Halfe-pelagianisme to thinke grace once received to be sufficient Super-pelagianisme to thinke our actions can bring God in debt to us by merit and supererogation and Catarisme imaginary purity in Canonizing our selves as present Saints and condemning all that differ from us as reprobates All these are white spots and have the colour of goodnesse but are indications of leprosie So is that that God threatens Decorticatio ficus albi rami that the figtree shall be bark'd and the boughes thereof left white to be left white without barke was an indication of a speedy withering Ostensa candescunt arescunt says Saint Gregory of that place the bough that lies open without barke looks white but perishes the good works that are done openly to please men have their reward says Christ that is shall never have reward To pretend to doe good and not meane it To doe things good in themselves but not to good ends to goe towards good ends but not by good ways to make the deceiving of men thine end or the praise of men thine end all this may have a whiteness a colour of good but all this is a barking of the bough and an indication of a mischievous leprosie There is no good whiteness but a reflection from Christ Jesus in an humble acknowledgement that wee have none of our own and in a consident assurance that in our worst estate we may be made partakers of his We are all red earth In Adam we would not since Adam we could not avoid sinne and the Concomitants thereof miseries which we have called our West our cloud our darknesse But then we have a North that scatters these clouds in the next word Ad imaginem that we are made to another patterne in another likenesse then our own Faciamus hominem so far are we gone East and West which is halfe our Compasse and all this days voiage For we are strooke upon the sand and must stay another Tyde and another gale for our North and South SERMON XXIX Preached to the King at the Court. The second Sermon on GEN. 1. 26. And God said Let us make man in our Image after our likenesse BY fair occasion from these words we proposed to you the whole Compasse of mans voyage from his lanching forth in this world to his Anchoring in the next from his hoysing sayle here to his striking sayle there In which Compasse we designed to you his foure quarters first his East where he must beginne the fundamentall knowledge of the Trinity for that we found to be the specification and distinctive Character of a Christian where though that be so we shewed you also why we were not called Trinitarians but Christians and we shewed you the advantage that man hath in laying hold upon God in these severall notions that the Prodigall sonne hath an indulgent Father that the decayed Father hath an abundant Sonne that the dejected spirit hath a Spirit of comfort to fly to in heaven And as we shewed you from Saint Paul that it was an Atheisme to be no Christian without God says he as long as without Christ so we lamented the slacknesse of Christians that they did not seriously and particularly consider the persons of the Trinity and especially the holy Ghost in their particular actions And then we came to that consideration whether this doctrine were established or directly insinuated in this plurall word of our text Faciamus Let us us make man and we found that doctrine to be here and here first of any place in the Bible And finding God to speake in the plurall we accepted for a time that interpretation which some had made thereof that God spake in the Person of a Soveraigne Prince and therefore as they do in the plurall We. And thereby having established reverence to Princes we claim'd in Gods behalfe the same reverence to him That men would demeane themselves here when God is spoken to in prayer as reverently as when they speake to the King But after this we found God to speake here not onely as our King but as our maker as God himselfe and God in Counsell Faciamus and we applied thereunto the difference of our respect to a Person of that honorable rank when we came before him at the Counsell Table and when we came to him at his own Table and thereby advanced the seriousnesse of this consideration God in the Trinity And farther we failed not with that our Eastern winde Our West we considered in the next word Hominem that though we were made by the whole Trinity yet the whole Trinity made us but men and men in this name of our text Adam and Adam is but earth and that 's our West our declination our Sunset We passed over the foure names by which man is ordinarily expressed in the Scriptures and we found necessary misery in three of them and possible nay likely misery in the fourth in the best name We insisted upon the name of our text Adam earth and had some use of these notes First that if I were but earth God was pleased to be the Potter If I but a sheep he a shepheard If I but a cottage he a builder So he worke upon me let me be what he will We noted that God made us earth not ayre not fire That man hath bodily and worldly duties to performe and is not all Spirit in this life Devotion is his soule but he hath a body of discretion and usefulnesse to invest in some calling We noted too that in being earth we are equall We tryed that equality first in the root in Adam There if any man will be nobler earth then I he must have more originall sinne then I for that was all Adams patrimony all that he could give And we tryed this equality in another furnace in the grave where there is no meanes to distinguish Royall from Plebeian nor Catholique from Hereticall dust And lastly we noted that this our earth was red earth and considered in what respect it was red even in Gods hands but found that in the bloud-rednesse of sinne God had no hand but sinne and destruction for sinne was wholly from our selves which consideration we ended with this that there was Macula alba a white spot of leprosie as well as a red and we found the over-valuation of our own purity and the uncharitable condemnation of all that differ from us to be that white spot And so far we sayled with that Western winde And are come to our third point in this our Compasse our North. In this point the North we place our first comfort The North is not always the comfortablest clime nor is the North always a type of happines in the Scriptures Many times God threatens stormes from the North. But even in those Northern stormes we consider that action that they scatter they dissipate those clouds which were gathered and so induce a serenity And so fair weather comes from the North. And
24. Take heed what you heare WHether that which is recorded by this Evangelist in and about this Chapter be one intire Sermon of our Saviours preached at once or Notes taken and erected from severall Sermons of his we are no further curious to inquire then may serve to ground this Note that if it were one intire Sermon our Saviour preached methodically and eased his hearers with certain landmarks by the way with certain divisions certain transitions and callings upon them to observe the points as they arose For as he beginneth so Hearken Behold so he returneth to that refreshing of their considerations Et dixit illis He said unto them and Again he said unto them seaven or eight times in this Chapter so many times he calleth upon them to observe his passing from one point to another If they be but Notes of severall Sermons we onely note this from that That though a man understand not a whole Sermon or remember not a whole Sermon yet he doth well that layeth hold upon such Notes therein as may be appliable to his own case and his own conscience and conduce to his own edification The widow of Sarepta had no Palaces to build and therefore she went not out to survay Timber she had onely a poore cake to bake to save her own and her childs life and she went out to gather a few sticks two sticks as she told the Prophet Elias to do that work Every man that cometh to heare here every man that cometh to speak here cometh not to build Churches nor to build Common-wealths to speak onely of the duties of Kings and of Prelates and of Magistrates but that poore soul that gathers a stick or two for the baking of her own cake that layeth hold upon any Note for the rectifying of her own perverseness hath performed the commandment of this Text Take heed what ye heare He that is drowning will take hold of a bulrush and even that bulrush may stay him till stronger means of succour come If you would but feel that you are drowning in the whirlepooles of sinne and Gods judgements for sin and would lay hold upon the shallowest man be that man dignified with Gods Character the Character of Orders and lay hold upon the meanest part of his speach be that speach dignified with Gods Ordinance be it a Sermon even I and any thing that I say here and say thus spoken by a Minister of God in the house of God by the Ordinance of God might stop you till you heard better and you might be the fitter for more if you would but take heed now what you heard Take heed what you heare These words were spoken by Christ to his Apostles upon this occasion He had told them before That since there was a candle lighted in the world it must not be put under a bushell nor under a bed verse 21. That all that is hid should be made manifest That all that was kept secret should come abroad verse 22. That if any man had ears to heare he might heare verse 23. That is that the Mystery of salvation which had been hid from the world till now was now to be published to the world by their Preaching their Ministery their Apostleship And that therefore since he was now giving them their Commission and their instructions since all that they had in charge for the salvation of the whole world was onely that that he delivered unto them that which they heard from him they should take heed what they heard Take heed what you heare In which he layeth a double obligation upon them First All that you hear from me you are to preach to the world and therefore Take heed what you heare forget none of that And then you are to preach no more then you heare from me and therefore Take heed what you heare adde nothing to that Be not over-timorous so to prevaricate and forbear to preach that which you have truely heard from me But be not over-venturous neither to pretend a Commission when you have none and to preach that for my word which is your own passion or their purpose that set you up And when we shall have considered these words in this their first acceptation as they were spoken literally and personally to the Apostles we shall see also that by reflexion they are spoken to us the Ministers of the Gospell and not onely to us of the Reformation but to our Adversaries of the Romane perswasion too and therefore in that part we shall institute a short comparison whether they or we do best observe this commandment Take heed what you heare Preach all that preach nothing but that which you have received from me And having passed through these words in both those acceptations literally to the Apostles and by reflexion to all the Ministers of the Gospell the Apostles being at this time when these words were spoken but Hearers they are also by a fair accommodation appliable to you that are Hearers now Take heed what you heare And since God hath extended upon you that glorification that beatification as that he hath made you regale Sacerdotium a royall Priesthood since you have a Regality and a Priesthood imprinted upon you since by the prerogative which you have in the Gospell of the Kingdome of Christ Jesus and the co-inheritance which you have in that Kingdome with Christ Jesus himself you are Regum genus and Sacerdotum genus of kin to Kings and of kin to Priests be carefull of the honour of both those of whose honour you have the honour to participate and take heed what you heare of Kings take heed what you heare of Priests take heed of hearkning to seditious rumours which may violate the dignity of the State or of schismaticall rumours which may cast a cloud or aspersion upon the government of the Church Take heed what you hear First then as the words are spoken in their first acceptation literally to the Apostles the first obligation that Christ layes upon them is the publication of the whole Gospell Take heed what you heare for all that which you hear from me the world must heare from you for for all my death and resurrection the world lies still surrounded under sinne and Condemnation if this death and resurrection be not preached by you unto them Therefore the last words that ever our Saviour spoke unto them were a ratification of this Commission You shall be my witnesses both in Ierusalem and in Iudea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth God proceeds legally Publication before Judgement God shall condemn no man for not beleeving in Christ to whom Christ was never manifested 'T is true that God is said to have come to Eliah in that still small voice and not in the strong wind not in the Earth-quake not in the fire So God says Sibilabâ— populum meum I will but kisse I will but whisper for my
sinnes unconsidered unrepented uncorrected In that glistring circle in the firmament which we call the Galaxy the milky way there is not one Star of any of the six great magnitudes which Astronomers proceed upon belonging to that circle It is a glorious circle and possesses a great part of heaven and yet is all of so little stars as have no name no knowledge taken of them So certainly are there many Saints in heaven that shine as stars and yet are not of those great magnitudes to have been Patriarchs or Prophets or Apostles or Martyrs or Doctors or Virgins but good and blessed soules that have religiously performed the duties of inferiour callings and no more And as certainly are there many soules tormented in hell that never sinned sinne of any of the great magnitudes Idolatry Adultery Murder or the like but inconsiderately have slid and insensibly continued in the practise and habite of lesser sinnes But Parva non sunt parva nothing may be thought little where the consequence may prove great When our Saviour said that we shall give an account of every Idle word in the day of Judgement what great hills of little sands will oppresse us then And if substances of sinne were removed yet what circumstances of sinne would condemne us If idle words have this weight there can be no word thought idle in the Scriptures And therefore I blame not in any I decline not in mine own practise the making use of the variety and copiousnesse of the holy Ghost who is ever abundant and yet never superfluous in expressing his purpose in change of words And so no doubt we might doe now in observing a difference between these words in our text Image and likenesse and between these two formes of expressing it in our Image and after our likenesse This might be done but that that must be done will possesse all our time that is to declare taking the two words for this time to be but a farther illustration of one another Image and likenesse to our present purpose to be all one what this Image and this likenesse imparts and how this North scatters our former cloud what our advantage is that we are made to an Image to a pattern and our obligation to set a pattern before us in all our actions God appointed Moses to make all that he made according to a pattern God himselfe made all that he made according to a pattern God had deposited and laid up in himselfe certain formes patternes Idea's of every thing that he made He made nothing of which he had not preconceived the forme and predetermined in himselfe I will make it thus And when he had made any thing he saw it was good good because it answered the pattern the Image good because it was like to that And therefore though of other creatures God pronounced they were good because they were presently like their pattern that is like that forme which was in him for them yet of man he forbore to say that he was good because his conformity to his pattern was to appeare after in his subsequent actions Now as God made man after another pattern and therefore we have a dignity above all that we had another manner of creation then the rest so have we a comfort above all that we have another manner of Administration then the rest God exercises another manner of Providence upon man then upon other creatures A Sparrow falls not without God says Christ yet no doubt God works otherwise in the fall of eminent persons then in the fall of Sparrows For yee are of more value then many Sparrows says Christ there of every man and some men single are of more value then many men God does not thanke the Ant for her industry and good-husbandry in providing for her selfe God does not reward the Foxes for concurring with Sampson in his revenge God does not fee the Lion which was the executioner upon the Prophet which had disobeyed his commandement nor those two she-Beares which slew the petulant children who had caluminated and reproached Elisha God does not fee them before nor thanke them after not take knowledge of their service But for those men that served Gods execution upon the Idolaters of the Goden Calfe it is pronounced in their behalfe that therein they consecrated themselves to God and for that service God made that tribe the tribe of Levi his portion his Clergy his consecrated Tribe So Quiae fecisti hoc says God to Abraham by my selfe I have sworn because thou hast done this thing and hast not withheld thy Sonne thine onely sonne in blessing I will blesse thee and in multiplying I will multiply thee So neither is God angry with the dog that turnes to his vomit nor with the sow that after her washing wallowes in the mire But of Man in that case he says It is impossible for those who were once enlightned if they fall away to renew them againe by repentance The creatures live under his law but a law imposed thus This they shall doe this they must doe Man lives under another manner of law This you shall doe that is this you should doe this I would have you doe And fac hoc doe this and you shall live disobey and you shall die But yet the choise is yours Choose ye this day life or death So that this is Gods administration in the Creature that he hath imprinted in them an Instinct and so he hath something to preserve in them In man his administration is this that he hath imprinted in him a faculty of will and election and so hath something to reward in him That instinct in the creature God leaves to the naturall working thereof in it selfe But the free will of man God visites and assists with his grace to doe supernaturall things When the creature does an extraordinary action above the nature thereof as when Balaams Asse spake the creature exercises no faculty no will in it selfe but God forced it to that it did When man does any thing conducing to supernaturall ends though the worke be Gods the will of man is not meerly passive The will of man is but Gods agent but still an agent it is And an agent in another manner then the tongue of the beast For the will considered as a will and grace never destroyes nature nor though it make a dead will a live will or an ill will a good will doth it make the will no will might refuse or omit that that it does So that because we are created by another pattern we are governed by another law and another providence Goe thou then the same way If God wrought by a pattern and writ by copy and proceeded by a precedent doe thou so too Never say there is no Church without error therefore I will be bound by none but frame a Church of mine owne or be a Church to my selfe What greater injustice then to propose
to others to thy self And then by our Commission we cry out to you to make streight his paths In which we do not require that you should absolutely rectifie all the deformities and crookednesse which that Tortuositas Serpentis the winding of the old Serpent hath brought you to for now the streame of our corrupt nature is accustomed to that crooked channell and we cannot divert that we cannot come to an absolute directnesse and streightnesse and profession in this life and in this place the holy Ghost speaks but of a way a path not of our rest in the end but of our labour in the way Our Commission then is not to those sinlesse men that think they have nothing for God to forgive But when we bid you make streight his paths as before we directed you to take knowledge what his wayes towards others had been so here we intend that you should observe which is the Lords path into you by what way he comes oftnest into you who are his Temple and do not lock that doore do not pervert do not crosse do not deface that path The ordinary way even of the holy Ghost for the conveying of faith and supernaturall graces is as the way of worldly knowledge is by the senses where his way is by the care by hearing his word preached do not thou crosse that way of his by an inordinate delight in hearing the eloquence of the preacher for so thou hearest the man and not God and goest thy way and not his God hath divers wayes into divers men into some he comes at noone in the sunshine of prosperity to some in the dark and heavy clouds of adversity Some he affects with the musick of the Church some with some particular Collect or Prayer some with some passage in a Sermon which takes no hold of him that stands next him Watch the way of the Spirit of God into thee that way which he makes his path in which he comes oftnest to thee and by which thou findest thy self most affected and best disposed towards him and pervert not that path foule not that way Make streight his paths that is keepe them streight and when thou observest which is his path in thee by what means especially he workes upon thee meet him in that path embrace him in those meanes and alwayes bring a facile a fusil a ductile a tractable soule to the offers of his grace in his way Our Commission reaches to the exalting of your valleys Let every valley be exalted In which we bid you not to raise your selves in this world to such a spirituall heighth as to have no regard to this world to your bodies to your fortunes to your families Man is not all soule but a body too and as God hath married them together in thee so hath he commanded them mutuall duties towards one another and God allowes us large uses of temporall blessings and of recreations too To exalt valleyes is not to draw up flesh to the heighth of spirit that cannot be that should not be done But it is to draw you so much towards it as to consider and consider with an application that the very Law which was but the schoolmaster to the Gospell was given upon a mountaine That Moses could not so much as see the Land of promise till he was brought up into a mountaine That the inchoation of Christ glory which was his transfiguration was upon a mountaine That his conversation with God in prayer That his returne to his eternall Kingdom by his ascension was so too from a mountaine even his exinanition his evacuation his lowest humiliation his crucifying was upon a mountaine and he calls even that humiliation an exaltation Si exaltatus If I be exalted lifted up sayes Christ signifying what death he should die Now if our depressions our afflictions be exaltations so they were to Christ so they are to every good Christian how far doth God allow us an exalting of our vallies in a considering with a spirituall boldnesse the heighth and dignity of mankind and to what glory God hath created us Certainly man may avoid as many sinnes by this exalting his vallies this considering the heighth and dignity of his nature as by the humblest meditations in the world For upon those words of Iob Manus tuae fecerunt me Saint Gregory says Misericordiae judicis dignitatem suae conditionis opponit Iob presents the dignity of his creation by the hand of God as an inducement why God should regard him It is not his valley but his mountaines that he brings into Gods sight not that dust which God took into his hands when he made him but that person which the hands of God had made of that dust Man is an abridgement of all the world and as some Abridgements are greater then some other authors so is one man of more dignity then all the earth And therefore exalt thy vallies raise thy selfe above the pleasures that this earth can promise And above the sorrowes it can threaten too A painter can hardly diminish or contract an Elephant into so little a forme but that that Elephant when it is at the least will still be greater then an Ant at the life and the greatest Sinne hath diminished man shrowdly and brought him into a narrower compasse but yet his naturall immortality his soule cannot dye and his spirituall possibility even to the last gaspe of spending that immortality in the kingdome of glory and living for ever with God for otherwise our immortality were the heaviest part of our curse exalt this valley this cold of earth to a noble heighth How ill husbands then of this dignity are we by sinne to forfeit it by submitting our selves to inferior things either to gold then which every worme because a worme hath life and gold hath none is in nature more estimable and more precious Or to that which is lesse then gold to Beauty for there went neither labour nor study nor cost to the making of that the Father cannot diet himselfe so nor the mother so as to be sure of a faire child but it is a thing that hapned by chance wheresoever it is and as there are Diamonds of divers waters so men enthrall themselves in one clime to a black in another to a white beauty To that which is lesse then gold or Beauty voice opinion fame honour we sell our selves And though the good opinion of good men by good ways be worth our study yet popular applause and the voice of inconsiderate men is too cheape a price to set our selves at And yet it is hardly got too for as a ship that lies in harbour within land sometimes needs most of the points of the Compasse to bring her forth so if a man surrender himselfe wholly to the opinion of other men and have not his Criterium his touchstone within him he will need both North and South all the points of the