her spirit she had a strange secret perswasion that the bringing this Childe should be her last scene of life and we have known that the soul when she is about to disrobe her self of her upper garment sometimes speaks rarely Magnifica verba mors propè admota excutit sometimes it is prophetical sometimes God by a superinduced perswasion wrought by instruments or accidents of his own serves the ends of his own providence and the salvation of the soul But so it was that the thought of death dwelt long with her and grew from the first steps of fancy and fear to a consent from thence to a strange credulity and expectation of it and without the violence of sicknesse she died as if she had done it voluntarily and by designe and for fear her expectation should have been deceived or that she should seem to have had an unreasonable fear or apprehension or rather as one said of Cato sic abiit è vitâ ut causam moriendi nactam se esse gauderet she died as if she had been glad of the opportunity And in this I cannot but adore the providence and admire the wisdom and infinite mercies of God For having a tender and soft a delicate and fine constitution and breeding she was tender to pain and apprehensive of it as a childs shoulder is of a load and burden Grave est tenerae cervici jugum and in her often discourses of death which she would renew willingly and frequently she would tell that she feared not death but she feared the sharp pains of death Emori nolo me esse mortuam non curo The being dead and being freed from the troubles and dangers of this world she hoped would be for her advantage and therefore that was no part of her fear But she believing the pangs of death were great and the use and aids of reason little had reason to fear lest they should do violence to her spirit and the decency of her resolution But God that knew her fears and her jealousie concerning her self fitted her with a death so easie so harmlesse so painlesse that it did not put her patience to a severe trial It was not in all appearance of so much trouble as two fits of a common ague so carefull was God to remonstrate to all that stood in that sad attendance that this soul was dear to him and that since she had done so much of her duty towards it he that began would also finish her redemption by an act of a rare providence and a singular mercy Blessed he that goodnesse of God who does so careful actions of mercy for the ease and security of his servants But this one instance was a great demonstration that the apprehension of death is worse then the pains of death and that God loves to reprove the unreasonablenesse of our fears by the mightiness and by the arts of his mercy She had in her sickness if I may so cal it or rather in the solemnities and graver preparations towards death some curious and well-becoming fears concerning the final state of her soul. But from thence she passed into a deliquium or a kinde of trance and as soon as she came forth of it as if it had been a vision or that she had conversed with an Angel and from his hand had received a label or scroll of the book of life and there seen her name enrolled she cried out aloud Glory be to God on high Now I am sure I shall be saved Concerning which manner of discoursing we are wholy ignorant what judgement can be made but certainly there are strange things in the other world and so there are in all the immediate preparation to it and a little glimps of heaven a minutes conversing with an Angel any ray of God any communication extraordinary from the spirit of comfort which God gives to his servants in strange and unknown manners are infinitely far from illusions and they shall then be understood by us when we feel them and when our new and strange needs shall be refreshed by such unusual visitation But I must be forced to use summaries and arts of abbreviature in the enumerating those things in which this rare Personage was dear to God and to all her Relatives If we consider her Person she was in the flower of her age Jucundum cum aetas florida ver ageret of a temperate plain and natural diet without curiosity or an intemperate palate she spent lesse time in dressing then many servants her recreations were little and seldom her prayers often her reading much she was of a most noble and charitable soul a great lover of honourable actions and as great a despiser of base things hugely loving to oblige others and very unwilling to be in arrear to any upon the stock of courtesies and liberality so free in all acts of favour that she would not stay to hear her self thanked as being unwilling that what good went from her to a needful or an obliged person should ever return to her again she was an excellent friend and hugely dear to very many especially to the best and most discerning persons to all that conversed with her and could understand her great worth and sweetnesse she was of an Honourable a nice and tender reputation and of the pleasures of this world which were laid before her in heaps she took a very small and inconsiderable share as not loving to glut her self with vanity or to take her portion of good things here below If we look on her as a Wife she was chast and loving fruitful and discreet humble and pleasant witty and complyant rich and fair wanted nothing to the making her a principal and a precedent to the best Wives of the world but a long life and a full age If we remember her as a Mother she was kinde and severe careful and prudent very tender not at al fond a greater lover of her childrens souls then of their bodies and one that would value them more by the strict rules of honour and proper worth then by their relation to her self Her servants found her prudent and fit to Govern and yet open-handed and apt to reward a just Exactor of their duty and a great Rewarder of their diligence She was in her house a comfort to her dearest Lord a guide to her children a Rule to her Servants an example to all But as she related to God in the offices of Religion she was even and constant silent and devout prudent and material she loved what she now enjoyes and she feared what she never felt and God did for her what she never did expect Her fears went beyond all her evil and yet the good which she hath received was and is and ever shall be beyond all her hopes She lived as we al should live and she died as I fain would die Et cum supremos Lachesis perneverit annos Non aliter cineres mando jacere meos I pray
Father and the influences of the Holy Ghost our souls are not onely recovered from the state of flesh and reduced back to the intirenesse of animall operations but they are heightned into spirit and transformâ—d into a new nature And this is a new Article and now to be considered S. Hierom tels of the Custome of the Empire When a Tyrant was overcome they usâ—d to break the head of his Statues and upon the same Trunk to set the head of the Conquerour and so it passed wholly for the new Prince So it is in the kingdom of Grace As soon as the Tyrant sin is overcome and a new heart is put into us or that we serve under a new head instantly we have a new Name given us and we are esteemed a new Creation and not onely changed in manners but we have a new nature within us even a third part of essentiall constitution This may seem strange and indeed it is so and it is one of the great mysteriousnesses of the Gospel Every man naturally consists of soul and body but every Christian man that belongs to Christ hath more For he hath body and soul and spirit My Text is plain for it If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his and by Spirit is not meant onely the graces of God and his gifts enabling us to do holy things there is more belongs to a good man then so But as when God made man he made him after his own image and breath'd into him the spirit of life and he was made in animam viventem into a living soul then he was made a man So in the new creation Christ by whom God made both the worlds intends to conform us to his image and he hath given us the spirit of adoption by which we are made sons of God and by the spirit of a new life we are made new creatures capable of a new state intitled to another manner of duration enabled to do new and greater actions in order to higher ends we have new affections new understandings new wils Vetera transierunt ecce omnia nova facta sunt All things are become new And this is called the seed of God when it relates to the principle and cause of this production but the thing that is produced is a spirit and that is as much in nature beyond a soul as a soul is beyond a body This great Mystery I should not utter but upon the greatest authority in the world and from an infallible Doctor I mean S. Paul who from Christ taught the Church more secrets then all the whole Colledge besides And the very God of peace sanctifie you wholly and I pray God that your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blamelesse unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are not sanctified wholly nor preserved in safety unlesse besides our souls and bodies our spirit also be kept blamelesse This distinction nice and infinitely above humane reason but the word of God saith the same Apostle is sharper then a two-edged sword piercing even to the dividing asunder the soul and the spirit and that hath taught us to distinguish the principle of a new life from the principle of the old the celestiall from the naturall and thus it is This spirit as I now discourse of it is a principle infused into us by God when we become his children whereby we live the life of Grace and understand the secrets of the Kingdom and have passions and desires of things beyond and contrary to our naturall appetites enabling us not onely to sobriety which is the duty of the body not onely to justice which is the rectitude of the soul but to such a sanctity as makes us like to God * For so saith the Spirit of God Be ye holy as I am be pure be perfect as your heavenly Father is pure as he is perfect which because it cannot be a perfection of degrees it must be in similitudine naturae in the likenesse of that nature which God hath given us in the new birth that by it we might resemble his excellency and holinesse And this I conceive to be the meaning of S. Peter According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain to life and godlinesse that is to this new life of godlinesse through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and vertue whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises that by these you might be partakers of the Divine nature so we read it But it is something mistaken it is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Divine nature for Gods nature is indivisible and incommunicable but it is spoken participativè or per analogiant partakers of a Divine nature that is of this new and God-like nature given to every person that serves God whereby he is sanctified and made the childe of God and framed into the likenesse of Christ. The Greeks generally call this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a gracious gift an extraordinary superaddition to nature not a single gift in order to single purposes but an universall principle and it remains upon all good men during their lives and after their death and is that white stone spoken of in the Revelation and in it a new name written which no man knoweth but he that hath it And by this Gods sheep at the day of judgement shall be discerned from goats If their spirits be presented to God pure and unblameable this great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this talent which God hath given to all Christians to improve in the banks of grace and of Religion if they bring this to God increased and grown up to the fulnesse of the measure of Christ for it is Christs Spirit and as it is in us it is called the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ then we shall be acknowledged for sons and our adoption shall passe into an eternall inheritance in the portion of our elder Brother I need not to apply this Discourse The very mystery it self is in the whole world the greatest engagement of our duty that is imaginable by the way of instrument and by the way of thankfulnesse Quisquis magna dedit voluit sibi magna rependi He that gives great things to us ought to have great acknowledgements and Seneca said concerning wise men That he that doth benefit to others hides those benefits as a man layes up great treasures in the earth which he must never see with his eyes unlesse a great occasion forces him to dig the graves and produce that which he buried but all the while the man was hugely rich and he had the wealth of a great relation so it is with God and us For this huge benefit of the Spirit which God gives us is for our good deposited in our souls not made for forms and ostentation not to be looked upon or serve little ends but growing in the secret of our
of vertues But as Diagoras to them that shewed to him the votive garments of those that had escaped shipwrack upon their prayers and vows to Neptune answered that they kept no account of those that prayed and vowed and yet were drowned So do these men keep catalogues of those few persons who broke the third of a fair life in sunder with the violence of a great crime and by the grace of God recovered and repented and lived But they consider not concerning those infinite numbers of men who died in their first fit of sicknesse who after a fair voyage have thrown themselves over boord and perished in a sudden wildnesse One said well Si quid Socrates aut Aristippus contra morem et consuetudinem fecerunt idem sibi ne arbitretur licere Magnis enim illi divinis bonis hanc licentiam assequebantur If Socrates did any unusual thing it is not for thee who art of an ordinary vertue to assume the same licence For he by a divine and excellent life hath obtained leave or pardon respectively for what thou must never hope for till thou hast arrived to the same glories First be as devout as David as good a Christian as Saint Peter and then thou wilt not dare with designe to act that which they fell into by surprize and if thou doest fall as they did by that time thou hast also repented like them it may be said concerning thee that thou dist fall and break thy bones but God did heal thee and pardon thee Remember that all the damned soules shall bear an eternity of torments for the pleasures of a short sinfulnesse but for a single trasient action to die for ever is an intolerable exchange and the effect of so great a folly that whosoever falls into and then considers it it will make him mad and distracted for ever 3. Remember that since no man can please God or bE partakers of any promises or reap the reward of any actions in the returnes of eternity unlesse he performs to God an intir duty according to the capacities of a man so taught and so tempted and so assisted such a person must be curious that he be not cozened with the duties and performances of any one relation 1. Some there are that think all our religion consists in prayers and publick or private offices of devotion and not in moral actions or entercourses of justice and temperance of kindnesse and friendships of sincerity and liberality of chastity and humility of repentance and obedience indeed no humour is so easie to be counterfeited as devotion and yet no hypocrisy is more common among men nor any so uselesse as to God for it being an addresse to him alone who knows the heart and all the secret purposes it can do no service in order to heaven so long as it is without the power of Godlinesse and the energy and vivacity of a holy life God will not suffer us to commute a duty because all is his due and religion shall not pay for the want of temperance if the devoutest Hermit be proud or he that fasts thrice in the week be uncharitable once or he that gives much to the poor gives also too much liberty to himself he hath planted a fair garden and invited a wilde boar to refresh himself under the shade of the fruit trees and his guest being something rude hath disordered his paradise and made it become a wildernesse 2. Others there are that judge themselves by the censures that Kings and Princes give concerning them or as they are spoken of by their betters and so make false judgements concerning their condition For our betters to whom we show our best parts to whom we speak with caution and consider what we represent they see our arts and our dressings but nothing of our nature and deformities Trust not their censures concerning thee but to thy own opinion of thy self whom thou knowest in thy retirements and natural peevishnesse and unhandsome inclinations and secret basenesse 3. Some men have been admired abroad in whom the wife and the servant never saw any thing excellent a rare judge and a good common-wealths man in the streets and publick meetings and a just man to his neighbour and charitable to the poor for in all these places the man is observed and kept in awe by the Sun by light and by voices But this man is a Tyrant at home an unkinde husband ill Father an imperious Master and such men are like prophets in their own countreys not honoured at home and can never be honoured by God who will not endure that many vertues should excuse a few vices Or that any of his servants shall take pensions of the Devil and in the profession of his service do his enemy single advantages 4. He that hath past many stages of a good life to prevent his being tempted to a single sin must be very careful that he never entertain his spirit with the remembrances of his past sin nor amuse it with the phantastick apprehensions of the present When the Israelites fancied the sapidnesse and relish of the flesh pots they longed to tast and to return So when a Libian Tiger drawn from his wilder forragings is shut up and taught to eat civil meat and suffer the authority of a man he sits down tamely in his prison and payes to his keeper fear and reverence for his meat But if he chance to come again and taste a draught of warm blood he presently leaps into his naturall cruelty Admonitae tument gustato sanguine fauces Feruet à trepido vix abstinet ira Magistro He scarce abstains from eating those hands that brought him discipline and food so is the nature of a man made tame and gentle by the grace of God and reduced to reason and kept in awe by religion and lawes and by an awfull vertue is taught to forget those alluring and sottish relishes of sin but if he diverts from his path and snatches handfuls from the wanton vineyards and remembers the lasciviousnesse of his unwholesome food that pleased his childish palate then he grows sick again and hungry after unwholesome diet and longs for the apples of Sodom A man must walk thorow the world without eyes or ears fancy or appetite but such as are created and sanctified by the grace of God and being once made a new man he must serve all the needs of nature by the appetites and faculties of grace nature must be wholly a servant and we must so look towards the deliciousnesse of our religion and the rayishments of heaven that our memory must be for ever uselesse to the affairs and perceptions of sin we cannot stand wee cannot live unlesse we be curious and watchfull in this particular By these and all other arts of the Spirit if we stand upon our guard never indulging to our selves one sin because it is but oâ—e as knowing that one sin brought
nothing is easier then to follow and to be obedient Sermon XXII Of Christian Prudence Part III. 7. AS it is a part of Christian prudence to take into the conduct of our soules a spiritual man for a guide so it is also of great concernment that we be prudent in the choice of him whom we are to trust in so great an interest Concerning which it will be impossible to give characters and significations particular enough to enable a choice without the interval assistances of prayer experience and the Grace of God He that describes a man can tell you the colour of his hair his stature and proportions and describe some general lines enough to distingush him from a Cyclops or a Saracen but when you chance to see the man you will discover figures or little features of which the description had produced in you no Phantasme or expectation And in the exteriour significations of a sect there are more semblances then in mens faces and greater uncertainty in the signes what is faulty strives so craftily to act the true and proper images of things and the more they are defective in circumstances the more curious they are in forms and they also use such arts of gaining Proselytes which are of most advantage towards an effect and therefore such which the true Christian ought to pursue and the Apostles actually did and they strive to follow their patterns in arts of perswasion not onely because they would seem like them but because they can have none so good so effective to their purposes that it follows that it is not more a duty to take care that we be not corrupted with false teachers then that we be not abused with false signes for we as well finde a good man teaching a false proposition as a good cause managed by ill men and a holy cause is not alwayes dressed with healthful symptomes nor is there a crosse alwayes set upon the doores of those congregations who are infected with the plague of heresy When Saint John was to separate false teachers from true he took no other course but to remark the doctrine which was of God and that should be the mark of cognisance to distinguish right shepheards from robbers and invaders every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God He that denieth it is not of God By this he bids his schollers to avoid the present sects of Ebion Cerinthus Simon Magus and such other persons that denied that Christ was at all before he came or that he came really in the flesh and a proper humanity This is a clear note and they that conversed with Saint John or believed his doctrine were sufficiently instructed in the present Questions But this note will signify nothing to us for all sects of Christians confesse Jesus Christ come in the flesh and the following sects did avoid that rock over which a great Apostle had hung out so plain a lantern In the following ages of the Church men have been so curious to signifie misbelievers that they have invented and observed some signes which indeed in some cases were true real appendages of false believers but yet such which were also or might be common to them with good men and members of the Catholick Church some few I shall remark and give a short account of them that by removing the uncertain we may fix our inquiries and direct them by certain significations lest this art of prudence turn into folly and faction errour and secular designe 1. Some men distinguish errour from truth by calling their adversaries doctrine new and of yesterday and certainly this is a good signe if it be rightly applyed for since all Christian doctrine is that which Christ taught his Church and the spirit enlarged or expounded and the Apostles delivered we are to begin the Christian aera for our faith and parts of religion by the period of their preaching our account begins then and whatsoever is contrary to what they taught is new and false and whatsoever is besides what they taught is no part of our religion and then no man can be prejudiced for believing it or not and if it be adopted into the confessions of the Church the proposition is alwayes so uncertain that it s not to be admitted into the faith and therefore if it be old in respect of our dayes it is not therefore necessary to be believed if it be new it may be received into opinion according to its probabilitie and no sects or interest are to be divided upon such accounts This onely I desire to be observed that when a truth returns from banishment by a postliminium if it was from the first though the Holy fire hath been buried or the river ran under ground yet that we do not call that new since newnesse is not to be accounted of by a proportion to our short lived memories or to the broken records and fragments of story left after the inundation of barbarisme and war and change of Kingdoms and corruption of Authors but by its relation to the fountain of our truths and the birth of our religion under our Fathers in Christ the holy Apostles and Disciples a Camel was a new thing to them that saw it in the fable But yet it was created as soon as a cow or the domestick creatures and some people are apt to call every thing new which they never heard of before as if all religion were to be measured by the standards of their observation or country customs Whatsoever was not taught by Christ or his Apostles though it came in by Papias or Dionysius by Arius or Liberius is certainly new as to our account and whatsoever is taught to us by the Doctors of the present age if it can shew its test from the beginning of our period for revelation is not to be called new though it be pressed with a new zeal and discoursed of by unheard of arguments that is though men be ignorant and need to learn it yet it is not therefore new or unnecessary 2. Some would have false teachers sufficiently signified by a name or the owning of a private Appellative as of Papist Lutheran Calvenists Zuinglian Socinian think it is enough to denominat them not of Christ if they are called by the name of a man And indeed the thing is in it self ill but then if by this mark we shall esteem false teachers sufficiently signified we must follow no man no Church nor no communion for all are by their adversaries marked with an appellative of separation and singularity and yet themselves are tenacious of a good name such as they choose or such as is permitted to them by fame and the people and a natural necessity of making a distinction Thus the Donatist called themselves the flock of God and the Novatians called the Catholicks traditors and the Eustathians called themselves Catholikes and the worshippers of images made Iconoclast to be a name
condemn but whether his rule can extend to this case is now to be enquired 1. It is certain that children may be cozned into goodnesse and sick men to health and passengers in a storm into fafety and the reason of these is because not onely the end is fair and charitable and just but the means are such which do no injury to the persons which are to receive benefit Because these are persons who are either naturally or accidentally ignorant and incompetent judges of affaires and if they be also wilful as such persons most commonly are there is in art and nature left no wayes to deal with them but with innocent charitable and artificial deceptions they are not capable of reason and solid discourses and therefore either must be exposed to all harms like Lions whelps when their nurse and sire are taken in a toile or else be provided for in wages proportionable to their capacitie 2. Sinners may not be treated with the liberty we take to children and sick persons because they must serve God with choice and election and therefore although a sick man may be cozened into his health yet a man must not be cozened into his duty which is no duty at all or pleasing to God unlesse it be voluntary and chosen and therefore they are to be treated with arguments proper to move their wills by the instrument of understanding specially being persons of perfect faculties and apt to be moved by the wayes of health and of a man It is an argument of infirmity that in some cases it is necessary to make pretences but those pretences are not made legitimate unlesse it be the infirmity of the interested man with whom we do comply My infirmity can not make it lawful to make colours and images of things But the infirmity of him with whom I deal may be such that he can be defended or instructed no other way But sinners that offend God by choice must have their choice corrected and their understandings instructed or else their evill is not cured nor their state amended 2. For it is here very observable that in entercourses of this nature we are to regard a double duty the matter of justice and the rights of charity that is that good be done by lawful instruments for it is certain it is not lawful to abuse a mans understanding with a purpose to gain him 6. d. it is not fit to do evil for a good end or to abuse one man to preserve or do advantage to another and therefore it is not sufficient that I intend to do good to my neighbour for I may not therefore tell a lie and abuse his credulity because his understanding hath a right as certain as his will hath or as his money and his right to truth is no more to be cozened and defrauded then his right unto his money and therefore such artificial entercourses are no wayes to be permitted but to such persons over whose understandings we have power and authority Plato said it was lawful for Kings and Governours to dissemble because there is great necessity for them so to do but it was but crudely said so nakedly to deliver the doctrine for in such things which the people cannot understand and yet ought to obey there is a liberty to use them as we use children who are of no other condition or capacities then children but in all things where they can and ought to choose because their understanding is onely a servant to God no man hath power to abuse their credulity and reason to preserve their estates and peace But because Children and mad people and diseased are such whose underdandings are in minority and under Tuition they are to be governed by their proper instruments and proportions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Proclus a good turn is to be preferred before a true saying it is onely true to such persons who cannot value truth and prefer an intellectual before a material interest It is better for children to have warm clothes then a true proposition and therefore in all senses they and their like may be so treated But other persons who have distinct capacities have an injury done them by being abused into advantages and although those advantages make them recompence yet he that is tied to make a man recompence hath done him injury and committed a sin by which he was obliged to restitution therefore the man ought not to be cozened for his own good 4. And now upon the grounds of this discourse we may more easily determine concerning saving the life of a man by telling a lie in judgement 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Pericles of Athens when his friend desired him to swear on his side I will assist my friend so far as I may not dishonour God and to lie in judgment is directly against the being of government the honour of Tribunals and the commandement of God and therefore by no accident can be hallowed it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Aristotle said of a lie it is a thing evil in it self that is it is evil in the whole kinde ever since it came to be forbidden by God and therefore all those instances of crafty and delusive answers which are recorded in scripture were extra judicial and had not this load upon them to be a deceiving of authority in those things where they had right to command or inquire either were before or besides the commandment not at all against it and since the law of Moses forbad lying in judgement onely by that law we are to judge of those actions in the old testament which were committed after its publication and because in the sermons of the prophets and especially in the new testament Christ hath superadded or enlarged the law of ingenuity hearty simplicity we are to leave the old scripture precedents upon the ground of their own permissions and finish our duty by the rules of our religion which hath so restrained our words that they must alwayes be just and alwayes charitable and there is no leave given to prevaricate but to such persons where there can be no obligation persons that have no right such with whom no contract can be made such as children and fools and infirm persons whose faculties are hindred or depraved I remember that Secundus extremely commends Arria for deluding her husbands fears concerning the death of his beloved boy and wiped her eyes and came in confidently and sate by her husbands bed-side and when she could no longer forbear to weep her husbands sicknesse was excuse enough to legitimate that sorrow or else she could retire but so long she forbore to confess the boy's death til Caecinna Paetus had so far recovered that he could go forth to see the boy and need not fear with sorrow to returne to his disease It was indeed a great kindnesse and a rare prudence as their affaires and laws were ordered but we have better means to cure our sick
impure tempter and shall carry a flame within him and all the world is on fire round about him and every thing brings fuel to the flame and full tables are a snare and empty tables are collateral servants to a lust and help to blow the fire and kindle the heap of prepared temptations and yet a man must not at all tast of the forbidden fruit and he must not desire what he cannot choose but desire and he must not enjoy whatsoever he does violently covet and must never satisfy his appetite in the most violent importunities but must therefore deny himself because to do so is extremely troublesome this seems to be an art of torture and a devise to punish man with the spirit of agony and a restlesse vexation But this also hath in it a great ingredient of mercy or rather is nothing else but a heap of mercy in its intire constitution For if it were not for this we had nothing of our own to present to God nothing proportionable to the great rewards of heaven but either all men or no man must go thither for nothing can distinguish man from man in order to beatitude but choice and election and nothing can enoble the choice but love and nothing can exercise love but difficulty and nothing can make that difficulty but the contradiction of our appetite and the crossing of our natural affections and therefore whenever any of you is tempted violently or grow weary in your spirits with resisting the petulancy of temptation you may be cured if you will please but to remember and rejoyce that now you have something of your own to give to God something that he will be pleased to accept something that he hath given thee that thou mayest give it him for our mony and our time our dayes of feasting and our dayes of sorrow our discourse and our acts of praise our prayers and our songs our vows and our offerings our worshippings and prostrations and whatsoever else can be accounted in the sum of our religion are onely accepted according as they bear along with them portions of our wil and choice of love and appendant difficulty Laetius est quoties magno tibi constat honestum So that whoever can complain that he serves God with pains and mortifications he is troubled because there is a distinction of things such as we call vertue and vice reward and punishment and if he will not suffer God to distinguish the first he will certainly confound the latter and his portion shall be blacknesse without variety and punishment shall be his reward 6. As an appendage to this instance of divine mercy we are to account that not onely in nature but in contingency and emergent events of providence God makes compensation to us for all the evils of chance and hostilities of accident brings good out of evil which is that solemn triumph which mercy makes over justice when it rides upon a cloud and crowns its darknesse with a robe of glorious light God indeed suffered Joseph to be sold a bondslave into Egypt but then it was that God intended to crown and reward his chastity for by that means he brought him to a fair condition of dwelling and there gave him a noble trial he had a brave contention and he was a conqueror Then God sent him to prison but still that was mercy it was to make way to bring him to Pharaohs court and God brought famine upon Canaan and troubled all the souls of Jacobs family and there was a plot laid for another mercy this was to bring them to see and partake of Josephs glory and then God brought a great evil upon their posterity and they groaned under task-masters but this God changed into the miracles of his mercy and suffered them to be afflicted that he might do ten miracles for their sakes and proclaim to all the world how dear they were to God And was not the greatest good to mankinde brought forth from the greatest treason that ever was committed the redemption of the world from the fact of Judas God loving to defeat the malice of man and the arts of the Devil by rare emergencies and stratagems of mercy It is a sad calamity to see a kingdom spoiled and a church afflicted the Priests slain with the sword and the blood of Nobles mingled with cheaper sand religion made a cause of trouble and the best men most cruelly persecuted Government confounded and laws ashamed Judges decreeing causes in fear and covetousnesse and the ministers of holy things setting themselves against all that is sacred and setting fire upon the fields and turning in little foxes on purpose to destroy the vineyards and what shall make recompence for this heap of sorrows when ever God shall send such swords of fire even the mercies of God which then will be made publick when we shall hear such afflicted people sing Inconvertendo captivitatem Sion with the voice of joy and festival eucharist among such as keep holy day and when peace shall become sweeter and dwell the longer and in the mean time it serves religion and the affliction shall try the children of God and God shall crown them and men shall grow wiser and more holy and leave their petty interstes and take sanctuary in holy living and be taught temperance by their want and patience by their suffering and charity by their persecution and shall better understand the duty of their relations and at last the secret worm that lay at the root of the plant shall be drawn forth and quite extinguished For so have I known a luxuriant Vine swell into irregular twigs and bold excrescencies and spend it self in leaves and little rings and affoord but trifling clusters to the wine-presse and a faint return to his heart which longed to be refreshed with a full vintage But when the Lord of the vine had caused the dressers to cut the wilder plant and made it bleed it grew temperate in its vain expense of uselesse leaves and knotted into fair and juicy bunches and made accounts of that losse of blood by the return of fruit So is an afflicted Province cured of its surfets and punished for its sins and bleeds for its long riot and is left ungoverned for its disobedience and chastised for its wantonnesse and when the sword hath let forth the corrupted blood and the fire hath purged the rest then it enters into the double joyes of restitution and gives God thanks for his rod and confesses the mercies of the Lord in making the smoke be changed into fire and the cloud into a perfume the sword into a staffe and his anger into mercy Had not David suffered more if he had suffered lesse and had he not been miserable unlesse he had been afflicted he understood it well when he said It is good for me that I have been afflicted He that was rival to Crassus when he stood candidate to command the Legions in the Parthians warre was
that she might for ever be so far distant from a vice that she might onely see it and loath it but never tast of it so much as to be put to her choice whether she would be vertuous or no. God intending to secure this soul to himself would not suffer the follies of the world to seize upon her by way of too neer a trial or busie temptation 3. She was married young and besides her businesses of religion seemed to be ordained in the providence of God to bring to this Honourable family a part of a fair fortune and to leave behinde her a fairer issue worth ten thousand times her portion and as if this had been all the publick businesse of her life when she had so far served Gods ends God in mercy would also serve hers and take her to an early blessednesse 4. In passing through which line of providence she had the art to secure her eternal interest by turning her condition into duty expressing her duty in the greatest eminency of a vertuous prudâ—nt and rare affection that hath been known in any example I will not give her so low a testimony as to say onely that she was chast She was a person of that severity modesty and close religion as to that particular that she was not capable of uncivil temptation and you might as well have suspected the sun to smell of the poppy that he looks on as that she could have been a person apt to be sullyed by the breath of a foul question 5. But that which I shall note in her is that which I would have exemplar to all Ladies and to all women She had a love so great for her Lord so intirely given up to a dear affection that she thought the same things and loved the same loves and hated according to the same enmities and breathed in his soul and lived in his presence and languished in his absence and all that she was or did was onely for and to her Dearest Lord Si gaudet si flet si tacit hunc loquitur Coenat propinat poscit negat innuit unus Naevius est and although this was a great enamel to the beauty of her soul yet it might in some degrees be also a reward to the vertue of her Lord For she would often discourse it to them that conversed with her that he would improve that interest which he had in her affection to the advantages of God and of religion and she would delight to say that he called her to her devotions he encouraged her good inclinations he directed her piety he invited her with good books and then she loved religion which she saw was not onely pleasing to God and an act or state of duty but pleasing to her Lord and an act also of affection and conjugal obedience and what at first she loved the more forwardly for his sake in the using of religion left such relishes upon her spirit that she found in it amability enough to make her love it for its own So God usually brings us to him by instruments of nature and affections and then incorporates us into his inheritance by the more immediate relishes of Heaven and the secret things of the Spirit He only was under God the light of her eyes and the cordiall of her spirits and the guide of her actions and the measure of her affections till her affections swelled up into a religion and then it could go no higher but was confederate with those other duties which made her dear to God Which rare combination of duty and religion I choose to expresse in the words of Solomon She forsook not the guide of her youth nor brake the Covenant of her God 6. As she was a rare wife so she was an excellent Mother For in so tender a constitution of spirit as hers was and in so great a kindnesse towards her children there hath seldom been seen a stricter and more curious care of their persons their deportment their nature their disposition their learning and their customs And if ever kindnesse and care did contest and make parties in her yet her care and her severity was ever victorious and she knew not how to do an ill turn to their severer part by her more tender and forward kindnesse And as her custome was she turned this also into love to her Lord. For she was not onely diligent to have them bred nobly and religiously but also was carefull and solicitous that they should be taught to observe all the circumstances inclinations the desires and wishes of their Father as thinking that vertue to have no good circumstances which was not dressed by his copy and ruled by his lines and his affections And her prudence in the managing her children was so singular and rare that when ever you mean to blesse this family and pray a hearty and a profitable prayer for it beg of God that the children may have those excellent things which she designed to them and provided for them in her heart and wishes that they may live by her purposes and may grow thither whither she would fain have brought them All these were great parts of an excellent religion as they concerned her greatest temporal relations 7. But if we examine how she demeaned her self towards God there also you will finde her not of a common but of an exemplar piety She was a great reader of Scripture confining her self to great portions every day which she read not to the purposes of vanity and impertinent curiosities not to seem knowing or to become talking not to expound and Rule but to teach her all her duty to instruct her in the knowledge and love of God and of her Neighbours to make her more humble and to teach her to despise the world and all its gilded vanities and that she might entertain passions wholly in designe and order to heaven I have seen a female religion that wholly dwelt upon the face and tongue that like a wanton and an undressed tree spends all its juice in suckers and irregular branches in leafs and gumme and after all such goodly outsides you should never eat an apple or be delighted with the beauties or the perfumes of a hopefull blossome But the religion of this excellent Lady was of another constitution It took root downward in humility and brought forth fruit upward in the substantiall graces of a Christian in charity and justice in chastity and modesty in fair friendships and sweetnesse of society She had not very much of the forms and outsides of godlinesse but she was hugely carefull for the power of it for the morall essentiall and usefull parts such which would make her be not seem to be religious 8. She was a very constant person at her prayers and spent all her time which Nature did permit to her choice in her devotions and reading and meditating and the necessary offices of houshold government every one of which is an action of religion