from death a man might in some sort be said to be immortall for that minute but Man is never so Nunquam ei vicinius est posse vivere quà m posse mori That proposition is never truer This man may live to morrow then this proposition is This man may dy this minute Though then shortnesse of life be a malediction to the wicked The bloudy and deceitfull men shall not live halfe their dayes there 's the sentence the Judgement the Rule And they were cut down before their time there 's the execution the example God hath threatned God hath inflicted shortnesse of dayes to the wicked yet the Curse consists in their indisposition in their over-loving of this world in their terrors concerning the next world and not meerly in the shortnesse of life for this Ite depart out of this world is part of the Consolation I have a Reversion upon my friend and though I wish it not yet I am glad if he die Men that have inheritances after their fathers are glad when they dye though not glad that they die yet glad when they die I have a greater after the death of this body and shall I be loath to come to that Yet it is not so a Consolation as that we should by any means be occasions to hasten our own death Multi Innocentes ab aliis occiduntur à seipso nemo Many men get by the malice of others if thereby they dy the sooner for they are the sooner at home and dy innocently but no man dies innocently that dies by his own hand or by his own hast We may not doe it never we may not wish it alwayes nor easily Before a perfect Reconciliation with God it is dangerous to wish death David apprehended it so I said O my God take me not away in the midst of my dayes In an over tender sense and impatience of our own Calamities it is dangerous to desire death too Very holy men have transgressed on that hand Elias in his persecution came inconsiderately to desire that he might die It is enough ô Lord take away my soule He would tell God how much was enough And so sayes Iob My soule chuseth rather to be strangled and to die then to be in my bones He must have that that his soule chuses But to omit many cases wherein it is not good nor safe to wish Death certainly when it is done primarily in respect of God for his glory and then for the respect which is of our selves it is onely to enjoy the sight and union of God and that also with a Conditionall submission to his will and a tacite and humble reservation of all his purposes we may think David's thought and speak David's words My soule thirsteth for God even for the living God when shall I come and appeare before the presence of my Living God Saint Paul had David's example for it when he comes to his Cupio dissolvi to desire to be dissolved And Saint Augustine had both their examples when he sayes so affectionately Eia Domine videam ut hîc moriar O my God let me see thee in this life that I may die the death of the Righteous dy to sin moriar ut te videam let me dy absolutely that I may see thee essentially Here we may be in his Presence we see his state there we are in his Bedchamber and see his eternall and glorious Rest. The Rule is good given by the same Father Non injustum est justo optare mortem A righteous man may righteously desire deathâ— Si Deus non dederit injustum erit non tolerare vitam amarissimam but if God affords not that ease he must not refuse a laborious life So that this departing is not a going before we be call'd Christ himselfe stay'd for his ascension till he was taken up But when these comes a Lazare veni foras that God calls us from this putrefaction which we think life let us be not onely obedient but glad to depart For without such an Ite there is no such Surgite as is intended here without this departing there is no good rising without a joyfull Transmigration no joyfull Resurrection He that is loth to depart is afraid to rise againe and he that is afraid of the Resurrection had rather there were none and he that had rather there were none aâ—t â—aecitate aut animosâ—tate says S. Augustine either he will make himselfe beleeve that there is none or if he cannot overcome his Conscience so absolutely he will make the world beleeve that he beleeves there is none and truly to lose our sense of the Resurrection is as heavy a losse as of any one point of Religion It is the knot of all and hath this priviledge above all that though those Joyes of heaven which we shall possesse immediately after our death be infinite yet even to these infinite Joyes the Resurrection given an addition and enlarges even that which was infinite And therefore is Iob so passionately desirous that this doctrine of the Resurrection might be imparted to all imprinted in all Oh that my words more now written Oh that they were written in a book and graven with an Iron pen in lead and stone for ever what is all this that Iob recommends with so much devotion to all I am sure that my Redeemer liveth and be shall stand the last on Earth and though after my skin wormes destroy this body yet I shall see God in my flesh whom I my selfe shall see and mine eyes shall behold and none either for me This doctrine of the Resurrection had Iob so vehement and so early a care of Neither could the malicious and pestilent inventions of man no not of Satan himselfe abolish this doctrine of the Resurrection for as Saint Hierome observes from Adrian's time to Constantin's for 180 yeares in the place of Christs birth they had set up an Idoll a statue of Adonis In the place of his Crucifying they had set up an Idoll of Venus and in the place of his Resurrection they had erected a Iâ—â—pâ—ter in opinion that these Idolatrous provisions of theirs would have abolish'd the Mysteries of our Religion but they have outliv'd all them and shall outlive all the world eternally beyond all Generations And therefore doth Saint Ambrose apply well and usefully to our Death and Resurrection to our departing and rising these words Come my people enter then into thy Chambers and shut thy dores after thee Hide thy selfe for a very little while untill the Indignation passeover thee that is Goe quietly to your graves attend your Resurrection till God have executed his purpose upon the wicked of this world Murmur not to admit the dissolution of body and soul upon your death-beds nor the resolution and putrefaction of the body alone in your graves till God be pleased to repaire all in a full consummation and
work for advancing thy state remember thy naturall death but especially when thou art in a sinfull worke for satisfying thy lusts remember thy spirituall death Be afraid of this death and thou wilt never feare the other Thou wilt rather sigh with David My soule hath too long dwelt with him that hateth peace Thou wilt be glad when a bodily death may deliver thee from all farther danger of a spirituall death And thou wilt be ashamed of that imputation which is layd upon worldly men by St. Cyprian Ad nostros navigamus ventos contrarios optamus we pretend to be sayling homewards and yet we desire to have the winde against us we are travelling to the heavenly Ierusalem and yet we are loath to come thither Here then is the use of our hope before death that this life shall be a gallery into a better roome and deliver us over to a better Country for if in this life onely we have hope in Christ we are of all men the most miserable Secondly in the agony of death when the Sessions are come and that as a prisoner may looke from that Tower and see the Judge that must condemne him to morrow come in to night so we lye upon our death-bed and apprehend a present judgement to be given upon us when if we will not pleade to the Indictment if we will stand mute and have nothing to say to God we are condemned already condemned in our silence and if we do plead we have no plea but guilty nothing to say but to confesse all the Indictment against our selves when the flesh is too weake as that it can performe no office and yet would faine stay here when the soule is laden with more sins then she can bear and yet would faine contract more in this agony there is this use of our hope that as God shall then when our bodily eares are deaf whisper to our soules and say Memento homo Remember consider man that thou art but dust and art now returning into dust so we in our hearts when our bodily tongues are speechlesse may then say to God as it is in Iob Memento quaeso Remember thou also I beseech thee O God that it is thou that hast made me as clay and that it is thou that bringest me to that state againe and therefore come thou and looke to thine owne worke come and let thy servant depart in peace in having seen his salvation My hope before death is that this life is the way my hope at death is that my death shall be a doore into a better state Lastly the use of our hope is after death that God by his promise hath made himself my debter till he restore my body to me againe in the resurrection My body hath sinned and he hath not redeemed a sinner he hath not saved a sinner except he have redeemed and saved my body as well as my soule To those soules that lye under the Altar and solicite God for the resurrection in the Revelation God sayes That they should rest for a little season untill their fellow-servants and their brethren that should be killed even as they were were fulfilled All that while while that number is fulfilling is our hopes exercised after our death And therefore the bodies of the Saints of God which have been Temples of the Holy Ghost when the soule is gone out of them are not to be neglected as a sheath that had lost the knife as a shell that had spent the kernell but as the Godhead did not depart from the dead body of Christ Jesus then when that body lay dead in the grave so the power of God and the merit of Christ Jesus doth not depart from the body of man but his blood lives in our ashes and shall in his appointed time awaken this body againe to an everlasting glory Since therefore Iob had and we have this assurance before we dye when we dye after we are dead it is upon good reason that he did and we do trust in God though he should kill us when he doth kill us after he hath killed us Especially since it is Ille He who is spoken of before he that kills and gives life he that wounds and makes whole againe God executes by what way it pleases him condemned persons cannot chuse the manner of their death whether God kill by sicknesse by age by the hand of the law by the malice of man si ille as long as we can see that it is he he that is Shaddai Vastator Restaurator the destroyer and the repairer howsoever he kill yet he gives life too howsoever he wound yet he heales too howsoever he lock us into our graves now yet he hath the keys of hell and death and shall in his time extend that voyce to us all Lazare veni for as come forth of your putrefaction to incorruptible glory Amen SERMON XXXI Preached at Hanworth to my Lord of Carlile and his company being the Earles of Northumberland and Buckingham c. Aug. 25. 1622. JOE 36. 25. Every man may see it man may behold it afar off THe words are the words of Elihu Elihu was one of Iobs friends and a meer naturall man a man not captivated not fettered not enthralled in any particular forme of Religion as the Iewes were a man not macerated with the feare of God not infatuated with any preconceptions which Nurses or Godfathers or Parents or Church or State had infused into him not dejected not suppled not matured not entendred with crosses in this world and so made apt to receive any impressions or follow any opinions of other men a meer naturall man and in the meer use of meer naturall reason this man sayes of God in his works Every man may see it Man may behold it afar off It is the word of a naturall man and the holy Ghost having canonized it sanctified it by inserting it into the booke of God it is the word of God too Saint Paul cites sometimes the words of secular Poets and approves them and then the words of those Poets become the word of God Elihu speakes a naturall man and God speakes in canonizing his words and therefore when we speake to godly men we are sure to be believed for God sayes it if we were to speake to naturall men onely we might be believed for Elihu a naturall man and wise in his generation sayes it that for God in his works Every man may see it man may behold it afar off Be pleased to admit and charge your memories with this distribution of the words Let the parts be but two so you will be pleased to stoop and gather or at least to open your hands to receive some more I must not say flowers for things of sweetnesse and of delight grow not in my ground but simples rather and medicinall herbs of which as there enter many into good cordials so in this supreme cordiall of bringing
tentations to sin He shall eat up my dust so as that it shall fly into mine eys that is so work upon my carnall affections as that they shall not make me blinde nor unable to discern that it is he that works It is said of one kinde of Serpent that because they know by an instinct they have that their skin is good for the use of man for the falling sickness out of Envy they hide their skin when they cast it The Serpent is loth we should have any benefit by him but we have even his tentations arm us and the very falling exalts us when after a sin of infirmity we come to a true and scrutiny of our conscience So he hath nothing to eat but our dust and he eats up our dust so as that he contributes to our glory by his malice The Whale was Ionas Pilot The Crows were Elias caters The Lions were Daniels sentinels The Viper was Pauls advocate it pleaded for him brought the beholders in an instant from extreme to extreme from crying out that Paul was a murderer to cry that he was a god Though at any time the Serpent having brought me to a sin cry out Thou art a murderer that is bring me to a desperate sense of having murdred mine own soul yet in that darkness I shal see light by a present repentance effectual application of the merits of my Savior I shall make the Serpent see I am a God thus far a God that by my adhering to Christ I am made partaker of the Divine Nature For that which S. Chrysost. says of Baptism is true too in the second Baptism Repentance Deposui terram coelum indui then I may say to the Serpent Your meat is dust and I was dust but Deposui terram I have shak'd off my dust by true repentance for I have shak'd off my self and am a new creature and am not now meat for your Table Iam terra non sum sed sal says the same Father I am not now unsavoury dust but I am salt And Sal ex aqua vento says he Salt is made of water and winde I am made up of the water of Baptism of the water of Repentance of the water that accompanies the blood of Christ Jesus and of that winde that blows where it list and hath been pleased to blow upon me the Spirit of God the Holy Ghost and I am no longer meat for the Serpent for Dust must he eat all the days of his life I am a branch of that Vine Christ is the Vine and we are the branches I am a leafe of that Rose of Sharon and of that Lilly of the valleys I am a plant in the Orchard of Pomegranats and that Orchard of Pomegranats is the Church I am a drop of that dew that dew that lay upon the head of Christ. And this Vine and this Rose and Lilly and Pomegranats of Paradise and this Dew of heaven are not Dust And dust must thou eate all the dayes of thy life So then the Prophecy of Esay fulfils it self That when Christ shall reign powerfully over us The wolf and the lamb shall feed together Saul and Ananias shall meet in a house as S. Hierome expounds that and Ananias not be afraid of a Persecutor The Lion shall eate straw like the Bullock says that Prophet in that place Tradent se rusticitati Scripturarum says the same Father The strongest understandings shall content themselves with the homelinesse of the Scriptures and feed upon plain places and not study new dishes by subtilties and perplexities and then Dust shall be the Serpents meat says the Prophet there The power of Satan shall reach but to the body and touch a soul wrapt up in Christ. But then it is Totâ vitâ all his life His diet is impaired but it is not taken away He eats but dust but he shall not lack that as long as hee lives And how long lives the Serpent this Serpent The life of this Serpent is to seduce man to practise upon man to prevaile upon man as farre and as long as man is dust And therefore wee are not onely his dust whilst wee live all which time we serve in our carnall affections for him to feed upon but when we are dead we are his dust still Man was made in that state as that he should not resolve to dust but should have passed from this world to the next without corruption or resolution of the body That which God said to Adam Dust thou art belonged to all from the beginning he and all we were to be of dust in his best integrity but that which God adds there in terram revertêris dust thou art and to it thou shalt returne that the Serpent brought in that was induced upon man by him and his tentation So that when we are living dust here he eats us and when we are dead dust too in the grave he feeds upon us because it proceeds from him both that we die and that we are detained in the state of exinanition and ingloriousnesse in the dust of the earth and not translated immediately to the joyes of heaven as but for him we should have been But as though he do feed upon our living dust that is induce sicknesses and hunger and labour and cold and paine upon our bodies here God raises even that dust out of his hands and redeemes it from his jaws in affording us a deliverance or a â—â—â—â—itution from those bodily calamities here as he did abundantly to his servant and our example Iob so though he feed upon our dead dust and detain our bodies in the disconsolate state of the grave yet as the Godhead the divine nature did not depart from the body of Christ when it lay dead in the grave so neither doth the love and power of God depart from the body of a Christian though resolved to dust in the grave but in his due time shall recollect that dust and recompact that body and reunite that soul in everlasting joy and glory And till then the Serpent lives till the Judgement Satan hath power upon that part of man and that 's the Serpents life first to practise our death and then to hold us in the state of the dead Till then we attend with hope and with prayers Gods holy pleasure upon us and then begins the unchangeable state in our life in body and soul together then we beginne to live and then ends the Serpents life that is his earnest practise upon us in our life and his faint triumph in continuing over our dust That time the time of the generall Resurrection being not yet come the devills thought themselves wronged and complained that Christ came before the time to torment them and therefore Christ yeelded so much to their importunity as to give them leave to enter into the swine And therefore let not us murmur
It was then his Deed and it was his gift it was his Deed of gift and it hath all the formalities and circumstances that belong to that for here is a seale in his blood and here is a delivering pregnantly implied in this word which is not onely Dedit he gave but Tradidit he delivered First Dedit he gave himselfe for us to his Father in that eternall Decree by which he was Agnus occisus ab origine mundi The Lamb slain from the beginning of the world And then Tradidit he delivered possession of himselfe to Death and to all humane infirmities when he took our Nature upon him and became one of us Yea this word implies a further operativenesse and working upon himself then all this for the word which the Apostle uses here for Christ giving of himselfe is the same word which the Evangelists use still for Iudas betraying of him so that Christ did not onely give himselfe to the will of the Father in the eternall Decree nor onely deliver himselfe to the power of death in his Incarnation but he offered he exhibited he exposed we may say he betrayed himselfe to his enemies and all this for worse enemies to the Iewes that Crucified him once for us that make finne our sport and so make the Crucifying of the Lord of life a Recreation It was a gift then free and absolute Hee keeps us not in fear of Resumption of ever taking himselfe from the Church again nay he hath left himself no power of Revocation I am with you sayes he to the end of the world To particular men he comes he knocks and he enters and he stays and hesups and yet for their unworthinesse goes away again but with the Church he is usque ad consummationem till the end It is a permanent gift Dedit and Dedit seipsum It was he that did it That which he did was to give and that which he gave was himselfe Now since the Holy Ghost that is the God of unity and peace hath told us at once that the satisfaction for our sins is Christ himselfe and hath told us no more Christ entirely Christ altogether let us not divide and mangle Christ or tear his Church in pieces by froward and frivolous difputations whether Christ gave his divinity for us or his humanity whether the divine Nature or the humane Nature redeemed us for neither his divinity nor his humanity is Ipse He himselfe and Dedit seipsum He gave himselfe Let us not subdivide him into lesse pieces then those God and Man and enquire contentiously whether he suffered in soul as well as in body the pains of Hâ—ll as well as the sting of Death the Holy-Ghost hath presented him unite and knit together For neither soul nor body was Ipse He himselfe and Dedit seipsum He gave himselfe let us least of all shred Christ Iesus into lesse scruples and atoms then these Soul and body and dispute whether consisting of both it were his active or his passive obedience that redeemed us whether it were his death and passion onely or his innocency and fulfilling of the Law too let us onely take Christ himselfe for onely that is said he gave himselfe It must be an Innocent person and this Innocent person must die for us seperate the Innocency and the Death and it is not Ipse it is not Christ himselfe and Dedit seipsum it was himselfe Let us abstain from all such curiosities which are all but forc'd dishes of hot brains and not sound meat that is from all perverse wranglings whether God or Man redeemed us and then whether this God and Man suffered in soule or in body and then whether this person consisting of soule and body redeemed us by his action or by his passion onely for as there are spirituall wickednesses so there are spirituall wantonnesses and unlawfull and dangerous dallyings with mysteries of Divinity Money that is changed into small pieces is easily lost gold that is beat out into leaf-gold cannot be coyned nor made currant money we know the Heathens lost the true God in a thrust they made so many false gods of every particular quality and attribute of God that they scattered him and evacuated him to an utter vanishing so doth true and sound and nourishing Divinity vanish away in those impertinent Questions All that the wit of Man adds to the Word of God is all quicksilver and it evaporates easily Beloved Custodi Depositum sayes the Apostle keep that which God hath revealed to thee for that God himselfe cals thy Talent it hath weight and substance in it Depart not from thy old gold leave not thy Catechism-divinity for all the School-divinity in the world when we have all what would we have more if we know that Christ hath given himselfe for us that we are redeemed and not redeemed with corruptible things but with the precious blood of Christ Jesus we care for no other knowledge but that Christ and Christ crucified for us for this is another and a more peculiar and profitable giving of himselfe for thee when he gives himselfe to thee that is when he gives thee a sense and apprehension and application of the gift to thy self that Christ hath given himselfe to thy selfe We are come now to his exchange what Christ had for himselfe when he gave himselfe And he had a Church So this Apostle which in this place writes to the Ephesians when he preached personally to the Ephesians he told them so too The Church is that Quam acquisivit sanguine suo which he purchased with his bloud Here Christ bought a Church but I would there were no worse Simony then this Christ received no profit from the Church and yet he gave himselfe for it and he stayes with it to the end of the world Here is no such Non-residency as that the Church is left unserved other men give enough for their Church but they withraw themselves and necessary provision And if we consider this Church that Christ bought and paid so dearly for it was rather an Hospitall then a Church A place where the blind might recover sight that is Men borne in Paganisme or Superstition might see the true God truly worshipped and where the lame might be established that is those that Halted between two Religions might be rectified in the truth where the Deaf might receive so quicke a hearing as that they might discerne Musique in his Thunder in all his fearefull threatnings that is mercy in his Judgments which are still accompanied with conditions of repentance and they might finde Thunder in his Musique in all his promises that is threatnings of Judgements in our misuse of his mercies Where the hereditary Leper the new borne Child into whose marrow his fathers transgression cleaves in originall sinne and he that hath enwrapped Implicatos morbos one disease in another in Actuall sinnes might not onely come if he would but be intreated to come yea
speake for him After that first and heavy curse of Almighty God upon Man Morte morieris If thou eate thou shalt die and die twice thou shall die a bodily thou shalt die a spirituall death a punishment which no sentence of any law or law-maker could ever equall to deterre Men from offending by threatning to take away their lives twice and by inflicting a spirituall death eternally upon the Soule after we have all incurred that malediction Morte moriemur we shall die both death we cannot thinke to scape any lesse malediction of any law and therefore we are all Intestabiles we are all intestable in all these senses and apprehensions which we have touched upon We can make no testament of our owne we have no good thing in us to dispose we have no good inclination no good disposition in our Will we can make no use of anothers testament not of the double testaments of Almighty God for in the Old testament he gives promises of a Messias but we bring into the world no Faith to apprehend those promises and in the New testament he gives a performance the Messias is come but he is communicable to us no way but by baptisme and we cannot baptize our selves we can profit no body else by our testimony we are not able to endure persecution for the testimony of Christ to the edification of others we are not able to doe such workes as may shine before Men to the glorifying of our God Neither doth the testimony of others doe us any good for neither the Martyrdome of so many Millions in the primitive Church nor the execution of so many judgments of God in our owne times doe restifie any thing to our Consciences neither at the last day when those Saints of God whom we have accompanied in the outward worship of God here in the visible Church shall be called to the right hand and we detruded to the left shall they dare to open their mouthes for us or to testifie of us or to say Why Lord these Men when they were in the world did as we did appeared and served thee in thy house as we did they seem'd to goe the same way that we did upon Earth why goe they a sinister way now in heaven We are utterly intestable we can give nothing we can take nothing nothing will be beleeved from us who are all falshood it selfe nor can we be releeved by any thing that any other will say for us As long as we are considered under the penalty of that law this is our case Interdicti intestabiles we are accursed and so as that we are intestable Now as this great malediction Morte marieris in volves all other punishments upon whom that falls all fall so when our Saviour Christ Jesus hath a purpose to take away that or the most dangerous part of that the spirituall death when he will reverse that judgment Aqua igni interdicitur to make us capable of his water and his fire when he will reverse the intestabiles the inteâ—â—ability and make us able to receive his graces by faith and declare them by works then as he that will reedifie a demolished house begins not at the top but at the bottome so Christ Jesus when he will make this great preparation this great reedification of mankind he beginnes at the lowest step which is that we may have use of the testimony of others in our behalfe and he proceeds strongly and effectually he produces three witnesses from heaven so powerfull that they will be heard they will be beleeved and three witnesses on earth so neare us so familiar so domestique as that they will not be denied they will not be discredited Three are three that beare Record in heaven and three that beare record in earth Since then Christ Jesus makes us all our owne Iury able to conceive and judge upon the Evidence and testimony of these three heavenly and three earthly witnesses let us draw neare and hearken to the evidence and consider three things Testimonium esse Quid sit and Qui testes That God descends to meanes proportionable to Man he affords him witnesse and secondly the matter of the proofe what all these six witnesses testifie what they establish Thirdly the quality and value of the witnesses and whether the matter be to be beleeved for their sakes and for their reasons God requires nothing of us but Testimony for Martyrdome is but that A Martyr is but a witnesse God offers us nothing without testimony for his Testament is but a witnesse Teste ipso is shrewd evidence when God says I will speake and I will testifie against thee I am God even thy God when the voice of God testifies against me in mine owne conscience It is more pregnant evidence then this when his voice testifies against me in his word in his Scriptures The Lord testified against Israel by all the Prophets and by all the Seers When I can never be alone but that God speakes in me but speakes against me when I can never open his booke but the first sentence mine eye is upon is a witnesse against me this is fearfull evidence But in this text we are not in that storme for he hath made us Testabiles that is ready to testifie for him to the effusion of our bloud and Testabiles that is fit to take benefit by the testament that hee hath made for us The effusion of his bloud which is our second branch what is testified for us what these witnesses establish First then that which a sinner must be brought to understand and beleeve by the strength of these witnesses is Integritas Christi not the Integrity as it signifies the Innocency of Christ but integrity as it signifies Intireness not as it is Integer vitae but Integra vita not as he kept an integrity in his life but as he onely is intirely our life That Christ was a person composed of those two Natures divine and humane whereby he was a fit and a full satisfaction for all our sinnes and by death could be our life for when the Apostle writ this Epistle it seemes there had been a schisme not about the Mysticall body of Christ the Church but even about the Naturall that is to say in the person of Christ there had been a schisme a separation of his two natures for as we see certainly before the death of this Apostle that the Heresie of Ebion and of Cerinthus which denied the divine nature of Christ was set on foot for against them purposely was the Gospell of Saint Iohn written so by Epiphanius his ranking of the Heresies as they arose where he makes Basilides his Heresie which denied that Christ had any naturall body to be the fourth herefie and Ebions to be the tenth it seemes that they denied his humanity before they denied his Divinity And therefore it is well collected that this Epistle of Saint Iohn being written long
death But upon that part of the sentence In pulverem reverteris To dust thou shalt return there is no Non obstante though thou turn to God thou must turn into the grave for hee that redeem'd thee from the other death redeem'd not himself from this Carry this consideration to the last minute of the world when we that remain shall bee caught up in the clouds yet even that last fire may be our fever those clouds our winding sheets that rapture our dissolution and so with Saint Augustine most of the ancients most of the latter men think that there shall be a sudden dissolution of body and soul which is death and a sudden re-uniting of both which is resurrection in that instant Quis Homeo is Davids question What man is he that liveth and shall not see death Let us adde Quis Deoram What god is he amongst the Gentiles that hath not seen death Which of their three hundred Iupiters which of their thousands of other gods have not seen death Mortibus morjuntur we may adde to that double death in Gods mouth another death The gods of the Gentiles have dyed thrice In body in soul and in fame for though they have been glorified with a Deification nor one of all those old gods is at this day worshipt in any part of the world but all those temporary and transitory Gods are worn out and dead in all senses Those gods who were but men fall under Davids question Quis Home And that man who was truly God fals under it too Christ Jesus He saw death though he saw not the death of this text Corruption And if we consider the effusion of his precious blood the contusion of his sacred flesh the extention of those sinews and ligaments which tyed heaven and earth together in a reconciliation the departing of that Intelligence from that sphear of that high Priest from that Temple of that Dove from that Arke of that soul from that body that dissolution which as an ordinary man he should have had in the grave but that the decree of God declar'd in the infallibility of the manifold prophesies preserv'd him from it had been but a slumber in respect of these tortures which he did suffer The Godhead staid with him in the grave and so he did not corrupt but though our souls be gone up to God our bodies shall Corruption in the skin says Iob In the outward beauty These be the Records of velim these be the parchmins the endictments and the evidences that shall condemn many of us at the last day our own skins we have the book of God the Law written in our own hearts we have the image of God imprinted in our own souls wee have the character and seal of God stamped in us in our baptism and all this is bound up in this velim in this parchmin in this skin of ours and we neglect book and image and character and feal and all for the covering It is not a clear case if we consider the originall words properly That Iesabel did paint and yet all translators and expositors have taken a just occasion out of the ambiguity of those words to cry down that abomination of painting It is not a clear case if we consider the propriety of the words That Absolon was hanged by the hair of the head and yet the Fathers and others have made use of that indifferency and verisimilitude to explode that abomination of cherishing and curling haire to the enveagling and ensnaring and entangling of others Iudicium patietur aeternum says Saint Hierome Thou art guilty of a murder though no body die Quia vinum attulisti si faisset qui bibisset Thou hast poyson'd a cup if any would drink thou hast prepar'd a tentation if any would swallow it Tertullian thought he had done enough when he had writ his book De Habitu muliâ—bri against the excesse of women in clothes but he was fain to adde another with more vehemence De cultu foeminarum that went beyond their clothes to their skin And he concludes Illud ambitionis crimen there 's vain-glory in their excesse of clothes but Hoc prostitutionis there 's prostitution in drawing the eye to the skin Pliny says that when their thin silke stuffes were first invented at Rome Excogitatum ad faeminas denudandas It was but an invention that women might go naked in clothes for their skins might bee seen through those clothes those thinne stuffes Our women are not so carefull but they expose their nakednesse professedly and paint it to cast bird-lime for the passengers eye Beloved good dyet makes the best Complexion and a good Conscience is a continuall feast A cheerfull heart makes the best blood and peace with God is the true cheerfulnesse of heart Thy Saviour neglected his skin so much as that at last hee scarse had any all was torn with the whips and scourges and thy skin shall come to that absolute corruption as that though a hundred years after thou art buryed one may find thy bones and say this was a tall man this was a strong man yet we shall soon be past saying upon any relique of thy skinne This was a fair man Corruption seises the skinne all outward beauty quickly and so it does the body the whole frame and constitution which is another consideration After my skinne my Body If the whole body were an eye or an ear where were the body says Saint Paul but when of the whole body there is neither eye nor ear nor any member left where is the body And what should an eye do there where there is nothing to be seen but loathsomnesse or a nose there where there is nothing to be smelt but putrefaction or an ear where in the grave they doe not praise God Doth not that body that boasted but yesterday of that priviledge above all creatures that it onely could goe upright lie to day as flat upon the earth as the body of a horse or of a dogge And doth it not to morrow lose his other priviledge of looking up to heaven Is it not farther remov'd from the eye of heaven the Sunne then any dogge or horse by being cover'd with the earth which they are not Painters have presented to us with some horrour the sâ—cleton the frame of the bones of a mans body but the state of a body in the dissolution of the grave no pencil can present to us Between that excrementall jelly that thy body is made of at first and that jelly which thy body dissolves to at last there is not so noysome so putrid a thing in nature This skinne this outward beauty this body this whole constitution must be destroy'd says Iobâ— in the next place The word is well chosen by which all this is expressed in this text Nakaph which is a word of as heavy a signification to expresse an utter abolition and annihilation as perchance can be
one person in him My flesh shall no more be none of mine then Christ shall not be man as well as God SERMON XV. Preached at Lincolns Inne 1 COR. 15. 50. Now this I say Brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God SAint Gregory hath delivered this story That Eutychius who was Bishop of Constantinople having written a book of the Resurrection and therein maintained that errour That the body of Christ had not that our bodies in the Resurrection should not have any of the qualities of a naturall body but that those bodies were in subtilitatem redacta so rarifyed so refined so attenâ—ated and reduced to a thinnesse and subtlenesse that they were aery bodies and not bodies of flesh and blood This error made a great noise and raised a great dust till the Emperour to avoid scandall which for the most part arises out of publick conferences was pleased to hear Eutychius and Gregory dispute this point privately before himself and a small company And that upon conference the Emperour was so well satisfyed that hee commanded Eutychius his books to bee burnt That after this both Gregory and Eutychius fell sicke but Eutychius dyed and dyed with this protestation In hâc carne in this flesh taking up the flesh of his hand in the presence of them that were there in this flesh I acknowledge that I and all men shall arise at the day of Judgement Now the principall place of Scripture which in his book and in that conference Eutychius stood upon was this Text these words of Saint Paul This I say brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God And the directest answer that Gregory gave to it was Caro secundum culpam non regnabit sed Caro secundum naturam sinfull flesh shall not but naturall flesh that is flesh indued with all qualities of flesh all such qualities as imply no defect no corruption for there was flesh before there was sin such flesh and such blood shall inherit the Kingdome of God As there have been more Heresies about the Humanity of Christ then about his Divinity so there have been more heresies about the Resurrection of his body and consequently of ours then about any other particular article that concerns his Humiliation or Exaltation Simon Magus strook deepest at first to the root That there was no Resurrection at all The Gnosticks who took their name from knowledge as though they knew all and no body else any thing which is a pride transferr'd through all Heretickes for as that sect in the Roman Church which call themselves Ignorantes and seem to pretend to no knowledge doe yet believe that they know a better way to heaven then all other men doe so that sect amongst them which called themselves Nullanos Nothings thought themselves greater in the Kingdome of God then either of the other two sects of diminution the Minorits or the Minims did These Gnosticks acknowledged a Resurrection but they said it was of the soul onely and not of the body for they thought that the soul lay dead at least in a dead sleep till the Resurrection Those Heretickes that are called the Arabians did as the Gnosticks did affirm a temporary death of the soul as well as of the body but then they allowed a Resurrection to both soul and body after that death which the Gnostickes did not but to the soul onely Hymeneus and Philetus of whom Saint Paul speakes they restrained the Resurrection to the soule but then they restrained this Resurrection of the soule to this life and that in those who were baptized the Resurrection was accomplished already Eutychius whom wee mentioned before enlarged the Resurrection to the body as well as to the soul but enlarged the qualities of the body so far as that it was scarce a body The Armenian hereticks said that it was not onely Corpus humâ—num but Corpus masculinum That all should rise in the perfecter sex and none as women Origen allowed a Resurrection and allowed the Body to be a naturall body but the contracted the time he said that when we rose we should enjoy the benefits of the resurrection even in bodily pleasures for a thousand years and then be annihilated or absorpted and swallowed up into the nature and essence of God himselfe for it will be hard to state Origens opinion in this point Origen was not herein well understood in his owne time not doe we understand him now for the most part but by his accusers and those that have written against him Divers of these Heretiques for the maintenance of their severall heresies perverted this Scripture Flesh and bloud cannot inherit the kingdome of God and that occasioned those Fathers who opposed those heresies so diverse from one another to interpret these words diversly according to the heresie they opposed All agree that they are an argument for the resurrection though they seem at first to oppose it For this Chapter hath three generall parts first Resurrectionem esse that there shall be a Resurrection which the Apostle proves by many and various arguments to the thirty fifth verse And then Quati corpore the body shall rise but some will say How are the dead raised and with what body doe they come in that thirty fifth verse And lastly Quid de superstitibus what shall become of them who shall be found alive at the day We shall all be changed verse fifty one Now this text is the knot and corollary or all the second part concerning the qualities of the bodies in the resurrection Now says the Apostle now that I have said enough to prove that a resurrection there is now now that I have said enough what kind of bodies shall arise now I show you as much in the Negative as I have done in the Affirmative now I teach you what to avoid as well as I have done what to affect now this I say brethren that flesh and bloud cannot inherit the kingdome of God Now though those words be primarily principally intended of the last Resurrection yet in a secondary respect they are appliable in themselves and very often applied by the ancients to the first Resurrection our resurrection in this life Tertullian hath intimated and presented both together elegantly when he says of God Nobis arrhabonem spiritus reliquit arrhabonem à nobis accepit God hath given us his earnest and a pawn from him upon earth in giving us the holy Ghost and he hath received our earnest and a pawn from us into heaven by receiving our nature in the body of Christ Jesus there Flesh and bloud when it is conformed to the flesh and bloud of Christ now glorified and made like his by our resurrectien may inherite the kingdome of God in heaven Yea flesh and bloud being conformed to Christ by the sanctification of the holy Ghost here in this world may inherit the kingdome of God here upon earth for God hath a
his Temple looks for first fruits from both that so on both sides mariage should have such a degree of eternity as to have had no beginning of mariage before mariage It should have this degree of eternity too this quality of a circle to have no interruption no breaking in the way by unjust suspitions and jealousies Where there is Spiritus immunditei as S. Paul calls it a spirit of uncleannesse there will necessarily be Spiritus zelotypiae as Moses cals it a spirit of jealousie But to raise the Devill in the power of the Devill to call up one spirit by another spirit by the spirit of jealousie and suspition to induce the spirit of uncleannesse where it was not if a man conjure up a Devill so God knows who shall conjure it down again As jealousie is a care and not a suspition God is not ashamed to protest of himself that he is a jealous God God commands that no idolatry be committed Thou shalt not bow down to a graven Image and before he accuses any man to have bowed down to a graven Image before any Idolatry was committed he tells them that he is a jealous God God is jealous before there is any harm done And God presents it as a curse when he says My jealousie shall depart from thee and I will be quiet and no more angry that is I will heave thee to thy self and take no more care of thee Jealousie that implies care and honour and counsell and tendernesse is rooted in God for God is a jealous God and his servants are jealous servants as S. Paul professes of himself I am jealous over you with a gedly jealousie But jealousie that implies diffidence and suspition and accusation is rooted in the Devil for he is the Accuser of the brethren So then this secular mariage should be in aeternum eternall for ever as to have no beginning before and so too as to have no jealous interruption by the way for it is so eternall as that it can have no end in this life Those whom God hath joyned no man no Devill can separate so as that it shall not remain a mariage so far as that if those separated persons will live together again yet they shall not be new maried so farre certainly the band of mariage continues still The Devil makes no mariages He may have a hand in drawing conveyances in the temporall conditios there may be practice but the mariage is made by God in heaven The Devil can break no mariages neither though he can by sin break off all the good uses and take away all the comforts of mariage I pronounce not now whether Adultery dissolves mariage or no It is S. Augustines wisdome to say Where the Scripture is silent let me be silent too And I may goe lower then he and say Where the Church is silent let me be silent too and our Church is so far silent in this as that it hath not said That Adultery dissolves mariage Perchance then it is not the death of mariage but surely it is a deadly wound We have Authors in the Romanc Church that think fornicationem non vagam that such an incontinent life as is limited to one certain person is no deadly sin But there is none even amongst them that diminish the crime of Adultery Habere quasi non haberes is Christs counsell To have a wife as though thou hadst none that is continency and temperance and forbearance and abstinency upon some occasions But non habere quasi haberes is not so not to have a wife and yet have her to have her that is anothers that is the Devils counsell That falutation of the Angle to the blessed Virgin Mary Blessed art thou amongst memen we may make even this interpretation not onely that she was blessed amongst women that is above women but that she was Benedicta blessed amongst women that all women blest her that no woman had occasion to curse her And this is the eternity of this secular mariage as far as this world admits any eternity that it should have no beginning before no interruption of jealousie in the way no such approach towards dissolution as that incontinency in all opinions and in all Churches is agreed to be And here also without any scruple of fear or of suspition of the contrary there is place for this benediction upon this couple Build ô Lord upon thine own foundations in these two and establish thy former graces with future that no person ever complain of either of them nor either of them of one another and so he and she are maried in aeternum for ever We are now come in our order proposed at first to our second Part for all is said that I intended of the secular mariage And of this second the spirituall mariage much needs not to be said There is another Priest that contracts that another Preacher that celebrates that the Spirit of God to our spirit And for the third mariage the eternall mariage it is a boldnesse to speak any thing of a thing so inexpressible as the joyes of heaven it is a diminution of them to goe about to heighten them it is a shadowing of them to goe about to lay any colours or light upon them But yet your patience may perchance last to a word of each of these three Circumstances The Persons the Action the Term both in this spirituall and in the eternall mariage First then as in the former Part the secular mariage for the persons there we considered first Adam and Eve and after every man and woman and this couple in particular so in this spirituall mariage we consider first Christ and his Church for the Persons and more particularly Christ and my soul. And can these persons meet in such a distance and in such a disparagement can these persons meet the Son of God and the son of man When I consider Christ to be Germen Iehovae the bud and blossome the fruit and off-spring of Jehovah Jehovah himself and my self before he took me in hand to be not a Potters vessell of earth but that earth of which the Potter might make a vessel if he would and break it if he would when he had made it When I consider Christ to have been from before all beginnings and to be still the Image of the Father the same stamp upon the same metall and my self a peece of rusty copper in which those lines of the Image of God which were imprinted in me in my Creation are defaced and worn and washed and burnt and ground away by my many and many and many fins When I consider Christ in his Circle in glory with his Father before he came into this world establishing a glorious Church when he was in this world and glorifying that Church with that glory which himself had before when he went out of this world and then consider my self in my circle I came into this world
washed in my own tears and either out of compunction for my self or compassion for others I passe through this world as through a valley of tears where tears settle and swell and when I passe out of this world I leave their eyes whose hands close mine full of tears too can these persons this Image of God this God himself this glorious God and this vessell of earth this earth it self this inglorious worm of the earth meet without disparagement They doe meet and make a mariage because I am not a body onely but a body and s oul there is a mariage and Christ maries me As by the Law a man might mary a captive woman in the Warres if he shaved her head and pared her nails and changed her clothes so my Saviour having fought for my soul fought to blood to death to the death of the Crosse for her having studied my soul so much as to write all those Epistles which are in the New Testament to my soul having presented my soule with his own picture that I can see his face in all his temporall blessings having shaved her head in abating her pride and pared her nails in contracting her greedy desires and changed her clothes not to fashion her self after this world my soul being thus fitted by himself Christ Jesus hath maried my soul maried her to all the three intendments mentioned in the secular mariage first in ustionem against burning That whether I burn my self in the fires of tentation by exposing my self to occasions of tentation or be reserved to be burnt by others in the fires of persecution and martyrdome whether the fires of ambition or envy or lust or the everlasting fires of hell offer at me in an apprehension of the judgements of God yet as the Spirit of God shall wipe all tears from mine eyes so the tears of Christ Jesus shall extinguish all fires in my heart and so it is a mariage In ustionem a remedy against burning It is so too In prolificationem for children first vae soli woe unto that single soul that is not maried to Christ that is not come into the way of having issue by him that is not incorporated in the Christian Church and in the true Church but is yet in the wildernesse of Idolatry amongst the Gentiles or in the Labyrinth of superstition amongst the Papists vae soli woe unto that single man that is not maried unto Christ in the Sacraments of the Church and vae sterili woe unto them that are barren after this spirituall mariage for that is a great curse in the Prophet Ieremy Scribe virum istum sterilem write this man childlesse that implied all calamities upon him And assoon as Christ had laid that curse upon the Fig-tree Let no fruit grow upon thee for ever presently the whole tree withered no fruit no leafes neither nor body left To be incorporated in the body of Christ Jesus and bring forth no fruits worthy of that profession is a wofull state too Vae soli woe unto the Gentiles not maried unto Christ and vae sterili woe unto inconsiderate Christians that think not upon their calling that conceive not by Christ but there is a vae praegnanti too wo unto them that are with child and are never delivered that have good conceptions religious dispositions holy desires to the advancement of Gods truth but for some collaterall respects dare not utter them nor bring them to their birth to any effect The purpose of his mariage to us is to have children by us and this is his abundant and his present fecundity that working now by me in you in one instant he hath children in me and grand children by me He hath maried me in ustionem and in prolem against burning and for children but can he have any use of me in adjutorium for a helper Surely if I be able to feed him and clothe him and harbour him and Christ would not condemne men at the last day for not doing these if man could not doe them I am able to help him too Great persons can help him over sea convey the name of Christ where it hath not been preached yet and they can help him home again restore his name and his truth where superstition with violence hath disseised him And they can help him at home defend his truth there against all machinations to displant and dispossesse him Great men can help him thus and every man can help him to a better place in his own heart and his own actions then he hath had there and to be so helped in me and helped by me to have his glory thereby advanced Christ hath maried my soul And he hath maried it in aeternum for ever which is the third and last Circumstance in this spirituall as it was in the secular mariage And here the aeternum is enlarged in the secular mariage it was an eternity considered onely in this life but this eternity is not begun in this world but from all eternity in the Book of life in Gods eternall Decree for my election there Christ was maried to my soul. Christ was never in minority never under years there was never any time when he was not as ancient as the Ancient of Days as old as his Father But when my soul was in a strange minority infinite millions of millions of generations before my soul was a soul did Christ mary my soul in his eternall Decree So it was eternall it had no beginning Neither doth he interrupt â—his by giving me any occasion of jealousie by the way but loves my soul as though there were no other soul and would have done and suffered all that he did for me alone if there had been no name but mine in the Book of life And as he hath maried me to him in aeternum for ever before all beginnings and in aeternum for ever without any interruptions so I know that whom he loves he loves to the end and that he hath given me not a presumptuous impossibility but a modest infallibility that no sin of mine shall divorce or separate me from him for that which ends the secular mariage ends not the spirituall not death for my death does not take me from that husband but that husband being by his Father preferr'd to higher titles and greater glory in another state I doe but goe by death where he is become a King to have my part in that glory and in those additions which he hath received there And this hath led us to our third and last mariage our eternall mariage in the triumphant Church And in this third mariage the persons are the Lamb and my soul The mariage of the Lamb is come and blessed are they that are called to the mariage Supper of the Lamb says S. Iohn speaking of our state in the generall Resurrection That Lamb that was brought to the slaughter and opened not his mouth
before his Gospell was written principally and purposely against the opposers of Christs humanity but occasionally also in defence of his divine nature too Because there is Solutio Iesu a dissolving of Jesus a taking of Jesus in peeces a dividing of his Natures or of his Offices which overthrowes all the testimonies of these six great witnesses when Christ said Solvite templum hoc destroy dissolve this temple and in three dayes I will raise it he spoke that but of his naturall body there was Solutio corporis Christs body and soule were parted but there was not Solutio Iesu the divine nature parted not from the humane no not in death but adhered to and accompanied the soule even in hell and accompanied the body in the grave And therefore says the Apostle Omnis spiritus qui solvit Iesum ex deo non est for so Irenaeus and Saint Augustine and Saint Cyrill with the Grecians read those words That spirit which receives not Jesus intirely which dissolves Jesus and breakes him in peeces that spirit is not of God All this then is the subject of this testimony first that Christ Jesus is come in the flesh there is a Recognition of his humane nature And then that this Jesus is the sonne of God there is a subscription to his divine nature he that separates these and thereby makes him not able or not willing to satisfie for Man he that separates his Nature or he that separates the worke of the Redemption and says Christ suffered for us onely as Man and not as God or he that separates the manner of the worke and says that the passive obedience of Christ onely redeemed us without any respect at all to his active obedience onely as he died and nothing as he died innocently or he that separates the perfection and consummation of the worke from his worke and findes something to be done by Man himselfe meritorious to salvation or he that separates the Prince and the Subject Christ and his members by nourishing Controversies in Religion when they might be well reconciled or he that separates himselfe from the body of the Church and from the communion of Saints for the fashion of the garments for the variety of indifferent Ceremonies all these do Solvere Iesum they slacken they dissolve that Jesus whose bones God provided for that they should not be broken whose flesh God provided for that it should not see Corruption and whose garments God provided that they should not bee divided There are other luxations other dislocations of Jesus when we displace him for any worldly respect and prefer preforment before him there are other woundings of Jesus in blasphemous oathes and exerations there are other maimings of Jesus in pretending to serve him intirely and yet retaine one particular beloved sinne still there are other rackings and extendings of Jesus when we delay him and his patience to our death-bed when we stretch the string so farre that it cracks there that is appoint him to come then and he comes not there are other dissolutions of Jesus when men will melt him and powre him out and mold him up in a waser Cake or a peece of bread there are other annihilations of Jesus when Men will make him and his Sacraments to be nothing but bare signes but all these will be avoided by us if we be gained by the testimony of these six witnesses to hold fast that integrity that intirensse of Jesus which is here delivered to us by this Apostle In which we beleeve first Iâ—sum a Saviour which implies his love and his will to save us and then we beleeve Christum the anointed that is God and man able and willing to doe this great worke and that he is anointed and sealed for that purpose and this implies the decree the contract and bargaine of acceptation by the Father that Pactum salis that eternall covenant which seasons all by which that which he meant to doe as he was Iesus should be done as he was Christ. And then as the intirenesse of Jesus is expressed in the verse before the text we beleeve Quod venit that as all this might be done if the Father and Sonne would agree as all this must be done because they had agreed it so all this was done Quâ—a venit because this Jesus is already come and that for the father intirenesse for the perfection and consummation and declaration of all venit per aquam sanguinem He came by water and bloud Which words Saint Bernard understands to imply but a difference between the comming of Christ and the comming of Moses who was drawen out of the water and therefore called by that name of Moses But before Moses came to be a leader of the people he passed through bloud too through the bloud of the Egyptian whom he slew and much more when he established all their bloudy sacrifices so that Mases came not onely by water Neither was the first Testament ordained without bloud Others understand the words onely to put a difference between Iohn Baptist and Christ because Iohn Baptist is still said to baptize with waterâ— Because he should be declared to Israel therefore am I come baptizing with water but yet Iohn Baptists baptisme had not onely a relation to bloud but a demonstration of it when still he pointed to the Lambe Ecce Agnus for that Lambe was slâ—ine from the beginning of the world So that Christ which was this Lambe came by water and bloud when he came in the risuall types and figures of Moses and when he came in the baptisme of Iohn for in the Law of Moses there was so frequent use of water as that we reckon above fifty severall Immunditi as uncleannesses which might receive their expiation by washing without being put to their bloudy sacrifies for them And then there was so frequent use of bloud that almost all things are by the Law purged with bloud and without shedding of bloud is no Remission But this was such water and such bloud as could not perfect the worke but therefore was to be renewed every day The water that Jesus comes by is such a water as he that arinketh of it shall thirst no more nay there shall spring up in him a well of water that is his example shall worke to the satisfaction of others we doe not say to a satisfaction for others And then this is that bloud that perfected the whole worke at once By his own bloud entred he once into the holy place and obtained eternall Redemption for us So that Christ came by water and bloud according to the old ablutions and old sacrifices when he wept when he sweat when he powred out bloud pretious incorruptible inestimable bloud at so many channels as he did all the while that he was upon the altar sacrificing himselfe in his passion But after the immolation of this sacrifice after his Consummatum est when Christ
found in all the Scriptures Tremellius hath mollifyed it in his translation there it is but Confodere to pierce And yet it is such a piercing such a sapping such an undermining such a demolishing of a fort of Castle as may justly remove us from any high valuation or any great confidence in that skinne and in that body upon which this Confoderint must fall But in the great Bible it is Contriverint Thy skinne and thy body shall be ground away trod away upon the ground Aske where that iron is that is ground off of a knife or axe Aske that marble that is worn off of the threshold in the Church-porch by continuall treading and with that iron and with that marble thou mayst finde thy Fathers skinne and body Contrita sunt The knife the marble the skinne the body are ground away trod away they are destroy'd who knows the revolutions of dust Dust upon the Kings high-way and dust upon the Kings grave are both or neither Dust Royall and may change places who knows the revolutions of dust Even in the dead body of Christ Jesus himself one dram of the decree of his Father one sheet one sentence of the prediction of the Prophets preserv'd his body from corruption and incineration more then all Iosephs new tombs and fine linnen and great proportion of spices could have done O who can expresse this inexpreffible mystery The foul of Christ Jesus which took no harm by him contracted no Originall sin in coming to him was guilty of no more sin when it went out then when it came from the breath and bosome of God yet this soul left this body in death And the Divinity the Godhead incomparably better then that soul which soul was incomparably better then all the Saints and Angels in heaven that Divinity that God-head did not forsake the body though it were dead If we might compare things infinite in themselves it was nothing so much that God did assume mans nature as that God did still cleave to that man then when he was no man in the separation of body and soul in the grave But full we from incomprehensible mysteries for there is mortification enough and mortification is vivification and aedification in this obvious consideration skinne and body beauty and substance must be destroy'd And Destroyed by wormes which is another descent in this humiliation and exâ—anition of man in death After my skinne wormes shall destroy this body I will not insist long upon this because it is not in the Originall In the Originall there is no mention of wormes But because in other places of Iob there is They shal lye down alike in the dust and the worms shall cover them The womb shal forget them and the worm shal feed sweetly on them because the word Destroying is presented in that form number Contriverint when they shall destroy they and no other persons no other creatures named both our later translations for indeed our first translation hath no mention of wormes and so very many others even Tremellâ—s that adheres most to the letter of the Hebrew have filled up this place with that addition Destroyed by worms It makes the destruction the more contemptible Thou that wouldest not admit the beames of the Sunne upon thy skinne and yet hast admitted the pollutions of sinne Thou that wouldst not admit the breath of the ayre upon thy skinne and yet hast admitted the spirit of lust and unchast solicitations to breath upon thee in execrable oathes and blasphemies to vicious purposes Thou whose body hath as farre as it can putrefyed and corrupted even the body of thy Saviour in an unworthy receiving thereof in this skinne in this body must be the food of worms the prey of destroying worms After a low birth thou mayst passe an honourable life after a sentence of an ignominious death thou mayst have an honourable end But in the grave canst thou make these worms silke worms They were bold and early worms that eat up Herod before he dyed They are bold and everlasting worms which after thy skinne and body is destroyed shall remain as long as God remains in an eternall gnawing of thy conscience long long after the destroying of skinne and body by bodily worms Thus farre then to the destroying of skinne and body by worms all men are equall Thus farre all 's Common law and no Prerogative so is it also in the next step too The Resurrection is common to all The prerogative lies not in the Rising but in the rising to the fruition of the sight of God in which consideration the first beam of comfort is the Postquam After all this destruction before by worms ruinous misery before but there is something else to be done upon me after God leaves no state without comfort God leaves some inhabitants of the earth under longer nights then others but none under an everlasting night and those whom he leaves under those long nights he recompenses with as long days after I were miserable if there were not an Antequam in my behalfe if before I had done well or ill actually in this world God had not wrapped me up in his good purpose upon me And I were miserable againe if there were not a Postquam in my behalfe If after my sinne had cast me into the grave there were not a lowd trumpet to call me up and a gracious countenance to looke upon me when I were risen Nay let my life have been as religious as the infirmities of this life can admit yet If in this life onely we have hope in Christ we are of all men most miserable For for the worldly things of this life first the children of God have them in the least proportions of any and besides that those children of God which have them in larger proportion do yet make the least use of them of any others because the children of the world are not so tender conscienced nor so much afraid lest those worldly things should become snares and occasions of tentation to them if they open themselves to a full enjoying thereof as the children of God are And therefore after my wanting of many worldly things after a penurious life and after my not daring to use those things that I have so freely as others doe after that holy and conscientious forbearing of those things that other men afford themselves after my leaving all these absolutely behind me here and my skin and body in destruction in the grace After all there remaines something else for me After but how long after That 's next When Christ was in the body of that flesh which we are in now sinne onely excepted he said in that state that he was in then Of that day and houre no man knoweth not the Angels not the Sonne Then in that state he excludes himselfe And when Christ was risen againe in an uncorruptible body he said even to his nearest followers Non est
vestruâ—â— it is not for you to know times and seasons Before in his state of mortality 〈…〉 ignor antibus he pretended to know no more of this then they that knew nothing After when he had invested immortality per sui exceptionem says that Father he excepts none but himselfe all the rest even the Apostles were left ignorant thereof For this non est vestrum it is not for you is part of the last sentence that ever Christ spake to them If it be a convenient answer to say Christ knew it not as man how bold is that man that will pretend to know it And if it be a convenient interpretation of Christs words that he knew it not that is knew it not so as that he might tell it them how indiscreet are they who though they may seem to know it will publish it For thereby they fill other men with scruples and vexations and they open themselves to scorne and reproach when their predictions prove false as Saint Augustine observed in his time and every age hath given examples since of confident men that have failed in these conjectures It is a poore pretence to say this intimation this impression of a certaine time prepares men with better dispositions For they have so often been found false that it rather weakens the credit of the thing it selfe In the old world they knew exactly the time of the destruction of the world that there should be an hundred twenty years before the flood came And yet upon how few did that prediction though from the mouth of God himselfe work to repentance Naâ—â— found grace in Gods eyes but it was not because he mended his life upon that prediction but he was grations in Gods sight before At the day of our death we write Pridiâ—râ—surrâ—ctioniâ— the day before the resurrection It is Vigilia resurectionis Our Easter Eve Adveniat regnum tuum possesse my soule of thy kingdome then And Fiâ—â— voluntas tua my body shall arise after but how soon after or how late after thy will bee done then by thy selfe and thy will bee knowne till then to thy selfe We passe on As in Massa damnata the whole lump of mankind is under the condemnation of Adams sinne and yet the good purpose of God severs some men from that condemnation so at the resurrection all shall rise but not all to glory But amongst them that doe Ego says Iob I shall I as I am the same man made up of the samebody and the same soule Shall I imagine a difficulty in my body because I have lost an Arme in the East and a leg in the West because I have left some bloud in the North and some bones in the South Doe but remember with what ease you have sate in the chaire casting an account and made a shilling on one hand a pound on the other or five shillings below ten above because all these lay easily within your reach Consider how much lesse all this earth is to him that sits in heaven and spans all this world and reunites in an instant armes and legs bloud and bones in what corners so ever they be scattered The greater work may seem to be in reducing the soul That that soule which sped so ill in that body last time it came to it as that it contracted Originall sinne then and was put to the slavery to serve that body and to serve it in the ways of sinne not for an Apprentiship of seven but seventy years after that that soul after it hath once got loose by death and liv'd God knows how many thousands of years free from that body that abus'd it so before and in the sight and fruition of that God where it was in no danger should willingly nay desirously ambitiously seek this scuttered body this Eastern and Western and Northern and Southern body this is the most inconsiderable consideration and yet Ego I I the same body and the same soul shall be recompact again and be identically numerically individually the same man The same integrity of body and soul and the same integrity in the Organs of my body and in the faculties of my soul too I shall be all there my body and my soul all my body all my soul I am not all here I am here now preaching upon this text and I am at home in my Library considering whether S. Gregory or S. Hierome have said best of this text before I am here speaking to you and yet I consider by the way in the same instant what it is likely you will say to one another when I have done you are not all here neither you are here now hearing me and yet you are thinking that you have heard a better Sermon somewhere else of this text before you are here and yet you think you could have heard some other doctrine of down-right Predestinations and Reprobation roundly delivered somewhere else with more edification to youâ— you are here and you remember your selves that now yee think of it This had been the fittest time now when every body else is at Church to have made such and such a private visit and because you would bee there you are there I cannot say you cannot say so perfectly so entirely now as at the Resurrection Ego I am here I body and soul I soul and faculties as Christ sayd to Peter Noli timere Ego sum Fear nothing it is I so I say to my selfe Noli timere My soul why art thou so sad my body why dost thou languish Ego I body and soul soul and faculties shall say to Christ Jesus Ego sum Lord it is I and hee shall not say Nescio te I know thee not but avow me and place me at his right hand Ego sum I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath Ego sum and I the same man shall receive the crown of glory which shall not fade Ego I the same person Ego videbo I shall see I have had no looking-glasse in my grave to see how my body looks in the dissolution I know not how I have had no houre-glasse in my grave to see how my time passes I know not when for when my eylids are closed in my death-bed the Angel hath said to me that time shall be no more Till I see eternity the ancient of days I shall see no more but then I shall Now why is Iob gladder of the use of this sense of seeing then of any of the other He is not He is glad of seeing but not of the sense but of the Object It is true that is said in the School Viciniùs se habent potentiae sensitivae ad animam quà m corpus Our sensitive faculties have more relation to the soul then to the body but yet to some purpose and in some measure all the senses shall be in our glorifyed bodies In actu or in potentiâ
of heaven our residence it is a madnesse to study the joys of the world The Kingdome of heaven is righteousnesse and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost says Saint Paul And this Kingdome of heaven is Intra nos says Christ it is in us and it is joy that is in us but every joy is not this Kingdome and therefore says the same Apostle Rejoyce in the Lord There is no other true joy none but that But yet says he there Rejoyce and again I say rejoiâ—e that is both again we say it again and again we call upon you to have this spirituall joy for without this joy ye have not the earnest of the Spirit And it is again rejoyce bring all the joys ye have to a second examination and see if you can rejoyce in them again Have you rejoyced all day in Feasts in Musickes in Conversations well at night you must be alone hand to hand with God Again I say rejoyce sleep not till you have tryed whether your joy will hold out there too Have you rejoyced in the contemplation of those temporall blessingsâ— which God hath given you 't is well for you may do so But yet again I say Rejoyce call that joy to an accompt and see whether you caâ—â— rejoyce again in such a use of those blessings as he that gave them to you requires of you Have you rejoyced in your zeal of Gods service that 's a true rejoycing in the Lord But yet still rejoyce again see that this joy be accompanyed with another joy that you have zeal with knowledge Rejoyce but rejoyce again refine your joy purge away all drosse and lees from your joy there is no false joy enters into heaven but yet no sadnesse neither There is a necessary sadnes in this life but even in this life necessary only so as Physick is necessary Tristitia data ut peccata deleamus It is Data a gift of God a sadnes and sorrow infused by him not assumed by our selves upon the crosses of this world And so it is physick and it is Morbi illius peccati it is proper and peculiar physick for that disease for sinne But as that Father pathetically enlarges that consideration Remedium lippitudinis non tâ—llit alios morbos water for fore eyes will not cure the tooth-ach sorrow and sadnesse which is prescribed for sinne will not cure should not be applyed to the other infirmities and diseases of our humane condition Pecunia mulctatus est says that Father still Doluit non emendavit A man hath a decree passed against him in a Court of Justice or lost a Ship by tempest and hee hath griev'd for this hath this revers'd the decree or repaired the shipwrack Filium amisit doluit non resuscitavit His Son his eldest Son his onely Son his towardly Son is dead and he hath grieved for this hath he raised his Son to life again Infirmatur ipse doluit abstulit morbum Himself is fallen into a consumption and languishes and grieves but doth it restore him Why no for sadnesse and sorrow is not the physick against decrees and shipwracks and consumptions and death But then Peccavit quis says he still deluit peccata delevit Hath any man sinned against his God and come to a true sorrow for that sinne peccata delevit he hath wash't away that sinne from his soule for sorrow is good for nothing else intended for nothing else but onely for our sinnes out of which sadnesse first arose And then considered so this sadnesse is not truly nor properly sadnesse because it is not so intirely There is health in the bitternesse of physique There is joy in the depth of this sadnesse Saint Basill inforces those words of the Apostle 2 Cor. 6. 10. Quasi tristes semper autem gandentes usefully to this point Tristitia nostra habet quasi gaudium non habet Our sorrow says he hath a limitation a modification it is but as it were sorrow and we cannot tell whether we may call it sorrow or no but our joy is perfect joy because it is rooted in an assurance Est in spe certa our hope of deliverance is in him that never deceived any for says he then our sadnesse passes away as a dreame Et qui insomnium judicat addit quasi quasi dicebam quasi equitabam quasi cogitabam he that tells his dreame tells it still in that phrase me thought I spoke me thought I went and me thought I thought so all the sorrow of Gods children is but a quasi tristes because it determines in joy and determines soon To end this because there is a difference inter delectationem gaudium between delight and joy for delight is in sensuall things and in beasts as well as in men but joy is grounded in reason and in reason rectified which is conscience therefore we are called to rejoyce againe to try whether our joy be true joy and not onely a delight and when it is found to be a true joy we say still rejoyce that is continue your spirituall joy till it meet the eternall joy in the kingdome of heaven and grow up into one joy but because sadnesse and sorrow have but one use and a determined and limited imployment onely for sin we doe not say be sorry and again be sorry but when you have been truly sorry for your sinnes when you have taken that spirituall physique beleeve your selfe to be well accept the seale of the holy Ghost for the remission of your sins in Christ Jesus and come to that health which that physique promises peace of conscience This joy then which Saint Paul found to be so essentiall so necessary for man he found that God placed within mans reach so neare him as that God afforded man this joy where he least looked for it even in affliction And of this joy in affliction we may observe three steps three degrees one is indeed but halfe a joy and that the Philosophers had A second is a true joy and that all Christians have but the third is an overflowing and aboundant joy to which the Apostle was come and to which by his example hee would rouse others that joy of which himselfe speaks againe I am filled with comfort and am exceeding joyfull in all our tribulations The first of these which we call a halfe joy is but an indolency and a forced unsensiblenesse of those miseries which were upon them a searing up a stupefaction is not of the senses yet of the affections That resolution which some morall men had against misery Non facies ut te dicam malam no misery should draw them to doe misery that honour as to call it misery And in respect of that extreme anguish which out of an over tendernesse ordinary men did suffer under the calamities of this life even this poore indolency and privation of griefe was a joy but yet but a halfe joy the second joy
heart Let a man be zealous and fervent in reprehension of sin and there flies out an arrow that gives him the wound of a Puritan Let a man be zealous of the house of God and say any thing by way of moderation for the repairing of the ruines of that house and making up the differences of the Church of God and there flies out an arrow that gives him the wound of a Papist One shoots East and another West but both these arrows meet in him that means well to defame him And this is the first misery in these arrows these tentations Quia alienae they are shot from others they are not in our own quiver not in our own government Another quality that tentations receive from the holy Ghosts Metaphore of arrows is Quia veloces because this captivity to sin comes so swiftly so impetuously upon us Consider it first in our making In the generation of our parents we were conceiv'd in sin that is they sinn'd in that action so we were conceiv'd in sinne in their sin And in our selves we were submitted to sin in that very act of generation because then we became in part the subject of Originall sin Yet there was no arrow shot into us then there was no sinne in that substance of which we were made for if there had been sin in that substance that substance might be damn'd though God should never infuse a soul into it and that cannot be said well then God whose goodnesse and wisdome will have that substance to become a Man he creates a soul for it or creates a soul in it I dispute not that he sends a light or hee kindles a light in that lanthorn and here 's no arrow shot neither here 's no sin in that soul that God creates for there God should create something that were evill and that cannot be said Here 's no arrow shot from the body no sin in the body alone None from the soul no sin in the soul alone And yet the union of this soul and body is so accompanied with Gods malediction for our first transgression that in the instant of that union of life as certainly as that body must die so certainly the whole Man must be guilty of Originall sin No man can tell me out of what Quiver yet here is an arrow comes so swiftly as that in the very first minute of our life in our quickning in our mothers womb wee become guilty of Adams sin done 6000 years before and subject to all those arrows Hunger Labour Grief Sicknesse and Death which have been shot after it This is the fearfull swiftnesse of this arrow that God himself cannot get before it In the first minute that my soul is infus'd the Image of God is imprinted in my soul so forward is God in my behalf and so early does he visit me But yet Originall sin is there as soon as that Image of God is there My soul is capable of God as soon as it is capable of sin and though sin doe not get the start of God God does not get the start of sin neither Powers that dwell so far asunder as Heaven and Hell God and the Devill meet in an instant in my soul in the minute of my quickning and the Image of God and the Image of Adam Originall sin enter into me at once in one and the same act So swift is this arrow Originall sin from which all arrows of subsequent tentations are shot as that God who comes to my first minute of life cannot come before death And then a third and last danger which we noted in our tentations as they are represented by the holy Ghost in this Metaphore of arrows is that they are vix visibiles hardly discernible 'T is true that tentations doe not light upon us as bullets that we cannot see them till we feel them An arrow comes not altogether so but an arrow comes so as that it is not discern'd except we consider which way it comes and watch it all the way An arrow that findes a man asleep does not wake him first and wound him after A tentation that findes a man negligent possesses him before be sees it In gravtssimis criminibus confinia virtutum ladunt This is it that undoes us that vertues and vices are contiguous and borderers upon one another and very often we can hardly tell to which action the name of vice and to which the name of vertue appertains Many times that which comes within an inch of a noble action fals under the infamy of an odious treason At many executions half the company will call a man an Heretique and half a Martyr How often an excesse makes a naturall affection an unnaturall disorder Vtinam aut sororem non amasset Hamon aut non vindicasset Absolon Hamon lov'd his sister Tamar but a little too well Absolon hated his brothers incest but a little too ill Though love be good and hate be good respectively yet says S. Ambrose I would neither that love nor that hate had gone so far The contract between Ionathan and David was If I say The arrow on this side of thee all is wel If I say The arrow is beyond thee thou art in an ill case If the arrow the tentation be yet on this side of thee if it have not lighted upon thee thou art well God hath directed thy face to it and thou may'st if thou wilt continue thy diligence watch it and avoid it But if the arrow be beyond thee and thou have cast it at thy back in a forgetfulnesse in a security of thy sin thy case is dangerous In all these respects are these arrows these infirmities deriv'd from the sin of Adam dangerous as they are alienae in the hand of others as they are veloces swift in seising us and as they are vix visibiles hardly discern'd to be such And these considerations fell within this first branch of this second part Thine arrows tentations as they are arrows stick fast in me These dangers are in them as they are sagittae arrows and would be so if they were but single arrows any one tentation would endanger us any one tribulation would encumber us but they are plurall arrows and many arrows A man is not safe because one arrow hath mist him nor though he be free from one sin In the execution of Achan all Israel threw stones at him and stoned him If Achan had had some brother or cousin amongst them that would have flung over or short or weakly what good had that done him when he must stand the mark for all the rest All Israel must stone him A little disposition towards some one vertue may keep thee from some one tentation Thou mayst think it pity to corrupt a chast soul and forbear soliciting her pity to oppresse a submitting wretch and forbear to vex him and yet practise and that with hunger and thirst other sins or
those sins upon other persons But all Israel stones thee arrows flie from every corner and thy measure is not to thank God that thou art not as the Publican as some other man but thy measure is to be pure and holy as thy father in heaven is pure and holy and to conform thy self in some measure to thy pattern Christ Jesus Against him it is noted that the Jews took up stones twice to stone him Once wheÌ„ they did it He went away and hid himself Our way to scape these arrows these tentations is to goe out of the way to abandon all occasions and conversation that may lead into tentation In the other place Christ stands to it and disputes it out with them and puts them from it by the scriptum est and that 's our safe shield since we must necessarily live in the way of tentations for coluber in via there is a snake in every path tentation in every calling still to receive all these arrowes upon the shield of faith still to oppose the scriptum est the faithfull promises of God that he will give us the issue with the tentation when we cannot avoid the tentation it self Otherwise these arrows are so many as would tire and wear out all the diligence and all the constancy of the best morall man Wee finde many mentions in the Scriptures of filling of quivers and emptying of quivers and arrows and arrows still in the plurall many arrows But in all the Bible I think we finde not this word as it signifies tentation or tribulation in the singular one arrow any where but once where David cals it The arrow that flies by day And is seen that is known by every man for for that the Fathers and Ancients runne upon that Exposition that that one arrow common to all that day-arrow visible to all is the naturall death so the Chalde paraphrase calls it there expresly Sagitta mâ—rtis The arrow of death which every man knows to belong to every man for as clearly as he sees the Sunne set he sees his death before his eyes Therefore it is such an arrow as the Prophet does not say Thou shalt not feel but Thou shalt not feare the arrow that flies by day The arrow the singular arrow that flies by day is that arrow that fals upon every man death But every where in the Scriptures but this one place they are plurall many so many as that we know not whence nor what they are Nor ever does any man receive one arrow alone any one tentation but that he receives another tentation to hide that though with another and another sin And the use of arrows in the war was not so much to kill as to rout and disorder a battail and upon that routing followed execution Every tentation every tribulation is not deadly But their multiplicity disorders us discomposes us unseâ—â—les us and so hazards us Not onely every periodicall variation of our years youth and age but every day hath a divers arrow every houre of the day a divers tentation An old man wonders then how an arrow from an eye could wound him when he was young and how love could make him doe those things which hee did then And an arrow from the tongue of inferiour people that which we make shift to call honour wounds him deeper now and ambition makes him doe as strange things now as love did then A fair day shoots arrows of visits and comedies and conversation and so wee goe abroad and a foul day shoots arrows of gaming or chambering and wantonnesse and so we stay at home Nay the same sin shoots arrows of presumption in God before it be committed and of distrust and diffidence in God after we doe not fear before and we cannot hope after And this is that misery from this plurality and multiplacity of these arrows these manifold tentations which David intends here and as often as he speaks in the same phrase of plurality vituli multi many buls canes multi many dogs and bellantes multi many warlike enemies and aquaeâ— multae many deep waters compasse me For as it is said of the spirit of wisdome that it is unicus multiplex manifoldly one plurally singular so the spirit of tentation in every soul is unicus multiplex singularly plurall rooted in some one beloved sin but derived into infinite branches of tentation And then these arrows stick in us the raine fals but that cold sweat hangs not upon us Hail beats us but it leaves no pock-holes in our skin These arrows doe not so fall about us as that they misse us nor so hit us as they rebound back without hurting us But we complain with Ieremy The sons of his quiver are entred into our reins The Roman Translation reads that filias The daughters of his quiver If it were but so daughters we might limit these arrows in the signification of tentations by the many occasions of tentation arising from that sex But the Originall hath it filios the sons of his quiver and therefore we consider these arrows in a stronger signification tribulations as well as tentations They stick in us Consider it but in one kinde diseases sicknesses They stick to us so as that we are not sure that any old diseases mentioned in Physicians books are worn out but that every year produces new of which they have no mention we are sure We can scarce expresse the number scarce sound the names of the diseases of mans body 6000 year hath scarce taught us what they are how they affect us how they shall be cur'd in us nothing on this side the Resurrection can teach us They stick to us so as that they passe by inheritance and last more generations in families then the inheritance it self does and when no land no Manor when no title no honour descends upon the heir the stone or the gout descends upon him And as though our bodies had not naturally diseases and infirmities enow we contract more inflict more and that out of necessity too in mortifications and macerations and Disciplines of this rebellious flesh I must have this body with me to heaven or else salvation it self is not perfect And yet I cannot have this body thither except as S. Paul did his I beat down this body attenuate this body by mortification Wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death I have not body enough for my body and I have too much body for my soul not body enough not bloud enough not strength enough to sustain my self in health and yet body enough to destroy my soul and frustrate the grace of God in that miserable perplexed riddling condition of man sin makes the body of man miserable and the remedy of sin mortification makes it miserable too If we enjoy the good things of this world Duriorem carcerem praeparamus wee doe but carry an other wall about our
thee in directing body and soul to thy glory and when thou shalt be pleased to take us in pieces by death receive our souls to thee and lay up our bodies for thee in consecrated ground and in a Christian buryall And lastly thine arrows were followed and pressed with the hand of God The hand of God pressed upon thee in that eternall decree in that irrevocable contract between thy Father and thee in that Oportuit pati That all that thou must suffer and so enter into our glory Establish us O Lord in all occasions of diffidences here and when thy hand presses our arrows upon us enable us to see that that very hand hath from all eternity written and written in thine own blood a decree of the issue as well and as soon as of the tentation In which confidence of which decree as men in the virtue thereof already in possession of heaven we joyn with that Quire in that service in that Anthem Blessing and glory and wisdome and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be unto our God for ever and ever Amen SERMON XX. Preached at Lincolns Inne PSAL. 38. 3. There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sinne IN that which is often reported to you out of Saint Hierome Titulus clavis that the title of the Psalme is the key of the Psalm there is this good use That the book of Psalms is a mysterious book and if we had not a lock every man would thrust in and if we had not a key we could not get in our selves Our lock is the analogy of the Christian faith That wee admit no other sense of any place in any Psalm then may consist with the articles of the Christian faith for so no Heretique no Schismatique shall get in by any countenance of any place in the Psalms and then our key is that intimation which we receive in the title of the Psalm what duty that Psalm is principally directed upon and so we get into the understanding of the Psalm and profiting by the Psalm Our key in this Psalm given us in the title thereof is that it is Psalmus ad Recordationem a Psalm of Remembrance The faculty that is awakened here is our Memory That plurall word nos which was used by God in the making of Man when God said Faciamus Let us us make man according to our image as it intimates a plurality a concurrence of all the Trinity in our making so doth it also a plurality in that image of God which was then imprinted in us As God one God created us so wee have a soul one soul that represents and is some image of that one God As the three Persons of the Trinity created us so we have in our one soul a threefold impression of that image and as Saint Bernard calls it A trinity from the Trinity in those three faculties of the soul the Vnderstanding the Will and the Memory God calls often upon the first faculty O that this people would but understand But understand Inscrutabiliâ— judicia tua Thy judgements are unsearchable and thy ways past finding out And oh that this people would not goe about to understand those unreveâ—led decrees and secrets of God God calls often upon the other faculty the Will too and complaines of the stiffe perversnesse and opposition of that Through all the Prophets runs that charge Noluerunt and Noluerunt they would not they refused me Noluerunâ— audire says God in Esay They are rebellious children that will not hear Domus Israel noluit says God to Ezekiel The house of Israel will not hear thee not Thee not the minister That 's no marvail it is added by God there Noluit me they will not hear me Noluerunt erubescere says God to Ieremy They will not be ashamed of their former ways And therefore Noluerunt reverti They will not return to better ways Hee that is past shame of sin is past recovery from sin So Christ continues that practise and that complaint in the Gospel too He sends forth his servants us to call them that were bidden Et noluerunt venire and they would not come upon their call Hee comes himself and would gather them as hen her chickens and they would not Their fault is not laid in this that they had no such faculty as a will for then their not coming were not their fault but that they perverted that will Of our perversenesse in both faculties understanding and will God may complain but as much of our memory for for the rectifying of the will the understanding must be rectified and that implies great difficulty But the memory is so familiar and so present and so ready a faculty as will always answer if we will but speak to it and aske it what God hath done for us or for others The art of salvation is but the art of memory When God gave his people the Law he proposes nothing to them but by that way to their memory I am the Lord your God which brought you out of the land of Egypt Remember but that And when we expresse Gods mercy to us we attribute but that faculty to God that he remembers us Lord what is man that thou art mindfull of him And when God works so upon us as that He makes his wonderfull works to be had in remembrance it is as great a mercy as the very doing of those wonderfull works was before It was a seal upon a seal a seal of confirmation it was a sacrament upon a sacrament when in instituting the sacrament of his body and his bloud Christ presented it so Doe this in remembrance of me Memorare novissima remember the last things and fear will keep thee from sinning Memorare praeterita remember the first things what God hath done for thee and love love which mis-placed hath transported thee upon many sins love will keep thee from sinning Plato plac'd all learning in the memory wee may place all Religion in the memory too All knowledge that seems new to day sayes Plato is but a remembring of that which your soul knew before All instruction which we can give you to day is but the remembring you of the mercies of God which have been new every morning Nay he that hears no Sermons he that reads no Scriptures hath the Bible without book He hath a Genesis in his memory he cannot forget his Creation he hath an Exodus in his memory he cannot forget that God hath delivered him from some kind of Egypt from some oppression He hath a Leviticus in his memory hee cannot forget that God hath proposed to him some Law some rules to be observed He hath all in his memory even to the Revelation God hath revealed to him even at midnight alone what shall be his portion in the next world And if he dare but remember that nights communication
no persecutor could ever invent a sicknesse or a way to inflict a sicknesse upon a condemned man To a galley he can send him and to the gallows and command execution that hour but to a quartane fever or to a gâ—ut hee cannot condemn him In poverty I lack but other things In banishment I lack but other men But in sicknesse I lack my self And as the greatest misery of war is when our own Country is made the seat of the war so is it of affliction when mine own Body is made the subject thereof How shall I put a just value upon Gods great blessings of Wine and Oyle and Milke and Honey when my cast is gone or of Liberty when the gout fetters my feet The King may release me and say Let him goe whither he will but God says He shall not goe till I will God hath wrapped up all misery in that condemnation Morte morietur That the sinner shall die twice But if the second death did not follow the first death were an ease and a blessing in many sicknesses And no sicknesse can be worse then that which is intended here for it is all over Non sanitas no soundnesse no health in any part This consideration arises not onely from the Physicians Rule that the best state of Mans body is but a Neutrality neither well nor ill but Nulla sanitas a state of true and exquisit health say they no man hath But not onely out of this strictnesse of Art but out of an acknowledgment of Nature we must say sanitas hujus vitae bâ—ne intelligentibus sanitas non est It is but our mistaking when we call any thing Health But why so fames naturalis morbus est Hunger is a sicknesse And that 's naturally in us all Medicamentum famis cibus potus sitis fatigationis somnus when I eate I doe but take Physique for Hunger and for thirst when I drink and so is sleep my physique for wearinesse Detrahe medicamentum interficient for beare but these Physiques and these diseases Hunger and thirst and wearinesse will kill thee And as this sickness is upon us all and so non sanitas there is no Health in none of us so it is upon us all at all times and so Non sanitas there is never any soundness in us for saemper deficimus we are Borne in a Consumption and as little as we are then we grow less from that time Vita cursus ad mortem Before we can craule we runne to meet death urgemur ownes pari passu Though some are cast forward to death by the use which others have of their ruine and so throw them through Discontents into desperate enterprises and some are drawn forward to death by false Markes which they have set up to their own Ambitions and some are spurred forward to death by sharp Diseases contracted by their own intemperance and licentiousness and some are whip'd forward to death by the Miseries and penâ—ries of this life take away all these accidentall furtherances to death this drawing and driving and spurring and whipping pari paessu urgemur omnes we bring all with us into the world that which carries us out of the world a naturall unnaturall consuming of that radicall vertue which sustaines our life Non sanitas there is no health in any so universall is sickness nor at any time in any so universall and so universall too as that not in any part of any man at any time As the King was but sick in his feet and yet it killed him It was but in his fact yet it flew up into his head it affected his head as our former translation observed it in their margin that the disease did not onely grow to a great height in the disease but to the highest parts of the body It was at first but in the feet but it was presently all over Iosiah the King was shot with an arrow at the battail of Megiddo One book that reports the story says he was carried out of the field alive dyed at Ierusalem and another that he was carried out of the field dead Deadly wounds deadly sicknesses spread themselvs all over so fast as that the holy Ghost in relating it makes it all one to tell the beginning and the end thereof If a man doe but prick a finger and binde it above that part so that the Spirits or that which they call the Balsamum of the body cannot descend by reason of that ligature to that part it will gaâ—grene And which is an argument and an evidence that mischiefes are more operative more insinuating more penetrative more diligent then Remedies against mischâ—efes are when the Spirits and Balsamum of the body cannot passe by that ligature to that wound yet the Gangrene will passe from that wound by that ligature to the body to the Heart and destroy In every part of the body death can finde a door or make a breach Mortall diseases breed in every part But when every part at once is diseased death does not bsie ge him but inhabit him In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble and the strong men shall how themselves and the grinders cease because they are few and those that look out at the windows he darkned when age of Gods making age grown by many years or age of the Devills making age grown by many sinnes hath spred an universall debility upon me that all sicknesses are in me have all lost their names as all simples have in Triacle I am sick of sicknesse and not of a Fever or any particular distemper then is the misery of this Text fallen upon me Non sanitas no health none at any time none in any part non in Carne not in my flesh not in my whole substance which is also another circumstance of exaltation in humane misery Take flesh in the largest extent and signification that may be as Moses calls God The God of the spirits of all flesh that is of the Beeing of all Creatures and take all these Creatures to be ours in that Donation Subjicite dominamini subdue and rule all Creatures yet there is no soundnesse in our flesh for all these Creatures are corrupted and become worse then they were to us by the sinne of Adam Bring flesh to a nearer signification to our own there was Caro juxta naturam and there is Caro juxta culpam That flesh which was naturall to man that which God gave man at first that had health and soundnesse in it but yet not such a degree of soundnesse as that it needed no more then it then had That had been naturally enough if that had been preserved to carry that flesh it selfe to heaven but even that flesh if it had not sinned though it had an Immortality in it self yet must have received a glorification in heaven as well though in another measure
people and gather them so So Christ tells us things in darknesse And so Christ speakes to us in our Ear And these low voices and holy whisperings and halfe-silences denote to us the inspirations of his Spirit as his Spirit beares witnesse with our spirit as the Holy Ghost insinuates himselfe into our soules and works upon us so by his private motions But this is not Gods ordinary way to be whispering of secrets The first thing that God made was light The last thing that he hath reserved to doe is the manifestation of the light of his Essence in our Glorification And for Publication of himselfe here by the way he hath constituted a Church in a Visibility in an eminency as a City upon a hill And in this Church his Ordinance is Ordinance indeed his Ordinance of preaching batters the soule and by that breach the Spirit enters His Ministers are an Earth-quake and shake an earthly soule They are the sonnes of thunder and scatter a cloudy conscience They are as the fall of waters and carry with them whole Congregations 3000 at a Sermon 5000 at a Sermon a whole City such a City as Niniveh at a Sermon and they are as the roaring of a Lion where the Lion of the tribe of Juda cries down the Lion that seekes whom he may devour that is Orthodoxall and fundamentall truths are established against clamorous and vociferant innovations Therefore what Christ tels us in the darke he bids us speake in the light and what he saies in our eare he bids us preach on the house top Nothing is Gospell not Evangelium good message if it be not put into a Messengers mouth and delivered by him nothing is conducible to his end nor available to our salvation except it be avowable doctrine doctrine that may be spoke alowd though it awake them that sleep in their sinne and make them the more froward for being so awaked God hath made all things in a Roundnesse from the round superficies of this earth which we tread here to the round convexity of those heavens w ch as long as they shal have any beeing shall be our footstool when we come to heaven God hath wrapped up all things in Circles and then a Circle hath no Angles there are no Corners in a Circle Corner Divinity clandestine Divinity are incompatible termes If it be Divinity it is avowable The heathens served their Gods in Temples sub dio without roofs or coverings in a free opennesse and where they could in Temples made of Specular stone that was transparent as glasse or crystall so as they which walked without in the streets might see all that was done within And even nature it self taught the naturall man to make that one argument of a man truly religious Aperto vivere voto That he durst pray aloud and let the world heare what he asked at Gods hand which duty is best performed when we joyne with the Congregation in publique prayer Saint Augustine hath made that note upon the Donatists That they were Clancularii clandestine Divines Divines in Corners And in Photius we have such a note almost upon all Heretiques as the Nestorian was called Coluber a snake because though he kept in the garden or in the meadow in the Church yet he lurked and lay hid to doe mischief And the Valentinian was called a Grashopper because he leaped and skipped from place to place and that creature the Grashopper you may hear as you passe but you shall hardly find him at his singing you may hear a Conventicle Schismatick heare him in his Pamphlets heare him in his Disciples but hardly surprize him at his exercise Publication is a fair argument of truth That tasts of Luthers holy animosity and zealous vehemency when he says Audemus gloriari Christum à nobis primo vulgatum other men had made some attempts at a Reformation and had felt the pulse of some persons and some Courts and some Churches how they would relish a Reformation But Luther rejoyces with a holy exultation That he first published it that he first put the world to it So the Apostles proceeded when they came in their peregrination to a new State to a new Court to Rome it selfe they did not enquire how stands the Emperour affected to Christ and to the preaching of his Gospel Is there not a Sister or a Wife that might be wrought upon to further the preaching of Christ Are there not some persons great in power and place that might be content to hold a party together by admitting the preaching of Christ This was not their way They only considered who sent them Christ Jesus And what they brough salvation to every soul that embraced Christ Jesus That they preached and still begunne with a Vae si non Never tell us of displeasure or disgrace or detriment or death for preaching of Christ. For woe be unto us if we preach him not And still they ended with a Qui non crediderit Damnabitur Never deceive your own souls He to whom Christ hath been preached and beleeves not shall be damned All Divinity that is bespoken and not ready made fitted to certaine turnes and not to generall ends And all Divines that have their soules and consciences so disposed as their Libraries may bee At that end stand Papists and at that end Protestants and he comes in in the middle as neare one as the other all these have a brackish taste as a River hath that comes near the Sea so have they in comming so neare the Sea of Rome In this the Prophet exalts our Consolation Though the Lord give us the bread of Adversity and the water of Affliction yes shall not our Teachers be removed into corners They shall not be silenced by others they shall not affect of themselves Corner Divinity But saies he there our eyes shall see our Teachers and our eares shall hear a word saying This is the way walke in it For so they shall declare that they have taken to heart this Commandement of him that sent them Christ Jesus All that you receive from me you must deliver to my people therefore Take heed what you hear forget none of it But then you must deliver no more then that and therefore in that respect also Take heed what you hear adde nothing to that and that is the other obligation which Christ laies here upon his Apostles That reading of those words of Saint Iohn Omnis spiritus qui solvit Iesum Every spirit that dissolves Jesus that takes him asunder in pieces and beleeves not all is a very ancient reading of that place And upon that Ancient reading the Ancients infer well That not onely that spirit that denies that Christ being God assumed our flesh not onely he that denies that Christ consists of two natures God and Mam but he also that affirmes this Christ thus consisting of two natures to consist also of two persons this man dissolves Iesus takes him asunder in
midnight not to see where we all see him in the Congregation and to see him with terror in the Suburbs of despaire in the solitary chamber Man may sayes Scotus man must he cannot chuse sayes Thomas man hath seen God sayes the holy Ghost Man that is every man and that 's our last branch in this first part The inexcusablenesse goes over man over all men Because they would not see invisible things in visible they are inexcusable all Death passed upon all men for all have sinned All sinners all dead Is Gods right hand shorter then his left his mercy shrunk and his justice stretched no certainly certainly every man may see him Man cannot hide himselfe from God God does not hide himselfe from man not from any man Col-Adam Omnis home even in that low name that lowest acceptation of man as he is but derived from earth as he is but earth he may see God We have divers names for man in Hebrew at least foure This that makes him but earth Adam is the meanest and yet Col-Adam Every man may see God David cals us to the contemplation of the heavens Coeli enarrant and Iob to the contemplation of the firmament of the Pleiades and Orion and Arcturus and the ordinances of heaven but it is not onely the Mathematician that sees God Demini terra the earth is the Lords and all that dwell therein all in all corners of the earth may see him David tels us They that go down to the sea in ships they see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep but it is not onely the Mariner the discoverer that discovers God but he that puts his hand to the plough and looks not back may see God there Let him be filius terra the sonne of the earth without noble extraction without knowne place of uncertaine parents even Melchisedeck was so Let him be filius percussionis the sonne of affliction a man that hath inward heavy sentences and heavy executions of the law Let him be filius mortis the sonne of death as Saul said to Ionathan of David a man designed to dye nay let him be filius Belial the sonne of iniquity and of everlasting perdition there is no lownesse no naturall no spirituall dejection so low but that that low man may see God Let him be filius terrae the sonne of the earth and of no body else let him be Dominus terrae Lord of the earth busied upon the earth and nothing else let him be hospes terrae a guest a tenant an inmate of the earth halfe of him in the earth and the rest no where else this poore man this worldly man this dying man may see God To end this you can place the spheare in no position in no station in which the earth can eclipse the Sun you can place this clod of earth man in no ignorance in no melancholy in no oppression in no sinne but that he may but that he does see God The Marrigold opens to the Sunne though it have no tongue to say so the Atheist does see God though he have not grace to confesse it We have past through our first part and the three branches of that The object God in his works and the faculty that apprehends seeing that is knowing and the person indued with the faculty every man even Adam In our second part which is a tacite answer to a likely objection Is not God in the highest heaven afar off yes but man may see afar off we have the same three branches too and yet not the same the same object God but in another manifestation then in his worke in glory the same faculty seeing but with other manner of eyes glorified eyes the same person man but not man as he is Adam a meere naturall and earthly man but man as he is Enosh who by having tasted Gods corrections or by having considered the miseries of this world is prepared for the joy and glory of the next And in this part we will begin with the person man Man may behold it afar off How different are the wayes of God from the ways of man the eyes of God from the eyes of man and the wayes and eyes of a godly man from the eyes and wayes of a man of this world We looke still upon high persons and after high places and from those heights we thinke we see far but he that will see this object must lye low it is best discerned in the dark in a heavy and a calamitous fortune The naturall way is upward I can better know a man upon the top of a steeple then if he were halfe that depth in a well but yet for higher objects I can better see the stars of heaven in the bottome of a well then if I stood upon the highest steeple upon earth If I twist a cable of infinite fadomes in length if there be no ship to ride by it nor anchor to hold by it what use is there of it If Mannor thrust Mannor and title flow into title and bags powre out into chests if I have no anchor faith in Christ if I have not a ship to carry to a haven a soule to save what 's my long cable to me If I adde number to number a span a mile long if at the end of all that long line of numbers there be nothing that notes pounds or crownes or shillings what 's that long number but so many millions of millions of nothing If my span of life become a mile of life my penny a pound my pint a gallon my acre a sheere yet if there be nothing of the next world at the end so much peace of conscience so much joy so much glory still all is but nothing multiplied and that is still nothing at all 'T is the end that qualifies all and what kinde of man I shall be at my end upon my death-bed what trembling hands and what lost legs what deafe eares and what gummy eyes I shall have then I know and the nearer I come to that disposition in my life the more mortified I am the better I am disposed to see this object future glory God made the Sun and Moon and Stars glorious lights for man to see by but mans infirmity requires spectacles and affliction does that office Gods meaning was that by the sun-shine of prosperity and by the beames of honour and temporall blessings a man should see farre into him but I know not how he is come to need spectacles scarse any man sees much in this matter till affliction shew it him God made the ballance even riches may show God and poverty may show God let the two Testaments the old and the new be the ballance and so they are even the blessednesse of the old Testament runs all upon temporall blessings and worldly riches Blessed in the city and in the field blessed in the fruit of thy cattell and
them To sever the King and the Kingdome and pretend the weale of the one without the other is to shake and discompose Gods building Historically this was the Jewes case when Ieremy lamented here if he lamented the declination of the State in the death of the King Iosiah And if he lamented the transportation of Zedekiah and that that crosse were not yet come upon them Or if he lamented the future devastation of that Nation occasioned by the death of the King of Kings Christ Jesus when he came into the world this was their case prophetically Either way historically or prophetically Ieremy looks upon the Kingdome but yet through that glasse through the King The duty of the Day and the order of the Text invites us to an application of this branch too Our adversaries did not come to say to themselves Nolumus Regnum hoc we will not have this Kingdome stand the materiall Kingdome the plenty of the Land they would have been content to have but the formall Kingdome that is This forme of Government by a Soveraigne King that depends upon none but God they would not have So that they came implicitely 〈◊〉 Nolumus Regnum hoc we will not have this Kingdome governed thus and they came explicitely to a Nolumus Regem hunc as the Jewes were resolved of Christ We will not have this King to governe at all Non hunc Will you not have him you were at your Nolumus hanc long before Her whom God had set over you before him you would not have Your not Anniversary but Hebdomadary Treasons cast upon her a necessity of drawing blood often and so your Nolumus hâ—nc your desire that she were gone might have some kinde of ground or colour But for your Nolumus hunc for this King who had made no Inquisition for blood who had forborne your very pecuniary penalties who had as himself witnesses of himself made you partakers with his Subjects of his own Religion in matters of grace and in reall benefits and in Titles of Honour Quare fremuerant Why did these men rage and imagine a vaine thing What they did historically we know They made that house which is the hive of the Kingdome from whence all her honey comes that house where Iustice her self is conceived in their preparing of Laws and inanimated and quickned and borne by the Royall Assent there given they made that whole house one Murdring peece and charged that peece with Peers with People with Princes with the King and meant to discharge it upward at the face of heaven to shoot God at the face of God Him of whom God hath said Dii estis You are Gods at the face of God that had said so as though they would have reproached the God of heaven and not have been beholden to him for such a King but shoot him up to him and bid him take his King again with a nolumus hunc regnare we will not have this King to reign over us This was our case Historically and what it is Prophetically as long as that remains to bee their doctrine which he against whom that attempt was principally made found by their examination to be their doctrine That they and no Sect in the world but they did make Treason an article of Religion That their Religion bound them to those attempts so long they are never at an end Till they dis-avow those Doctrines that conduce to that prophetically they wish prophetically they hope for better successe in as ill attempts It is then the kingdome that Ieremy laments but his nearest object is the King Hee laments him First let it be as with S. Hierome many of the Ancients and with them many of the later Rabbins will have it for Josiah for a good King in whose death the honour and the strength of the kingdome took that deadly wound to become tributary to a forain Prince for to this lamentation they refer those words of the Prophet which describe a great sorrow In that day shall there be a great mourning in Ierusalem as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon which was the place where Iosiah was slain There shall be such a lamentation says the Prophet in this interpretation as was for the death of Iosiah This then was for him for a good King Wherein have we his goodnesse expressed Abundantly Hee did that which was right in Gods fight And whose Eye need he fear that is right in the Eye of God But how long did he so To the end for Nero who had his Quinquennium and was a good Emperour for his first five years was one of the worst of all Hee that is ill all the way is but a Tyran Hee that is good at first and after ill an Angels face and a Serpents taile make him a Monster Iosiah began well and persevered so He turned not aside to the right â—and nor to the left That is if we apply it to the Iosiah of our times neither to the fugitive that leaves our Church and goes to the Roman nor to the Separatist that leaves our Church and goes to none In the eighteenth year of his reign Iosiah undertook the reparation of Gods house If we apply this to the Iosiah of our times I think in that year of his reign he visited this Church and these wals and meditated and perswaded the reparation thereof In one word Like unto Iosiah there was no King before nor after And therefore there was just cause of lamentation for this King for Iosiah historically for the very loss of his person prophetically for the misery of the State after his death Our errand is to day to apply all these branches to the day Those men who intended us this cause of lamentation this day in the destruction of our Iosiah spared him not because he was so because so because he was a Iosiah because he was good no not because he was good to them his benefits to them had not mollified them towards him for that is not their way Both the French Henries were their own and good to them but did that rescue either of them from the knife And was not that Emperour whom they poisoned in the Sacrament their own and good to them and yet was that any Antidote against their poison To so reprobate a sense hath God given them over herein as that though in their Books they ly heaviest upon Princes of our Religion yet truly they have destroyed more of their own then of ours Thus it is Historically in their proceedings past And Prophetically it can be but thus since no King is good in their sense if he agree not to all points of Doctrine with them And when that is done not good yet except he agree in all points of Iurisdiction too and that no King can doe that will not be their Farmer of his Kingdome Their Authours have disputed Auferibilitatem Papae whether the Church of God might not be
nor over-mourne for that which as we have induced it upon our selves so God shall deliver us from at last that is both death and corruption after death and captivity in that comfortlesse state but for the resurection For so long we are to be dust and so long lasts the Serpents life Satans power over man dust must he eate all the days of his life In the meane time for our comfort in the way when this Serpent becomes a Lyon yet there is a Lyon of the Tribe of Iudah that is too strong for him so if he who is Serpens serpens humi the Serpent condemned to creep upon the ground doe transforme himselfe into a flying Serpent and attempt our nobler faculties there is Serpens exaltatus a Serpent lifted up in the wildernesse to recover all them that are stung and feel that they are stung with this Serpent this flying Serpent that is these high and continued sinnes The creeping Serpent the groveling Serpent is Craft the exalted Serpent the crucified Serpent is Wisdome All you worldly cares all your crafty bargaines all your subtill matches all your diggings into other means estates all your hedgings in of debts all your planting of children in great allyances all these diggings and hedgings and plantings savour of the earth and of the craft of that Serpent that creeps upon the earth But crucifie this craft of yours bring all your worldly subtilty under the Crosse of Christ Jesus husband your farmes so as you may give a good account to him presse your debts so as you would be pressed by him market and bargaine so as that you would give all to buy that field in which his treasure and his pearle is hid and then you have changed the Serpent from the Serpent of perdition creeping upon the earth to the Serpent of salvation exalted in the wildernesse Creeping wisedome that still looks downward is but craft Crucified wisedome that looks upward is truly wisedome Between you and that ground Serpent God hath kindled a war and the nearer you come to a peace with him the farther ye go from God and the more ye exaspetate the Lord of Hosts and you whet his sword against your own souls A truce with that Serpent is too near a peace to condition with your conscience for a time that you may continue in such a sin till you have paid for such a purchase married such a daughter bought such an annuity undermined and eaten out such an unthrift this truce though you mean to end it before you die is too near a peace with that Serpent between whom and you God hath kindled an everlasting war A cessation of Arms that is not to watch all his attempts and tentations not to examine all your particular actions A Treaty of Peace that is to dispute and debate in the behalf and favour of a sin to palliate to disguise to extenuate that sin this is too near a peace with this Serpent this creeping Serpent But in the other Serpent the crucified Serpent God hath reconciled to himself all things in heaven and earth and hell You have peace in the assistance of the Angels of heaven Peace in the contribution of the powerfull prayers and of the holy examples of the Saints upon earth peace in the victory and triumph over the power of hell peace from sins towards men peace of affections in your selves peace of conscience towards God From your childhood you have been called upon to hold your peace To be content is to hold your peace murmure not at God in any corrections of his and you doe hold this peace That creeping Serpent Satan is war and should be so The crucified Serpent Christ Jesus is peace and shall be so for ever The creeping Serpent eats our dust the strength of our bodies in sicknesses and our glory in the dust of the grave The crucified Serpent hath taken our flesh and our blood and given us his flesh and his blood for it And therefore as David when he was thought base for his holy freedome in dancing before the Ark said he would be more base so since we are all made of red earth let him that is red be more red Let him that is red with the blood of his own soul be red again in blushing for that rednesse and more red in the Communion of the blood of Christ Jesus whom we shall eat all the days of our life and be mystically and mysteriously and spiritually and Sacramentally united to him in this life and gloriously in the next In this state of dust and so in the territory of the Serpent the Tyrant of the dead lies this dead brother of ours and hath lien some years who occasions our meeting now and yearly upon this day and whose soul we doubt not is in the hands of God who is the God of the living And having gathered a good Gomer of Manna a good measure of temporall blessings in this life and derived a fair measure thereof upon them whom nature and law directed it upon and in whom we beseech God to blesse it hath also distributed something to the poor of this Parish yearly this day and something to a meeting for the conserving of neighbourly love and something for this exercise In which no doubt his intention was not so much to be yearly remembred himself as that his posterity and his neighbours might be yearly remembred to doe as he had done For this is truly to glorifie God in his Saints to sanctifie our selves in their examples To celebrate them is to imitate them For as it is probably conceived and agreeably to Gods Justice that they that write wanton books or make wanton pictures have additions of torment as often as other men are corrupted with their books or their pictures so may they who have left permanent examples of good works well be beleeved to receive additions of glory and joy when others are led by that to do the like And so they who are extracted and derived from him and they who dwelt about him may assist their own happiness and enlarge his by following his good example in good proportions Amen SERMON XLVIII Preached at St. Dunstans LAMENT 3. 1. I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath YOU remember in the history of the Passion of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus there was an Ecce homo a shewing an exhibiting of that man in whom we are all blessed Pilat presented him to the Jews so with that Ecce homo Behold the man That man upon whom the wormwood and the gall of all the ancient Prophecies and the venome and malignity of all the cruell instruments thereof was now poured out That man who was left as a tender plant and as a roote out of a dry ground without forme or beauty or comelinesse that wee should desire to see him as the Prophet Esay exhibits him That man who upon the brightnesse of