is so rich in heads each to be cut off by the work of a several repentance Now in the last place as this sin of all mankind in Adam is considered in its effects so it becomes to us a body of sin and death a natural disorder of the whole man an hostility and enmity of the flesh against the spirit and the parent of all sin in us as may appear Rom. vii and Jam. i. 14. Which that you may have a more compleat understanding of consider it as it is ordinarily set down consisting of three parts 1. A natural defect 2. A moral affection 3. A legal guilt 1. A guiltiness of the breach of the law for these three whatsoever you may think of them are all parts of that sin of our nature which is in and is to be imputed to us called ordinarily original sin in us to distinguish it from that first act committed by Adam of which this is an effect And first that natural defect is a total loss and privation of that primitive justice holiness and obedience which God had furnisht the creature withal a disorder of all the powers of the soul a darkness of the understanding a perversness of the will a debility weakness and decay of all the senses and in sum a poverty and destruction and almost a nothingness of all the powers of soul and body And how ought we to lament this loss with all the veins of our heart to labour for some new strain of expressing our sorrow and in fine to petition that rich grace which may build up all these ruines to pray to God that his Christ may purchase and bestow on us new abilities that the second Adam may furnish us with more durable powers and lasting graces then we had but forfeited in the first The following part of this sin of our nature viz. A moral evil affection is word for word mentioned Rom. vii 5. For there the Greek words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ordinarily translated motions of sins and in the margin the passions of sins are more significantly to be rendred affections of sins i. e. by an usual figure sinful affections That you may the better observe the encumbrances of this branch of this sin which doth so overshadow the whole man and so sence him from the beams and light of the spiritual invisible Sun I am to tell you that the very Heathen that lived without the knowledge of God had no conversation with and so no instruction from the Bible in this matter that these very Heathens I say had a sense of this part of original sin to wit of these evil moral lusts and affections which they felt in themselves though they knew not whence they sprang Hence is it that a Greek Philosopher out of the ancients makes a large discourse of the unsatiable desire and lust which is in every man and renders his life grievous unto him where he useth the very same word though with a significant Epithet added to it that St. James doth c. i. ver 15. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 infinite lust with which as St. James saith a man is drawn away and enticed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so saith he that part of the mind in which these lusts dwell is perswaded and drawn or rather falls backward and forward 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which lust or evil concupiscence he at last defines to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an unsattable intemperance of the appetite never filled with a desire never ceasing in the prosecution of evil and again he calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our birth and nativity derived to us by our parents i. e. an evil affection hereditary to us and delivered to us as a legacy at our birth or nativity all which seems a clear expression of that original lust whose motions they felt and guest at its nature Hence is it that it was a custom among all of them I mean the common Heathen to use many ways of purgations especially on their children who at the imposition of their names were to be lustrated and purified with a great deal of superstition and ceremony such like as they used to drive away a plague or a cure for an house or City As if nature by instinct had taught them so much Religion as to acknowledge and desire to cure in every one this hereditary disease of the soul this plague of mans heart as 't is called 1 Kings viii 38. And in sum the whole learning of the Wisest of them such were the Moralists was directed to the governing and keeping in order of these evil affections which they called the unruly Citizens and common people of the soul whose intemperance and disorders they plainly observed within themselves and laboured hard to purge out or subdue to the government of reason and vertue which two we more fully enjoy and more Christianly call the power of grace redeeming our souls from this body of sin Thus have I briefly shewed you the sense that the very Heathen had of this second branch of original sin which needs therefore no farther aggravation to you but this that they who had neither Spirit nor Scripture to instruct them did naturally so feelingly observe and curse it that by reason of it they esteemed their whole life but a living death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and their body but the Sepulchre of the soul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 both which together are but a Periphrasis of that which St. Paul calls in brief the body of death And shall we who have obtained plenty of light and instruction besides that which nature bestowed on us with them shall we I say let our eyes be confounded with abundance of day shall we see it more clearly to take less notice of it Shall we feel the stings of sin within us which though they do but prick the regenerate prove mortal to the rest of us and shall we not observe them Shall we not rather weep those fountains dry and crop this luxury of our affections with a severe sharp sorrow and humiliation Shall we not starve this rank fruitful mother of Vipers by denying it all nourishment from without all advantages of temptations and the like which it is wont to make use of to beget in us all manner of sin let us aggravate every circumstance and inconvenience of it to ourselves and then endeavour to banish it out of us and when we find we are not able importune that strong assistant the Holy Spirit to curb and subdue it that in the necessity of residing it yet may not reign in our mortal bodies to tame and abate the power of this necessary Amorite and free us from the activity and mischief and temptations of it here and from the punishment and imputation of it hereafter And so I come to the third part or branch of this original sin to wit its legal guilt and this we do contract by such an early
entreat the Sun to shine on thee especially if this cloud fall down in a showr if thou canst melt so thick a viscous meteor as those corrupt affections are into a soft rain or dew of penitent tears thou mayest then be confident of a fair bright Sun-shine For I dare promise that never humble tender weeping foul had ever this light quite darkned within it but could at all times read and see the will of God and the law of its creation not drawn only but almost engraven and woven into its heart For these tears in our eyes will spiritually mend our sight as whatever you see through water though it be represented somewhat dimly yet seems bigger and larger then if there were no water in the way according to that Rule in the Opticks Whatever is seen through a thicker medium seems bigger then it is And then by way of Use shall we suffer so incomparable a mercy to be cast away upon us Shall we only see and admire and not make use of it Shall we fence as it were and fortifie our outward man with walls and bulwarks that the inner man may not shine forth upon it Or shall we like silly improvident flies make no other use of this candle but only to singe and burn and consume our selves by its flame receive only so much light from it as will add to our hell and darkness 'T is a thing that the flintiest heart should melt at to see such precious mercies undervalued such incomparable blessings either contemned or only improved into curses Arrian calls those in whom this light of the soul is as I shewed you clouded and obscured 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dead trunks and carkasses of flesh and to keep such men in order were humane laws provided which he therefore calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 miserable hard laws to keep dead men in compass and again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Earth and Hell the places to which dead bodies are committed And certainly if so then by way of contrary all the life that we possess is but by obedience to this law within us and 't is no longer to be called life but either sleep or death or lethargy every minute that we move out of the circle of its directions There is not a step or moment in our lives but we have a special use and need of this law to manage us every enterprize of our thoughts or actions will yield some difficulty which we must hold up and read and judge of by this candle nay sometimes we have need of a glass or instrument to contract the beams and light of it or else 't would scarce be able to get through to our actions passion and folly and the Atheism of our lives hath so thickned the medium Wherefore in brief remember that counsel Mal. ii 15. Take heed to your spirit and let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth the wife of his youth i. e. saith Jeroms gloss legem naturalem scriptam in corde the law of nature written in his heart which was given him in the womb as a wife and help to succour him Let us set a value on this polar Star within us which hath or should have an influence at least directions on all our actions let us encrease and nourish and make much of the sparks still warm within us And if Scholars and Antiquaries prize nothing so high as a fair Manuscript or ancient Inscription let us not contemn that which Gods own finger hath written within us lest the sin of the contempt make us more miserable and the mercy profit us only to make us unexcusable And so I come to my second part the sin of contemning or rejecting this law For this cause he gave them up 1. because the contempt of his law thus provoked him The guilt arising from this contempt shall sufficiently be cleared to you by observing and tracing of it not through every particular but in general through all sorts of men since the fall briefly reducible to these three heads 1. the Heathens 2. the Jews 3. present Christians and then let every man that desires a more distinct light descend and commune with his own heart and so he shall make up the observation The Heathens sin will be much aggravated if we consider how they reckon'd of this law as the square and rule and canon of their actions and therefore they will be inexcusable who scarce be ever at leisure to call to it to direct them when they had use of it The Stoick calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the promise that every man makes the obligation that he is bound in to nature at his shaping in the womb and upon which condition his reasonable soul is at his conception demised to him so that whosoever puts off this obedience doth as he goes on renounce and even proclaim his forfeiture of the very soul he lives by and by every unnatural that is sinful action 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 destroyes the natural man within him and by a prodigious regeneration is in a manner transubstantiate into a beast of the field Which conceit many of them were so possest with that they thought in earnest that 't was ordinary for souls to walk from men into Cocks and Asses and the like and return again at natures appointment as if this one contempt of the law of nature were enough to unman them and make them without a figure comparable nay coessential to the beasts that perish 'T were too long to shew you what a sense the wisest of them had of the helps that light could afford them so that one of them cryes out confidently 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. If all other laws were taken out of the world we Philosophers would still live as we do those directions within us would keep us in as much awe as the most imperious or severest Law-giver And again how they took notice of the perversness of men in refusing to make use of it for who saith one ever came into the knowledge of men without this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this knowledge and discretion of good and evil as old in him as his soul And yet who makes any use of it in his actions nothing so ordinary as to betray and declare that we have it by finding fault and accusing vices in other men by calling this justice this tyranny this vertue this vice in another whilst yet we never are patient to observe or discern ought of it in our selves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Who ever spares to call injustice which he sees in another by its own name for his own reason tells him 't is so and he must needs give it its title But when the case concerns his own person when his passions counsel him against the law within him then is he content not to see though it shine never so bright about him and this was
wooing again to tempt and sollicite even temptations to give gifts to all thy lovers to hire them that they may come unto thee on every side for thy whoredoms vers 33. of this Chapter This is a degree of stupidity and insolence of insatiable pride and lust that neither the iniquity of Sodom nor stubbornness of Capernaum nor the Rhetoricall'st Phrase almost in the very Scripture can express but only this in my Text which comes in the last place with a marvellous Emphasis Imperious The work c. In which one Epithet many of the highest degrees of sin are contein'd 1. Confidence and shamelesness in sinning an imperious Whore mulier impudicae libidinis one that is better acquainted with lust than to blush when she meets with it modesty and coyness are but infirmities rather than good qualities of youth effects of ignorance and tenderness and unexperience in sin a little more conversation in the world will season men to a bolder temper in time instruct them that this modesty is the only thing they ought to be asham'd of 'T is not ingenuity but cowardise a poor degenerous pusillanimous humour to go fearfully about a vice to sin tremblingly and with regrets This country disposition or soft temper when we come abroad into the world amongst men 't is quite out-dated Thus is impudence and a forehead of steel grown not the armour only but even the complexion of every man-like spirit He is not fit for the Devils war that is so poorly appointed either with courage or munition as to be discomfited by a look 't is part of his honour not to fear disgrace and his reputation not to stand upon so poor a thing as reputation 2. Imperious taking all authority into her own hands scorning to be afraid either of God or Devil quae regno posita neminem timeat having fancied her self in a throne never thinks either of enemy to endanger or of superiour to quell her but sins confidently in Cathedrâ Psal I. 1. in state in security and at ease and never doubts or fears to be removed And this is most primarily observable in the Jews depending on their carnal Prerogatives as being of Abrahams seed and yet thus also may we suspect do many among us some tying Gods decree of Election to their persons and individual entities without any reference to their qualifications or demeanors others by a premature perswasion that they are in Christ and so in such an irreversible estate that all the temptations all the Devils nay all the sins in Hell shall never dispossess them Others resolv'd That God can see no sin in his children in imitation of Marcus in Irenaeus whose Heresie or rather Fancie it was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that by the redemption they were become invisible Upon these I say and other grounds how true I will not now examine do many rash presumers abuse the grace of God unto wantonness never fear to sin because they need not fear to be punished never cease to provoke God because they are sure he is their friend and being resolved of him as a Saviour contemn him as a Judge Multiad sapientiam pervenissent c. saith he Many had come to learning enough had they not believed too soon they had attain'd it No such hindrance to proficiency as too timely a conceit of knowledge Thus might we ordinarily guess some men to have been in good towardly estates had they not made too much hast to conceive so and having once possest themselves of heaven on such slight grounds such as not a solemn examination of themselves but some gleams of their fancy had bestowed upon them 't is no wonder if all the effects of their assurance be spiritual security and supine confidence in sinning they have hid their heads in heaven by their vain speculation and then think their whole body must needs be safe be it never so open and naked and bare to all temptations Nay be they up to the shoulders in carnality nay earth nay hell yet seeing caput inter nubila their head is in the clouds there is no danger or fear of drowning be it never so deep or myrie This was Laodice as estate Rev. III. 17. She fancied her self great store of spiritual riches brought in an Inventory of a very fair estate I am rich and am encreased in goods and have need of nothing any more accession even of the graces of God would be but superfluousand burthensome not knowing all this while That she was wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked There is not a blessing upon earth that can any way hope or seem to parallel a sober wellgrounded assurance here that in time we shall be Saints in Heaven 't is such a Paradise upon Earth that Heaven it self seems but a second part of it differing from it rather in degrees and external accomplishments than in any distinct specifical kind of happiness The Lord of Heaven by his mighty working when it shall please him begin and consummate it in us But then to make use of this Patent of Heaven to engage us further in the deep to keep us not from the Devils works but from his attachments only as a protection to secure our misdemeanors not to defend our innocence for a man thus appointed to venture on a Precipice as the Turks saith Busbequius are wont to try the goodness of an horse by riding him post down the steepest hill to out-dare the Devil in his own territories as Christ is said to descend thither to triumph over him to besiege and set upon Hell presuming of our interest in Heaven as of a Magical Charm and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to keep us safe from death or maims in the midst of enemies nay of friends this is a piece of spiritual pride of Lucifer's own inscribing an imperious majestick garb of impiety a triumphant or processionary pomp an affected stately gate in sin that nothing but a violent rending power of the Spirit or a boisterous tempestuous judgment can force us out of Such a prophane Fiduciary as this which hath even defiled Heaven by possessing it such an Hellish Saint is like to be torn out of the third Heaven into which his speculation hath rapt him and after a long dream of Paradise find himself awake in Hell And from this degree of religious prophaneness this confidence in sinning on presumption that we are under grace from this premature resolution that no sin no Devil can endanger us from this imperious whoredom as from the danger of Hell Good Lord deliver us 3. Imperious signifies more distinctly a tyrannical Lording behaviour usurping and exercising authority over all And this the Apostate Jew and Christian Libertine doth 1. By tyrannizing over himself i. e. his faculties and estate 2. Over all that come near him Over himself by urging and driving on in a carnal course not patient of any regrets and resistances that a tender
disposition motions of Gods Spirit or gripes of Conscience can make against it goading and spurring on any of his faculties as being too dull unactive and slothful in the ways of death even forcing them if they be any time foreslowed and trashed by either outward or inward restraints to sin even in sight of them and hastening them to a kind of unvoluntary disobedience Thus will a stone when 't is kept violently from the ground being held in a mans hand or the like press and weigh towards the Earth incessantly as if it were naturally resolved to be revenged on any one to tire him out that thus detained it from its place nay when it is let down you may see it yet press lower make its print in the Earth as if it would never be satisfied till it could rest in Hell The sinner is never at quiet with himself Instat imperat He is urgent and importunate upon himself to satisfie every craving lust Not the beggarliest affection or laziest unworthiest desire of the flesh but shall have its alms and dole rather than starve though it be an atome of his very soul to the utter undoing and bankrupting of him that gives it And for his tyranny over his estate whether Temporal or Spiritual his goods of Fortune or gifts of Grace they must all do homage to this carnal Idol All his treasures on Earth are richly sold if they can but yield him the fruition of one beloved sin And for Spiritual Illuminations or any Seeds of Grace he will lose them all and even shut himself for ever into the darkness of Hell rather than ever be directed by their light out of those pleasing paths of death A restraining grace was but a burthensome needless encumbrance and a gleam of the Spirit but a means to set Conscience a working to actuate her malice and execution on sin and it were an happy exchange to get but one loving delight or companion for them both Let but a sin be coy and stanch not to be gain'd at the first woing and all these together like Jacob's present out of all his goods shall be all little enough for a sacrifice or bribe to sollicite or hire it And this the Prophet notes here distinctly Vers 33. and 34. Thou art contrary to all the Whores in the World In other places Men give gifts to all Whores but thou givest gifts to all thy lovers None follow or bribe thee to commit whoredoms Thou givest a reward and no reward is given to thee therefore thou art contrary The sinner in my Text scorns to set so low a value on sin as that profit or advantage should ingratiate it to him it is so amiable in his eyes of it self he will prize it so high that any other treasure shall not be considerable in respect of it It is part of his loyalty and expression of his special service to the Devil to become a bankrupt in his cause to sell all that he hath both God and fortunes to follow him It is the art and cunning of common Whores to raise mens desires of them by being coy Difficultate augere libidinis pretium to hold off that they may be followed Vers 34. But this sin is not at so artificial her affections are boysterous and impatient of delay she is not at so much leisure as to windlace or use craft to satisfie them she goes downright a woing and if there be any difficulty in compassing all that she hath is ready for a dowry and prostitute before her idol Lust Lastly Imperious over all that come near him either men or sins Everyman must serve him either as his pander or companion to further or associate him I told you he sinned in Cathedrâ Psal I. 1. that is also doctorally and magisterially every spectator must learn of him it is his profession he sets up school for it his practises are so commandingly exemplary that they do even force and ravish the most maidenly tender conscience And then for all inferiors they are required to provide him means and opportunities of sinning to find him out some game and no such injury can be done as to rouze or spring a sin that would otherwise have lodged in his walk It was part of the Heathenish Romans quarrel against the Primitive Christians saith Tertullian that they drove away their Devils These Exorcist-Christians had banished all their old familiars out of the Kingdom which they were impatient to be deprived of And thus careful and chary are men of their helps of opportunities to sin it is all the joy they have in the world sometimes to have a temptation and to be able to make use of it to have the Devil continue strong with them in an old Courtier 's phrase It is their very life and he that deprives them of it is a murtherer And for the sins themselves Lord how they tyrannize over them how they will rack and torture and stretch every limb of a sin that they may multiply it into infinites and sin as often at once as is possible Adam in the bare eating of an Apple committed a multitude of sins Leo in his 86 Epist August de Civit. Dei and other of the Fathers will number them out to you And thus far this tyrant over Impiety and Lust will be a Pelagian as to order all his deviation by imitation of Adam's Every breach of one single Law shall contain a brood or nest into which it may be subdivided and every circumstance in the Action shall furnish him with fresh matter for variety of sin Again How imperious is he in triumphing over a sin which he hath once atchieved If he have once got the better of good nature and Religion broke in upon a stubborn sullen vice that was formerly too hard for him how often doth he reiterate and repeat that he may perfect his conquest that it may lie prostrate and tame before him never daring to resist him And if there be any Virgin modest sins which are ashamed of the light either of the Sun or Nature not coming abroad but under a veil as some sins being too horrid and abominable are fain to appear in other shapes and so keep us company under the name of amiable or innocent qualities then will this violent imperious sinner call them out into the Court or Market place tear away the veil that he may commit them openly and as if the Devil were too modest for him bring him upon the stage against his will and even take Hell by violence and force Thus are men come at last to a glorying in the highest impieties and expect some renown credit as a reward for the pains they take about it and then certainly honour is grown very cheap when it is bestowed upon sins and the man very tyrannical over his spectators thoughts that requires to be worshipped for them This was a piece of the Devils old tyranny in the times of Heathenism which I
the Lord that are fit to move or to perswade any The utmost secular fear is so much more impendent over Satan's than God's Clients the killing of the body the far more frequent effect of that which had first the honor to bring death into the world The Devil owning the title of destroyer Abaddon and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and inflicting diseases generally on those whom he possest and Christ that other of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Physitian and the Saviour that hath promises of long life annexed to some specials of his service that if it were reasonable to fear those that can kill the body and afterwards have no more that they can do i. e. Are able by the utmost of their malice and Gods permission but to land thee safe at thy fair Haven to give thee Heaven and bliss before thy time instead of the many lingring deaths that this life of ours is subject to yet there were little reason to fear or suspect the fate in Gods service far less than in those steep precipitous paths which the Devil leads us thorow And therefore to be thus low-bell'd with panick frights to be thus tremblingly dismayed where there is no place of fear and to ride on intrepid on the truest dangers as the Barbarians in America do on Guns is a mighty disproportion of mens faculties a strange superiority of phansie over judgment That may well be described by a defect in the power of numbring that discerns no difference between Ciphers and Millions but only that the noughts are a little the blacker and the more formidable And so much for the third branch of this character There is yet a fourth notion of simplicity as it is contrary to common ordinary prudence that by which the politician and thriving man of this world expects to be valued the great dexterity and managery of affairs the business of this world wherein let me not be thought to speak Paradoxes if I tell you with some confidence that the wicked man is this only impolitick fool and the Christian generally the most dextrous prudent politick person in the world and the safest Motto that of the Virtutem violenter retine the keeping vertue with the same violence that Heaven is to be taken with Not that the Spirit of Christ infuses into him the subtleties and crafts of the wicked gives him any principles or any excuse for that greater portion of the Serpentine wisdom but because honesty is the most gainful policy the mok thriving thorow prudence that will carry a man farther than any thing else That old principle in the Mathematicks That the right line comes speediliest to the journeys end being in spight of Machiavel a Maxim in Politicks also and so will prove till Christ shall resign and give up to Satan the oeconomy of the World Some examples it is possible there may be of the Prosperum Scelus the thriving of villany for a time and so of the present advantages that may come in to us by our secular contrivances but sure this is not the lasting course but only an anomaly or irregularity that cannot be thought fit to be reckoned of in comparison of the more constant promises the long life in a Canaan of Milk and Honey that the Old and New Testament both have ensured upon the meek disciple And I think a man might venture the experiment to the testimony and tryal of these times that have been deemed most unkind and unfavorable to such innocent Christian qualities that those that have been most constant to the strict stable honest principles have thrived far better by the equable figure than those that have been most dexterous in changing shapes and so are not the most unwise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if there were never another state of retributions but this Whereas it is most scandalously frequent and observable that the great Politicians of this world are baffled and outwitted by the Providence of Heaven sell their most precious souls for nought and have not the luck to get any money for them the most unthrifty improvident Merchandise that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 folly Psal xlix 13. which the lxxii render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 scandal the most pitious offensive folly the wretchedst simplicity in the World You would easily believe it should not stand in need of a farther aggravation and yet now you are to be presented with one in my Text by way of heightning of the Character and that was my second particular that at first I promised you made up of two farther considerations First The loving of that which is so unlovely secondly The continuing in the Passion so long How long you simple ones will you love c. First The degree and improvement of the Atheists folly consists in the loving of it that he can take a delight and complacency in his way to be patient of such a course gainless service such scandalous mean submissions had been reproach enough to any that had not divested himself of ingenuity and innocence together and become one of Aristotles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Natural slaves which if it signifie any thing denotes the fools simple ones in this Text whom nature hath marked in the head for no very honorable employments But from this passivity in the Mines and Gallies to attain to a joy voluptuousness in the employment to dread nothing but Sabbatick years and Jubiles and with the crest-fallen slave to disclaim nothing but liberty manumission i. e. in effect Innocence and Paradise and Bliss to court and woo Satan for the Mansions in Hell and the several types and praeludiums of them the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the initial pangs in this life which he hath in his disposing to be such a Platonick lover of stripes and chains without intuition of any kind of reward any present or future wages for all his patience and as it follows to hate knowledge and piety hate it as the most treacherous enemy that means to undermine their Hell to force them out of their beloved Satan's embraces This is certainly a very competent aggravation of the simplicity And yet to see how perfect a character this is of the most of us that have nothing to commend or even excuse in the most of those ways on which we make no scruple to exhaust our souls but only our kindness irrational passionate kindness and love toward them then that love shall cover a multitude of sins supersede all the exceptions and quarrels that otherwise we should not chuse but have to them Could a man see any thing valuable or attractive in Oaths Curses in Drunkenness and Bestiality the sin that when a Turk resolves to be guilty of he makes a fearful noise unto his Soul to retire all into his feet or as far off as it is possible that it may not be within ken of that bestial prospect as Busbequius tell us Could any man endure
the covetous man's sad galling Mules burthens of Gold his Achans Wedge that cleaves and rends in sunder Nations so that in the Hebrew that sin signifies wounding and incision Joel ii 8. and is alluded to by his piercing himself thorow with divers sorrows 1 Tim. vi 10. his very Purgatories and Limbo's nay Hell as devouring and perpetual as it and the no kind of satisfaction so much as to his eye from the vastest heaps or treasures were he not in love with folly and ruin had he not been drenched with philtres and charms had not the Necromancer plaid some of his prizes on him and as S. Paul saith of his Galatians even bewitched him to be a fool would we but make a rational choice of our sins discern somewhat that were amiable before we let loose our passion on them and not deal so blindly in absolute elections of the driest unsavory sin that may but be called a sin that hath but the honor of affronting God and damning one of Christ's redeemed most of our wasting sweeping sins would have no manner of pretensions to us and that you will allow to be one special accumulation of the folly and madness of these simple ones that they thus love simplicity The second aggravation is the continuance and duration of this fury a lasting chronical passion quite contrary to the nature of passions a flash of lightning lengthned out a whole day together That they should love simplicity so long It is the nature of acute diseases either to have intervals and intermissions or else to come to speedy crises and though these prove mortal sometimes yet the state is not generally so desperate and so it is with sins Many the sharpest and vehementest indispositions of the Soul pure Feavers of rage and lust prove happily but flashing short furies are attended with an instant smiting of the heart a hating and detesting our follies a striking on the thigh in Jeremy and in David's penitential stile a So foolish was I and ignorant even as a beast before thee And it were happy if our Feavers had such cool seasons such favorable ingenuous intermissions as these But for the hectick continual Feavers that like some weapons the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 barbed shafts in use among the Franks in Agathias being not mortal at the entrance do all their slaughter by the hardness of getting out the Vultures that so tyre and gnaw upon the Soul the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that never suffer the sinner fool to make any approach toward his wits toward sobriety again This passionate love of folly improved into an habitual steady course of Atheisticalness a deliberate peremptory final reprobating of Heaven the purity at once and the bliss of it the stanch demure covenanting with death resolvedness to have their part to run their fortune with Satan through all adventures this is that monstrous brat That as for the birth of the Champion in the Poet three nights of darkness more than Egyptian were to be crowded into one all the simplicity and folly in a Kingdom to help to a being in the World And at the birth of it you will pardon Wisdom if she break out into a passion and exclamation of pity first and then of indignation How long ye simple ones c. My last particular The first debt that Wisdom that Christ that every Christian Brother ows and pays to every unchristian liver is that of pity and compassion which is to him of all others the properest dole Look upon all the sad moanful objects in the world betwixt whom all our compassion is wont to be divided First the Bankrupt rotting in a Gaol secondly the direful bloody spectacle of the Soldier wounded by the Sword of War thirdly the Malefactor howling under the Stone or gasping upon the Rack or Wheel and fourthly the gallant person on the Scaffold or Gallows ready for execution And the secure senseless sinner is the brachygraphy of all these You have in him 1. A rich patrimony and treasure of grace purchased dear and setled on him by Christ most prodigally and contumeliously mispent exhausted 2. A Soul streaming out whole Rivers of blood and spirits through every wound even every sin it hath been guilty of and not enduring the Water to cleanse much less the Wine or Oyl to be poured into any one of them the whole Soul transfigured into one wound one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 congelation and clod of blood Then thirdly beyond this all the racks and pangs of a tormenting conscience his only present exercise And lastly all the torments in Hell the Officer ready hurrying him to the Judg and the Judg delivering him to the Executioner his minutely dread and expectation the dream that so haunts and hounds him And what would a man give in bowels of compassion to Christianity or but to humane kind to be able to reprieve or rescue such an unhappy creature to be but the Lazarus with one drop of water to cool the tipof the scalding Tongue that is engaged in such a pile of flames If there be any Charity left in this frozen World any Beam under this cold uninhabitable Zone it will certainly work some meltings on the most obdurate heart it will dissolve and pour out our bowels into a seasonable advice or admonition that excellent Recipe saith Themist 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That supplies the place and does the work of the burnings and scarifyings A cry to stop him in his precipitous course a tear at least to solemnize if not to prevent so sad a fate And it were well if all our bowels were thus employed all our kindness most passionate love thus converted and laid out on our poor lapsed sinner-brethrens souls to seize upon those fugitives as Christ is said to do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heb. xi 16. to catch hold and bring them back ere it be yet too late rescue them out of the hands of their dearest espoused sins and not suffer the most flattering kind of death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Gal. de Athl. the Devil in the Angelical disguise the sin that undertakes to be the prime Saint the zeal for the Lord of Hosts any the most venerable impiety to lay hold on them Could I but see such a new fashioned Charity received and entertained in the World every man to become his brothers keeper and every man so tame as to love and interpret aright entertain and embrace this keeper this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this Guardian Angel as an Angel indeed as the only valuable friend he hath under Heaven I should think this a lucky omen of the worlds returning to its wits to some degree of piety again And till then there is a very fit place and season for the exercise of the other part of the passion here that of Indignation the last minute of my last particular as the how long is an expression of Indignation Indignation not at the men for however
amongst us to witness his compassion to satisfie for us by his own death and attach himself for our liberty to undergo such hard conditions rather than be forced to a cheap severity and that he might appear to love his Enemies to hate his Son In brief to fulfil the Work without any aid required from us and make Salvation ready to our hands as Manna is called in the sixth of Wisdom 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Bread baked and sent down ready from Heaven Wisd xvi 20. to drop it in our mouths and exact nothing of us but to accept of it this is an act of love and singleness that all the malice we carry about us knows not how to suspect so far from possibility of a treacherous intent or double dealing that if I were an Heathen nay a Devil I would bestow no other appellation on the Christians God than what the Author of the Book of Wisdom doth so often 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the friend or the lover of Souls But this is a vulgar though precious subject and therefore I shall no longer insist on it Only before I leave it would I could see the effect of it exprest in our Souls as well as acknowledged in our looks your hearts ravished as thorowly as your brains convinc'd your breasts as open to value and receive this superlative mercy as your tongues to confess it then could I triumph over Hell and death and scoff them out of countenance then should the Devil be reduced to his old pittance confined to an empty corner of the World and suffer as much by the solitariness as darkness of his abode all his engines and arts of torment should be busied upon himself and his whole exercise to curse Christ for ever that hath thus deprived him of Associates But alas we are too sollicitous in the Devil's behalf careful to furnish him with Companions to keep him warm in the midst of fire 't is to be feared we shall at last thrust him out of his Inheritance 'T is a probable argument that God desires our Salvation because that Hell wheresoever it is whether at the Center of the Earth or Concave of the Moon must needs be far less than Heaven and that makes us so besiege the gate as if we feared weshould find no room there We begin our journey betimes left we should be forestall'd and had rather venture a throng or crowd in Hell than to expect that glorious liberty of the Sons of God 'T is to be feared that at the day of Judgment when each Body comes to accompany its Soul in torment Hell must be let out and enlarge its territories to receive its Guests Beloved there is not a Creature here that hath reason to doubt but Christ was sent to die for him and by that death hath purchased his right to life Only do but come in do but suffer your selves to live and Christ to have died do not uncrucifie Christ by crucifying him again by your unbelief do not disclaim the Salvation that even claims right and title to you and then the Angels shall be as full of joy to see you in Heaven as God is willing nay desirous to bring you thither and Christ as ready to bestow that Inheritance upon you at his second coming as at his first to purchase it Nothing but Infidelity restrains Christs sufferings and confines them to a few Were but this one Devil cast out of the World I should be straight of Origens Religion and preach unto you Universal Catholick Salvation A second Argument of God's good meaning towards us of his willingness that we should live is the calling of the Gentiles the dispatching of Posts Heralds over the whole ignorant Heathen World and giving them notice of this treasure of Christs blood Do but observe what a degree of prophaneness unnatural abominations the Gentile World was then arrived to as you may read in all their stories and in the first to the Romans how well grown and ripe for the Devil Christ found them all of them damnably Superstitious and Idolatrous in their Worship damnably unclean in their lives nay engaged for ever in this rode of damnation by a Law they had made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 never to entertain any new Laws or Religion not to innovate though it were to get Salvation as besides their own Histories may be gathered out of Act. xvii 18. And lastly consider how they were hook'd in by the Devil to joyn in crucifying of Christ that they might be guilty of that blood which might otherwise have saved them and then you will find no argument to perswade you 't was possible that God should have any design of mercy on them Peter was so resolv'd of the point that the whole succession of the Gentiles should be damned that God could scarce perswade him to go and Preach to one of them Act. x. He was fain to be cast into a Trance and see a Vision about it and for all that he is much troubled about the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their prophaneness and uncleanness that they were not fit for an Apostle to defile himself about their Conversion And this was the general opinion of all the Jews they of the Circumcision were astonished at the news Act. x. 45. Nay this is it that the Angels wondred at so when they saw it wrought at the Church by Pauls Ministery never dreaming it possible till it was effected as may appear Eph. iii. 10. This was the Mystery which from the beginning of the World had been hid in God V. 9. One of God's Cabinet Counsels a Mercy decreed in secret that no Creature ever wist of till it was performed And in this behalf are we all being lineally descended from the Gentiles bound over to an infinite measure both of humiliation and gratitude for our deliverance from the guilt and reign of that second original sin that Heathenism of our Ancestors and Catholick damnation that Sixteen hundred years ago we were allinvolv'd in Beloved we were long ago set right again and the obligation lies heavy upon us to shew this change to have been wrought in us to some purpose to prove our selves Christians in grain so fixed and established that all the Devils in Hell shall not be able to reduce us again to that abhorred condition If we that are thus called out shall fall back after so much Gospel to Heathen practices and set up Shrines and Altars in our hearts to every poor delight that our sottishness can call a God if we are not called out of their sins as well as out of their ignorance then have we advanced but the further toward Hell we are still but Heathen Gospellers our Christian Infidelity and practical Atheism will but help to charge their guilt upon us and damn us the deeper for being Christians Do but examine your selves on this one Interrogatory whether this calling the Gentiles hath found any effect in your
hearts any influence on your lives whether your Conversations are not still as Heathenish as ever If you have no other grounds or motives to embrace the Gospel but only because you are born within the pale of the Church no other evidences of your Discipleship but your livery then God is little beholding to you for your service The same motives would have served to have made you Turks if it had been your chance to have been born amongst them and now all that fair Christian outside is not thank-worthy 'T is but your good fortune that you are not now at the same work with the old Gentiles or present Indians a worshipping either Jupiter or the Sun 'T was a shrewd speech of Clemens that the life of every unregenerate Man is an Heathen-life and the sins of unsanctified Men are Heathen-sins and the estate of a Libertine Christian an Heathen estate and unless our resolutions and practices are consonant to our profession of Christ we are all still Heathens and the Lord make us sensible of this our Condition The third and in sum the powerfullest Argument to prove God's willingness that we should live is that he hath bestowed his spirit upon us that as soon as he called up the Son he sent the Comforter This may seem to be the main business that Christ ascended to Heaven about so that a Man would guess from the xvi Chapter of St. John and Vers 7. that if it had not been for that Christ had tarried amongst us till this time but that it was more expedient to send the Spirit to speak those things powerfully to our hearts which often and in vain had been sounded in our ears 'T is a fancy of the Paracelsians that if we could suck out the lives and spirits of other Creatures as we feed on their flesh we should never die their lives would nourish and transubstantiate into our lives their spirit increase our spirits and so our lives grow with our years the older we were by consequence the fuller of life and so no difficulty to become Immortal Thus hath God dealt with us first sent his Son his Incarnate Son his own Flesh to feed and nourish us and for all this we die daily he hath now given us his own very Life and incorporeous Essence a piece of pure God his very Spirit to feed upon and digest that if it be possible we might live There is not a vein in our Souls unless it be quite pin'd and shrivel'd up but hath some blood produced in it by that holy nourishment every breath that ever we have breathed toward Heaven hath been thus inspired besides those louder Voices of God either sounding in his Word or thundring in his Judgments there is his calm soft voice of Inspiration like the Night Vision of old which stole in upon the mind mingled with sleep and gentle slumber He draws not out into the Field or meets us as an Enemy but entraps us by surprize and disarms us in our quarters by a Spiritual Stratagem conquers at unawares and even betrays and circumvents and cheats us into Heaven That precept of Pythagoras 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To worship at the noise and whistling of the wind had sense and divinity in it that Iamblicus that cites it never dreamt of that every sound and whispering of this Spirit which rustles either about our ears or in our hearts as the Philosopher saith Tecum est intus est when it breaths and blows within us the stoutest faculty of our Souls the proudest piece of flesh about us should bow down and worship Concerning the manner of the Spirits working I am not I need not to dispute Thus far it will be seasonable and profitable for you to know that many other Illuminations and holy Graces are to be imputed to Gods Spirit besides that by which we are effectually converted God speaks to us many times when we answer him not and shines about our eyes when we either wink or sleep Our many sudden short-winded Ejaculations toward Heaven our frequent but weak inclinations to good our ephemerous wishes that no man can distinguish from true piety but by their sudden death our every-day resolutions of obedience whilestwe continue in sin are arguments that God's Spirit hath shined on us though the warmth that it produced be soon chill'd with the damp it meets with in us For example there is no doubt beloved but the Spirit of God accompanies his Word as at this time to your ears if you will but open at its knock and receive and entertain it in your hearts it shall prove unto you according to its most glorious attribute Rom. i. The power of God unto salvation But if you will refuse it your stubborness may repel and frustrate God's Work but not annihilate it though you will not be saved by it it is God's still and so shall continue to witness against you at the day of doom Every word that was every darted from that Spirit as a beam or javelin of that piercing Sun every atome of that flaming Sword as the word is phrased shall not though it be rebated vanish the day of vengeance shall instruct your Souls that it was sent from God and since it was once refused hath been kept in store not to upbraid but damn you Many other petty occasions the Spirit ordinarily takes to put off the Cloud and open his Face towards us nay it were not a groundless doubt whether he do not always shine and the cloud be only in our hearts which makes us think the Sun is gone down or quite extinct if at any time we feel not his rays within us Beloved there be many things amongst us that single fire can do nothing upon they are of such a stubborn frozen nature there must be some material thing for the fire to consist in a sharp iron red hot that may bore as well as burn or else there is small hopes of conquering them Many men are so hardned and congealed in sin that the ordinary beam of the Spirit cannot hope to melt them the fire must come consubstantiate with some solid instrument some sound corpulent piercing judgment or else it will be very unlikely to thrive True it is the Spirit is an omnipotent Agent which can so invisibly infuse and insinuate its vertue through the inward man that the whole most enraged adversary shall presently fall to the earth Act. ix the whole carnal man lie prostrate and the sinner be without delay converted and this is a Miracle which I desire from my heart might be presently shewed upon every Soul here present But that which is to my present purpose is only this That God hath also other manners and ways of working which are truly to be said to have descended from Heaven though they are not so successful as to bring us thither other more calm and less boysterous influences which if they were received into an honest heart might prove semen
immortalitatis and in time encrease and grow up to immortality There is no such encumbrance to trash us in our Christian Progress as a fancy that some men get possessed with that if they are elected they shall be called and saved in spight of their teeth every man expecting an extraordinary call because Saul met with one and perhaps running the more fiercely because Saul was then called when he was most violent in his full speed of malice against Christians In this behalf all that I desire of you is First to consider that though our regeneration be a miracle yet there are degrees of miracles and thou hast no reason to expect that the greatest and strongest miracle in the world shall in the highest degree be shewed in thy Salvation Who art thou that God should take such extraordinary pains with thee Secondly To resolve that many precious rays and beams of the Spirit though when they enter they come with power yet through our neglect may prove transitory pass by that heart which is not open for them And then thirdly You will easily be convinced that no duty concerns us all so strictly as to observe as near as we can when thus the Spirit appears to us to collect and muster up the most lively quick-sighted sprightfullest of our faculties and with all the perspectives that spiritual Opticks can furnish us with to lay wait for every glance and glimpse of its fire or light We have ways in nature to apprehend the beams of the Sun be they never so weak and languishing and by uniting them into a burning Glass to turn them into afire Oh that we were as witty and sagacious in our spiritual estate then it were easie for those sparks which we so often either contemn or stifle to thrive within us and at least break forth into a flame In brief Incogitancy and inobservance of Gods seasons supine numbness and negligence in spiritual affairs may on good grounds be resolved on as the main or sole cause of our final impenitence and condemnation it being just with God to take those away in a sleep who thus walked in a dream and at last to refuse them whom he hath so long sollicited He that hath scorned or wasted his inheritance cannot complain if he dies a bankrupt nor he that hath spent his candle at play count it hard usage that he is fain to go to bed darkling It were easie to multiply arguments on this theme from every minute of our lives to discern some pawn and evidence of Gods fatherly will and desire that we should live Let it suffice that we have been large if not abundant in these three chief ones First The giving of his Son to the World Secondly Dispatching the Gospel to the Gentiles And lastly The sending of his Spirit We come now to a view of the opposite trenches which lie pitched at the Gates of Hell obstinate and peremptory to besiege and take it Mans resolvedness and wilfulness to die my second part Why will you die There is no one conceit that engages us so deep to continue in sin that keeps us from repentance and hinders any seasonable Reformation of our wicked lives as a perswasion that God's will is a cause of all events Though we are not so blasphemous as to venture to define God the Author of sin yet we are generally inclined for a fancy that because all things depend on God's decree whatsoever we have done could not be otherwise all our care could not have cut off one sin from the Catalogue And so being resolved that when we thus sinned we could not chuse we can scarce tell how to repent for such necessary fatal misdemeanors the same excuses which we have for having sinned formerly we have for continuing still and so are generally better prepared for Apologies than Reformation Beloved it will certainly much conduce to our edification instead of this speculation whose grounds or truth I will not now examine to fix this practical theorem in our hearts that the will of man is the principal cause of all our evil that death either as it is the punishment of sin eternal death or as it is the sin it self a privation of the life of grace spiritual death is wholly to be imputed to our wilful will It is a Probleme in Aristotle why some Creatures are longer in conceiving and bringing forth than others and the sensiblest reason he gives for it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the hardness of the Womb which is like dry earth that will not presently give any nourishment to either seed or plant and so is it in the spiritual conception and production of Christ that is of life in us The hardness and toughness of the heart the womb where he is to be born that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that dry Earth in the Philosophers or that way-side or at best stony ground in Christs phrase is the only stop and delay in begetting of life within us the only cause of either barrenness or hard travail in the Spirit Be the brain never so soft and pliable never so waxy and capable of impressions yet if the heart be but carnal if it have any thing much of that lust of the flesh 1 John ii 15. in its composition it will be hard for the spiritual life to be conceived in that man For Faith the only means by which Christ lives and dwells in us Ephes iii. 17. is to be seated in the heart i. e. the will and affections according to the express words That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith So that be your brains never so swelled and puft up with perswasions of Christ our Saviour be they so big that they are ready to ly-in and travail of Christ as Jove's did of Minerva in the Poem yet if the heart have not joyned in the conception if the seed sown have not taken root and drawn nourishment from the will it is but an aerial or phantastical birth or indeed rather a disease or tympany nay though it come to some proof and afterward extend and increase in limbs and proportions never so speciously yet if it be only in the brain neither is this to be accounted solid nourishment augmentation but such as a Camaelion may be thought to have that feeds on air and it self is little better and in sum not growth but swellings So then if the will either by nature or custom of sinning by familiarity and acquaintance making them dote on sensual objects otherwise unamiable by business and worldly ambitious thoughts great enemies to faith or by pride and contentment both very incident to noble Personages and great Wits to Courtiers and Scholars In brief if this Will the stronger and more active part of the Soul remain carnal either in indulgence to many or which is the snare of judicious men in chief of some one prime sin then cannot all the faith in the world bring that man to Heaven it may
been so long frozen in sin and petrified even into Adamant Beloved as a man may come to such an estate of grace here that he may be most sure he shall not fall as St. Paul in likelihood was when he resolved that nothing could separate him So may a man be engaged so far in sin that there is no rescuing from the Devil There is an irreversible estate in evil as well as good and perhaps I may have arrived to that before my hour of death for I believe Pharaoh was come to it Exod. ix 34. after the seventh Plague hardning his heart and then I say it is possible that thou that hitherto hast gone on in habituate stupid customary rebellions mayest be now at this minute arrived to this pitch That if thou run on one pace farther thou art engaged for ever past recovery And therefore at this minute in the strength of your age and lusts this speech may be as seasonable as if death were seizing on you Why will you die At what time soever thou repentest God will have mercy but this may be the last instant wherein thou canst repent the next sin may benumb or fear thy heart that even the pangs of death shall come on thee insensibly that the rest of thy life shall be a sleep or lethargy and thou lie stupid in it till thou findest thy self awake in flames Oh if thou shouldst pass away in such a sleep Again I cannot tell you whether a death-bed repentance shall save you or no. The Spouse sought Christ on her bed but found him not Cant. iii. 1. The last of Ecclesiastes would make a man suspect that remembring God when our feeble impotent age comes on us would stand us in little stead Read it for it is a most learned powerful Chapter This I am sure of God hath chosen to himself a people Zealous of good works Tit. ii 14. And they that find not some of this holy fire alive within them till their Souls are going out have little cause to think themselves of God's election So that perhaps there is something in it that Matth. iii. 8. the Exhortation bring forth fruits worthy of repentance is exprest by a tense that ordinarily signifies time past 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 have brought forth fruits It will not be enough upon an exigence when there is no way but one with me to be inclinable to any good works to resolve to live well when I expect to die I must have done this and more too in my life if I expect any true comfort at my death There is not any point we err more familiarly in and easily than our spiritual condition what is likely to become of us after death Any slight phansie that Christ died for us in particular we take for a Faith that will be sure to save us Now there is no way to preserve our selves from this Error but to measure our Faith and Hopes by our Obedience that if we sincerely obey God then are we true believers And this cannot well be done by any that begins not till he is on his death-bed be his inclinations to good then never so strong his faith in Christ never so lusty yet how knows he whether it is only fear of death and a conviction that in spight of his teeth he must now sin no longer that hath wrought these inclinations produced this faith in him Many a sick man resolves strongly to take the Physicians dose in hope that it will cure him yet when he comes to taste its bitterness will rather die than take it If he that on his death-bed hath made his solemnest severest Vows should but recover to a possibility of enjoying those delights which now have given him over I much fear his fiercest resolutions would be soon out-dated Such inclinations that either hover in the Brain only or float on the Surface of the Heart are but like those wavering temporary thoughts Jam. i. 6. Like a wave of the Sea driven by the wind and tost they have no firmness or stable consistence in the Soul it will be hard to build Heaven on so slight a foundation All this I have said not to discourage any tender languishing Soul but by representing the horrors of death to you now in health to instruct you in the doctrine of Mortality betimes so to speed and hasten your Repentance Now as if to morrow would be too late as if there were but a small Isthmus or inch of ground between your present mirth and jollity and your everlasting earnest To gather up all on the Clue Christ is now offered to you as a Jesus The times and sins of your Heathenism and unbelief God winketh at Acts xvii 30. The Spirit proclaims all this by the Word to your hearts and now God knows if ever again commands all men every where to repent Oh that there were such a Spirit in our hearts such a zeal to our eternal bliss and indignation at Hell that we would give one heave and spring before we die that we would but answer those invitations of mercy those desires of God that we should live with an inclination with a breath with a sigh toward Heaven Briefly if there be any strong violent boisterous Devil within us that keeps possession of our hearts against God if the lower sensual part of our Soul if an habit of sin i. e. a combination or legion of Devils will not be over-topped by reason or grace in our hearts if a major part of our carnal faculties be still canvasing for Hell if for all our endeavors and pains it may appear to us that this kind of evil spirit will not be cast out save only by Fasting and Prayer Then have we yet that remedy left First To fast and pine and keep him weak within by denying him all foreign fresh Provision all new occasions of sin and the like and so to block and in time starve him up And then secondly To pray that God will second and fortifie our endeavours that he will force and rend and ravish this carnal Devil out of us that he will subdue our wills to his will that he will prepare and make ready life for us and us for life that he will prevent us by his grace here and accomplish us with his glory hereafter Now to him c. The VII Sermon JER v. 2. Though they say the Lord liveth surely they swear falsly NOt to waste any time or breath or which men in this delicate and effeminate Age are wont to be most sparing and thrifty of any part of your precious patience unprofitably but briefly to give you a guess whither our discourse is like to lead you We will severally lay down and sort to your view every word of the Text single and so we may gather them up again and apply them to their natural proper purposes First then the particle Though in the front and surely in the body of the Text are but bands
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to magnifie a vow then is the vow or resolution truly great that will stand us in stead when it is performed As for all others they remain as brands and monuments of reproach to us upbraiding us of our inconstancy first then of disobedience and withal as signs to warn that Gods strength is departed from us I doubt not but this strength being thus lost may return again before our death giving a plunge as it did in Samson when he pluckt the house about their ears at last Jude xvi But this must be by the growing out of the hair again verse 22. the renewing of his repentance and sanctity with his vow and by prayer unto God verse 28. Lord God or as the LXXII 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Remember me I pray thee and strengthen me but for all this it was said before in the 19. verse his strength and in the 20. verse the Lord was departed from him And so now doubt it may from us if we have no better security for our selves than the present possession and a dream of perpetuity For though no man can excommunicate himself by one rule yet he may by another in the Canon Law that there be some faults excommunicate a man ipso facto one who hath committed them the law excommunicates though the Judge do not you need not the application there be perhaps some sins and Devils like the Carian Scorpions which Apollonius and Antigonus mention out of Aristotle which when they strike strangers do them no great hurt 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 presently kill their own countrey-men some Devils perhaps that have power to hurt only their own subjects as sins of weakness and ignorance though they are enough to condemn an unregenerate man yet we hope through the merits of Christ into whom he is ingrafted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 shall do little hurt to the regenerate unless it be only to keep him humble to cost him more sighs and prayers But then saith the same Apollonius there your Labylonian snakes that are quite contrary do no great hurt to their own countrey-men but are present death to strangers and of this number it is to be feared may presumption prove and spiritual pride sins that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Devils natives ordinary habitual sinners need not much to fear but to the stranger and him that is come from far thinking himself as S. Paul was dropt out of the third Heaven and therefore far enough from the infernal countrey 't is to be feared I say they may do much mischief to them And therefore as Porphyry sayes of Plotinus in his life and that for his commendation that he was not ashamed to suck when he was eight years old but as he went to the Schools frequently diverted to his nurse so will it concern us for the getting of a consistent firm habit of soul not to give over the nurse when we are come to age and years in the spirit to account our selves babes in our virility and be perpetually a calling for the dug the sincere milk of the word of the Sacraments of the Spirit and that without any coyness or shame be we in our own conceits nay in the truth never so perfect full grown men in Christ Jesus And so much be spoken of the first point proposed the Pharisees flattering misconceit of his own estate and therein implicitely of the Christians premature deceivable perswasions of himself 1. thinking well of ones self on what grounds soever 2. overprizing of his own worth and graces 3. his opinion of the consistency and immutability of his condition without either thought of what 's past or fear of what 's to come Many other misconceits may be observed if not in the Pharisee yet in his parallel the ordinary confident Christian as 1. that Gods decree of election is terminated in their particular and individual entities without any respect to their qualifications and demeanors 2. That all Christian faith is nothing but assurance a thing which I toucht 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the preface and can scarce forbear now I meet with it again 3. That the Gospel consists all of promises of what Christ will work in us no whit of precepts or prohibitions 4. That it is a state of ease altogether and liberty no whit of labour and subjection but the Pharisee would take it ill if we should digress thus far and make him wait for us again at our return We hasten therefore to the second part the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or natural importance of the words and there we shall find him standing apart and thanking God only perhaps in complement his posture and language give notice of his pride the next thing to be toucht upon Pride is a vice either 1. in our natures 2. in our educations or 3. taken upon us for some ends the first is a disease of the soul which we are inclined to by nature but actuated by a full diet and inflation of the soul through taking in of knowledge virtue or the like which is intended indeed for nourishment for the soul but through some vice in the digestive faculty turns all into air and vapours and windiness whereby the soul is not fed but distended and not fill'd but troubled and even tortured out of it self To this first kind of pride may be accommodate many of the old fancies of the Poets and Philosophers the Gyants fighting with God i. e. the ambitious daring approaches of the soul toward the unapproachable light which cost the Angels so dear and all mankind in Eve when she ventured to taste of the tree of knowledge Then the fancy of the heathens mentioned by Athenagoras that the souls of those gyants were Devils that 't is the Devil indeed that old serpent that did in Adams time and doth since animate and actuate this proud soul and set it a moving And Philoponus saith that winds and tumours i. e. lusts and passions those troublesom impressions in the soul of man are the acceptablest sacrifices the highest feeding to the Devils nay to the very damned in Hell who rejoyce as heartily to hear of the conversion of one vertuous or learned man to the Devil of such a brave proselyte I had almost said as the Angels in Heaven at the repentance and conversion of a sinner This is enough I hope to make you keep down this boyling and tumultuousness of the soul lest it make you either a prey or else companions for Devils and that 's but a hard choice nay a man had far better be their food than their associates for then there might be some end hoped for by being devoured but that they have a villanous quality in their feeding they bite perpetually but never swallow all jaws and teeth but neither throats nor stomachs which is noted perhaps by that phrase in the Psalmist Death gnaweth upon the wicked is perpetually a gnawing but never devours
can be required of a Christian they look no farther then the outward work observe not what heart is under this outside but resolve their estate is safe they have as much interest in Heaven as any one Such men as these the Apostle begins to character and censure in the 12. verse of the Chapter As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh c. They that stand only on a fair specious out-side and think all the sap and life of Religion lies in the bark they do this and this these will have you circumcised and constrain you to a many burthensome ceremonies measuring out Religion to you by the weight thus much is required of you to do as Popish Confessors set their deluded votaries their task of Ave Maries and Pater nosters by tale and thus you may be sure to be saved In brief the Apostle here shews the unprofitableness of all these and sets up the inward sanctity and renewedness of heart against them all as the only thing that will stand us in stead and appear to be of any weight in the balance of the sanctuary If you observe all the commands and submit your selves to all the burden of both Law and Gospel and bear it upon your shoulders never so valiantly if you be content to be circumcised as Christ was or because he hath now abrogated that make use of Christian liberty and remain uncircumcised notwithstanding all inducements to the contrary In brief be you outwardly never so severe a Jew or Christian all that is nothing worth there is but one thing most peremptorily required of you and that you have omitted For neither circumcision availeth any thing neither uncircumcision but a new creature The particle but in the front of my Text is exclusive and restrictive it excludes every thing in the world from pretending to avail any thing from being believed to do us any good For by circumcision the Church of the Jews and by uncircumcision the whole profession of Christian Religion being understood when he saith neither of these availeth any thing he forcibly implies that all other means all professions all observances that men think or hope to get Heaven by are to no purpose and that by consequence it exactly restrains to the new creature there it is to be had and no where else thus doth he slight and undervalue and even reprobate all other wayes to Heaven that he may set the richer price and raise a greater estimation in us of this The substance of all the Apostles discourse and the ground-work of mine shall be this one Aphorism Nothing is efficaciously available to salvation but a renewed regenerated heart For the opening of which we will examine by way of doctrine wherein this new creature consists and then by way of use the necessity of that and unprofitableness of all other plausible pretending means and first of the first wherein this new creature consists 'T is observable that our state of nature and sin is in Scripture exprest ordinarily by old age the natural sinful man that is all our natural affections that are born and grow up with us are called the old man as if since Adams fall we were decrepit and feeble and aged as soon as born as a child begotten by a man in a consumption never comes to the strength of a man is alwayes weak and crazy and puling hath all the imperfections and corporal infirmities of age before he is out of his Infancy And according to this ground the whole Analogy of Scripture runs all that is opposite to the old decrepit state to the dotage of nature is phrased new The new Covenant Mark i. 27. The language of believers new tongues Mark xvi 17. A new commandment John xiii 34. A new man Ephes ii 15. In sum the state of grace is exprest by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all is become new 2 Cor. v. 17. So that old and new as it divides the Bible the whole state of things the world so it doth that to which all these serve man every natural man which hath nothing but nature in him is an old man be he never so young is full of years even before he is able to tell them Adam was a perfect man when he was but a minute old and all his children are old even in the cradle nay even dead with old age Eph. ii 5. And then consequently every spiritual man which hath somewhat elsé in him then he received from Adam he that is born from above John iii. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for it may be so rendred from the original as well as born again as our English read it he that is by Gods spirit quickned from the old death Ephes ii 5. he is contrary to the former a new man a new creature the old Eagle hath cast his beak and is grown young the man when old has entred the second time into his mothers womb and is born again all the gray hairs and wrinkles fall off from him as the scales from blind Tobits eyes and he comes forth a refin'd glorious beauteous new creature you would wonder to see the change So that you find in general that the Scripture presumes it that there is a renovation a casting away of the old coat a youth and spring again in many men from the old age and weak bed-rid estate of nature Now that you may conceive wherein it consists how this new man is brought forth in us by whom it is conceived and in what womb 't is carried I will require no more of you then to observe and understand with me what is meant by the ordinary phrase in our Divines a new principle or inward principle of life and that you shall do briefly thus A mans body is naturally a sluggish unactive motionless heavy thing not able to stir or move the least animal motion without a soul to enliven it without that 't is but a carcass as you see at death when the soul is separated from it it returns to be but a stock or lump of flesh the soul bestows all life and motion on it and enables it to perform any work of nature Again the body and soul together considered in relation to somewhat above their power and activity are as impotent and motionless as before the body without the soul Set a man to remove a mountain and he will heave perhaps to obey your command but in event will do no more towards the displacing of it then a stone in the street could do but now let an omnipotent power be annext to this man let a supernatural spirit be joyned to this soul and then will it be able to overcome the proudest stoutest difficulty in nature You have heard in the primitive Church of a grain of faith removing mountains and believe me all miracles are not yet out-dated The work of regeneration the bestowing of a spiritual life on one
expect to be called from the depth of sin to regeneracy and salvation Although Saul being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the chief of sinners was called and saved yet Saul was also in another sense for ought we read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and perhaps the last that from so great a riot of sin obtained so great salvation Wherefore O sinner be not presumptuous from Pauls example but from Pauls single example begin to suspect thy state and fear that such a miracle of salvation shall not be afforded thee There hath been an opinion of late reviv'd perhaps original among the Romans that the greatest sinner is the more likely object of Gods mercy or subject of his grace then the mere moral man whom either natural fear or the like not spiritual respects hath restrained from those out-rages of sin The being of this opinion in the primitive Romans and the falseness of it is sufficiently prov'd by that expostulation of St. Paul Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound God forbid In answer to some who hearing that Christ came into the world to save sinners thought that the excess of sin was the best qualification and only motive to provoke and deserve a more abundant grace and certain salvation As if that spirit which once to manifest its power called Saul in the midst of his madness breathing out threatnings and slaughters against the Church would not call any but those who had prepared themselves by the same degree of madness but required that men should make themselves almost Devils that they might be called into Christians as if that God which could out of stones could not also out of men raise up children unto Abraham as if that Christ which raised up Lazarus being dead four dayes and as they thought stinking in his grave could not as easily have heal'd him whilst he was yet alive whereas we read that Christ dealt more on the cures of the impotent then resurrections of the dead that is in a spiritual application heal'd more from the bed of languishment of their weaknesses and diseases then he raised out of the graves of trespasses and sins though some also hath he out of death quickned to exalt the power and miracle of his mercy Yet hath not this doctrine too been most confidently maintained among some of our times That there is more hope of the debauch'd man that he shall be called or saved then of the mere moral honest man who yet is in the state of unregeneracy Have not some men defining this moral man by the formal hypocrite set him in the greatest opposition to Heaven As if that degree of innocence or rather not being extremely sinful which a moral care of our wayes may bestow on us were a greater hindrance then promotion toward the state of grace and the natural man were so much the further from God the nearer he were to goodness and no man could hope to come to Heaven but he that had knockt at Hell gates I confess indeed that the Holy Ghost where he means to inhabit hath no need of pains to prepare him a room but can at his first knock open and cleanse adorn and beautifie the most uncouth ugly and unsavory heart in the world That omnipotent convincing Spirit can at the same instant strike the most obdurate heart and soften it and where it once enters cannot be repuls'd by the most sturdy habituate sin or Deval I confess likewise that some have been thus rather snatch'd then call'd like the fire-brands out of the fire and by an extasie of the Spirit inwardly in a minute chang'd from incarnate Devils into incarnate Saint So was Mary dispossest of seven Devils who was after so highly promoted in Christs favour that she had the honor to be the first witness of the resurrection So that Gadarene who had intrencht and fortified himself among the Tombs and was garrison'd with an army of Devils so that he brake fetters and chains and could not be tam'd or kept in any compass yet in a minute at Christs word sent forth a legion of Fiends sufficient to people and destroy a Colony of Swine And so was Paul in my Text in a minute at Christs call delivered of a multitude of blasphemous malicious spirits and straight became the joy of Angels the Apostle of the Gentiles Yet mean time these miraculous but rarer examples must not prescribe and set up must not become a rule and encourage any one to Sauls madness on confidence of Pauls conversion to a more impetuous course of sinning that he may become a more glorious Saints 'T is a wrong way to Heaven to dig into the deep and a brutish arrogance to hope that God will the more eagerly woo us the further our sins have divorc't us from him If some as hath been said have been caught or strucken in the height of their rebellions or in the fulness of the evil spirit called to a wane as diseases in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or top-pitch are wont to decay and weaken into health again if there have been some of these as my Apostle rais'd from the depth of sin as Lazarus from the stench of the grave yet these in respect of others more softly and ordinarily called are found few in number and such as were appointed for the miracles as well as the objects of Gods mercy Hence it is that a strange disorder hath most times accompanied this extraordinary conversion of more violent outragious sinners Our Apostle to go no farther was to be cast into a trance and his regeneration not to be accomplisht without a kind of death and resurrection whereas others who are better morally qualified or rather are less hardned in the sins of unregeneracy do answer at the softest knock or whispering'st call of the Spirit and at his becken will come after him More might be said of this point how St. Paul was most notably converted that he had the alleviation of ignorance for which cause as he sayes himself he found mercy and that others are not probably to expect the like miracle who have not those insuperable prepossessions from custom and religion but that this is not the business of the Text but a praecognoscendum or passage to the clearing of it Briefly therefore to conclude this note Paul is the chief example mentioned in Scripture and there be not many though some more that were called from the height of impiety from the gall of bitterness to this mystical third Heaven or so high degree of Saint and Apostle The more ordinary course of Gods proceeding if we may possibly judge of the Decree by events and examples is to call such to the state of grace and so consequently of glory who have passed their unregeneracy most innocently and kept themselves least polluted from the stains of habituate wickedness that is have lived as much as natural men can do in the plainest honestest course of morality it being presupposed that
It makes him apply himself c. we mean not that the encrease of sin produces faith formally but only inciteth to believe by way of instruction by shewing us what distress we are in and consequently in what a necessity of a deliverer The meditation of our sinful courses may disclose our misery not redress it may explore not mend a sinner like a touchstone to try not any way to alter him It is the controuling Spirit which must effectually renew our spirits and lead us to the Christ which our sins told us we had need of The sense of sin may rouze the soul but it is the Spirit of God that layes the toils the feeling of our guilt may beat the waters but it is the great fisher of our souls which spreads the nets which entraps us as we are in our way to Hell and leads us captive to salvation The mere gripings of our Conscience being not produced by any Pharmacon of the spirit but by some distemper arising from sin what anxiety doth it cause within us What pangs and twinges to the soul O Lord do thou regenerate us and then thy Holy Spirit shall sanctifie even our sins unto our good and if thy grace may lead us our sins shall pursue and drive us unto Christ Secondly by way of character how to distinguish a true convert from a false A man which from an inveterate desperate malady shall meet with a miraculous unexpected cure will naturally have some art of expression above an ordinary joy you shall see him in an extasie of thanksgiving and exultancy whilst another which was never in that distress quietly enjoys the same health and gives thanks softly by himself to his preserver So is it in the distresses of the soul which if they have been excessive and almost beyond hope of recovery as the miracle must so will the expression of this deliverance be somewhat extraordinary The soul which from a good moral or less sinful natural estate is magis immutata quam genita rather chang'd then regenerate into a spiritual goes through this business without any great noise the Spirit entring into it in a still small voice or at a breathing but when a robustous obdurate sinner shall be rather apprehended then called when the Sea shall be commanded to give up his ship-wrack't and the Sepulchre to restore her dead the soul surely which thus escapeth shall not be content with a mean expression but will practice all the Hallelujahs and Magnificats which the triumphant Liturgies of the Saints can afford it Wherefore I say if any one out of a full violent course of sinning conceive himself converted and regenerated let him examine what a degree of spiritual exultancy he hath attained to and if he find it but mean and slight and perfunctory let him somewhat suspect that he may the more confirm the evidence of his calling Now this spiritual exultancy of the regenerate consists both in a solemn humiliation of himself and a spiritual rejoycing in God his Saviour both exprest in Maries Magnificat where she specifies in the midst of her joy the lowliness of his handmaid and in St. Pauls victory-song over death So that if the conversion of an inordinate sinner be not accompanied with unwonted joy and sorrow with a godly sense of his past distress and a godly triumph for his delivery if it be not followed with a violent eagerness to fasten on Christ finally if there be not somewhat above ordinary in the expression then I counsel not to distrust but fear that is with a sollicitous not suspicious trembling to labour to make thy calling and election sure to pray to that Holy Spirit to strike our hearts with a measure of holy joy and holy sorrow some way proportionable to the size of those sins which in our unregeneracy reigned in us and for those of us whom our sins have separated far from him but his grace hath called home to him that he will not suffer us to be content with a distance but draw us close unto himself make us press toward the mark and fasten our selves on that Saviour which hath redeemed us from the body and guilt of this so great death The third Use is of comfort and confirmation to some tender souls who are incorporated into Christ yet finding not in themselves that excessive measure of humiliation which they observe in others suspect their own state and infinitely grieve that they can grieve no more Whereas this doctrine being observed will be an allay to their sorrow and wipe some unnecessary tears from their eyes For if the greatness of sin past or the plentiful relicks of sin remaining do require so great a measure of sorrow to expiate the one and subdue the other if it be a deliverance from an habituate servitude to all manner of sin which provokes this extraordinary pains of expression then certainly they who have been brought up with the spirit which were from their baptism never wholly deprived of it need not to be bound over to this trade of sorrow need not to be set apart to that perpetual humiliation which a more stubborn sin or Devil is wont to be cast out by I doubt not but a soul educated in familiarity with the spirit may at once enjoy her self and it and so that if it have an humble conceit of it self and a filial of God may in earth possess God with some clearness of look some serenity of affections some alacrity of heart and tranquility of spirit God delights not in the torment of his children though some are so to be humbled yea he delights not in such burnt offerings as they bestow upon him who destroy and consume and sacrifice themselves but the Lords delight is in them that fear him filially and put their trust i. e. assurance confidence in his mercy in them that rejoyce that make their service a pleasure not an affliction and thereby possess Heaven before they come to it 'T is observed in husbandry that soil laid on hard barren starved ground doth improve it and at once deface and enrich it which yet in ground naturally fruitful and kept in heart and good case is esteemed unnecessary and burthensome You need not the application Again the husbandman can mend a dry stubborn wayward fruitless earth by overflowing of it and on such indeed is his ordinary requisite discipline to punish it for its amendment But there is a ground otherwise well tempered which they call a weeping ground whence continually water soaks out and this proves seldom fruitful if our learned husbandmen observe aright whereof there is sometime need of draining as well as watering The application is that your soul which either hath been naturally dry and barren or else over-wrought in the business of the world needs a flood of tears to soften and purge it But the well temper'd soul which hath never been out of heart but hath alwayes had some inward life some fatness of
straight she applies it to her self which was the point we undertook to shew The direct use of this Proposition is for a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or judgment of our estate 'T is observed in the body that the rest of the senses may be distempered and lost without impairing of it but only the touch cannot which therefore they call the sense of life because that part or body which is deprived of feeling is also at deaths door and hath no more life in it then it hath reliques of this sense So is it also in spiritual matters of all other symptomes this of senslesness is most dangerous and as the Greek Physicians are wont to say of a desperate disease 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 very very mortal This feeling tenderness is necessary to the life of grace and is an inseparable both effect and argument of it Wherefore I say for the judgment of your selves observe how every piece of Scripture works upon you If you can pass over a Catalogue of sins and judgments without any regret or reluctancy if you can read Sodom and Gomorrah Babylon and the Harlot Jerusalem and not be affected with their stories if thou canst be the Auditor of other mens faults without any sense or griping of thine own if the name of sin or sinner be unto thee but as a jest or fable not worthy thy serious notice then fear thy affections want of that temper which the softning spirit is wont to bestow where it rests and accordingly as thou findest this tenderness increasing or waining in thee either give thanks or pray either give thanks for the plenty of that spirit which thou enjoyest or in the sense of thy wants importune it that God will give us softned relenting hearts that the recital of other mens sins may move us other mens judgments may strike us other mens repentance melt us with a sense with a confession with a contrition of our own But above all O Holy Spirit from hardness of heart from an undiscerning reprobate spirit from a contempt nay neglect a not observing of thy Word as from the danger of hell Good Lord deliver us And thus much of this point of this effect of a tender heart noted to you out of the cadence of the words I now come to observe somewhat more real out of the main of the words themselves Of whom c. We find not our Apostle here complementing with himself either excusing or attenuating his guilt but as it were glorying in the measure of his sins striving for preeminence above all other sinners challenging it as his right and as eager upon the preferment as his fellow labourer Peter his successor for a Primacy as he professes of all Bishops yea the whole Church so our Apostle here Of all sinners I am the chief The note briefly is this That every one is to aggravate the measure and number of his sins against himself and as near as he can observe how his guilt exceedeth other mens This was St. Pauls practise and our pattern not to be gazed on but followed not to be discust but imitated In the discourse whereof I shall not labour to prove you the necessity of this practise which yet I might do out of Davids example in his penitential Psalms especially 51. out of Nehemiahs confession and the like but taking this as supposed I shall rather mix doctrine and reason and use altogether in prescribeing some forms of aggravating our selves to our selves yet not descending to a particular dissection of sin into all its parts but dealing only on general heads equally appliable to all men briefly reducible to these two 1. Original sin or the sin of our nature of which we are all equally guilty 2. Personal sin grounded in and terminated to each mans person For Original sin it is the Fathers complaint and ought more justly to be ours of these times that there is no reckoning made of it 't is seldom thought worthy to supply a serious place in our humiliation 't is mentioned only for fashions sake and as it were to stop Gods mouth and to give him satisfaction or palliate the guilt of our wilful rebellions not on any real apprehension that its cure and remedy in Baptism is a considerable benefit or the remanant weakness after the killing venom is abated were more then a trivial disadvantage So that we have a kind of need of original clearness of understanding to judge of the foulness of original sin and we cannot sufficiently conceive our los without some recovery of those very faculties we forfeited in it But that we may not be wilfully blind in a matter that so imports us that we may understand somewhat of the nature and dangerous condition of this sin you must conceive Adam who committed this first sin in a doub'e respect either as one particular man or as containing in his loyns the whole nature of man all mankind which should ever come from him Adams particular sin i. e. his personal disobedience is wonderfully aggravated by the Fathers 1. from his original justice which God had bestowed on him 2. from the near familiarity with God which he enjoyed and then lost 3. from the perpetual blest estate which had it not been for this disobedience he might for ever have lived in 4. from the purity and integrity of his Will which was then void of all sinful desire which otherwise might have tempted to this disobedience 5. from the easiness of both remembring and observing the Commandment it being a short prohibition and only to abstain from one tree where there was such plenty besides 6. from the nature and circumstances of the offence by which the Fathers do refer it to all manner of most hainous sins making it to contain a breach of almost each moral law all which were then written in the tables of his heart and therefore concluding it to be an aggregate or mixture of all those sins which we have since so reiterated and so many times sinn'd over So then this personal sin of Adam was of no mean size not to be reckoned of as an every days offence as an ordinary breach or the meer eating of an apple In the next place as Adam was no private person but the whole humane nature so this sin is to be considered either in the root or in the fruit in its self or in its effects In its self so all mankind and every particular man is and in that name must humble himself as concerned in the eating of that fruit which only Adams teeth did fasten on is to deem himself bound to be humbled for that pride that curiosity that disobedience or whatsoever sin else can be contained in that first great transgression and count you this nothing to have a share in such a sin which contains such a multitude of rebellions T' is not a slight perfunctory humiliation that can expiate not a small labour that can destroy this monster which
prepossession that it outruns all other computations of our life We carry a body of sin about us before we have one of flesh have a decrepit weak old man with all his crazy train of affections and lusts before even infancy begins Behold saith the Psalmist Psal li. 5. I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me as if guilt were the plastick power that formed us and wickedness the Minera and Element of our being as if it were that little moving point which the curious enquirers into nature find to be the rudiment of animation and pants not then for life but lust and endless death So that the saying of St. James chap. i. 15. seems a description of our natural birth When lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death Nor does this hasty inmate leave us when grown up no it improves its rancour against God and goodness mixes with custom passion and example and whatever thing is apt to lead us unto mischief somenting all the wild desires of our inferior brutal part till it become at last an equal and profest enemy making open hostility setting up its sconces fortifying it self with munition and defence as meaning to try the quarrel with God and pretending right to man whom God doth but usurp Thus shall you see it encampt and settingup its banners for tokens under that proud name of another law Rom. vii 23. I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and as if it had got the better of the day bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in the members i. e. unto its self And shall we feel such an enemy within us laying siege at God and grace in us and fiercely resolving whether by deceit or battery to captivate us unto himself and shall we not take notice of him Shall we not think it worthy our pains and expence to defeat him or secure our selves Beloved that will be the best stratagem for the taking of this enemy which is now adays most ordinary in sieges to block up all passages and hinder all access of fresh provision and so by denying this greedy devourer all nourishment from without to starve and pine him into such a tameness that he may be taken without resistance which how really you may perform by these means of mortification and repentance prescribed you in Scripture you shall better learn by your own practice then my discourse The fourth aggravation of this guilt is that is that its minera and fewel lurks even in a regenerate man wretched c. and enforceth Paul into a conflict a war against himself And is it possible for one otherwise happy as the regenerate man inwardly surely is to sleep securely and never to try a field with the Author of its so much misery or finding it to be within its self part of it self not to think it a sin worthy repentance and sorrow by which Gods Holy Spirit is so resisted so affronted and almost quelled and cast out Fifthly and lastly the guilt of it appears by the effects of it 1. inclination 2. consent to evil for even every inclination to sin without consent is an irregularity and kind of sin i. e. an aversion of some of our faculties from God all which should directly drive amain to him and goodness That servant which is commanded with all speed and earnestness to go about any thing offends against his Masters precept if he any way incline to disobedience if he perform his commands with any regret or reluctancy Now secondly consent is so natural a consequent of this evil inclination that in a man you can scarce discern much less sever them No man hath any inordinate lust but doth give some kind of consent to it the whole will being so infected with this lust that that can no sooner bring forth evil motions but this will be ready at hand with evil desires and then how evident a guilt how plain a breach of the law it is you need not mine eyes to teach you Thus have I insisted somewhat largely on the branches of Original sin which I have spread and stretcht the wider that I might furnish you with more variety of aggravations on each member of it which I think may be of important use for this or any other popular Auditory because this sin ordinarily is so little thought of even in our solemnest humiliations When you profess that you are about the business of repentance you cannot be perswaded that this common sin which Adam as you reckon only sinned hath any effect on you I am yet afraid that you still hardly believe that you are truly and in earnest to be sorry for it unless the Lord strike our hearts with an exact sense and profest feeling of this sin of our nature and corruption of our kind And suffer us not O Lord to nourish in our selves such a torpor a sluggishness and security lest it drive us headlong to all manner of hard-heartedness to commit actual sins and that even with greediness And so I come briefly to a view of each mans personal sins I am the chief where I might rank all manner of sins into some forms or seats and then urge the deformity of each of them single and naked to your view but I will for the present presume your understandings sufficiently instructed in the hainousness of each sin forbidden by the Commandments For others who will make more or less sins then the Scripture doth I come not to swatisfie them or decide their Cases of Conscience In brief I will propose to your practice only two forms of confessing your sins and humbling your selves for them which I desire you to aggravate to your selves because I have not now the leisure to beat them low or deep to your consciences Besides original sin already spoken of you are to lay hard to your own charges 1. your particular chief sins 2. all your ordinary sins in gross For the first observe but that one admirable place in Solomons Prayer at the dedication of the Temple If there be in the land famine c. Whatsoever plague whatsoever sickness what prayer or supplication soever be made by any man or by all thy people Israel which shall know every man the plague of his own heart and spread forth his hand to this house then hear thou in Heaven c. Where the condition of obtaining their requests from God is excellently set down if they shall know i. e. be sensible of be sorry for and confess to God every man the plague of his own heart that is in the bulk and heap of their sins shall pick the fairest loveliest sin in the pack the plague i. e. the pestilential reigning sweeping offence on which all the lower train of petty faults do wait and depend do minister and suppeditate matter to work If I say they shall take this