delight which can be no less than a Paradise of pleasure unto them But yet that they now are already in that happy place or in the actual fruition of that full happiness and glory which shall hereafter give them the fulness of their reward this the Scriptures do not seem to teach nor the Eatheâ— to affirmâ— but a great consnt of both may he rather sound to the contrary Of those that departed this life before the coming of Christ our Lord in the flesh or his going away again and ascending into the highest Heavens 〈…〉 as the Apostle speaks unto the Hebrews that of the same Apostle may not be denied All these died and received not the promises but behold them a far off And that very beholding holding was their refreshing it seems in that place of rest where they lay after death as it were at anchor in a calm and quiet Harbour free from those winds and tempests wherewith they were beaten whilst they stood off at Sea in the painful Navigation of this life for so the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Greek and sinus in the Latine may import and so Theophylact doth expound Abrahams Bay as well as Abrahams Bosome But yet though at rest they as yet saith he received not the promises and he gives his reason for it too God having provided some better thing for us that they without us should not be made perfect Which reason too will serve for all others that died since the Ascension of our Saviour For as it was not convenient they should be made perfect without us so neither that we our selves should be made perfect without the rest of our brethren If any were so who sooner than the Souls of those Saints and Martyrs that refused not even death for Christ and his Gospel And yet even these are arrayed only in white Robes as Candidati and ready drest in their wedding apparrel for the marriage of the Lamb but are willed withal to rest a while until their fellow servants and the rest of their brethren to be slain likewise should be fulfilled also That so all might be perfected together and by three degrees according to the three estates of life death and judgment draw on unto the fulness of that perfection as having a good hopâ— in life infallible assurance in death and plenary possession at the resurrection In life here we walk by Faith we see not God In the estate after death we see him but afar off as the Apostle speaks but at the Resurrection face to face Here in this world we lie as cripples in Solomons Porch but cured by the name of Jesus death carrieth us into the body of the Temple where we are leaping for joy exulting and praising God but the day of Christ will draw the Veil lead us into the Holy of Holies where God himself dwells between the Cherubins Lastly now upon earth we are Militant Pugnatoâ—es wrestlers and warriours in death we are declared Victours and Conquerors but in the resurrection triumphant and crowned even with that Crown of Righteousness which the Lord the just Judge will give saith St. Paul in die illo in that day laid up indeed before as he there speaks but not before that day it seems to be given but then it shall for then he shall reward c. The like on the other side may well be conceived of the wicked their Souls asâ— soon as departed enter into sorrows and torments the worm that shall never die begins presently to feed upon them but drench'd it seems as yet they are not in that lake of fire which shall never be quenched and will be the fulness of their reward The Devils themselves are not yet there and therefore are bold to say unto our Saviour Art thou come to torment us aâ—te tempâ—â— before our time A set time sure there is appointed for that In the interim as the Crown is reserved for the Righteous so these and all their Adherents are reserved it seems unto that day which shall give them the full accomplishment of their sorrows So St. Jude Reserved in chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day This they all know and cannot without horrour think of it They believe therefore saith St. James and tremble And so likewise all other the Spirits lewd and diabolical people they understand their final and fearful doom already on which their condemning thoughts do perpetually feed not without infinite regret indignation and fury and so though locally seated in Hell yet as yet scalding there and burning only in the flames that arise from their own bosoms But when that great day shall once come and the Son of Man appear in his glory then shall that old Dragon the deceiver with all those apostate people whom he hath deceived and are not written in the Book of the Lamb be thrown into that Lake burning with fire and brimstone Yea death and Hell too shall be cast into that Lake Hell to shew that all they who are now there in custody shall then be thrown into that Lake as into the Center tower-ward and Dungeon of that fearful Prison And death too to signify their immortality there in a perpetual dying life and everlasting living death even for ever and ever And death and Hell were cast into that Lake of fire For now the time of full Retribution is come this is the great day of reward and there is no other To that then let us pass with my Text from the time to the reward it self Then he shall reward c. This word of Reward seems to stick in the Jaws of many men at least to come forth fumbling between their Teeth as if they did not very well like it But whether they like it or no so the Scriptures often speak and accordingly we must be content to receive them The truth is there are extreams in this point as in most others lyable unto dispute and controversy and Verity like Virtue lies in the golden mean between both For some are wholly and totally all for reward and no Grace unless it be a stock of Grace whereby they may condignly merit the reward Others again can away with no Reward at all but will have all of meer Grace when the truth consists in a mixture compounded of both neither totally grace nor meerly reward but merces gratiosa a gracious Reward And that not only in regard of the Grace first given but of the work too it self that is to be rewarded The former take Heaven to be as fully merited by the works of the Righteous as Hell is deserved by the sins of the wicked The latter suppose Heaven to be meerly a free gift and in the consequences of their Positions make Hell as free a Collation as the Kingdom of Heaven Both seem to be equally out and not much unequally to share both truth and errour between them For thus much I conceive is clear and
Israel words of great compassion and learn to condemn our selves and our own sins in the evil we suffer when it doth strike Thou hast destroyed thy self And to bless and adore God for all the good we either do or receive when in special mercy it doth not strike but in me is thy help O Israel thou hast destroyed thy self but c. But Israel is a word that wants not ambiguities for all are not Israel that are of Israel There are Israelites of the seed and Israelites of the Faith of Abraham There are Sons of flesh and Sons of the promise and Israel is the Church of God the womb that conceives and bears both Duoe Gentes in utero It is Rebekahs womb in which Jacob and Esau and in them two mighty Nations do contend and strive It is the Net in the Gospel that contains things both good and bad The Fold that hath Sheep and Goats The Field that hath Tares and Wheat The Barn-floor that hath Wheat and Chaff So then to collect the sum and substance of those points which this Scripture doth especially present unto consideration Here are first two sorts of people the Good and the Bad Elect and Reprobate implied in Israel Secondly the two several Ends of those two sorts Life and Death Destruction and Salvation for the help here may be none other than help from destruction and that can be nothing else than Salvation and so some Translations render it And lastly the two several causes of those ends God and Man God of life Man of death God the cause of Salvation unto the Elect and the Reprobate the cause of destruction unto themselves whereby neither those that are saved may sacrifice unto their own Nets nor they which perish lay any blame on his decrees these being no less deprived of all excuse than those bereaved of all boasting O Israel thou hast c. That these words may have a true and litteral understanding of Calamities and Deliverances incident unto this present life that which immediately goes before in the precedent verse I will meet them as a Bear bereaved of her whelps c. will not suffer any Man to doubt But that they are only and principally meant of such and not of eternal destruction and Salvation in them that which follows will permit no man to believe I will ransome them from the power of the grave I will redeem them from death O death I will be thy plague O grave I will be thy destruction words that do not carry a sound of momentany affliction And therefore this illustrious promise or Prophecy or both by the Apostle to the Corinthians is repeated and worthily appropriated unto him who is the Saviour of Body and Soul and hath redeemed us from first and second both Corporal and Eternal death The more deservedly is Pâ—scator otherwise a Learned and Industrious Pastor to be blamed who in a late and negligent tract of Predestination having so ordered the state of Reprobation as he saw God thereby must needs become the first Author and Procurer of his Creatures endless destruction lest this place here Oh Israel thou hast destroyed thy self should cross his intent or hinder his building replies that it is meant of such destruction only as pertains unto the present World as if there were not one and the same cause of destruction in both nay as if it were more prejudicial unto God and his Justice to be the absolute cause of slight and short troubles here than of perpetual and everlasting sorrows in Hell hereafter It is strange he should rather seek an answer than acknowledge the truth of so excellent a sentence A sentence that is indeed the very line and level whereby himself and every one else must direct and square all his propositions that concern those eternal appointments and decrees of a just and merciful God It is the best if not the only Star and Card and Compass too on which the weak age of reason must continually fix it self whilst it Steers in this dangerous Navigation in this immense and bottomless Sea of Predestination in which Abyssus Abyssum invocat one Deep calls upon another Deep upon Deep and Rock upon Rock so thick that in seeking to avoid the one unless this Golden Rule be our direction we shall be sure to strike and split upon the other as many that have sailed before us have done whose Bark and burthen should never have perished had this notable Saying sate Pilot at the Helm by whose shipwrack we may learn wisdom to beware For some of the first and best Reformers of the Roman Superstition justly displeased at the Pelagian freedom of the Papist whereby Man is made the first mover unto his own good striving with all their might to bear up from this Charybdis fell foul upon Sylla on the other side and instead of Pelagian liberty brought in more than Manichean necessity whereby God is as far intitled unto Mans ill Both in extreams and both extreamly to be blamed the former being not able fully to say In thee is our Salvation unto God the latter Thou hast destroyed thy self unto Man Arminius of late an Acute Dutchman steps forth to reform these Reformers whose main Errour notwithstanding which he should have condemned especially he is found especially to imitate fleying where he should but sheer and flying from one extream to another when the truth lies between both For as they upon a worthy dislike of a conditional Election upon foreseen merits through heat or ignorance come to maintain an absolute Reprobation so he out of his as worthy dislike of this Iron and Adamantine decree of absolute Reprobation without demerits fell back again unto conditional Election In both both of them equally erring the truth lying equally distant from both so as it is not easie to judge Election upon good works being derogatory to the freeness of Gods mercy and Reprobation without evil unto the Truth of his Justice whether contains the greater impiety The one gives too much unto Man in the work of Salvation The other too much unto God in the means of damnation My Text convinceth both the former in the latter part and the latter in the former O Israel thou hast destroyed thy self but in me is thy help And as in Errours so are their portions not much unequal in Truth For Arminius election upon foresight and his Adversaries absolute reprobation are not more false than their absolute Election and his Reprobation upon foresight are as I conceive it apparently true which is not the least reason that they which are brethren and friends in all other points sweetly conspiring against the common Enemy should with such violent affections enter into this Civil War amongst themselves For there is no stronger nourishment unto mutual perswasion than when either side shall behold some demonstrative truths in his own and as gross and palpable errours in the others opinion It can hardly chuse but beget prejudice and
another How did that one word of the Witch strike Saul thorough and thorough leaving him tumbling on the earth in a swoon To morrow by this time thou and thy sons shall be with me so bitter indeed is the remembrance even of bodily death unto those that have no spiritual life in their Souls But what misery may we think will there be in the enduring and suffering of that whose only expectation is so fearful Sad and fearful is the departure of the wicked though it outwardly appear not in all the comforts of my Text belong not to them as their Spirits were dead whilest they lived so they shall not live when they die Where there is no righteousness there can be no life For the Spirit c. No the righteous the righteous that is the faithful and penitent Souls these are they who as they have the true spiritual life in present so in death they shall have the true comforts of the blessed life which is to come for however God at other times brings trouble heaviness and afflictions on his best servants yet at that hour he never fails to assist them and in the midst of death to make the life of their Souls appear more clearly for righteousness sake He may seem to absent himself from them and to hide his counâ—◠〈◊〉 but then in that day of need in that last and fearful time which most requires it they shall be sure of his comforts he will not fail then to discover his face and make the light of his countenance to shine into that region of darkness and by the gracious beams thereof to chear up his people lighting and guiding their feet through that obscure Valley and shadow of death into the blessed ways of immortality and peace Believe not me look upon the holy men of God a little and see it perfomed with your Eyes Behold the Patriarch Jacob the Father of the Patriarchs he who wrestled not only that one time at the River Jabbock but all his life long with the arme of the Almighty continually afflicting him But see how contrary it fell out in the end when all the clouds of affliction being blown over a calm of contentment follows and he is gathered unto his Fathers in peace but first mark how the Lord gave him strength before he went hence and was no more seen wherewith he collects his fainting Spirits raiseth himself in his bed calls his Sons about him tells them of things to come great things to come for many generations and with an inspired Spirit ready to expire gives every one his several blessing and benediction in such a prophetical so high and Heavenly a strain and stile as if an Angel had sate on his lip and I doubt not but many Angels sate waiting in that door of the body for the coming forth of his Soul which stayed not long after to receive and convey it into the bosom of his Grand-father Abraham there to rest in everlasting peace Look upon Joshua that valiant Captain who having spent his life in travail and more than Herculean labours warring against Gyants and the Sons of Aâ—ak yet at last you may see him sitting down in peace and dividing the spoil among the Children of Jacob And in the end death drawing near see how he summons the Tribes of Israel together and in a sweet Oration recounts unto them all the mercies of God which had followed them from Terab the Father of Abraham that dwelt beyond the flood to Cheusem that had now gotten possession of the promised land within Jordan And being full of the spirit and spiritual life with such power of speech he exhorts them to the fear and service of this merciful God that the whole Congregation as if they had had but one heart and one Soul and both throughly affected joyntly cry out God forbid that we should forsake the Lord nay he is our God and we will serve him Josh the last After this manner from the flame of his own zeal having kindled a fire in the hearts of others this great Worthy and worthy Servant of the Lord lived in his death and dyed in peace See holy Samuel the Judge of Israel going to his grave as to his bed and in him consider the power and vertue of a good conscience arising from the memory of a well acted life Whose Ox or whose Ass have I taken whom have I defrauded or opprest or at whose hands have I received a bribe saith he in the publick assembly and all the people bare witness unto him saith the Text. Hoc ducit ad fâ—nus sepulturam this is it that accompanies him to his Grave and layes him in his rotten Sepulcher The like blessed savour of rest did this peace of conscience send forth in the blessed Apostle S. Paul who in that wonderful confidence was bold to deliver up his Soul in the breath of the same words as it were his Saviour had done before him a Consummatum est I have finished my course I have kept the faith henceforth is laid up for me a Crown of righteousness which the Lord the just Judge shall give me in that day words worthy of a Soul so near its Heaven Lastly view the Protomartyr Steven blessed with peace in the midst of a cruel death for all torments are easy if they have answerable comforts The obstinate Jews threw the stones of death at him but he filled with the Holy Ghost looks stedfastly into Heaven where he beholds his Saviour standing at the right hand of God to whom now dying he speaks as he had done before to his Father in manus tuas into thy hands O Lord I commend my Spirit Such have been the blessed ends of these holy men of God and of many others famous in their Generations and such it shall be in all others that faithfully serve him though peradventure it is not manifest in all Their bodies are buried in the Earth but they have left a name behind them and a memory sweeter than the perfume made by the art of the Apothecary as was spoken of the good King Josiah And what is there now that can more deeply affect an honest and a good heart what can a religious mind either so much desire unto it self or behold with so great joy in another as to see a devout and penitent Soul give a peaceful farewel unto Nature and in the depth of death depart full of the comforts of immortality and life But it may be far off examples will be left too far off respects for likely those that are nearest do affect us better if so you want them not neither two among the rest more remarkable you have had of late The one not long since the other now before your eyes The Mother and the Daughter of both whom I may truly say in the words of my Text their bodies were dead while they lived and their Souls lived in the death of their bodies for righteousness sake A
in usilitatem nostram de salvatore salutem operari imploy or make use of him for our best behoof draw his proper extract from him and work salvation out of this our Saviour But how may that be done sure no way better than as God in his infinite mercy this day gave him so we this day again in all thankfulness receive him otherwise we shall but evacuate the gift and dishonour the giver but abuse his goodness and lose our own benefit For it is not so ours but by our own neglect it may be lost For though all be ours because given us yet nothing shall be ours if not accepted Ours indeed he and all his are already by right and interest but they are never throughly ours till they be ours by possession and then they are ours indeed Possession then let us take but how or which way shall we take it no way so well as in the blessed Sacrament in the holy Mysteries instituted of purpose and ordained to no other end but for pledges to assure us and conduits to convey unto us this blessed Saviour and all his benefits There and there only we may be seised and possessed of both for there and there only are both to be received Thither then let us approach with all reverence and due regard to claim our interest in them and then be assured it shall never be denied He himself will presently meet and answer us with an Accipite Here take this is my body by the offering whereof ye are sanctified Take this is my blood by the shedding whereof ye are saved Take and receive them both and with them all the joyes and blessings they both have purchased or this Text doth afford for now after this all are yours in right and yours in possession none can bereave you of them You have the Author of all safe enough and fast enough with you nay within you It is no longer now Natus vobis to you is born a Saviour but in vobis in you he is born and in you he lives and will live for ever Ye may henceforth say with St. Paul jam non ego vivo fed vivit in me Christus it is not I now that live but Christ liveth in me and if he live in us now we shall live in him for ever hereafter For if whilst ye live ye do not live but Christ liveth in you why when ye die ye shall not dye but live in Christ in Christ the Lord of life and glory and joy and with Christ be made coheirs and Lords of them all and whatsoever other blessedness wherewith he himself is everlastingly Blessed Which the Lord God Almighty vouchsafe unto us for this our Saviour Christ the Lords sake who this day came to purchase them for us and to whom with the Father and the blessed Spirit three Persons c. be rendred all c. Amen Laus Deo in aeternum THE SECOND SERMON ON CHRISTMAS Day SERMON X. Upon GAL. iv 4 5. When the fullness of time was come God sent forth his Son made of a Woman made under the Law That he might redeem them that were under the Law that we might receive the adoption of Sons THE Text begins with the fulness of time but we may well begin with the fulness of the Text for it hath both fulness of time and fulness of matter the love of the Father the humility of the Son and the happiness of man arising from both are here at the full First the fulness of the Fathers love who so loved the world as he gave his only begotten Son When the fulness c. God sent his Son c. Secondly the fulness of the Sons humility not only vouchsafing to take on him our nature made of a Woman but also our miserable condition undertaking to satisfy the Law unto whose condemnation we were subject made under the Law c. Thirdly and lastly the fulness of our bliss and happiness arising from both as being now ransomed from the death of everlasting sorrow which the Law did threaten that he might redeem c. and not so only but adopted also unto that immortal life of glory which the Gospel doth promise that we might c. by the one we are freed from all evil by the other invested with whatsoever is good and both must needs make up the fulness of happiness That he c. So these three are here at the full and in the fulness of them doth consist the fulness of the whole Gospel whose foundation is wholly built upon the Son of God sent into the world of whom there is little to be known and by whom there was little performed and fulfilled which is not even in these verses fully expressed For you have here both foundation and roof both substance of the work and all the circumstances that belong unto it and you may see in it not only that he was a Saviour sent into the world which is the main but also who it was that was sent and by whom and in what manner to what end and in what time which are necessary adjuncts If you demand of it who it was that was sent it tells you the Son of God if by whom it answers by God his Father God sent his Son if in what manner it replies in a twofold made and made again twice made factum ex factum sub made of and made under made of a Woman and made under the Law If to what purpose all this it gives you a double end which is the comfort of all Redemption and Adoption unto men To them that were c. That we might c. Lastly if when it was performed you have it clearly and fully in the first words in plenitudine temporis in the fulness of time When the fulness c. So have you the sending and whatsoever may seem to belong unto it who was sent and by whom how and why and when not one the least circumstance is omitted but you have all so full it is and yet you have not all the fullness For should we inquire more particularly into the nature and person of this Saviour here they are all three one person and two natures or two natures in one person he is the Son of God see his Divinity but of a Woman see his humanity made of a Woman see their union in one person for God cannot be made Man but by making himself one person with Man This for his incarnation will you now inquire for the birth or nativity of the person so incarnate it's here too for as he was made so was he sent as made of a Woman so sent into the world made of a Woman by incarnation and sent into the world by birth and nativity God sent his son made of a woman Should we yet proceed a step or two farther after his incarnation and birth would you behold his life or contemplate his death see what he did in the one or consider what he suffered in the other that you may do also factus sub lege will give you both For what were the actions of his life but
that shall undertake such a debt that in this case shall be content to take up our forfeited bond and put in new security of his own be bound skin for skin body for body and life for life and be content to pay the bond too when the day comes his love sure is full and he brings comfort with him to purpose And even this he did this he undertook and this he performed for us He undertook it at his Circumcision and performed it in his passion Whosoever is Circumcised factus est debitor universae legis he becomes a debter unto the whole Law saith St. Paul Gal. v. 3 At his Circumcision then he undertook the debt he entred bond anew with us and in sign that he so did he then shed a few drops of his blood whereby he signed the bond as it were and gave those few drops as a pledge or earnest that when the fulness of time came he would not fail to shed all the rest And shed it he did what at his Circumcision he undertook at his passion he performed even to the full He bound himself in a bound of death and death he underwent even the death of the Cross the most bitter reproachful cursed death of the Cross so payed all to the uttermost farthing and having paid it delevit Chirographum he cancelled the handwriting the sentece of the Law that till then was of record and stood in full force against us but now that the whole world might know it to be void he hung it up in the same place where it was satisfied he nailed it to the Tree of his Cross Col. ii 14. But yet this is not all the penalty is but one part of the Law and he became debtor universae legis to the whole Law saith the Apostle and the whole Law he payed whatsoever was due In the Law we consider a double force or power it hath a commanding and it hath a condemning power a power directive and a power vindicative it hath precepts which it injoins and it hath punishments which it inflicts by the one it informs us what we are to do by the other what we must suffer if we do it not and he was under both parts that both might be fully discharged for as he satisfied the one at his death so the other in his life In his life he exactly kept and observed all the precepts of the Law to the least tittle and in his death he received the full punishment of the Law to the worst and utmost extremity and so was under both and fulfilled both paid all both principal and forfeiture the principal in keeping the Law himself the forfeiture in suffering the penalty of the Law for others that so others might be freed from both Sure now the Sons humility that humbled himself to death even the death of the Cross is full no less full than the Fathers love The Father sent and sent his Son the Son was made and made of a Woman made of a Woman and made under the Law made under the Law and both parts of the Law that he might be fully made And this is Gods fulness Let us now proceed unto Mans fulness for from this fulness of the Fathers love and the Sons humility we all receive the fulness of our own bliss and happiness contained in our Redemption and Adoption for to these purposes all this was done That he might redeem them c. And these two Redemption and Adoption are the two degrees of our making for without them we had been marred utterly undone and they fully answer unto the two degrees of his making made of a Woman and made under the Law He under the Law that we might be redeemed from under the Law he made the Son of Man that Men might be made the Sons of God So the making of him was his own marring but his marring was our making he twice marred by his making we twice made by his marring He of God made Man and of Man made a sinner we of sinners that is bondslaves to the Law made Freemen and of Freemen Sons Sons of God and Heirs annexed with Christ. And what more is there that we could wish to make it up fuller since our desires can extend no farther than to be rid of all evil and to be endowed with whatsoever good is and by these two Redemption and Adoption we are made partakers of both To be redeemed from under the Law is to be quit of all evil and to be adopted into the state of Children is to be intitled unto all that is good For all evil is in being under the Law from whence we are redeemed and all good in that heavenly inheritance whereunto we are adopted we were created to inherit a glorious Kingdom but through sin we lost our inheritance and not so only but together with it we forfeited our lives a sentence of death and everlasting destruction was passed upon us and from this now we are freed by redemption in that again we are reestated by adoption and what would we more But we must speak a little in particular of both and first of Redemption That he might redeem c. Every deliverance is not Redemption but such only as is obtained by a just and a full price so the word imports and something more Redemption a rebuying or buying back again of something formerly sold or forfeited into the possession of another Ever a former alienation must go before and a valuable satisfaction follow after otherwise there may be a bare emption without the former a reemption without the latter but unless both be precedent it cannot be Redemption And sure such a matter had formerly befallen us A kind of alienation had gone before whereby we had made away our selves sold our inheritance and forfeited our lives A making away indeed rather than a sale it was for such a trifle made away first in Adam for the forbidden fruit a matter of no moment since in our own persons daily made away for some trifling pleasure or profit not much more worth And having thus passed our selves away by this selling our selves under sin the Law seiseth on us whose dreadful doom is death and Hell and everlasting sorrows there with the Prince of Hell So infinite a punishment doth it inflict because in the breach of it an infinite Majesty was offended In this heavy case we lay shut up under the Law as in a Prison Rom. iii. 23. fast bound with the cords of our own sins Prov. v. 22. the sentence passed on us and we waiting but for execution what evil is there not in this estate and on every Soul that is in it Our Faith sure is weak and we do not throughly apprehend what we have only heard of but could we see it with the seeing of the eye as Job speaks were we permitted to stand on the brink and look into that fearful pit of everlasting horror whereunto we are condemned by the Law
neither comfort himself nor receive any from the rest of the world shall he for his last refuge as thousands of others have done cry Lord Lord be thou my help and comfort and bring my Soul out of Prison But alas unto what purpose and upon what acquaintance He that gave his Soul unto sin and Satan in his life time why should he think God in his death will embrace and entertain it No no Either give up thy Soul unto God when he calls for it in his word in the provocations of his love in the holy motions of his Spirit unto thine or else when thou wouldest give it he will none of it unless as an angry Judge to deliver it over to the tormentor And in these streights what remains but that he either take up the ditty of that dying Emperour heu quae nunc abibis in loca fearfully part with his Soul he knows not whither or else embrace the counsel of Jobs wife desperately curse God and die Either way he comes to his deserved end and he whose whole life was as the way of a snail not a step but leaving filth behind at the last dies like a Candles end in the Socket boyling and burning in the flame of his own distressed and distracted Soul till he go out in a suff and leave an ill savour behind him amongst all good people Such is oftentimes the fearful departure of those whom God for their former wicked lives shall refuse to lead out of their Prisons when they die No this favour belongs not unto them it is reserved for those faithful Souls that with holy David have throughly sorrowed for their sins for they only shall partake of Davids Prayer that imitate Davids repentance And these however he may seem to absent himself for a while and hide his countenance from them yet in that day of need in that last and Fearful time that most requires it they shall be sure of his comforts He will not fail then to discover his face and make the light of his countenance shine into that region of darkness and by the beams thereof chear up his people leading and lighting them through all the dark and winding Alleys of death until they arrive in the glorious Kingdom of immortality and peace Believe not me but behold the holy man of God and see it performed with your Eyes Look upon Jacob the Patriarch and Father of the Patriarchs he that wrestled not only that one time at the River Jabbock but all his life long with the arm of the Almighty continually afflicting him yet in the end all these storms are blown over and he is gathered unto his Fathers in a calm of content and peace But first mark how the Lord gave him strength before he went hence and was no more seen wherewith he collects his fainting Spirits raiseth himself up in his bed calls his Sons about him gives every one his several blessing and benediction in such a high and Prophetical strain as if an Angel had sate on his lips and I think many Angels sate waiting in that door of his body for the coming forth of his Soul which stayed not long after to convey it into the bosom of his Grand-father Abraham there to rest in everlasting peace Look upon Joshua the Captain of Israel after all his Wars and Battles past at length he sits him down and divides the spoil among the Tribes of Jacob and death drawing near see how he summons the whole people together and with such power of speech exhorts them to the fear and service of God which had dealt so mercifully with them that the whole Congregation as if it had but one heart and one tongue and both throughly affected joynt ly cry out unto him God forbid that we should forsake the Lord nay but we will serve him for he is our God Thus out of the flame of his own zeal having kindled a fire in the breast of others this great Worthy was led forth from his Prison in peace See Samuel the Judge of Israel going to his grave as to his bed and in him consider the power and vertue of a good Conscience arising from the memory of a well acted life Whose Oxe or whose Ass have I taken whom have I defrauded or at whose hands have I received a bribe saith he unto the Congregation as all bear him Record saith the Text hoc ducit ad funus sepulturam This is it which accompanies him to his grave and laies him in his rotten Sepulchre Lastly consider St. Paul and his marvellous confidence even before his death that made him bold to deliver up his Soul almost like his Saviour with a consummatum est I have finished my course I have kept the faith henceforth is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord the just Judge shall give me at that day words worthy of a Soul so near unto its Heaven such have been the blessed ends of these holy Men of God and many more famous in their generations and such it is and shall be in all others that faithfully serve him though it be not ever manifest in all And what is there now that can more deeply affect a good heart what can a religious mind so much desire unto it self or behold with so great delight in another as to see a devout and penitent Soul give a peaceful farewel unto Nature and in the midst of death depart full of comforts of immortality and life as those Souls only do whom God shall vouchsafe to lead out of their corruptible prisons with the sweet consolations of his spirit But peradventure far off examples will be left too far off respects Usually those that are nearest do affect us most if so this sad occasion will afford you a worthy one for I have done with her Text and must speak as I promised and you expect of her person that made choice of the Text and by this time you cannot but perceive how justly She delighted in prayer and praise while she lived and she left this behind her written with her own hand that it might testify so much for her even after her death and that by it she might in a sort lest her thankfulness being private should die with her self publickly praise the name of God amidst the company of the righteous the congregation of good men here on earth even then when she her self freed from her prison should be singing honour and glory with Saints and Angels in Heaven Yet this was not all the reason of her choice It sorted well with her condition whilst she was in the body and she knew it would be fully accomplished when she should be led out of it For she had her part of afflictions and they prest sore upon her too even straitned her Soul Her branches she saw were rent away branch after branch and to so loving a nature they could not but go off as limbs from her body What Bernard
habet all our time that is past death hath seised on it and so much of our life is consumed Let me then warn you and stir up your meditations of your mortality in the words of Moses Deut. xxxii 29. O that men were wise then would they understand this then would they consider their latter end Sure we are unwise that we consider not the things past the evil we have committed the good we have omitted the benefits of God we have abused the time we have mispent and yet we grieve not because we think not yet whether we shall die More unwise are we not to consider the things present the deadness of our Body and uncertainty of our death the difficulty of Salvation and the small number of such as shall be saved and yet we shame not because we think we shall not yet die But most unwise are we that we consider not the things to come Death Judgment Hell all to come and yet we fear not because we think we shall never die But O that we were wise then should we understand then should we consider our latter end and considering it we should both prepare for it now and more cheerfully entertain it when it comes memorare novissims remember thy end saith the Wiseman in aeternum non peccabis and thou shalt never offend never do amiss Ecclus vii 36. So universal is the goodness of this consideration and therefore I have stayed the longer on it But now I pass from mortality to the cause of it from death to sin that first brought it into the world The body is dead because of sin Sin it is and only sin which is as the cause of all our dolours and calamities so of death it self that follows them without this there never had been there never could have been any death in the world Death were not death had it not a sting to kill but the sting of death is sin as the strength of sin is the law saith our Apostle The cursed apple of disobedience which our first Parents would needs eat sticks still in all our teeth it was poyson unto his nature and infected his blood and he hath derived the contagion to all his posterity who still continuing to feed on forbidden fruit as he did do perpetually strengthen the original Disease and draw death upon themselves more hastily and violently than either that sin procured or the prime corruption of nature for it doth inforce Hence then we may perceive first how foolish they are who living still in sin yet never consider that they are the Butchers and Murtherers of themselves according to that of the Psalmist The malice of the wicked shall slay themselves xxxiv 21 his own sin which he hath conceived brought forth and nourished shall be his destruction Every Man judgeth Saul miserable that died upon his own Sword but what better are other wretched Men whose sins and iniquities are the cruel instruments of death wherewith they slay themselves Souls and Bodies too Thus are they twice miserable first that they must die and secondly that they are guilty of their own death O the lamentable blindness of Men who albeit in their life they fear nothing more than death yet do they entertain nothing more willingly than sin which causeth their death In bodily diseases Men are content to abstain even from ordinary food when they are informed it will but nourish their sickness and this they do to eschew death only herein they are so ignorant that notwithstanding they abhor death yet they take pleasure in unrighteousness that brings it upon them And secondly which shall be the last use we will make of this point Since sin it is that did first bring and doth still hasten on death upon wicked Men what marvel is it if in these last and worst days the Lord strike the bodies of Men with sundry sorts of diseases and sundry kinds of death seeing Man by sundry sorts of sins doth not cease to provoke him unto anger He frameth his Judgments proportionable to our iniquities if ye walk stubbornly against me and will not obey me I will then bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins Levit. xxvi 25. He hath a famine to punish intemperance and the abuse of his creatures if the memory of our own corrupt and putrifying bodies cannot do it he hath a devouring sword to bring down the pride of our hearts If we have fiery and unclean affections he doth not need burning Fevers and loathsome diseases to punish them And now if the Lord after that he hath stricken us with such a dreadful pestilence shall renew his Plague amongst us or go on to finish that former destruction with the Sword of our enemies what shall we say but the despising of his former fatherly corrections or our stubborn walking against the Lord our God hath procured it justly unto our selves Quid mirum in poenas generis humani crescere ir am Dei cùm crescat quotidie quod puniatur what marvel that the wrath of God increase every day to punish Man when that doth daily increase which deserves that God should punish it But enough of this part it is now time to pass on to the second and most worthy part as of Man so of my Text from the Body to the Soul from the memory of death to the comforts against death for though the body be dead yet it is but the body the spirit which is the highest consolation of a Christian is yet alive Mans life it self But the spirit is life I cannot now stand to discourse of the excellent Nature of Mans Spirit and the wonderful union of it with flesh and blood for Man you see is no simple creature but compounded of both both a Body and a Spirit He is the abstract and brief compendium of all the creatures of God The world was corporeal the Angels spiritual and both were united in Man and made as it were into one creature A creature which hath being with the elements life with plants sense with beasts reason and spiritual existence with Angels that so the Almighty God first uniting all his creatures in Man and then uniting Man unto himself in the person of Christ might in some sort through Man communicate himself to all his creatures Worthily therefore did the Naturalists term him a little world and as worthily did St. Austin say of him that of all the miracles that were ever wrought amongst Men Man himself is the greatest miracle and that not only in regard of his two substances but especially in regard of their marvellous union that a mass of clay should be quickened by a spirit of life and both united into one person That as God himself hath diverse persons in one Nature so man hath diverse and those contrary natures in one person Commonly says Bernard the honourable agrees not with the ignoble the strong overgoes the weak the living and the dead dwell not together
memorable and exemplary couple I may well join them in my speech they were so many ways joined in themselves They were joined in affinity and alliance they were joined in affection and love they were joined in the quality and nature of their Disease and would not be severed till death did it in the time of their sickness they were joined in the comforts of death and now they are joined in the glory of an everlasting life But the formers rites are passed yet they might not be now passed over I cannot but give her a touch she desired it from me and I am sure she deserved it For the latter here now in your sight I shall not speak much because I can hardly speak enough with her former times I have had no acquaintance and therefore can make no relation of it only I assure my self that she who was so patient and penitent in her sickness so devout and cheerful in her death could not but be well and religiously disposed in the course of her life But for the latter part of her days them I have known and in them been an eye-witness of the expression of more goodness than I have often seen or from a Woman of her quality could have expected The things of note which I especially observed in her and shall commend unto you are principally these her willingness to entertain death and her deadness unto the world and worldly affairs her joy in spiritual discourses and her frequency and fervency in devout prayer For the first if we consider the impediments it was much she should do it so cheerfully she was but young and entring upon the prime of her years She had small and tender Infants of her own that went near her she was well bestowed where she found both youth and love and means too wanted nothing nor was likely to want haec sunt quae faciunt homines invitos mori and these are the things that make Men unwilling to die could the Philosopher say Yet notwithstanding all these she gently submitted her self unto it she resolutely went forth to meet it and lest he should miss her she call'd it unto her Come gentle death and even held forth her arms to receive and embrace it For the second I was with her often yet never heard a word of worldly matter or secular affair so much as fall from her tongue Her heart was bent on Heaven which made it delight so much in heavenly contemplations they came down upon her as the Scripture speaks like rain into a fleece of wooll and as a shower upon a thirsty land With what an open and greedy ear did she suck in celestial comforts which she shortly after vented out again in devout supplications wherein the mercy of the Lord did not forsake her even to the last gasp And then at last when her hands forsook her tongue and her tongue had almost forsaken her heart yet her heart did still adhere unto God in uncessant prayer and therefore she intreated others to hold her fainting hands that her tongue failing they at least might testify that her Soul did commune with her Maker It calls to mind the story of Moses having Aaron and Hur to support his arms for whilst he prayed Amalek fled and Joshua conquered Sure I am whilst she did in like manner the true Joshua conquered all the spiritual Amalekites and enemies of her Soul who only could batter down the prison of her body that her spirit being loose and at liberty might freely clear the air and mount up to the desired place of everlasting rest where she now is and where may she still in peace remain till another day shall invest both Body and Soul with unspeakable glory Who can now mourn who can weep for such a Soul if ye do they must be tears of joy not of sorrow at least they must be for your selves not for her You may bewail your own loss you cannot grieve at her death unless you envy her happiness foelix iss a anima imitationem desiderat non planctum that happy Soul is no subject of sorrow but a pattern of imitation And therefore I now leave the dead and conclude to the living that their Spirits may live in death as hers hath shown them the example For this should be the chief endeavour this should be the principal care of a Christian in his whole life that when his life shall end yet the life of his Soul may not end with the death of his body It little matters how it fares with us in the rest of our time so it go well with us here when if wrath overtake us it shall eleave unto us for ever but if peace end our days our days afterwards of peace shall never end For as the tree falleth there it shall lie Wretched Men that can willingly think of any thing save this that infinitely concerns them above all things else that can wish with Balaam let me die the death of the righteous and let my last end be like his but never endeavour themselves in the works of righteousness whereby they may procure it as if they might be like them in their death whom they refused to imitate in their actions But they may wish like Solomons fool till their tongue cleave to their gums for so long as they live the life of Balaam loving the wages of iniquity they shall never die the death of the righteous nor have their last end like his whom they are nothing like in conversation No if the Soul then live it must be as my Text hath it for righteousness sake Set thy self therefore to it seriously and speedily Wise Princes make many days preparation for a field that must be fought in one Beloved let us be wise too and lay up something every day for the last when we shall wrestle with death If we win that skirmish we have enough but where or when or how soon we shall be called to the conflict who can tell be not secure therefore and presume not on the last hour it may come suddenly upon thee flatter not thy self and thy sins and frame not delay unto thine own Soul Send not Religion before thee unto thine old age whither peradventure thou shalt never come or else come hardned through the deceitfulness of sin Give not thy youth and strength unto Satan and then when thou art low drawn and upon the lees think to present God with the dregs of thy life What a folly were it for thee to adventure thy surest thy everlasting weal or wo making or marring on so sandy and sinking a foundation how much better were it for thee to remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth before the evil day come and thou say I have no delight herein that thy Creator may not forget thee in thine old age when strength faileth and Man returneth to his long home Sure in these great water-floods we shall hardly come nigh him and therefore let
the punishment and it is no less than all which a Sinner may receive the punishment of loss and the punishment of sense the loss of all good in the exclusion from Heaven and the suffering of all evil in the torments of Hell This exprest in Scripture by an unquenchable fire that by a gnawing and never dying worm Divines contending which is worst when either is insufferably bad but both joined together make a double death and destruction which none can conceive And therefore the Son of Syrach 23. 12. doth well term it a sin that is arrayed and apparelled with death there is a word saith he and it is clothed about with death God grant it be not found in the heritage of Jacob and that you may know what the word is which he means he presently infers use not thy mouth to intemperate swearing for there is the word the word of sin clothed about with death and I pray God it may not be found in the heritage of Jacob neither in our Jacob nor his heritage his Son or Subject neither himself nor any of his Kingdom And this were punishment enough it should seem were there no other yet this is not all for this general and universal destruction of the world to come is common to all sins and sinners but the special threat and commination in that precept against this sin seems to relate unto some special revenge that God will take of it even in the life of this world here before they depart unto the sorrows of another for neither in that or this shall they ever be held guiltless but receive a just reward and recompence in both Concerning this later what and how grievous it is you may read in the 23. of Eccles. before cited It is briefly thus and I beseech you mark it Vir multùm jurans a man that useth much swearing shall be filled with iniquity and a plague or curse shall never depart from his house How terrible and dreadful is this himself shall be filled with iniquity and the curse of God shall be upon his house nay which is worse Shall never depart from his house his Spirit will forsake the one that being given up unto a reprobate sense he may fill up the measure of his sins and fat himself against the day of slaughter be shall be filled with iniquity and his blessing will leave the other unto the waste and spoil of a consuming malediction until ruine eat it up and wholly root it out the curse shall never depart from his house Gods judgments for other sins are great yet they seem to extend themselves but to the third or fourth Generation at the farthest how deadly then is this iniquity and how heavy the revenge that staies not there but runs through all Generations Shall never depart from the house until the house it self depart and be no more A bitter curse indeed that wasts and spoils wheresoever it comes but utterly ruines the House where it remains nay leaves not so much as any ruines to remain neither Stone nor Timber for it eats up both as you may read in the Prophet Zechariah where you shall find the curse written in a Role a large curse as it should seem for the Role hath room enough for more curses than ever the Spirit of God hath registred for it was twenty Cubits long and ten Cubits broad a great and flying Role which when that Prophet beheld in a Vision the Angel which gave the interpretation said This is the curse that goeth forth over the face of the whole earth according unto which the swearer shall be cut off for it shall enter into his house and remain in the midst of his house and shall consume it with the timber thereof and the stones thereof Zech. 5. 4. A strange remaining wherein nothing not so much as Timber and Stone shall remain and a heavy malediction when a Man shall be emptied of all his goods and filled only with his own Sins He shall be filled with iniquity How many deaths and destructions do attend and inviron this accursed Sin the death of his estate and substance which shall be consumed the death of Sin or rather of Grace through Sin wherewith he shall be filled and the everlasting death of Body and Soul in a lake of burning brimstone wherein he shall be perpetually tormented So true is that of Syracides before mentioned but never enough repeated it is a word cloathed about with death and we can never enough repeat his prayer God grant it be not found in the heritage of Jacob. Consider these things now and then say It is a Custom and I cannot leave it shall it excuse the Malefactor if he say to the Judge I take no pleasure in Theft only my fingers have been inured to it from my youth and I cannot now forsake the habit and yet the Thief who notwithstanding hath his Curse written also in the other side of Zecharies flying Role may be the better excused of the two for though he take no pleasure yet there may be profit in the sin But the Custom whether without or upon pretence shall never excuse either till both forsake the Custom It is this only through which we shall be held guiltless and by which alone we may remove this Curse of God both from our selves and our houses And why can it not be done what should hinder that we may not forsake it where lies the labour or wherein doth the difficulty consist that it should be so invincible Why what saith Chrysostom Homil. 17. on Mat. Nunquid pecuniarum opus est impensa Nunquid aerumnis sudore perficitur is it a business that requires the expence of any great sums of our money or else of our spirits in sweat and painful labour to atchieve it Tantummodo Velle sufficit totum quod jubetur impletum est No such thing only will that is bend thy mind and thy will to it and the thing required is presently fulfilled As use hath bred a custom so disuse must destroy it and a contrary use beget a contrary Custom And sure the Will of man cannot think of a Custom so easy to be disused as this all others are deeply rooted in natural Affections and therefore hard to be plucked up but this hath no hold in Nature not one Appetite in the infirmity of man that gapes and waters after it it can neither quench the Thirst nor kill the Hunger of any desire whereunto our Corruption is subject but is only an external a naked and a bare Custom which only use hath begotten and doth still nourisn and disuse without any great difficulty can again starve and strangle Tantummodo velle sufficit only set thy will to it and the business is ended for as St. Austin hath it lib. 8. Conses In the ways of God Ire pervenire is nothing but Velle ire to walk is only to will and whosoever wills cannot but walk but then it
too as well as any man but bring them to the Commandments to the corporal works either of Charity to the distressed or of bounty for the publick honour and worship of that God whom they pretend to fear and then they leave you This they begin to doubt whether it may be any part of their duty or no But however the soul of the old and outward man may be immortal though severed from the body yet is it not so with the new man Sever the fear of God from the observance of his Commandments and it will instantly cease to be fear As St. John of love so may we say of this fear that includes it He that saith he feareth God and keeps not his Commandments is a liar Again observe the Commandments but not in the true fear of God and it will be not observance but dissimulation A Liar this of all Liars whose hypocrisy can make the very spirit of wickedness to inform and actuate the comely limbs and members of true holiness A prodigious conjunction and therefore a Monster detestable both to God and man It is but right then and as it should be that these two here make but one whole conclusion one whole duty one whole matter one whole man They may be distinguished they may not be divided God hath joined them together and let no man seek to put them asunder but he that fears God let him keep his Commandments also Keep his Commandments durus est hic sermo this is an hard saying and the world sure will be hardly brought to this part of the conclusion yea it were something well if those that seem purest amongst us did not conclude clean contrary That the Commandments were not given to be kept yea that there is no possibility for any man though under the state of grace at any time or in any action to keep without violation even the least Commandment But two things there are that seem especially to deceive men in this point First an erroneous opinion that a spiritual action cannot be good so long as it may be bettered as having so much of sin as it wants of absolute perfection which they suppose the Law under the high terms of eternal death doth require at every mans hands But this is apparently mistaken for evident it is that the Law under the penalty enforceth only essential goodness not so that which is gradual otherwise the holy Angels may now sin in Heaven for they excel one another as in nature so in their zeal and operations yea he that is holier than the Angels Christ himself would be endangered of whom the Scriptures do plainly affirm that he prayed at one time more earnestly than at another And rightly for goodness is not seated in puncto in any precise nick or indivisible Center but hath its just latitude and is capable of degrees of comparison in the Concrete bonus melior optimus So Priscian will instruct them with this opinion not admitting it hath false Latin in it and false Divinity both at once This the first The Second thing is another supposal too and little less erroneous than the former That in every good and divine action the flesh lusting against the spirit doth by that malignant influence corrupt and vitiate even with sin the whole operation But what if the lusting flesh do not always move and in every action What if when it moves it doth not yet enter into composition with that act that subdues and quells it as indeed it doth not what if the vertue of such conquering acts be the greater by the opposition as indeed it is ever the more excellent by how much it breaks through stronger resistance according to that of our Saviour virtus mea in infirmitate perficitur Lastly what if every act of lust it self be not in true propriety a Sin As if it be meerly natural great Clerks conceive it is not because sin is ever voluntary and moral They take it for a true Rule â—Lex datur non appetitui sed voluntati and so they conceive our Saviour doth interpret it when he makes not every one whose flesh lusteth but him only that lusteth in his heart that is with his will to be an Adulterer St. Paul they suppose follows his Masters interpretation and though no man doth define lust more than he yet he doth it with caution as the sin not of the person a subject properly not capable of sin but of the flesh I know that in me but with correction that is in my flesh there is no good thing It is no more I that do it but sin that dwelleth in me And that we take it not for such a sin as transgresseth the Law he is bold to say that the righteousness of the Law is fulfilled in those that walk not after the flesh not that have no carnal motions but after the Spirit St. Austin therefore they conceive said well that when the appetite doth lust but the will doth not like it is as when Eve had eaten but not Adam And as we sinned at the first not in Eve but in Adam so is it still for unless Adam eat as well as Eve the will consent as well as the appetite water the fall is not finished The lusts therefore and appetites of Nature if they arise immediately out of the Body and be not raised by our unhappy fancy which the Will sets on work or by some act or custom of Sin which the Will hath already wrought they are not in their opinion sinful unless we will make God the Author of Sin who is the creator of nature and natural appetites yea and Christ too the subject of sin that was not without a natural inclination directly opposite to the known will of God otherwise he could never have said as he doth not my will but thy will be done No doubt but by the lustings of the flesh humane frailties and imperfections more than enough may and do too often cleave like moles and stains unto the divinest actions of the most spiritual men but a mole of frailty is one thing and the corruption of mortal-sin another One thing claudicare in via to go on though halting sometimes and interfering in the way to Heaven and another to cross out of it run counter directly towards Hell And therefore from such surreptitious and involuntary defects to conclude that no man can love God with all his heart clean contrary to the testimonies of the Scripture That the just man falleth seven times a day to wit into sin though that Scripture intend no such matter that all his righteousness is but a defiled rag and the divinest action in the eye of the Law but a mortal and deadly Sin is an exaggeration that doth but rack and tenter a truth until it burst into two errors and dangerous ones both in Gods regard and mans As if men were bound unto meer impossibilities and God that hard man in the Gospel reaping where
ambitions If the greater Peers among the people instead of being Gods and common Fathers unto their Country prove Wolves unto their brethren and like Pikes grow great and vast by eating up the Fry that is round about them donec Serpens serpentem devorans fiat Draco If instead of benign and benevolent Stars they shall be of a sowr and Saturnian Aspect only blasting whatsoever comes within the sphere of their activity or else but of a Mercurian concurring influence good with the good and bad with the bad not as justice but as affection and faction shall lead them then no marvel if mighty men come at length to be mightily tormented But if these Noble Persons shall be truly Noble indeed and as God hath termed them Gods and Fathers unto their Country If like Job they shall deliver the poor and such as have none to help from those that are too mighty for them break the jawes of the wicked and pluck the spoil out of their teeth until the blessing of them that are ready to perish come upon them for it If the Prince that is supream be not a disturber like Nimrod but rather as Solomon Princeps pacis a King of peace nourishing his people like David with a perfect and upright heart and ruling them prudently with all his power If his moderation be known unto all and his Piety unto God and goodness no less exemplary than his Virtue then undoubtedly both he and they and all such Mighty men in this great day shall be as mightily honoured when he that hath made you Rulers of his people set you here in the seats of Justice as on the throne of David shall then advance you higher take you up even upon his own throne in the Clouds as being in the number of those Saints that shall be Assessors there and with Christ as the Apostle tells us to judge the world whilst those mighty and glorious Monarchs that once so much troubled the earth and other Princes Great men and Favorites of the world shall now stand like poor worms beneath you at the Bar nudo latere palpitantes sententian◠aeternae mortis expectantes naked and quaking as St. Hierome speaks under the sentence of eternal death Where now are all their Dignities and Titles their Pomp and former Splendor how is it vanished Alas all these things accompany none any farther than the grave but their works these follow after unto judgment where according to their works they shall be now rewarded which is our last point And then be shall reward every man secundùm opera sua according to his works This as it is the latter part of my Text so is it the most substantial but withal the most troublesome for here we seem to meet with nothing but difficulties There are but three words in it And whether we look on the opera which is the main or the sua that adheres or the secundùm that hath reference unto both Objections we shall find and some of them difficult enough even in all three Set the Accent first upon the opera for that as I said is the main and we shall no sooner do it but the objection is instantly emergent for if Men shall be now judged with precise respect unto their works since none are so wicked but have some good deeds nor any so righteous but have many sins how should it come to pass that either any should escape Condemnation or if some do why should not all escape it for all are sinners But this knot may well be dissolved without any great labour For though works at that day shall be judged of as good or evil precisely according unto that Law which they have transgressed yet the men whose they are shall be sentenced for these works not according to the law but with reference and respect unto the conditions of the Gospel for God shall then judge the secrets of all hearts saith St. Paul secundùm evangelium meum according to my Gospel And according to the Gospel the same works are not always of the same condition with reference to reward and punishment but according to the repentance of the person or his falling from it do receive ever a new qualification The Schools therefore do accordingly distinguish of opera mortua and mortifera viva and mortificata and rediviva too of dead works and deadly of living and mortified and reviviscent also Works morally good but not done with any Pious or Spiritual intention they account dead works as lyable neither to reward nor punishment Works morally and mortally evil these are mortisera deadly Works that draw death and destruction after them works of Faith and Charity in the converted Soul these are opera viva living works and such as have title unto life everlasting but both these latter may be mortified and both after mortification revive again when the sinner repents him of his Sins all his former wickedness is forgotten and when the penitent man returns again to his Sins none of his former righteousness shall then be remembred And as men do ebb or flow in their true repentance so their sins or their good deeds do either revive or mortifie and the mortification of the one is the reviving ever of the other And for this reason saith our Saviour in the Revelation Behold I come quickly and my reward is with me to render unto every man not as his works but in the singular as his work shall be For according unto this one work of repentance either his sin or his righteousness hath the predominance and shall be accordingly rewarded by him who will now reward every man in this sence according to his works But yet since this Judgment proceeds in mercy and according to the Gospel why are we not said to be rewarded according to our Faith rather than according to our works As though works where the Gospel is revealed were of any validity without Faith or Faith any way rewardable farther than it is operative and fruitful in works But besides this is a day of universal reckoning not confined within the precise latitude of that revelation every man without exception must now come to his account and what every one is bound to account for according to that and to that only he shall be sentenced New the Gospel of Christ hath not been revealed unto all but the notions of good and evil are implanted in Nature and men are to be judged of and accepted too according to what they have not according to what they have not as our Saviour speaketh And therefore the Faith of the Jew was not required of the Gentile neither yet the Faith of the Christian at the hands of the Jew The Law of Nature indeed binds all but positive Laws those only to whom they are given And thus much seems to be both Law and Gospel That no man give an account but for the Talents that were delivered him For God is no such
so the clashing of Truth and Errour indeed truth and truth errour and errour being silenced Righteousness and peace may meet and kiss each other the more freely And that sure will be found the right and best way too at the last For most assuredly when all contestations are terminated when all these Sophismes and subtilties of the Schools Subtilitates ultramundanae plusquam Chrysippeae Subtilties as he said beyond the Moon and such as Chrysippus never dreamt on shall vanish into air leave and forsake us utterly it will be righteousness only that shall do us good in the end this righteousness of God and our faithful endeavour in it that shall be able to give peace and comfort to the Soul in death and through death lead and light it into immortality and life No way in the world no Righteousness thither but this only the good way the way which the Prophet Samuel long since discovered I will shew you the good and the right way fear the Lord and serve him in truth and consider how great things he hath done for you A good and a right and therefore a right good way Not that every way which is good is presently right some may have the zeal of God but not according to knowledge but than undoubtedly it cannot be right unless it be good Whatsoever way it be if it cross or part with goodness it will in the same place certainly part with verity where it leaves rightousness we may be sure it leaves truth the true Doctrine being always as the Apostle testifies of it Doctrinâ— secundum pietatem a doctrine according unto piety I Tim. So Rectum est index sui obliqui That which is right doth both discover it self and other things that are crooked But be the doctrine never so right and righteous yet if the man be not so to what purpose is it Had he all truth and were endued with the knowledge of all mysteries yet if he detain that truth in unrighteousness it should profit him nothing but to augment that wrath of God which saith the Apostle is already revealed from Heaven against him When on the other side did he know nothing else nothing but Christ and him crucified as St. Paul desired to know no more yet walking faithfully in that path of Righteousness which he hath taught and â—rodden out before him his ignorance of other controvertible truths or suspension either I think would hurt him but little For Righteousness naturally doth lead into truth and unless men did first forsake it they could hardly run into dangerous errour For were not the Soul depraved with unrighteous lusts and the judgment of the mind perverted by corrupt affections it could not easily resist apparent truth or not discern manifest falshood But when the will gives it self over to be ruled by the appetite no marvel if the intellect naturally subject unto the willâ— be as easily wrapt in errour Ambition and Avarice and desire of sinning with sting of Conscience having once seized upon the Scribes and Pharisees of old what strange leaven were they soon brought to mingle with the bread of life And how mightily have the same affections since wrought in many more Hence as from the Trojan Horse so many impious but profitable deceits and devices have issued forth upon ignorant people on the one side dispensing with them for their own sins and dispensing to them other mens merits the imaginary treasure of the Church that the Church might be filled with real Hence what strange positions and unto Piety most dangerous have been formed on the other side establishing justification even in the loss of sanctification presumptuously cloathing themselves and their disciples with the righteousness of another even then when they are wilfully unrighteous in themselves And so not content upon repentance to be justified by imputation but have found out even then whilst they sin an imputative indeed a meer putative sanctification that by this means amidst the works of darkness in the paradise of conceit they may still remain Children of light But be not deceived saith St. John he that doth righteousness is righteous All which though spisse and palpable hallucinatious on both parts yet so long as the eye is not single as our Saviour speaks but blear'd with mists of profits and pleasures they may not easily be deceived less easily redressed in either They may term themselves as they please but so long as impure desires are seated in the Soul nothing shall be able to tie them to the purity of that truth which opposeth or withhold them from contending for such falshoods as sute with those desires Itching ears and lusts in the spirits neither will nor can endure sound Doctrine saith the Apostle But rather than fail will raise up unto themselves Teachers after their own lusts and at their own charge raise preserments for them too that so their hired tongues may tickle their ears when they itch smooth or smother their sins In this case who shall prevail or what shall give Men light if in favour of their evil ways they love darkness more than light It is only the search and study of Righteousness that can bring us into the way of truth and dissolve errours and their controversies by taking away their causes by removing those gross and earthly affections that like Foggs at noon darken and benight the judgment The pure and cleansed heart shall see God saith our Saviour see him perfectly hereafter see of him and his truth more clearly in the present as he doth elsewhere assure us If any man doth the will of my Father he shall know of my doctrine But besides the nature of Righteousness leading into truth the protection and providence divine seems specially to assist and direct it The very secrets of the Lord saith King David are upon them that fear him who himself having respect unto the Commandment became wiser than his Teachers But however secrets yet light enough sure shall ever spring up unto the righteous who have undoubted interest in the promise of that Comforter which unto the worlds end shall lead into all truth all that is necessary for the leading of them when this world ends into the glory of a better yea and teach them mildness in truths of less consequence for the present For did we follow righteousness and not pride and passion we should easily learn to enter on mysteries warily and to maintain our opinions soberly And when the strife is peradventure but about a crackt pane in the Window or a loose tyle in the Roof as he said well not to raise such stirs and outcryes as if the Foundation were presently endangered It is only the judgment which Righteousness hath cleared from perturbations that can discern the necessity of points and direct our prosecution accordingly instructing us not to call every problematical question by the name of necessary and infallible truth but agreeing in fundamentals either to leave superedifications to the
demonstration of the intrinsick goodness that is holiness of the Lord that vouchsafed it For if the detestation of evil be an argument of goodness how full of goodness is he who that we might know how utterly he hates and abhors all sin and wickeness rather than it should escape unrevenged would incarnate the Divinity it self that so he might punish it and severely too even in his own Son which doth not only manifest his goodness but his Justice also and together with both the greatness and grievousness of our sins How far were our Souls gone and how deadly our Iniquities that must either draw God from Heaven yea dragg him to the Cross or plunge us in an everlasting Hell And unto that our blessed Lord vouchsafed to be brought that we might be delivered from this Who then shall declare either the heinous guilt of our sin or the infinite power the manifest wisdom or infinite both goodness and justice declared in his generations Especially his goodness unto us miserable sinners which we must ever especially think on but never hope to utter O what mind what speech shall utter say or conceive the great honour he hath this day done unto our nature how many and marvellous benefits he hath in it confer'd on our persons freeing us from all that is evil sin sorrow death and Hell and investing us with whatsoever is good Grace Joy and Glory everlasting in Heaven Say we then all with Pelergus Age O Christe Dei Verbum Sapientia Well then O dear Jesus the word and wisdom of the Father what shall we poor miserable Creatures return unto thee for all thy favours Tuae enim omnia à nobis nihil cupis nisi salvari for thou hast done all things for us and requirest nothing of us again but that we would suffer our selves to be saved nay thou givest us salvation and takest it kindly at our hands yea as a benefit unto thy self if we will but receive it O infinite goodness and that we may laud and praise and worship thee worthily for it add one more mercy unto all that is past and as thou wast pleased to be born in our nature so vouchsafe to be born again by thy holy Spirit in our Persons that we may once more say Quis enarrabit c. So we pass unto our last point from his Divine birth of the Father and his Humane from the womb of the blessed Virgin unto his spiritual in the Souls of all the faithful For it is not enough that the Son of God was born for us or in our nature unless he be also born within â—us and in our particular spirits by his grace that so as he was made the Son of Man by being united unto our flesh we might become the Sons of God by being united again unto him in the spirit By wihch spiritual union and mystical are conveyed and applyed unto us all the benefits and graces purchased by the personal And it is not the meriting of Mercy but the actual conferring of it that must do us good which is never fully done until he that was born for us be reborn again in and within us till he live in our hearts by Faith and his life revive in our conversation till his patience be stamped upon our Spirits and the rest of his Divine Vertues ingraven and formed on our Souls For so speaks St. Paul of this Spiritual Generation My little children of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you Gal. iv 19. And formed then he is in us not before when we can shape and form our hearts in some good measure according to the pattern and precedent he hath left us truly saying with the same St. Paul Vivo jam non ego sed Christus vivit in me I live now and yet not I but Christ liveth in me A birth and formation so full of marvel and miracle as we may no less say of it than of those other Quis enarrabit c For in the first indeed God is born of God in the second God is born of a Woman but in the third many Men and Women at once both bear and are born of God because Gods formation in Man is Mans reformation unto the image of God his generation in us our regeneration in him And so by the same act in which God is born in Man in the self-same both act and instant Man is born of God as St. John speaks And that by the insensible and unsearchable working of the Spirit which works so secretly as Man himself cannot observe and discern it though it work within himself and even in his own spirit The child is not more inobservably conceived in the womb of the Mother than Christ Jesus in the Soul of the Christian. And therefore the kingdom of heaven cometh not by observation saith our Saviour that it is come we find but how it came we perceive not and what we cannot discern how should we express who then shall declare c. Neither is it more secret than strange and powerful there being nothing of greater admiration than the wonderful work of God in the conversion of a sinner How marvellous is it that the hearts of wicked Men that were for so many years before domicilia Daemonum the habitation of Devils wherein the Foxes had holes and the fowls of the air their nests that is deceipt and ambition roosted and with them Luxury and Avarice Envy Wrath and Malice Prophaneness Falshood and all manner of filthiness until it became a den of beasts a cage of unclean birds and indeed a very Hell of impure spirits that such a Stable of filth Augeaâ—'s Stable should suddenly be cleansed and a Tenent of Grace Jesus as in that of Bethlem be born in it in an instant That so dark vaults of lusts and uncleanness should presently be transformed into Temples of the Holy Ghost That so impotent and inthralled Souls should be indued with power from above and inspired with such an Almighty and miraculous Faith as is able in a moment to cast out all those Devils To teach the prophane to speak with a new tongue the wrathful and vindictive with patience to suck up all the poysoned malice venemous stomachs can disgorge against them without hurt and not only to be good in themselves but by laying their hands on the sick by their charitable works unto the distressed not only relieve them but with their very example recover others that were sick of sin unto death Who can behold such a change such and so sudden a mutation and not say with David This is the Lords doing and it is marvellous in our eyes Sure it is digitus Dei the finger of God indeed the very power of his Spirit nay no other than another incarnation and spiritual birth of the Son of God in such a Soul And quis enarrabit A generation performed with so secret and yet so powerful an operation Which yet we
season and who is so mad as to build and plant garnish and make great provision in an Inn in his passage and upon the way being to depart ere long peradventure the next morning For here we have no abiding place no permanent City but as strangers and pilgrims we look for one which hath a foundation And in such a Soul which is in it self as an Inn and esteems the world for no other and therefore void of all scraping and wretched desires the Son of God is ever most infallibly born and will as certainly bear it where are true riches and everlasting Now these three pleasure profit and pride that is the flesh the world and the Devil are the three heads whereunto all sins are reducible and as Christ cuts them all off in his birth so must we cut them off in our selves or he will never be born in us Carnal pleasure must depart he will be born of a Virgin Devilish pride abandoned he is born in a Stable worldly cares and covetous desires utterly discharged he is born in an Inn. And when the Soul is thus prepared by being truly cleansed from all these the time is at hand and then let him make hast and go up with confidence unto Bethlem for there he will be born that is the last and general place of his nativity born in Bethlem And Bethlem is domus panis so the name signifies the house of bread and never so truly as now when the bread of life was born in it And as then so will be still be born in Bethlem in the house of bread Of bread not corporal but spiritual and such as can nourish the Soul and what house think you is that surely Bethlem is nothing but Bethel the house of bread none other but the house of God Where Men eat Angels food and that bread of life is freely dispensed not only panis verbi but panis verbum the bread of the word but the bread which is the word the eternal word of God panis de Coelo bread from Heaven of which whosoever eateth shall never die And this is that house ecce and behold there is that heavenly bread indeed not so much bread as the body of thy Redeemer the bread which we break is it not the Communion of the Lords body the Communion sure of his body and blood too of himself and all that he did or suffered yea or purchased either For all are communicated in these the same Symbols of all and Conduits by which all are conveyed to us And therefore Christ Jesus himself is under this bread and comes down to thee as from Heaven in this shape that he might be at once both received in thy mouth and conceived in thy heart conceived and born live and inhabit therefor ever So justly was Bethlem the seat of his Nativity and therefore as Jacob said when he awoke out of sleep in that place where some suppose the Temple was afterwards built how fearful saith he is this place the Lord was in it and I was not aware this is none other than the house of God and the gate of heaven if he said so of the Temple the house of that bread how much more justly may we say of the bread of this house How fearful is this bread the Lord is in it and much more especially than in the Temple and wo unto them that are not aware of it that discern it not for they do but eat damnation to themselves because they discern not the Lords body Take heed therefore above all things unto thy self when thou comest to this fearful twice fearful place this double Temple the Temple of his worship and Temple of his Body and so that thou make thy approach with due regard and diligent preparation with that deep sorrow as becometh thy sins that low reverence as becometh thy Saviour And so in the end think on the night wherein he was to be born and betake thee to thy sweet and silent meditations consider the deep of Winter and embrace thine afflictions Look upon the days of peace and let go wrath view the Stable and down with thy pride see the Inn and contemn the World contemplate the Virgin and cleanse thy self from all pollutions of the flesh so shall the King have pleasure in thy beauty and thy Virgin Soul come up safely into Bethlem and take of the bread of life freely and with it the blessed Lord of life himself who will make thy spirit another spiritual Bethlem or house for this living bread an habitation for this living Lord to be born and live in so long as thou livest and give thee everlasting life when thou canst live no longer Which God of his infinite mercy c. To whom c. Laus Deo in aeternum TWO FUNERAL SERMONS The FIRST for the MOTHER SERMON XII Upon PSAL. cxlii verse ult Bring my Soul out of Prison that I may give thanks unto thy Name which thing if thou wilt grant me then shall the Righteous resort unto my Company DO not marvel the Text may be fitter than you imagine or I could have made choice of for it is not I but another it was not taken but given me She that is now gone and at rest and may she rest for ever in peace she whose dissolved Tabernacle the prison of whose blessed Soul lies here before your eyes as a spectacle of mortality as a document of the frailty of our humane condition which I would if I might so wish it had this day appeared by some other example She this worthy and honoured Lady now glorious Saint in Heaven to whom we are at this time to perform our last office and Christian duty She it is who as she made it her frequent praise in her life so she desired it might be commended to your meditations in her death And you will anon perceive how justly when you shall see how well it sorted with the one and how fully it is now accomplished in the other But for this you must stay a little First therefore of her Theam then of her self Bring my Soul c. The whole Psalm is a prayer of Davids pursued by Saul and shut up in a Cave as appears by the Title but whether that of Adullam in the xxii of Samuel as Haimo and Remigius or else of the other of Engedi in the xxiv of the same book as Ambrose and Athanasius suppose is uncertain nor is it material to enquire In one of them it was and in this distress he flees unto the Lord for sucour in this whole Psalm the sum and substance of whose devout prayer you have in this last verse Bring my Soul c. This is the Historical truth and the literal sence of the Text which ariseth from thence is manifest Deliver my Soul out of Prison Espelunca out of this Cave and not so only not out of the Cave alone for so he might have fallen into the hands of Saul from whom it
meditating on the miseries of his peregrination on Earth and the joyes of the celestial Jerusalem above and as it were sighing in himself that he was detained so long from praising the name of God and singing hymns of thanksgiving and honour amidst all the company of the righteous there and congregation of the first-born both Saints and Angels he grieves at his absence and groans out the ferventness of his desire in this short Prayer Bring my Soul out of Prison that I may praise thy name A desire which he doth elsewhere often express As the Hart desireth the water-brooks so longeth my Soul after thee O God When shall I appear before the presence of the Lord Blessed be they that dwell in thy house they shall be always praising of thee from generation to generation and that he might be in the midst of them praising his name his desire in this Prayer is here Bring my Soul out of Prison c. And yet if we shall suppose he did not yet others may and no question but many do The Roman Catholicks report not without Joy that their holy St. Francis died with this very sentence in his mouth and this sence of it to be his mind which he had no sooner uttered but Anima à Corpore libera evolavit in coelum his Soul according to his request freed from his body flew away into Heaven And certainly whosoever hath but so much goodness as he can grieve to be detained from Heaven or desires to be freed from the molestations of sin upon Earth cannot but esteem of the body as a Prison which hinders him in both Nay the very Philosophers that knew neither of those respects out of moral regards could both perceive and acknowledge it for such Carcer sepulchrum Animae the Prison and Sepulcher of the Soul And so may we term them too only we must be careful we avoid the error of Origen That our Souls sinned in Heaven and are condemned to bodies but as to Gallies or Prisons where they are to do penance for former transgressions But as St. Austin doth well distinguish it is not the body in it self which was first built for a house of delight though sin committed in it but the corruption of it that makes it a Prison according to that in the Book of Wisdom Corpus corruptibile aggravat animam the corruptible bod◠presseth down the Soul and ceaseth not to fight against it with many noysome lusts in regard whereof the Apostle himself was inforced to cry out as even weary of his Prison quis liberabit who shall deliver me from this body of death why Thanks be unto God through our Lord Jesus Christ this is he that shall deliver us this is the Lord to whom David did and we all must pray that desire this benefit Bring my soul out of Prison O Lord. And yet though we may lawfully make this Prayer in this sence yet it must be as before with submission of our will unto his we must wait the Lords leisure with patience to whom only belong the issues of death and therefore not seek to break through the walls or throw our selves out at the windows but stay till he shall please to open the door and lead us forth in peace for it is Educ animam we may not thrust it out our selves but he must lead it forth or we shall but thrust it out of one prison into another infinitely worse Nay it seems by that word it should be no hasty desire that he himself should do it neither it doth not sound as if we would have him presently break down and demolish the building and so sweep us away in an instant that were Eripe animam pluck forth my Soul out of prison but it is Educ lead it forth and seems to import not so much an anticipation of our time as an humble Petition that when our time is come and this Tabernacle must needs be dissolved that then amidst all the conflicts and terrours of death he would be pleased to be with us to sustain and uphold us with his grace chean up and guide forth our Souls with his comforts for this is educere animam to lead the Soul out of Prison And happy thrice happy are those Souls that are thus led and conducted in this perillous time Every one indeed prays for it but every one shall not obtain it It is Educ animam meam and we must put an accent upon that meam on Davids Soul that faithful and penitent Soul indeed was and all others without fail shall be in their due time thus led and guided out of their Prisons in peace but those that have no part in his penitence they may say if they will but they shall have no part in his Prayer As they neglected God and all his ways in their life so God again will be as far from hearing or keeping them in their death but will rather laugh in their destruction and mock when their fear cometh as it is in the first of Proverbs And then on the otherside how miserable thrice miserable shall he be that must part with his Soul at a venture without any comfort to sustain it or light of grace to lead it through the fearful passages of death Look on him and you shall then see when after all his mirth and revels you shall find him at the last laid on his groaning pillow on the bed of languishing as David speaks O consider well how woful and disconsolate his estate must needs be when after all his former pleasures being worn out with his body the Soul begins to loath the ruinous house of age and sickness when it may not stay and yet knows not whither to go at what time those sad and severe cogitations formerly beaten from him through youth and felicity return to afflict and pay him home for all his vain and wanton delights yea peradventure when the terrours of God shall fight against him and the Arrows of the Almighty stick within him the venom whereof drinks up the spirit as it is in Job In this misery of his wounded in body through sickness and distressed in conscience through sin what shall lead him forth with comfort since God refuseth to do it shall his wife his sons or his friends his honours offices or wealth why the very thought of these and whatsoever else he hath that is good doth but double his afflicton since now he must part with them for ever and may well therefore say unto them as Job did unto his three friends miserable comforters are ye all what then shall he comfort himself as some of the servants of God have done by looking back on the ways of his life why nothing can possibly torment him more he now sees that he hath but wearied himself in the ways of Iniquity and perceives though too late what before he refused to believe that such paths lead down unto the Chambers of death Since then he can
said in the loss of his friend is most true in her case Her bowels were pluckt from her and she could not but feel the wound and therefore if for nought else but her sorrow and afflictions sake she might well pray educ animam c. But other troubles she had besides and distractions in the world that often called her meditations from Heaven where they delighted wholly to converse especially in her later time wherein she so inured her Soul unto blessed contemplation as she had almost freed her self from this prison ere she was freed from the body that indeed was still in the world but her mind and affections were usually with her Maker So that those earthy cares which hang at the heels of other mens Souls like talents of lead hung at hers only but as a line that usually gave her leave to soar aloft only humane necessity that held the end of it had power now and then to draw her down to the grief and sorrow of her heart I am a witness of her complaint and of her tears too that any worldly occasions though never so necessary should trouble and interrupt her spiritual devotions and therefore I am sure in this regard it was her frequent prayer Bring my Soul out of prison And besides afflictions and cares sins she had too no question for what Soul is without them but yet so few and so far from habit as I think no man can easily tell what they were Infirmities and omissions it may be though for my part I know them not yet this I know that her goodness esteemed them as the greatest sins and bewailed them with sorrow enough to suffice one that had murdered his Father or betrayed his Country never ceasing to send forth her fervent supplications in this behalf unto the last gasp Her tongue her hands her heart all prayed this prayer her tongue as long as it could move and when that failed her hand spake and when both were gone yet questionless her heart cried this cry deliver my soul out of this prison the prison of sin But yet until the body be severed from the Soul the Soul can never utterly be severed either from sin or care or sorrow of affliction And a body she had it is now you see a carkase but sometimes was a goodly frame a well built and comeâ—y maniâ—on and even cut out of an antient Quarry but unto her whose thoughts were on another habitation above as it was in it self by reason of the corruption whereunto it was subject so she esteem'd it but a prison unto her Soul and that did at last trouble her peace with pains and delay her from those joys that are pure and know no mixture of sorrow No marvel therefore if in the desire of these she could make that her prayer which others tremble to think on deliverance from her Prison But yet there needed no earnest Prayer for this death comes fast enough on of it self without hastning it more concerns us to die well and with the comforts of God in our bosomes that may shield us from our spiritual enemies that are then busiest and guide and conduct us through the dark valley of death that is terrible in it self And therefore in this respect I rather conceive she that was so careful of her Soul could not but make it her humblest and heartiest prayer that when the time should come the Lord of his mercy would be pleased to lead it out of Prison So fit was it every way and in many regards so good a choice did she make of her prayer whilst she lived and the Lord from his holy habitation heard her cry and at last accomplisht and fulfilled it all in her death Though before he pleased to lay sorrows enough upon her yet now in the midst of them all his comforts did refresh her Soul Now he comes to it in his dearest loving kindness and leads it forth indeed with his choicest consolations and graces to make her a full recompence for all her former afflictions How doth it now rejoice others about her even in the depth of their sorrow to see her full of the Spirit and out of the abundance of it sometimes pouring down blessings on her children and childrens children and every one his several blessings like Jacob sometimes stirring up and exhorting to the fear and service of the Lord with holy Joshuâ— sometimes again solacing her self in the sweet peace of a good Conscience as blessed Samuel and lastly sometimes venting out her strong hope and stedfast confidence with St. Paul but in the words of Job I know that my Redeemer liveth and I shall see him with these eyes as she often repeated But what may be said enough of her fervent praying she was ever pious and frequent in this holy exercise through the whole course of her life thrice a day at the least at morning at noon and at night besides her times of publick prayer so five times a day she prayed and I doubt not but instantly too But now when her prison began to ruine and death to appear within ken how assiduous is she now it is not Davids seven nor twice seven times a day that can suffice but she plies it as if she had meant to fulfil the Apostles precept pray continually I told you but now her heart tongue and hand prayed to the last gasp and I think that gasp was a prayer too when her understanding failed and she could neither hear nor see others yet others might see and perceive that she prayed So perfectly had she taught her tongue to pray that when her senses were locked up it could run of it self And if such a Soul as this be not whose shall ever be led forth with comfort and peace But yet before her leading forth being remembred of it she willingly made confession of her Faith acknowledging all the Articles of her Belief and adhering only unto the blood of Christ Jesus for her hope in these she had lived and in them she would die but die in charity too forgiving and desiring to be forgiven of the whole world as at other times she did not refuse to ask it even of her own Servants when she had but uttered a word with a little more earnestness than ordinary And this solemn profession made that she might farther yet fulfil all rights she gladly makes her Son her Father and receives his absolution And not long after the God of all mercies on whom she continually called answered her gently and opening the Prison eduxit animam led forth her blessed Soul full of gracious comforts unto everlasting glory for with this all the other prisons are utterly dissolved No more afflictions now nor sin nor death for ever all tears are wiped from her eyes and sorrow from her heart all pain from her Body and sin from her Soul which now in the highest Heavens compassed about with the righteous sings the songs of praise and honour and
not then a Carnal presence but a Spiritual that doth link and associate unto Christ. To make up our union with him it is not needful that his humane nature should be drawn down from Heaven or that his body should be every where present on Earth as the Ubiquitaries affirm or that the Bread in the Sacrament should be transubstantiate into his body as the Papists imagin His dwelling in us is by his Spirit and his union with us is spiritual So himself in the same place where he speaks of eating his flesh and drinking his blood doth interpret himself the flesh profiteth nothing the words that I speak are spirit and life And his Spirit it is not his body that shall give life unto the Spirit when the body shall perish If Christ c. This touch shall suffice for the condition I proceed to the substance of the Text. The Body is dead It contains as I said an admonition of our frailty corruption and death and comforts against death It is but the body that is dead the Spirit is life First of our corruption and frailry The body is dead That we all tend unto death we all know but the Apostle's speech is more remarkable he says not the body is subject to death but by a more significant phrase of speech he presseth it homer The body is dead There is a difference between a mortal body and a dead body Adams body before the fall was mortal in some sort that is subject to a possibility of dying but now after the fall our bodies are so mortal as they are subject to a necessity of dying yea if we'll here with the Apostle esteem of death by the beginning and seisure of it they are dead already The forerunners and harbingers of death dolours infirmities and heavy diseases have seised already on our bodies and marked them out as lodgings which shortly must be the habitation of their Master But how near this manner of speech draws unto true propriety they best conceive who best understand how that malediction of God and curse of the Law The day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt die the death was fulfilled If God spared not the Angels when they waxed proud will he spare thee who art but a putrifying worm Ille intumuit in coelo erga in sterquilinio he was puft up in Heaven and therefore was cast down from the place of his habitation and if I wax proud lying on a dunghil shall I not be cast down into Hell So often therefore as corrupt nature stirreth up the heart to pride because of youth and health beauty and strength and the like perfections of the body let this consideration humble thee that though these are fair and beauti ful flowers yet they cannot but suddenly wither because the root from whence they sprung is corrupt and rotten and even dead already Neither is it more available to the cutting down of arrogance and pride than to teach us Temperance and sobriety What availeth it to pamper that Carcase of thine with excess of delicate feeding which is possessed by death already If Men took the tenth part of that care to present their spirit holy and without blame unto the Lord which they take to make their bodies fair and beautiful in the eyes of Men they might in short time make a greater improvement in Religion and Virtue than they have done But herein is their folly they make fat the flesh with precious things which within few days the worms shall devour but never care to beautify the Soul with holy and virtuous actions which shortly is to be presented to God Let us therefore refrain from the immoderate cherishing this proud and dead flesh meats are ordained for the belly and the belly for meats but God will destroy them both 1 Cor. vi 13. I might inlarge this point almost infinitely for the benefit of this consideration is not confined unto Humility Sobriety and Temperance or any particular virtues but it 's universal restraining from all evil and inciting powerfully unto all virtue and goodness Nihil sic revocat bominem à peccato quà m frequens mortis meditatio saith St. Aug. nothing can so recall a Man from his evil ways as the frequent meditation of death especially if he consider as the certainty of death so the uncertain time of his death and the unchangeable estate of everlasting misery if he die in his sins Would to God we were wise thoroughly to apprehend and apply this unto our own Souls It is strange that there is nothing so well known nothing of greater benefit and yet nothing so little regarded What a Prodigy is it that sinful Men should carry about their death in their bosoms and in every vein of their Bodies and yet scarce admit a thought of their mortality into their minds but live here as if they verily thought they should never die If we had no Religion yet reason would teach us that our strength is not the strength of stones and yet them even the drops of water weareth nor our sinews of Brass and Iron as Job speaks and yet these the rust and canker consumeth but a vapour but a smoak which the Sun soon drieth or the wind driveth away It was wittily said of Epictetus the Philosopher who going forth one day and seeing a Woman weeping that had broken her Pitcher and the next day meeting another Woman that had lost her Son Heri vidi fragilem frangi hodie video mortalem mori Yesterday saith he I saw a brittle thing broken and to day I see a mortal Man die And what difference of frailty between these two surely none unless Man be the frailer of the two For as St. Austin hath it Take the brittlest veslel of earth or glass and keep it safe from outward violence and it may last many thousand of years but take a Man of the most pure complexion of the strongest constitution and keep him as safe as thou canst he hath that within his own bowels and bones that will bring him to his end Nay I hear some say saith the same Father that such a one hath the Plague or the Pleurisie and therefore sure he will die but we may rather say such a one liveth and therefore sure he will die for diverse have had these Diseases and did not die of them but never any Man lived that did not die The Consumption of the Liver is the messenger of Death the Consumption of the Lungs the Minister of Death the Consumption of the marrow and moisture the very Mother of Death and yet many have had these Diseases and not died of them But there is another kind of Consumption which could never yet be cured it is the Consumption of the days the common Disease of all Mankind David saw it and spake of it when he said my days are consumed like smoke Psal. cii yea the Philosopher saw it and could say of it quicquid praeteritum est temporis mors
us seek his face while he may be found and make our prayers in an acceptable time So shall our petitions be heard and we in all our tribulations in the hour of death and in the day of judgment as we desire be most assuredly delivered finding comfort in our life and life in our last end And what is all the wealth and honour pomp and glory of the world in comparison of this They may yield discontents enough as being gotten with travel kept with care and lost with grief but can never give any true satisfaction to the Soul especially in that last and perillous time which most requires it Surely every Mans thought is a secret watch unto his own heart let him then ask his own Soul and it will tell him versa reversa in tergum in latera in ventrem dura sunt omnia Christus solus requies muse and forecast toss and turn all the night long from side to side still still no true ease nor true contentment no perfect joy to be found but in the sweet peace of a good Conscience sprinkled and washed with the blood of Jesus Christ the Prince of peace All other things fail us at our death and therefore are unworthy of our care whilst we live No no Thoughts of remorse and joyes of sorrow silent moans and melting tears an heart truly humbled and a Spirit ever setled chearfully to live and willing to die in the loving arms of a gracious Redeemer this is the prize this is the Crown we should contend for and this is the way now to live a Saint on Earth and ever hereafter to injoy an exceeding and an eternal weight of glory in the highest Heavens Which the Lord of all glory grant unto us for and in the meritorious Passion of his Son Christ Jesus our Lord. To whom with the blessed Spirit c. Laus Deo in aeternum Amen FINIS * Antiquitates Univers Oxon L. ii p. 109. * â— x. Instit C. 2. * Better known perhâ—ps by the name of Mercurius Rusticus an 1647. Psal. cxi 2â— Ecclus. i. 16 Ecclus. i. 18 1 Joh. iv 18. Ecclus. i. 12 Psal. xix 10 Rom. viii Matt. x. Job xxxi Psalm xliii Jon. i. Gen. xxxi 53. Deut. vi Matt. iv Isa. viii 12. Rev Matâ— Job xxviii 28. Rom. 8. Matt. 7. 24. Rom. 4. Rom. 8. Gen. viii 4. Exod. xxiv 16. Josh. vi 16. Matt. 25. Heb. 1. Matt. 25. Prov. xxiv 12. Heb. ix 8. Heb. â—i 40. slev vi 10 Verse 6. Jam. iii. Rev. xx 10. Rev. xx 14. 2 Tim. Job xxix Rom. i. Rom. v. â—2 Acts xi 48. Gen. xvii Rom. v. 18. Rom. i. 2 Cor. v. 10. Mat. xxvâ— Aristot. De fide operibus Galat. i. 19. Mark xi 40. 1 Pet. 2. 11. Rom. 6. 2 Sam. 2. Judg. v. 23. James iii. 15. Jam. iii. 16. 2 Tim. iv 3. Matt. V. Gen. iii. 12. verse 14. 1 Cor. xv 55. Ber. de Con. ad Cleric Abbot in praesat Exercitat de gratia perseverant De bono Persev cap. 14. Rom. ix Phil. i. 2. John xv 16 Rom. ix Epist. 103. Aug. Enchirid cap. 98. De sp lit c. 34. Lib. 12. â—â—iâ—it Del cap. 9. Wisd. i. 13. Gen. Lib. 3. contra Julian cap. 13. Aug. lib. de Orat c. 22. Ad Moni lib. 1. c. 22. Suit cap. 61. Lib. advers mort sibi falso imp ad artic 10 Inst. lib. 3. cap. 23. Moral lib. 26. cap. 10. 2 Per. ii 1. Retract lib. 1. cap. 11. Isai. v. Lib. 4. cap. 71. Matt. xxiv Luk. ix 33. 2 Cor. xii 4. Exod. xii 48. xxii 6. Knowledge Faith Repentance Love Jer. xxx 24. 〈◊〉 Gen. xlix 10. Esa. vii 14 Jer. xxiii 5. Dan ix 25. Zaâ— vi 12 Hag. ii 8. Psal. lxxi lvi xxxv