to natural light being conversant about those things that do not derive their value and authority from any arbitrary constitutions but from the moral and intrinsick nature of the things themselves These Laws as being the results and dictates of right reason are especially as to their first and more immediate emanations the same in all Men in the World and in all Times and Places 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ' as the Jewes call them Precepts that are evident among all Nations indeed they are interwoven into Mens nature inserted into the texture and constitution of their minds and do discover themselves as soon as ever they arrive to the free use and exercise of their reason That there are such Laws and Principles naturally planted in Mens breasts is evident from the consent of Mankind and the common experience of the World Whence else comes it to pass that all wicked Men even among the Heathens themselves after the commission of gross sins such as do more sensibly rouze and awaken conscience are filled with horrours and fears of punishment but because they are conscious to themselves of having violated some Law and Rule of Duty Now what Law can this be not the written and revealed Law for this the Heathens never had it must be therefore the inbred Law of Nature that 's born with them and fixed in their minds antecedently to any external revelation For when the Gentiles which have not the Law do by nature by the light and evidence by the force and tendency of their natural notions and dictates the things contained in the Law these having not a Law are a Law unto themselves which shew the work of the Law written in their hearts their conscience also bearing witness and their thoughts 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the reasonings of their minds in the mean while 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by turns accusing or else excusing one another that is although they had not a written Law as the Jewes had of old and we Christians have at this day yet by the help of their natural Principles they performed the same actions and discharged the same Duties that are contained in and commanded by the written and external Law shewing by their practices that they had a Law some common notions of good and evil written in their hearts And to this their very Consciences bear witness for according as they either observe or break these natural Laws their Consciences do either acquit or condemn them Hence we find God in the very infancy of the World appealing to Gain for the truth of this as a thing sufficiently plain and obvious Why art thou wroth and why is thy countenance fallen if thou doest well shalt thou not be accepted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be lift up able to walk with a pleased and a chearful countenance the great indication of a mind satisfied in the conscience of its duty but if thou doest not well sin lies at the door the punishments of sin will be ready to follow thee and conscience as a Minister of vengeance will perpetually pursue and haunt thee By these Laws Mankind was principally governed in the first Ages of the World there being for near Two Thousand Years no other fixed and standing Rule of Duty than the dictates of this Law of Nature those Principles of Vice and Vertue of Justice and Honesty that are written in the heart of every Man 3. THE Jewes very frequently tell us of some particular commands to the number of Seven which they call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Precepts of the Sons of Noah Six whereof were given to Adam and his Children and the Seventh given to Noah which they thus reckon up The first was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 concerning strange worship that they should not give Divine honour to Idols or the Gods of the Heathens answerable to the two first commands of the Decalogue Thou shalt have no other Gods but me thou shalt not make unto thee any graven Image nor the likeness of any thing that is in Heaven above or in the Earth beneath or in the Water under the Earth thou shalt not bow down thy self to them or serve them for c. From the violation of this Law it was that Job one of the Patriarchs that lived under this dispensation solemnly purges himself when speaking concerning the worship of the Celestial Lights the great if not only Idolatry of those early Ages says he if I beheld the Sun when it shined or the Moon walking in her brightness and my heart hath been secretly inticed or my mouth hath kissed my hand this also were an iniquity to be punished by the Judge for I should have denied the God that is above The second 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 concerning blessing or worshipping that they should not blaspheme the Name of God This Law Job also had respect to when he was careful to sanctifie his Children and to propitiate the Divine Majesty for them every Morning for it may be said he that my Sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts The third was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 concerning the shedding of blood forbidding Man-slaughter a Law expresly renewed to Noah after the Flood and which possibly Job aimed at when he vindicates himself that he had not rejoyced at the destruction of him that hated him or lift up himself when evil found him Nor was all effusion of humane blood forbidden by this Law capital punishments being in some cases necessary for the preservation of humane Society but only that no Man should shed the blood of an innocent Person or pursue a private revenge without the warrant of publick Authority The fourth was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 concerning the disclosing of uncleanness against filthiness and adultery unlawful marriages and incestuous mixtures If mine heart says Job in his Apology hath been deceived by a Woman or if I have laid wait at my neighbour's door then let my Wife grind c. for this is an heinous crime yea it is an iniquity to be punished by the Judges The fifth was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 concerning theft and rapine the invading another Man's right and property the violation of bargains and compacts the falsifying a Man's word or promise the deceiving of another by fraud lying or any evil arts From all which Job justifies himself that he had not walked with vanity nor had his foot hasted to deceit that his step had not turned out of the way nor his heart walked after his eyes nor any blot cleaved to his hands And elsewhere he bewails it as the great iniquity of the Times that there were some that removed the Land-marks that violently took away the Flocks and fed thereof that drove away the Asse of the Fatherless and took the Widows Oxe for a pledge that turned the needy out of the way and made the poor of the Earth hide themselves together c. The sixth was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
Opinions some making him contemporary with Abraham others with Jacob which had he been we should doubtless have found some mention of him in their story as well as we do of 〈◊〉 others again refer him to the time of the Law given at Mount Sinai and the Israelites travels in the Wilderness others to the times of the Judges after the settlement of the Israelites in the Land of Promise nay some to the reign of David and Solomon and I know not whether the Reader will not smile at the fancy of the Turkish Chronologists who make Job Major-domo to Solomon as they make Alexander the Great the General of his Army Others go further and place him among those that were carried away in the Pabylonish Captivity yea in the time of Ahasuerus and make his fair Daughters to be of the number of those beautiful young Virgins that were sought-for for the King Follies that need no confutation 'T is certain that he was elder than Moses his Kindred and Family his way of sacrificing the Idolatry rise in his time evidently placing him before that Age besides that there are not the least foot-steps in all his Book of any of the great things done for the 〈◊〉 deliverance which we can hardly suppose should have been omitted being examples so fresh in memory and so apposite to the design of that Book Most probable therefore it is that he lived about the time of the Israelitish Captivity in Egypt though whether as some Jews will have it born that very Year that Jacob came down into Egypt and dying that Year that they went out of Egypt I dare not peremptorily affirm And this no question is the reason why we find nothing concerning him in the Writings of Moses the History of those Times being crowded up into a very little room little being recorded even of the Israelites themselves for near Two Hundred Years more than in general that they were heavily oppressed under the Egyptian Yoke More concerning this great and good Man and the things relating to him if the Reader desire to know he may among others consult the elaborate exercitations of the younger 〈◊〉 in his Historia Jobi where the largest curiosity may find enough to satisfie it 22. AND now for a Conclusion to this Occonomy if we reflect a little upon the state of things under this period of the World we shall find that the Religion of those 〈◊〉 Ages was plain and simple unforced and natural and highly agreeable to the common dictates and notions of Mens minds They were not educated under any forreign Institutions nor conducted by a Body of numerous Laws and written Constitutions but were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Philo calls them tutor'd and instructed by the dictates of their own minds and the Principles of that Law that was written in their hearts following the order of Nature and right Reason as the safest and most ancient Rule By which means as one of the Ancients observes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they maintained a free and uninterrupted course of Religion conducting their lives according to the rules of Nature so that having purged their minds from lust and passion and attained to the true knowledge of God they had no need of external and written Laws Their Creed was short and perspicuous their notions of God great and venerable their devotion and piety real and substantial their worship grave and serious and such as became the grandeur and majesty of the Divine being their Rites and Ceremonies few and proper their obedience prompt and sincere and indeed the whole conduct of their conversation discovering it self in the most essential and important duties of the humane life According to this standard it was that our blessed Saviour mainly designed to reform Religion in his most excellent Institutions to retrieve the piety and purity the innocency and simplicity of those 〈◊〉 and more uncorrupted Ages of the World to improve the Laws of Nature and to reduce Mankind from ritual observances to natural and moral duties as the most vital and essential parts of Religion and was therefore pleased to charge Christianity with no more than two positive Institutions Baptism and the Lord's Supper that Men might learn that the main of Religion lies not in such things as these Hence Eusebius undertakes at large to prove the faith and manners of the Holy Patriarchs who lived before the times of Moses and the belief and practice of Christians to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one and the same Which he does not only assert and make good in general but deduce from particular instances the examples of Enoch Noah Abraham Melchisedeck Job c. whom he expresly proves to have believed and lived 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 altogether after the manner of Christians Nay that they had the name also as well as the thing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as he shews from that place which he proves to be meant of Abraham Isaac and Jacob 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Touch not my Christians mine Anointed and do my Prophets no harm And in short that as they had the same common Religion so they had the common blessing and reward SECT II. Of the MOSAICAL Dispensation Moses the Minister of this Oeconomy His miraculous preservation His learned and noble education The Divine temper of his mind His conducting the Israelites out of Egypt Their arrival at Mount Sinai The Law given and how Moral Laws the Decalogue whether a perfect Compendium of the Moral Law The Ceremonial Laws what Reduced to their proper Heads Such as concerned the matter of their Worship Sacrifices and the several kinds of them Circumcision The Passover and its typical relation The place of Publick Worship The Tabernacle and Temple and the several parts of them and their typical aspects considered Their stated times and 〈◊〉 weekly monthly annual The Sabbatical Year The Year of Jubilee Laws concerning the Persons ministring Priests Levites the High-Priest how a type of Christ. The Design of the Ceremonial Law and its abolition The Judicial Laws what The Mosaick Law how divided by the Jews into affirmative and negative Precepts and why The several ways of Divine revelation Urim and Thummim what and the manner of its giving Answers Bath-Col Whether any such way of revelation among the Jews Revelation by Dreams By Visions The Revelation of the Holy Spirit what Moses his way of Prophecy wherein exceeding the rest The pacate way of the spirit of prophecy This spirit when it ceased in the Jewish Church The state of the Church under this Dispensation briefly noted From the giving of the Law till Samuel From Samuel till Solomon It s condition under the succeeding Kings till the Captivity From thence till the coming of Christ. The state of the Jewish Church in the time of Christ more particularly considered The prophanations of the Temple The Corruption of their Worship The abuse of the Priesthood The Depravation of the Law by false glosses
his people and free liberty to go serve and worship the God of their Fathers And that he might not seem a mere pretender to Divine revelation but that he really had an immediate commission from Heaven God was pleased to furnish him with extraordinary Credentials and to seal his Commission with a power of working Miracles beyond all the Arts of Magick and those tricks for which the Egyptian Sorcerers were so famous in the World But Pharaoh unwilling to part with such useful Vassals and having oppressed them beyond possibility of reconcilement would not hearken to the proposal but sometimes downright rejected it otherwhiles sought by subtil and plausible pretences to evade and shift it off till by many astonishing Miracles and severe Judgments God extorted at length a grant from him Under the conduct of Moses they set forwards after at least two hundred years servitude under the Egyptian yoke and though 〈◊〉 sensible of his error with a great Army pursued them either to cut them off or bring them back God made way for them through the midst of the Sea the waters becoming like a wall of Brass on each side of them till being all passed to the other 〈◊〉 those invisible cords which had hitherto tied up that liquid Element bursting in sunder the waters returned and overwhelmed their enemies that pursued them Thus God by the same stroke can protect his friends and punish his enemies Nor did the Divine Providence here take its leave of them but became their constant guard and defence in all their journeys waiting upon them through their several stations in the wilderness the most memorable whereof was that at Mount Sinai in Arabia The place where God delivered them the pattern in the Mount according to which the form both of their Church and State was to be framed and modelled In order hereunto Moses is called up into the Mount where by Fasting and Prayer he conversed with Heaven and received the body of their Laws Three days the people were by a pious and devout care to sanctifie and prepare themselves for the promulgation of the Law they might not come near their Wives were commanded to wash their clothes as an embleme and representation of that cleansing of the heart and that inward purity of mind where with they were to entertain the Divine will On the third day in the morning God descended from Heaven with great appearances of Majesty and terror with thunders and lightnings with black clouds and tempests with shouts and the loud noise of a trumpet which trumpet say the Jews was made of the horn of that Ram that was offered in the room of Isaac with fire and smoke on the top of the Mount ascending up like the smoke of a Furnace the Mountain it self greatly quaking the people trembling nay so terrible was the sight that Moses who had so frequently so familiarly conversed with God said I exceedingly fear and quake All which pompous trains of terror and magnificence God made use of at this time to excite the more solemn attention to his Laws and to beget a greater reverence and veneration for them in the minds of the people and to let them see how able he was to call them to account and by the severest penalties to vindicate the violation of his Law 4. THE Code and Digest of those Laws which God now gave to the Jews as the terms of that National Covenant that he made with them consisted of three sorts of Precepts Moral Ecelesiastical and Political which the Jews will have intimated by those three words that so frequently occur in the writings of Moses Laws Statutes and Judgments By 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Laws they understand the Moral Law the notices of good and evil naturally implanted in mens minds By 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Statutes Ceremonial Precepts instituted by God with peculiar reference to his Church By 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Judgments Political Laws concerning Justice and Equity the order of humane society and the prudent and peaceable managery of the Commonwealth The Moral Laws inserted into this Code are those contained in the Decalogue 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as they are called the ten words that were written upon two Tables of Stone These were nothing else but a summary Comprehension of the great Laws of Nature engraven at first upon the minds of all men in the World the most material part whereof was now consigned to writing and incorporated into the body of the Jewish Law I know the Decalogue is generally taken to be a complete System of all natural Laws But whoever impartially considers the matter will find that there are many instances of duty so far from being commanded in it that they are not reducible to any part of it unless hook'd in by subtilties of wit and drawn thither by forc'd and unnatural inferences What provision except in one case or two do any of those Commandments make against neglects of duty Where do they obligue us to do good to others to love assist relieve our enemies Gratitude and thankfulness to benefactors is one of the prime and essential Laws of Nature and yet no where that I know of unless we will have it implied in the Preface to the Law commanded or intimated in the Decalogue With many other cases which 'tis naturally evident are our duty whereof no footsteps are to be seen in this Compendium unless hunted out by nice and sagacious reasonings and made out by a long train of consequences never originally intended in the Commandment and which not one in a thousand are capable of deducing from it It is probable therefore that God reduc'd only so many of the Laws of Nature into writing as were proper to the present state and capacities of that people to whom they were given superadding some and explaining others by the Preaching and Ministery of the Prophets who in their several Ages endeavoured to bring men out of the Shades and Thickets into clear light and Noon-day by clearing up mens obligations to those natural and essential duties in the practice whereof humane nature was to be advanced unto its just accomplishment and perfection Hence it was that our Lord who came not to destroy the Law but to fulfil and perfect it has explained the obligations of the natural Law more fully and clearly more plainly and intelligibly rendred our duty more fixed and certain and extended many instances of obedience to higher measures to a greater exactness and perfection than ever they were understood to have before Thus he commands a free and universal charity not only that we love our friends and relations but that we love our enemies bless them that curse us do good to them that hate us and pray for them that despitefully use and persecute us He hath forbidden malice and revenge with more plainness and smartness obliged us not only to live according to the measures of sobriety but extended it to self-denial and taking
was the Sabbath which was to be kept with all imaginable care and strictness they being commanded to rest in it from all servile labours and to attend the Duties and Offices of Religion a type of that rest that remains for the People of God Their monthly Festivals were the New-moons wherein they were to blow the Trumpets over their Sacrifices and Oblations and to observe them with great expressions of joy and triumph in a thankful resentment of the blessings which all that Month had been conferred upon them Their Annual Solemnities were either ordinary or extraordinary Ordinary were those that returned every Year whereof the first was the Passover to be celebrated upon the Fourteenth day of the first Month as a Memorial of their great deliverance out of Egypt The second Pentecost called also the Feast of Weeks because just seven Weeks or fifty days after the Passover Instituted it was partly in memory of the promulgation of the Law published at Mount Sinai fifty days after their celebration of the Passover in Egypt partly as a thanksgiving for the in gathering of their Harvest which usually was fully brought in about this time The third was the Feast of Tabernacles kept upon the Fifteenth day of the Seventh Month for the space of Seven days together at which time they dwelt in Booths made of green Boughs as a memento of that time when they sojourn'd in Tents and Tabernacles in the Wilderness and a sensible demonstration of the transitory duration of the present life that the Earthly house of our Tabernacle must be dissolved and that therefore we should secure a building of God an house not made with hands Eternal in the Heavens These were the three great solemnities wherein all the Males were obliged to appear at Jerusalem and to present themselves and their offerings in testimony of their homage and devotion unto God Besides which they had some of lesser moment such as their Feast of Trumpets and that of Expiation The Annual Festivals extraordinary were those that recurr'd but once in the periodical return of several years such was the Sabbatical year wherein the Land was to lye fallow and to rest from ploughing and sowing and all manner of cultivation and this was to be every seventh year typifying the Eternal Sabbatism in Heaven where good men shall rest from their labours and their works shall follow them But the great Sabbatical year of all was that of Jubilee which returned at the end of seven ordinary Sabbatick years that is every fiftieth year the approach whereof was proclaimed by the sound of Trumpets in it servants were released all debts discharged and mortgaged Estates reverted to their proper heirs And how evidently did this shadow out the state of the Gospel and our Lord 's being sent to preach good tidings to the meek to bind up the broken hearted to preach liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord that they might lift up their heads because their redemption drew nigh 8. LASTLY They had Laws concerning the persons by whom their publick worship was administred and here there was appointed an High Priest who had his proper offices and rules of duty his peculiar attire and consecration ordinary Priests whose business was to instruct the people to Pray and offer sacrifice to bless the Congregation and judge in cases of Leprosie and such like at their Ordination they were to be chosen before all the people to be sprinkled with the water of Expiation their Hair shaved and their Bodies washed afterwards anointed and sacrifices to be offered for them and then they might enter upon their Priestly ministrations Next to these were the Levites who were to assist the Priests in preparing the Sacrifices to bear the Tabernacle while it lasted and lay up its Vessels and Utensils to purifie and cleanse the Vessels and Instruments to guard the Courts and Chambers of the Temple to watch weekly in the Temple by their turns to sing and celebrate the praises of God with Hymns and Musical Instruments and to joyn with the Priests in judging and determining Ceremonial causes they were not to be taken into the full discharge of their Function till the thirtieth nor to be kept at it beyond the fiftieth year of their age God mercifully thinking it fit to give them then a Writ of Ease whose strength might be presumed sufficiently impaired by truckling for so many years under such toilsom and laborious ministrations Though the Levitical Priests were types of Christ yet it was the High Priest who did eminently typifie him and that in the unity and singularity of his office for though many Orders and Courses of inferior Priests and Ministers yet was there but one High Priest There is one Mediator between God and man the man Christ Jesus in the qualifications necessary to his election as to place he was to be taken out of the Tribe of Levi as to his person which was to be every ways perfect and comely and the manner of his Consecration in his singular capacity that he alone might enter into the holy of holies which he did once every year upon the great day of Expiation with a mighty pomp and train of Ceremonies killing Sacrifices burning Incense sprinkling the bloud of the Sacrifice before and upon the Mercy-seat going within the veil and making an attonement within the holy place All which immediately referred to Christ who by the sacrifice of himself and through the veil of his own flesh entred not into the holy place made with hands but into Heaven it self now to appear in the presence of God for us All which might be represented more at large but that I intend not a discourse about these matters 9. BESIDES the Laws which we have hitherto enumerated there were several other particular Commands Ritual Constitutions about Meats and Drinks and other parts of humane life Such was the difference they were to make between the Creatures some to be clean and others unclean such were several sorts of pollution and uncleanness which were not in their own nature sins but Ceremonial defilements of this kind were several provisions about Apparel Diet and the ordering Family-affairs all evidently of a Ceremonial aspect but too long to be insisted on in this place The main design of this Ceremonial Law was to point out to us the Evangelical state The Law had only a shadow of good things to come and not the very image of the things themselves the body was Christ and therefore though the Law came by Moses yet grace and truth the truth of all those types and figures came by Christ. It was time for Moses to resign the Chair when once this great Prophet was come into the World Ceremonies could no longer be of use when once the substance was at hand well may the Stars disappear at the rising of the Sun the Messiah being cut off
the same reasonable Propositions into other Nations and he therefore multiplied them to a great necessity of a dispersion that they might serve the ends of God and of the natural Law by their ambulatory life and their numerous disseminations And this was it which S. Paul 〈◊〉 The Law was added because of transgression meaning that because men did transgress the natural God brought Moses's Law into the world to be as a strand to the inundation of Impiety And thus the world stood till the fulness of time was come for so we are taught by the Apostle The Law was added because of transgression but the date of this was to expire at a certain period it was added to serve but till the seed should come to whom the Promise was made 23. For because Moses's Law was but an imperfect explication of the natural there being divers parts of the three Laws of Nature not at all explicated by that Covenant not the religion of Prayers not the reasonableness of Temperance and Sobriety in Opinion and Diet and in the more noble instances of Humanity and doing benefit it was so short that as S. Paul says The Law could not make the comers thereunto perfect and which was most of all considerable it was confined to a Nation and the other parts of mankind had made so little use of the Records of that Nation that all the world was placed in darkness and sate in the 〈◊〉 of death Therefore it was that in great mercy God sent his Son a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of the people Israel to instruct those and consummate these that the imperfection of the one and the mere darkness of the other might be illustrated by the Sun of Righteousness And this was by restoring the Light of Nature which they by evil Customs and 〈◊〉 Principles and evil Laws had obscured by restoring Man to the liberty of his spirit by freeing him from the slavery of Sin under which they were so lost and oppressed that all their discourses and conclusions some of their moral Philosophy and all their habitual practices were but servants of sin and made to cooperate to that end not which God intended as perfective of humane nature but which the Devil and vicious persons superinduced to serve little ends and irregular and to destroy the greater 24. For certain it is Christianity is nothing else but the most perfect design that ever was to make a man be happy in his whole capacity and as the Law was to the Jews so was Philosophy to the Gentiles a Schoolmaster to bring them to Christ to teach them the rudiments of Happiness and the first and lowest things of Reason that when Christ was come all mankind might become perfect that is be made regular in their Appetites wise in their Understandings assisted in their Duties directed to and instructed in their great Ends. And this is that which the Apostle calls being perfect men in Christ Jesus perfect in all the intendments of nature and in all the designs of God And this was brought to pass by discovering and restoring and improving the Law of Nature and by turning it all into Religion 25. For the natural Law being a sufficient and a proportionate instrument and means to bring a man to the End designed in his creation and this Law being eternal and unalterable for it ought to be as lasting and as unchangeable as the nature it self so long as it was capable of a Law it was not imaginable that the body of any Law should make a new Morality new rules and general proportions either of Justice or Religion or Temperance or Felicity the essential parts of all these consisting in natural proportions and means toward the consummation of man's last End which was first intended and is always the same It is as if there were a new truth in an essential and a necessary Proposition For although the instances may vary there can be no new Justice no new Temperance no new relations proper and natural relations and intercourses between God and us but what always were in Praises and Prayers in adoration and honour and in the symbolical expressions of God's glory and our needs 26. Hence it comes that that which is the most obvious and notorious appellative of the Law of Nature that it is a Law written in our hearts was also recounted as one of the glories and excellencies of Christianity Plutarch saying that Kings ought to be governed by Laws explains himself that this Law must be a word not written in Books and Tables but dwelling in the Mind a living rule the 〈◊〉 guide of their manners and monitors of their life And this was the same which S. Paul expresses to be the guide of the Gentiles that is of all men naturally The Gentiles which have not the Law do by nature the things contained in the Law which shews the work of the Law written in their hearts And that we may see it was the Law of Nature that returned in the Sanctions of Christianity God declares that in the constitution of this Law he would take no other course than at first that is he would write them in the hearts of men indeed with a new style with a quill taken from the wings of the holy Dove the Spirit of God was to be the great Engraver and the Scribe of the New Covenant but the Hearts of men should be the Tables For this is the Covenant that I will make with them after those days saith the Lord I will put my laws into their hearts and into their minds will I write them And their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more That is I will provide a means to expiate all the iniquities of man and restore him to the condition of his first creation putting him into the same order towards Felicity which I first designed to him and that also by the same instruments Now I consider that the Spirit of God took very great care that all the Records of the Law of Jesus should be carefully kept and transmitted to posterity in Books and Sermons which being an act of providence and mercy was a provision lest they should be lost or mistaken as they were formerly when God writ some of them in Tables of stone for the use of the sons of Israel and all of them in the first Tables of Nature with the 〈◊〉 of Creation as now he did in the new creature by the singer of the Spirit But then writing them in the Tables of our minds besides the other can mean nothing but placing them there where they were before and from whence we blotted them by the mixtures of impure principles and discourses But I descend to particular and more minute considerations 27. The Laws of Nature either are bands of Religion Justice or Sobriety Now I consider concerning Religion that when-ever God hath made any particular Precepts to a Family as to Abraham's or
revealed and we shall remain ignorant for ever of many natural things unless they be revealed and unless we knew all the secrets of Philosophy the mysteries of Nature and the rules and propositions of all things and all creatures we are fools if we say that what we call an Article of Faith I mean truly such is against natural Reason It may be indeed as much against our natural reasonings as those reasonings are against truth But if we remember how great an ignorance dwells upon us all it will be found the most reasonable thing in the world only to enquire whether God hath revealed any such Proposition and then not to say It is against natural Reason and therefore an Article of Faith but I am told a truth which I knew not till now and so my Reason is become instructed into a new Proposition And although Christ hath given us no new moral Precepts but such which were essentially and naturally reasonable in order to the End of Man's Creation yet we may easily suppose him to teach us many a new Truth which we knew not and to explicate to us many particulars of that estate which God designed for Man in his first production but yet did not then declare to him and to furnish him with new Revelations and to signifie the greatness of the designed End to become so many arguments of indearment to secure his Duty that is indeed to secure his Happiness by the infallible using the instruments of attaining it 30. This is all I am to say concerning the Precepts of Religion Jesus taught us he took off those many superinduced Rites which God injoyned to the Jews and reduced us to the natural Religion that is to such expressions of Duty which all wise men and Nations used save only that he took away the Rite of sacrificing Beasts because it was now determined in the great Sacrifice of Himself which sufficiently and eternally reconciled all the world to God All the other things as Prayers and Adoration and Eucharist and Faith in God are of a natural order and an unalterable expression And in the nature of the thing there is no other way of address to God than these no other expression of his Glories and our needs both which must for ever be signified 31. Secondly Concerning the Second natural Precept Christian Religion hath also added nothing beyond the first obligation but explained it all Whatsoever ye would men should do to you do ye so to them that is the eternal rule of Justice and that binds contracts keeps promises affirms truth makes Subjects obedient and Princes just it gives security to Marts and Banks and introduces an equality of condition upon all the world save only when an inequality is necessary that is in the relations of Government for the preservation of the common rights of equal titles and possessions that there be some common term indued with power who is to be the Father of all men by an equal provision that every man's rights be secured by that fear which naturally we shall bear to him who can and will punish all unreasonable and unjust violations of Property And concerning this also the Holy Jesus hath added an express Precept of paying Tribute and all Caesar's dues to Caesar in all other particulars it is necessary that the instances and minutes of Justice be appointed by the Laws and Customs of the several Kingdoms and Republicks And therefore it was that Christianity so well combined with the Government of Heathen Princes because whatsoever was naturally just or declared so by the Political power their Religion bound them to observe making Obedience to be a double duty a duty both of Justice and Religion And the societies of Christians growing up from Conventicles to Assemblies from Assemblies to Societies introduced no change in the Government but by little and little turned the Commonwealth into a Church till the World being Christian and Justice also being Religion Obedience to Princes observation of Laws honesty in Contracts faithfulness in promises gratitude to benefactors simplicity in discourse and ingenuity in all pretences and transactions became the Characterisms of Christian men and the word of a Christian the greatest solemnity of stipulation in the world 32. But concerning the general I consider that in two very great instances it was remonstrated that Christianity was the greatest prosecution of natural Justice and equality in the whole world The one was in an election of an A postle into the place of Judas when there were two equal Candidates of the same pretension and capacity the Question was determined by Lots which naturally was the arbitration in questions whose parts were wholly indifferent and as it was used in all times so it is to this day used with us in many places where lest there be a disagreement concerning the manner of tithing some creatures and to prevent unequal arts and unjust practices they are tithed by lot and their sortuitous passing through the door of their sold. The other is in the Coenobitick life of the first Christians and Apostles they had all things in common which was that state of nature in which men lived charitably and without injustice before the distinction of dominions and private rights But from this manner of life they were soon driven by the publick necessity and constitution of affairs 33. Thirdly Whatsoever else is in the Christian Law concerns the natural precept of Sobriety in which there is some variety and some difficulty In the matter of 〈◊〉 the Holy Jesus did clearly reduce us to the first institution of Marriage in Paradise allowing no other mixture but what was first intended in the creation and first sacramental union and in the instance he so permitted us to the natural Law that he was pleased to mention no instance of forbidden Lust but in general and comprehensive terms of Adultery and Fornication in the other which are still more unnatural as their names are concealed and hidden in shame and secrecy we are to have no instructer but the modesty and order of Nature 34. As an instance of this Law of Sobriety Christ superadded the whole doctrine of Humility which Moses did not and which seem'd almost to be extinguished in the world and it is called by S. Paul sapere ad sobrietatem the reasonableness or wisdom of sobriety And it is all the reason in the world that a man should think of himself but just as he is He is deceived that thinks otherwise and is a fool And when we consider that Pride makes wars and causes affronts and no man loves a proud man and he loves no man but himself and his flatterers we shall understand that the Precept of Humility is an excellent art and a happy instrument towards humane Felicity And it is no way contradicted by a natural desire of Honour it only appoints just and reasonable ways of obtaining it We are not forbidden to
look upon my miseries thy holy Hands be stretched out to my relief and succour let some of those precious distilling Tears which nature and thy compassion and thy Sufferings did cause to distill and drop from those sacred fontinels water my stony heart and make it soft apt for the impressions of a melting obedient and corresponding love and moisten mine eyes that I may upon thy stock of pity and weeping mourn for my sins that so my tears and sorrows being drops of water coming from that holy Rock may indeed be united unto thine and made precious by such holy mixtures Amen 3. BLessed Jesus now that thou hast sanctified and exalted Humane nature and made even my Body precious by a personal uniting it to the Divinity teach me so reverently to account of it that I may not dare to prophane it with impure lusts or caitive affections and unhallow that ground where thy holy feet have troden Give to me ardent desires and efficacious prosecutions of these holy effects which thou didst design for us in thy Nativity and other parts of our Redemption give me great confidence in thee which thou hast encouraged by the exhibition of so glorious favours great sorrow and confusion of face at the sight of mine own imperfections and estrangements and great distances from thee and the perfections of thy Soul and bring me to thee by the strictnesses of a Zealous and affectionate imitation of those Sanctities which next to the hypostatical Union added lustre and excellency to thy Humanity that I may live here with thee in the expresses of a holy life and die with thee by mortification and an unwearied patience and reign with thee in immortal glories world without end Amen DISCOURSE I. Of Nursing Children in imitation of the Blessed Virgin-Mother 1. THese later Ages of the world have declined into a Softness above the effeminacy of Asian Princes and have contracted customes which those innocent and healthful days of our Ancestors knew not whose Piety was natural whose Charity was operative whose Policy was just and valiant and whose Oeconomy was sincere and proportionable to the dispositions and requisites of Nature And in this particular the good women of old gave one of their instances the greatest personages nurst their own Children did the work of Mothers and thought it was unlikely women should become vertuous by ornaments and superadditions of Morality who did decline the laws and prescriptions of Nature whose principles supply us with the first and most common rules of Manners and more perfect actions In imitation of whom and especially of the Virgin Mary who was Mother and Nurse to the Holy Jesus I shall endeavour to correct those softnesses and unnatural rejections of Children which are popular up to a custom and fashion even where no necessities of Nature or just Reason can make excuse 2. And I cannot think the Question despicable and the Duty of meanest consideration although it be specified in an office of small esteem and suggested to us by the principles of Reason and not by express sanctions of Divinity For although other actions are more perfect and spiritual yet this is more natural and humane other things being superadded to a full Duty rise higher but this builds stronger and is like a part of the foundation having no lustre but much strength and however the others are full of ornament yet this hath in it some degrees of necessity and possibly is with more danger and irregularity omitted than actions which spread their leaves fairer and look more gloriously 3. First here I consider that there are many sins in the scene of the Body and the matter of Sobriety which are highly criminal and yet the Laws of God expressed in Scripture name them not but men are taught to distinguish them by that Reason which is given us by nature and is imprinted in our understanding in order to the conservation of humane kind For since every creature hath something in it sufficient to propagate the kind and to conserve the individuals from perishing in confusions and general disorders which in Beasts we call Instinct that is an habitual or prime disposition to do certain things which are proportionable to the End whither it is designed Man also if he be not more imperfect must have the like and because he knows and makes reflexions upon his own acts and understands the reason of it that which in them is Instinct in him is natural Reason which is a desire to preserve himself and his own kind and differs from Instinct because he understands his Instinct and the reasonableness of it and they do not But Man being a higher thing even in the order of creation and designed to a more noble End in his animal capacity his Argumentative Instinct is larger than the Natural Instinct of Beasts for he hath Instincts in him in order to the conservation of Society and therefore hath Principles that is he hath natural desires to it for his own good and because he understands them they are called Principles and Laws of Nature but are no other than what I have now declared for Beasts do the same things we do and have many the same inclinations which in us are the Laws of Nature even all which we have in order to our common End But that which in Beasts is Nature and an impulsive force in us must be duty and an inviting power we must do the same things with an actual or habitual designation of that End to which God designs Beasts supplying by his wisdom their want of understanding and then what is mere Nature in them in us is Natural reason And therefore Marriage in men is made sacred when the mixtures of other creatures are so merely natural that they are not capable of being vertuous because men are bound to intend that End which God made And this with the superaddition of other Ends of which Marriage is representative in part and in part effective does consecrate Marriage and makes it holy and mysterious But then there are in marriage many duties which we are taught by Instinct that is by that Reason whereby we understand what are the best means to promote the End which we have assigned us And by these Laws all unnatural mixtures are made unlawful and the decencies which are to be observed in Marriage are prescribed us by this 4. Secondly Upon the supposition of this Discourse I consider again that although to observe this Instinct or these Laws of Nature in which I now have instanced be no great vertue in any eminency of degree as no man is much commended for not killing himself or for not degenerating into beastly Lusts yet to prevaricate some of these Laws may become almost the greatest sin in the world And therefore although to live according to Nature be a testimony fit to give to a sober and a temperate man and rises no higher yet to do an action against Nature is the greatest
dishonour and impiety in the world I mean of actions whose scene lies in the Body and disentitles us to all relations to God and vicinity to Vertue 5. Thirdly Now amongst actions which we are taught by Nature some concern the being and the necessities of Nature some appertain to her convenience and advantage and the transgressions of these respectively have their heightnings or depressions and therefore to kill a man is worse than some preternatural pollutions because more destructive of the end and designation of Nature and the purpose of instinct 6. Fourthly Every part of this Instinct is then in some sense a Law when it is in a direct order to a necessary End and by that is made reasonable I say in some sence it is a Law that is it is in a near disposition to become a Law It is a Rule without obligation to a particular punishment beyond the effect of the natural inordination and obliquity of the act it is not the measure of a moral good or evil but of the natural that is of comely and uncomely For if in the individuals it should fail or that there pass some greater obligation upon the person in order to a higher end not consistent with those means designed in order to the lesser end in that particular it is no fault but sometimes a vertue And therefore although it be an Instinct or reasonable towards many purposes that every one should beget a man in his own image in order to the preservation of nature yet if there be a superaddition of another and higher end and contrary means perswaded in order to it such as is holy Coelibate or Virginity in order to a spiritual life in some persons there the instinct of Nature is very far from passing obligation upon the Conscience and in that instance ceases to be reasonable And therefore the Romans who invited men to marriage with priviledges and punished morose and ungentle natures that refused it yet they had their chaste and unmarried Vestals the first in order to the Commonwealth these in a nearer order to Religion 7. Fifthly These Instincts or reasonable inducements become Laws obliging us in Conscience and in the way of Religion and the breach of them is directly criminal when the instance violates any end of Justice or Charity or Sobriety either designed in Nature's first intention or superinduced by God or man For every thing that is unreasonable to some certain purpose is not presently criminal much less is it against the Law of Nature unless every man that goes out of his way sins against the Law of Nature and every contradicting of a natural desire or inclination is not a sin against a law of Nature For the restraining sometimes of a lawful and a permitted desire is an act of great Vertue and pursues a greater reason as in the former instance But those things only against which such a reason as mixes with Charity or Justice or something that is now in order to a farther end of a commanded instance of Piety may be without errour brought those things are only criminal And God having first made our instincts reasonable hath now made our Reason and Instincts to be spiritual and having sometimes restrained our Instincts and always made them regular he hath by the intermixture of other principles made a separation of Instinct from Instinct leaving one in the form of natural inclination and they rise no higher than a permission or a decency it is lawful or it is comely so to do for no man can asfirm it to be a Duty to kill him that assaults my life or to maintain my children for ever without their own industry when they are able what degrees of natural fondness 〈◊〉 I have towards them nor that I sin if I do not marry when I can contain and yet every one of these may proceed from the affections and first inclinations of Nature but until they mingle with Justice or Charity or some instance of Religion and Obedience they are no Laws the other that are so mingled being raised to Duty and Religion Nature inclines us and Reason judges it apt and requisite in order to certain ends but then every particular of it is made to be an act of Religion from some other principle as yet it is but fit and reasonable not Religion and particular Duty till God or man hath interposed But whatsoever particular in nature was fit to be made a Law of Religion is made such by the superaddition of another principle and this is derived to us by tradition from Adam to Noah or else transmitted to us by the consent of all the world upon a natural and prompt reason or else by some other instrument derived to us from God but especially by the Christian Religion which hath adopted all those things which we call things honest things comely and things of good report into a law and a duty as appears Phil. 4. 8. 8. Upon these Propositions I shall infer by way of Instance that it is a Duty that Women should nurse their own Children For first it is taught to women by that Instinct which Nature hath implanted in them For as Favorinus the Philosopher discoursed it is but to be half a Mother to bring forth Children and not to nourish them and it is some kind of Abortion or an exposing of the Infant which in the reputation of all wise Nations is infamous and uncharitable And if the name of Mother be an appellative of affection and endearments why should the Mother be willing to divide it with a stranger The Earth is the Mother of us all not only because we were made of her Red clay but chiefly that she daily gives us food from her bowels and breasts and Plants and Beasts give nourishment to their off-springs after their production with greater tenderness than they bare them in their wombs and yet Women give nourishment to the Embryo which whether it be deformed or perfect they know not and cannot love what they never saw and yet when they do see it when they have rejoyced that a Child is born and forgotten the sorrows of production they who then can first begin to love it if they begin to divorce the Infant from the Mother the Object from the Affection cut off the opportunities and occasions of their Charity or Piety 9. For why hath Nature given to women two exuberant Fontinels which like two Rocs that are twins feed among the Lilics and drop milk like dew from Hermon and hath invited that nourishment from the secret recesses where the Infant dwelt at first up to the Breast where naturally now the Child is cradled in the entertainments of love and maternal embraces but that Nature having removed the Babe and carried its meat after it intends that it should be preserved by the matter and ingredients of its constitution and have the same diet prepared with a more mature and proportionable digestion If Nature
favourable And it is considerable that nothing is worse than Death but Damnation or something that partakes of that in some of its worst ingredients such as is a lasting Torment or a daily great misery in some other kind And therefore since no humane Law can bind a man to a worse thing than Death if Obedience brings me to death I cannot be worse when I disobey it and I am not so bad if the penalty of death be not expressed And so for other penalties in their own proportions This Discourse is also to be understood concerning the Laws of Peace not of War not onely because every disobedience in War may be punished with death according as the reason may chance but also because little things may be of great and dangerous consequence But in Peace it is observable that there is no humane positive superinduced Law but by the practice of all the world which because the 〈◊〉 of the Prince is certainly included in it is the surest interpretation it is dispensed withall by ordinary necessities by reason of lesser inconveniences and common accidents thus the not saying of our Office daily is excused by the study of Divinity the publishing the banns of Matrimony by an ordinary incommodity the Fasting-days of the Church by a little sickness or a journey and therefore much rather if my Estate and most of all if my Life be in danger with it and to say that in these cases there is no interpretative permission to omit the particular action is to accuse the Laws and the Law-giver the one of unreasonableness the other of uncharitableness 22. Fourthly These Considerations are upon the execution of the duty but even towards Man our obedience must have a mixture of the Will and choice like as our injunction of obedience to the Divine Command With good will doing service saith the Apostle for it is impossible to secure the duty of inferiours but by conscience and good will unless provision could be made against all their secret arts and concealments and escapings which as no providence can foresee so no diligence can cure It is but an eye-service whatsoever is compelled and involuntary nothing rules a man in private but God and his own desires and they give Laws in a Wilderness and accuse in a Cloister and do execution in a Closet if there be any prevarication 23. Fifthly But obedience to humane Laws goes no farther we are not bound to obey with a direct and particular act of Understanding as in all Divine Sanctions for so long as our Superiours are fallible though it be highly necessary we conform our wills to their innocent Laws yet it is not a duty we should think the Laws most prudent or convenient because all Laws are not so but it may concern the interest of humility and self-denial to 〈◊〉 subject to an inconvenient so it be not a sinful Command for so we must chuse an affliction when God offers it and give God thanks for it and yet we may cry under the smart of it and call to God for ease and remedy And yet it were well if inferiours would not be too busie in disputing the prudence of their Governours and the convenience of their Constitutions Whether they be sins or no in the execution and to our particulars we are concern'd to look to I say as to our particulars for an action may be a sin in the Prince commanding it and yet innocent in the person executing as in the case of unjust Wars in which the Subject who cannot ought not to be a Judge yet must be a Minister and it is notorious in the case of executing an unjust sentence in which not the Executioner but the Judge is only the unjust person and he that serves his Prince in an unjust War is but the executioner of an unjust sentence But what-ever goes farther does but undervalue the person slight the Government and unloose the golden cords of Discipline For we are not intrusted in providing for degrees so we secure the kind and condition of our actions And since God having derived rays and beams of Majesty and transmitted it in parts upon several states of men hath fixed humane authority and dominion in the golden candlestick of Understanding he that shall question the prudence of his Governour or the wisdom of his Sanction does unclasp the golden rings that tie the purple upon the Prince's shoulder he tempts himself with a reason to disobey and extinguish the light of Majesty by overturning the candlestick and hiding the opinion of his wisdom and understanding And let me say this He that is confident of his own understanding and reasonable powers and who is more than he that thinks himself wiser than the Laws needs no other Devil in the neighbourhood no tempter but himself to pride and vanity which are the natural parents of Disobedience 24. But a man's Disobedience never seems so reasonable as when the Subject is forbidden to do an act of Piety commanded indeed in the general but uncommanded in certain circumstances And forward Piety and assiduous Devotion a great and undiscreet Mortifier is often tempted to think no Authority can restrain the fervours and distempers of zeal in such holy Exercises and yet it is very often as necessary to restrain the indiscretions of a forward person as to excite the remissness of the cold and frozen Such persons were the Sarabaites spoken of by 〈◊〉 who were greater labourers and stricter mortifiers than the Religious in Families and Colledges and yet they endured no Superiour nor Laws But such customs as these are Humiliation without Humility humbling the body and exalting the spirit or indeed Sacrifices and no Obedience It was an argument of the great wisdom of the Fathers of the 〈◊〉 when they heard of the prodigious Severities exercised by 〈◊〉 Stylites upon himself they sent one of the Religious to him with power to enquire what was his manner of living and what warrant he had for such a rigorous undertaking giving in charge to command him to give it over and to live in a community with them and according to the common institution of those Religious families The Messenger did so and immediately 〈◊〉 removed his foot from his Pillar with a purpose to descend but the other according to his Commission called to him to stay telling him his station and severity was from God And he that in so great a Piety was humble and obedient did not undertake that Strictness out of singularity nor did it transport him to vanity for that he had received from the Fathers to make judgment of the man and of his institution whereas if upon pretence of the great Holiness of that course he had refused the command the spirit of the person was to be declared caitive and imprudent and the man 〈◊〉 from his troublesom and ostentous vanity 25. Our Fasts our Prayers our Watchings our Intentions of duty our frequent Communions and
himself extremely upon a mistake The Child Jesus was born a King but it was a King of all the World not confined within the limits of a Province like the weaker beauties of a Torch to shine in one room but like the Sun his Empire was over all the World and if Herod would have become but his Tributary and paid him the acknowledgments of his Lord he should have had better conditions than under Caesar and yet have been as absolute in his own Jewry as he was before His Kingdom was not of this World and he that gives heavenly Kingdoms to all his servants would not have stooped to have taken up Herod's petty Coronet But as it is a very vanity which Ambition seeks so it is a shadow that disturbs and discomposes all its motions and apprehensions 8. And the same mistake caused calamities to descend upon the Church for some of the Persecutions commenced upon pretence Christianity was an enemy to Government But the pretence was infinitely unreasonable and therefore had the fate of senseless allegations it disbanded presently for no external accident did so incorporate the excellency of Christ's Religion into the hearts of men as the innocency of the men their inoffensive deportment the modesty of their designs their great humility and obedience a life expresly in enmity and contestation against secular Ambition And it is to be feared that the mingling humane interests with Religion will deface the image Christ hath stamped upon it Certain it is the metall is much abated by so impure allay while the Christian Prince serves his end of Ambition and bears arms upon his neighbour's Countrey for the service of Religion making Christ's Kingdom to invade Herod's rights and in the state Ecclesiastical secular interests have so deep a portion that there are snares laid to tempt a Persecution and men are invited to Sacrilege while the Revenues of a Church are a fair fortune for a Prince I make no scruple to find fault with Painters that picture the poor Saints with rich garments for though they deserved better yet they had but poor ones and some have been tempted to cheat the Saint not out of ill will to his Sanctity but love to his Shrine and to the beauty of the cloaths with which some imprudent persons have of old time dressed their Images So it is in the fate of the Church Persecution and the robes of Christ were her portion and her cloathing and when she is dressed up in gawdy fortunes it is no more than she deserves but yet sometimes it is occasion that the Devil cheats her of her Holiness and the men of the world sacrilegiously cheat her of her Riches and then when God hath reduced her to that Poverty he first promised and intended to her the Persecution ceases and Sanctity returns and God curses the Sacrilege and stirs up mens minds to religious Donatives and all is well till she grows rich again And if it be dangerous in any man to be rich and discomposes his steps in his journey to Eternity it is not then so proportionable to the analogy of Christ's Poverty and the inheritance of the Church to be sedulous in acquiring great Temporalties and putting Princes in jealousie and States into care for securities lest all the Temporal should run into Ecclesiastical possession 9. If the Church have by the active Piety of a credulous a pious and less-observant Age been endowed with great Possessions she hath rules enough and poor enough and necessities enough to dispend what she hath with advantages to Religion but then all she gets by it is the trouble of an unthankful a suspected and unsatisfying dispensation and the Church is made by evil persons a Scene of ambition and stratagem and to get a German Bishoprick is to be a Prince and to defend with niceness and Suits of Law every Custom or lesser Rite even to the breach of Charity and the scandal of Religion is called a Duty and every single person is bound to forgive injuries and to quit his right rather than his Charity but if it is not a duty in the Church also in them whose life should be excellent to the degree of Example I would fain know if there be not greater care taken to secure the Ecclesiastical Revenue than the publick Charity and the honour of Religion in the strict Piety of the Clergy for as the not ingaging in Suits may occasion bold people to wrong the Church so the necessity of ingaging is occasion of losing Charity and of great Scandal I find not fault with a free Revenue of the Church it is in some sense necessary to Governours and to preserve the Consequents of their Authority but I represent that such things are occasion of much mischief to the Church and less Holiness and in all cases respect should be had to the design of Christianity to the Prophecies of Jesus to the promised lot of the Church to the dangers of Riches to the excellencies and advantages and rewards of Poverty and if the Church have enough to perform all her duties and obligations chearfully let her of all Societies be soonest content If she have plenty let her use it temperately and charitably if she have not let her not be querulous and troublesome But however it would be thought upon that though in judging the quantum of the Church's portion the World thinks every thing too much yet we must be careful we do not judge every thing too little and if our fortune be safe between envy and contempt it is much mercy If it be despicable it is safe for Ecclesiasticks though it may be accidentally inconvenient or less profitable to others but if it be great publick experience hath made remonstrance that it mingles with the world and durties those fingers which are instrumental in Consecration and the more solemn Rites of Christianity 10. Jesus fled from the Persecution as he did not stand it out so he did not stand out against it he was careful to transmit no precedent or encouragement of resisting tyrannous Princes when they offer violence to Religion and our lives He would not stand disputing for privileges nor calling in Auxiliaries from the Lord of Hosts who could have spared him many Legions of Angels every single Spirit being able to have defeated all Herod's power but he knew it was a hard lesson to learn Patience and all the excuses in the world would be sought out to discourage such a Doctrine by which we are taught to die or lose all we have or suffer inconveniences at the will of a Tyrant we need no authentick examples much less Doctrines to invite men to War from which we see Christian Princes cannot be restrained with the engagements and peaceful Theorems of an excellent and a holy Religion nor Subjects kept from Rebelling by the interests of all Religions in the world nor by the necessities and reasonableness of Obedience nor the indearments of
Man if they pass through an even and an indifferent life towards the issues of an ordinary and necessary course they are little and within command but if they pass upon an end or aim of difficulty or ambition they duplicate and grow to a 〈◊〉 and we have seen the even and temperate lives of indifferent persons continue in many degrees of Innocence but the Temptation of busie designs is too great even for the best of dispositions 7. But these Temptations are crasse and material and soon discernible it will require some greater observation to arm against such as are more spiritual and immaterial For he hath Apples to cousen Children and Gold for Men the Kingdoms of the World for the Ambition of Princes and the Vanities of the World for the Intemperate he hath Discourses and fair-spoken Principles to abuse the pretenders to Reason and he hath common Prejudices for the more vulgar understandings Amongst these I chuse to consider such as are by way of Principle or Proposition 8. The first great Principle of Temptation I shall note is a general mistake which excuses very many of our crimes upon pretence of Infirmity calling all those sins to which by natural disposition we are inclined though by carelesness and evil customs they are heightned to a habit by the name of Sins of infirmity to which men suppose they have reason and title to pretend If when they have committed a crime their Conscience checks them and they are troubled and during the interval and abatement of the heats of desire resolve against it and commit it readily at the next opportunity then they cry out against the weakness of their Nature and think as long as this body of death is about them it must be thus and that this condition may stand with the state of Grace And then the Sins shall return periodically like the revolutions of a Quartan Ague well and ill for ever till Death surprizes the mistaker This is a Patron of sins and makes the Temptation prevalent by an authentick instrument and they pretend the words of S. Paul For the good that I would that I do not but the evil that I would not that I do For there is a law in my members 〈◊〉 against the law of my mind bringing me into captivity to the law of Sin And thus the 〈◊〉 of Sin is mistaken for a state of Grace and the imperfections of the Law are miscalled the affections and necessities of Nature that they might seem to be incurable and the persons apt for an excuse therefore because for Nature there is no absolute cure But that these words of S. Paul may not become a 〈◊〉 of death and instruments of a temptation to us it is observable that the Apostle by a siction of person as is usual with him speaks of himself not as in the state of Regeneration under the Gospel but under the 〈◊〉 obscurities insufficiencies and imperfections of the Law which indeed he there contends to have been a Rule good and holy apt to remonstrate our misery because by its prohibitions and limits given to natural desires it made actions before indifferent now to be sins it added many curses to the breakers of it and by an 〈◊〉 of contrariety it made us more desirous of what was now unlawful but it was a Covenant in which our Nature was restrained but not helped it was provoked but not sweetly assisted our Understandings were instructed but our Wills not sanctified and there were no suppletories of Repentance every greater sin was like the fall of an Angel irreparable by any mystery or express recorded or enjoyned Now of a man under this Govenant he describes the condition to be such that he understands his Duty but by the infirmities of Nature he is certain to fall and by the helps of the Law not strengthened against it nor restored after it and therefore he calls himself under that notion a miserable man sold under sin not doing according to the rules of the Law or the dictates of his Reason but by the unaltered misery of his Nature certain to prevaricate But the person described here is not S. Paul is not any justified person not so much as a Christian but one who is under a state of direct opposition to the state of Grace as will manifestly appear if we observe the antithesis from S. Paul's own characters For the Man here named is such as in whom sin wrought all concupiscence in whom sin lived and slew him so that he was dead in trespasses and sins and although he did delight in the Law after his inwardman that is his understanding had intellectual complacencies and satisfactions which afterwards he calls serving the Law of God with his mind that is in the first dispositions and preparations of his spirit yet he could act nothing for the law in his members did inslave him and brought him into captivity to the law of sin so that this person was full of actual and effective lusts he was a slave to sin and dead in trespasses But the state of a regenerate person is such as to have 〈◊〉 the flesh with the affections and lusts in whom sin did not reign not only in the mind but even also not in the mortal body over whom sin had no dominion in whom the old man was crucified and the body of sin was destroyed and sin not at all served And to make the antithesis yet clearer in the very beginning of the next Chapter the Apostle saith that the spirit of life in Christ Jesus had made him free from the law of sin and death under which law he complained immediately before he was sold and killed to shew the person was not the same in these so different and contradictory representments No man in the state of Grace can say The evil that I would not that I do if by evil he means any evil that is habitual or in its own nature deadly 9. So that now let no man pretend an inevitable necessity to sin for if ever it comes to a custom or to a great violation though but in a single act it is a condition of Carnality not of spiritual life and those are not the infirmities of Nature but the weaknesses of Grace that make us sin so frequently which the Apostle truly affirms to the same purpose The flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh and these are contrary the one to the other so that ye cannot or that ye do not do the things that ye would This disability proceeds from the strength of the flesh and weakness of the spirit For he adds But if ye be led by the Spirit ye are not under the Law saying plainly that the state of such a combate and disability of doing good is a state of a man under the Law or in the flesh which he accounts all one but every man that is sanctified
must be severe in our discourses and neither lie in a great matter nor a small for the custom thereof is not good saith the son of Sirach I could add concerning this Precept That Christ having left it in that condition he found it in the Decalogue without any change or alteration of circumstance we are commanded to give true testimony in Judgment which because it was under an Oath there lies upon us no prohibition but a severity of injunction to swear truth in Judgment when we are required The securing of Testimonies was by the sanctity of an Oath and this remains unaltered in Christianity 41. Thou shalt not covet This Commandment we find no-where repeated in the Gospel by our Blessed Saviour but it is inserted in the repetition of the Second Table which S. Paul mentioned to the Romans for it was so abundantly expressed in the inclosures of other Precepts and the whole design of Christ's Doctrine that it was less needful specially to express that which is every-where affixed to many Precepts Evangelical Particularly it is inherent in the first Beatitude Blessed are the poor in spirit and it means that we should not wish our Neighbour's goods with a deliberate entertained desire but that upon the commencement of the motion it be disbanded instantly for he that does not at the first address and 〈◊〉 of the passion suppress it he hath given it that entertainment which in every period of staying is a degree of morose delectation in the appetite And to this I find not Christ added any thing for the Law it self forbidding to entertain the desire hath commanded the instant and present suppression they are the same thing and cannot reasonably be distinguished Now that Christ in the instance of Adultery hath commanded to abstain also from occasions and accesses towards the Lust in this hath not the same severity because the vice of Covetousness is not such a wild-fire as Lust is not inflamed by contact and neighbourhood of all things in the world every thing may be instrumental to libidinous desires but to covetous appetites there are not temptations of so different natures 42. Concerning the order of these Commandments it is not unusefully observed that if we account from the first to the last they are of greatest perfection which are last described and he who is arrived to that severity and dominion of himself as not to desire his Neighbour's goods is very far from actual injury and so in proportion it being the least degree of Religion to confess but One God But therefore Vices are to take their estimate in the contrary order he that prevaricates the First Commandment is the greatest sinner in the world and the least is he that only covets without any actual injustice And there is no variety or objection in this unless it be altered by the accidental difference of degrees but in the kinds of sin the Rule is true this onely The Sixth and Seventh are otherwise in the Hebrew Bibles than ours and in the Greek otherwise in Exodus than in Deuteronomy and by this rule it is a greater sin to commit Adultery than to Kill concerning which we have no certainty save that S. Paul in one respect makes the sin of Uncleanness the greatest of any sin whose scene lies in the body Every sin is without the body but he that commits Fornication sins against his own body The PRAYER O Eternal Jesus Wisdome of the Father thou light of Jews and Gentiles and the great Master of the world who by thy holy Sermons and clearest revelations of the mysteries of thy Father's Kingdom didst invite all the world to great degrees of Justice Purity and Sanctity and instruct us all in a holy Institution give us understanding of thy Laws that the light of thy celestial Doctrine illuminating our darknesses and making bright all the recesses of our spirits and understandings we may direct our feet all the lower man the affections of the inferiour appetite to walk in the paths of thy Commandments Dearest God make us to live a life of Religion and Justice of Love and Duty that we may adore thy Majesty and reverence thy Name and love thy Mercy and admire thy infinite glories and perfections and obey thy Precepts Make us to love thee for thy self and our neighbours for thee make us to be all Love and all Duty that we may adorn the Gospel of thee our Lord walking worthy of our Vocation that as thou hast called us to be thy Disciples so we may walk therein doing the work of faithful servants and may receive the adoption of sons and the gift of eternal glory which thou hast reserved for all the Disciples of thy holy Institution Make all the world obey thee as a Prophet that being redeemed and purified by thee our High Priest all may reign with thee our King in thy eternal Kingdom O Eternal Jesus Wisdom of thy Father Amen Of the Three additional Precepts which Christ superinduced and made parts of the Christian Law DISCOURSE XI Of CHARITY with its parts Forgiving Giving not Judging Of Forgiveness PART I. 1. THE Holy Jesus coming to reconcile all the world to God would reconcile all the parts of the world one with another that they may rejoyce in their common band and their common Salvation The first instance of Charity forbad to Christians all Revenge of Injuries which was a perfection and endearment of duty beyond what either most of the old Philosophers or the Laws of the Nations 〈◊〉 of Moses ever practised or enjoyned For Revenge was esteemed to unhallowed unchristian natures as sweet as life a satisfaction of injuries and the onely cure of maladies and affronts Onely Laws of the wisest Commonwealths commanded that Revenge should be taken by the Judge a few cases being excepted in which by sentence of the Law the injured person or his nearest Relative might be the Executioner of the Vengeance as among the Jews in the case of Murther among the Romans in the case of an Adulteress or a ravished daughter the Father might kill the Adulteress or the Ravisher In other things the Judge onely was to be the Avenger But Christ commanded his Disciples rather than to take revenge to expose themselves to a second injury rather offer the other cheek than be avenged for a blow on this For vengeance belongs to God and he will retaliate and to that wrath we must give place saith S. Paul that is in well-doing and evil suffering commit our selves to his righteous judgment leaving room for his execution who will certainly do it if we snatch not the sword from his arm 2. But some observe that our Blessed Saviour instanced but in smaller injuries He that bad us suffer a blow on the cheek did not oblige us tamely to be sacrificed he that enjoyned us to put up the loss of our Coat and Cloak did not signifie his pleasure to be that we should 〈◊〉
pro sua rererentâ—â— 1. THE Soul of a Christian is the house of God Ye are God's building saith S. Paul but the house of God is the house of Prayer and therefore Prayer is the work of the Soul whose organs are intended for instruments of the Divine praises and when every stop and pause of those instruments is but the conclusion of a Collect and every breathing is a Prayer then the Body becomes a Temple and the Soul is the Sanctuary and more private recess and place of entercourse Prayer is the great duty and the greatest priviledge of a Christian it is his entercourse with God his Sanctuary in troubles his remedy for sins his cure of griefs and as S. Gregory calls it it is the principal instrument whereby we minister to God in execution of the decrees of eternal Predestination and those things which God intends for us we bring to our selves by the mediation of holy Prayers Prayer is the ascent of the mind to God and a petitioning for such things as we need for our support and duty It is an abstract and summary of Christian Religion Prayer is an act of Religion and Dinine Worship confessing his power and his mercy it celebrates his Attributes and confesses his glories and reveres his person and implores his aid and gives thanks for his blessings it is an act of Humility condescension and dependence expressed in the prostration of our bodies and humiliation of our spirits it is an act of Charity when we pray for others it is an act of Repentance when it confesses and begs pardon for our sins and exercises every Grace according to the design of the man and the matter of the Prayer So that there will be less need to amass arguments to invite us to this Duty every part is an excellence and every end of it is a blessing and every design is a motive and every need is an impulsive to this holy office Let us but remember how many needs we have at how cheap a rate we may obtain their remedies and yet how honourable the imployment is to go to God with confidence and to fetch our supplies with easiness and joy and then without farther preface we may address our selves to the understanding of that Duty by which we imitate the imployment of Angels and beatified spirits by which we ascènd to God in spirit while we remain on earth and God descends on earth while he yet resides in Heaven sitting there on the Throne of his Kingdom 2. Our first enquiry must be concerning the Matter of our Prayers for our Desires are not to be the rule of our Prayers unless Reason and Religion be the rule of our Desires The old Heathens prayed to their Gods for such things which they were ashamed to name publickly before men and these were their private prayers which they durst not for their undecency or iniquity make publick And indeed sometimes the best men ask of God Things not unlawful in themselves yet very hurtful to them and therefore as by the Spirit of God and right Reason we are taught in general what is lawful to be asked so it is still to be submitted to God when we have asked lawful things to grant to us in kindness or to deny us in mercy after all the rules that can be given us we not being able in many instances to judge for our selves unless also we could certainly pronounce concerning future contingencies But the Holy Ghost being now sent upon the Church and the rule of Christ being left to his Church together with his form of Prayer taught and prescribed to his Disciples we have sufficient instruction for the matter of our Prayers so far as concerns the lawfulness or unlawfulness And the rule is easie and of no variety 1. For we are bound to pray for all things that concern our duty all that we are bound to labour for such as are Glory and Grace necessary assistances of the Spirit and rewards spiritual Heaven and Heavenly things 2. Concerning those things which we may with safety hope for but are not matter of duty to us we may lawfully testifie our hope and express our desires by petition but if in their particulars they are under no express promise but only conveniencies of our life and person it is only lawful to pray for them under condition that they may conform to God's will and our duty as they are good and placed in the best order of eternity Therefore 1 for spiritual blessings let our Prayers be particularly importunate perpetual and persevering 2 For temporal blessings let them be generally short conditional and modest 3 And whatsoever things are of mixt nature more spiritual than Riches and less necessary than Graces such as are gifts and exteriour aids we may for them as we may desire them and as we may expect them that is with more confidence and less restraint than in the matter of temporal requests but with more reservedness and less boldness of petition than when we pray for the graces of Sanctification In the first case we are bound to pray in the second it is only lawful under certain conditions in the third it becomes to us an act of zeal nobleness and Christian prudence But the matter of our Prayers is best taught us in the form our Lord taught his Disciples which because it is short mysterious and like the treasures of the Spirit full of wisdom and latent sences it is not improper to draw forth those excellencies which are intended and signified by every Petition that by so excellent an authority we may know what it is lawful to beg of God 3. Our Father which art in Heaven The address reminds us of many parts of our duty If God be our Father where is his fear and reverence and obedience If ye were Abraham's children ye would do the works of Abraham and Ye are of your father the Devil for his works ye do Let us not dare to call him Father if we be rebels and enemies but if we be obedient then we know he is our Father and will give us a Child's portion and the inheritance of Sons But it is observable that Christ here speaking concerning private Prayer does describe it in a form of plural signification to tell us that we are to draw into the communication of our prayers all those who are confederated in the common relation of Sons to the same Father Which art in Heaven tells us where our hopes and our hearts must be fixed whither our desires and our prayers must tend Sursum corda Where our treasure is there must our hearts be also 4. Hallowed be thy Name That is Let thy Name thy Essence and glorious Attributes be honoured and adored in all the world believed by Faith loved by Charity celebrated with praises thanked with Eucharist and let thy Name be hallowed in us as it is in it self
against every thing but nothing could please them But wisdom righteousness had a theatre in its own family and is justified of all her children Then he proceeds to a more applied reprehension of Capernaum and Chorazin and Bethsaida for being pertinacious in their sins and infidelity in defiance and reproof of all the mighty works which had been wrought in them But these things were not revealed to all dispositions the wife and the mighty of the world were not subjects prepared for the simplicity and softer impresses of the Gospel and the down-right severity of its Sanctions And therefore Jesus glorified God for the magnifying of his mercy in that these things which were hid from the great ones were revealed to babes and concludes this Sermon with an invitation of all wearied and disconsolate persons loaded with sin and misery to come to him promising ease to their burthens and refreshment to their weariness and to exchange their heavy pressures into an easie yoke and a light burthen 9. When Jesus had ended this Sermon one of the Pharisees named Simon invited him to eat with him into whose house when he was entred a certain woman that was a sinner abiding there in the City heard of it her name was Mary she had been married to a noble personage a native of the Town and Castle of Magdal from whence she had her name of Magdalen though she her self was born in Bethany a widow she was and prompted by her wealth liberty and youth to an intemperate life and too free entertainments She came to Jesus into the Pharisee's house not as did the staring multitude to glut her eyes with the sight of a miraculous and glorious person nor as did the Centurion or the 〈◊〉 or the Ruler of the Synagogue for cure of her sickness or in behalf of her friend or child or servant but the only example of so coming she came in remorse and regret for her sins 〈◊〉 came to Jesus to lay her burthen at his feet and to present him with a broken heart and a weeping eye and great affection and a box of Nard Pistick salutary and precious For she came trembling and fell down before him weeping bitterly for her sins pouring out a 〈◊〉 great enough to wash the feet of the Blessed Jesus and wiping them with the hairs of her head after which she brake the box and anointed his feet with ointment Which expression was so great an ecstasie of love sorrow and adoration that to anoint the feet even of the greatest Monarch was long unknown and in all the pomps and greatnesses of the Roman Prodigality it was not used till Otho taught it to Nero in whose instance it was by Pliny reckoned for a prodigy of unnecessary profusion and in it self without the circumstance of 〈◊〉 free a dispensation it was a present for a Prince and an Alabaster-box of Nard Pistick was sent as a present from 〈◊〉 to the King of Ethiopia 10. When Simon observed this sinner so busie in the expresses of her Religion and 〈◊〉 to Jesus he thought with himself that this was no Prophet that did not know her to be a sinner or no just person that would suffer her to touch him For although the Jews Religion did permit Harlots of their own Nation to live and enjoy the priviledges of their Nation save that their Oblations were refused yet the Pharisees who pretended to a greater degree of Sanctity than others would not admit them to civil 〈◊〉 or the benefits of ordinary society and thought Religion it self and the honour of a Prophet was concerned in the interests of the same superciliousness and therefore Simon made an objection within himself Which Jesus knowing for he understood his thoughts as well as his words made her Apology and his own in a civil question expressed in a Parable of two Debtors to whom a greater and a less debt respectively was forgiven both of them concluding that they would love their merciful Creditor in proportion to his mercy and donative and this was the case of Mary Magdalen to whom because much was forgiven she loved much and expressed it in characters so large that the Pharisee might read his own incivilities and inhospitable entertainment of the Master when it stood confronted with the magnificency of Mary Magdalen's penance and charity 11. When Jesus had dined he was presented with the sad sight of a poor Demoniack possessed with a blind and a dumb Devil in whose behalf his friends intreated Jesus that he would cast the Devil out which he did immediately and the blind man saw and the dumb spake so much to the amazement of the people that they ran in so prodigious companies after him and so scandalized the Pharisees who thought that by means of this Prophet their reputation would be lessened and their Schools empty that first a rumour was scattered up and down from an uncertain principle but communicated with tumult and apparent noises that Jesus was beside himself Upon which rumour his friends and kindred came together to see and to make provisions accordingly and the holy Virgin-mother came her self but without any apprehensions of any such horrid accident The words and things she had from the beginning laid up in her heart would furnish her with principles exclusive of all apparitions of such fancies but she came to see what that persecution was which under that colour it was likely the Pharisees might commence 12. When the Mother of Jesus and his kindred came they found him in a house encircled with people full of wonder and admiration And there the holy Virgin-mother might hear part of her own Prophecy verified that the generations of the earth should call her blessed for a woman worshipping Jesus cried out Blessed is the womb that bare thee and the paps that gave thee suck To this Jesus replied not denying her to be highly blessed who had received the honour of being the Mother of the Messias but advancing the dignities of spiritual excellencies far above this greatest temporal honour in the world Yea rather blessed are they that hear the word of God and do it For in respect of the issues of spiritual perfections and their proportionable benedictions all immunities and temporal honours are empty and hollow blessings and all relations of kindred disband and empty themselves into the greater chanels and flouds of Divinity 13. For when Jesus being in the house they told him his Mother and his Brethren staid for him without he told them those relations were less than the ties of Duty and Religion For those dear names of Mother and Brethren which are hallowed by the laws of God and the endearments of Nature are made far more sacred when a spiritual cognation does supervene when the relations are subjected in persons religious and holy but if they be abstract and separate the conjunction of persons in spiritual bands in the same Faith and the same Hope and the union of them
following APPARATUS is only to present the Reader with a short Scheme of the state of things in the preceding periods of the Church to let him see by what degrees and measures the Evangelical state was introduc'd and what Methods God in all Ages made use of to conduct Mankind in the paths of Piety and Vertue In the Infancy of the World he taught men by the Dictates of Nature and the common Notices of Good and Evil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Philo calls them the most Ancient Law by lively Oracles and great Examples of Piety He set forth the Holy Patriarchs as Chrysostom observes as Tutors to the rest of Mankind who by their Religious lives might train up others to the practice of Vertue and as Physicians be able to cure the minds of those who were infected and overrun with Vice Afterwards says he having sufficiently testified his care of their welfare and happiness by many instances of a wise and benign Providence towards them both in the land of Canaan and in Egypt he gave them Prophets and by them wrought Signs and Wonders together with innumerable other expressions of his bounty At last finding that none of these Methods did succeed not Patriarchs not Prophets not Miracles not daily Warnings and Chastisements brought upon the World he gave the last and highest instance of his love and goodness to Mankind he sent his only begotten Son out of his own bosom 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the great Physician both of Soul and Body who taking upon him the form of a Servant and being born of a Virgin conversed in the World and bore our sorrows and infirmities that by rescuing Humane Nature from under the weight and burden of Sin he might exalt it to Eternal Life A brief account of these things is the main intent of the following Discourse wherein the Reader will easily see that I considered not what might but what was fit to be said with respect to the end I designed it for It was drawn up under some more disadvantageous circumstances than a matter of this nature did require which were it worth the while to represent to the Reader might possibly plead for a softer Censure However such as it is it is submitted to the Readers Ingenuity and Candor W. C. IMPRIMATUR THO. TOMKYNS Ex AEd. Lambeth Feb. 25. 1674. AN APPARATUS OR Discourse Introductory TO THE Whole WORK concerning the Three Great Dispensations OF THE CHURCH PATRIARCHAL MOSAICAL and EVANGELICAL SECT I. Of the PATRIARCHAL Dispensation The Tradition of Elias The three great Periods of the Church The Patriarchal Age. The Laws then in force natural or positive Natural Laws what evinced from the testimony of natural conscience The 〈◊〉 Precepts of the Sons of Noah Their respect to the Law of Nature Positive Laws under that dispensation Eating Blood why prohibited The mystery and signification of it Circumcision when commanded and why The Laws concerning Religion Their publick Worship what Sacrifices in what sence natural and how far instituted The manner of God's testifying his acceptance What the place of their publick Worship Altars and Groves whence Abraham's Oke its long continuance and destruction by Constantine The Original of the Druids The times of their religious Assemblies In process of time Genes 4. what meant by it The Seventh Day whether kept from the beginning The Ministers of Religion who The Priesthood of the first-born In what cases exercised by younger Sons The state of Religion successively under the several Patriarchs The condition of it in Adam's Family The Sacrifices of Cain and Abel and their different success whence Seth his great Learning and Piety The face of the Church in the time of Enosh What meant by Then began Men to call upon the Name of the Lord. No Idolatry before the Flood The Sons of God who The great corruption of Religion in the time of Jared Enoch's Piety and walking with God His translation what The incomparable sanctity of Noah and his strictness in an evil Age. The character of the men of that time His preservation from the Deluge God's Covenant with him Sem or 〈◊〉 whether the Elder Brother The confusion of Languages when and why Abraham's Idolatry and conversion His eminency for Religion noted in the several instances of it God's Covenant with him concerning the Messiah The Piety of Isaac and Jacob. Jacob's blessing the twelve Tribes and foretelling the Messiah Patriarchs extraordinary under this dispensation Melchisedeck who wherein a type of Christ. Job his Name Country Kindred Quality Religion Sufferings when he lived A reflection upon the religion of the old World and its agreement with Christianity GOD who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past to the Fathers by the Prophets hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son For having created Man for the noblest purposes to love serve and enjoy his Maker he was careful in all Ages by various Revelations of his Will to acquaint him with the notices of his duty and to shew him what was good and what the Lord did require of him till all other Methods proving weak and ineffectual for the recovery and the happiness of humane nature God was pleased to crown all the former dispensations with the Revelation of his Son There is among the Jews an ancient Tradition of the House of Elias that the World should last Six Thousand Years which they thus compute 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Two Thousand Years empty little being recorded of those first Ages of the World Two Thousand Years the Law and Two Thousand the Days of the Messiah A Tradition which if it minister to no other purposes does yet afford us a very convenient division of the several Ages and Periods of the Church which may be considered under a three-fold Oeconomy the Patriarchal Mosaical and Evangelical dispensation A short view of the two former will give us great advantage to survey the later that new and better dispensation which God has made to the World 2. THE Patriarchal Age 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Jews call it the days of emptiness commenced from the beginning of the World and lasted till the delivery of the Law upon Mount Sinai And under this state the Laws which God gave for the exercise of Religion and the Government of his Church were either Natural or Positive Natural Laws are those innate Notions and Principles whether speculative or practical with which every Man is born into the World those common sentiments of Vertue and Religion those Principia justi decori Principles of fit and right that naturally are upon the minds of Men and are obvious to their reason at first sight commanding what is just and honest and forbidding what is evil and uncomely and that not only in the general that what is good is to be embraced and what is evil to be avoided but in the particular instances of duty according to their conformity or repugnancy
state of Innocence for Man being created under such excellent circumstances as he was in Paradise could not but know that he owed to God all possible gratitude and subjection obedience he owed him as his Supreme Lord and Master gratitude as his great Patron and Benefactor and was therefore obliged to pay to him some Eucharistical Sacrifices as a testimony of his grateful acknowledgment that he had both his being and preservation from him But when sin had changed the scene and Man-kind was sunk under a state of guilt he was then to seek for a way how to pacifie God's anger and this was done by bloody and expiatory sacrifices which God accepted in the sinners stead And as to these it seems reasonable to suppose that they should be founded upon a positive Institution because pardon of sin being a matter of pure grace and favour whatever was a means to signifie and convey that must be appointed by God himself first revealed to Adam and by him communicated to his Children The Deity propitiated by these atonements was wont to testifie his acceptance of them by some external and visible sign Thus Cain sensibly perceived that God had respect to Abel's sacrifice and not to his though what this sign was it is not easie to determine Most probably it was fire from Heaven coming down upon the Oblation and consuming it For so it frequently was in the Sacrifices of the Mosaic dispensation and so we find it was in that famous Sacrifice of Abraham a Lamp of Fire passed between the parts of the Sacrifice Thus when 't is said God had respect to Abel and to his offering Theodotion renders it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he burnt it and to this custome the Psalmist alludes in that Petition Remember all thy offerings and accept thy burnt Sacrifice 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 reduce thy burnt-offering into ashes 8. WHERE it was that this Publick Worship was performed is next to be enquired into That they had fixed and determinate Places for the discharge of their religious Duties those especially that were done in common is greatly probable Nature and the reason of things would put them upon it And this most think is intended in that phrase where it is said of Cain and Abel that they brought their oblations that is as Aben-Ezra and others expound it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to the place set apart for divine worship And this probably was the reason why Cain though vexed to the heart to see his Brother preferred before him did not presently set upon him the solemnity and religion of the Place and the sensible appearances of the Divine Majesty having struck an awe into him but deferred his murdrous intentions till they came into the Field and there fell upon him For their Sacrifices they had Altars whereon they offered them contemporary no doubt with Sacrifices themselves though we read not of them till after the Flood when Noah built an Altar unto the Lord and offered burnt-offerings upon it So Abraham immediately after his being called to the worship of the true God in Sichem built an Altar unto the Lord who appeared unto him and removing thence to a Mountain Eastward he built another Altar and called on the Name of the Lord as indeed he did almost in every place where he came Thus also when he dwelt at Beer-sheba in the Plains of Mamre he planted a Grove there and called on the Name of the Lord the everlasting God This no doubt was the common Chappel or Oratory whither Abraham and his numerous Family and probably those whom he gained to be Proselytes to his Religion were wont to retire for their publick adorations as a Place infinitely advantageous for such Religious purposes And indeed the Ancient devotion of the World much delighted in Groves in Woods and Mountains partly for the conveniency of such Places as better composing the thoughts for divine contemplations and resounding their joynt-praises of God to the best advantage partly because the silence and retiredness of the Place was apt to beget a kind of sacred dread and horrour in the mind of the Worshipper Hence we find in Ophrah where Gideon's Father dwelt an Altar to Baal and a Grove that was by it and how common the superstitions and idolatries of the Heathen-world were in Groves and High-places no Man can be ignorant that is never so little conversant either in prophane or sacred stories For this reason that they were so much abused to idolatry God commanded the Israelites to destroy their Altars break down their Images and cut down their Groves and that they should not plant a Grove of any Trees near unto the Altar of the Lord lest he should seem to countenance what was so universally prostituted to false worship and idolatry But to return to Abraham He planted a Grove 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Tree which the Ancients generally make to have been a large spreading Oake and some foundation there is for it in the sacred Text for the place where Abraham planted it is called the Plain of Mamre or as in the Hebrew he dwelt 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 among the Oakes of Mamre and so the Syriac renders it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The House of the Oake The name whereof Josephus tells us was Ogyges and it is not a conjecture to be despised that Noah might probably inhabit in this place and either give the name to it or at least derive his from it Ogyges being the Name by which he is usually described in forreign Writers This very Oake S. Hierom assures us and Eusebius intimates as much was yet standing till the time of Constantine and worshipped with great superstition And Sozomen tells us more particularly that there was a famous Mart held there every Summer and a Feast celebrated by a general confluence of the neighbouring Countries and Persons of all Religions both Christians Jews and Gentiles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 every one doing honour to this Place according to the different Principles of their Religion but that Constantin being offended that the Place should be prophan'd with the superstitions of the Jews and the idolatry of the Gentiles wrote with some severity to Macarius the Bishop of Jerusalem and the Bishops of Palestin that they should destroy the Altars and Images and deface all Monuments of Idolatry and restore the Place to its ancient Sanctity Which was accordingly done and a Church 〈◊〉 in the Place where God was purely and sincerely worshipped From this Oake the ordinary place of Abraham's worship and devotion the Religion of the Gentiles doubtless derived its Oakes and Groves and particularly the Druids the great and almost only Masters and Directors of all Learning and Religion among the Ancient Brittains hence borrowed their Original who are so notoriously known to have lived wholly under Oakes and Groves and there to have delivered their Doctrines and Precepts and to have
an uncertain hill and the way to it had been upon the waters upon which no spirit but that of Contradiction and Discord did ever move for the man should have tended to an end of an uncertain dwelling and walked to it by ways not discernible and arrived thither by chance which because it is irregular would have discomposed the pleasures of a Christian Hope as the very disputing hath already destroyed Charity and disunited the continuity of Faith and in the consequent there would be no Vertue and no Felicity But God who never loved that Man should be too ambitiously busie in imitating his Wisedom and Man lost Paradise for it is most desirous we should imitate his Goodness and transcribe copies of those excellent Emanations from his Holiness whereby as he communicates himself to us in Mercies so he propounds himself imitable by us in Graces And in order to this God hath described our way plain certain and determined and although he was pleased to leave us indetermined in the Questions of exteriour Communion yet he put it past all question that we are bound to be Charitable He hath placed the Question of the state of Separation in the dark in hidden and undiscerned regions but he hath opened the windows of Heaven and given great light to us teaching how we are to demean our selves in the state of Conjunction Concerning the Salvation of Heathens he was not pleased to give us account but he hath clearly described the duty of Christians and tells upon what terms alone we shall be saved And although the not inquiring into the ways of God and the strict rules of practice have been instrumental to the preserving them free from the serpentine enfoldings and labyrinths of Dispute yet God also with a great design of mercy hath writ his Commandments in so large characters and engraven them in such Tables that no man can want the Records nor yet skill to read the hand-writing upon this wall if he understands what he understands that is what is placed in his own spirit For God was therefore desirous that humane nature should be perfected with moral not intellectual Excellencies because these only are of use and compliance with our present state and conjunction If God had given to Eagles an appetite to swim or to the Elephant strong desires to fly he would have ordered that an abode in the Sea and the Air respectively should have been proportionable to their manner of living for so God hath done to Man fitting him with such Excellencies which are useful to him in his ways and progress to Perfection A man hath great use and need of Justice and all the instances of Morality serve his natural and political ends he cannot live without them and be happy but the filling the rooms of the Understanding with aiery and ineffective Notions is just such an Excellency as it is in a Man to imitate the voice of Birds at his very best the Nightingale shall excel him and it is of no use to that End which God designed him in the first intentions of creation In pursuance of this consideration I have chosen to serve the purposes of Religion by doing assistence to that part of Theologie which is wholly practical that which makes us wiser therefore because it makes us 〈◊〉 And truly my Lord it is enough to weary the spirit of a Disputer that he shall argue till he hath lost his voice and his time and sometimes the Question too and yet no man shall be of his mind more than was before How few turn Lutherans or Calvinists or Roman Catholicks from the Religion either of their Country or Interest Possibly two or three weak or interested phantastick and easie prejudicate and effeminate understandings pass from Church to Church upon grounds as weak as those for which formerly they did dissent and the same Arguments are good or bad as exteriour accidents or interiour appetites shall determine I deny not but for great causes some Opinions are to be quitted but when I consider how few do forsake any and when any do oftentimes they chuse the wrong side and they that take the righter do it so by contingency and the advantage also is so little I believe that the triumphant persons have but small reason to please themselves in gaining Proselytes since their purchase is so small and as inconsiderable to their triumph as it is unprofitable to them who change for the worse or for the better upon unworthy motives In all this there is nothing certain nothing noble But he that follows the work of God that is labours to gain Souls not to a Sect and a Subdivision but to the Christian Religion that is to the Faith and Obedience of the Lord JESUS hath a promise to be assisted and rewarded and all those that go to Heaven are the purchase of such undertakings the fruit of such culture and labours for it is only a holy life that lands us there And now my Lord I have told you my reasons I shall not be ashamed to say that I am weary and toiled with rowing up and down in the seas of Questions which the Interests of Christendom have commenced and in many Propositions of which I am heartily perswaded I am not certain that I am not deceived and I find that men are most confident of those Articles which they can so little prove that they never made Questions of them But I am most certain that by living in the Religion and fear of God in Obedience to the King in the Charities and duties of Communion with my Spiritual Guides in Justice and Love with all the world in their several proportions I shall not fail of that End which is perfective of humane nature and which will never be obtained by Disputing Here therefore when I had fixed my thoughts upon sad apprehensions that God was removing our Candlestick for why should be not when men themselves put the Light out and pull the Stars from their Orbs so hastening the day of God's Judgment I was desirous to put a portion of the holy fire into a Repository which might help to re-enkindle the Incense when it shall please God Religion shall return and all his Servants sing In convertendo captivitatem Sion with a voice of Eucharist But now my Lord although the results and issues of my retirements and study do naturally run towards You and carry no excuse for their forwardness but the confidence that your Goodness rejects no emanation of a great affection yet in this Address I am apt to promise to my self a fair interpretation because I bring you an instrument and auxiliaries to that Devotion whereby we believe you are dear to God and know that you are to good men And if these little sparks of holy fire which I have heaped together do not give life to your prepared and already-enkindled Spirit yet they will sometimes help to entertain a Thought to actuate a Passion to imploy and hallow
a Fancy and put the body of your Piety into fermentation by presenting you with the circumstances and parts of such Meditations which are symbolical to those of your daily Office and which are the passe-temps of your severest hours My Lord I am not so vain to think that in the matter of Devotion and the rules of Justice and Religion which is the business of your life I can add any thing to your heap of excellent things but I have known and felt comfort by reading or hearing from other persons what I knew my self and it was unactive upon my spirit till it was made vigorous and effective from without And in this sence I thought I might not be useless and impertinent My Lord I designed to be instrumental to the Salvation of all persons that shall read my Book But unless because Souls are equal in their substance and equally redeemed we are obliged to wish the Salvation of all men with the greatest that is with equal desires I did intend in the highest manner I could to express how much I am to pay to you by doing the offices of that Duty which although you less need yet I was most bound to pay even the duties and charities of Religion having this design that when posterity for certainly they will learn to distinguish things and persons shall see your Honoured Name imployed to separate and rescue these Papers from contempt they may with the more confidence expect in them something fit to be offered to such a Personage My Lord I have my end if I serve God and You and the needs and interests of Souls but shall think my return full of reward if you shall give me pardon and put me into your Litanies and account me in the number of your Relatives and Servants for indeed my Lord I am most heartily Your Lordship's most affectionate and most obliged Servant JER TAYLOR THE CONTENTS THE PREFACE fol. I. An Exhortation to the Imitation of the Life of CHRIST fol. i SECT I. The History of the Conception of JESUS pag. 1. Considerations upon the Annunciation of the Blessed MARY and the Conception of the Holy Jesus p. 3. SECT II. The Bearing of JESUS in the 〈◊〉 of the Blessed 〈◊〉 p. 7. Considerations concerning the circumstances of the Interval between the Conception and Nativity p. 8. SECT III. The Nativity of our Blessed Saviour JESUS p. 13. Considerations upon the Birth of our Blessed Saviour JESUS p. 15. Discourse 1. Of Nursing Children in imitation of the Blessed Virgin-Mother p. 18. SECT IV. Of the great and glorious Accidents happening about the Birth of JESUS p. 25. Considerations upon the Apparition of the Angels to the Shepherds p. 28. Considerations upon the Epiphany of the Blessed JESUS by a Star and the Adoration of JESUS by the Eastern Magi. p. 31. SECT V. Of the Circumcision of JESUS and his Presentation in the Temple p. 35. Considerations upon the Circumcision of the Holy Child JESUS p. 36. Discourse 2. Of the Vertue of Obedience p. 40. Considerations upon the Presentation of JESUS in the Temple p. 51. Discourse 3. Of Meditation p. 54. SECT VI. Of the Death of the Holy Innocents or the Babes of Bethlehem and the Flight of JESUS into Egypt p. 65. Considerations upon the Death of the Innocents and the Flight of the Holy JESUS into Egypt p. 67. SECT VII Of the younger years of JESUS and his Disputation with the Doctors in the Temple p. 73. Considerations upon the Disputation of JESUS with the Doctors in the Temple p. 74. SECT VIII Of the Preaching of John the Baptist preparative to the Manifestation of JESUS p. 77. Considerations upon the Preaching of John the Baptist. p. 78. Discourse 4. Of Mortification and corporal Austerities p. 82. SECT IX Of JESUS being Baptized and going into the Wilderness to be tempted p. 93. Considerations upon the Baptizing Fasting and Temptation of the Holy JESUS by the Devil p. 95. Discourse 5. Of Temptation p. 102. Discourse 6. Of Baptism p. 116. Of Baptizing Infants p. 127. SECT X. Of the first Manifestation of JESUS by the Testimony of John and a Miracle p. 151. Considerations touching the Vocation of five Disciples and of the first Miracle of JESUS done at Cana in Galilee p. 155. Discourse 7. Of Faith p. 159. SECT XI Of CHRIST's going to Jerusalem to the Passeover the first time after his Manifestation and what followed till the expiration of the Office of John the Baptist. p. 167. Considerations upon the first Journey of the Holy JESUS to Jerusalem when he whipt the Merchants out of the Temple p. 169. Discourse 8. Of the Religion of Holy Places p. 171. SECT XII Of JESUS's departure into Galilee his manner of Life Miracles and Preaching his calling of Disciples and what happened until the second Passeover p. 181. Considerations upon the Entercourse happening between the Holy JESUS and the Woman of Samaria p. 187. Considerations upon CHRIST's first Preaching and the Accidents happening about that time p. 193. Discourse 9. Of Repentance p. 197. Upon CHRIST's Sermon on the Mount and of the Eight Beatitudes p. 221. Discourse 10. Upon that part of the Decalogue which the Holy JESUS adopted into the Institution and obligation of Christianity p. 231. Of the three additional Precepts which CHRIST super induced and made parts of the Christian Law Discourse 11. Of CHARITY with its parts Forgiving Giving not Judging p. 232. Of Alms. p. 258. Discourse 12. Of the second additional Precept of CHRIST viz. Of PRAYER p. 261. Discourse 13. Of the third additional Precept of CHRIST viz. of the manner of FASTING p. 272. Discourse 14. Of the Miracles which JESUS wrought for confirmation of his Doctrine during the whole time of his Preaching p. 277. SECT XIII Of the Second Year of the Preaching of JESUS p. 289. Discourse 15. Of the Excellency 〈◊〉 Reasonableness and Advantages of bearing CHRIST's Yoke and living according to his Institution p. 295. Discourse 16. Of Certainty of 〈◊〉 p. 313. SECT XIV Of the Third Year of the Preaching of JESUS p. 319. Discourse 17. Of Scandal or Giving and taking Offence p. 328. Discourse 18. Of the Causes and Manner of the Divine Judgments p. 335. SECT XV. Of the Accidents happening from the Death of Lazarus until the Death and Burial of JESUS p. 345. Considerations of some preparatory Accidents before the entrance of JESUS into his Passion p. 357. Considerations upon the Washing of the Disciples feet by JESUS and his Sermon of 〈◊〉 p. 363. Discourse 19. Of the Institution and Reception of the Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper p. 369. Considerations upon the Accidents happening on the Vespers of the Passion p. 383. Considerations upon the Scourging and other Accidents happening from the Apprehension till the Crucifixion of JESUS p. 389. Discourse 20. Of Death and the due manner of Preparation to it p. 397. Considerations upon the Crucifixion of the Holy JESUS p. 411. SECT XVI Of the Resurrection and
because it brings afflictions upon us but with love to our supreme Law-giver it is contrary to the natural love we bear to God so understood because it makes him our enemy whom naturally and reasonably we cannot but love and therefore also opposite to the first Appetite of Man which is to be like God in order to which we have naturally no instrument but Love and the consequents of Love 6. And this is not at all to be contradicted by a pretence that a man does not naturally know there is a GOD. Because by the same instrument by which we know that the World began or that there was a first man by the same we know that there is a GOD and that he also knew it too and conversed with that God and received Laws from him For if we discourse of Man and the Law of Nature and the first Appetites and the first Reasons abstractedly and in their own complexions and without all their relations and provisions we discourse jejunely and falsely and unprofitably For as Man did not come by chance nor by himself but from the universal Cause so we know that this universal Cause did do all that was necessary for him in order to the End he appointed him And therefore to begin the history of a Man's Reason and the philosophy of his Nature it is not necessary for us to place him there where without the consideration of a GOD or Society or Law or Order he is to be placed that is in the state of a thing rather than a person but God by Revelations and Scriptures having helped us with Propositions and parts of story relating Man's first and real condition from thence we can take the surest account and make the most perfect derivation of Propositions 7. From this first Appetite of Man to be like God and the first natural instrument of it Love descend all the first obligations of Religion In which there are some parts more immediately and naturally expressive others by superinduction and positive command Natural Religion I call such actions which either are proper to the nature of the thing we worship such as are giving praises to him and speaking excellent things of him and praying to him for such things as we need and a readiness to obey him in whatsoever he commands or else such as are expressions proportionate to our natures that make them that is giving to God the best things we have and by which we can declare our esteem of his honour and excellency assigning some portion of our time of our estate the labours of our persons the increase of our store First fruits Sacrifices Oblations and Tithes which therefore God rewards because he hath allowed to our natures no other instruments of doing him honour but by giving to him in some manner which we believe honourable and apt the best thing we have 8. The next Appetite a man hath is to beget one like himself God having implanted that appetite into Man for the propagation of mankind and given it as his first Blessing and permission It is not good for man to be alone and Increase and multiply And Artemidorus had something of this doctrine when he reckons these two Laws of Nature Deum colere Mulieribus vinci To worship God and To be overcome by women in proportion to his two first Appetites of Nature To be like God and To have another like himself This Appetite God only made regular by his first provisions of satisfaction He gave to Man a Woman for a Wife for the companion of his sorrows for the instrument of multiplication and yet provided him but of one and intimated he should have no more which we do not only know by an after-revelation the Holy Jesus having declared it to have been God's purpose but Adam himself understood it as appears by his first discourses at the entertainment of his new Bride And although there were permissions afterward of Polygamy yet there might have been a greater pretence of necessity at first because of enlarging and multiplying fountains rather than chanels and three or four at first would have enlarged mankind by greater proportion than many more afterwards little distances near the Centre make greater and larger figures than when they part near the fringes of the Circle and therefore those after-permissions were to avoid a greater evil not a hallowing of the licence but a reproach of their infirmity And certainly the multiplication of Wives is contrariant to that design of love and endearment which God intended at first between Man and Wife Connubia mille Non illis generis nexus non pignora curae Sed numero languet pietas And amongst them that have many Wives the relation and necessitude is tristing and loose and they are all equally contemptible because the mind entertains no loves or union where the object is multiplied and the act unfixed and distracted So that this having a great commodity in order to Man 's great End that is of living well and happily seems to be intended by God in the nature of things and instruments natural and reasonable towards Man's End and therefore to be a Law if not natural yet at least positive and superinduced at first in order to Man 's proper End However by the provision which God made for satisfaction of this Appetite of Nature all those actions which deflect and erre from the order of this End are unnatural and inordinate and not permitted by the concession of God nor the order of the thing but such actions only which naturally produce the end of this provision and satisfaction are natural regular and good 9. But by this means Man grew into a Society and a Family and having productions of his own kind which he naturally desired and therefore loved he was consequently obliged to assist them in order to their End that they might become like him that is perfect men and brought up to the same state and they also by being at first impotent and for ever after beneficiaries and obliged persons are for the present subject to their Parents and for ever after bound to duty because there is nothing which they can do that can directly produce so great a benefit to the Parents as they have to the Children From hence naturally descend all those mutual Obligations between Parents and Children which are instruments of Protection and benefit on the one side and Duty and obedience on the other and all these to be expressed according as either of their necessities shall require or any stipulation or contract shall appoint or shall be superinduced by any positive Laws of God or Man 10. In natural descent of the Generations of Man this one first Family was multiplied so much that for conveniency they were forced to divide their dwellings and this they did by Families especially the great Father being the Major-domo to all his minors And this division of dwellings although it
Holy Jesus perfected and restored the natural Law and drew it into a System of Propositions and made them to become of the family of Religion For God is so zealous to have Man attain to the End to which he first designed him that those things which he hath put in the natural order to attain that End he hath bound fast upon us not only by the order of things by which it was that he that prevaricated did naturally fall short of Felicity but also by bands of Religion he hath now made himself a party and an enemy to those that will be not-happy Of old Religion was but one of the natural Laws and the instances of Religion were distinct from the discourses of Philosophy Now all the Law of Nature is adopted into Religion and by our love and duty to God we are tied to do all that is reason and the parts of our Religion are but pursuances of the natural relation between God and us and beyond all this our natural condition is in all sences improved by the consequents and adherencies of this Religion For although Nature and Grace are opposite that is Nature depraved by evil habits by ignorance and ungodly customs is contrary to Grace that is to Nature restored by the Gospel engaged to regular living by new revelations and assisted by the Spirit yet it is observable that the Law of Nature and the Law of Grace are never opposed There is a Law of our members saith S. Paul that is an evil necessity introduced into our appetites by perpetual evil customs examples and traditions of vanity and there is a Law of sin that answers to this and they differ only as inclination and habit vicious desires and vicious practices But then contrary to these are 〈◊〉 a Law of my mind which is the Law of Nature and right Reason and then the Law of Grace that is of Jesus Christ who perfected and restored the first Law and by assistances reduced it into a Law of holy living and these two 〈◊〉 as the other the one is in order to the other as 〈◊〉 and growing degrees and capacities are to perfection and consummation The Law of the mind had been so rased and obliterate and we by some means or other so disabled from observing it exactly that until it was turned into the Law of Grace which is a Law of pardoning infirmities and assisting us in our choices and elections we were in a state of deficiency from the perfective state of Man to which God intended us 37. Now although God always designed Man to the same state which he hath now revealed by Jesus Christ yet he told him not of it and his permissions and licences were then greater and the Law it self lay closer 〈◊〉 up in the compact body of necessary Propositions in order to so much of his End as was known or could be supposed But now according to the extension of the revelation the Law it self is made wider that is more explicit and natural Reason is thrust forward into discourses of Charity and benefit and we tied to do very much good to others and tied to cooperate to each other's felicity 38. That the Law of Charity is a Law of Nature needs no other argument but the consideration of the first constitution of Man The first instances of Justice or entercourse of man with a second or third person were to such persons towards whom he had the greatest endearments of affection in the world a 〈◊〉 and Children and Justice and Charity at first was the same thing And it hath obtained in Ages far removed from the first that Charity is called Righteousness He hath dispersed and given to the poor his righteousness remaineth for ever And it is certain Adam could not in any instance be unjust but he must in the same also be uncharitable the band of his first Justice being the ties of love and all having commenced in love And our Blessed Lord restoring all to the intention of the first perfection expresses it to the same sence as I formerly observed Justice to our Neighbour is loving him as our selves For since Justice obliges us to do as we would be done to as the irascible faculty restrains us 〈◊〉 doing evil for fear of receiving evil so the concupiscible obliges us to Charity that our selves may receive good 39. I shall say nothing concerning the reasonableness of this Precept but that it concurs rarely with the first reasonable appetite of man of being like God Deus est mortali juvare mortalem 〈◊〉 haec est ad aeternitatem via said Pliny and It is more blessed to give than to receive said our Blessed Saviour And therefore the Commandment of Charity in all its parts is a design not only to reconcile the most miserable person to some participations and sense of felicity but to make the Charitable man happy and whether this be not very agreeable to the desires of an intelligent nature needs no farther enquiry And Aristotle asking the Question whether a man had more need of friends in prosperity or adversity makes the case equal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 When they are in want they need assistance when they are prosperous they need partners of their felicity that by communicating their joy to them it may reflect and double upon their spirits And certain it is there is no greater felicity in the world than in the content that results from the emanations of Charity And this is that which S. John calls the old Commandment and the new Commandment It was of old for it was from the beginning even in Nature and to the offices of which our very bodies had an organ and a seat for therefore Nature gave to a man bowels and the passion of yerning but it grew up into Religion by parts and was made perfect and in that degree appropriate to the Law of Jesus Christ. For so the Holy Jesus became our Law-giver and added many new Precepts over and above what were in the Law of Moses but not more than was in the Law of Nature The reason of both is what I have all this while discoursed of Christ made a more perfect restitution of the Law of Nature than Moses did and so it became the second Adam to consummate that which began to be less perfect from the prevarication of the first Adam 40. A particular of the Precept of Charity is forgiving Injuries and besides that it hath many superinduced benefits by way of blessing and reward it relies also upon this natural reason That a pure and a simple revenge does no way restore man towards the felicity which the injury did interrupt For Revenge is a doing a simple evil and does not in its formality imply reparation For the mere repeating of our own right is permitted to them that will do it by charitable instruments and to secure my self or the publick against the future by positive inflictions upon
Kir-haraseth and went to their own Countrey The same and much more was God's design who took not his enemie's but his own Son his only begotten Son and God himself and offered him up in Sacrifice to make us leave our perpetual fightings against Heaven and if we still persist we are hardned beyond the wildnesses of the Arabs and Edomites and neither are receptive of the impresses of Pity nor Humanity who neither have compassion to the Suffering of Jesus nor compliance with the designs of God nor conformity to the Holiness and Obedience of our Guide In a dark night if an Ignis Fatuus do but precede us the glaring of its lesser flames do so amuse our eyes that we follow it into Rivers and Precipices as if the ray of that false light were designed on purpose to be our path to tread in And therefore not to follow the glories of the Sun of Righteousness who indeed leads us over rocks and difficult places but secures us against the danger and guides us into safety is the greatest both undecency and unthankfulness in the world 5. In the great Council of Eternity when God set down the Laws and knit fast the eternal bands of Predestination he made it one of his great purposes to make his Son like us that we also might be like his Holy Son he by taking our Nature we by imitating his Holiness God hath predestinated us to be conformable to the image of his Son saith the Apostle For the first in every kind is in nature propounded as the Pattern of the rest And as the Sun the Prince of all the Bodies of Light and the Fire of all warm substances is the principal the Rule and the Copy which they in their proportions imitate and transcribe so is the Word incarnate the great Example of all the Predestinate for he is the first-born among many brethren And therefore it was a precept of the Apostle and by his doctrine we understand its meaning Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ. The similitude declares the duty As a garment is composed and made of the same fashion with the body and is applied to each part in its true figure and commensuration so should we put on Christ and imitate the whole body of his Sanctity conforming to every integral part and express him in our lives that God seeing our impresses may know whose image and superscription we bear and we may be acknowledged for Sons when we have the air and features and resemblances of our elder Brother 6. In the practice of this duty we may be helped by certain considerations which are like the proportion of so many rewards For this according to the nature of all holy Exercises stays not for pay till its work be quite finished but like Musick in Churches is Pleasure and Piety and Salary besides So is every work of Grace full of pleasure in the execution and is abundantly rewarded besides the stipend of a glorious Eternity 7. First I consider that nothing is more honourable than to be like God and the Heathens worshippers of false Deities grew vicious upon that stock and we who have fondnesses of imitation counting a Deformity full of honour if by it we may be like our Prince for pleasures were in their height in Capreae because Tiberius there wallowed in them and a wry neck in Nero's Court was the Mode of Gallantry might do well to make our imitations prudent and glorious and by propounding excellent Examples heighten our faculties to the capacities of an evenness with the best of Precedents He that strives to imitate another admires him and confesses his own imperfections and therefore that our admirations be not flattering nor our consessions phantastick and impertinent it were but reasonable to admire Him from whom really all Perfections do derive and before whose Glories all our imperfections must confess their shame and needs of reformation God by a voice from Heaven and by sixteen generations of Miracles and Grace hath attested the Holy Jesus to be the fountain of Sanctity and the wonderful Counsellor and the Captain of our sufferings and the guide of our manners by being his beloved Son in whom he took pleasure and complacency to the height of satisfaction And if any thing in the world be motive of our affections or satisfactory to our understandings what is there in Heaven or Earth we can desire or imagine beyond a likeness to God and participation of the Divine Nature and Perfections And therefore as when the Sun arises every man goes to his work and warms himself with his heat and is refreshed with his influences and measures his labour with his course So should we frame all the actions of our life by His Light who hath shined by an excellent Righteousness that we no more walk in Darkness or sleep in Lethargies or run a-gazing after the lesser and imperfect beauties of the Night It is the weakness of the Organ that makes us hold our hand between the Sun and us and yet stand staring upon a Meteor or an inflamed jelly And our judgments are as mistaken and our appetites are as sottish if we propound to our selves in the courses and designs of Perfections any copy but of Him or something like Him who is the most perfect And lest we think his Glories too great to behold 8. Secondly I consider that the imitation of the Life of Jesus is a duty of that excellency and perfection that we are helped in it not only by the assistance of a good and a great Example which possibly might be too great and scare our endeavours and attempts but also by its easiness compliance and proportion to us For Jesus in his whole life conversed with men with a modest Vertue which like a well-kindled fire fitted with just materials casts a constant heat not like an inflamed heap of stubble glaring with great emissions and suddenly stooping into the thickness of 〈◊〉 His Piety was even constant unblameable complying with civil society without affrightment of precedent or prodigious instances of actions greater than the imitation of men For if we observe our Blessed Saviour in the whole story of his Life although he was without Sin yet the instances of his Piety were the actions of a very holy but of an ordinary life and we may observe this difference in the Story of Jesus from Ecclesiastical Writings of certain beatified persons whose life is told rather to amaze us and to create scruples than to lead us in the evenness and serenity of a holy Conscience Such are the prodigious Penances of Simeon Stylites the Abstinence of the Religious retired into the mountain Nitria but especially the stories of later Saints in the midst of a declining Piety and aged Christendom where persons are represented Holy by way of Idea and fancy if not to promote the interests of a Family and Institution But our Blessed Saviour though his eternal Union
his leisure either we disrepute the infinity of his Wisdom or give clear demonstration of our own vanity 2. When God descended to earth he chose to be born in the Suburbs and retirement of a small Town but he was pleased to die at Jerusalem the Metropolis of Judaea Which chides our shame and pride who are willing to publish our gayeties in Piazza's and the corners of the streets of most populous places but our defects and the instruments of our humiliation we carry into desarts and cover with the night and hide them under ground thinking no secrecy dark enough to hide our shame nor any theatre large enough to behold our pompous vanities for so we make provisions for Pride and take great care to exclude Humility 3. When the Holy Virgin now perceived that the expectation of the Nations was arrived at the very doors of revelation and entrance into the World she brought forth the Holy Jesus who like Light through transparent glass past through or a ripe Pomegranate from a fruitful tree fell to the earth without doing violence to its Nurse and Parent She had no ministers to attend but Angels and neither her Poverty nor her Piety would permit her to provide other Nurses but her self did the offices of a tender and pious Parent She kissed him and worshipped him and thanked him that he would be born of her and she suckled him and bound him in her arms and swadling-bands and when she had 〈◊〉 to God her first scene of joy and Eucharist she softly laid him in the manger till her desires and his own necessities called her to take him and to rock him softly in her arms and from this deportment she read a lecture of Piety and maternal care which Mothers should perform toward their children when they are born not to neglect any of that duty which nature and maternal piety requires 4. Jesus was pleased to be born of a poor Mother in a poor place in a cold winter's night far from home amongst strangers with all the circumstances of humility and poverty And no man will have cause to complain of his course Robe if he remembers the swadling-clothes of this Holy Child nor to be disquieted at his hard Bed when he considers Jesus laid in a manger nor to be discontented at his thin Table when he calls to mind the King of Heaven and Earth was fed with a little breast-milk But since the eternal wisdom of the Father who knew to chuse the good and refuse the evil did chuse a life of Poverty it gives us demonstration that Riches and Honors those idols of the World's esteem are so far from creating true felicities that they are not of themselves eligible in the number of good things however no man is to be ashamed of innocent Poverty of which many wise men make Vows and of which the Holy Jesus made election and his Apostles after him made publick profession And if any man will chuse and delight in the affluence of temporal good things suffering himself to be transported with caitive affections in the pleasures of every day he may well make a question whether he shall speed as well hereafter since God's usual method is that they only who follow Christ here shall be with him for ever 5. The Condition of the person 〈◊〉 was born is here of greatest consideration For he that cried in the Manger that suck'd the paps of a Woman that hath exposed himself to Poverty and a world of inconveniences is the Son of the living God of the same substance with his Father begotten before all Ages before the Morning-stars he is GOD eternal He is also by reason of the personal Union of the Divinity with his Humane nature the Son of God not by Adoption as good Men and beatified Angels are but by an extraordinary and miraculous Generation He is the Heir of his Father's glories and possessions not by succession for his Father cannot die but by an equality of communication He is the express image of his Father's person according to both Natures the miracle and excess of his Godhead being as upon wax imprinted upon all the capacities of his Humanity And after all this he is our Saviour that to our duties of wonder and adoration we may add the affections of love and union as himself besides his being admirable in himself is become profitable to us Verè Verbum hoc est abbreviatum saith the Prophet The eternal Word of the Father is shortned to the dimensions of an infant 6. Here then are concentred the prodigles of Greatness and Goodness of Wisdom and Charity of Meekness and Humility and march all the way in mysterie and incomprehensible mixtures if we consider him in the bosome of his Father where he is seated by the postures of Love and essential Felicity and in the Manger where Love also placed him and an infinite desire to communicate his Felicities to us As he is God his Throne is in the Heaven and he fills all things by his immensity as he is Man he is circumscribed by an uneasie Cradle and cries in a Stable As he is God he is seated upon a super-exalted Throne as Man exposed to the lowest estate of uneasiness and need As God clothed in a robe of Glory at the same instant when you may behold and wonder at his Humanity wrapped in cheap and unworthy Cradle-bands As God he is incircled with millions of Angels as Man in the company of Beasts As God he is the eternal Word of the Father Eternal sustained by himself all-sufficient and without need and yet he submitted himself to a condition imperfect inglorious indigent and necessitous And this consideration is apt and natural to produce great affections of love duty and obedience desires of union and conformity to his sacred Person Life Actions and Laws that we resolve all our thoughts and finally determine all our reason and our passions and capacities upon that saying of St. Paul He that loves not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be accursed 7. Upon the consideration of these Glories if a pious soul shall upon the supports of Faith and Love enter into the Stable where this great King was born and with affections behold every member of the Holy Body and thence pass into the Soul of Jesus we may see a scheme of holy Meditations enough to entertain all the degrees of our love and of our understanding and make the mysterie of the Nativity as fruitful of holy thoughts as it was of Blessings to us And it may serve instead of a description of the Person of Jesus conveyed to us in imperfect and Apocryphal schemes If we could behold his sacred Feet with those affections which the Holy Virgin did we have transmitted to us those Mysteries in story which she had first in part by spiritual and divine infused light and afterwards by observation Those holy Feet tender and unable to support his sacred Body should bear him over
tremulous and so are the most holy and eminent Religious persons more full of awfulness and fear and modesty and humility so that in true Divinity and right speaking there is no such thing as the Unitive way of Religion save onely in the effects of duty obedience and the expresses of the precise vertue of Religion Meditations in order to a good life let them be as exalted as the capacity of the person and subject will endure up to the height of Contemplation but if Contemplation comes to be a distinct thing and something besides or beyond a distinct degree of vertuous Meditation it is lost to all sense and Religion and prudence Let no man be hasty to eat of the fruits of Paradise before his time 28. And now I shall not need to enumerate the blessed fruits of holy Meditation for it is a Grace that is instrumental to all effects to the production of all Vertues and the extinction of all Vices and by consequence the inhabitation of the Holy Ghost within us is the natural or proper emanation from the frequent exercise of this Duty onely it hath something particularly excellent besides its general influence for Meditation is that part of Prayer which knits the Soul to its right object and confirms and makes actual our intention and Devotion Meditation is the Tongue of the Soul and the language of our spirit and our wandring thoughts in prayer are but the neglects of Meditation and recessions from that Duty and according as we neglect Meditation so are our Prayers imperfect Meditation being the Soul of Prayer and the intention of our spirit But in all other things Meditation is the instrument and conveyance it habituates our affections to Heaven it hath permanent content it produces constancy of purpose despising of things below inflamed desires of Vertue love of God self-denial humility of understanding and universal correction of our life and manners The PRAYER HOly and Eternal Jesus whose whole Life and Doctrine was a perpetual Sermon of Holy life a treasure of Wisedom and a repository of Divine materials for Meditation give me grace to understand diligence and attention to consider care to lay up and carefulness to reduce to practice all those actions discourses and pious lessons and intimations by which thou didst expresly teach or tacitly imply or mysteriously signifie our Duty Let my Understanding become as spiritual in its imployment and purposes as it is immaterial in its nature fill my Memory as a vessel of Election with remembrances and notions highly compunctive and greatly incentive of all the parts of 〈◊〉 Let thy holy Spirit dwell in my Soul instructing my Knowledge sanctifying my Thoughts guiding my Affections directing my Will in the choice of Vertue that it may be the great imployment of my life to meditate in thy Law to study thy preceptive will to understand even the niceties and circumstantials of my Duty that Ignorance may neither occasion a sin nor become a punishment Take from me all vanity of spirit lightness of fancy curiosity and impertinency of inquiry illusions of the Devil and phantastick deceptions Let my thoughts be as my Religion plain honest pious simple prudent and charitable of great imployment and force to the production of Vertues and extermination of Vice but suffering no transportations of sense and vanity nothing greater than the capacities of my Soul nothing that may minister to any intemperances of spirit but let me be wholly inebriated with Love and that love wholly spent in doing such actions as best please thee in the conditions of my infirmity and the securities of Humility till thou shalt please to draw the curtain and reveal thy interiour beauties in the Kingdom of thine eternal Glories which grant for thy mercie 's sake O Holy and Eternal Jesu Amen The goodly CEDAR of Apostolick Catholick EPISCOPACY compared with the moderne Shoots Slips of divided NOVELTIES in the Church before the Introduction of the Apostles Lives In Rama was there a voice heard lamentation and weeping and great mourning â—â—â—hel weeping for her Children and would not be Comforted because they are not SECT VI. Of the Death of the Holy Innocents or the Babes of Bethlehem and the Flight of JESVS into Egypt The killing the Infants S. MAT. 2. 18 In Rama was there a voice heard Lamentation and weeping and great mourning Rachel weeping for her children and would not be conforted because they are not The flight into Egipt S. MAT. 2. 14. When he arose he took the young Child and his mother by night and departed into egipt 1. ALL this while Herod waited for the return of the Wise men that they might give directions where the Child did lie and his Sword might find him out with a certain and direct execution But when he saw that he was mocked of the Wise men he was exceeding wroth For it now began to deserve his trouble when his purposes which were most secret began to be contradicted and diverted with a prevention as if they were resisted by an all-seeing and almighty Providence He began to suspect the hand of Heaven was in it and saw there was nothing for his purposes to be acted unless he could dissolve the golden chain of Predestination Herod believed the divine Oracles foretelling that a King should be born in Bethlehem and yet his Ambition had made him so stupid that he attempted to cancel the Decree of Heaven For if he did not believe the Prophecies why was he troubled If he did believe them how could he possibly hinder that event which God had foretold himself would certainly bring to pass 2. And therefore since God already had hindered him from the executions of a distinguishing sword he resolved to send a sword of indiscrimination and confusion hoping that if he killed all the Babes of Bethlehem this young King's Reign also should soon determine He therefore sent forth and 〈◊〉 all the children that were in Bethlehem and all the coasts thereof from two years old and under according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the Wise men For this Execution was in the beginning of the second year after Christ's Nativity as in all probability we guess not at the two years end as some suppose because as his malice was subtile so he intended it should be secure and though he had been diligent in his inquiry and was near the time in his computation yet he that was never sparing of the lives of others would now to secure his Kingdom rather over-act his severity for some moneths than by doing execution but just to the tittle of his account hazard the escaping of the Messias 3. This Execution was sad cruel and universal no abatements made for the dire shriekings of the Mothers no tender-hearted souldier was imployed no hard-hearted person was softned by the weeping eyes and pity-begging looks of those Mothers that wondred how it was possible any person should hurt their pretty Sucklings no
sacrifice to God our dearest Lust. And this is not so properly an act as the end of Mortification Therefore it concerns the prudence of the Duty that all the efficacy and violence of it be imployed against the strongest and there where is the most dangerous hostility 23. Fourthly But if we mean to be Matters of the field and put our victory past dispute let us mortifie our morosity and natural aversations reducing them to an indifferency having in our wills no fondnesses in our spirits no faction of persons or nations being prepared to love all men and to endure all things and to undertake all employments which are duty or counsel in all circumstances and disadvantages For the excellency of Evangelical Sanctity does surmount all Antipathies as a vessel climbs up and rides upon a wave The Wolf and the Lamb shall cohabit and a Child shall play and put his fingers in the Cavern of an Aspick Nations whose interests are most contradictory must be knit by the confederations of a mortified and a Christian Spirit and single persons must triumph over the difficulties of an indisposed nature or else their own will is unmortified and Nature is stronger than can well consist with the dominion and absolute empire of Grace To this 〈◊〉 reduce such peevish and unhandsome nicenesses in matters of Religion that are unsatisfied unless they have all exteriour circumstances trimmed up and made pompous for their Religious offices such who cannot pray without a convenient room and their Devotion is made active only by a well-built Chappel and they cannot sing Lauds without Church-musick and too 〈◊〉 light dissolves their intention and too much dark promotes their melancholy and because these and the like exteriour Ministeries are good advantages therefore without them they can do nothing which certainly is a great intimation and likeness to Immortification Our Will should be like the Candle of the Eye without all colour in it self that it may entertain the species of all colours from without and when we lust after mandrakes and deliciousness of exteriour Ministeries we many times are brought to betray our own interest and prostitute our dearest affections to more ignoble and stranger desires Let us love all natures and serve all persons and pray in all places and fast without opportunities and do alms above our power and set our selves heartily on work to neglect and frustrate those lower temptations of the Devil who 〈◊〉 frequently enough make our Religion inopportune if we then will make it infrequent and will present us with objects enough and flies to disquiet our persons if our natures be petulant peevish curious and unmortified 24. It is a great mercy of God to have an affable sweet and well-disposed nature and it does half the work of Mortification for us we have the less trouble to 〈◊〉 our Passions and destroy our Lusts. But then as those whose natures are morose cholerick peevish and lustful have greater difficulty so is their vertue of greater excellence and returned with a more ample reward but it is in all mens natures as with them who gathered Manna They that gathered little had no lack and they that gathered much had nothing over they who are of ill natures shall want no assistance of God's grace to work their cure though their flesh be longer 〈◊〉 and they who are sweetly tempered being naturally meek and modest chaste or temperate will find work enough to contest against their temptations from without though from within possibly they may have fewer Yet there are greater degrees of Vertue and heroical excellencies and great rewards to which God hath designed them by so fair dispositions and it will concern all their industry to mortifie their spirit which though it be malleable and more ductile yet it is as bare and naked of imagery as the rudest and most iron nature so that Mortification will be every man's duty no nature nor piety nor wisdom nor 〈◊〉 but will need it either to subdue a Lust or a Passion to cut off an occasion or to resist a Temptation to persevere or to go on to secure our present estate or to proceed towards perfection But all men do not think so 25. For there are some who have great peace no fightings within no troubles without no disputes or contradictions in their spirit but these men have the peace of tributaries or a conquered people the gates of their city stand open day and night that all the carriages may enter without disputing the pass the flesh and the spirit dispute not because the spirit is there in pupillage or in bonds and the flesh rides in triumph with the tyranny and pride and impotency of a female tyrant For in the sence of Religion we all are Warriors or Slaves either our selves are stark dead in trespasses and sins or we need to stand perpetually upon our guards in continual observation and in contestation against our Lusts and our Passions so long denying and contradicting our own Wills till we will and chuse to do things against our Wills having an eye always to those infinite satisfactions which shall 〈◊〉 our Wills and all our Faculties when we arrive to that state in which there shall be no more contradiction but only that our mortal shall put on immortality 26. But as some have a vain and dangerous peace so others double their trouble by too nice and impertinent scruples thinking that every Temptation is a degree of Immortification As long as we live we shall have to do with Enemies but as this Life is ever a state of 〈◊〉 so the very design and purpose of Mortification is not to take away Temptations but to overcome them it endeavours to facilitate the work and secure our condition by removing all occasions it can but the opportunity of a crime and the solicitation to a sin is no fault of ours unless it be of our procuring or finds entertainment when it comes unsent for To suffer a Temptation is a misery but if we then set upon the 〈◊〉 of it it is an occasion of Vertue and never is criminal unless we give consent But then also it would be considered that it is not good offering our selves to fire ordeal to confirm our Innocence nor prudent to enter into Battel without need and to shew our valour nor safe to procure a Temptation that we may have the reward of Mortification of it For 〈◊〉 of the spirit is not commanded as a Duty finally resting in it self or immediately landing upon God's glory such as are acts of Charity and Devotion Chastity and Justice but it is the great instrument of Humility and all other Graces and therefore is to be undertaken to destroy a sin and to secure a vertuous habit And besides that to call on a danger is to tempt God and to invite the Devil and no man is sure of a victory it is also great imprudence to create a need that we may take it away again to drink
condition and the greatest instance of their infelicity whom the Church upon sufficient reason and with competent authority delivers over to Satan by the infliction of the greater Excommunication 8. As soon as it was permitted to the Devil to tempt our Lord he like fire had no power to suspend his act but was as entirely determined by the fulness of his malice as a natural agent by the appetites of nature that we may know to whom we owe the happinesses of all those hours and days of peace in which we sit under the trees of Paradise and see no serpent encircling the branches and presenting us with fair fruit to ruine us It is the mercy of God we have the quietness of a minute for if the Devil's chain were taken off he would make our very beds a torment our tables to be a snare our sleeps phantastick lustful and illusive and every sense should have an object of delight and danger an Hyaena to kiss and to perish in its embraces But the Holy Jesus having been assaulted by the Devil and felt his malice by the experiments of Humanity is become so merciful a high Priest and so sensible of our sufferings and danger by the apprehensions of compassion that he hath put a hook into the nostrils of Leviathan and although the reliques of seven Nations be in our borders and fringes of our Countrey yet we live as safe as did the Israelites upon whom sometimes an inroad and invasion was made and sometimes they had rest forty years and when the storm came some remedy was found out by his grace by whose permission the tempest was stirred up and we find many persons who in seven years meet not with a violent temptation to a crime but their battels are against impediments and retardations of improvement their own rights are not directly questioned but the Devil and Sin are wholly upon the defensive Our duty here is an act of affection to God making returns of thanks for the protection and of duty to secure and continue the favour 9. But the design of the Holy Ghost being to expose Jesus to the Temptation he arms himself with Fasting and Prayer and Baptism and the Holy Spirit against the day of battel he continues in the Wilderness forty days and sorty nights without meat or drink attending to the immediate addresses and colloquies with God not suffering the interruption of meals but representing his own and the necessities of all mankind with such affections and instances of spirit love and wisdom as might express the excellency of his person and promote the work of our Redemption his conversation being in this interval but a resemblance of Angelical perfection and his Fasts not an instrument of Mortification for he needed none he had contracted no stain from his own nor his Parents acts neither do we find that he was at all hungry or asslicted with his 〈◊〉 till after the expiration of forty days He was afterwards an hungry said the Evangelist and his abstinence from meat might be a defecation of his faculties and an opportunity of Prayer but we are not sure it intended any thing else but it may concern the prudence of Religion to snatch at this occasion of duty so far as the instance is imitable and in all violences of Temptation to fast and pray Prayer being a rare antidote against the poison and Fasting a convenient disposition to intense actual and undisturbed Prayer And we may remember also that we have been baptized and consign'd with the Spirit of God and have received the adoption of Sons and the graces of Sanctification in our Baptisms and had then the seed of God put into us and then we put on Christ and entring into battel put on the whole armour of Righteousness and therefore we may by observing our strength gather also our duty and greatest obligation to fight manfully that we may triumph gloriously 10. The Devil 's first Temptation of Christ was upon the instances and first necessities of Nature Christ was hungry and the Devil invited him to break his fast upon the expence of a Miracle by turning the stones into bread But the answer Jesus made was such as taught us since the ordinary Providence of God is sufficient for our provision or support extraordinary ways of satisfying necessities are not to be undertaken but God must be relied upon his time attended his manner entertained and his measure thankfully received Jesus refused to be relieved and denied to manifest the Divinity of his Person rather than he would do an act which had in it the intimation of a diffident spirit or might be expounded a disreputation to God's Providence And therefore it is an improvident care and impious security to take evil courses and use vile instruments to furnish our Table and provide for our necessities God will certainly give us bread and till he does we can live by the breath of his mouth by the Word of God by the light of his countenance by the refreshment of his Promises for if God gives not provisions into our granaries he can feed us out of his own that is 〈◊〉 of the repositories of Charity If the flesh-pots be removed he can also alter the appetite and when our stock is 〈◊〉 he can also lessen the necessity or if that continues he can drown the sense of it in a deluge of patience and resignation Every word of God's mouth can create a Grace and every Grace can supply two necessities both of the body and the spirit by the comforts of this to support that that they may bear each others burthen and alleviate the pressure 11. But the Devil is always prompting us to change our Stones into Bread our sadnesses into sensual comfort our drinesses into inundations of fancy and exteriour sweetnesses for he knows that the ascetick Tables of Mortification and the stones of the Desart are more healthful than the fulnesses of voluptuousness and the corn of the valleys He cannot endure we should live a life of Austerity or Self-denial if he can get us but to satisfie our Senses and a little more freely to please our natural desires he then hath a fair Field for the Battel but so long as we force him to fight in hedges and morasses encircling and crowding up his strengths into disadvantages by our stone-walls our hardnesses of Discipline and rudenesses of Mortification we can with more facilities repell his flatteries and receive fewer incommodities of spirit But thus the Devil will abuse us by the impotency of our natural desires and therefore let us go to God for satisfaction of our wishes God can and does when it is good for us change our stones into bread for he is a Father so merciful that if we ask him a Fish he will not give us a Scorpion if we ask him bread he will not offer us a stone but will satisfie all our desires by ministrations of the Spirit making stones to become our
crime and are every day made still more infrequent because Grace growing stronger the observation and advertency of the spirit and the attendance of the inner man grows more effectual and busie this is a state of the imperfection of Grace but a state of Grace it is And it is more commonly observed to be expressed in the imperfection of our good actions than in the irregularity of bad actions and in this sence are those words of our Blessed Saviour The Spirit 〈◊〉 is willing but the flesh is weak which in this instance was not expressed in sin but in a natural imperfection which then was a recession from a civility a not watching with the Lord. And this is the only Infirmity that can consist with the state of Grace 12. So that now we may lay what load we please upon our Nature and call our violent and unmortified desires by the name of an imperfect Grace but then we are dangerously mistaken and flatter our selves into an opinion of Piety when we are in the gall of bitterness so making our misery the more certain and irremediable because we think it needs nothing but a perpetuity and perseverance to bring us to Heaven The violence of Passion and Desires is a misery of Nature but a perfect principle of Sin multiplying and repeating the acts but not lessening the malignity But sins of Infirmity when we mean sins of a less and lower malice are sins of a less and imperfect choice because of the unavoidable imperfection of the Understanding Sins of Infirmity are always infirm sins that is weak and imperfect in their principle and in their nature and in their design that is they are actions incomplete in all their capacities but then Passions and periodical inclinations consisting with a regular and determined and actual understanding must never be their principle for whatsoever proceeds thence is destructive of spiritual life and inconsistent with the state of Grace But sins of infirmity when they pretend to a less degree of malignity and a greater degree of excuse are such as are little more than sins of pure and inculpable ignorance for in that degree in which any other principle is mixt with them in the same degree they are criminal and inexcusable For as a sin of infirmity is pretended to be little in its value and malignity so it is certain if it be great in the instance it is not a sin of infirmity that is it is a state or act of death and absolutely inconsistent with the state of Grace 13. Secondly Another Principle of Temptation pregnant with sin and fruitful of monsters is a weaker pretence which less wary and credulous persons abuse themselves withall pretending as a ground for their confidence and incorrigible pursuance of their courses that they have a Good meaning that they intend sometimes well and sometimes not ill and this shall be sufficient to sanctifie their actions and to hallow their sin And this is of worse malice when Religion is the colour for a War and the preservation of Faith made the warrant for destruction of Charity and a Zeal for God made the false light to lead us to Disobedience to Man and hatred of Idolatry is the usher of Sacriledge and the 〈◊〉 of Superstition the introducer of Profaneness and Reformation made the colour for a Schism and Liberty of conscience the way to a 〈◊〉 and saucy Heresie for the End may indeed hallow an indifferent action but can never make straight a crooked and irregular It was not enough for Saul to cry for God and the Sacrifice that he spared the fat flocks of Amalek and it would be a strange zeal and forwardness that rather than the Altar of incense should not smoak will burn Assa foetida or the marrow of a man's bones For as God will be honoured by us so also in ways of his own appointment for we are the makers of our Religion if we in our zeal for God do what he hath forbidden us And every sin committed for Religion is just such a violence done to it as it seeks to prevent or remedy 14. And so it is if it be committed for an end or pretence of Charity as well as of Religion We must be curious that no pretence engage us upon an action that is certainly criminal in its own nature Charity may sometimes require our Lives but no obligation can endear a Damnation to us we are not bound to the choice of an eternal ruine to save another Indeed so far as an Option will go it may concern the excrescences of Piety to chuse by a tacite or express act of volition to become Anathema for our brethren that is by putting a case and fiction of Law to suppose it better and wish it rather that I should perish than my Nation Thus far is charitable because it is innocent for as it is great love to our Countrey so it is no uncharitableness to our selves for such Options always are ineffective and produce nothing but rewards of Charity and a greater glory And the Holy Jesus himself who only could be and was effectively accursed to save us got by it an exceeding and mighty glorification and S. Paul did himself advantage by his charitable Devotion for his Countreymen But since God never puts the question to us so that either we or our Nation must be damned he having xt every man's final condition upon his own actions in the vertue and obedience of Christ if we mistake the expresses of Charity and suffer our selves to be damned indeed for God's glory or our Brethrens good we spoil the Duty and ruine our selves when our Option comes to act But it is observable that although Religion is often pretended to justifie a sin yet Charity is but seldom which makes it full of suspicion that Religion is but the cover to the Death's-head and at the best is but an accusing of God that he is not willing or not able to preserve Religion without our irregular and impious cooperations But however though it might concern us to wish our selves rather 〈◊〉 than Religion or our Prince or our Country should perish for I find no instances that it is lawful so much as to 〈◊〉 it for the preservation of a single friend yet it is against Charity to bring such a 〈◊〉 to 〈◊〉 and by sin to damn our selves really for a good end either 〈◊〉 Religion or Charity 15. Let us therefore serve God as he hath 〈◊〉 the way for all our accesses to him being acts of his free concession and grace must be by his 〈◊〉 designation and appointment We might as well have chosen what shape our 〈◊〉 should be of as of what instances the substance of our Religion should consist 16. Thirdly a third Principle of Temptation is an opinion of prosecuting actions of Civility Compliance and Society to the luxation of a point of Piety and 〈◊〉 Duty and good natures persons of humane and sweeter dispositions are
too apt to dash upon this rock of offence But the evil that I would note is that there are some conditions of men to whom a Vice is so accustomed that he that 〈◊〉 with them must handle the crime and touch the venome There are some Vices which are National there are some that are points of Honour some are Civilities of entertainment and they are therefore accounted unavoidable because the understandings of men are degenerous as their manners and it is accounted sottish and 〈◊〉 not to 〈◊〉 in their accustomed loosenesses Amongst some men all their first addresses are 〈◊〉 their entertainments intemperate beyond the permissions of Christian austerity their drink is humorous and their humours quarrellous and it is dishonourable not to engage in Duel and venture your Soul to 〈◊〉 an empty Reputation These inconveniences 〈◊〉 upon false opinions and vain fancies having no greater foundation than the sottish discourses of ignorant and 〈◊〉 persons and they have no peculiar and appropriate remedy but a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of manners and a consideration what is required of us as Christians to 〈◊〉 against 〈◊〉 fonder customs and expectations from us as we engage in the puddles of the world and are blended in society 17. To which purposes we must be careful not to engage too freely in looser company never without business or unavoidable accidents and when we mingle in affairs it will concern our safety to watch lest multitude of talk 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 of nature the delight of company and the freedom and ill 〈◊〉 civilities do by degrees draw us away from our guards and 〈◊〉 of spirit For in these cases every degree of dissolution disarms us of our strengths and if we give way 〈◊〉 far as we think it tolerable we instantly and undiscernibly pass into unlawful and criminal But our best defences are deposited in a severe and prudent understanding and discerning the sottishness of such principles which represent Vice in civil 〈◊〉 and propound a crime to you under the cover of kindness which is just so much recompence as it is satisfaction to a condemned person that he was accused by a witty Oratour and sentenced by an eloquent Judge Remember always that the friendships of the world are enmity with God and that those Societies which are combined by relations of drink and wantonness and impertinency and crimes are either inconsiderable in civility or reason or reputation no wise man is moved by their testimony or discourses and they are so impotent rude and undiscerning a theatre that most commonly he is the best man who from thence is the worst reported and represented 18. But in all the instances of this great evil the very stating the question right is above half the victory For it is a question between mistaken Civility and certain Duty Piety on one side and the disguises of Humanity on the other God and Man are the parties interested and to counterpoise the influence of the sight and face of Man which being in a visible communication it is not in some natures to neglect or contradict there are all the Excellencies of God the effects of his Power his certain Presence and Omniscience the severities of his Judgment and the sweetness and invitation of his Mercies besides the prudence wisdom and satisfaction to the spirit when we wisely neglect such sottish and low abuses and temptations to conform to the rules of Reason and Duty in compliance with the purposes of God and our own 〈◊〉 19. Thirdly These ill-managed Principles are dangers as universal as an infected air yet there are some diseases more proper to the particular state of Religion First To young beginners in Religion he represents the Difficulties of Religion and propounds the greater Examples of holy persons and affrights them with those mountains of Piety observing where and upon what instance of Severity his fancy will be most apprehensive and 〈◊〉 and this he fails not often to represent with a purpose that by believing no Piety less than the greatest can be good he may despair of those heights and retire into the securities and indifferencies of a careless life But this is to be cured by all those instruments of Piety which in special are incentives of the love of God and endearments of spiritual and religious affections and particularly by consideration of the Divine goodness who knows whereof we are made and remembers that we are but dust and will require no more of us than according to our powers and present capacities But the subject matter of this Temptation is considered and refuted in the Discourse of the Love of God 20. But most commonly young beginners are zealous and high and not so easily tempted to a recession till after a long time by a revolution of affections they are abated by a defervescency in holy actions The Devil uses to prompt them on not that he loves the Piety and the progress but that he would engage the person in imprudences and such forwardness of expresses which either are in their own nature indiscretions or from which by reason of the incapacity of the person it is necessary for him to retire A new Convert is like a Bird newly entred into a Net through which possibly she might pass without danger if her fears and unreasonable strivings did not intangle her but when by busie and disturbed slutterings she discomposes the order of it she is intangled and unpenned and made a prey to her treacherous enemy Such are the undiscreet strivings and too 〈◊〉 enterprises of new Penitents whom we shall observe too often undertaking great Austerities making Vows and casting bands upon their liberty and snares upon their persons thinking nothing great enough to expiate their sin or to present to God or to endear their services or secure their perseverance and therefore they lay a load of fetters upon themselves or rather cut off their legs that they may never go back therefore laying an obligation of Vows and intolerable burthens on themselves that by these they may by a compendium of Piety redeem the time and by those make it impossible to prevaricate But the observation of the sad events and 〈◊〉 accidents of these men hath given probation of the indiscretion of such furious addresses and beginnings And it was prudently done of Mcletius of Antioch when he visited the Dioceses of Syria and the several Religious persons famous for severe undertakings espying that Simeon Stylites dwelt upon a Pillar and had bound his leg with a strong chain of iron he sent for a Smith causing it to be knocked off and said To 〈◊〉 man that loves God his Mind is a sufficient chain For the loads of voluntary Austerities rashly undertaken make Religion a burthen when their first heats expire and their Vows which are intended to secure the practice and perpetuate the Piety are but the occasions of an aggravate crime and the Vow does not secure the Piety but the weariness and satiety of the
God at first designed to us And therefore as our Baptism is a separation of us from unbelieving people so the descent of the Holy Spirit upon us in our Baptism is a consigning or marking us for God as the Sheep of his pasture as the Souldiers of his Army as the Servants of his houshold we are so separated from the world that we are appropriated to God so that God expects of us Duty and Obedience and all Sins are acts of Rebellion and Undutifulness Of this nature was the sanctification of Jeremy and John the Baptist from their mothers womb that is God took them to his own service by an early designation and his Spirit marked them to a holy Ministery To this also relates that of S. Paul whom God by a decree separated from his mother's womb to the Ministery of the Gospel the 〈◊〉 did antedate the act of the Spirit which did not descend upon him until the day of his Baptism What these persons were in order to exteriour Ministeries that all the faithful are in order to Faith and Obedience consigned in Baptism by the Spirit of God to a perpetual relation to God in a continual service and title to his Promises And in this sence the Spirit of God is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Seal In whom also after that ye believed ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of Promise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Water washes the body and the Spirit seals the Soul viz. to a participation of those Promises which he hath made and to which we receive a title by our Baptism 22. Secondly The second effect of the Spirit is Light or Illumination that is the holy Spirit becomes unto us the Author of holy thoughts and firm perswasions and sets to his seal that the Word of God is true into the belief of which we are then baptized and makes Faith to be a Grace and the Understanding resigned and the Will confident and the Assent stronger than the premises and the Propositions to be believed because they are beloved and we are taught the ways of Godliness after a new manner that is we are made to perceive the Secrets of the Kingdom and to love Religion and to long for Heaven and heavenly things and to despise the World and to have new resolutions and new perceptions and new delicacies in order to the establishment of Faith and its increments and perseverance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God sits in the Soul when it is illuminated in 〈◊〉 as if he sate in his Throne that is he rules by a firm perswasion and intire principles of Obedience And therefore Baptism is called in Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the baptized 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 illuminated Call to mind the former days in which you were illuminated and the same phrase is in the 6. to the Hebrews where the parallel places expound each other For that which S. Paul calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 illuminated he calls after 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a receiving the knowledge of the truth and that you may perceive this to be wholly meant of Baptism the 〈◊〉 expresses it still by Synonyma's Tasting of the heavenly gift and made partakers of the Holy Ghost sprinkled in our hearts from an evil conscience and washed in our bodies with pure water all which also are a syllabus or collection of the several effects of the graces bestowed in Baptism But we are now instancing in that which relates most properly to the Understanding in which respect the Holy Spirit also is called Anointing or Unction and the mystery is explicated by S. John The Anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you and ye need not that any man teach you but as the same Anointing teacheth you of all things 23. Thirdly The Holy Spirit descends upon us in Baptism to become the principle of a new life to become a holy seed springing up to Holiness and is called by S. John 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 of God and the purpose of it we are taught by him Whosoever is 〈◊〉 of God that is he that is regenerated and entred into this New birth doth not 〈◊〉 sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God The Spirit of God is the Spirit of life and now that he by the Spirit is born anew he hath in him that principle which if it be cherished will grow up to life to life eternal And this is the Spirit of Sanctification the victory over the World the deletery of Concupiscence the life of the Soul and the perpetual principle of Grace sown in our spirits in the day of our Adoption to be the sons of God and members of Christ's body But take this Mystery in the words of S. Basil. There are two Ends proposed in Baptism to wit to abolish the body of Sin that we may no more bring forth fruit unto death and to live in the Spirit and to have our fruit to Sanctification The Water represents the image of death receiving the body in its bosom as in a Sepulchre but the quickning Spirit sends upon us a vigorous 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 power or 〈◊〉 even from the beginning renewing our Souls from the death of sin unto life For as our Mortification is 〈◊〉 in the water so the Spirit works life in us To this purpose is the discourse of S. Paul having largely discoursed of our being baptized into the death of 〈◊〉 he adds this as the Corollary of all He that is dead is freed from sin that is being mortified and buried in the waters of Baptism we have a new life of Righteousness put into us we are quitted from the dominion of Sin and are planted together in the likeness of Christ's Resurrection that henceforth we should not serve sin 24. Fourthly But all these intermedial Blessings tend to a glorious Conclusion for Baptism does also consign us to a holy Resurrection It takes the sting of death from us by burying us together with Christ and takes 〈◊〉 Sin which is the sting of death and then we shall be partakers of a blessed Resurrection This we are taught by S. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his Death For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his Death we shall be also in the likeness of his Resurrection That declares the real event in its due season But because Baptism consigns it and admits us to a title to it we are said with S. Paul to be risen with Christ in Baptism Buried with him in Baptism wherein also you are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God which hath raised him from the dead Which expression I desire to be remembred that by it we may better understand those other
may soon be washed but to be healed is a work of a long cure 3. Thirdly The Dispositions which are required to the ordinary susception of Baptism are not necessary to the efficacy or required to the nature of the Sacrament but accidentally and because of the superinduced necessities of some men and therefore the Conditions are not regularly to be required But in those accidents it was necessary for a Gentile Proselyte to repent of his sins and to believe in Moses's Law before he could be circumcised but Abraham was not tied to the same Conditions but only to Faith in God but Isaac was not tied to so much and Circumcision was not of Moses but of the Fathers and yet after the sanction of Moses's Law men were tied to conditions which were then made necessary to them that entred into the Covenant but not necessary to the nature of the Covenant it self And so it is in the susception of Baptism If a sinner enters into the Font it is necessary he be stripped of those appendages which himself sewed upon his Nature and then Repentance is a necessary disposition if his Understanding hath been a stranger to Religion polluted with evil Principles and a false Religion it is necessary he have an actual Faith that he be given in his Understanding up to the obedience of Christ. And the reason of this is plain Because in these persons there is a disposition contrary to the state and effects of Baptism and therefore they must be taken off by their contraries Faith and Repentance that they may be reduced to the state of pure Receptives And this is the sence of those words of our Blessed Saviour Unless ye become like one of these little ones ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven that is Ye cannot be admitted into the Gospel-Covenant unless all your contrarieties and impediments be taken from you and you be as apt as children to receive the new immissions from Heaven And this Proposition relies upon a great Example and a certain Reason The Example is our Blessed Saviour who was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 debitor he had committed no sin and needed no Repentance he needed not to be saved by Faith for of Faith he was the Author and Finisher and the great object and its perfection and reward and yet he was baptized by the Baptism of John the Baptism of Repentance And therefore it is certain that Repentance and Faith are not necessary to the susception of Baptism but necessary to some persons that are baptized For it is necessary we should much consider the difference If the Sacrament by any person may be justly received in whom such Dispositions are not to be sound then the Dispositions are not necessary or intrinsecal to the susception of the Sacrament and yet some persons coming to this Sacrament may have such necessities of their own as will make the Sacrament ineffectual without such Dispositions These I call necessary to the person but not to the Sacrament that is necessary to all such but not necessary to all absolutely And Faith is necessary sometimes where Repentance is not sometimes Repentance and Faith together and sometimes otherwise When Philip baptized the Eunuch he only required of him to believe not to repent But S. Peter when he preached to the Jews and converted them only required Repentance which although it in their case implied Faith yet there was explicit stipulation for it they had crucified the Lord of life and if they would come to God by Baptism they must renounce their sin that was all was then stood upon It is as the case is or as the persons have superinduced necessities upon themselves In Children the case is evident as to the one part which is equally required I mean Repentance the not doing of which cannot prejudice them as to the susception of Baptism because they having done no evil are not bound to repent and to repent is as necessary to the susception of Baptism as Faith is But this shews that they are accidentally necessary that is not absolutely not to all not to Insants and if they may be excused from one duty which is indispensably necessary to Baptism why they may not from the other is a secret which will not be found out by these whom it concerns to believe it 4. And therefore when our Blessed Lord made a stipulation and express Commandment for Faith with the greatest annexed penalty to them that had it not He that believeth not shall be damned the proposition is not to be verified or understood as relative to every period of time for then no man could be converted from Insidelity to the Christian Faith and from the power of the Devil to the Kingdom of Christ but his present Infidelity shall be his final ruine It is not therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not a Sentence but a 〈◊〉 a Prediction and Intermination It is not like that saying God is true and every man a lier and Every good and every perfect gift is from above for these are true in every instant without reference to circumstances but He that believeth not shall be damned is a Prediction or that which in Rhetorick is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a Use because this is the affirmation of that which usually or frequently comes to pass such as this He that strikes with the sword shall perish by the sword He that robs a Church shall be like a wheel of a vertiginous and unstable estate He that loves wine and oyl shall not be rich and therefore it is a declaration of that which is universally or commonly true but not so that in what instant soever a man is not a believer in that instant it is true to say he is damned for some are called the third some the sixth some the ninth hour and they that come in being first called at the eleventh hour shall have their reward so that this sentence stands true at the day and the judgment of the Lord not at the judgment or day of man And in the same necessity as Faith stands to Salvation in the same it stands to Baptism that is to be measured by the whole latitude of its extent Our Baptism shall no more do all its intention unless Faith supervene than a man is in possibility of being saved without Faith it must come in its due time but is not indispensably necessary in all instances and periods Baptism is the seal of our Election and adoption and as Election is brought to effect by Faith and its consequents so is Baptism but to neither is Faith necessary as to its beginning and first entrance To which also I add this Consideration That actual Faith is necessary not to the susception but to the consequent effects of Baptism appears because the Church and particularly the Apostles did baptize some persons who had not Faith but were Hypocrites such as were Simon Magus Alexander the
which in a greater measure and upon more variety of rules the Governours of Churches are obliged But that which Christian Simplicity prohibits is the mixing arts and unhandsome means for the purchase of our ends witty counsels that are underminings of our neighbour destroying his just interest to serve our own stratagems to deceive infinite and insignificant answers with fraudulent design unjust and unlawful concealment of our purposes fallacious promises and false pretences flattery and unjust and unreasonable praise saying one thing and meaning the contrary pretending Religion to secular designs breaking faith taking false oaths and such other instruments of humane purposes framed by the Devil and sent into the world to be perfected by man Christian Simplicity speaks nothing but its thoughts and when it concerns Prudence that a thought or purpose should be concealed it concerns Simplicity that silence be its cover and not a false vizor it rather suffers inconvenience than a lie it destroys no man's right though it be inconsistent with my advantages it reproves freely palliates no man's wickedness it intends what it ought and does what is bidden and uses courses regular and just sneaks not in corners and walks always in the eye of God and the face of the world 7. Jesus told Nathanael that he knew him when he saw him under the Fig-tree and Nathanael took that to be probation sufficient that he was the 〈◊〉 and believed rightly upon an insufficient motive which because Jesus did accept it gives testimony to us that however Faith be produced by means regular or by arguments incompetent whether it be proved or not proved whether by chance or deliberation whether wisely or by occasion so that Faith be produced by the instrument and love by Faith God's work is done and so is ours For if S. Paul rejoyced that Christ was preached though by the 〈◊〉 of peevish persons certainly God will not reject an excellent product because it came from a weak and sickly parent and he that brings good out of evil and rejoyces in that good having first triumphed upon the evil will certainly take delight in the Faith of the most ignorant persons which his own grace hath produced out of innocent though insufficient beginnings It was folly in Naaman to refuse to be cured because he was to recover only by washing in Jordan The more incompetent the means is the greater is the glory of God who hath produced waters from a rock and fire from the collision of a sponge and wool and it is certain the end unless it be in products merely natural does not take its estimate and degrees from the external means Grace does miracles and the productions of the Spirit in respect of its instruments are equivocal extraordinary and supernatural and ignorant persons believe as strongly though they know not why and love God as 〈◊〉 as greater spirits and more excellent understandings and when God pleases or if he sees it expedient he will do to others as to Nathanael give them greater arguments and better instruments for the confirmation and heightning of their 〈◊〉 than they had for the first production 8. When Jesus had chosen these few Disciples to be witnesses of succeeding accidents every one of which was to be a probation of his mission and Divinity he entred into the theatre of the world at a Marriage-feast which he now first hallowed to a Sacramental signification and made to become mysterious he now began to chuse his Spouse out from the communities of the world and did mean to endear her by unions ineffable and glorious and consign the Sacrament by his bloud which he first gave in a secret 〈◊〉 and afterwards in 〈◊〉 and apparent effusion And although the Holy Jesus did in his own person consecrate Coelibate and Abstinence and Chastity in his Mother's yet by his 〈◊〉 he also hallowed Marriage and made it honourable not only in civil account and the rites of Heraldry but in a spiritual sence he having new sublim'd it by making it a Sacramental representment of the union of Christ and his 〈◊〉 the Church And all married persons should do 〈◊〉 to remember what the conjugal society does represent and not break the matrimonial bond which is a 〈◊〉 ligament of Christ and his Church for whoever dissolves the sacredness of the Mystery and unhallows the Vow by violence and impurity he dissolves his relation to Christ. To break faith with a Wife or Husband is a divorce from Jesus and that is a separation from all possibilities of Felicity In the time of the 〈◊〉 Statutes to violate Marriage was to do injustice and dishonour and a breach to the sanctions of Nature or the first constitutions But two bands more are added in the Gospel to make Marriage more sacred For now our Bodies are made Temples of the Holy Ghost and the Rite of Marriage is made significant and Sacramental and every act of Adultery is Profanation and Irreligion it 〈◊〉 a Temple and deflours a Mystery 9. The Married pair were holy but poor and they wanted wine and the Blessed Virgin-Mother pitying the 〈◊〉 of the young man complained to Jesus of the want and 〈◊〉 gave her an answer which promised no satisfaction to her purposes For now that Jesus had lived thirty years and done in person nothing answerable to 〈◊〉 glorious Birth and the miraculous accidents of his Person she longed till the time 〈◊〉 in which he was to manifest himself by actions as miraculous as the Star of his Birth She knew by the rejecting of his Trade and his going abroad and probably by his own 〈◊〉 to her that the time was near and the forwardness of her love and holy desires 〈◊〉 might go some minutes before his own precise limit However 〈◊〉 answered to this purpose to shew that the work he was to do was done not to satisfie her importunity which is not occasion enough for a Miracle but to prosecute the great work of Divine designation For in works spiritual and religious all exteriour relation ceases The world's order and the manner of our nature and the infirmities of our person have produced Societies and they have been the parents of Relation and God hath tied them fast by the knots of duty and made the duty the occasion and opportunities of reward But in actions spiritual in which we relate to God our relations are sounded upon the Spirit and therefore we must do our duties upon considerations separate and spiritual but never suffer temporal relations to impede our Religious duties Christian Charity is a higher thing than to be confined within the terms of dependence and correlation and those endearments which leagues or nature or society have made pass into spiritual and like Stars in the presence of the Sun appear not when the heights of the Spirit are in place Where duty hath prepared special instances there we must for Religion's sake promote them but even to our Parents or our Children the charities
of Religion ought to be greater than the affections of Society And though we are bound in all offices exteriour to prefer our Relatives before others because that is made a Duty yet to purposes spiritual all persons eminently holy put on the efficacy of the same relations and pass a duty upon us of religious affections 10. At the command of Jesus the Water-pots were filled with water and the water was by his Divine power turned into wine where the different oeconomy of God and the world is highly observable Every man sets forth good wine at first and then the worse But God not only turns the water into wine but into such wine that the last draught is most pleasant The world presents us with fair language promising 〈◊〉 convenient fortunes pompous honours and these are the outsides of the bole but when it is swallowed these dissolve in the instant and there remains 〈◊〉 and the malignity of Coloquintida Every sin 〈◊〉 in the first address and carries light in the face and hony in the lip but when we have well drunk then comes that which is worse a whip with six strings fears and terrors of Conscience and shame and displeasure and a caitive disposition and diffidence in the day of death But when after the manner of the purifying of the Christians we fill our Water-pots with water watering our couch with our tears and moistening our cheeks with the perpetual distillations of Repentance then Christ turns our water into wine first Penitents and then Communicants first waters of sorrow and then the wine of the Chalice first the justifications of Correction and then the sanctifications of the Sacrament and the effects of the Divine power joy and peace and serenity hopes full of confidence and confidence without shame and boldness without presumption for Jesus keeps the best wine till the last not only because of the direct reservations of the highest joys till the nearer approaches of glory but also because our relishes are higher after a long 〈◊〉 than at the first Essays such being the nature of Grace that it increases in relish as it does in fruition every part of Grace being new Duty and new Reward The PRAYER O Eternal and ever-Blessed Jesu who didst chuse Disciples to be witnesses of thy Life and Miracles so adopting man into a participation of thy great imployment of bringing us to Heaven by the means of a holy Doctrine be pleased to give me thy grace that I may 〈◊〉 and revere their Persons whom thou hast set over me and follow their Faith and imitate their Lives while they imitate thee and that I also in my capacity and proportion may do some of the meaner offices of spiritual building by Prayers and by holy Discourses and 〈◊〉 Correption and friendly Exhortations doing advantages to such Souls with whom I shall converse And since thou wert pleased to enter upon the stage of the World with the commencement of Mercy and a Miracle be pleased to visit my Soul with thy miraculous grace turn my water into wine my natural desires into supernatural perfections and let my sorrows be turned into joys my sins into vertuous habits the weaknesses of humanity into communications of the 〈◊〉 nature that since thou keepest the best unto the last I may by thy assistance grow from Grace to Grace till thy Gifts be turned to Reward and thy Graces to participation of thy Glory O Eternal and ever-Blessed Jesu Amen DISCOURSE VII Of Faith 1. NAthanael's Faith was produced by an argument not demonstrative not certainly concluding Christ knew him when he saw him first and he believed him to be the Messias His Faith was excellent what-ever the argument was And I believe a GOD because the Sun is a glorious body or because of the variety of Plants or the fabrick and rare contexture of a man's Eye I may as fully assent to the Conclusion as if my belief dwelt upon the Demonstrations made by the Prince of Philosophers in the 8. of his Physicks and 12. of his Metaphysicks This I premise as an inlet into the consideration concerning the Faith of ignorant persons For if we consider upon what 〈◊〉 terms most of us now are Christians we may possibly suspect that either Faith hath but little excellence in it or we but little Faith or that we are mistaken generally in its definition For we are born of Christian parents made Christians at ten days old interrogated concerning the Articles of our Faith by way of anticipation even then when we understand not the difference between the Sun and a Tallow-candle from thence we are taught to say our Catechism as we are taught to speak when we have no reason to judge no discourse to dilcern no arguments to contest against a Proposition in case we be catechised into False doctrine and all that is put to us we believe infinitely and without choice as children use not to chuse their language And as our children are made Christians just so are thousand others made Mahumetans with the same necessity the same facility So that thus sar there is little thanks due to us for believing the Christian Creed it was indifferent to us at first and at last our Education had so possest us and our interest and our no temptation to the contrary that as we were disposed into this condition by Providence so we remain in it without praise or excellency For as our beginnings are inevitable so our progress is imperfect and insufficient and what we begun by Education we retain only by Custom and if we be instructed in some slighter Arguments to maintain the Sect or Faction of our Country Religion as it disturbs the unity of Christendom yet if we examine and consider the account upon what slight arguments we have taken up Christianity it self as that it is the Religion of our Country or that our Fathers before us were of the same Faith or because the Priest bids us and he is a good man or for something else but we know not what we must needs conclude it the good providence of God not our choice that made us Christians 2. But if the question be Whether such a Faith be in it self good and acceptable that relies upon insufficient and unconvincing grounds I suppose this case of Nathanael will determine us and when we consider that Faith is an 〈◊〉 Grace if God pleases to behold his own glory in our weakness of understanding it is but the same thing he does in the instances of his other Graces For as God enkindles Charity upon variety of means and instruments by a thought by a chance by a text of Scripture by a natural tenderness by the sight of a dying or a tormented beast so also he may produce Faith by arguments of a differing quality and by issues of his Providence he may engage us in such conditions in which as our Understanding is not great enough to chuse the best so neither is it furnished with
them not to retain them or invite them but as objects of displeasure to avert them from us 2. To resist all lustful desires and extinguish them by their proper correctories and remedies 3. To resuse all occasions opportunities and temptations to Impurity denying to please a wanton 〈◊〉 or to use a 〈◊〉 gesture or to go into a danger or to converse with an improper unsafe object hating the garment spotted with the flesh so S. Jude calls it and not to look upon a maid so Job not to sit with a woman that is a singer so the son of Sirach 4. To be of a liberal soul not mingling with affections of mony and inclinations of covetousness not doing any act of violence rapine or injustice 5. To be ingenuous in our thoughts purposes and professions speaking nothing contrary to our intentions but being really what we 〈◊〉 6. To give all our faculties and affections to God without dividing interests between God and his enemies without entertaining of any one crime in society with our pretences for God 7. Not to lie in sin but instantly to repent of it and return purifying our Conscience from dead works 8. Not to dissemble our faith or belief when we are required to its confession pretending a perswasion complying with those from whom 〈◊〉 we differ Lust Covetousness and Hypocrisie are the three great enemies of this Grace they are the motes of our eyes and the spots of our Souls The reward of Purity is the vision beatifical If we are pure as God is pure we shall also see him as he is When we awake up after his likeness we shall 〈◊〉 hold his presence To which in this world we are consigned by freedom from the cares of Covetousness the shame of Lust the fear of discovery and the stings of an evil Conscience which are the portion of the several Impurities here forbidden 17. Seventhly Blessed are the Peace-makers for they shall be called the children of God The wisdome of God is first pure and then peaceable that 's the order of the Beatitudes As soon as Jesus was born the Angels sang a Hymn Glory be to God on high and on earth peace good will towards men signifying the two great 〈◊〉 upon which Christ was dispatched in his Legation from Heaven to earth He is the Prince of Peace Follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man ever shall see God The acts of this Grace are 1. To mortisie our Anger 〈◊〉 and fiery dispositions apt to enkindle upon every slight accident inadvertency or misfortune of a friend or servant 2. Not to be hasty rash provocative or upbraiding in our language 3. To live quietly and serenely in our families and neighbourhoods 4. Not to backbite slander misreport or undervalue any man carrying tales or sowing dissention between brethren 5. Not to interest our selves in the quarrels of others by abetting either part except where Charity calls us to rescue the oppressed and then also to do a work of charity without mixtures of uncharitableness 6. To avoid all suits of Law as much as is possible without intrenching upon any other collateral obligation towards a third interest or a necessary support for our selves or great conveniency for our families or if we be engaged in Law to pursue our just interests with just means and charitable maintenance 7. To endeavour by all means to reconcile disagreeing persons 8. To endeavour by affability and fair deportment to win the love of our neighbours 9. To offer satisfaction to all whom we have wronged or slandered and to remit the offences of others and in trials of right to find out the most charitable expedient to determine it as by indifferent arbitration or something like it 10. To be open free and ingenuous in reprehensions and fair expostulations with persons whom we conceive to have wronged us that no seed of malice or rancor may be latent in us and upon the breath of a new displeasure break out into a flame 11. To be modest in our arguings disputings and demands not laying great interest upon trifles 12. To moderate balance and temper our zeal by the rules of Prudence and the allay of Charity that we quarrel not for opinions nor intitle God in our impotent and mistaken fancies nor lose Charity for a pretence of an article of Faith 13. To pray heartily for our enemies real or imaginary always loving and being apt to benefit their persons and to cure their faults by charitable remedies 14. To abstain from doing all affronts disgraces slightings and 〈◊〉 jearings and mockings of our neighbour not giving him appellatives of scorn or irrision 15. To submit to all our Superiours in all things either doing what they command or suffering what they impose at no hand lifting our 〈◊〉 against those upon whom the characters of God and the marks of Jesus are imprinted in signal and eminent authority such as are principally the King and then the Bishops whom God hath set to watch over our Souls 16. Not to invade the possessions of our Neighbours or commence War but when we are bound by justice and legal trust to defend the rights of others or our own in order to our duty 17. Not to speak evil of dignities or undervalue their persons or publish their faults or upbraid the levities of our Governours knowing that they also are designed by God to be converted to us for castigation and amendment of us 18. Not to be busie in other mens affairs And then the peace of God will rest upon us The reward is no less than the adoption and inheritance of sons for he hath given unto us power to be called the sons of God for he is the Father of Peace and the Sons of Peace are the Sons of God and theresore have a title to the inheritance of Sons to be heirs with God and coheirs with Christ in the kingdom of Peace and essential and never-failing charity 18. Eightly Blessed are they which are Persecuted sor righteousness sake for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven This being the hardest command in the whole Discipline of Jesus is fortified with a double Blessedness for it follows immediately Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you meaning that all Persecution for a cause of Righteousness though the affliction be instanced only in reproachful language shall be a title to the Blessedness Any suffering for any good or harmless action is a degree of Martyrdom It being the greatest testimony in the world of the greatest love to quit that for God which hath possessed our most natural regular and orderly affections It is a preferring God's cause before our own interest it is a loving of Vertue without secular ends it is the noblest the most resigned ingenuous valiant act in the world to die for 〈◊〉 whom we never have seen it is the crown of Faith the confidence of Hope and our greatest Charity The Primitive
was necessary for Religion therefore to abstain from Suits of Law and servile works but such works as are of necessity and charity which to observe are of themselves a very good Religion is a necessary duty of the day and to do acts of publick Religion is the other part of it So much is made matter of duty by the intervention of Authority and though the Church hath made no more prescriptions in this God hath made none at all yet he who keeps the Day most strictly most religiously he keeps it best and most consonant to the design of the Church and the ends of Religion and the opportunity of the present leisure and the interests of his Soul The acts of Religion proper for the Day are Prayers and publick Liturgies Preaching Catechizing acts of Charity Visiting sick persons acts of Eucharist to God of Hospitality to our poor neighbours of friendliness and civility to all reconciling differences and after the publick Assemblies are dissolved any act of direct Religion to God or of ease and remission to Servants or whatsoever else is good in Manners or in Piety or in Mercy What is said of this great Feast of the Christians is to be understood to have a greater 〈◊〉 and obligation in the Anniversary of the Resurrection of the Ascension of the Nativity of our Blessed Saviour and of the descent of the Holy Spirit in Pentecost And all days festival to the honour of God in remembrance of the holy Apostles and Martyrs and departed Saints as they are with prudence to be chosen and retained by the Church so as not to be unnecessary or burthensome or useless so they are to be observed by us as instances of our love of the communion of Saints and our thankfulness for the blessing and the example 26. Honour thy Father and thy Mother This Commandment Christ made also to be Christian by his frequent repetition and mention of it in his Sermons and Laws and so ordered it that it should be the band of civil Government and Society In the Decalogue God sets this Precept immediately after the duties that concern himself our duty to Parents being in the consines with our duty to God the Parents being in order of nature next to God the cause of our being and production and the great Almoners of Eternity conveying to us the essences of reasonable Creatures and the charities of Heaven And when our Blessed Saviour in a Sermon to the 〈◊〉 spake of duty to Parents he rescued it from the impediments of a vain tradition and secured this Duty though against a pretence of Religion towards God telling us that God would not himself accept a gift which we took from our Parents needs This duty to Parents is the very 〈◊〉 and band of Commonwealths He that honours his Parents will also love his Brethren derived from the same loins he will dearly account of all his relatives and persons of the same cognation and so Families are united and 〈◊〉 them Cities and Societies are framed And because Parents and Patriarchs of 〈◊〉 and of Nations had regal power they who by any change 〈◊〉 in the care and government of Cities and Kingdomes succeeded in the power and authority of Fathers and became so in estimate of Law and true Divinity to all their people So that the Duty here commanded is due to all our Fathers in the sense of Scripture and Laws not onely to our natural but to our civil Fathers that is to Kings and Governours And the Scripture adds Mothers for they also being instruments of the blessing are the objects of the Duty The duty is Honour that is Reverence and Support if they shall need it And that which our Blessed Saviour calls not 〈◊〉 our Parents in S. Matthew is called in S. Mark doing nothing for them and Honour is expounded by S. Paul to be maintenance as well as reverence Then we honour our Parents if with great readiness we minister to their necessities and communicate our estate and attend them in sicknesses and supply their wants and as much as lies in us give them support who gave us being 27. Thou shalt do no Murther so it was said to them of old time He that kills shall be guilty of Judgment that is he is to die by the sentence of the Judge To this Christ makes an appendix But I say unto you he that is angry with his Brother without a cause shall be in danger of the Judgment This addition of our Blessed Saviour as all the other which are severer explications of the Law than the Jews admitted was directed against the vain and imperfect opinion of the Lawyers who thought to be justified by their external works supposing if they were innocent in matter of fact God would require no more of them than Man did and what by custome or silence of the Laws was not punishable by the Judge was harmless before God and this made them to trust in the letter to neglect the duties of Repentance to omit asking pardon for their secret irregularities and the obliquities and aversations of their spirits and this S. Paul also complains of that neglecting the righteousness of God they sought to establish their own that is according to Man's judgment But our Blessed Saviour tells them that such an innocence is not enough God requires more than conformity and observation of the fact and exteriour 〈◊〉 placing Justice not in legal innocency or not being condemned in judgment of the Law and humane judicature but in the righteousness of the spirit also for the first acquits us before man but by this we shall be held upright in judgment before the Judge of all the world And therefore besides abstinence from murther or actual wounds Christ forbids all anger without cause against our Brother that is against any man 28. By which not the first motions are forbidden the twinklings of the eye as the Philosophers call them the pro-passions and sudden and irresistible alterations for it is impossible to prevent them unless we could give our selves a new nature any more than we can refuse to wink with our eye when a sudden blow is offered at it or refuse to yawn when we see a yawning sleepy person but by frequent and habitual mortification and by continual watchfulness and standing in readiness against all inadvertencies we shall lessen the inclination and account fewer sudden irreptions A wise and meek person should not kindle at all but after violent and great collision and then if like a flint he sends a spark out it must as soon be extinguished as it shews and cool as soon as sparkle But however the sin is not in the natural disposition But when we entertain it though it be as 〈◊〉 expresses it cum voluntate non 〈◊〉 without a determination of revenge then it begins to be a sin Every indignation
Holy Jesus condemned in the Gentiles who in their Hymns would say a name over a hundred times But in this we have no rule to determine us in numbers and proportion but right Reason God loves not any words the more for being said often and those repetitions which are unreasonable in prudent estimation cannot in any account be esteemed pious But where a reasonable cause allows the repetition the same cause that makes it reasonable makes it also proper for Devotion He that speaks his needs and expresses nothing but his fervour and greatness of desire cannot be vain or long in his Prayers he that speaks impertinently that is unreasonably and without desires is long though he speak but two syllables he that thinks for speaking much to be heard the sooner thinks God is delighted in the labour of the lips but when Reason is the guide and Piety is the rule and Necessity is the measure and Desire gives the proportion let the Prayer be very long he that shall blame it for its length must proclaim his disrelish both of Reason and Religion his despite of Necessity and contempt of Zeal 20. As a part and instance of our importunity in Prayer it is usually reckoned and advised that in cases of great sudden and violent need we corroborate our Prayers with a Vow of doing something holy and religious in an uncommanded instance something to which God had not formerly bound our duty though fairly invited our will or else if we chuse a Duty in which we were obliged then to vow the doing of it in a more excellent manner with a greater inclination of the Will with a more fervent repetition of the act with some more noble circumstance with a fuller assent of the Understanding or else adding a new Promise to our old Duty to make it become more necessary to us and to secure our duty In this case as it requires great prudence and caution in the susception lest what we piously intend obtain a present blessing and lay a lasting snare so if it be prudent in the manner holy in the matter useful in the consequence and safe in all the circumstances of the person it is an endearing us and our Prayer to God by the increase of duty and charity and therefore a more probable way of making our Prayers gracious and acceptable And the religion of Vows was not only hallowed by the example of Jacob at Bethel of Hannah praying for a child and God hearing her of David vowing a Temple to God and made regular and safe by the rules and cautions in Moses's Law but left by our Blessed Saviour in the same constitution he found it he having innovated nothing in the matter of Vows and it was practised accordingly in the instance of S. Paul at Cenchrea of Ananias and Sapphira who vowed their possessions to the use of the Church and of the Widows in the Apostolical age who therefore vowed to remain in the state of widowhood because concerning them who married after the entry into Religion S. Paul says they have broken their first faith and such were they of whom our Blessed Saviour affirms that some make themselves 〈◊〉 for the kingdom of Heaven that is such who promise to God a life of Chastity And concerning the success of Prayer so seconded with a prudent and religious Vow besides the instances of Scripture we have the perpetual experience and witness of all Christendom and in particular our Saxon Kings have been remarked for this part of importunity in their own Chronicles Oswy got a great victory with unlikely forces against Penda the 〈◊〉 after his earnest Prayer and an appendent Vow and Ceadwalla obtained of God power to recover the Isle of Wight from the hands of Infidels after he had prayed and promised to return the fourth part of it to be imployed in the proper services of God and of Religion This can have no objection or suspicion in it among wise and disabused persons for it can be nothing but an encreasing and a renewed act of Duty or Devotion or Zeal or Charity and the importunity of Prayer acted in a more vital and real expression 21. First All else that is to be considered concerning Prayer is extrinsecal and accidental to it Prayer is publick or private in the communion or society of Saints or in our Closets these Prayers have less temptation to vanity the other have more advantages of Charity example fervour and energy In publick offices we avoid singularity in the private we avoid hypocrisie those are of more 〈◊〉 these of greater retiredness and silence of spirit those serve the needs of all the world in the first intention and our own by consequence these serve our own needs first and the publick only by a secondary intention these have more pleasure they more duty these are the best instruments of Repentance where our Confessions may be more particular and our shame less scandalous the other are better for Eucharist and instruction for edification of the Church and glorification of God 22. Secondly The posture of our bodies in Prayer had as great variety as the Ceremonies and civilities of several Nations came to The Jews most commonly prayed standing so did the Pharisee and the Publican in the Temple So did the Primitive Christians in all their greater Festivals and intervals of Jubilee in their Penances they kneeled The Monks in 〈◊〉 sate when they sang the Psalter And in every Country whatsoever by the custom of the Nation was a symbol of reverence and humility of silence and attention of gravity and modesty that posture they translated to their Prayers But in all Nations bowing the head that is a laying down our glory at the feet of God was the manner of Worshippers and this was always the more humble and the lower as their Devotion was higher and was very often expressed by prostration or lying flat upon the ground and this all Nations did and all Religions Our deportment ought to be grave decent humble apt for adoration apt to edisie and when we address our selves to Prayer not instantly to leap into the office as the Judges of the Areopage into their sentence without preface or preparatory affections but considering in what presence we speak and to what purposes let us balance our servour with reverential fear and when we have done not rise from the ground as if we vaulted or were glad we had done but as we begin with desires of assistance so end with desires of pardon and acceptance concluding our longer offices with a shorter mental Prayer of more private reflexion and reverence designing to mend what we have done amiss or to give thanks and proceed if we did well and according to our powers 23. Thirdly In private Prayers it is permitted to every man to speak his Prayers or only to think them which is a speaking to God Vocal
freely and delight himself and to the banquets of a full table serve up the chalice of tears and sorrow and no bread of affliction Certainly he that makes much of himself hath no great indignation against the sinner when himself is the man And it is but a gentle revenge and an easie judgment when the sad sinner shall do penance in good meals and expiate his sin with sensual satisfaction So that Fasting relates to Religion in all variety and difference of time it is an antidote against the poison of sensual temptations an advantage to Prayer and an instrument of extinguishing the guilt and the affections of sin by judging our selves and representing in a Judicatory of our own even our selves being Judges that sin deserves condemnation and the sinner merits a high calamity Which excellencies I repeat in the words of Baruch the Scribe he that was Amanuensis to the Prophet Jeremy The soul that is greatly vexed which goeth stooping and feeble and the eyes that fail and the hungry soul will give thee praise and righteousness O Lord. 5. But now as Fasting hath divers ends so also it hath divers Laws If Fasting be intended as an instrument of Prayer it is sufficient that it be of that quality and degree that the spirit be clear and the head undisturbed an ordinary act of Fast an abstinence from a meal or a deferring it or a lessening it when it comes and the same abstinence repeated according to the solemnity and intendment of the offices And this is evident in reason and the former instances and the practice of the Church dissolving some of her Fasts which were in order only to Prayer by noon and as soon as the great and first solemnity of the day is over But if Fasting be intended as a punitive act and an instrument of Repentance it must be greater S. Paul at his Conversion continued three days without eating or drinking It must have in it so much affliction as to express the indignation and to condemn the sin and to judge the person And although the measure of this cannot be exactly determined yet the general proportion is certain for a greater sin there must be a greater sorrow and a greater sorrow must be attested with a greater penalty And Ezra declares his purpose thus I proclaimed a Fast that we might afflict our selves besore God Now this is no farther required nor is it in this sense 〈◊〉 useful but that it be a trouble to the body an act of judging and severity and this is to be judged by proportion to the sorrow and indignation as the sorrow is to the crime But this affliction needs not to leave any remanent effect upon the body but such transient sorrow which is consequent to the abstinence of certain times designed for the solemnity is sufficient as to this purpose Only it is to be renewed often as our Repentance must be habitual and lasting but it may be commuted with other actions of severity and discipline according to the Customs of a Church or the capacity of the persons or the opportunity of circumstances But if the Fasting be intended for Mortification then it is fit to be more severe and medicinal by continuance and quantity and quality To Repentance total abstinences without interruption that is during the solemnity short and sharp are most apt but towards the mortifying a Lust those sharp and short Fasts are not reasonable but a diet of Fasting an habitual subtraction of nutriment from the body a long and lasting austerity increasing in degrees but not violent in any And in this sort of Fasting we must be highly careful we do not violate a duty by sondness of an instrument and because we intend Fasting as a help to mortifie the Lust let it not destroy the body or retard the spirit or violate our health or impede us in any part of our necessary duty As we must be careful that our Fast be reasonable serious and apt to the end of our designs so we must be curious that by helping one duty uncertainly it do not certainly destroy another Let us do it like honest persons and just without artifices and hypocrisie but let us also do it like wise persons that it be neither in it self unreasonable nor by accident become criminal 6. In the pursuance of this Discipline of Fasting the Doctors of the Church and Guides of Souls have not unusefully prescribed other annexes and circumstances as that all the other acts of deportment be symbolical to our Fasting If we fast for Mortification let us entertain nothing of temptation or semblance to invite a Lust no sensual delight no freer entertainments of our body to countenance or corroborate a passion If we fast that we may pray the better let us remove all secular thoughts for that time for it is vain to alleviate our spirits of the burthen of meat and drink and to depress them with the loads of care If for Repentance we fast let us be most curious that we do nothing contrary to the design of Repentance knowing that a sin is more contrary to Repentance than Fasting is to sin and it is the greatest stupidity in the world to do that thing which I am now mourning for and for which I do judgment upon my self And let all our actions also pursue the same design helping one instrument with another and being so zealous for the Grace that we take in all the aids we can to secure the Duty For to fast from flesh and to eat delicate fish not to eat meat but to drink rich wines freely to be sensual in the objects of our other appetites and restrained only in one to have no dinner and that day to run on hunting or to play at cards are not handsome instances of sorrow or devotion or self-denial It is best to accompany our Fasting with the retirements of Religion and the enlargements of Charity giving to others what we deny to our selves These are proper actions and although not in every instance necessary to be done at the same time for a man may give his Alms in other circumstances and not amiss yet as they are very convenient and proper to be joyned in that society so to do any thing contrary to Religion or to Charity to Justice or to Piety to the design of the person or the design of the solemnity is to make that become a sin which of it self was no vertue but was capable of being hallowed by the end and the manner of its execution 7. This Discourse hath hitherto related to private Fasts or else to Fasts indefinitely For what rules soever every man is bound to observe in private for Fasting piously the same rules the Governours of a Church are to intend in their publick prescription And when once Authority hath intervened and proclaimed a Fast there is no new duty incumbent upon the private but that we obey the circumstances letting them
you learn of me For my yoke is easie my burthen is light Revel 2 10. Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life 1 Cor. 9. 24 25. So run that ye may obtain Every man that striueth for y e mastery is temperate in all things now they do it to obtain a corrupible crown but we an incorruptible THE Holy Jesus came to break from off our necks two great yokes the one of Sin by which we were fettered and imprisoned in the condition of slaves and miserable persons the other of Moses's Law by which we were kept in pupillage and minority and a state of Imperfection and asserted us into the glorious liberty of the sons of God The first was a Despotick Empire and the Government of a Tyrant the second was of a School-master severe absolute and imperious but it was in order to a farther good yet nothing pleasant in the sufferance and load And now Christ having taken off these two hath put on a third He quits us of our Burthen but not of our Duty and hath changed the former Tyranny and the less-perfect Discipline into the sweetness of paternal regiment and the excellency of such an Institution whose every Precept carries part of its reward in hand and assurances of after-glories Moses's Law was like sharp and unpleasant Physick certainly painful but uncertainly healthful For it was not then communicated to them by promise and universal revelations that the end of their Obedience should be Life eternal but they were full of hopes it might be so as we are of health when we have a learned and wise Physician But as yet the Reward was in a cloud and the hopes in fetters and confinement But the Law of Christ is like Christ's healing of diseases he does it easily and he does it infallibly The event is certainly consequent and the manner of cure is by a touch of his hand or a word of his mouth or an approximation to the hem of his garment without pain and vexatious instruments My meaning is that Christianity is by the assistance of Christ's spirit which he promised us and gave us in the Gospel made very easie to us And yet a reward so great is promised as were enough to make a lame man to walk and a broken arm endure the burthen a reward great enough to make us willing to do violence to all our inclinations passions and desires A hundred weight to a giant is a light burthen because his strength is disproportionably great and makes it as easie to him as an ounce is to a child And yet if we had not the strength of giants if the hundred weight were of Gold or Jewels a weaker person would think it no trouble to bear that burthen if it were the reward of his portage and the hire of his labours The Spirit is given to us to enable us and Heaven is promised to encourage us the first makes us able and the second makes us willing and when we have power and affections we cannot complain of pressure And this is the meaning of our Blessed Saviour's invitation Come to me for my burthen is light my 〈◊〉 is easie which S. John also observed For this is the love of God that we keep his Commandments and his Commandments are not grievous For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world and this is the victory that overcometh even our Faith that is our belief of God's promises the promise of the Spirit for present aid and of Heaven for the future reward is strength enough to overcome all the world 2. But besides that God hath made his yoke easie by exteriour supports more than ever was in any other Religion Christianity is of it self according to humane estimate a Religion more easie and desirable by our natural and reasonable appetites than Sin in the midst of all its pleasures and imaginary felicities Vertue hath more pleasure in it than Sin and hath all satisfactions to every desire of man in order to humane and prudent ends which I shall represent in the consideration of these particulars 〈◊〉 To live according to the Laws of Jesus is in some things most natural and proportionable to the desires and first intentions of Nature 2. There is in it less trouble than in Sin 3. It conduces infinitely to the content of our lives and natural and political satisfactions 4. It is a means to preserve our temporal lives long and healthy 5. It is most reasonable and he only is prudent that does so and he a fool that does not And all this besides the considerations of a glorious and happy Eternity 3. Concerning the First I consider that we do very ill when in stead of making our Natural infirmity an instrument of Humility and of recourse to the grace of God we pretend the sin of Adam to countenance our actual sins natural infirmity to excuse our malice either laying Adam in fault for deriving the disability upon us or God for putting us into the necessity But the 〈◊〉 that we feel in this are from the rebellion of the inferiour Appetite against Reason or against any Religion that puts restraint upon our first desires And therefore in carnal and sensual instances accidentally we 〈◊〉 the more natural averseness because God's Laws have put our irascible and concupiscible faculties in fetters and restraints yet in matters of duty which are of immaterial and spiritual concernment all our natural reason is a perfect enemy and contradiction to and a Law against Vice It is natural for us to love our Parents and they who do not are unnatural they do violence to those dispositions which God gave us to the constitution of our Nature and for the designs of Vertue and all those tendernesses of affection those bowels and relenting dispositions which are the endearments of Parents and Children are also the bands of duty Every degree of love makes duty delectable and therefore either by nature we are inclined to hate our Parents which is against all reason and experience or else we are by nature enclined to do to them all that which is the effect of love to such Superiours and principles of being and dependency and every prevarication from the rule effects and expresses of love is a contradiction to Nature and a mortification to which we cannot be invited by any thing from within but by something from without that is violent and preternatural There are also many other vertues even in the matter of sensual appetite which none can lose but by altering in some degree the natural disposition And I instance in the matter of Carnality and Uncleanness to which possibly some natures may think themselves apt and disposed but yet God hath put into our mouths a bridle to curb the licentiousness of our speedy appetite putting into our very natures a principle as strong to restrain it as there is in us a disposition apt to invite us and this is
men do very indiscreetly and may occasion the alienation of some mens minds from the entertainments of Religion but this being accidental to the thing it self and to the purpose of the man is not the Sin of Scandal but it is the Indiscretion of Scandal if by such means he divorces any man's mind from the cohabitation and unions of Religion and yet if the purpose of the man be to affright weaker and unwise persons it is a direct Scandal and one of those ways which the Devil uses toward the peopling of his kingdom it is a plain laying of a snare to entrap feeble and uninstructed souls 5. But if the pious action have been formerly joyned with any thing that is truly criminal with Idolatry with Superstition with impious Customs or impure Rites and by retaining the Piety I give cause to my weak brother to think I approve of the old appendage and by my reputation invite him to swallow the whole action without discerning the case is altered I am to omit that pious action if it be not under command until I have acquitted it from the suspicion of evil company But when I have done what in prudence I guess sufficient to thaw the frost of jealousie to separate those dissonancies which formerly seemed united I have done my duty of Charity by endeavouring to free my brother from the snare and I have done what in Christian prudence I was obliged when I have protested against the appendent crime If afterwards the same person shall entertain the crime upon pretence of my example who have plainly 〈◊〉 it he lays the snare for himself and is glad of the pretence or will in spite enter into the net that he might think it reasonable to rail at me I may not with Christian charity or prudence wear the picture of our Blessed Lord in rings or medals though with great affection and designs of doing him all the honour that I can if by such Pictures I invite persons apt more to follow me than to understand me to give Divine honour to a Picture but when I have declared my hatred of Superstitious worshippings and given my brother warning of the snare which his own mistake or the Devil's malice was preparing for him I may then without danger signifie my Piety and affections in any civil representments which are not against God's Law or the Customs of the Church or the analogy of Faith And there needs no other reason to be given for this Rule than that there is no reason to be given against it if the nature of the thing be innocent and the purpose of the man be pious and he hath used his moral industry to secure his brother against accidental mischances and abuses his duty in this particular can have no more parts and instances 6. But it is too crude an assertion to affirm indefinitely that whatsoever hath been abused to evil or superstitious purposes must presently be abjured and never entertained for fear of Scandal for it is certain that the best things have been most abused Have not some persons used certain verses of the Psalter as an antidote against the Tooth-ach and carried the blessed Sacrament in pendants about their necks as a charm to countermand Witches and S. John's Gospel as a spell against wild beasts and wilder untamed spirits Confession of sins to the Ministers of Religion hath been made an instrument to serve base ends and so indeed hath all Religion been abused and some persons have been so receptive of Scandal that they suspected all Religion to be a mere stratagem because they have observed very many men have used it so For some natures are like Spunges or Sugar whose utmost verge if you dip in Wine it drowns it self by the moisture it sucks up and is drenched all over receiving its alteration from within it s own nature did the mischief and plucks on its own dissolution And these men are greedy to receive a Scandal and when it is presented but in small instances they suck it up to the dissolution of their whole Religion being glad of a quarrel that their impieties may not want all excuse But yet it is certainly very unreasonable to reject excellent things because they have been abused as if separable accidents had altered natures and essences or that they resolve never to forgive the duties for having once fallen into the hands of unskilful or malicious persons Hezekiah took away the brazen Serpent because the people abused it to Idolatry but the Serpent had long before lost its use and yet if the people had not been a peevish and refractory and superstitious people in whose nature it was to take all occasions of Superstition and farther yet if the taking away such occasions and opportunities of that Sin in special had not been most agreeable with the designs of God in forbidding to the people the common use of all Images in the second Commandment which was given them after the erection of that brazen Statue Hezekiah possibly would not or at least had not been bound to have destroyed that monument of an old story and a great blessing but have sought to separate the abuse from the minds of men and retained the Image But in Christianity when none of these circumstances occur where by the greatness and plenty of revelations we are more fully instructed in the ways of Duty and when the thing it self is pious and the abuse very separable it is infinite disparagement to us or to our Religion either that our Religion is not sufficient to cure an abuse or that we will never part with it but we must unpardonably reject a good because it had once upon it a crust or spot of leprosie though since it hath been washed in the waters of Reformation The Primitive Christians abstained from actions of themselves indifferent which the unconverted people used if those actions were symbolical or adopted into false Religions or not well understood by those they were bound to satisfie But when they had washed off the accrescences of Gentile Superstition they chose such Rites which their neighbours used and had designs not imprudent or unhandsome and they were glad of a Heathen Temple to celebrate the Christian Rites in them and they made no other change but that they ejected the Devil and invited their Lord into the possession 7. Thirdly In things merely indifferent whose practice is not limited by command nor their nature heightned by an appendent Piety we must use our liberty so as may not offend our Brother or lead him into a sin directly or indirectly For Scandal being directly against Charity it is to be avoided in the same measure and by the same proportions in which Charity is to be pursued Now we must so use our selves that we must cut off a foot or pluck out an eye rather than the one should bear us and the other lead us to sin and death we must rather rescind all the natural and sensual
are God's tokens marks upon the body of insected persons and declare the malignity of the disease and bid us all beware of those determined crimes 6. Thirdly But then in these and all other accidents we must first observe from the cause to the effect and then judge from the effect concerning the nature and the degree of the cause We cannot conclude This family is lessened beggered or extinct therefore they are guilty of Sacrilege but thus They are Sacrilegious and God hath blotted out their name from among the posterities therefore this Judgment was an express of God's anger against Sacrilege the Judgment will not conclude a Sin but when a Sin infers the Judgment with a legible character and a prompt signification not to understand God's choice is next to stupidity or carelesness Arius was known to be a seditious heretical and dissembling person and his entrails descended on the earth when he went to cover his feet it was very suspicious that this was the punishment of those sins which were the worst in him But he that shall conclude Arius was an Heretick or Seditious upon no other ground but because his bowels gushed out begins imprudently and proceeds uncharitably But it is considerable that men do not arise to great crimes on the sudden but by degrees of carelesness to lesser impieties and then to clamorous sins And God is therefore said to punish great crimes or actions of highest malignity because they are commonly productions from the spirit of Reprobation they are the highest ascents and suppose a Body of sin And therefore although the Judgment may be intended to punish all our sins yet it is like the Syrian Army it kills all that are its enemies but it hath a special commission to fight against none but the King of Israel because his death would be the dissolution of the Body And if God humbles a man for his great sin that is for those acts which combine and consummate all the rest possibly the Body of sin may separate and be apt to be scattered and subdued by single acts and instruments of mortification and therefore it is but reasonable in our making use of God's Judgments upon others to think that God will rather strike at the greatest crimes not only because they are in themselves of greatest malice and iniquity but because they are the summe total of the rest and by being great progressions in the state of sin suppose all the rest included and we by proportioning and observing the Judgment to the highest acknowledge the whole body of sin to lie under the curse though the greatest only was named and called upon with the voice of thunder And yet because it sometimes happens that upon the violence of a great and new occasion some persons leap into such a sin which in the ordinary course of sinners uses to be the effect of an habitual and growing state then if a Judgment happens it is clearly appropriate to that one great crime which as of it self it is equivalent to a vicious habit and interrupts the acceptation of all its former contraries so it meets with a curse such as usually God chuses for the punishment of a whole body and state of sin However in making observation upon the expresses of God's anger we must be careful that we reflect not with any bitterness or scorn upon the person of our calamitous Brother left we make that to be an evil to him which God intends for his benefit if the Judgment was medicinal or that we increase the load already great enough to sink him beneath his grave if the Judgment was intended for a final abscission 7. Fourthly But if the Judgments descend upon our selves we are to take another course not to enquire into particulars to find out the proportions for that can only be a design to part with just so much as we must needs but to mend all that is amiss for then only we can be secure to remove the Achan when we keep nothing within us or about us that may provoke God to jealousie or wrath And that is the proper product of holy fear which God intended should be the first effect of all his Judgments and of this God is so careful and yet so kind and provident that fear might not be produced always at the expence of a great suffering that God hath provided for us certain prologues of Judgment and keeps us waking with alarms that so he might reconcile his mercies with our duties Of this nature are Epidemical diseases not yet arrived at us prodigious Tempests Thunder and loud noises from Heaven and he that will not fear when God speaks so loud is not yet made soft with the impresses and perpetual droppings of Religion Venerable Bede reports of S. Chad that if a great gust of Wind suddenly arose he presently made some holy ejaculation to beg favour of God for all mankind who might possibly be concerned in the effects of that Wind but if a Storm succeeded he fell prostrate to the earth and grew as violent in Prayer as the Storm was 〈◊〉 at Land or Sea But if God added Thunder and Lightning he went to the Church and there spent all his time during the Tempest in reciting Litanies Psalms and other holy Prayers till it pleased God to restore his favour and to seem to forget his anger And the good Bishop added this reason Because these are the extensions and stretchings forth of God's hand and yet he did not strike but he that trembles not when he sees God's arm held forth to strike us understands neither God's mercies nor his own danger he neither knows what those horrours were which the People saw from mount Sinai nor what the glories and amazements shall be at the great day of Judgment And if this Religious man had seen Tullus Hostilius the Roman King and Anastasius a Christian Emperor but a reputed Heretick struck dead with Thunderbolts and their own houses made their urns to keep their ashes in there could have been no posture humble enough no Prayers devout enough no place holy enough nothing sufficiently expressive of his fear and his humility and his adoration and Religion to the almighty and infinite power and glorious mercy of God sending out his Emissaries to denounce war with designs of peace A great Italian General seeing the sudden death of Alfonsus Duke of Ferrara kneeled down instantly saying And shall not this sight make me religious Three and twenty thousand fell in one night in the Assyrian Camp who were all slain for Fornication And this so prodigious a Judgement was recorded in Scripture for our example and affrightment that we should not with such freedom entertain a crime which destroyed so numerous a body of men in the darkness of one evening Fear and Modesty and universal Reformation are the purposes of God's Judgments upon us or in our neighbourhood 8. Fifthly Concerning Judgments happening to a Nation or a Church the
and pleasure 2. Love desires to do all good to its beloved object and that is the greatest love which gives us the greatest blessings And the Sacrament therefore is the argument of his greatest love for in it we receive the honey and the honey-comb the Paschal Lamb with his bitter herbs Christ with all his griefs and his Passion with all the salutary effects of it 3. Love desires to be remembred and to have his object in perpetual representment And this Sacrament Christ designed to that purpose that he who is not present to our eyes might always be present to our spirits 4. Love demands love again and to desire to be beloved is of it self a great argument of love And as God cannot give us a greater blessing than his Love which is himself with an excellency of relation to us superadded so what greater demonstration of it can he make to us than to desire us to love him with as much earnestness and vehemency of desire as if we were that to him which he is essentially to us the author of our being and our blessing 5. And yet to consummate this Love and represent it to be the greatest and most excellent the Holy Jesus hath in this Sacrament designed that we should be united in our spirits with him incorporated to his body partake of his Divine nature and communicate in all his Graces and Love hath no expression beyond this that it desires to be united unto its object So that what Moses said to the men of Israel What nation is so great who hath God so nigh unto them as the Lord our God is in all things for which we call upon him we can enlarge in the meditation of this Holy Sacrament for now the Lord our God calls upon us not only to be nigh unto him but to be all one with him not only as he was in the Incarnation flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone but also to communicate in spirit in grace in nature in Divinity it self 7. Upon the strength of the premisses we may sooner take an estimate of the Graces which are conveyed to us in the reception and celebration of this Holy Sacrament and Sacrifice For as it is a Commemoration and representment of Christ's Death so it is a commemorative Sacrifice as we receive the symbols and the mystery so it is a Sacrament In both capacities the benefit is next to infinite First For whatsoever Christ did at the Institution the same he commanded the Church to do in remembrance and repeated rites and himself also does the same thing in Heaven for us making perpetual Intercession for his Church the body of his redeemed ones by representing to his Father his death and sacrifice there he sits a high Priest continually and offers still the same one perfect sacrifice that is still represents it as having been once finished and consummate in order to perpetual and never-failing events And this also his Ministers do on earth they offer up the same Sacrifice to God the sacrifice of the Cross by prayers and a commemorating rite and representment according to his holy Institution And as all the effects of Grace and the titles of glory were purchased for us on the Cross and the actual mysteries of Redemption perfected on earth but are applied to us and made effectual to single persons and communities of men by Christ's Intercession in Heaven so also they are promoted by acts of Duty and Religion here on earth that we may be workers together with God as S. Paul expresses it and in virtue of the eternal and all-sufficient Sacrifice may offer up our prayers and our duty and by representing that sacrifice may send up together with our prayers an instrument of their graciousness and acceptation The Funerals of a deceased friend are not only performed at his first interring but in the monthly minds and anniversary commemorations and our grief returns upon the fight of a picture or upon any instance which our dead friend desired us to preserve as his memorial we celebrate and exhibite the Lora's death in sacrament and symbol and this is that great express which when the Church offers to God the Father it obtains all those blessings which that sacrifice purchased Themistocles snatch'd up the son of King Admetus and held him between himself and death to mitigate the rage of the King and prevailed accordingly Our very holding up the Son of God and representing him to his Father is the doing an act of mediation 〈◊〉 advantage to our selves in the virtue and efficacy of the Mediatour As Christ is a Priest in Heaven for ever and yet does not sacrifice himself afresh nor yet without a sacrifice could he be a Priest but by a daily ministration and intercession represents his sacrifice to God and offers himself as sacrificed so he does upon earth by the ministery of his servants he is offered to God that is he is by Prayers and the Sacrament represented or offered up to God as sacrificed which in effect is a celebration of his death and the applying it to the present and future necessities of the Church as we are capable by a ministery like to his in Heaven It follows then that the celebration of this Sacrifice be in its proportion an instrument of applying the proper Sacrifice to all the purposes which it first designed It is ministerially and by application an instrument propitiatory it is Eucharistical it is an homage and an act of adoration and it is impetratory and obtains for us and for the whole Church all the benefits of the sacrifice which is now celebrated and applied that is As this Rite is the remembrance and ministerial celebration of Christ's sacrifice so it is destined to do honour to God to express the homage and duty of his servants to acknowledge his supreme dominion to give him thanks and worship to beg pardon blessings and supply of all our needs And its profit is enlarged not only to the persons celebrating but to all to whom they design it according to the nature of Sacrifices and Prayers and all such solemn actions of Religion 8. Secondly If we consider this not as the act and ministery of Ecclesiastical persons but as the duty of the whole Church communicating that is as it is a 〈◊〉 so it is like the Springs of Eden from whence issue many Rivers or the Trees of celestial Jerusalem bearing various kinds of Fruit. For whatsoever was offered in the Sacrifice is given in the Sacrament and whatsoever the Testament bequeaths the holy Mysteries dispense 1. He that 〈◊〉 my 〈◊〉 and drinketh my bloud abideth in me and 〈◊〉 in him Christ in his Temple and his resting-place and the worthy Communicant is in Sanctuary and a place of protection and every holy Soul having feasted at his Table may say as S. Paul 〈◊〉 live yet not I but Christ liveth in me So that to live is Christ Christ is
Purity the meek persons of Content and Humility yet vicious and corrupted palats find also the gust of death and Coloquintida The Sybarites invited their women to their solemn sacrifices a full year before the solemnity that they might by previous dispositions and a long foresight 〈◊〉 with gravity and fairer order the celebration of the rites And it was a reasonable answer of Pericles to one that ask'd him why he being a Philosophical and severe person came to a wedding trimmed and adorned like a Paranymph I come adorned to an adorned person trimmed to a Bridegroom And we also if we come to the marriage of the Son with the Soul which marriage is celebrated in this sacred Mystery and have not on a wedding garment shall be cast into outer darkness the portion of undressed and unprepared souls 12. For from this Sacrament are excluded all unbaptized persons and such who lie in a known sin of which they have not purged themselves by the apt and proper instruments of Repentance For if the Paschal Lamb was not to be eaten but by persons pure and clean according to the sanctifications of the Law the Son of God can less endure the impurities of the Spirit than God could 〈◊〉 the uncleannesses of the Law S. Paul hath given us instruction in this First let a man examine himself and so let him eat For he that eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks damnation to himself not discerning the Lord's body That is although in the Church of Corinth by reason of the present Schism the publick Discipline of the Church was neglected and every man permitted to himself yet even then no man was disobliged from his duty of private Repentance and holy preparations to the perception of so great a mystery that the Lord's body may be discerned from common nutriment Now nothing can so unhallow and desecrate the rite as the remanent affection to a sin or a crime unrepented of And Self-examination is prescribed not for it self but in order to abolition of sin and death for it self is a relative term and an imperfect duty whose very nature is in order to something beyond it And this was in the Primitive Church understood to so much severity that if a man had relapsed after one publick Repentance into a 〈◊〉 crime he was never again readmitted to the holy Communion and the Fathers of the Council of 〈◊〉 call it a mocking and jesting at the Communion of our Lord to give it once again after a Repentance and a relapse and a second or third postulation And indeed we use to make a sport of the greatest instruments of Religion when we come to them after an habitual vice whose face we have it may be wetted with a tear and breathed upon it with a sigh and abstained from the worst of crimes for two or three days and come to the Sacrament to be purged and to take our rise by going a little back from our sin that afterwards we may leap into it with more violence and enter into its utmost angle This is dishonouring the body of our Lord and deceiving our selves Christ and Belial cannot cohabit unless we have left all our sins and have no fondness of affection towards them unless we hate them which then we shall best know when we leave them and with complacency entertain their contraries then Christ hath washed our feet and then he invites us to his holy Supper Hands dipt in bloud or polluted with unlawful gains or stained with the spots of flesh are most unfit to handle the holy body of our Lord and minister nourishment to the Soul Christ loves not to enter into the mouth full of cursings oathes blasphemies revilings or evil speakings and a heart full of vain and vicious thoughts stinks like the lake of Sodom he finds no rest there and when he enters he is vexed with the unclean conversation of the impure inhabitants and flies from thence with the wings of a Dove that he may retire to pure and whiter habitations S. Justin Martyr reckoning the predispositions required of every faithful soul for the entertainment of his Lord says that it is not lawful for any to eat the Eucharist but to him that is washed in the laver of regeneration sor the remission of sins that believes Christ's Doctrine to be true and that lives according to the Discipline of the Holy Jesus And therefore S. Ambrose refused to minister the holy Communion to the Emperor Theodostus till by publick Repentance he had reconciled himself to God and the society of faithsul people after the furious and cholerick rage and slaughter committed at Thessalonica And as this act was like to cancellating and a circumvallation of the holy mysteries and in that sence and so far was a proper duty sor a Prelate to whose dispensation the rites are committed so it was an act of duty to the Emperor of paternal and tender care not of proper authority or jurisdiction which he could not have over his Prince but yet had a care and the supravision of a Teacher over him whose Soul S. Ambrose had betrayed unless he had represented his indisposition to communicate in expressions of Magisterial or Doctoral authority and truth For this holy Sacrament is a nourishment of spiritual life and therefore cannot with effect be ministred to them who are in the state of spiritual death it is giving a Cordial to a dead man and although the outward rite be ministred yet the Grace of the Sacrament is not communicated and therefore it were well that they also abstained from the rite it self For a fly can boast of as much priviledge as a wicked person can receive from this holy Feast and oftentimes pays his life sor his access to sorbidden delicacies as certainly as they 13. It is more generally thought by the Doctors of the Church that our Blessed Lord administred the Sacrament to Judas although he knew he sold him to the Jews Some others deny it and suppose Judas departed presently after the sop given him before he communicated However it was Christ who was Lord of the Sacraments might dispense it as he pleased but we must minister and receive it according to the rules he hath since described but it becomes a precedent to the Church in all succeeding Ages although it might also have in it something extraordinary and apter to the first institution for because the fact of Judas was secret not yet made notorious Christ chose rather to admit him into the rites of external Communion than to separate him with an open shame for a fault not yet made open For our Blessed Lord did not reveal the man and his crime till the very time of ministration if Judas did communicate But if Judas did not communicate and that our Blessed Lord gave him the sop at the Paschal Supper 〈◊〉 at the interval between it and the institution of his own it is certain that
their friends and consider not that their friends are bound to accept the trouble as themselves to accept the sickness that to tend the sick is at that time allotted for the portion of their work and that Charity receives it as a duty and makes that duty to be a pleasure And however if our friends account us a burthen let us also accept that circumstance of affliction to our selves with the same resignation and indifferency as we entertain its occasion the Sickness it self and pray to God to enkindle a flame of Charity in their breasts and to make them compensation for the charge and trouble we put them to and then the care is at an end But others excuse their discontent with a more religious colour and call the disease their trouble and affliction because it impedes their other parts of Duty they cannot preach or study or do exteriour assistences of Charity and Alms or acts of Repentance and Mortification But it were well if we could let God proportion out our work and set our task let him chuse what vertues we shall specially exercise and when the will of God determines us it is more excellent to endure afflictions with patience equanimity and thankfulness than to do actions of the most pompous Religion and laborious or expensive Charity not only because there is a deliciousness in actions of Religion and choice which is more agreeable to our spirit than the toleration of sickness can be which hath great reward but no present pleasure but also because our suffering and our imployment is consecrated to us when God chuses it and there is then no mixture of imperfection or secular interest as there may be in other actions even of an excellent Religion when our selves are the chusers And let us also remember that God hath not so much need of thy works as thou hast of Patience Humility and Resignation S. Paul was far a more considerable person than thou canst be and yet it pleased God to shut him in prison for two years and in that intervall God secured and promoted the work of the Gospel and although 〈◊〉 was an excellent Minister yet God laid a sickness upon him and even in his disease gave him work enough to do though not of his own chusing And therefore fear it not but the ends of Religion or Duty will well enough proceed without thy health and thy own eternal interest when God so pleases shall better be served by Sickness and the Vertues which it occasions than by the opportunities of Health and an ambulatory active Charity 18. When thou art resigned to God use fair and appointed means for thy Recovery trust not in thy spirit upon any instrument of health as thou art willing to be disposed by God so look 〈◊〉 for any event upon the stock of any other cause or principle be ruled by the Physician and the people appointed to tend thee that thou neither become troublesome to them nor give any sign of impatience or a peevish spirit But this advice only means that thou do not disobey them out of any evil principle and yet if Reason be thy guide to chuse any other aid or sollow any other counsel use it temperately prudently and charitably It is not intended for a Duty that thou shouldst drink Oil in stead of Wine if thy Minister reach it to thee as did Saint Bernard nor that thou shouldst accept a Cake tempered with Linseed-oil in stead of Oil of Olives as did F. Stephen mentioned by 〈◊〉 but that thou tolerate the defects of thy servants and accept the evil accidents of thy disease or the unsuccessfulness of thy Physician 's care as descending on thee from the hands of God Asa was noted in Scripture that in his sickness he sought not to the Lord but to the Physicians Lewis the XI of France was then the miserablest person in his Kingdom when he made himself their servant courting them with great pensions and rewards attending to their Rules as Oracles and from their mouths waited for the sentence of life or death We are in these great accidents especially to look upon God as the disposer of the events which he very often disposes contrary to the expectation we may have of probable causes and sometimes without Physick we recover and with Physick and excellent applications we grow worse and worse and God it is that makes the remedies unprosperous In all these and all other accidents if we take care that the sickness of the Body derive not it self into the Soul nor the pains of one procure impatience of the other we shall alleviate the burthen and make it supportable and profitable And certain it is if men knew well to bear their sicknesses humbly towards God charitably towards our Ministers and chearfully in themselves there were no greater advantage in the world to be received than upon a sick bed and that alone hath in it the benefits of a Church of a religious Assembly of the works of Charity and labour And since our Soul 's eternal well-being depends upon the Charities and Providence and Veracity of God and we have nothing to show for it but his word and Goodness and that is infinitely enough it is but reason we be not more nice and scrupulous about the usage and accommodation of our Body if we accept at God's hand sadness and driness of affection and spiritual desertion patiently and with indifferency it is unhandsome to express our selves less satisfied in the accidents about our body 19. But if the Sickness proceed to Death it is a new charge upon our spirits and God calls for a final and intire Resignation into his hands And to a person who was of humble affections and in his life-time of a mortified spirit accustomed to bear the yoke of the Lord this is easie because he looks upon Death not only as the certain condition of Nature but as a necessary transition to a state of Blessedness as the determination of his sickness the period of humane inselicities the last change of condition the beginning of a new strange and excellent life a security against sin a freedom from the importunities of a Tempter from the tyranny of an imperious Lust from the rebellion of Concupiscence from the disturbances and tempests of the Irascible faculty and from the fondness and childishness of the Concupiscible and S. Ambrose says well the trouble of this life and the dangers are so many that in respect of them Death is a remedy and a fair proper object of desires And we finde that many Saints have prayed for death that they might not see the Persecutions and great miseries incumbent upon the Church and if the desire be not out of Impatience but of Charity and with resignation there is no reason to reprove it Elias prayed that God would take his life that he might not see the evils of Ahab and Jezebel and their vexatious intendments against the
Praef. n. 40. Recidivation or Relapse into a state of sin unpardonable and how 156. Reproachful Language prohibited 247. Reprehension of evil Persons may be in Language properly expressive of the Crime ibid. Resisting evil in what sence lawful 225. Reverence of posture to be used in Prayer 271. 23. Remedies against Anger 248. 35. Repetition of Prayers 270. Relations secular must be quitted for Religion in what sence 320. They must not hinder Religious Duties 236. Reformation begins ill if it begins with Sacrilege 171. 5. Reward propounded in the beginning and end of Christian Duties 222. It makes the labour easie 295. 1. Restitution to the state of Grace is divisible and by parts 314. Restitution made by Zacchaeus 346. 4. Resurrection proved and described by Jesus 348. 11. All Relations of Kindred or 〈◊〉 cease then ibid. Resurrection of Jesus 393. Given for a sign 160. 279. It is the support of Christianity 428. Resignation of himself to be made by a dying or sick person 405. 17. Rich men less disposed for reception of Christianity 29. Riches are surest and to best purposes obtained by Christianity 301. 10. Rites of Burial among the Jewes lasted Fourty days 419. S. SArabaitae great Mortifiers but not obedient 49. 24. Sacrilege a robbing of God 52. Saints to inherit the Earth in what sence 224. 9. Sacraments ineffectual without the conjunction of something moral 97. They operate by way of Prayers ibid. Sacrament of the Lord's Supper instituted 349. 17. It s manner ibid. To be received Fasting 272. Of the Presence of Christ's Body in it 370. 3. Sabbath of the Jewes abolished 327. 28. 243. 25. Primitive Christians kept both the Sabbath and the Lord's Day 243. 24. Second Sabbath after the first what it means 290. 2. Sabbatick pool streamed onely upon the Sabbath 327. 28. Salome presented John Baptist's Head to her Mother 169. She was killed with Ice ibid. Samaritans were Schismaticks 182. 3. They hated the Jewes ibid. They were cast in their Appeal to Ptolemy ibid. Samaritan 〈◊〉 a Concubine after the death of her fifth Husband 187. 1. Scandal cannot be given by any thing that is our Duty 328. 334. 13. Sin of Scandal and the indiscretion of Scandal 330. 6. Scandalous persons who 328. 334. 13. No Man can say that himself is scandalized 333. 10. The Rules Measure and Judgement of Scandal 328. Between a Friend and an Enemy how we are to doe in the question of Scandal 334. 12. Scandal how to be avoided in making and executing Laws 334. 14. State of Separation 423. 429. 15. The Pool of Siloam 325. 21. Scorn must not be cast upon our calamitous Brother 339. Secular Persons tied to a frequent Communion 379. 19. Secular and Spiritual Objects their difference 380. 21. Serapion's Reproof of a young proud Monk 366. 7. Sepulchre of Jesus sealed 501. 39. Sermon of Christ upon the Mount 183. 11. His Farewell-Sermon 350. 19. Severity to our selves and Gentleness to others a Duty 324. 17. Sensuality Vide Temptations Simon' s name changed 151. 2. His Wifes Mother cured 184. 12. Simeon Stylites commended for Obedience 49. 24. Simon Magus brought a new Sin into the world 104. 6. Sins of Infirmity Vide 〈◊〉 Sins small in themselves are made great when they come by design 44. 12. When they are acted by deliberation ibid. When they are often repeated and not interrupted by Repentance ibid. 13. When they are 〈◊〉 45. 14. Sin pleasant at the first bitter in the end 159. It carries a whip with it 170. They are forgiven when the Punishment is remitted 184. After Pardon they may return in guilt 211. It is more troublesome than Vertue is 297. 4. Not cared for unless it be difficult 299. 6. It shortens our lives naturally 305. 19. It made Jesus weep 359. To be accounted as great Blemishes to our selves as we account them to others 365. 6. Sinners Prayers not heard in what sence 266. 13. Sinners in need are to be relieved 258. Sinners are Fools 310. 28. State of Sin totally opposed to the Mercies of the Covenant 200. Sin against the Holy Ghost what it is 201. 10. Simplicity of Spirit a Christian Duty 157. Shame of Lust more violent to Nature than the Severities of Continence 295. The good Shepherd 325. Shepherds by Night watchful had a Revclation of Christ 29. Spiritual Shepherds must be watchful ibid. Spiritual Sadness is often a Mercy and a Grace 236. When otherwise 160. Spiritual persons apt to be tempted to Pride 86 100. Spiritual Mourning 224. Spiritual Pleasures distinguished from Temporal 191. Spiritual good things how to be prayed for 266. 262. Spiritual 〈◊〉 360. 8. Spirit makes Religion 〈◊〉 295. It is the earnest of Salvation 316. Spirit of Adoption ibid. It is quenched by some ibid. Spirit is 〈◊〉 to be offered to God 176. Solemnities of Christ's Kingdom 392. Souldiers plunged Jesus into the Brook Cedron 388. 11. They pierced his Side 355. They mock and beat Him 351. 353. They cover his Face at his Attachment 351. They fell to the ground at the glory of his Person ibid. Sun's Eclipse at the Passion miraculous 354. Stones of the Temple of what bigness 348. 12. Star at Christ's Birth moved irregularly 27. 9. That the Star appearing to the Wise Men was an Angel the Opinion of the Greeks 27. 8. Swine kept by the Jews and why 194 Statue of Brass erected by the Woman cured of her Bloudy issue 185. 20. Success of our endeavours depends on God 196. 5. Sudden Joys are dangerous 196. 7. Schism to be avoided in the Occasions 194. Swearing in common Talk a great Crime 304. By Creatures forbidden ibid. Suits at Law with what Cautions permitted 264. Syrophoenician importunate with Jesus for her Daughter 321. 6. Solomon's Porch a fragment of the first Temple 327. 29. Sweat of Christ in the Agony as great as drops of Bloud 350. 20. 385. 6. T. TAble with Nails fastned to Christ's Garment when he bore the Cross 413. 2. Teachers of others should be exemplary 33. 79. They should learn first of their Superiours 75. Not to make too much haste into the Imployment 79. Teresa à Jesu her Vow 235. 22. Temporal Priviledges inferiour to Spiritual 292. Temporal good things how to be prayed for 261. Temptation not alwayes a sign of immortification 91. Not to be voluntarily entred into 91. 110. Not alwayes an argument of GOD's Disfavour 97. 361. It is every Man's Lot 105. Not alwayes to be removed by Prayer 102. The several manners of Temptation ibid. Remedies against it 112. 29. seq 1. Consideration 1. Of the Presence of God 112. 29. 1. Consideration 2. Of Death 114. 34. 2. Prayer 115. 37. Temple of Jerusalem how many High-Priests it had in Succession 303. 14. Transmigration of Souls maintained by the Pharisees 321. 8. Tribute to be paid 347. Traitor discovered by a Sop 350. Trinity meeting at the 〈◊〉 of our Blessed Lord by some manners of exteriour
exceedingly troubled publickly rebuked him for it and that as the case required with great sharpness and severity It was not long after that S. Paul and 〈◊〉 resolved upon visiting the Churches which they had lately planted among the Gentiles To which end Barnabas determined to take his cousin Mark along with them This Paul would by no means agree to he having deserted them in their former journey A little spark which yet kindled a great feud and dissention between these two good men and arose to that height that in some discontent they parted from each other So natural is it for the best of men sometimes to indulge an unwarrantable passion and so far to espouse the interest of a private and particular humour as rather to hazard the great Law of Charity and violate the bands of friendship than to recede from it The effect was Barnabas taking his Nephew went for Cyprus his native Country S. Paul made choice of Silas and the success of his undertaking being first recommended to the Divine care and goodness they set forwards on their journey 2. THEIR first passage was into Syria and Cilicia confirming the Churches as they went along And to that end 〈◊〉 with them Copies of the Synodical Decrees lately ordained in the Council at Jerusalem Hence we may suppose it was that he set 〈◊〉 for Crete where he preached and propagated Christianity and constituted Titus to be the first Bishop and Pastor of that Island whom he left there to settle and dispose those affairs which the shortness of his own stay in those parts would not suffer him to do Hence he returned back unto Cilicia and came to Lystra where he found Timothy whose Father was a Greek his Mother a Jewish convert by whom he had been brought up under all the advantages of a pious and religious education and especially an incomparable skill and dexterity in the holy Scriptures S. Paul designing him for the companion of his travels and a special instrument in the Ministery of the Gospel and knowing that his being uncircumcised would be a mighty prejudice in the opinion and estimation of the Jews caused him to be circumcised being willing in lawful and indifferent matters such was Circumcision now become to accommodate himself to mens humors and apprehensions for the saving of their Souls 3. FROM hence with his company he passed through Phrygia and the Country of Galatia where he was entertained by them with as mighty a kindness and veneration as if he had been an Angel immediately sent from Heaven And being by Revelation forbidden to go into Asia by a second Vision he was commanded to direct his journey for Macedonia And here it was that S. Luke joyned himself to his company and became ever after his inseparable companion Sailing from Troas they arrived at the Island Samothracia and thence to 〈◊〉 from whence they went to Philippi the chief City of that part of Macedonia and a Roman Colony where he staid some considerable time to plant the Christian Faith and where his Ministery had more particular success on Lydia a Purple-seller born at 〈◊〉 baptized together with her whole Family and with her the Apostle sojourned during his residence in that place A little without this City there was a Proseucha 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Syriac renders it an Oratory or house of Prayer whereto the Apostle and his company used frequently to retire for the exercise of their Religion and for preaching the Gospel to 〈◊〉 that resorted thither The Jews had 〈◊〉 sorts of places for their publick worship The Temple at Jerusalem which was like the Cathedral or Mother-Church where all Sacrifices and Oblations were 〈◊〉 and where all Males were bound three times a-year personally to pay their devotions Their Synagogues many whereof they had almost in every place not unlike our Parochial Churches where the Scriptures were read and expounded and the people taught their duty Moses of old time hath in every City them that preach him being read in the Synagogues every Sabbath-day And then they had their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Philo sometimes calls them or 〈◊〉 which were like Chappels of Ease to the Temple and the 〈◊〉 whither the people were wont to come solemnly to offer up their Prayers to Heaven They were built as 〈◊〉 informs us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without the City in the open Air and uncovered 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being large spacious places after the manner of Fora or Market-places and these they called 〈◊〉 And that the Jews and Samaritans had such places of Devotion he proves from this very place at Philippi where S. Paul preached For they had them not in Judaea only but even at Rome it self where Tiberius as Philo tells 〈◊〉 the Emperor suffered the Jews to inhabit the Transtiberin Region and undisturbedly to 〈◊〉 according to the Rites of their Institutions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 to have their Proseucha's and to meet in them especially upon their holy Sabbaths that they might be familiarly instructed in the Laws and Religion of their Country Such they had also in other places especially where they had not or were not suffered to have Synagogues for their publick worship But to return 4. AS they were going to this Oratory they were often followed by a Pythonesse a Maid-servant acted by a spirit of Divination who openly cried out That these men were the servants of the most high God who came to shew the way of Salvation to the World So easily can Heaven extort a Testimony from the mouth of Hell But S. Paul to shew how little he needed Satan to be his witness commanded the Daemon to come out which immediately left her The evil Spirit thus thrown out of possession presently raised a storm against the Apostles for the Masters of the Damsel who used by her Diabolical arts to raise great advantages to themselves being sensible that now their gainful Trade was spoil'd resolved to be revenged on them that had spoiled it Accordingly they laid hold upon them and drag'd them before the Seat of Judicature insinuating to the Governours that these men were Jews and sought to introduce different customs and ways of worship contrary to the Laws of the Roman Empire The Magistrates and People were soon agreed the one to give Sentence the other to set upon the Execution In fine they were stript beaten and then commanded to be thrown into Prison and the Jaylor charged to keep them with all possible care and strictness Who to make sure of his charge thrust them into the Inner-Dungeon and made their feet fast in the Stocks But a good man can turn a Prison into a Chappel and make a den of Thieves to be an house of Prayer Our feet cannot be bound so fast to the Earth but that still our hearts may mount up to Heaven At midnight the Apostles were over-heard by their fellow-prisoners praying and singing
justified upon terms of perfect and intire obedience there is now no other way but this That the promise by the Faith of Christ be given to all them that believe i. e. this Evangelical method of justifying sincere believers Besides the Jewish Oeconomy was deficient in pardoning sin and procuring the grace and favour of God it could only awaken the knowledge of sin not remove the guilt of it It was not possible that the blood of Bulls and Goats should take away sin all the 〈◊〉 of the Mosaick Law were no further available for the pardon of sin than merely as they were founded in and had respect to that great sacrifice and expiation which was to be made for the sins of mankind by the death of the Son of God The Priests though they daily ministred and oftentimes offered the same sacrifices yet could they never take away sins No that was reserved for a better and a higher sacrifice even that of our Lord himself who after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever sat down on the right hand of God having completed that which the repeated sacrifices of the Law could never effect So that all men being under guilt and no justification where there was no remission the Jewish Oeconomy being in it self unable to pardon was incapable to justifie This S. Paul elsewhere declared in an open Assembly before Jews and Gentiles Be it known unto you men and brethren that through this man Christ Jesus is preached unto you forgiveness of sins And by him all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the Law of Moses 13. FOURTHLY He proves that Justification by the Mosaick Law could not stand with the death of Christ the necessity of whose death and sufferings it did plainly evacuate and take away For if righteousness come by the Law then Christ is dead in vain If the Mosaical performances be still necessary to our Justification then certainly it was to very little purpose and altogether unbecoming the wisdom and goodness of God to send his own Son into the World to do so much for us and to suffer such exquisite pains and tortures Nay he tells them that while they persisted in this fond obstinate opinion all that Christ had done and suffered could be of no advantage to them Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not again intangled in the yoke of bondage the bondage and servitude of the Mosaick rites Behold 〈◊〉 Paul solemnly say unto you That if you be Circumcised Christ shall profit you nothing For I testifie again to every man that is Circumcised that he is a debtor to do the whole Law Christ is become of none effect to you whosoever of you are justified by the Law ye are fallen from grace The summ of which argument is That whoever lay the stress of their Justification upon Circumcision and the observances of the Law do thereby declare themselves to be under an obligation of perfect obedience to all that the Law requires of them and accordingly supersede the vertue and efficacy of Christ's death and disclaim all right and title to the grace and favour of the Gospel For since Christ's death is abundantly sufficient to attain its ends whoever takes in another plainly renounces that and rests upon that of his own chusing By these ways of reasoning 't is evident what the Apostle drives at in all his discourses about this matter More might have been observed had I not thought that these are sufficient to render his design especially to the unprejudiced and impartial obvious and plain enough 14. LASTLY That S. Paul's discourses about Justification and Salvation do immediately refer to the controversie between the Orthodox and Judaizing Christians appears hence that there was no other controversie then on foot but concerning the way of Justification whether it was by the observation of the Law of Moses or only of the Gospel and the Law of Christ. For we must needs suppose that the Apostle wrote with a primary respect to the present state of things and so as they whom he had to deal with might and could not but understand him Which yet would have been impossible for them to have done had he intended them for the controversies which have since been bandied with so much zeal and fierceness and to give countenance to those many nice and subtil propositions those curious and elaborate schemes which some men in these later Ages have drawn of these matters 15. FROM the whole discourse two Consectaries especially plainly follow I. Consect That works of Evangelical obedience are not opposed to Faith in Justification By works of Evangelical obedience I mean such Christian duties as are the fruits not of our own power and strength but God's Spirit done by the assistance of his grace And that these are not opposed to Faith is undeniably evident in that as we observed before Faith as including the new nature and the keeping God's commands is made the usual condition of Justification Nor can it be otherwise when other graces and vertues of the Christian life are made the terms of pardon and acceptance with Heaven and of our title to the merits of Christ's death and the great promise of eternal life Thus Repentance which is not so much a single Act as a complex body of Christian duties Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and ye shall receive the Holy Ghost Repent and be converted that your sins may be blotted out So Charity and forgiveness of others Forgive if ye have ought against any that your Father also which is in Heaven may forgive you your trespasses For if ye forgive men their trespasses your heavenly Father also will forgive you But if ye forgive not men their trespasses neither will your Father forgive yours Sometimes Evangelical obedience in general God is no respecter of persons but in every Nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted with him If we walk in the light as God is in the light we have fellowship one with another and the bloud of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin What priviledge then has Faith above other graces in this matter are we justified by Faith We are pardoned and accepted with God upon our repentance charity and other acts of Evangelical obedience Is Faith opposed to the works of the Mosaick Law in Justification so are works of Evangelical obedience Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing but the keeping of the Commandments of God Does Faith give glory to God and set the crown upon his head Works of Evangelical obedience are equally the effects of Divine grace both preventing and assisting of us and indeed are not so much our works as his So that the glory of all must needs be intirely resolved into the grace of God nor can any