he did come and he did dye The man Moses was very meeke the child Jesus meeker then hee Moses his meeknesse had a determination at least an interruption a discontinuance when hee revenged the wrong of another upon that Egyptian whom he slew But a bruised reed might have stood unbroken and smoking flax might have lien unquenched for ever for all Christ. And therefore though Christ send his Disciples to School to the Scribes and Pharisees because they sate in Moses seat for other lessons yet for
well to be angry even unto death Ieremy was under this tentation too Ionas was angry because his Prophesie was not performed because God would not second his Prophesie in the destruction of Nineveh Ieremy was angry because his Prophesie was like to be performed he preached heavy Doctrin and therfore his Auditory hated him Woe is me my Mother says he that thou hast born me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth I preach but the messages of God and vae mihi si non wo be unto me if I preach not them I preach but the sense of Gods indignation upon mine own soul in a conscience of mine own sins I impute nothing to another that I confesse not of my selfe I call none of you to confession to me I doe but confesse my self to God and you I rack no mans memory what he did last year last week last night I onely gather into my memory and powr out in the presence of my God and his Church the sinfull history of mine own youth and yet I am a contentious man says Ieremy a worm and a burthen to every tender conscience says he and I strive with the whole earth I am a bitter and satyricall preacher This is that that wearies mee says hee I have neither lent on usury nor men have lent me on usury yet as though I were an oppressing lender or a fraudulent borrower every one of them doth curse me This is a naturall infirmity which the strongest men being but men cannot devest that if their purposes prosper not they are weary of their industry weary of their lifes But this is Summa ingratitude in Deum mâ—lle non esse quà m miserum esse There cannot be a greater unthankfulnesse to God then to desire to be Nothing at all rather then to be that that God would have thee to be To desire to be out of the world rather then to glorifie him by thy patience in it But when this infirmity overtakes Gods children Patiuntur ut homtines sustinent ut Dei amici They are under calamities as they are râ—en but yet they come to recollect themselves and to beat those calamities as the valiant Souldiers as the faithfull servants as the bosome friends of almighty God Si vis discere qualis esse debiâ—s disce post gratiam says the same Father Learn patience not from the stupidity of Philosophers who are but their own statues men of stone without sense without affections and who placed all their glory in a Non facies ut te dicam analum that no pain should make them say they were in pain nor from the perâ—iâ—acy of Heretiques how to bear a calamity who gave their bodies to the fire for the establishing of their Disciples but take out a new lesson in the times of Grace Consider the Apostles there Gaudentes Gloriantes They departed from the Councell rejoycing that they were counted worthy to suffer rebuke for his name It was Ioy and all Ioy says S. Iames It was Glory and all Glory says S. Paul Absit mihi God forbid that I should glory save in the Crosse of our Lord Iesus Christ And if I can glory in that to glory in that is to have a conscience testifying to me that God receives glory by my use of his correction I may come to God reason with God plead with God wrastle with God and be received and sustained by him This was Davids case in our Text therefore he doth not stray into the infirmities of these great and good Men Moses Iob Elias Ieremy and Ionah whose errours it is labour better bestowed carefully to avoid then absolutely to excuse for that cannot be done But David presents onely to God the sense of his corrections and implies in that that since the cure is wrought since Gods purpose which is by corrections to bring a sinner to himself and so to God is effected in him God would now be pleased to remember all his other gracious promises too and to admit such a zealous prayer as as he doth from Esay after Be not angry O Lord above measure that is above the measure of thy promises to repentant souls or the measure of the strength of our bodies Neither remember iniquities for ever But loe wee beseech thee Behold we are thy people To end this first part because the other extends it self in many branches Then when we are come to a sense of Gods purpose by his corrections it is a seasonable time to flie to his mercy and to pray that he would remove them from us and to present our Reasons to spare us for thy corrections have wrought upon us Give us this day our daily bread for thou hast given us stones and scorpions tribulations and afflictions and we have fed upon them found nourishment even in those tribulations and afflictions and said thee grace for them blessed and glorified thy name for those tribulations and afflictions Give us our Cordials now and our Restoratives for thy physick hath evacuated all the peccant humour and all our naturall strength shine out in the light of thy countenance now for this long cold night hath benum'd us since the drâ—sse is now evaporated now withdraw thy fire since thy hand hath anew cast us now imprint in us anew thine Image since we have not disputed against thy corrections all this while O Lord open thou our lips now and accept our remembring of thee that we have not done so Accept our Petition and the Reason of our Petition for thine Arrows stick fast in us and thy hand presseth us sore David in a rectified conscience findes that he may be admitted to present reasons against farther corrections And that this may be received as a reason That Gods Arrows are upon him for this is phrase or a Metaphore in which Gods indignation is often expressed in the Scripture He sent out his Arrows and scattered them sayes David magnifying Gods goodness in his behalf against his enemies And so again God will ordaine his Arrrowes for them that persecute me Complebo sagittas says God I will heap mischiefs upon them and I will spend mine arrows upon them yea Inebriabo sanguine I will make mine Arrows drunk in their bloud It is Idiotismus Spiritus sancti a peculiar character of the holy Ghosts expressing Gods anger in that Metaphore of shooting Arrows In this place some understand by these Arrows foul and infectious diseases in his body derived by his incontinence Others the sting of Conscience and that fearfull choice which the Prophet offered him war famine and pestilence Others his passionate sorrow in the death of Bethsheba's first childe or in the Incest of Amnon upon his sister or in the murder upon Amnon by Absolon or in the death of Absolen by Ioab or in many other occasions of sorrow that surrounded David and his family more perchance then any such family in the
childe should die a hundred years old yet the sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed What can be certain in this world if even the mercy of God admit a variation what can be endlesse here if even the mercy of God receive a determination and sin doth vary the nature sin doth determine even the infinitenesse of the mercy of God himself for though The childe shall die a hundred yeares old yet the sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed Disconsolate soul dejected spirit bruised and broken ground and trodden attenuated evaporated annihilated heart come back heare thy reprieve and sue for thy pardon God will not take thee away in thy sins thou shalt have time to repent The childe shall die a hundred years old But then lame and decrepit soul gray and inveterate sinner behold the full ears of corn blasted with a mildew behold this long day shutting up in such a night as shall never see light more the night of death in which the deadliest pang of thy Death will be thine Immortality In this especially shalt thou die that thou canst not die when thou art dead but must live dead for ever for The sinner being a hundred yeers old shall be accursed he shall be so for ever In this discovery from this Red Sea to this dead Sea from the mercy of God in the blood of his Son to the malediction of God in the blood of the sinner be pleased to make these the points of your Compasse and your Land-marks by the way in those the two parts of this exercise First in the first consider the precedencie and primogeniture of Mercy God begins at Mercy and not at Iudgement God's method here is not The sinner shall be accursed but The childe shall have long life but first the blessing and then the malediction And then secondly we shall see in what form the particular blessing is given here In long life The childe shall die a hundred years old And then also because we find it in the company of Mercies in the region of Mercies in this first part of the Text which is the Sphear of Mercy we shall look also how this very dying is a Mercy too The mercy is especially plac'd in the long life The childe shall live a hundred yeares but the Holy Ghost would not leave out that that he should die The childe shall die a hundred yeares old And in these three first the precedencie and primogeniture of God's mercy and then the specification of that mercy in long life and lastly the association of mercy that death as well as life is a blessing to the Righteous we shall determine that first part And in the second But the sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed we shall see first that the malediction of God hath no object but a sinner God antidates no malediction Till there be a sinner there is no malediction nay not till there be an inveterate sinner A sinner of a hundred yeares at least such a sinner as would be so if God would spare him a hundred yeares here And upon such a sinner God thunders out this Prosternation this Consternation in this one word of our Text which involves and inwraps all kinds of miseries feeblenesse in body infatuation in mind evacuation of power dishonour in â—ame eclipses in favour ruine in fortune dejection in spirit He shall be accursed Where because in this second part we are in the Region and Sphear of maledictions we cannot consider this future He shall be as a future of favour a prorogation a deferring of the malediction He shall be is not he shall be hereafter but not yet but it is a future of continuation He shall be accursed that is he shall be so for ever And so have you the frame and partitions of this Bâ—thel this House of God in which he dwells which is both Iosuah's Beth-hagla the house of Joy and Iohn's Bethania his house of affliction too and we passe now to the furnishing of these roomes with such stuff as I can have laid together First in our first part we consider the precedency and primogeniture of Mercy It is a good thing to be descended of the eldest Brother To descend from God to depend upon God by his eldest Son the Son of his love the Sonne of his right hand Mercy and not to put God to his second way his sinister way his way of judgement David prophesies of God's exaltation of Solomon so Ponam in Primogenitum I will make him my first-born Though Solomon were not so God would make him so And in that Title the Wiseman makes his prayer for Israel Quem coaequasti Primogegenito whom thou hast nam'd thy first-born for so God had in Exod. Israel is my Sonne even my first-born and in Iob the fiercest terrour of death is exprest so Primogenitus mortis the first-born of Death shall devour his strength Still the exaltation the Superlative is called so The first-born And in such a sense if we could think of more degrees of goodnesse in God of an exaltation of God himself in God of more God in God of a Superlative in God we must necessarily turn upon his mercy for that Mercie must be the Superlative So is it too if we consider Gods first action or God's first thought towards Man Mercy was the first-born by every Mother by that Understanding by that Will by that Power which we conceive in God Mercy was the first-born and first-mover in all We consider a preventing Grace in God and that preventing Grace is before all for that prevents us so as to Visite us when we sit in darknesse And we consider an Antecedent-Will in God and that Antecedent Will is before all for by that Will God would have all men saved And when we call Gods Grace by other names then Preventing whether Assisting Grace that it stand by us and sustain us or Concomitant Grace that it work with us and inanimate our action when it is doing or his Subsequent Grace that rectifies or corrects an action when it is done when all is done still it is the Preventing Power and quality of that Grace that did all that in me If I stand by his Assisting Grace if I work with his Concomitant Grace if I rectifie my errour by his Subsequent Grace that that moves upon me in all these is still the preventing power of that Grace For as all my Naturall actions of life are done by the power of that Soul which was in me before so all the Supernaturall actions of that Soul are done by that power of that Grace that prevents and preinanimates that action and all my co-operation is but a post-operation a working by the Power of that All-preventing Grace I moved not at first by the Tide by the strength of naturall faculties nor do I move after by that windâ— which had formerly fill'd my sails I proceed not now by
into this life I would not wish to have come into this world And now that God hath made this life a Bridge to Heaven it is but a giddy and a vertiginous thing to stand long gazing upon so narrow a bridge and over so deep and roaring waters and desperate whirlpools as this world abounds with So teach us to number our dayes saith David that we may apply our hearts unto wisedome Not to number them so as that we place our happinesse in the increase of their number What is this wisedome he tells us there He asked life of thee and thou gavest it him But was that this life It was Length of dayes for ever and ever the dayes of Heaven As houses that stand in two Shires trouble the execution of Justice the house of death that stands in two worlds may trouble a good mans resolution As death is a sordid Postern by which I must be thrown out of this world I would decline it But as death is the gate by which I must enter into Heaven would I never come to it certainly now now that Sinne hath made life so miserable if God should deny us death he multiplied our misery We are in this Text upon blessings appropriated to the Christian Church and so to these times And in theseTimes we have not so long life as the Patriarchs had before They were to multiply children for replenishing the world and to that purpose had long life We multiply sinnes and the children and off-spring of sinnes miseries and therefore may be glad to get from this generation of Vipers God gave his Children Manna and Quails in the Wildernesse where nothing else was to be had but when they came to the Land of Promise that Provision ceas'd God gave them long life in the times of Nature and long though shorter then before in the times of the Law because in nature especially but in the Law also it was hard to discern hard to attain the wayes to Heaven But the wayes to Heaven are made so manifest to us in the Gospel as that for that use we need not long life and that is all the use of our life here He that is ready for Heaven hath lived to a blessed age and to such an intendment a childe newly baptized may be elder then his Grandfather Therefore we receive long life for a blessing when God is pleased to give it though Christ entered it into no Petition of his Prayer that God would give it and so though we enter it into no Petition nor Prayer we receive it as a blessing too when God will afford us a deliverance a manumission an emancipation from the miseries of this life Truely I would not change that joy and consolation which I proposed to my hopes upon my Death-bed at my passage out of this world for all the joy that I have had in this world over again And so very a part of the Joy of Heaven is a joyfull transmigration from hence as that if there were no more reward no more recompence but that I would put my self to all that belongs to the duty of an honest Christian in the world onely for a joyfull a cheerfull passage out of it And farther we shall not exercise your patience or your devotion upon these three pieces which constitute our first part The Primogeniture of Gods Mercy which is first in all The specification of Gods Mercy long Life as it is a figure of and a way to eternity and then the association of Gods Mercy that Death as well as Life is a blessing to the Righteous So then we have brought our Sunne to his Meridianall height to a full Noon in which all shadows are removed for even the shadow of death death it self is a blessing and in the number of his Mercies But the Afternoon shadows break out upon us in our second part of the Text. And as afternoon shadowes do these in our Text do also they grow greater and greater upon us till they end in night in everlasting night The sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed Now of shadowes it is appliably said Vmbrae non sunt tenebrae sed densior lux shadowes are not utter darknesse but a thicker light shadowes are thus much nearer to the nature of light then darknesse is that shadowes presume light which darknesse doth not shadowes could not be except there were light The first shadowes in this dark part of our Text have thus much light in them that it is but the sinner onely the sinner that is accursed The Object of Gods malediction is not man but sinfull man If God make a man sinne God curses the man but if sinne make God curse God curses but the sinne Non talem Deum tuum putes qualis nec tu debes esse Never propose to thy self such a God as thou wert not bound to imitate Thou mistakest God if thou make him to be any such thing or make him to do any such thing as thou in thy proportion shouldst not be or shouldst not do And shouldst thou curse any man that had never offended never transgrest never trespast thee Can God have done so Imagine God as the Poet saith Ludere in humanis to play but a game at Chesse with this world to sport himself with making little things great and great things nothing Imagine God to be but at play with us but a gamester yet will a gamester curse before he be in danger of losing any thing Will God curse man before man have sinned In the Law there are denuntiations of curses enjoyned and multiplied There is maledictus upon maledictus but it is maledictus homo cursed be the man He was not curst by God before he was a man nor curst by God because he was a man but if that man commit Idolatry Adultery Incest Beastiality Bribery Calumny as the sinnes are reckoned there there he meets a particular curse upon his particular sinne The book of Life is but names written in Heaven all the Book of Death that is is but that in the Prophet when names are written in the Earth But whose names are written in the Earth there They that depart from thee shall be written in the Earth They shall be when they depart from thee For saith he They have forsaken the Lord the Fountain of Living water They did not that because their names were written in the Earth but they were written there because they did that Our Saviour Christ came hither to do all his Fathers will and he returned cheerfully to his Father again as though he had done all when he had taken away the sinnes of the world by dying for all sinnes and all sinners But if there were an Hospitall of miserable men that lay under the reprobation and malediction of Gods decree and not for sinne the blood of that Lamb is not sprinkled upon the Postills of that doore Forgive me O Lord O Lord forgive
And at the judgement you shall stand but stand at the barre But when you stand before the Throne you stand as it is also added in this place before the Lamb who having not opened his mouth to save his owne fleece when he was in the shearers hand nor to save his own life when he was in the slaughterers hand will much lesse open his mouth to any repentant sinners condemnation or upbrayd you with your former crucifyings of him in this world after he hath nailed those sinnes to that crosse to which those sinnes nayled him You shall stand amicti stolis for so it follows covered with Robes that is covered all over not with Adams fragmentary raggs of fig-leafes nor with the halfe-garments of Davids servants Though you have often offered God halfe-confessions and halfe-repentances yet if you come at last to stand before the Lambe his fleece covers all hee shall not cover the sinnes of your youth and leave the sinnes of your age open to his justice nor cover your sinfull actions and leave your sinfull words and thoughts open to justice nor cover your own personall sinnes and leave the sinnes of your Fathers before you or the sinnes of others whose sins your tentations produced and begot open to justice but as he hath enwrapped the whole world in one garment the firmament so cloathed that part of the earth which is under our feet as gloriously as this which we live and build upon so those sinnes which we have hidden from the world and from our own consciences and utterly forgotten either his grace shall enable us to recollect and to repent in particular or we having used that holy diligence to examine our consciences so he shall wrap up even those sinnes which we have forgot and cover all with that garment of his own righteousnesse which leaves no foulnesse no nakednesse open You shall be covered with Robes All over and with white Robes That as the Angels wondred at Christ coming into heaven in his Ascension Wherefore art thou red in thine Apparell and thy garments like him that treadeth the wine fat They wondred how innocence it selfe should become red so shall those Angels wonder at thy coming thither and say Wherefore art thou white in thine apparell they shall wonder how sinne it selfe shall be clothed in innocence And in thy hand shall be a palm which is the last of the endowments specifyed here After the waters of bitternesse they came to seventy to innumerable palmes even the bitter waters were sweetned with another wood cast in The wood of the Crosse of Christ Jesus refreshes all teares and sweetnes all bitternesse even in this life but after these bitter waters which God shall wipe from all our eies we come to the seventy to the seventy thousand palms infinite seales infinite testimonies infinite extensions infinite durations of infinite glory Go in beloved and raise your own contemplations to a height worthy of this glory and chide me for so lame an expressing of so perfect a state and when the abundant spirit of God hath given you some measure of conceiving that glory here Almighty God give you and me and all a reall expressing of it by making us actuall possessors of that Kingdome which his Sonne our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood Amen SERMON XXXIII Preached at Denmark house some few days before the body of King Iames was removed from thence to his buriall Apr. 26. 1625. CANT 3. 11. Goe forth ye Daughters of Sion and behold King Solomon with the Crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the day of the gladnesse of his heart IN the Creation of man in that one word Faciamus let Vs make man God gave such an intimation of the Trinity as that we may well enlarge and spread and paraphrase that one word so farre as to heare therein a councell of all the three Persons agreeing in this gracious designe upon Man faciamus let us make him make and him mend him and make him sure I the Father will make him by my power if he should fall Thou the Sonne shalt repayr him re-edify him redeem him if he should distrust that this Redemption belonged not to him Thou the Holy Ghost shalt apply to his particular soule and conscience this mercy of mine and this merit of the Sonnes and so let us make him In our Text there is an intimation of another Trinity The words are spoken but by one but the persons in the text are Three For first The speaker the Director of all is the Church the spouse of Christ she says Goe forth ye daughters of Sion And then the persons that are called up are as you see The Daughters of Sion the obedient children of the Church that hearken to her voice And then lastly the persons upon whom they are directed is Solomon crowned That is Christ invested with the royall dignity of being Head of the Church And in this especially is this applyable to the occasion of our present meeting All our meetings now are to confesse to the glory of God and the rectifying of our own consciences and manners the uncertainty of the prosperity and the assurednesse of the adversity of this world That this Crown of Solomons in the text will appear to be Christs crown of Thornes his Humiliation his Passion and so these words will dismisse us in this blessed consolation That then we are nearest to our crown of Glory when we are in tribulation in this world and then enter into full possession of it when we come to our dissolution and transmigration out of this world And these three persons The Church that calls The children that hearken and Christ in his Humiliation to whom they are sent will be the three parts in which we shall determine this Exercise First then the person that directs us is The Church no man hath seen God and lives but no man lives till he have heard God for God spake to him in his Baptisme and called him by his name then Now as it were a contempt in the Kings house for any servant to refuse any thing except he might heare the King in person command it when the King hath already so established the government of his house as that his commandements are to be signifyed by his great Officers so neither are we to look that God should speak to us mouth to mouth spirit to spirit by Inspiration by Revelation for it is a large mercy that he hath constituted an Office and established a Church in which we should heare him When Christ was baptized by Iohn it is sayd by all those three Evangelists that report that story in particular circumstances that there was a voice heard from heaven saying This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased and it is not added in any of those three
what ground he sayes or does or suffers that which he suffers and does and sayes Howsoever he pretend the honour of God in his testimony yet if the thing be materially false false in it self though true in his opinion or formally false true in it self but not known to be so to him that testifies it both ways he is an incompetent witnesse And this takes away the honour of having been witnesses for Christ and the consolation and style of Martyrs both from them who upon such evidence as can give no assurance that is traedi tions of men have grounded their faith in God and from them who take their light in corners and conventicles and not from the City set upon the top of a hill the Church of God Those Roman Priests who have given their lives those Separatists which have taken a voluntary banishment are not competent witnesses for the glory of God for a witnesse must know and qui testatur de scientia testetur de modo scientiae sayes the Law He that will prove any thing by his knowledge must prove how he came by that knowledge The Papist hath not the knowledge of his Doctrine from any Scripture the Separatist hath not the knowledge of his Discipline from any precedent any example in the primitive Church How farre then is that wretched and sinfull man from giving any testimony or glory to Christ in his life who never comes to the knowledge and consideration why he was sent into this life who is so farre from doing his errand that he knowes not what his errand was not whether he received any errand or no. But as though that God who for infinite millions of ages delighted himself in himself and was sufficient in himself and yet at last did bestow six dayes labour for the creation and provision of man as though that God who when man was sowr'd in the lumpe poysoned in the fountaine withered in the roote in the loins of Adam would then ingage his Sonne his beloved Sonne his onely Sonne to be man by a temporary life and to be no man by a violent and a shamefull death as though that God who when he was pleased to come to a creation might have left out thee amongst privations amongst nothings or might have shut thee up in the close prison of a bare being and no more as he hath done earth and stones or if he would have given thee life might have left thee a Toad or if he would have given thee a humane soule might have left thee a heathen without any knowledge of God or if he had afforded thee a Religion might have left thee a Iew or though he had made thee a Christian might have left thee a Papist as though that God that hath done so much more in breeding thee in his true Church had done all this for nothing thou passest thorough this world like a flash like a lightning whose beginning or end no body knowes like an Ignis fatuus in the aire which does not onely not give light for any use but not so much as portend or signifie any thing and thou passest out of the world as thy hand passes out of a basin of water which may bee somewhat the fouler for thy washing in it but retaines no other impression of thy having been there and so does the world for thy life in it When God placed Adam in the world he bad him fill it and subdue it and rule it and when he placed him in paradise he bad him dresse and keepe paradise and when he sent his children into the over-flowing Laud of promise he bad them fight and destroy the Idolaters to every body some task some errand for his glory And thou comest from him into this world as though he had said nothing unto thee but Go and do as you see cause Go and do as you see other men do Thou knowest not that is considerest not what thou wast sent to doe what thou shouldest have done but thou knowest much lesse what thou hast done The light of nature hath taught thee to hide thy sinnes from other men and thou hast been so diligent in that as that thou hast hid them from thy self and canst not finde them in thine owne conscience if at any time the Spirit of God would burne them up or the blood of Christ Jesus wash them out thou canst not finde them out so as that a Sermon or Sacrament can work upon them Perchance thou canst tell when was the first time or where was the first place that thou didst commit such or such a sinne but as a man can remember when he began to spell but not when he began to reade perfectly when he began to joyne his letters but not when he began to write perfectly so thou remembrest when thou wentest timorously and bashfully about sinne at first and now perchance art ashamed of that shamefastnesse and sorry thou beganst no sooner Poore bankrupt that hast sinned out thy soule so profusely so lavishly that thou darest not cast up thine accounts thou darest not aske thy selfe whether thou have any soule left how farre art thou from giving any testimony to Christ that darest not testifie to thy selfe nor heare thy conscience take knowledge of thy transgressions but haddest rather sleepe out thy daies or drinke out thy daies then leave one minute for compunction to lay hold on and doest not sinne alwaies for the love of that sinne but for feare of a holy sorrow if thou shouldest not fill up thy time with that sinne God cannot be mocked saith the Apostle nor God cannot be blinded He seeth all the way and at thy last gaspe he will make thee see too through the multiplying Glasse the Spectacle of Desperation Canst thou hope that that God that seeth this darke Earth through all the vaults and arches of the severall spheares of Heaven that seeth thy body through all thy stone walls and seeth thy soul through that which is darker then all those thy corrupt flesh canst thou hope that that God can be blinded with drawing a curtain between thy sinne and him when he is all eye canst thou hope to put out that eye with putting out a candle when he hath planted legions of Angels about thee canst thou hope that thou hast taken away all Intelligence if thou have corrupted or silenced or sent away a servant O bestow as much labour as thou hast done to finde corners for sin to finde out those sinnes in those corners where thou hast hid them As Princes giveâ— pardons by their own hands but send Judges to execute Justice come to him for mercy in the acknowledgement of thy sinnes and stay not till his Justice come to thee when he makes inquisition for blood and doe not think that if thou feel now at this presentâ— a little tendernesse in thy heart a little melting in thy bowels a little dew in thine eyes that if thou beest come to know that thou art a
and may make thee doubt whether thou have it or no every day that is as often as thou canst heare more and more witnesses of this light and bless that God who for thy sake would submit himselfe to these Testimonia ab homine these Testimonies from men and being all light himselfe and having so many other Testimonies would yet require the Testimony of Man of Iohn which is our other branch of this first part Christ who is still the light of our Text That light the essentiall light had testimony enough without Iohn First he bore witness of himselfe And though he say of himself If I beare witnesse of my self my witnesse is not true yet that he might say either out of a legall and proverbiall opinion of theirs that ordinarily they thought That a witness testifying for himself was not to be beleeved whatsoever he said Or as Man which they then took him to be he might speake it of himselfe out of his own opinion that in Iudicature it is a good rule that a man should not be beleeved in his own case But after this and after he had done enough to make them see that he was more then man by multiplying of miracles then he said though I beare witnesse of my selfe my witnesse is true So the onely infallibility and unreproachable evidence of our election is in the inward word of God when his Spirit beares witnesse with our Spirit that we are the Sonnes of God for if the Spirit the Spirit of truth say he is in us he is in us But yet the Spirit of God is content to submit himselfe to an ordinary triall to be tried by God and the Countrey he allowes us to doubt and to be afraid of our regeneration except we have the testimony of sanctification Christ bound them not to his own testimony till it had the seale of workes of miracles nor must we build upon any testimony in our selves till other men that see our life testifie for us to the world He had also the testimony of his Father the Father himselfe which hath sent me beareth witnesse of me But where should they see the Father or heare the Father speak That was all which Philip asked at his hands Lord show us the Father and it sufficeth us He had the testimony of an Angel who came to the shepheards so as no where in all the Scriptures there is such an Apparition expressed the Angel of the Lord came upon them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them but where might a man talke with this Angel and know more of him As Saint Augustine says of Moses Scripsit abiit he hath written a little of the Creation and he is gone Si hîc esset tenerem rogarem if Moses were here says he I would hold him fast till I had got him to give me an exposition of that which he writ For beloved we must have such witnesses as we may consult farther with I can see no more by an Angel then by lightning A star testified of him at his birth But what was that star was it any of those stars that remaine yet Gregory Nissen thinkes it was and that it onely then changed the naturall course and motion for that service But almost all the other Fathers thinke that it was a light but then created and that it had onely the forme of a star and no more and some few that it was the holy Ghost in that forme And if it were one of the fixed stars and remaine yet yet it is not now in that office it testifies nothing of Christ now The wise men of the East testified of him too But what were they or who or how many or from whence were they for all these circumstances have put Antiquity it selfe into more distractions and more earnest disputations then circumstances should doe Simeon testified of him who had a revelation from the holy Ghost that he should not see death till he had seen Christ. And so did the Prophetess Anna who served God with fasting and prayer day and night Omnis sexus aetas both sexes and all ages testified of him and he gives examples of all as it was easie for him to doe Now after all these testimonies from himselfe from the Father from the Angel from the star from the wise men from Simeon from Anna from all what needed the testimony of Iohn All those witnesses had been thirty years before Iohn was cited for a witnesse to come from the wildernesse and preach And in thirty years by reason of his obscure and retired life in his father Iosephs house all those personall testimonies of Christ might be forgotten and for the most part those witnesses onely testified that he was borne that he was come into the world but for all their testimony he might have been gone out of the world long Before this he might have perished in the generall flood in that flood of innocent blood in which Herod drowned all the young children of that Countrey When therefore Christ came forth to preach when he came to call Apostles when he came to settle a Church to establish meanes for our ordinary salvation by which he is the light of our text the Essentiall light shining out in his Church by the supernaturall light of faith and grace then he admitted then he required Testimonium ab homine testimony from man And so for our conformity to him in using and applying those meanes which convay this light to us in the Church we must doe so too we must have the seale of faith and of the Spirit but this must be in the testimony of men still there must be that done by us which must make men testifie for us Every Christian is a state a common-wealth to himselfe and in him the Scripture is his law and the conscience is his Iudge And though the Scripture be inspired from God and the conscience be illumined and rectified by the holy Ghost immediately yet both the Scriptures and the Conscience admit humane arguments First the Scriptures doe in all these three respects first that there are certaine Scriptures that are the revealed will of God Secondly that these books which we call Canonicall are those Scriptures And lastly that this and this is the true sense and meaning of such and such a place of Scripture First that there is a manifestation of the will of God in certain Scriptures if we who have not power to infuse Faith into men for that is the work of the Holy Ghost onely but must deal upon the reason of men and satisfie that if we might not proceed per testimonia ab homine by humane Arguments and argue and infer thus That if God will save man for worshipping him and damne him for not worshipping him so as he will be worshipped certainly God hath revealed to man how he will be worshipped and
be called his enemy It is true if we consider the infinite disproportion between them he cannot but to many sad purposes and in many heavy applications Man is an enemy to God Iob could goe no higher in expressing his misery Why hidest thou thy face and holdest me for thine enemy and againe Behold he findeth occassions against me and counteth me for his enemy So man is an enemy to God And then to adhere to an enemy is to become an enemy for Man to adhere to Man to ascribe any thing to the power of his naturall faculties to thinke of any beame of clearnesse in his own understanding or any line of rectitude in in his owne will this is to accumulate and multiply enmities against God and to assemble and muster up more and more man to fight against God A Reconciliation is required therefore there is an enmitie but it is but a reconciliation therefore was a friendship There was a time when God and Man were friends God did not hate man from all Eternitie God forbid And this friendship God meant not to breake God had no purpose to fall out with man for then hee could never have admitted him to a friendship Net hominem amicum quisquam potest fidelitter amare cui se noverit futurum inimicum No man can love another as a friend this yeare and meane to bee his enemy next Gods foreknowledge that man and he should fall out was not a foreknowledge of any thing that he meant to doe to that purpose but onely that Man himselfe would become incapable of the continuation of this friendship Man might have persisted in that blessed amitie and since if he had done so the cause of his persisting had beene his owne will I speak of the next and immediate Cause As the cause why the Angels that did persist was Bona ipsorum Angelorum voluntas the good use of their own free-will much more was the cause of their defection and breaking this friendship in their owne will God therefore having made man that is Mankinde in a state of love and friendship God having not by any purpose of his done any thing toward the violation of this friendship in man in any man God continueth his everlasting goodnesse towards man towards mankinde still in inviting him to accept the means of Reconciliation and a returne to the same state of friendship which hee had at first by our Ministery Be ye reconciled unto God You see what you had and how you lost it If it might not bee recovered God would not call you to it It was piously declared in a late Synod That in the offer of this Reconciliation God meanes as the Minister meanes and I am sure I meane it and desire it to you all so does God Nec Deus est qui inimicitias gerit sed vos it is not God but you that oppose this Reconciliation O my people what have I done unto thee or wherein have I grieved thee testifie against me testifie if I did any thing towards inducing an enmity ot doe any thing towards hindring this Reconciliation which reconciliation is to be restored to as good an estate in the love of God as you had in Adam and our estate is not as good if it be not as generall if the merit of Christ be not as large as the sinne of Adam and if it be not as possible for you to be saved by him as it is impossible for you to be saved without him It is therefore but praying you in Christs stead that you be reconciled to God And if you consider what God is The Lord of hosts and therefore hath meanes to destroy you or what he is not He is not man that he can repent and therefore it belongs to you to repent first If you consider what the Lord doth He that dwells in the heavens doth laugh them to scorne and hath them in derision or what he doth not He doth not justifie the wicked balance nor the bag of deceitfull waights If you consider what the Lord would doe Ierusalem Ierusalem how often would I have gathered thy children together as the Hen gathereth her Chickens and yee would not or what he would not doe As I live sayeth the Lord I desire not the death of the wicked if yee consider all this any of this dare you or can you if you durst or would you if you could stand out in an irreconciliable war against God Especially if you consider that that is more to you then what God is and does and would doe and can doe for you or against you that is what he hath done already that he who was the party offended hath not onely descended so low as to be reconciled first and to pay so deare for that as the bloud of his owne and onely Sonne but knowing thy necessity better then thy selfe he hath reconciled thee to him though thou knewest it not God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himselfe as it is in the former verse there the worke is done thy reconciliation is wrought God is no longer angry so as to withhold from thee the meanes for there it followes Hee hath committed to us the word of Reconciliation That wee might tell you the instrument of Reconciliation is drawn between God and you and as it is written in the history of the Councell of Nice that two Bishops who died before the establishing of the Canons did yet subscribe and set their names to those Canons which to that purpose were left upon their graves all night so though you were dead in your sinne and enemies to God and Children of wrath as all by nature are when this Reconciliation was wrought yet the Spirit of God may give you this strength to dip your pennes in the bloud of the Lambe and so subscribe your names by acceptation of this offer of Reconciliation Doe but that subscribe accept and then Caetera omnia all the rest that concernes your holy history your Iustification and Sanctification nonne scripta sunt are they not written in the bookes of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel says the Holy Ghost in another case Are they not written in the books of the Chronicles of the God of Israel Shalt thou not finde an eternall Decree and a Book of life in thy behalfe if thou looke for it by this light and reach to it with this Hand the acceptation of this Reconciliation They are written in those reverend and sacred Records and Rolls and Parchments even the skinne and flesh of our Blessed Saviour written in those his stripes and those his wounds with that bloud that can admit to Index expurgatorius no expunction no satisfaction But the life of his death lies in thy acceptation and though he be come to his thou art not come to thy Consummatum est till that be done Doe that and then thou hast put on thy wedding garment A man
what mariage includes and what it excludes what it requires what it forbids It is a mariage and a mariage after the death of another If one dye sayes the Text Howsoever the Romane Church in the exercise of their Tyranny have forbidden Church-men to mary then when they have orders and forbidden orders to bee given to any who have formerly beene maried if they maried Widowes God is pleased here to afford us some intimation some adumbration a Typicall and exemplar knowledge of the lawfulnesse of such mariages hee maries after the death of a former husband and then farther a brother maries the wife of his deceased brother Now into the reasons of the law literally given and literally accepted wee looke not It is enough that God hath a care of the preservation of names and families and inheritances in those distinctions and in those Tribes where hee layd them then but for the accommodation of the law to our present application it must bee a brother a spirituall brother a professor of the same faith that succeeds in this mariage in this possession and this government of that widow Church It must be a brother and Frater câ—habitans says our Text a brother that dwelt together with the former husband he must be of the same houshold of the faithfull as well as professe the same faith he must dwell in the house of God not separate himselfe or encourage others to doe so for matter of Ceremonies and discipline Idolaters must not Separaists must not be admitted to these mariages to these widow churches And then it is a surrendring to a brother dead without children In this spirituall procreation of children we all dye without children of our own Though by our labours when God blesses them you become children yet you are Gods children not ours we nurse you by his word but his Spirit begets you by the same word we must not challenge to us that which God onely can doe And then being thus maried to this widow taking the charge of this Church he must says our text performe the duty of a husbands brother He must it is a personall service not to be done always by Proxy and Delegates He must and he must performe not begin well and not persist commence and not consummate but performe the worke and performe the worke as it is a duty It is a meer mercy in God to send us to you but it is a duty in us to doe that which we are sent for by his Word and his Sacraments to establish you in his holy obedience and his rich and honourable service And then our duty consists in both these that we behave our selves as your husband which implies a power an authority but a power and authority rooted in love and exercised with love and then that we doe all as brothers to the former husband that as one intentation of this law was that inheritances and temporall proprieties might be preserved so our care might be through predecessor and successor and all that all rights might be preserved to all men that nothing not due or due onely in rigor be extorted from the people nothing that is in truth or in equity due be with-held from the Minister but that the true right of people and Pastor and Patron be preserved to the preservation of love and peace and good opinion of one another First then that which we take upon us is a Mariage Amongst the Iews it was almost an ignominious an infamous thing to die unmaried at least to die without children being maried Amongst the gentiles it was so too all well governed States ever enlarged themselves in giving places of command and profit to maried men Indeed such men are most properly said to keep this world in reparations that provide a succession of children and for the next world though all that are borne into this world doe not enter into the number of Gods Saints in heaven yet the Saints of heaven can be made out of no other materialls but men borne into this world Every stone in the quarry is not sure to be imployed in the building of the church but the Church must be built out of those stones and therefore they keep this world they keep heaven it selfe in reparation that mary in the feare of God and in the same feare bring up the children of such a mariage But I presse not this too literally nor over perswasively that every man is bound to Mary God is no accepter of persons nor of conditions But being to use these words in their figurative application I say every man is bound to marry himselfe to a profession to a calling God hath brought him from being nothing by creating him but he resolves himselfe into nothing againe if he take no calling upon him In our Baptisme we make our contract with God that we will believe all those Articles there recited there 's our contract with hiâ— and then pursuing this contract in the other Sacrament when we take his body and his blood we are maried to him So at the same time at our Baptisme we make a contract in the presence of God and his congregation with the world that we wil forsake the covetous desires of the world that is the covetous proprieting of all things to our selves the covetous living onely for our selves there 's our contract with the world that we will mutually assist and serve our brethren in the world and then when we take particular callings by which we are enabled to perform that former contract then we are maried to the world so every man is duly contracted to the world in Baptisme and lawfully maried to the world in accepting a profession And so this service of ours to the Church is our mariage Now in a Matrioniall state there is onus and Honos a burden to be born an Honour to be received The burden of the sinnes of the whole world was a burden onely for Christs shoulders but the sinnes of this Parish willly upon my shoulders if I be silent or if I be indulgent and denounce not Gods Judgement upon those sinnes It will be a burden to us if we doe not and God knowes it is a burden to us when be do denounce those Judgements Esay felt and groned under this burden when he cried Onus Babylonis Onus Moab and Onus Damasci O the burden of Babylon and the burden of Damscus and so the other Prophets grone often under this burden in contemplation of other places It burdened it troubled it grieved the holy Prophets of God that they must denounce Gods judgements though upon Gods enemies We reade of a compassionate Generall that looking upon his great Army from a hill fell into a bitter weeping upon this consideration that in fiftie or sixtie years hence there will not be a man of these that fight now alive upon the earth What Sea could furnish mine eyes with teares enough to poure out if I should
those Canons enjoyn is a debt which they can call for but the Pastor himself hath another Court another Barre in himselfe by which hee tries himselfe and must condemne himselfe if hee pay not this debt performe not this duty as often as himself knowes himselfe to bee fit and able to doe it It is a duty and it is the duty of an husbands brother Now the husband hath power and authority over the wife The head of the woman is the Man and when the office of this spirituall husband is particularly expressed thus Reprove Rebuke Exhort you see for one word of familiarity that is Exhort there are two of authority Reprove and Rebuke But yet all the authority of the husband secular or ecclesiasticall temporall or spirituall husband is grounded rooted in love for the Apostle seemes to delight himself in the repeating of that Commandement to the Ephesians and to the Colossians Husbands love your wives Moses extends himselfe no farther in expressing all the happinesses that Isaak and Rebecca enjoyed in one another but this shee become his wife and he loved her If shee had not beene his wife Moses would never have proposed that love for an example for so it is also betweene Elkanah and his wife Hannah 1 Sam. 1. 5. Vnto Hannah he gave a double portion for sayes the Text hee loved Hannah If the Pastor love there will bee a double labour if the People love there will bee double respect But being so hee thought hee said all when he said they loved one another For where the Congregation loves the Pastor hee will forbeare bitter reproofes and wounding increpations and where the Pastor loves his Congregation his Rebukes because they proceed our of love will bee acceptable and well interpreted by them It is a duty and personall and perpetuall a duty of a husband and lastly of a husband that is brother to the former husband In which last circumstance we have time to mark but this one note that the reason of that law which drew the brother to this mariage was the preservation of the temporall inheritance in that family Even in our spirituall mariages to widow Churches we must have a care to preserve the temporall rights of all persons That the Parish be not oppressed with heavy extortions nor the Pastor defrauded with unjust substraction nor the Patron damnified by usurpations nor the Ordinary neglected by disobediences but that people and Pastor and Patron and Ordinary continuing in possession of their severall rights love being the root of all the fruit of all may be peace love being the soul of all the body of all may be unity which the Lord of unity and concord grant to us all for his Sonne Christ Jesus sake Amen SERMON XLVI The second Sermon Preached by the Author after he came to St. Dunstanes 25 Apr. 1624. PSAL. 34. 11. Come ye children Hearken unto me I will teach you the fear of the Lord. THE Text does not call children simply literally but such men and women as are willing to come in the simplicity of children such children as Christ spoke of Except ye become as little children ye shall not enter into the Kingdome of heaven Come ye children come such children Nor does the Text call such as come and would fain be gone again it is Come and Hearken not such as wish themselves away nor such as wish another man here but such as value Gods ordinance of Preaching though it be as the Apostle says but the foolishnesse of Preaching and such as consider the office and not the person how meane soever Come ye children And when ye are come Hearken And though it be but I Hearken unto me And I will teach you the feare of the Lord the most noble the most couragious the most magnanimous not affection but vertue in the world Come ye children Hearken unto me and I will teach you the feare of the Lord. To every Minister and Dispenser of the word of God and to every Congregation belong these words Divisio And therefore we will divide the Text between us To you one to us appertains the other part You must come and you must hearken we must teach and teach to edification There is the Meum Tuum your part and our part From each Part these branches flow out naturally In yours first the capacity as children Then the action you Come Then your Disposition here you hearken And lastly your submission to Gods Ordinance you hearken even unto me unto any Minister of his sending In our Part there is first a Teaching for else why should you come or hearken unto me or any It is a Teaching it is not onely a Praying And then there is a Catholique doctrine a circular doctrine that walks the round and goes the compasse of our whole lives from our first to our last childhood when age hath made us children again and it is the Art of Arts the root and fruit of all true wisdome The true feare of the Lord. Come ye children hearken unto mee and I will teach you the feare of the Lord. First then the word in which in the first branch of the first part your capacity is expressed filii pueri children is from the Originall which is Banim often accepted in three notions and so rendred Three ways men are called children out of that word Banâ—m in the Scriptures Either it is servi servants for they are filiâ— familiares as the Master is Pater familias Father of the family and that he is though there be no naturall children in the family the servants are children of the family and are very often in Scriptures called so Pueri children Or it is Alumni Nurse-children foster-children filii mâ—mmillares children of the breasts whether wee minister to them temporall or spirituall nourishment they are children Or else it is filii viscerales children of our bowels our naturall children And in all these three capacities as servants as sucking children as sons are you called upon in this appellation in this compellation children First as you are servants you are children for without distinction of age servants are called so frequently ordinarily in the Scriptures Pueri The Priest asks David before he would give him the holy bread An vasa puerorum sancta Whether those children speaking of Davids followers were clean from women Here were children that were able to get children Nay Davids Soldiers are often called so pueri children In the first of the Kings he takes a Muster recenset pueros Here were children that were able to kill men You are his children of what age soever as you are his servants and in that capacity he cals you You are unprofitable servants but it is not an unprofitable service to serve God He can get nothing by you but you can have nothing without him The Centurions servants came when he said Come and was their wages like yours Had