to relinquish the paths of darkness this is the way of the Kingdom and the purpose of the Gospel and the proper work of Faith 6. And if we consider upon what stock Faith it self is instrumental and operative of Salvation we shall find it is in it self acceptable because it is a Duty and commanded and therefore it is an act of Obedience a work of the Gospel a submitting the Understanding a denying the Affections a laying aside all interests and a bringing our thoughts under the obedience of Christ. This the Apostle calls the Obedience of Faith And it is of the same condition and constitution with other Graces all which equally relate to Christ and are as firm instruments of union and are washed by the bloud of Christ and are sanctified by his Death and apprehend him in their capacity and degrees some higher and some not so high but Hope and Charity apprehend Christ in a measure and proportion greater than Faith when it distinguishes from them So that if Faith does the work of Justification as it is a mere relation to Christ 〈◊〉 so also does Hope and Charity or if these are Duties and good works so also is Faith and they all being alike commanded in order to the same end and encouraged by the same reward are also accepted upon the same stock which is that they are acts of Obedience and relation too they obey Christ and lay hold upon Christ's merits and are but several instances of the great duty of a Christian but the actions of several faculties of the 〈◊〉 Creature But 〈◊〉 Faith is the beginning Grace and hath insluence and causality in the production of the other 〈◊〉 all the other as they are united in Duty are also united in their Title and appellative they are all called by the name of Faith because they are parts of Faith as Faith is taken in the larger sence and when it is taken in the strictest and distinguishing sence they are 〈◊〉 and proper products by way of natural emanation 7. That a good life is the genuine and true-born issue of Faith no man questions that knows himself the Disciple of the Holy Jesus but that Obedience is the same thing with Faith and that all Christian Graces are parts of its bulk and constitution is also the doctrine of the Holy Ghost and the Grammar of Scripture making Faith and Obedience to be terms coincident and expressive of each other For Faith is not a single Star but a Constellation a chain of Graces called by S. Paul the power of God unto salvation to every believer that is Faith is all that great instrument by which God intends to bring us to Heaven and he gives this reason In the Gospel the 〈◊〉 cousness of God is revealed from faith to faith for it is written The 〈◊〉 shall live by Faith Which discourse makes Faith to be a course of Sanctity and holy 〈◊〉 a continuation of a Christian's duty such a duty as not only gives the first breath but by which a man lives the life of Grace The just shall live by Faith that is such a Faith as grows from step to step till the whole righteousness of God be fulfilled in it From faith to faith saith the Apostle which S. 〈◊〉 expounds From Faith believing to Faith obeying from imperfect Faith to Faith made perfect by the animation of Charity that he who is justified may be justified still For as there are several degrees and parts of Justification so there are several degrees of Faith answerable to it that in all sences it may be true that by Faith we are justified and by Faith we live and by Faith we are saved For if we proceed from Faith to Faith from believing to obeying from Faith in the Understanding to Faith in the Will from Faith barely assenting to the revelations of God to Faith obeying the Commandments of God from the body of Faith to the soul of Faith that is to Faith sormed and made alive by Charity then we shall proceed from Justification to Justification that is from Remission of Sins to become the Sons of God and at last to an actual possession of those glories to which we were here consigned by the fruits of the Holy Ghost 8. And in this sence the Holy Jesus is called by the Apostle the Author and 〈◊〉 of our Faith he is the principle and he is the promoter he begins our Faith in Revelations and perfects it in Commandments he leads us by the assent of our Understanding and finishes the work of his grace by a holy life which S. Paul there expresses by its several constituent parts as laying aside every weight and the sin that so easily besets us and running with patience the race that is set before us resisting unto bloud striving against sin for in these things Jesus is therefore made our example because he is the Author and Finisher of our Faith without these Faith is imperfect But the thing is something plainer yet for S. James says that Faith lives not but by Charity and the life or essence of a thing is certainly the better part of its constitution as the Soul is to a Man And if we mark the manner of his probation it will come home to the main point For he proves that Abraham's saith was therefore imputed to him for Righteousness because he was justified by Works Was not Abraham our Father justified by Works when he offered up his son And the Scripture was fulfilled saying Abraham believed God and it was imputed to him for righteousness For Faith wrought with his Works and made his Faith perfect It was a dead and an imperfect Faith unless Obedience gave it being and all its integral or essential parts So that Faith and Charity in the sence of a Christian are but one duty as the Understanding and the Will are but one reasonable Soul only they produce several actions in order to one another which are but divers 〈◊〉 and the same spirit 9. Thus S. Paul describing the Faith of the Thessalonians calls it that whereby they turned from Idols and whereby they served the living God and the Faith of the Patriarchs believed the world's Creation received the Promises did Miracles wrought Rightcousness and did and suffered so many things as make up the integrity of a holy life And therefore disobedience and unrighteousness is called want of Faith and Heresie which is opposed to Faith is a work of the flesh because Faith it self is a work of Righteousness And that I may enumerate no more particulars the thing is so known that the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which in propriety of language signifies 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 is rendred disobedience and the not providing for our families is an act of 〈◊〉 by the same reason and analogy that 〈◊〉 or Charity and a holy life are the duties of a Christian of a justifying
Faith And although in the natural or philosophical sence Faith and Charity are distinct habits yet in the sence of a Christian and the signification of duty they are the same for we cannot believe aright as Believing is in the Commandment unless we live aright for our Faith is put upon the account just as it is made precious by Charity according to that rare saying of S. 〈◊〉 recorded by the supposed S. Denis Charity is the greatest and the least Theologie all our Faith that is all our Religion is compleated in the duties of universal Charity as our Charity or our manner of living is so is our Faith If our life be unholy it may be the faith of Devils but not the Faith of Christians For this is the difference 10. The faith of the Devils hath more of the Understanding in it the Faith of Christians more of the Will The Devils in their saith have better Discourse the Christians better affections They in their faith have better Arguments we more Charity So that Charity or a good life is so necessary an ingredient into the definition of a Christian's Faith that we have nothing else to distinguish it from the faith of Devils and we need no trial os our Faith but the examination of our lives If you keep the Commandments of God then have you the Faith of Jesus they are immediate in S. John's expression but if you be 〈◊〉 and ungodly you are in S. Paul's list amongst them that have no saith Every Vice that rules amongst us and sullies the fair beauty of our Souls is a conviction of Infidelity 11. For it was the Faith of Moses that made him despise the riches of Egypt the Faith of 〈◊〉 that made him valiant the Faith of Joseph that made him chast Abraham's Faith made him obedient S. Mary Magdalen's Faith made her penitent and the Faith of S. Paul made him travel so far and suffer so much till he became a prodigy both of zeal and patience Faith is a Catholicon and cures all the distemperatures of the Soul it 〈◊〉 the World saith S. John it works rightcousness saith S. Paul it purifies the heart saith S. Peter it works Miracles saith our Blessed Saviour Miracles in Grace always as it did Miracles in nature at its first publication and whatsoever is good if it be a Grace it is an act of Faith if it be a reward it is the fruit of Faith So that as all the actions of man are but the productions of the Soul so are all the actions of the new man the effects of Faith For Faith is the life of Christianity and a good life is the life of Faith 12. Upon the grounds of this discourse we may understand the sence of that Question of our Blessed Saviour When the son of man comes shall he find Faith on earth Truly just so much as he finds Charity and holy living and no more For then only we can be confident that Faith is not failed from among the children of men when we seel the heats of the primitive Charity return and the calentures of the first old Devotion are renewed when it shall be accounted honourable to be a servant of Christ and a shame to commit a sin then and then only our Churches shall be Assemblies of the faithful and the Kingdoms of the world Christian Countries But so long as it is notorious that we have made Christian Religion another thing than what the Holy Jesus designed it to be when it does not make us live good lives but it self is made a pretence to all manner of impiety a stratagem to serve ends the ends of covetousness of ambition and revenge when the Christian Charity ends in killing one another for Conscience sake so that Faith is made to cut the throat of Charity and our Faith kills more than our Charity preserves when the Humility of a Christian hath indeed a name amongst us but it is like a mute person talk'd of only while Ambition and Rebellion Pride and Scorn Self-seeking and proud undertakings transact most of the great affairs of Christendom when the custody of our Senses is to no other purposes but that no opportunity of pleasing them pass away when our Oaths are like the fringes of our discourses going round about them as if they were ornaments and trimmings when our Blasphemies Prophanation Sacriledge and Irreligion are become scandalous to the very Turks and Jews while our Lusts are always habitual sometimes unnatural will any wise man think that we believe those Doctrines of Humility and Obedience of Chastity and Charity of Temperance and Justice which the Saviour of the World made sacred by his Sermon and example or indeed any thing he either said or did promised or threatned For is it possible a man with his wits about him and believing that he should certainly be damned that is be eternally tormented in body and Soul with terments greater than can be in this world if he be a Swearer or Lier or Drunkard or cheats his neighbour that this man should dare to do these things to which the temptations are so small in which the delight is so inconsiderable and the satisfaction so none at all 13. We see by the experience of the whole world that the belief of an honest man in a matter of temporal advantage makes us do actions of such danger and difficulty that half so much industry and 〈◊〉 would ascertain us into a possession of all the Promises Evangelical Now let any man be asked whether he had rather be rich or be saved he will tell you without all doubt Heaven is the better option by infinite degrees for it cannot be that Riches or Revenge or Lust should be directly preferred that is be thought more eligible than the glories of Immortality That therefore men neglect so great Salvation and so greedily run after the satisfaction of their baser appetites can be attributed to nothing but want of Faith they do not heartily believe that Heaven is worth so much there is upon them a stupidity of spirit and their Faith is dull and its actions suspended most commonly and often interrupted and it never enters into the Will so that the Propositions are considered nakedly and precisely in themselves but not as referring to us or our interests there is nothing of Faith in it but so much as is the first and direct act of Understanding there is no consideration nor reflexion upon the act or upon the person or upon the subject So that even as it is seated in the Understanding our Faith is commonly lame mutilous and imperfect and therefore much more is it culpable because it is destitute of all cooperation of the rational appetite 14. But let us consider the power and efficacy of worldly Belief If a man believes that there is gold to be had in Peru for fetching or Pearls and rich Jewels in India for the exchange of trifles he
being written by Symeon Bishop of Jerusalem exploded A concurrence of circumstances to entitle S. Peter to it 〈◊〉 things in it referred to which he had preached at Rome particularly the destruction of Jerusalem Written but a little before his death The spurious Writings attributed to him mentioned by the Ancients His Acts. Gospel Petri Praedicatio His Apocalypse Judicium Petri Peter's married relation His Wife the companion of his Travels Her Martyrdom His Daughter 〈◊〉 1. HAVING run through the current History of S. Peter's Life it may not be amiss in the next place to survey a little his Person and Temper His Body if we may believe the description given of him by Nicephorus was somewhat slender of a middle size but rather inclining to tallness his complexion very pale and almost white The hair of his Head and Beard curl'd and thick but withall short though S. Hierom tells us out of Clemens his Periods that he was Bald which probably might be in his declining age his Eyes black but speckt with red which Baronius will have to proceed from his frequent weeping his Eye-brows thin or none at all his Nose long but rather broad and flat than sharp such was the Case and out-side Let us next look inwards and view the Jewel that was within Take him as a Man and there seems to have been a natural eagerness predominant in his Temper which as a Whetstone sharpned his Soul for all bold and generous undertakings It was this in a great measure that made him so forward to speak and to return answers sometimes before he had well considered them It was this made him expose his person to the most eminent danger promise those great things in behalf of his Master and resolutely draw his Sword in his quarrel against a whole Band of Souldiers and wound the High-Priests Servant and possibly he had attempted greater matters had not our Lord restrained and taken him off by that seasonable check that he gave him 2. THIS Temper he owed in a great measure to the Genius and nature of his Country of which Josephus gives this true character That it naturally bred in men a certain fierceness and animosity whereby they were fearlesly carried out upon any action and in all things shew'd a great strength and courage both of mind and body The Galileans says he being 〈◊〉 from their childhood the men being as seldom overtaken with cowardize as their Country with want of men And yet notwithstanding this his fervor and fierceness had its intervals there being some times when the Paroxysms of his heat and courage did intermit and the man was surprised and betrayed by his own fears Witness his passionate crying out when he was upon the Sea in danger of his life and his fearful deserting his Master in the Garden but especially his carriage in the High-Priests Hall when the confident charge of a sorry Maid made him sink so far beneath himself and not withstanding his great and resolute promises so shamefully deny his Master and that with curses and imprecations But he was in danger and passion prevailed over his understanding and fear betrayed the succours which reason offered and being intent upon nothing but the present safety of his life he heeded not what he did when he 〈◊〉 his Master to save himself so dangerous is it to be left to our selves and to have our natural passions let loose upon us 3. CONSIDER him as a Disciple and a Christian and we shall find him exemplary in the great instances of Religion Singular his Humility and the lowliness of mind With what a passionate earnestness upon the conviction of a Miracle did he beg of our Saviour to depart from him accounting himself not worthy that the Son of God should come near so vile a sinner When our Lord by that wonderful condescension stoopt to wash his Apostles feet he could by no means be perswaded to admit it not thinking it sit that so great a person should submit himself to so servile an office towards so mean a person as himself nor could he be induced to accept it till our Lord was in a manner forced to threaten him into obedience When Cornelius heightned in his apprehensions of him by an immediate command from God concerning him would have entertained him with expressions of more than ordinary honour and veneration so far was he from complying with it that he plainly told him he was no other than such a man as himself With how much candor and modesty does he treat the inferiour Rulers and Ministers of the Church He upon whom Antiquity heaps so many honourable titles stiling himself no other than their fellow-Presbyter Admirable his love to and zeal for his Master which he thought he could never express at too high a rate for his sake venturing on the greatest dangers and exposing himself to the most imminent hazards of his life 'T was in his quarrel that he drew his Sword against a Band of Souldiers and an armed multitude and 't was love to his Master drew him into that imprudent advice that he should seek to save himself and avoid those sufferings that were coming upon him that made him promise and engage so deep to suffer and die with him Great was his forwardness in owning Christ to be the Messiah and Son of God which drew from our Lord that honourable Encomium Blessed art thou Simon Bar Jonah But greater his courage and constancy in confessing Christ before his most inveterate enemies especially after he had recovered himself of his fall With how much plainness did he tell the Jews at every turn to their very faces that they were the Murderers and Crucifiers of the Lord of Glory Nay with what an undaunted courage with what an Heroick greatness of mind did he tell that very Sanhedrim that had sentenced and condemned him that they were guilty of his murder and that they could never be saved any other way than by this very Jesus whom they had crucified and put to death 4. LASTLY let us reflect upon him as an Apostle as a Pastor and Guide of Souls And so we find him faithful and diligent in his office with an infinite zeal endeavouring to instruct the ignorant reduce the erroneous to strengthen the weak and confirm the strong to reclaim the vicious and turn Souls to righteousness We find him taking all opportunities of preaching to the people converting many thousands at once How many voiages and travels did he undergo with how unconquerable a patience did he endure all conflicts and trials and surmount all difficulties and oppositions that he might plant and propagate the Christian Faith Not thinking much to lay down his own life to promote and further it Nor did he only do his duty himself but as one of the prime Superintendents of the Church and as one that was sensible of the value and the worth of Souls he was careful to put others in mind of
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
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
powers to reject any proposition and to believe well is an effect of a singular predestination and is a Gift in order to a Grace as that Grace is in order to Salvation But the insufficiency of an argument or disability to prove our Religion is so far from disabling the goodness of an ignorant man's Faith that as it may be as strong as the Faith of the greatest Scholar so it hath full as much excellency not of nature but in order to Divine acceptance For as he who believes upon the only stock of Education made no election of his Faith so he who believes what is demonstrably proved is forced by the demonstration to his choice Neither of them did 〈◊〉 and both of them may equally love the Article 3. So that since a 〈◊〉 Argument in a weak understanding does the same work that a strong Argument in a more 〈◊〉 and learned that is it convinces and makes Faith and yet neither of them is matter of choice if the thing believed be good and matter of 〈◊〉 or necessity the Faith is not rejected by God upon the weakness of the first nor accepted upon the strength of the latter principles when we are once in it will not be enquired by what entrance we passed thither whether God leads us or drives us in whether we come by Discourse or by Inspiration by the guide of an Angel or the conduct of Moses whether we be born or made Christians it is indifferent so we be there where we should be for this is but the gate of Duty and the entrance to Felicity For thus far Faith is but an act of the Understanding which is a natural Faculty serving indeed as an instrument to Godliness but of it self no part of it and it is just like fire producing its act inevitably and burning as long as it can without power to interrupt or suspend its action and therefore we cannot be more pleasing to God for understanding rightly than the fire is for burning clearly which puts us evidently upon this consideration that Christian Faith that glorious Duty which gives to Christians a great degree of approximation to God by Jesus Christ must have a great proportion of that ingredient which makes actions good or bad that is of choice and effect 4. For the Faith of a Christian hath more in it of the Will than of the Understanding Faith is that great mark of distinction which separates and gives formality to the Covenant of the Gospel which is a Law of Faith The Faith of a Christian is his Religion that is it is that whole conformity to the Institution or Discipline of Jesus Christ which distinguishes him from the believers of false Religions And to be one of the faithful signifies the same with being a Disciple and that contains Obedience as well as believing For to the same sense are all those appellatives in Scripture the Faithful Brethren Believers the Saints Disciples all representing the duty of a Christian A Believer and a Saint or a holy person is the same thing Brethren signifies Charity and Believers Faith in the intellectual sence the Faithful and Disciples signifie both for besides the consent to the Proposition the first of them is also used for Perseverance and Sanctity and the greatest of Charity mixt with a confident Faith up to the height of Martyrdom Be faithful unto the death said the Holy Spirit and I will give thee the Crown of life And when the Apostles by way of abbreviation express all the body of Christian Religion they call it Faith working by Love which also S. Paul in a parallel place calls a New Creature it is a keeping of the Commandments of God that is the Faith of a Christian into whose desinition Charity is ingredient whose sence is the same with keeping of God's Commandments so that if we desine Faith we must first distinguish it The faith of a natural person or the saith of Devils is a 〈◊〉 believing a certain number of Propositions upon conviction of the Understanding But the Faith of a Christian the Faith that justifies and saves him is Faith working by Charity or Faith keeping the Commandments of God They are distinct Faiths in order to different ends and therefore of different constitution and the instrument of distinction is Charity or Obedience 5. And this great Truth is clear in the perpetual testimony of Holy Scripture For Abraham is called the Father of the Faithful and yet our Blessed Saviour told the Jews that if they had been the sons of Abraham they would have done the works of Abraham and therefore Good works are by the Apostle called the sootsteps of the Faith of our Father Abraham For Faith in every of its stages at its first beginning at its increment at its greatest perfection is a Duty made up of the concurrence of the Will and the Understanding when it pretends to the Divine acceptance Faith and Repentance begin the Christian course Repent and believe the Gospel was the summ of the Apostles Sermons and all the way after it is Faith working by Love Repentance puts the first spirit and life into Faith and Charity preserves it and gives it nourishment and increase it self also growing by a mutual supply of spirits and nutriment from Faith Whoever does heartily believe a Resurrection and Life eternal upon certain Conditions will certainly endeavour to acquire the Promises by the Purchase of Obedience and observation of the Conditions For it is not in the nature or power of man directly to despise and reject so 〈◊〉 a good So that Faith supplies Charity with argument and maintenance and Charity supplies Faith with life and motion Faith makes Charity reasonable and Charity makes Faith living and effectual And therefore the old Greeks called Faith and Charity a miraculous Chariot or Yoke they bear the burthen of the Lord with an equal consederation these are like 〈◊〉 twins they live and die together Indeed Faith is the first-born of the twins but they must come both at a birth or else they die being strangled at the gates of the womb But if Charity like Jacob lays hold upon his elder brother's heel it makes a timely and a prosperous birth and gives certain title to the eternal Promises For let us give the right of primogeniture to Faith yet the Blessing yea and the Inheritance too will at last fall to Charity Not that Faith is disinherited but that Charity only enters into the possession The nature of Faith passes into the excellency of Charity before they can be rewarded and that both may have their estimate that which justifies and saves us keeps the name of Faith but doth not do the deed till it hath the nature of Charity For to think well or to have a good opinion or an excellent or a fortunate understanding entitles us not to the love of God and the consequent inheritance but to chuse the ways of the Spirit and
Churches living under Persecution commenced many pretty opinions concerning the state and special dignity of Martyrs apportioning to them one of the three Coronets which themselves did knit and supposed as pendants to the great Crown of righteousness They made it suppletory of Baptism expiatory of sin satisfactory of publick 〈◊〉 they placed them in bliss immediately declared them to need no after-Prayer such as the Devotion of those times used to pour upon the graves of the faithful with great prudence they did endeavour to alleviate this burthen and sweeten the bitter chalice and they did it by such doctrines which did only remonstrate this great truth That since no love was greater than to lay down our lives nothing could be so great but God would indulge to them And indeed whatsoever they said in this had no inconvenience nor would it now unless men should think mere suffering to be sufficient to excuse a wicked life or that they be invited to dishonour an excellent patience with the mixture of an impure action There are many who would die for Christ if they were put to it and yet will not quit a Lust for him those are hardly to be esteemed Christ's Martyrs unless they be dead unto sin their dying for an Article or a good action will not pass the great scrutiny And it may be boldness of spirit or sullenness or an honourable gallantry of mind or something that is excellent in civil and political estimate moves the person and endears the suffering but that love only which keeps the Commandments will teach us to 〈◊〉 for love and from love to pass to blessedness through the red Sea of bloud And indeed it is more easie to die for Chastity than to live with it and many women have been found who suffered death under the violence of Tyrants for defence of their holy vows and purity who had they long continued amongst pleasures courtships curiosities and importunities of men might perchance have yielded that to a Lover which they denied to an Executioner S. Cyprian observes that our Blessed Lord in admitting the innocent Babes of Bethlehem first to die for him did to all generations of Christendom consign this Lesson That only persons holy and innocent were fit to be Christ's Martyrs And I remember that the Prince of the Latine Poets over against the region and seats of Infants places in the Shades below persons that suffered death wrongfully but adds that this their death was not enough to place them in such blessed mansions but the Judge first made inquiry into their lives and accordingly designed their station It is certain that such dyings or great sufferings are Heroical actions and of power to make great compensations and redemptions of time and of omissions and imperfections but if the Man be unholy so also are his Sufferings for Hereticks have died and vicious persons have suffered in a good cause and a dog's neck may be cut off in sacrifice and Swine's bloud may 〈◊〉 the trench about the Altar but God only accepts the Sacrifice which is pure and spotless first seasoned with salt then seasoned with fire The true Martyr must have all the preceding Graces and then he shall receive all the Beatitudes 19. The acts of this Duty are 1. Boldly to confess the Faith nobly to exercise publick vertues not to be ashamed of any thing that is honest and rather to quit our goods our liberty our health and life it self than to deny what we are bound to affirm or to omit what we are bound to do or to pretend contrary to our present perswasion 2. To rejoyce in Afflictions counting it honourable to be conformable to Christ and to wear the cognizance of Christianity whose certain lot it is to suffer the hostility and violence of enemies visible and invisible 3. Not to revile our Persecutors but to bear the Cross with evenness tranquillity patience and charity 4. To offer our sufferings to the glory of God and to joyn them with the Passions of Christ by doing it in love to God and obedience to his Sanctions and testimony of some part of his Religion and designing it as a part of duty The reward is the Kingdom of Heaven which can be no other but eternal Salvation in case the Martyrdom be consummate and they also shall be made perfect so the words of the reward were read in Clement's time If it be less it keeps its proportion all suffering persons are the combination of Saints they make the Church they are the people of the Kingdom and heirs of the Covenant For if they be but Confessors and confess Christ in prison though they never preach upon the rack or under the axe yet Christ will confess them before his heavenly Father and they shall have a portion where they shall never be persecuted any more The PRAYER O Blessed Jesus who art become to us the Fountain of Peace and Sanctity of Righteousness and Charity of Life and perpetual Benediction imprint in our spirits these glorious characterisms of Christianity that we by such excellent dispositions may be consigned to the infinity of Blessedness which thou camest to reveal and minister and exhibit to mankind Give us great Humility of spirit and deny us not when we beg Sorrow of thee the mourning and sadness of true Penitents that we may imitate thy excellencies and conform to thy sufferings Make us Meek patient indifferent and resigned in all accidents changes and issues of Divine Providence Mortifie all inordinate Anger in us all Wrath Strife Contention Murmurings Malice and Envy and interrupt and then blot out all peevish dispositions and morosities all disturbances and unevenness of spirit 〈◊〉 of habit that may hinder us in our duty Oh teach me so to hunger and thirst after the ways of Righteousness that it may be meat and drink to me to do thy Father's will Raise my affections to Heaven and heavenly things fix my heart there and prepare a treasure for me which I may receive in the great diffusions and communications of thy glory And in this sad interval of infirmity and temptations strengthen my hopes and 〈◊〉 my Faith by such emissions of light and grace from thy Spirit that I may relish those Blessings which thou preparest for thy Saints with so great appetite that I may despise the world and all its gilded vanities and may desire nothing but the crown of righteousness and the paths that lead thither 〈◊〉 graces of thy Kingdom and the glories of it that when I have served thee in holiness and strict obedience I may reign with thee in the glories of Eternity for thou O Holy Jesus art our hope and our life and glory our 〈◊〉 great reward Amen II. 〈◊〉 Jesu who art infinitely pleased in demonstrations of thy Mercy and didst descend into a state of misery suffering persecution and 〈◊〉 that thou mightest give us thy mercy and reconcile us to thy Father and make us
our Family to be turned out of doors and our whole Estate aliened and cancelled especially we being otherwise obliged to provide for them under the pain of the curse of Infidelity And indeed there is much reason our defences may be extended when the injuries are too great for our sufferance or that our defence bring no greater damage to the other than we divert from our selves But our Blessed Saviour's prohibition is instanced in such small particulars which are no limitations of the general Precept but particulars of common consideration But I say unto you resist not evil so our English Testament reads it but the word signifies avenge not evil and it binds us to this only that we be not avengers of the wrong but rather suffer twice than once to be avenged He that is struck on the face may run away or may divert the blow or bind the hand of his enemy and he whose Coat is snatched away may take it again if without injury to the other he may do it We are sometimes bound to resist evil every clearing of our innocence refuting of calumnies quitting our selves of reproach is a resisting evil but such which is hallowed to us by the example of our Lord himself and his Apostles But this Precept is clearly expounded by S. Paul Render not evil for evil that is be not revenged You may either secure or restore your selves to the condition of your own possessions or fame or preserve your life provided that no evil be returned to him that offers the injury For so sacred are the Laws of Christ so holy and great is his Example so much hath he endear'd us who were his enemies and so frequently and severely hath he preached and enjoyned Forgiveness that he who knows not to forgive knows not to be like a Christian and a Disciple of so gentle a Master 3. So that the smallness or greatness of the instance alters not the case in this duty In the greatest matters we are permitted only to an innocent defence in the smallest we may do so too I may as well hold my coat fast as my gold and I may as well hide my goods as run away and that 's a defence and if my life be in danger I must do no more but defend my 〈◊〉 Save only that defence in case of life is of a larger signification than in case of goods I may wound my enemy if I cannot else be safe I may disarm him or in any sence disable him and this is extended even to a liberty to kill him if my defence necessarily stands upon so hard conditions for although I must not give him a wound for a wound because that cannot cure me but is certainly Revenge yet when my life cannot be otherwise safe than by killing him I have used that liberty which Nature hath permitted me and Christ hath not forbidden who only interdicted Revenge and for bad no desence which is charitable and necessary and not blended with malice and anger And it is as much Charity to preserve my self as him when I fear to die 4. But although we find this no-where forbidden yet it is very consonant to the excellent mercy of the Gospel and greatly laudable if we chuse rather to lose our life in imitation of Christ than save it by the loss of another's in pursuance of the permissions of Nature When Nature only gives leave and no Law-giver gives command to defend our lives and the excellence of Christianity highly commends dying for our enemies and propounds to our imitation the greatest Example that ever could be in the world it is a very great imperfection if we chuse not rather to obey an insinuation of the Holy Jesus than with greediness and appetite pursue the bare permissions of Nature But in this we have no necessity Only this is to be read with two cautions 1. So long as the assaulted person is in actual danger he must use all arts and subterfuges which his wit or danger can supply him with as passive defence flight arts of diversion entreaties soft and gentle answers or whatsoever is in its kind innocent to prevent his sin and my danger that when he is forced to his last defence it may be certain he hath nothing of Revenge mingled in so sad a remedy 2. That this be not understood to be a permission to defend our lives against an angry and unjust Prince for if my lawful Prince should attempt my life with rage or with the abused solemnities of Law in the first case the Sacredness of his Person in the second the reverence and religion of Authority are his defensatives and immure him and bind my hands that I must not 〈◊〉 them up but to Heaven for my own defence and his pardon 5. But the vain pretences of vainer persons have here made a Question where there is no seruple And if I may defend my Life with the sword or with any thing which Nature and the Laws forbid not why not also mine Honour which is as dear as life which makes my 〈◊〉 without contempt useful to my friend and comfortable to my self For to be reputed a Coward a baffled person and one that will take affronts is to be miserable and scorned and to invite all insolent persons to do me injuries May I not be permitted to fight for mine Honour and to wipe off the stains of my reputation Honour is as dear as life and sometimes dearer To this I have many things to say For that which men in this question call Honour is nothing but a reputation amongst persons vain unchristian in their deportment empty and ignorant souls who count that the standard of Honour which is the instrument of reprobation as if to be a Gentleman were to be no Christian. They that have built their Reputation upon such societies must take new estimates of it according as the wine or fancy or custom or some great fighting person shall determine it and whatsoever invites a quarrel is a rule of Honour But then it is a sad consideration to remember that it is accounted honour not to recede from any thing we have said or done It is honour not to take the Lie in the mean time it is not dishonourable to lie indeed but to be told so and not to kill him that says it and venture my life and his too that is a forfeiture of reputation A Mistresses's favour an idle discourse a jest a jealousie a health a gayety any thing must ingage two lives in hazard and two Souls in ruine or else they are dishonoured As if a Life which is so dear to a man's self which ought to be dear to others which all Laws and wisePrinces and States have secured by the circumvallation of Laws and penalties which nothing but Heaven can recompense for the loss of which is the breath of God which to preserve Christ died the Son of God died as if this were so contemptible a
no Miracles before 30 years of age 154. 6 8. He entertains five Disciples ibid. He is to be sought for in his Ordinances 156. 4. He ejected the Merchants out of the Temple 169. 2. He mingled no Injury with his Zeal 170. 4. He Baptized Peter onely 181. 1. He ends the Samaritan's Qu. about the place of Worship 182. 4. He made a Covenant of Faith and Repentance 200. 9. This Covenant is consigned in Baptism ibid. His Miracles were greater than any man did before him 277. 2. His Passion cured our Miseries 411. 2. He was viator not comprehensor in his Passion 413. 5. His Prayer for his Enemies was effectual 416. 10. He first ascended into Heaven 419. 1. His side streamed forth two Sacraments 426. 4. He raised the Widow's son to life 291. 7. He shewed the power of a God with the infirmities of a Man 387. 9. Crowned with thorns 395. 11. His Commission to Peter 419. 4. 420. 4. He is our Advocate for actions relative to him 360. 8 9. A King 28. 13. A Star was his evidence ibid. Christians ought to be exemplary in their Lives 231. 1. Their Righteousness to exceed the Pharisaical 232 233. Christian prudence 157. 6. Christian simplicity 157. 6. They for the most part chuse not their Religion 160. 1. They are to be like Children 325. 15. Christian Liberty not to be betrayed 331. 8. Christianity an easie Yoak 295. 1. More pleasant than Sin ibid. More natural ibid. vide Praes Not so troublesome as sin 297. It is the way of peace 299. 7. Of Content ibid. 300. Of Riches and of long life 302. 13 14. seq Of Health ibid. Of Wisdom 308. 27. Children of God exposed to Temptations 98. 7 8. Church deserves great Revenues but needs them not 70. 8 9. Her endowments are of advantage to the People ibid. Dangerous for the Church to be Rich in Temporal possessions ibid. Church ought to be more apt to remit of Temporal rights than others ibid. Church-Tribunal to be of great mercy 430. 16. Compared with God's Tribunal ibid. It is impregnable against Hell-gates 321. 9. Built upon the Confession of Peter ibid. Churches built upon Mount Tabor 322. 11. They are Holy Places to what sence and to what purposes 172. How to be used 176. 11. Church in Paradise called the presence of God 175. 7. The residence of Angels ibid. 8. Their best ornament is the holiness of worshippers 178. 14. They are desecrated by Vice ibid. Circumcision an earnest of the Passion 36. 1. Not declared to be remissive of original sin ibid. Circumcision of Christ served many purposes 37. 2. It was an act of Obedience ibid. Complying with customes of civility sometimes a Temptation 108. 16. Company-keeping to be avoided as it can ibid. Communion of Saints profitable and pleasant 75. Comforts more necessary to 〈◊〉 Converts 33. 9. Clergie's duty under the Parable of a Steward 326. 26. Covetousness its fruits 361. 10. 390. Confession to a Minister of Religion 218. 51. Contrition alone not sufficient for Pardon ibid. Consecration of the Eucharist mysterious 369. 2. Cure of Souls a dangerous and grave Imployment 96. 2. D. DEscription of Jesus by way of Meditation and Mystery 16. 5 6. Decalogue expounded 231. Death happening untimely doth not always consign to Damnation 336. Preparation to Death 397. seq It comes by all accidents ibid. Deaths sudden and rare ibid. Death-bed Repentance too late 339. 5. Vide Repentance It is desirable 405. 19. How far it may be prayed against ibid. To be submitted to in all cases ibid. Death of Man sanctified and conquered by Christ's Death 426. 7. 405. 19. Dying persons how to be treated and assisted 400. 6. Devils confessed Christ 290. 4. That the Devil had the managing of the Roman Empire was the Opinion of some Wise-men 100. 14. One deaf and dumb ejected 321. 7. He furnishes evil persons with apt instruments 361. 10. How they did appear to Jesus in the Desart 95. 7. They are impotent in their malice 100. Can hurt no Soul without its consent ibid. 13. The Tribute of the Didrachm 322. 13. Diligence in our Calling accepted though our Calling be mean 32. Dispensations not to be accepted too freely 37. Disobedience to God in great and small instances compared 44. 12 13. Disobedience to GOD and Man compared 46. A deliberate choice of the smallest disobedience in its formality is destructive though in the matter it be otherwise pardonable 44. 12. Defence of our selves permitted 252. 2. Not against our Prince ibid. Defence of our innocence in Judgment permitted 252. Dove descending on Christ was mysterious 97. 5. Doubting the issue of our Prayers in what sense lawful 267. 15. Duels unlawful 253. 5. seq Doubting in an Article how to be cured 400. 8. Despair how to be cured 401. 10. E. EGyptian Idols fell to the Ground at Christ's coming thither 67. 9. In AEgypt Christ dwelt in a Garden of Balsam ibid. Egyptians worshipped an Infant in a Cradle and a Virgin in a Bed ibid. Envy reproved by the example of Angels 29. 2. Envy spiritual 360. 9. Eat for necessity not delight 87. 15. Eli's Family short-lived 308. 24. Cured by Repentance ibid. Election what it signifies in Scripture 313. 2. It depends upon Duty 314. uncertain to us ibid. Ecclesiastical Regiment how differing from Secular 323. 14. Ecclesiastical power verified in Heaven 323. 16. Ecclesiastical persons bound to communicate often 379. 18. Ecclesiastical Persons are to imitate Christ in Meekness Innocence Suffering 393. 8 9. Ecclesiastical Judicatories compared with the Divine 430. Earnest of the Spirit what it signifies 316. 7. Eclipse of the Sun at the Passion was miraculous 355. 34. Enemies occasion to us of much good 386. 8. Erring persons how to be treated 188. 2. 10. 7. Evil counsels come to nought 85. 2. Though they succeed it is not Prosperity ibid. Elizabeth carried her Son the Baptist into the Wilderness 77. 1. She died after 40 days ibid. Example of Preachers is the best Sermon 78. 5. 364. 4. Examples of Divine Judgments 338. 5. Esau's Repentance 391. 7. Excuses from frequent communion not valid 379. 20. Evenness and moderation of a religious state most necessary for young beginners and safest for all men 407 408. Expences unnecessary to be cut off and spent in Alms. 252. 2. F. FAlse witness highly criminal 250. 40. Familiarity with God what it should signifie 33. 26. Faith described 160. 2. Charity is part of its constitution ibid. However it be produced whether it be proved or not it is sufficient 157. 7. 162. 1. Pref. 28. Faith of ignorant and knowing men compared 160. 1 2. Faith of Christians how it differs from that of Devils 163. 7. Excellencies and effects of Faith 163. 9. seq The marks of a truly Christian Faith ibid. Vide Disc. of Faith per tot Fasting before the Sacrament 272. 1. Degrees Manner and Rules of Fasting 274. 275. It is no duty of
on to preach confidently and securely for that he himself would stand by him and preserve him 2. ABOUT this time as is most probable he wrote his first Epistle to the Thessalonians Silas and Timothy being lately returned from thence and having done the message for which he had sent them thither The main design of the Epistle is to confirm them in the belief of the Christian Religion and that they would persevere in it notwithstanding all the afflictions and persecutions which he had told them would ensue upon their profession of the Gospel and to instruct them in the main duties of a Christian and Religious life While the Apostle was thus imployed the malice of the Jews was no less at work against him and universally combining together they brought him before Gallio the Proconsul of the Province elder Brother to the famous Seneca Before him they accused the Apostle as an Innovator in Religion that sought to introduce a new way of worship contrary to what was established by the Jewish Law and permitted by the Roman Powers The Apostle was ready to have pleaded his own cause but the Proconsul told them that had it been a matter of right or wrong that had faln under the cognizance of the Civil Judicature it had been very fit and reasonable that he should have heard and determined the case but since the controversie was only concerning the punctilio's and niceties of their Religion it was very improper for him to be a Judge in such matters And when they still clamoured about it he threw out their Indictment and commanded his officers to drive them out of Court Whereupon some of the Towns men seised upon Sosthenes one of the Rulers of the Jewish Consistory a man active and busie in this Insurrection and beat him even before the Court of Judicature the Proconsul not at all concerning himself about it A year and an half S. Paul continued in this place and before his departure thence wrote his second Epistle to the Thessalonians to supply the want of his coming to them which in his former he had resolved on and for which in a manner he had engaged his promise In this therefore he endeavours again to confirm their minds in the truth of the Gospel and that they would not be shaken with those troubles which the wicked unbelieving Jews would not cease to create them a lost and undone race of men and whom the Divine vengeance was ready finally to overtake And because some passages in his 〈◊〉 Letter relating to this destruction had been mis-understood as if this day of the Lord were just then at hand he rectifies those mistakes and shews what must precede our Lord's coming unto Judgment 3. S. 〈◊〉 having thus fully planted and cultivated the Church at Corinth resolved now for Syria And taking along with him Aquila and Priscilla at Cenchrea the Port and Harbour of Corinth Aquila for of him it is certainly to be understood shaved his head in performance of a Nazarite-Vow he had formerly made the time whereof was now run out In his passage into Syria he came to Ephesus where he preached a while in the Synagogue of the Jews And though desired to stay with them yet having resolved to be at Jerusalem at the Passeover probably that he might have the fitter opportunity to meet his friends and preach the Gospel to those vast numbers that usually 〈◊〉 to that great solemnity he promised that in his return he would come again to them Sailing thence he landed at Caesarca and thence went up to Jerusalem where having visited the Church and kept the Feast he went down to Antioch Here having staid some time he traversed the Countries of Galatia and Phrygia confirming as he went the new-converted Christians and so came to 〈◊〉 where finding certain Christian Disciples he enquired of them whether since their conversion they had received the miraculous gifts and powers of the Holy Ghost They told him that the Doctrine which they had received had nothing in it of that nature nor had they ever heard that any such extraordinary Spirit had of late been bestowed upon the Church Hereupon he further enquired unto what they had been baptized the Christian Baptism being administred in the name of the Holy Ghost They answered they had received no more than John's Baptism which though it 〈◊〉 them to repentance yet did explicitly speak nothing of the Holy Ghost or its gists and powers To this the Apostle replied That though John's Baptism did openly oblige to nothing but Repentance yet that it did implicitly acknowledge the whole Doctrine concerning Christ and the Holy Ghost Whereto they assenting were solemnly initiated by Christian Baptism and the Apostle laying his hands upon them they immediately received the Holy Ghost in the gift of Tongues Prophecy and other miraculous powers conferred upon them 4. AFTER this he 〈◊〉 into the Jewish Synagogues where for the first three months he contended and disputed with the Jews endeavouring with great earnestness and resolution to convince them of the truth of those things that concerned the Christian Religion But when instead of success he met with nothing but refractoriness and infidelity he left the Synagogue and taking those with him whom he had converted instructed them and others that resorted to him in the School of one Tyrannus a place where Scholars were wont to be educated and instructed In this manner he continued for two years together In which time the Jews and Proselytes of the whole 〈◊〉 Asia had opportunity of having the Gospel preached to them And because Miracles are the clearest evidence of a Divine commission and the most immediate Credentials of Heaven those which do nearliest affect our senses and consequently have the strongest influence upon our minds therefore God was pleased to ratifie the doctrine which S. Paul delivered by great and miraculous operations and those of somewhat a more peculiar and extraordinary nature Insomuch that he did not only heal those that came to him but if Napkins or Handkerchiefs were but touched by him and applied unto the sick their diseases immediately vanished and the Daemons and evil Spirits departed out of those that were possessed by them 5. EPHESUS above all other places in the World was noted of old for the study of Magick and all secret and hidden Arts whence the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so often spoken of by the Ancients which were certain obscure and mystical Spells and Charms by which they endeavoured to heal Diseases and drive away evil Spirits and do things beyond the reach and apprehensions of common people Besides other professors of this black Art there were at this time at Ephesus certain Jews who dealt in the arts of 〈◊〉 and Incantation a craft and mystery which Josephus affirms to have been derived from Solomon who he tells us did not only find it out but composed forms of Exorcism and Inchantment whereby to cure diseases and expel
before the Sanhedrim The difference between the Pharisees and Sadducees about him The Jews conspiracy against his life discovered His being sent unto Caesarea 1. IT was not long after the tumult at Ephesus when S. Paul having called the Church together and constituted Timothy Bishop of that place took his leave and departed by 〈◊〉 for Macedonia And at this time it was that as he himself tells us he preached the Gospel round about unto Illyricum since called Sclavonia some parts of Macedonia bordering on that Province From Macedonia he returned back unto Greece where he abode three months and met with Titus lately come with great contributions 〈◊〉 the Church at Corinth By whose example he stirr'd up the liberality of the Macedonians who very freely and somewhat beyond their ability contributed to the poor Christians at Jerusalem From Titus he had an account of the present state of the Church at Corinth and by him at his return together with S. Luke he sent his second Epistle to them Wherein he endeavours to set right what his former Epistle had not yet effected to vindicate his Apostleship from that contempt and scorn and himself from those slanders and aspersions which the seducers who had found themselves lasht by his first Epistle had cast upon him together with some other particular cases relating to them Much about the same time he writ his first Epistle to Timothy whom he had left at Ephesus wherein at large he counsels him how to carry himself in the discharge of that great place and authority in the Church which he had committed to him instructs him in the particular qualifications of those whom he should make choice of to be Bishops and Ministers in the Church How to order the Deaconesses and to instruct Servants warning him withall of that pestilent generation of hereticks and seducers that would arise in the Church During his three months stay in Greece he went to Corinth whence he wrote his famous Epistle to the Romans which he sent by Phoebe a Deaconess of the Church of Cenchrea nigh Corinth wherein his main design is fully to state and determine the great controversie between the Jews and Gentiles about the obligation of the Rites and Ceremonies of the Jewish Law and those main and material Doctrines of Christianity which did depend upon it such as of Christian liberty the use of indifferent things c. And which is the main end of all Religion instructs them in and presses them to the duties of an holy and good life such as the Christian Doctrine does naturally tend to oblige men to 2. S. PAUL being now resolved for Syria to convey the contributions to the Brethren at Jerusalem was a while diverted from that resolution by a design he was told of which the Jews had to kill and rob him by the way Whereupon he went back into Macedonia and so came to Philippi and thence went to Troas where having staid a week on the Lords-day the Church met together to receive the holy Sacrament Here S. Paul preached to them and continued his discourse till midnight the longer probably being the next day to depart from them The length of his discourse and the time of the night had caused some of his Auditors to be overtaken with sleep and drowsiness among whom a young man called 〈◊〉 being fast asleep fell down from the third story and was taken up dead but whom S. Paul presently restored to life and health How indefatigable was the industry of our Apostle how close did he tread in his Masters steps who went about doing good He compassed Sea and Land preached and wrought miracles whereever he came In every place like a wise Master-builder he either laid a foundation or raised the superstructure He was instant in season and out of season and spared not his pains either night or day that he might do good to the Souls of men The night being thus spent in holy exercises S. Paul in the morning took his leave and went on foot to 〈◊〉 a Sea-port Town whither he had sent his company by Sea Thence they set sail to 〈◊〉 from thence to Samos and having staid some little time at Trogyllium the next day came to Myletus not so much as putting in at Ephesus because the Apostle was resolved if possible to be at Jerusalem at the Feast of Pentecost 3. AT Myletus he sent to Ephesus to summon the Bishops and Governours of the Church who being come he put them in mind with what uprightness and integrity with what affection and humility with how great trouble and danger with how much faithfulness to their Souls he had been conversant among them and had preached the Gospel to them ever since his first coming into those parts That he had not failed to acquaint them both publickly and privately with whatever might be useful and profitable to them urging both upon Jews and Gentiles repentance and reformation of life and an hearty entertainment of the Faith of Christ That now he was resolved to go to Jerusalem where he did not know what particular sufferings would befall him more than this That it had been foretold him in every place by those who were indued with the Prophetical gifts of the Holy Ghost that afflictions and imprisonment would attend him there But that he was not troubled at this no nor unwilling to lay down his life so he might but successfully preach the Gospel and faithfully serve his Lord in that place and station wherein he had set him That he knew that henceforth they should see his face no more but that this was his encouragement and satisfaction that they themselves could bear him witness that he had not by concealing from them any parts of the Christian Doctrine betray'd their Souls That as for themselves whom God had made Bishops and Pastors of his Church they should be careful to feed guide and direct those Christians under their inspection and be infinitely tender of the good of Souls for whose redemption Christ laid down his own life That all the care they could use was no more than necessary it being certain that after his departure Heretical Teachers would break in among them and endanger the ruine of mens Souls nay that even among themselves there would some arise who by subtil and crasty methods by corrupt and pernicious Doctrines would gain Proselytes to their party and thereby make Rents and Schisms in the Church That therefore they should watch remembring with what tears and sorrow he had 〈◊〉 three years together warned them of these things That now he recommended them to the Divine care and goodness and to the rules and instructions of the Gospel which if adhered to would certainly dispose and perfect them for that state of happiness which God had prepared for good men in Heaven In short that he had all a long dealt faithfully and uprightly with them they might know from hence that in all his preaching he had
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
Their Oral and unwritten Law It s original and succession according to the mind of the Jews Their unreasonable and blasphemous preferring it above the written Law Their religious observing the Traditions of the Elders The Vow of Corban what The superseding Moral Duties by it The Sects in the Jewish Church The Pharisees their denomination rise temper and principles Sadducees their impious Principles and evil lives The Essenes their original opinions and way of life The Herodians who The Samaritans Karraeans The Sect of the Zealots The Roman Tyranny over the Jewes 1. THE Church which had hitherto lyen dispersed in private Families and had often been reduced to an inconsiderable number being now multiplied into a great and a populous Nation God was pleased to enter into Covenant not any longer with particular Persons but with the Body of the People and to govern the Church by more certain and regular ways and methods than it had hitherto been This Dispensation began with the delivery of the Law and continued till the final period of the Jewish state consisting only of meats and drinks and divers washings and carnal Ordinances imposed on them until the time of reformation In the survey whereof we shall chiefly consider what Laws were given for the Government of the Church by what Methods of revelation God communicated his mind and will to them and what was the state of the Church especially towards the conclusion of this Oeconomy 2. THE great Minister of this Dispensation was Moses the Son of Amram of the House of Levi a Person whose signal preservation when but an Infant presaged him to be born for great and generous undertakings Pharaoh King of Egypt desirous to suppress the growing numbers of the Jewish Nation had afflicted and kept them under with all the rigorous severities of tyranny and oppression But this not taking its effect he made a Law that all Hebrew Male-children should be drowned as soon as born knowing well enough how to kill the root if he could keep any more Branches from springing up But the wisdom of Heaven defeated his crafty and barbarous 〈◊〉 Among others that were born at that time was Moses a goodly Child and whom his Mother was infinitely desirous to preserve but having concealed him till the saving of his might endanger the losing her own life her affection suggested to her this little stratagem she prepared an Ark made of Paper-reeds and pitched within and so putting him a-board this little Vessel threw him into the River Nilus committing him to the mercy of the waves and the conduct of the Divine Providence God who wisely orders all events had so disposed things that Pharaohs daughter whose name say the Jews was Bithia Thermuth says Josephus say the Arabians Sihhoun being troubled with a distemper that would not endure the hot Bathes was come down at this time to wash in the Nile where the cries of the tender Babe soon reached her ears She commanded the Ark to be brought a-shore which was no sooner opened but the silent oratory of the weeping Infant sensibly struck her with compassionate resentments And the Jews add that she no sooner touched the Babe but she was immediately healed and cried out that he was a holy Child and that she would save his life for which say they she obtained the favour to be brought under the wings of the Divine Majesty and to be called the daughter of God His Sister Miriam who had all this while beheld the scene afar off officiously proffered her service to the Princess to call an Hebrew Nurse and accordingly went and brought his Mother To her care he was committed with a charge to look tenderly to him and the promise of a reward But the hopes of that could add but little where nature was so much concerned Home goes the Mother joyful and proud of her own pledge and the royal charge carefully providing for his tender years His infant state being pass'd he was restored to the Princess who adopted him for her own son bred him up at Court where he was polished with all the arts of a noble and ingenuous education instructed in the modes of civility and behaviour in the methods of policy and government Learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians whose renown for wisdom is not only once and again taken notice of in holy Writ but their admirable skill in all liberal Sciences Natural Moral and Divine beyond the rate and proportion of other Nations is sufficiently celebrated by foreign Writers To these accomplishments God was pleased to add a Divine temper of mind a great zeal for God not able to endure any thing that seemed to clash with the interests of the Divine honour and glory a mighty courage and resolution in God's service whose edge was not to be taken off either by threats or charms He was not afraid of the Kings commandment nor feared the wrath of the King for he endured as seeing him that is invisible His contempt of the World was great and admirable sleighting the honours of Pharoah's Court and the fair probabilities of the Crown the treasures and pleasures of that rich soft and luxurious Country out of a firm belief of the invisible rewards of another World He refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter chusing rather to suffer 〈◊〉 with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt for he had respect unto the recompence of reward Josephus relates that when but a child he was presented by the Princess to her Father as one whom she had adopted for her son and designed for his successor in the Kingdom the King taking him up into his arms put his Crown upon his head which the child immediately pull'd off again and throwing it upon the ground trampled it under his feet An action which however looked upon by some Courtiers then present 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 portending a fatal Omen to the Kingdom did however evidently presage his generous contempt of the grandeur and honours of the Court and those plausible advantages of Soveraignty that were offered to him His patience was insuperable not tired out with the abuses and disappointments of the King of Egypt with the hardships and troubles of the Wilderness and which was beyond all with the cross and vexatious humors of a stubborn and unquiet generation He was of a most calm and treatable disposition his spirit not easily ruffled with passion he who in the cause of God and Religion could be bold and fierce as a Lion was in his own patient as a Lamb God himself having given this character of him That he was the meekest man upon the Earth 3. THIS great personage thus excellently qualified God made choice of him to be the Commander and conducter of the Jewish Nation and his Embassador to the King of Egypt to demand the enfranchisement of
of his Neighbour-creatures the skins of Beasts 〈◊〉 hair and a Leathern girdle and herein he literally made good the character of Elias who is described as an hairy man girt with a Leathern girdle about his Loins His Diet suitable to his Garb his Meat was Locusts and wild Honey Locusts accounted by all Nations amongst the meanest and vilest sorts of food wild honey such as the natural artifice and labour of the Bees had stored up in caverns and hollow Trees without any elaborate curiosity to prepare and dress it up Indeed his abstinence was so great and his food so unlike other Mens that the Evangelist says of him that he came neither eating nor drinking as if he had eaten nothing or at least what was worth nothing But Meat commends us not to God it is the devout mind and the honest life that makes us valuable in the eye of Heaven The place of his abode was not in Kings houses in stately and delicate Palaces but where he was born and bred the Wilderness of Judaea he was in the Desarts until the time of his shewing unto Israel Divine grace is not consined to particular places it is not the holy City or the Temple at Mount Sion makes us nearer unto Heaven God can when he please consecrate a Desart into a Church make us gather Grapes among Thorns and Religion become fruitful in a barren Wilderness 4. PREPARED by so singular an Education and furnished with an immediate Commission from God he entred upon the actual administration of his Office In those days came John the Baptist preaching in the Wilderness of Judaea and saying Repent ye for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand He was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Justin Martyr calls him the Herald to Proclaim the first approach of the Holy Jesus his whole Ministry tending to prepare the way to his entertainment accomplishing herein what was of old foretold concerning him For this is he that was spoken of by the Prophet Esaias saying The Voice of one crying in the Wilderness Prepare ye the way of the Lord make his paths straight He told the 〈◊〉 that the Messiah whom they had so long expected was now at hand and his Kingdom ready to appear that the Son of God was come down from Heaven a Person as far beyond him in dignity as in time and existence to whom he was not worthy to minister in the meanest Offices that he came to introduce a new and better state of things to enlighten the World with the clearest Revelations of the Divine will and to acquaint them with counsels brought from the bosom of the Father to put a period to all the types and umbrages of the Mosaic Dispensation and bring in the truth and substance of all those shadows and to open a Fountain of grace and fulness to Mankind to remove that state of guilt into which humane nature was so deeply sunk and as the Lamb of God by the expiatory Sacrifice of 〈◊〉 to take away the sin of the World not like the continual Burnt-offering the Lamb offered Morning and Evening only for the sins of the House of Israel but for Jew and Gentile Barbarian and Scythian bond and free he told them that God had a long time born with the sins of Men and would now bring things to a quicker issue and that therefore they should do well to break off their sins by repentance and by a serious amendment and reformation of life dispose themselves for the glad tidings of the Gospel that they should no longer bear up themselves upon their external priviledges the Fatherhood of Abraham and their being God's select and peculiar People that God would raise up to himself another Generation a Posterity of Abraham from among the Gentiles who should walk in his steps in the way of his unshaken faith and sincere obedience and that if all this did not move them to bring forth fruits meet for repentance the Axe was laid to the root of the Tree to extirpate their Church and to hew them down as fuel for the unquenchable Fire His free and resolute preaching together with the great severity of his life procured him a vast Auditory and numerous Proselytes for there went out to him Jerusalem and all Judaea and the Region round about Jordan Persons of all ranks and orders of all Sects and Opinions 〈◊〉 and Sadducees Souldiers and Publicans whose Vices he impartially censured and condemned and pressed upon them the duties of their particular places and relations Those whom he gained over to be Proselytes to his Doctrine he entred into this new Institution of life by Baptism and hence he derived his Title of the Baptist a solemn and usual way of initiating Proselytes no less than Circumcision and of great antiquity in the Jewish Church In all times says Maimonides if any Gentile would enter into Covenant remain under the wings of the Schechina or Divine Majesty and take upon him the yoke of the Law he is bound to have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Circumcision Baptism and a Peace-offering and if a Woman Baptism and an Oblation because it is said As ye are so shall the stranger be as ye your selves 〈◊〉 into Covenant by Circumcision Baptism and a Peace-offering so ought the Proselyte also in all Ages to enter in Though this last he confesses is to be omitted during their present state of desolation and to be made when their Temple shall be rebuilt This Rite they generally make contemporary with the giving of the Law So Maimonides By three things says he the Israelites entred into Covenant he means the National Covenant at Mount Sinai by Circumcision Baptism and an Oblation Baptism being used some little time before the Law which he proves from that place 〈◊〉 the People to day and to morrow and let them wash their Clothes This the Rabbines unanimously expound concerning Baptism and expresly affirm that where-ever we read of the Washing of Clothes there an obligation to Baptism is intended Thus they entred into the first Covenant upon the frequent violations whereof God having promised to make a new and solemn Covenant with them in the times of the Messiah they expected a second Baptism as that which should be the Rite of their Initiation into it And this probably is the reason why the Apostle writing to the Hebrews speaks of the Doctrin of Baptisms in the plural number as one of the primary and elementary Principles of the faith wherein the Catechumens were to be instructed meaning that besides the Baptism whereby they had been initiated into the Mosaic Covenant there was another by which they were to enter into this new 〈◊〉 that was come upon the World Hence the Sanhedrim to whom the cognizance of such cases did peculiarly appertain when told of John's Baptism never expressed any wonder at it as a new upstart Ceremony it being a thing daily practised in their Church nor found fault
and perfection whereof he designed should be brought in by Christ. And how admirably did God herein condescend to the temper and humor of that people for being of a more rough and childish disposition apt to be taken with gaudy and sensible objects by the external and pompous institutions of the Ceremonial Dispensation he prepared them for better things as children are brought on by things accommodate to their weak capacities The Church was then an heir under age and was to be trained up in such a way as agreed best with its Infant-temper till it came to be of a more ripe manly age able to digest Evangelical mysteries and then the cover and the veil was taken off and things made to appear in their own form and shape 7. HENCE in the next place appears our happiness above them that we are redeemed from those many severe and burdensom impositions wherewith they were clogg'd and are now obliged only to a more easie and reasonable service That the Law was a very grievous and 〈◊〉 Dispensation is evident to any that considers how much it consisted of carnal ordinances costly duties chargeable sacrifices and innumerable little Rites and Ceremonies Under that state they were bound to undergo yea even new-born Infants the bloudy and painful 〈◊〉 of Circumcision to abstain from many sorts of food useful and pleasant to man's life to keep multitudes of solemn and stated times new Moons and Ceremonial Sabbaths to take long and tedious journeys to Jerusalem to offer their sacrifices at the Temple to observe daily washings and purifications to use infinite care and caution in every place for if by chance they did but touch an unclean thing besides their present confinement it put them to the expences of a sacrifice with hundreds more troublesome and costly observances required of them A cruel bondage heavy burdens and grievous to be born under the weight whereof good men did then groan and earnestly breath after the time of reformation the very Apostles complained that it was a yoke upon their necks which neither their Fathers nor they were able to bear But this yoke is taken off from our shoulders and the way open into the liberties of the children of God The Law bore a heavy hand over them as children in their minority we are got from under the rod and lash of its tutorage and Pedagogie and are no more subject to the severity of its commands to the exact punctilio's and numerousness of its impositions Our Lord has removed that low and troublesome Religion and has brought in a more manly and rational way of worship more suitable to the perfections of God and more accommodate to the reason and understandings of men A Religion incomparably the wisest and the best that ever took place in the World God did not settle the Religion of the Jews and their way of worship because good and excellent in it self but for its suitableness to the temper of that people Happy we whom the Gospel has freed from those intolerable observances to which they were obliged and has taught us to serve God in a better way more 〈◊〉 and acceptable more humane and natural and in which we are helped forwards by greater aids of Divine assistence than were afforded under that Dispensation All which conspire to render our way smooth and plain Take my yoke upon you for my yoke is easie and my burden is light 8. THIRDLY the Dispensation of the Gospel is founded upon more noble and excellent promises A better Covenant established upon better promises And better promises they are both for the nature and clearness of their revelation They were of a more sublime and excellent nature as being promises of spiritual and eternal things such as immediately concerned the perfection and happiness of mankind grace peace pardon and eternal life The Law strictly considered as a particular Covenant with the Jews at Mount Sinai had no other promises but of temporal blessings plenty and prosperity and the happiness of this life This was all that appeared above-ground and that was expresly held forth in that transaction whatever might otherwise by due inferences and proportions of reason be deduced from it Now this was a great defect in that Dispensation it being by this means considering the nature and disposition of that people and the use they would make of it apt to intangle and debase the minds of men and to arrest their thoughts and desires in the pursuit of more sublime and better things I do not say but that under the Old Testament there were promises of spiritual things and of eternal happiness as appears from 〈◊〉 Psalms and some passages in the Books of the Prophets But then these though they were under the Law yet they were not of the Law that is did not properly belong to it as a legal Covenant God in every age of the Jewish Church raising up some extraordinary persons who preached notions to the people above the common standard of that Dispensation and who spoke things more plainly by how much nearer they approached the times of the Messiah But under the Christian Oeconomy the promises are evidently more pure and spiritual not a temporal Canaan external prosperity or pardon of ceremonial uncleanness but remission of sins reconciliation with God and everlasting life are proposed and offered to us Not but that in some measure temporal blessings are promised to us as well as them only with this difference to them earthly blessings were pledges of spiritual to us spiritual blessings are ensurances of temporal so far as the Divine wisdom sees fit for us Nor are they better in themselves than they are clearly discovered and revealed to us Whatever spiritual blessings were proposed under the former state were obscure and dark and very few of the people understood them But to us the veil is taken off and we behold the glory of the Lord with open face especially the things that relate to another World for this is the promise that he hath promised us even Eternal Life Hence our Lord is said to have brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel Which he may be justly said to have done inasmuch as he has given the greatest certainty and the clearest account of that state He hath given us the greatest assurance and certainty of the thing that there is such a state The happiness of the other World was a notion not so firmly agreed upon either amongst Jews or Gentiles Among the Jews it was peremptorily denied by the Sadducees a considerable Sect in that Church which we can hardly suppose they would have done had it been clearly propounded in the Law of Moses And among the Heathens the most sober and considering persons did at some times at least doubt of it witness that confession of Socrates himself the wisest and best man that ever was in the Heathen World who when he came to plead his cause before his Judges and
kept the same form and power in the several Families which were in the original yet it introduced some new necessities which although they varied in the instance yet were to be determined by such instruments of Reason which were given to us at first upon foresight of the publick necessities of the World And when the Families came to be divided that their common Parent being extinct no Master of a Family had power over another Master the rights of such men and their natural power became equal because there was nothing to distinguish them and because they might do equal injury and invade each other's possessions and disturb their peace and surprise their liberty And so also was their power of doing benefit equal though not the same in kind But God who made Man a sociable creature because he knew it was not good for him to be alone so dispensed the abilities and possibilities of doing good that in something or other every man might need or be benefited by every man Therefore that they might pursue the end of Nature and their own appetites of living well and happily they were forced to consent to such Contracts which might secure and supply to every one those good things without which he could not live happily Both the Appetites the Irascible and the Concupiscible fear of evil and desire of benefit were the sufficient endearments of Contracts of Societies and Republicks And upon this stock were decreed and hallowed all those Propositions without which Bodies politick and Societies of men cannot be happy And in the transaction of these many accidents daily happening it grew still reasonable that is necessary to the End of living happily that all those after-Obligations should be observed with the proportion of the same faith and endearment which bound the first Contracts For though the natural Law be always the same yet some parts of it are primely necessary others by supposition and accident and both are of the same necessity that is equally necessary in the several cases Thus to obey a King is as necessary and naturally reasonable as to obey a Father that is supposing there be a King as it is certain naturally a man cannot be but a Father must be supposed If it be made necessary that I promise it is also necessary that I perform it for else I shall return to that inconvenience which I sought to avoid when I made the Promise and though the instance be very far removed from the first necessities and accidents of our prime being and production yet the reason still pursues us and natural Reason reaches up to the very last minutes and orders the most remote particulars of our well-being 11. Thus Not to Steal Not to commit Adultery Not to kill are very reasonable prosecutions of the great End of Nature of living well and happily But when a man is said to steal when to be a Murtherer when to be Incestuous the natural Law doth not teach in all cases but when the superinduced Constitution hath determined the particular Law by natural Reason we are obliged to observe it because though the Civil power makes the instance and determines the particular yet right Reason makes the Sanction and passes the Obligation The Law of Nature makes the major Proposition but the Civil Constitution or any superinduced Law makes the Assumption in a practical Syllogism To kill is not Murther but to kill such persons whom I ought not It was not Murther among the Jews to kill a man-slayer before he entred a City of Refuge to kill the same man after his entry was Among the Romans to kill an Adulteress or a Ravisher in the act was lawful with us it is Murther Murther and Incest and Theft always were unlawful but the same actions were not always the same crimes And it is just with these as with Disobedience which was ever criminal but the same thing was not estimated to be Disobedience nor indeed could any thing be so till the Sanction of a Superior had given the instance of Obedience So for Theft To catch Fish in rivers or Deer or Pigeons when they were esteemed ferae naturae of a wild condition and so primo 〈◊〉 was lawful just as to take or kill Badgers or Foxes and Bevers and Lions but when the Laws had appropriated Rivers and divided Shores and imparked Deer and housed Pigeons it became Theft to take them without leave To despoil the Egyptians was not Theft when God who is the Lord of all possessions had bidden the Israelites but to do so now were the breach of the natural Law and of a Divine Commandment For the natural Law I said is eternal in the Sanction but variable in the instance and the expression And indeed the Laws of Nature are very few They were but two at first and but two at last when the great change was made from Families to Kingdoms The first is to do duty to God The second is to do to our selves and our Neighbours that is to our neighbours as to our selves all those actions which naturally reasonably or by institution or emergent necessity are in order to a happy life Our Blessed Saviour reduces all the Law to these two 1. Love the Lord with all thy heart 2. Love thy neighbour as thy self In which I observe in verification of my former discourse that Love is the first natural bond of Duty to God and so also it is to our Neighbour And therefore all entercourse with our neighbour was founded in and derived from the two greatest endearments of Love in the world A man came to have a Neighbour by being a Husband and a Father 12. So that still there are but two great natural Laws binding us in our relations to God and Man we remaining essentially and by the very design of creation obliged to God in all and to our neighbours in the proportions of equality as thy self that is that he be permitted and promoted in the order to his living well and happily as thou art for Love being there not an affection but the duty that results from the first natural bands of Love which began Neighbourhood signifies Justice Equality and such reasonable proceedings which are in order to our common End of a happy life and is the same with that other Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you do you to them and that is certainly the greatest and most effective Love because it best promotes that excellent End which God designed for our natural perfection All other particulars are but prosecutions of these two that is of the order of Nature save only that there is a third Law which is a part of Love too it is Self-love and therefore is rather supposed than at the first expressed because a man is reasonably to be presumed to have in him a sufficient stock of Self-love to serve the ends of his nature and creation and that is that man demean and use his own body
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
and adherences of love and obedience to his heavenly Father were next to infinite yet in his external actions in which only with the correspondence of the Spirit in those actions he propounds himself imitable he did so converse with men that men after that example might for ever converse with him We find that some Saints have had excrescencies and eruptions of Holiness in the instances of uncommanded Duties which in the same particulars we find not in the story of the Life of Jesus John Baptist was a greater Mortifier than his Lord was and some Princes have given more money than all Christ's Family did whilest he was alive but the difference which is observable is that although some men did some acts of Counsel in order to attain that perfection which in Jesus was essential and unalterable and was not acquired by degrees and means of danger and difficulty yet no man ever did his whole duty save only the Holy Jesus The best of men did sometimes actions not precisely and strictly requisite and such as were besides the Precept but yet in the greatest flames of their shining Piety they prevaricated something of the Commandment They that have done the most things beyond have also done some things short of their duty But Jesus who intended himself the Example of Piety did in manners as in the rule of Faith which because it was propounded to all men was fitted to every understanding it was true necessary short easie and intelligible So was his Rule and his Copy 〈◊〉 not only with excellencies worthy but with compliances possible to be imitated of glories so great that the most early and constant industry must confess its own imperfections and yet so sweet and humane that the greatest infirmity if pious shall find comfort and encouragement Thus God gave his children Manna from Heaven and though it was excellent like the food of Angels yet it conformed to every palate according to that appetite which their several fancies and constitutions did produce 9. But now when the Example of Jesus is so excellent that it allures and tempts with its facility and sweetness and that we are not commanded to imitate a Life whose story tells of 〈◊〉 in Prayer and Abstractions of senses and immaterial Transportations and Fastings to the exinanition of spirits and disabling all animal operations but a Life of Justice and Temperance of Chastity and Piety of Charity and Devotion such a Life without which humane Society cannot be conserved and by which as our irregularities are made regular so our weaknesses are not upbraided nor our miseries made a mockery we find so much reason to address our selves to a heavenly imitation of so blessed a Pattern that the reasonableness of the thing will be a great argument to chide every degree and minute of neglect It was a strange and a confident encouragement which Phocion used to a timorous Greek who was condemned to die with him Is it not enough to thee that thou must die with Phocion I am sure he that is most incurious of the issues of his life is yet willing enough to reign with Jesus when he looks upon the Glories represented without the Duty but it is a very great stupidity and unreasonableness not to live with him in the imitation of so holy and so prompt a Piety It is glorious to do what he did and a shame to decline his Sufferings when there was a God to hallow and sanctifie the actions and a Man clothed with infirmity to undergo the sharpness of the passion so that the Glory of the person added excellency to the first and the Tenderness of the person excused not from suffering the latter 10. Thirdly Every action of the Life of Jesus as it is imitable by us is of so excellent merit that by making up the treasure of Grace it becomes full of assistances to us and obtains of God Grace to enable us to its imitation by way of influence and impetration For as in the acquisition of Habits the very exercise of the Action does produce a Facility to the action and in some proportion becomes the cause of its self so does every exercise of the Life of Christ kindle its own fires inspires breath into it self and makes an univocal production of its self in a differing subject And Jesus becomes the fountain of spiritual Life to us as the Prophet Elisha to the dead child when he stretched his hands upon the child's hands laid his mouth to his mouth and formed his posture to the boy and breathed into him the spirit returned again into the child at the prayer of Elisha so when our lives are formed into the imitation of the Life of the Holiest Jesus the spirit of God returns into us not only by the efficacy of the imitation but by the merit and impetration of the actions of Jesus It is reported in the Bohemian Story that S. Wenceslaus their King one winter-night going to his Devotions in a remote Church bare-footed in the snow and sharpness of unequal and pointed ice his servant Podavivus who waited upon his Master's piety and endeavoured to imitate his affections began to faint through the violence of the snow and cold till the King commanded him to follow him and set his feet in the same footsteps which his feet should mark for him the servant did so and either fansied a cure or found one for he followed his Prince help'd forward with shame and zeal to his imitation and by the forming footsteps for him in the snow In the same manner does the Blessed Jesus for since our way is troublesome obscure full of objection and danger apt to be mistaken and to affright our industry he commands us to mark his footsteps to tread where his feet have stood and not only invites us forward by the argument of his Example but he hath troden down much of the difficulty and made the way easier and fit for our feet For he knows our infirmities and himself hath felt their experience in all things but in the neighbourhoods of sin and therefore he hath proportioned a way and a path to our strengths and capacities and like Jacob hath marched softly and in evenness with the children and the cattel to entertain us by the comforts of his company and the influences of a perpetual guide 11. Fourthly But we must know that not every thing which Christ did is imitable by us neither did he in the work of our Redemption in all things imitate his heavenly Father For there are some things which are issues of an absolute Power some are expresses of supreme Dominion some are actions of a Judge And therefore Jesus prayed for his enemies and wept over Jerusalem when at the same instant his Eternal Father laughed them to scorn for he knew that their day was coming and himself had decreed their ruine But it became the Holy Jesus to imitate his Father's mercies for himself was the great instrument of
the eternal Compassion and was the instance of Mercy and therefore in the operation of his Father's design every action of his was univocal and he shewed the power of his Divinity in nothing but in miracles of Mercy and illustrations of Faith by creating arguments of Credibility In the same proportion we follow Jesus as himself followed his Father For what he abated by the order to his intendment and design we abate by the proportions of our Nature for some excellent acts of his were demonstrations of Divinity and an excellent Grace poured forth upon him without measure was their instrument to which proportions if we should extend our infirmities we should crack our sinews and dissolve the silver cords before we could entertain the instances and support the burthen Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights but the manner of our Fastings hath been in all Ages limited to the term of an artificial day and in the Primitive Observations and the Jewish Rites men did eat their meal as soon as the Stars shone in the firmament We never read that Jesus laughed and but once that he rejoyced in spirit but the declensions of our Natures cannot bear the weight of a perpetual grave deportment without the intervals of refreshment and free alacrity Our ever-blessed Saviour suffered the Devotion of Mary Magdalene to transport her to an expensive expression of her Religion and twice to anoint his feet with costly Nard and yet if persons whose conditions were of no greater lustre or resplendency of Fortune than was conspicuous in his family and retinue should suffer the same profusion upon the dressing and perfuming their bodies possibly it might be truly said It might better be sold and distributed to the poor This Jesus received as he was the CHRIST and Anointed of the Lord and by this he suffered himself to be designed to Burial and he received the oblation as Eucharistical for the ejection of seven Devils for therefore she loved much 12. The instances are not many For how-ever Jesus had some extraordinary transvolations and acts of emigration beyond the lines of his even and ordinary conversation yet it was but seldom for his being exemplary was of so great consideration that he chose to have fewer instances of Wonder that he might transmit the more of an imitable Vertue And therefore we may establish this for a rule and limit of our imitations Because Christ our Law-giver hath described all his Father's will in Sanctions and signature of Laws whatsoever he commanded and whatsoever he did of precise Morality or in pursuance of the Laws of Nature in that we are to trace his footsteps and in these his Laws and his practice differ but as a Map and a Guide a Law and a Judge a Rule and a Precedent But in the special instances of action we are to abate the circumstances and to separate the obedience from the effect whatsoever was moral in a ceremonial performance that is highly imitable and the obedience of Sacrificing and the subordination to Laws actually in being even now they are abrogated teach us our duty in a differing subject upon the like reason Jesus's going up to Jerusalem to the Feasts and his observation of the Sabbaths teach us our duty in celebration of Festivals constitute by a competent and just Authority For that which gave excellency to the observation of Mosaical Rites was an Evangelical duty and the piety of Obedience did not only consecrate the observations of Levi but taught us our duty in the constitutions of Christianity 13. Fifthly As the Holy Jesus did some things which we are not to imitate so we also are to do some things which we cannot learn from his Example For there are some of our Duties which presuppose a state of Sin and some suppose a violent temptation and promptness to it and the duties of prevention and the instruments of restitution are proper to us but conveyed only by Precept and not by Precedent Such are all the parts and actions of Repentance the duties of Mortification and Self-denial For whatsoever the Holy Jesus did in the matter of Austerity looked directly upon the work of our Redemption and looked back only on us by a reflex act as Christ did on Peter when he looked him into Repentance Some states of life also there are which Jesus never led such are those of temporal Governors Kings and Judges Merchants Lawyers and the state of Marriage in the course of which lives many cases do occur which need a Precedent and the vivacity of an excellent Example especially since all the rules which they have have not prevented the subtilty of the many inventions which men have found out nor made provision for all contingencies Such persons in all their special needs are to govern their actions by the rules of proportion by analogy to the Holiness of the person of Jesus and the Sanctity of his Institution considering what might become a person professing the Discipline of so Holy a Master and what he would have done in the like case taking our heights by the excellency of his Innocency and Charity Only remember this that in such cases we must always judge on the strictest side of Piety and Charity if it be a matter concerning the interest of a second person and that in all things we do those actions which are farthest removed from scandal and such as towards our selves are severe towards others full of gentleness and sweetness For so would the righteous and merciful Jesus have done these are the best analogies and proportions And in such 〈◊〉 when the Wells are dry let us take water from a Cistern and propound to our selves some exemplar Saint the necessities of whose life have determined his Piety to the like occurrences 14. But now from these particulars we shall best account to what the duty of the Imitation of Jesus does amount for it signifies that we should walk as he walked tread in his steps with our hand upon the Guide and our eye upon his Rule that we should do glory to him as he did to his Father and that whatsoever we do we should be careful that it do him honour and no reproach to his Institution and then account these to be the integral parts of our Duty which are imitation of his Actions or his Spirit of his Rule or of his Life there being no better Imitation of him than in such actions as do him pleasure however he hath expressed or imitated the precedent 15. He that gives Alms to the poor takes Jesus by the hand he that patiently endures Injuries and affronts helps him to bear his Cross he that comforts his brother in Affliction gives an amiable kiss of peace to Jesus he that bathes his own and his neighbour's sins in tears of penance and compassion washes his Master's feet We lead Jesus into the recesses of our heart by holy Meditations and we enter into his heart when we express him in our actions for so
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
sweetnesses which represent the glory of the reward by the Antepasts and refreshments dispensed even in the ruggedness of the way and incommodities of the journey All other delights are the pleasures of Beasts or the sports of Children these are the Antepasts and preventions of the full Feasts and overflowings of Eternity 10. When they came to Bethlehem and the Star pointed them to a Stable they entred in and being enlightned with a Divine Ray proceeding from the face of the Holy Child and seeing through the cloud and passing through the scandal of his mean Lodging and poor condition they bowed themselves to the earth first giving themselves an Oblation to this great King then they made offering of their Gifts for a man's person is first accepted then his Gift God first regarded Abel and then accepted his Offering which we are best taught to understand by the present instance for it means no more but that all outward Services and Oblations are made acceptable by the prior presentation of an inward Sacrifice If we have first presented our selves then our Gift is pleasant as coming but to express the truth of the first Sacrifice but if our Persons be not first made a Holocaust to God the lesser Oblations of outward Presents are like Sacrifices without Salt and Fire nothing to make them pleasant or religious For all other sences of this Proposition charge upon God the distinguishing and acceptation of Persons against which he solemnly protests God regards no man's Person but according to the doing of his Duty but then God is said first to accept the Person and then the Gist when the Person is first sanctified and given to God by the vows and habits of a holy life and then all the actions of his Religion are homogeneal to their principle and accepted by the acceptation of the man 11. These Magi presented to the Holy Babe Gold Frankincense and Myrrh protesting their Faith of three Articles by the symbolical Oblation By Gold that he was a King by Incense that he was a God by Myrrh that he was a Man And the Presents also were representative of interiour Vertues the Myrrh signifying Faith Mortification Chastity Compunction and all the actions of the Purgative way of Spiritual life the Incense signifying Hope Prayer Obedience good Intention and all the actions and Devotions of the Illuminative the giving the Gold representing Love to God and our Neighbours the Contempt of riches Poverty of spirit and all the eminencies and spiritual riches of the Unitive life And these Oblations if we present to the Holy Jesus both our Persons and our Gifts shall be accepted our Sins shall be purged our Understandings enlightned and our Wills united to this Holy Child and entitled to a communion of all his Glories 12. And thus in one view and two Instances God hath drawn all the world to himself by his Son Jesus in the Instance of the Shepherds and the Arabian Magi Jews and Gentiles Learned and Unlearned Rich and Poor Noble and Ignoble that in him all Nations and all Conditions and all Families and all persons might be blessed having called all by one Star or other by natural Reason or by the secrets of Philosophy by the Revelations of the Gospel or by the ministery of Angels by the Illuminations of the Spirit or by the Sermons and Dictates of spiritual Fathers and hath consigned this Lesson to us That we must never appear before the Lord empty offering Gifts to him by the expences or by the affections of Charity either the worshipping or the oblations of Religion either the riches of the World or the love of the Soul for if we cannot bring Gold with the rich Arabians we may with the poor Shepherds come and kiss the Son lest he be angry and in all cases come and serve him with fear and reverence and spiritual rejoycings The PRAYER MOst Holy Jesu Thou art the Glory of thy people Israel and a light to the Gentiles and wert pleased to call the Gentiles to the adoration and knowledge of thy sacred Person and Laws communicating the inestimable riches of thy holy Discipline to all with an universal undistinguishing Love give unto us spirits docible pious prudent and ductile that no motion or invitation of Grace be ineffectual but may produce excellent effects upon us and the secret whispers of thy Spirit may prevail upon our Affections in order to Piety and Obedience as certainly as the loudest and most clamorous Sermons of the Gospel Create in us such Excellencies as are fit to be presented to thy glorious Majesty accept of the Oblation of my self and my entire services but be thou pleased to verifie my Offering and secure the possession to thy self that the enemy may not pollute the Sacrifice or divide the Gift or question the Title but that I may be wholly thine and for ever clarifie my Understanding sanctifie my Will replenish my Memory with arguments of Piety then shall I present to thee an Oblation rich and precious as the treble gift of the Levantine Princes Lord I am thine reject me not from thy favour exclude me not from thy presence then shall I serve thee all the days of my life and partake of the glories of thy Kingdom in which thou reignest gloriously and eternally Amen SECT V. Of the Circumcision of JESUS and his Presentation in the Temple The Circumcision of Iesus S. LUKE 2. 21. And when eight daies were accomphshed for the circumcising of the Child his name was called Iesus which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the Wombe The Purification and Presentation S. LUKE 2. 22. And when the dayes of her purification were accomplished they brought him to Ierusalem to present him to the Lord. 1. AND now the Blessed Saviour of the World began to do the work of his Mission and our Redemption and because Man had prevaricated all the Divine Commandments to which all humane nature respectively to the persons of several capacities was obliged and therefore the whole Nature was obnoxious to the just rewards of its demerits first Christ was to put that Nature he had assumed into a saveable condition by fulfilling his Father's preceptive will and then to reconcile it actually by suffering the just deservings of its Prevarications He therefore addresses himself to all the parts of an active Obedience and when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the Child he exposed his tender body to the sharpness of the circumcising stone and shed his bloud in drops giving an earnest of those rivers which he did afterwards pour out for the cleansing all Humane nature and extinguishing the wrath of God 2. He that had no sin nor was conceived by natural generation could have no adherences to his Soul or Body which needed to be pared away by a Rite and cleansed by a Mystery neither indeed do we find it expressed that Circumcision was ordained for abolition or pardon of original sin it
acceptance to all Graces But I shall reduce this to particular and more minute considerations 5. First We shall best know that our Will is in the obedience by our prompt undertaking by our chearful managing by our swift execution for all degrees of delay are degrees of immorigerousness and unwillingness And since time is extrinsecal to the act and alike to every part of it nothing determines an action but the Opportunity without and the desires and Willingress within And therefore he who deliberates beyond his first opportunity and exteriour determination and appointment of the act brings fire and wood but wants a Lamb for the sacrifice and unless he offer up his Isaac his beloved Will he hath no ministery prepared for God's acceptance He that does not repent to day puts it to the Question whether he will repent at all or no. He that defers Restitution when all the Circumstances are fitted is not yet resolved upon the duty And when he does it if he does it against his will he does but do honorary Penance with a Paper upon his hat a Taper in his hand it may satisfie the Law but not satisfie his Conscience it neither pleases himself and less pleases God A Sacrifice without a Heart was a sad and ominous presage in the superstition of the Roman Augurs and so it is in the service of God for what the exhibition of the work is to man that the presentation of the Will is to God It is but a cold Charity to a naked begger to say God help thee and do nothing give him clothes and he feels your Charity But God who is the searcher of the heart his apprehension of actions relative to him is of the inward motions and addresses of the Will and without this our exteriour services are like the paying of a piece of mony in which we have defaced the image it is not currant 6. Secondly But besides the Willingness to do the acts of express command the readiness to do the Intimations and tacite significations of God's pleasure is the best testimony in the world that our Will is in the obedience Thus did the Holy Jesus undertake a Nature of infirmity and suffer a Death of shame and sorrow and became obedient from the Circumcision even unto the death of the Cross not staying for a Command but because it was his Father's pleasure Mankind should be redeemed For before the susception of it he was not a person subjicible to a Command It was enough that he understood the inclinations and designs of his Father's Mercies And therefore God hath furnished us with instances of uncommanded Piety to be a touchstone of our Obedience He that does but his endeavour about the express commands hath a bridle in his mouth and is restrained by violence but a willing spirit is like a greedy eye devours all it sees and hopes to make some proportionable returns and compensations of duty for his infirmity by taking in the intimations of God's pleasure When God commands Chastity he that undertakes a holy Coelibate hath great obedience to the command of Chastity God bids us give Alms of our increase he obeys this with great facility that sells all his goods and gives them to the poor And provided our hastiness to snatch at too much does not make us let go our duty like the indiscreet loads of too forward persons too big or too inconvenient and uncombin'd there is not in the world a greater probation of our prompt Obedience than when we look farther than the precise Duty swallowing that and more with our ready and hopeful purposes nothing being so able to do miracles as Love and yet nothing being so certainly accepted as Love though it could do nothing in productions and exteriour ministeries 7. Thirdly but God requires that our Obedience should have another excellency to make it a becoming present to the Divine acceptance our Understanding must be sacrificed too and become an ingredient of our Obedience We must also believe that whatsoever God commands is most fitting to be commanded is most excellent in it self and the best for us to do The first gives our Affections and desires to God and this also gives our Reason and is a perfection of Obedience not communicable to the duties we owe to Man For God only is Lord of this faculty and being the fountain of all wisdom therefore commands our Understanding because he alone can satisfie it We are bound to obey humane Laws but not bound to think the Laws we live under are the most prudent Constitutions in the World But God's Commandments are not only a lantern to our feet and a light unto our paths but a rule to our Reason and satisfaction to our Understandings as being the instruments of our address to God and conveyances of his Grace and manuductions to Eternity And therefore St. John Climacus defines Obedience to be An unexamined and unquestioned motion a voluntary death and sepulture of the Will a life without curiosity a laying aside our own discretion in the midst of the riches of the most excellent understandings 8. And certainly there is not in the world a greater strength against temptations than is deposited in an obedient Understanding because that only can regulary produce the same affections it admits of fewer degrees and an infrequent alteration But the actions proceeding from the Appetite as it is determined by any other principle than a satisfied Understanding have their heightnings and their declensions and their changes and mutations according to a thousand accidents Reason is more lasting than Desire and with fewer means to be tempted but Affections and motions of appetite as they are procured by any thing so may they expire by as great variety of causes And therefore to serve God by way of Understanding is surer and in it self unless it be by the accidental increase of degrees greater than to serve him upon the motion and principle of passions and desires though this be fuller of comfort and pleasure than the other When Lot lived amongst the impure 〈◊〉 where his righteous Soul was in a continual agony he had few exteriour incentives to a pious life nothing to enkindle the sensible flame of burning desires toward Piety but in the midst of all the discouragements of the world nothing was left him but the way and precedency of a truly-informed Reason and Conscience Just so is the way of those wise souls who live in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation where Piety is out of countenance where Austerity is ridiculous 〈◊〉 under persecution no Examples to lead us on there the Understanding is left to be the guide and it does the work the surest for this makes the duty of many to be certain regular and chosen constant integral and perpetual but this way is like the life of an unmarried or a retired person less of grief in it and less of joy But the way of serving God with the
affections and with the pleasures and entertainments of desires is the way of the more passionate and imperfect not in a man's power to chuse or to procure but comes by a thousand chances meeting with a soft nature credulous or weak easie or ignorant softned with fears or invited by forward desires 9. Those that did live amidst the fervours of the primitive Charity and were warmed by their fires grew inflamed by contact and vicinity to such burning and shining lights And they therefore grew to high degrees of Piety because then every man made judgment of his own actions by the proportions which he saw before him and believed all descents from those greater examples to be so many degrees from the Rule And he that lives in a College of devout persons will compare his own actions with the Devotion and customes of that Society and not with the remisness of persons he hears of in story but what he sees and lives with But if we live in an Age of Indevotion we think our selves well assoiled if we be warmer than their Ice every thing which is above our example being eminent and conspicuous though it be but like the light of a Gloworm or the sparkling of a Diamond yet if it be in the midst of darkness it is a goodly beauty This I call the way of serving God by desires and affections and this is altered by example by publick manners by external works by the assignment of 〈◊〉 by designation of conventions for prayer by periods and revolutions of times of duty by hours and solemnities so that a man shall owe his Piety to these chances which although they are graces of God and instruments of Devotion yet they are not always in our power and therefore they are but accidental ministeries of a good life and the 〈◊〉 constant or durable But when the principle of our Piety is a conformity of our Understanding to God's Laws when we are instructed what to do and therefore do it because we are satisfied it is most excellent to obey God this will support our Piety against objections lead it on in despight of disadvantages this chuses God with Reason and is not determined from without and as it is in some degree necessary for all times so it is the greatest security against the change of Laws and Princes and Religions and Ages when all the incentives of affection and exteriour determinations of our Piety shall cease and perhaps all external offices and the daily sacrifice and Piety it self shall fail from the face of the Land then the obedience founded in the Understanding is the only lasting strength is left us to make retreat to and to secure our conditions Thus from the composition of the Will and Affections with our exteriour acts of obedience to God our Obedience is made willing swift and chearful but from the composition of the Understanding our Obedience becomes strong sincere and persevering and this is that which S. Paul calls our reasonable service 10. Fourthly To which if we add that our Obedience be universal we have all the qualifications which make the duty to be pious and prudent The meaning is that we obey God in all his Sanctions though the matter be in common account small and inconsiderable and give no indulgence to our selves to recede from the Rule in any matter whatsoever For the veriest minute of Obedience is worth our attention as being by God esteemed the trial of our Obedience in a greater affair He that is unjust in a little will be unjust in a greater said our Blessed Saviour And since to God all matter is alike and no more accrues to him in an Hecatomb than in a piece of gumm in an Ascetick severity than in a secular life God regards not the matter of a precept but the Obedience which in all instances is the same and he that will prevaricate when the matter is 〈◊〉 and by consequence the temptations to it weak and impotent and soon confuted will think he may better be excused when the temptations are violent and importunate as it commonly happens in affairs of greater importance He that will lie to save sixpence will not stick at it when a thousand pound is the purchase and possibly there is more contempt and despite done to the Divine authority when we disobey it in such particulars wherein the Obedience is most easie and the temptations less troublesome I do not say there is more injustice or more malice in a small Disobedience than in a greater but there is either more contempt or more negligence and dissolution of discipline than in the other 11. And it is no small temptation of the Devil soliciting of us not to be curious of scruples and grains nor to disturb our peace for lighter Disobediences persuading us that something must be indulged to publick manners something to the civilities of society something to nature and to the approaches of our passions and the motions of our first desires but that we be not over-righteous And true it is that sometimes such surreptions and smaller undecencies are therefore pardoned and lessened almost to a nullity because they dwell in the confines of things lawful and honest and are not so notorious as to be separated from permissions by any publick certain and universal cognisance and therefore may pass upon a good man sometimes without observation But it is a temptation when we think of neglecting them by a predetermined incuriousness upon pretence they are small But this must be reduced to more regular Conclusions 12. First Although smaller Disobediences expressed in slight mis-becoming actions when they come by surprise and sudden invasion are through the mercies of God dashed in the very approach their bills of accusation are thrown out and they are not esteemed as competent instruments of separation from God's love yet when a smaller sin comes by design and is acted with knowledge and deliberation for then it is properly an act of Disobedience Malitia supplet defectum aetatis The malice of the agent heightens the smalness of the act and makes up the iniquity To drink liberally once and something more freely than the strict rules of Christian sobriety and temperance permit is pardoned the easier when without deliberation and by surprise the person was abused who intended not to transgress a minute but by little and little was mistaken in his proportions but if a man by design shall estimate his draughts and his good fellowship and shall resolve upon a little intemperance thinking because it is not very much it is therefore none at all that man hath mistaken himself into a crime and although a little wound upon the finger is very curable yet the smallest prick upon the heart is mortal So is a design and purpose of the smallest Disobedience in its formality as malicious and destructive as in its matter it was pardonable and excusable 13. Secondly Although every lesser Disobedience when it comes singly
these impurities and vanities Jesus hath redeemed all his Disciples and not only thrown out of his Temples all the impure rites of Flora and Cybele but also the trifling and unprofitable ceremonies of the more sober Deities not only Vices but useless and unprofitable Speculations and hath consecrated our Head into a Temple our Understanding to Spirit our Reason to Religion our Study to Meditation and this is the first part of the Sanctification of our Spirit 6. And this was the cause Holy Scripture commands the duty of Meditation in proportion still to the excellencies of Piety and a holy life to which it is highly and aptly instrumental Blessed is the man that meditates in the Law of the Lord day and night And the reason of the Proposition and the use of the Duty is expressed to this purpose Thy words have I hid in my heart that I should not sin against thee The placing and fixing those divine Considerations in our understandings and hiding them there are designs of high Christian prudence that they with advantage may come forth in the expresses of a holy life For what in the world is more apt and natural to produce Humility than to meditate upon the low stoopings and descents of the Holy Jesus to the nature of a Man to the weaknesses of a Child to the poverties of a Stable to the ignobleness of a Servant to the shame of the Cross to the pains of Cruelty to the dust of Death to the title of a Sinner and to the wrath of God By this instance Poverty is made honourable and Humility is sanctified and made noble and the contradictions of nature are amiable and 〈◊〉 for a wise election Thus hatred of sin shame of our selves confusion at the sense of humane misery the love of God confidence in his Promises desires of Heaven holy resolutions resignation of our own appetites 〈◊〉 to Divine will oblations of our selves Repentance and mortification are the proper emanations from Meditation of the sordidness of sin our proneness to it our daily miseries as issues of Divine vengeance the glories of God his infinite unalterable Veracity the satisfactions in the vision of God the rewards of Piety the rectitude of the Laws of God and perfection of his Sanctions God's supreme and paternal Dominion and his certain malediction of sinners and when any one of these Considerations is taken to pieces and so placed in the rooms of application that a piece of duty is conjoyned to a piece of the mystery and the whole office to the purchase of a grace or the extermination of a vice it is like opening our windows to let in the Sun and the Wind and Holiness is as proportioned an effect to this practice as Glory is to a persevering Holiness by way of reward and moral causality 7. For all the Affections that are in Man are either natural or by chance or by the incitation of Reason and discourse Our natural affections are not worthy the entertainments of a Christian they must be supernatural and divine that put us into the hopes of Perfection and Felicities and these other that are good unless they come by Meditation they are but accidental and set with the evening Sun But if they be produced upon the strengths of pious Meditation they are as perpetual as they are reasonable and excellent in proportion to the Piety of the principle A Garden that is watered with short and sudden showrs is more uncertain in its fruits and beauties than if a Rivulet waters it with a perpetual distilling and constant humectation And just such are the short emissions and unpremeditated resolutions of Piety begotten by a dash of holy rain from Heaven whereby God sometimes uses to call the careless but to taste what excellencies of Piety they neglect but if they be not produced by the Reason of Religion and the Philosophy of Meditation they have but the life of a Fly or a tall Gourd they come into the World only to say they had a Being you could scarce know their length but by measuring the ground they cover in their fall 8. For since we are more moved by material and sensible objects than by things merely speculative and intellectual and generals even in spiritual things are less perceived and less motive than particulars Meditation frames the understanding part of Religion to the proportions of our nature and our weakness by making some things more circumstantiate and material and the more spiritual to be particular and therefore the more applicable and the mystery is made like the Gospel to the Apostles Our eyes do see and our ears do hear and our hands do handle thus much of the word of life as is prepared for us in the Meditation 9. First And therefore every wise person that intends to furnish himself with affections of Religion or detestation against a Vice or glorifications of a Mystery still will proportion the Mystery and fit it with such circumstances of fancy and application as by observation of himself he knows aptest to make impression It was a wise design of Mark Antony when he would stir up the people to revenge the death of Caesar he brought his body to the pleading-place he shewed his wounds held up the rent mantle and shewed them the garment that he put on that night in which he beat the Nervii that is in which he won a victory for which his memory was dear to them he shewed them that wound which pierced his heart in which they were placed by so dear a love that he made them his heirs and left to their publick use places of delight and pleasure and then it was natural when he had made those things present to them which had once moved their love and his honour that grief at the loss of so honourable and so lov'd a person should succeed and then they were Lords of all their sorrow and revenge seldom slept in two beds And thus holy Meditation produces the passions and desires it intends it makes the object present and almost sensible it renews the first passions by a fiction of imagination it passes from the Paschal Parlour to Cedron it tells the drops of sweat and measures them and finds them as big as drops of bloud and then conjectures at the greatness of our sins it fears in the midst of Christ's Agonies it hears his groans it spies Judas his Lantern afar off it follows Jesus to Gabbatha and wonders at his innocence and their malice and feels the strokes of the Whip and shrinks the head when the Crown of Thorns is thrust hard upon his holy brows and at last goes step by step with Jesus and carries part of the Cross and is nailed fast with sorrow and compassion and dies with love For if the Soul be principle of its own actions it can produce the same effects by reflex acts of the Understanding when it is assisted by the Imaginative part as when it sees the thing
be like his your Duty in imitation of his Precept and Example and then sing praises as you list no heart is large enough no voice pleasant enough no life long enough nothing but an eternity of duration and a beatifical state can do it well and therefore holy David joyns them both Whoso offereth me thanks and praise he honoureth me and to him that ordereth his conversation aright I will shew the salvation of God All thanks and praise without a right-ordered conversation are but the Echo of Religion a voice and no substance but if those praises be sung by a heart righteous and obedient that is singing with the spirit and singing with understanding that is the Musick God delights in 18. Sixthly But let me observe and press this caution It is a mistake and not a little dangerous when people religious and forward shall too promptly frequently and nearly spend their thoughts in consideration of Divine Excellencies God hath shewn thee merit enough to spend all thy stock of love upon him in the characters of his Power the book of the Creature the great tables of his Mercy and the lines of his Justice we have cause enough to praise his Excellencies in what we feel of him and are refreshed with his influence and see his beauties in reflexion though we do not put our eyes out with staring upon his face To behold the Glories and Perfections of God with a more direct intuition is the priviledge of Angels who yet cover their faces in the brightness of his presence it is only permitted to us to consider the back parts of God And therefore those Speculations are too bold and imprudent addresses and minister to danger more than to Religion when we pass away from the direct studies of Vertue and those thoughts of God which are the freer and safer communications of the Deity which are the means of entercourse and relation between him and us to those considerations concerning God which are Metaphysical and remote the formal objects of adoration and wonder rather than of vertue and temperate discourses for God in Scripture never revealed any of his abstracted Perfections and remoter and mysterious distances but with a purpose to produce fear in us and therefore to chide the temerity and boldness of too familiar and nearer entercourse 19. True it is that every thing we see or can consider represents some perfections of God but this I mean that no man should consider too much and meditate too frequently upon the immediate Perfections of God as it were by way of intuition but as they are manifested in the Creatures and in the ministeries of Vertue and also when-ever God's Perfections be the matter of Meditation we should not ascend upwards into him but descend upon our selves like fruitful vapours drawn up into a cloud descending speedily into a shower that the effect of the consideration be a design of good life and that our loves to God be not spent in abstractions but in good works and humble Obedience The other kind of love may deceive us and therefore so may such kind of considerations which are its instrument But this I am now more particularly to consider 20. For beyond this I have described there is a degree of Meditation so exalted that it changes the very name and is called Contemplation and it is in the unitive way of Religion that is it consists in unions and adherences to God it is a prayer of quietness and silence and a meditation extraordinary a discourse without variety a vision and intuition of 〈◊〉 Excellencies an immediate entry into an orb of light and a resolution of all our faculties into sweetnesses affections and starings upon the Divine beauty and is carried on to ecstasies raptures suspensions elevations abstractions and apprehensions beatifical In all the course of vertuous meditation the Soul is like a Virgin invited to make a matrimonial contract it inquires the condition of the person his estate and disposition and other circumstances of amability and desire But when she is satissied with these enquiries and hath chosen her Husband she no more considers particulars but is moved by his voice and his gesture and runs to his entertainment and sruition and spends her self wholly in affections not to obtain but enjoy his love Thus it is said 21. But this is a thing not to be discoursed of but felt And although in other Sciences the terms must first be known and then the Rules and Conclusions scientifical here it is otherwise for first the whole experience of this must be obtained before we can so much as know what it is and the end must be acquired first the Conclusion before the Premises They that pretend to these Heights call them the Secrets of the Kingdom but they are such which no man can describe such which God hath not revealed in the publication of the Gospel such for the acquiring of which there are no means prescribed and to which no man is obliged and which are not in any man's power to obtain nor such which it is lawful to pray for or desire nor concerning which we shall ever be called to an account 22. Indeed when persons have been long sostned with the continual droppings of Religion and their spirits made timorous and apt for impression by the assiduity of Prayer and perpetual alarms of death and the continual dyings of Mortification the Fancy which is a very great instrument of Devotion is kept continually warm and in a disposition and aptitude to take fire and to flame out in great ascents and when they suffer transportations beyond the burthens and support of Reason they suffer 〈◊〉 know not what and call it what they please and other pious people that hear 〈◊〉 of it admire that Devotion which is so eminent and beatified for so they esteem 〈◊〉 and so they come to be called Raptures and Ecstasies which even amongst the A 〈◊〉 were so seldom that they were never spoke of for those Visions Raptures and Intuitions of S. Stephen S. Paul S. Peter and S. John were not pretended to be of this kind not excesses of Religion but prophetical and intuitive Revelations to great and significant purposes such as may be and are described in story but these other cannot for so Cassian reports and commends a saying of Antony the Eremite That is not a perfect Prayer in which the Votary does either understand himself or the Prayer meaning that persons eminently Religious were Divina patientes as Dionysius Areopagita said of his Master Hierotheus Paticks in Devotion suffering ravishments of senses transported beyond the uses of humanity into the suburbs of beatifical apprehensions but whether or no this be any thing besides a too intense and indiscreet pressure of the faculties of the Soul to inconveniences of understanding or else a credulous busie and untamed fancy they that think best of it cannot give a certainty There are and have been some Religious
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
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
it is nice to judge the condition of the effect and therefore it is prudent to ascertain our condition by improving our care and our Religion and in all accidents to make no judgment concerning God's Favour by what we feel but by what we do 6. When the Holy Virgin with much Religion and sadness had sought her joy at last she found him disputing among the Doctors hearing them and asking them questions and besides that he now first opened a fontinel and there sprang out an excellent rivulet from his abyss of Wisdom he consigned this Truth to his Disciples That they who mean to be Doctors and teach others must in their first accesses and degrees of discipline learn of those whom God and publick Order hath set over us in the Mysteries of Religion The PRAYER BLessed and most Holy Jesus Fountain of Grace and comfort Treasure of Wisdom and spiritual emanations be pleased to abide with me for ever by the inhabitation of thy interiour assistances and refreshments and give me a corresponding love acceptable and unstained purity care and watchfulness over my ways that I may never by provoking thee to anger cause thee to remove thy dwelling or draw a cloud before thy holy face but if thou art pleased upon a design of charity or trial to cover my eyes that I may not behold the bright rays of thy Favour nor be refreshed with spiritual comforts let thy Love support my spirit by ways insensible and in all my needs give me such a portion as may be instrumental and incentive to performance of my duty and in all accidents let me continue to seek thee by Prayers and Humiliation and frequent desires and the strictness of a Holy life that I may follow thy example pursue thy foot-steps be supported by thy strength guided by thy hand enlightned by thy favour and may at last after a persevering holiness and an unwearied industry dwell with thee in the Regions of Light and eternal glory where there shall be no fears of parting from the habitations of Felicity and the union and fruition of thy Presence O Blessed and most Holy Jesus Amen SECT VIII Of the Preaching of John the Baptist preparative to the Manifestation of JESVS ELIAS Luke 1 17. And he shall goe before him in the spirit and power of Elias S t IOHN the Baptist Luk 1 15 And as the people were in expectation ve 16 Iohn answered saying unto them all I indeed baptize you with water but one mightier then I cometh y e latchet of whose shooes I am not worthy to unloose he shall baptize you with y e Holy Ghost and with fire WHen Herod had drunk so great a draught of bloud at Bethlehem and sought for more from the Hill-country Elizabeth carried her Son into the Wilderness there in the desert places and recesses to hide him from the fury of that Beast where she attended him with as much care and tenderness as the affections and fears of a Mother could express in the permission of those fruitless Solitudes The Child was about eighteen months old when he first sled to Sanctuary but after forty days his Mother died and his Father Zachary at the time of his ministration which happened about this time was killed in the Court of the Temple so that the Child was exposed to all the dangers and infelicities of an Orphan in a place of solitariness and discomfort in a time when a bloudy King endeavoured his destruction But when his Father and Mother were taken from him the Lord took him up For according to the tradition of the Greeks God deputed an Angel to be his nourisher and Guardian as he had formerly done to Ishmael who dwelt in the Wilderness and to Elias when he fled from the rage of Ahab so to this Child who came in the spirit of Elias to make demonstration that there can be no want where God undertakes the care and provision 2. The entertainment that S. John's Proveditóre the Angel gave him was such as the Wilderness did afford and such as might dispose him to a life of Austerity for there he continued spending his time in Meditations Contemplation Prayer Affections and Colloquies with God eating Flies and wild Honey not clothed in soft but a hairy garment and a leathern girdle till he was thirty years of age And then being the fifteenth year of Tiberius Pontius Pilate being Governour of Judaea the Word of God came unto John in the Wilderness And he came into all the countrey about Jordan preaching and baptizing 3. This John according to the Prophecies of him and designation of his person by the Holy Ghost was the fore-runner of Christ sent to dispose the people for his entertainment and prepare his ways and therefore it was necessary his person should be so extraordinary and full of Sanctity and so clarified by great concurrences and wonder in the circumstances of his life as might gain credit and reputation to the testimony he was to give concerning his LORD the Saviour of the World And so it happened 4. For as the Baptist while he was in the Wilderness became the pattern of solitary and contemplative life a School of Vertue and Example of Sanctity and singular Austerity so at his emigration from the places of his Retirement he seemed what indeed he was a rare and excellent Personage and the Wonders which were great at his Birth the prediction of his Conception by an Angel which never had before happened but in the persons of Isaac and Sampson the contempt of the world which he bore about him his mortified countenance and deportment his austere and eremitical life his vehement spirit and excellent zeal in Preaching created so great opinions of him among the people that all held him for a Prophet in his Office for a heavenly person in his own particular and a rare example of Sanctity and holy life to all others and all this being made solemn and ceremonious by his Baptism he prevailed so that he made excellent and apt preparations for the LORD 's appearing for there went out to him Jerusalem and all Judaea and all the regions round about Jordan and were baptized of him confessing their sins 5. The Baptist having by so heavenly means won upon the affections of all men his Sermons and his testimony concerning Christ were the more likely to be prevalent and accepted and the summ of them was Repentance and dereliction of sins and bringing forth the fruits of good life in the promoting of which Doctrine he was a severe reprehender of the Pharisees and Sadducees he exhorted the people to works of mercy the Publicans to do justice and to decline oppression the Souldiers to abstain from plundering and doing violence or rapine and publishing that he was not the CHRIST that he only baptized with water but the Messias should baptize with the holy Ghost and with fire he finally denounced judgment and great severities to all the World
of Discipline and Society opportunities of Perfection Privacy is the best for Devotion and the Publick for Charity In both God hath many Saints and Servants and from both the Devil hath had some 8. His Sermon was an Exhortation to Repentance and an Holy life He gave particular schedules of Duty to several states of persons sharply reproved the 〈◊〉 for their Hypocrisie and Impiety it being worse in them because contrary to their rule their profession and institution gently guided others into the ways of Righteousness calling them the streight ways of the Lord that is the direct and shortest way to the Kingdom for of all Lines the streight is the shortest and as every Angle is a turning out of the way so every Sin is an obliquity and interrupts the journey By such 〈◊〉 and a Baptism he disposed the spirits of men for the entertaining the 〈◊〉 and the Homilies of the Gospel For John's Doctrine was to the Sermons of Jesus as a Preface to a Discourse and his Baptism was to the new Institution and Discipline of the Kingdom as the Vigils to a Holy-day of the same kind in a less degree But the whole Oeconomy of it represents to us that Repentance is the first intromission into the Sanctities of Christian Religion The Lord treads upon no paths that are not hallowed and made smooth by the sorrows and cares of Contrition and the impediments of sin cleared by dereliction and the succeeding fruits of emendation But as it related to the Jews his Baptism did signifie by a cognation to their usual Rites and Ceremonies of Ablution and washing Gentile Proselytes that the Jews had so far receded from their duty and that Holiness which God required of them by the Law that they were in the state of strangers no better than Heathens and therefore were to be treated as themselves received Gentile Proselytes by a Baptism and a new state of life before they could be fit for the reception of the 〈◊〉 or be admitted to his Kingdom 9. It was an excellent sweetness of Religion that had entirely 〈◊〉 the Soul of the Baptist that in so great reputation of Sanctity so mighty concourse of people such great multitudes of Disciples and confidents and such throngs of admirers he was humble without mixtures of vanity and confirmed in his temper and Piety against the strength of the most impetuous temptation And he was tried to some purpose for when he was tempted to confess himself to be the CHRIST he refused it or to be Elias or to be accounted that Prophet he refused all such great appellatives and confessed himself only to be a Voice the lowest of Entities whose being depends upon the Speaker just as himself did upon the pleasure of God receiving form and publication and imployment wholly by the will of his Lord in order to the manifestation of the Word eternal It were 〈◊〉 that the spirits of men would not arrogate more than their own though they did not lessen their own just dues It may concern some end of Piety or Prudence that our reputation be preserved by all just means but never that we assume the dues of others or grow vain by the spoils of an undeserved dignity Honours are the rewards of Vertue or engagement upon Offices of trouble and publick use but then they must suppose a preceding worth or a fair imployment But he that is a Plagiary of others titles or offices and dresses himself with their beauties hath no more solid worth or reputation than he should have nutriment if he ate only with their mouth and slept their slumbers himself being open and unbound in all the Regions of his Senses The PRAYER O Holy and most glorious God who before the publication of thy eternal Son the Prince of Peace didst send thy Servant John Baptist by the examples of Mortification and the rude Austerities of a penitential life and by the Sermons of Penance to remove all the impediments of sin that the ways of his Lord and ours might be made clear ready and expedite be pleased to let thy Holy Spirit lead me in the streight paths of Sanctity without deslections to either hand and without the interruption of deadly sin that I may with facility Zeal 〈◊〉 and a persevering diligence walk in the ways of the Lord. Be pleased that the Axe may be laid to the root of Sin that the whole body of it may be cut down in me that no fruit of Sodom may grow up to thy displeasure Throughly purge the floor and 〈◊〉 of my heart with thy Fan with the breath of thy Diviner Spirit that it may be a holy repository of Graces and full of benediction and Sanctity that when our Lord shall come I may at all times be prepared for the entertainment of so Divine a Guest apt to lodge him and to feast him that he may for ever delight to dwell with me And make me also to dwell with him sometimes retiring into his recesses and private rooms by Contemplation and admiring of his Beauties and beholding the Secrets of his Kingdom and at all other times walking in the Courts of the Lord's House by the diligences and labours of Repentance and an Holy life till thou shalt please to call me to a nearer communication of thy Excellencies which then grant when by thy gracious assistances I shall have done thy works and glorified thy holy Name by the strict and never-failing purposes and proportionable endeavours of Religion and Holiness through the merits and mercies of Jesus Christ. Amen DISCOURSE IV. Of Mortification and corporal Austerities 1. FRom the days of John the Baptist the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force said our Blessed Saviour For now that the new Covenant was to be made with Man Repentance which is so great a part of it being in very many actions a punitive duty afflictive and vindicative from the days of the Baptist who first by office and solemnity of design published this Doctrine violence was done to the inclinations and dispositions of Man and by such violences we were to be possessed of the Kingdom And his Example was the best 〈◊〉 upon his Text he did violence to himself he lived a life in which the rudenesses of Camel's hair and the lowest nutriment of Flies and Honey of the Desart his life of singularity his retirement from the sweetnesses of Society his resisting the greatest of Tentations and despising to assume false honours were instances of that violence and explications of the Doctrine of Self-denial and Mortification which are the Pedestal of the Cross and the Supporters of Christianity as it distinguishes from all Laws Religions and Institutions of the World 2. Mortification is the one half of Christianity it is a dying to the World it is a denying of the Will and all its natural desires An abstinence from pleasure and sensual complacencies that the 〈◊〉 being subdued to the spirit both may joyn in the
are to receive their estimate as they cooperate to the End Whatsoever is a prudent restraint of an extravagant Passion whatsoever is a direct denial of a sin whatsoever makes provision for the spirit or withdraws the fewel from the impure fires of carnality that is an act of Mortification but those Austerities which Baal's Priests did use or the 〈◊〉 an ignorant Faction that went up and down Villages whipping themselves or those which return periodically on a set day of Discipline and using rudenesses to the Body by way of ceremony and solemnity not directed against the actual incursion of a pungent Lust are not within the vierge of the grace of 〈◊〉 For unless the Temptation to a carnal sin be actually incumbent and pressing upon the Soul pains of 〈◊〉 and smart do no benefit to ward suppressing the habit or inclination for such sharp disciplines are but short and transient troubles and although they take away the present fancies of a Temptation yet unless it be rash and uncharitable there is no effect remanent upon the body but that the Temptation may speedily return As is the danger so must be the application of the remedy Actual Severities are not imprudently undertaken in case of imminent danger but to cure an habitual Lust such corporal Mortifications are most reasonable whose effect is permanent and which takes away whatsoever does minister more 〈◊〉 and puts a torch to the pile 19. But this is 〈◊〉 a discourse of Christian Prudence not of precise Duty and Religion for if we do by any means provide for our indemnity and secure our innocence all other exteriour Mortifications are not necessary and they are convenient but as they do facilitate or cooperate towards the 〈◊〉 And if that be well understood it will concern us that they be used with prudence and caution with purity of intention and without pride for since they are nothing in themselves but are hallowed and adopted into the family of Religious actions by participation of the End the doing them not for themselves takes off all complacency and fancy reflecting from an opinion of the external actions guides and purifies the intention and teaches us to be prudent in the managing of those Austerities which as they are in themselves afflictive so have in them nothing that is eligible if they be imprudent 20. And now supposing these premises as our guide to chuse and enter into the action Prudence must be called into the execution and discharge of it and the manner of its managing And for the prudential part I shall first give the advice of Nigrinus in the discipline of the old Philosophers He that will best institute and instruct men in the studies of Vertue and true Philosophy must have regard to the mind to the body to the age to the former education and capacities or incapacities of the person to which all such circumstances may be added as are to be accounted for in all prudent estimations such as are national customs dangers of scandal the presence of other remedies or disbanding of the inclination 21. Secondly It may also concern the prudence of this duty not to neglect the smallest inadvertencies and minutes of Lust or spiritual inconvenience but to contradict them in their weakness and first beginnings We see that great disturbances are wrought from the smallest occasions meeting with an impatient spirit like great flames kindled from a little spark fallen into an heap of prepared Nitre S. Austin tells a Story of a certain person much vexed with Flies in the region of his dwelling and himself heightned the trouble by too violent and busie reflexions upon the inconsiderableness of the instrument and the greatness of the vexation alighting upon a peevish spirit In this disposition he was visited by a Manichee an Heretick that denied God to be the Maker of things visible he being busie to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Infection upon the next thing he met asked the impatient person whom he thought to be the Maker of Flies He 〈◊〉 I think the Devil was for they are instruments of great vexation and perpetual trouble What he rather sansied than believed or expressed by anger rather than at all had entertained within the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by such arguments to which his adversary was very apt to give consent by reason of his impatience and peevishness The Manichee having set his foot firm upon his first breach proceeded in his Question If the Devil made Flies why not Bees who are but a little bigger and have a sting too The consideration of the Sting made him fit to think that the little difference in bigness needed not a distinct and a greater Efficient especially since the same work-man can make a great as well as a little vessel The Manichee proceeded If a Bee why not a Locust if a Locust then a Lizzard if a Lizzard then a Bird if a Bird then a Lamb and thence he made bold to 〈◊〉 to a Cow to an Elephant to a Man His adversary by this time being insnared by granting so much and now ashamed not to grant more lest his first concessions should seem unreasonable and impious confessed the Devil to be the Maker of all Creatures visible The use which is made of this Story is this Caution that the Devil do not abuse us in Flies and provoke our spirits by trifles and impertinent accidents for if we be unmortified in our smallest motions it is not imaginable we should stand the blast of an impetuous accident and violent perturbation Let us not therefore give our Passions course in a small accident because the instance is inconsiderable for though it be the consequence may be dangerous and a wave may follow a wave till the inundation be general and desperate And therefore here it is intended for advice that we be observant of the accidents of our domestick affairs and curious that every trifling inadvertency of a servant or slight misbecoming action or imprudent words be not apprehended as instruments of vexation for so many small occasions if they be productive of many small disturbances will produce an habitual churlishness and immortification of spirit 22. Thirdly Let our greatest diligence and care be imployed in mortifying our predominant Passion for if our care be so great as not to entertain the smallest and our resolution so strong and holy as not to be subdued by the greatest and most passionate desires the Spirit hath done all its work secures the future and sanctifies the present and nothing is wanting but perseverance in the same prudence and Religion And this is typically commanded in the Precept of God to Moses and Aaron in the matter of Peor Vex the Midianites because they vexed you and made you sin by their daughters and Phinehas did so he killed a Prince of the house of Simeon and a Princess of Midian and God confirmed the Priesthood to him for ever meaning that we shall for ever be admitted to a nearer relation to God if we
a participation of his felicities for he is strangely covetous who would enjoy the Sun or the Air or the Sea alone here was treasure sor him and all the world and by lighting his brother Simon' s taper he made his own light the greater and more glorious And this is the nature of Grace to be diffusive of its own excellencies for here no 〈◊〉 can inhabit the proper and personal ends of holy persons in the contract and transmissions of Grace are increased by the participation and communion of others For our Prayers are more effectual our aids increased our incouragement and examples more prevalent God more honoured and the rewards of glory have accidental advantages by the superaddition of every new Saint and beatified person the members of the mystical body when they have received nutriment from God and his Holy Son supplying to each other the same which themselves received and live on in the communion of Saints Every new Star gilds the firmament and increases its first glories and those who are instruments of the Conversion of others shall not only introduce new beauties but when themselves shine like the stars in glory they shall have some reflexions from the light of others to whose fixing in the Orb of Heaven themselves have been instrumental And this consideration is not only of use in the exaltations of the dignity Apostolical and Clerical but for the enkindling even of private charities who may do well to promote others interests of Piety in which themselves also have some concernment 4. These Disciples asked of Christ where he 〈◊〉 Jesus answered Come and see It was an answer very expressive of our duty in this instance It is not enough for us to understand where Christ inhabits or where he is to be found for our understandings may follow him afar off and we receive no satisfaction unless it be to curiosity but we must go where he is eat of his meat wash in his Lavatory rest on his beds and dwell with him for the Holy Jesus hath no kind influence upon those who stand at distance save only the affections of a Loadstone apt to draw them nigher that he may transmit his vertues by union and confederations but if they persist in a sullen distance they shall learn his glories as Dives understood the peace of Lazarus of which he was never to participate Although the Son of man hath not where to lay his head yet he hath many houses where to convey his Graces he hath nothing to cover his own but he hath enough to sanctifie ours and as he dwelt in such houses which the charity of good people then afforded for his entertainment so now he loves to abide in places which the Religion of his servants hath vowed to his honour and the advantages of Evangelical ministrations Thither we must come to him or any-where else where we may enjoy him He is to be found in a Church in his ordinances in the communion of Saints in every religious duty in the heart of every holy person and if we go to him by the addresses of Religion in Holy places by the ministery of Holy rites by Charity by the adherences of Faith and Hope and other combining Graces the Graces of union and society or prepare a lodging for him within us that he may come to us then shall we see such glories and interiour beauties which none know but they that dwell with him The secrets of spiritual benediction are understood only by them to whom they are conveyed even by the children of his house Come and see 5. S. Andrew was first called and that by Christ immediately his Brother Simon next and that by Andrew but yet Jesus changed Simon' s name and not the other 's and by this change design'd him to an eminency of Office at least in signification principally above his Brother or else separately and distinctly from him to shew that these Graces and favours which do not immediately cooperate to eternity but are gifts and offices or impresses of authority are given to men irregularly and without any order of predisponent causes or probabilities on our part but are issues of absolute predestination and as they have efficacy from those reasons which God conceals so they have some purposes as conccal'd as their causes only if God pleases to make us vessels of fair imployment and of great capacity we shall bear a greater burthen and are bound to glorifie God with special offices But as these exteriour and ineffective Graces are given upon the same good will of God which made this matter to be a humane Body when if God had so pleased it was as capable of being made a Fungus or a Sponge so they are given to us with the same intentions as are our Souls that we might glorifie God in the distinct capacity of Grace as before of a reasonable nature And besides that it teaches us to magnifie God's free mercy so it removes every such exalted person from being an object of envy to others or from pleasing himself in vainer opinions for God hath made him of such an imployment as freely and voluntarily as he hath made him a Man and he no more cooperated to this Grace than to his own creation and may as well admire himself for being born in Italy or from rich parents or for having two hands or two feet as for having received such a designation extraordinary But these things are never instruments of reputation among severe understandings and never but in the sottish and unmanly apprehensions of the vulgar Only this when God hath imprinted an authority upon a person although the man hath nothing to please himself withal but God's grace yet others are to pay the duty which that impression demands which duty because it rapports to God and touches not the man 〈◊〉 as it passes through him to the fountain of authority and grace it extinguishes all 〈◊〉 of opinion and pride 6. When Jesus espied 〈◊〉 who also had been called by the first Disciples coming towards him he gave him an excellent character calling him a true Israelite in whom was no guile and admitted him amongst the first Disciples of the Institution by this character in one of the first of his Scholars hallowing Simplicity of spirit and receiving it into his Discipline that it might now become a vertue and duty Evangelical For although it concerns us as a Christian duty to be prudent yet the Prudence of Christianity is a duty of spiritual effect and in instances of Religion with no other purposes than to avoid giving offence to those that are without and within that we cause no disreputation to Christianity that we do nothing that may incourage enemies to the Religion and that those that are within the communion and obedience of the Church may not suffer as great inconveniences by the indiscreet conduct of religious actions as by direct temptations to a sin These are the purposes of private Prudence to
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
justifie that a holy life and a persevering Sanctity is enjoyned by the Covenant of the Gospel if I say in its first intention it be declared that we may as well and upon the same terms hope for Pardon upon a Recovery hereafter as upon the perseverance in the present condition 13. From these premisses we may soon understand what is the Duty of a Christian in all his life even to pursue his own undertaking made in Baptism or his first access to Christ and redemption of his person from the guilt and punishment of sins The state of a Christian is called in Scripture Regeneration Spiritual life Walking after the Spirit Walking in newness of life that is a bringing forth fruits meet for Repentance That Repentance which tied up in the same ligament with Faith was the disposition of a Christian to his Regeneration and Atonement must have holy life in perpetual succession for that is the apt and proper fruit of the first Repentance which John the Baptist preached as an introduction to Christianity and as an entertaining the Redemption by the bloud of the Covenant And all that is spoken in the New Testament is nothing but a calling upon us to do what we promised in our Regeneration to perform that which was the design of Christ who therefore redeemed us and bare our sins in his own body that we might die unto sin and live unto righteousness 14. This is that saying of S. Paul Follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you Plainly saying that unless we pursue the state of Holiness and Christian communion into which we were baptized when we received the grace of God we shall fail of the state of Grace and never come to see the glories of the Lord. And a little before Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of Faith having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water That 's the first state of our Redemption that 's the Covenant God made with us to remember our sins no more and to put his laws in our hearts and minds And this was done when our bodies were washed with water and our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience that is in Baptism It remains then that we persist in the condition that we may continue our title to the Covenant for so it follows Let us hold fast the profession of our Faith without wavering For if we sin wilfully after the profession there remains no more sacrifice that is If we hold not fast the profession of our Faith and continue not the condition of the Covenant but fall into a contrary state we have forfeited the mercies of the Covenant So that all our hopes of Blessedness relying upon the Covenant made with God in Jesus Christ are ascertained upon us by holding fast that profession by retaining our hearts still sprinkled from an evil conscience by following peace with all men and holiness For by not failing of the grace of God we shall not fail of our hopes the mighty price of our high calling but without all this we shall never see the face of God 15. To the same purpose are all those places of Scripture which intitle us to Christ and the Spirit upon no other condition but a holy life and a prevailing habitual victorious Grace Know you not your own selves Brethren how that Jesus Christ is in you except ye be reprobates There are but two states of being in order to Eternity either a state of the Inhabitation of Christ or the state of Reprobation Either Christ is in us or we are reprobates But what does that signifie to have Christ dwelling in us That also we learn at the feet of the same Doctor If Christ be in you the body is dead by reason of sin but the spirit is life because of righteousness The body of Sin is mortified and the life of Grace is active busie and spiritual in all them who are not in the state of Reprobation The Parallel with that other expression of his They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts If sin be vigorous if it be habitual if it be beloved if it be not dead or dying in us we are not of Christ's portion we belong not to him nor he to us For whoever is born of God doth not commit sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God that is every Regenerate person is in a condition whose very being is a contradiction and an opposite design to Sin When he was regenerate and born anew of water and the spirit the seed of God the original of Piety was put into him and bidden to encrease and multiply The seed of God in S. John is the same with the word of God in S. James by which he begat us and as long as this remains a Regenerate person cannot be given up to sin for when he is he quits his Baptism he renounces the Covenant he alters his relation to God in the same degree as he enters into a state of sin 16. And yet this discourse is no otherwise to be understood than according to the design of the thing it self and the purpose of God that is that it be a deep ingagement and an effectual consideration for the necessity of a holy life but at no hand let it be made an instrument of Despair nor an argument to lessen the influences of the Divine Mercy For although the nicety and limits of the Covenant being consigned in Baptism are fixed upon the condition of a holy and persevering uninterrupted Sanctity and our Redemption is wrought but once compleated but once we are but once absolutely intirely and presentially forgiven and reconciled to God this Reconciliation being in virtue of the Sacrifice and this Sacrifice applied in Baptism is one as Baptism is one and as the Sacrifice is one yet the Mercy of God besides this great Feast hath fragments which the Apostles and Ministers spiritual are to gather up in baskets and minister to the afterneeds of indigent and necessitous Disciples 17. And this we gather as fragments are gathered by respersed sayings instances and examples of the Divine mercy recorded in Holy Scripture The Holy Jesus commands us to forgive our brother seventy times seven times when he asks our pardon and implores our mercy and since the Divine mercy is the pattern of ours and is also procured by ours the one being made the measure of the other by way of precedent and by way of reward God will certainly forgive us as we forgive our brother and it cannot be imagined God should oblige us to give pardon oftner than he will give it himself especially since he hath expressed ours to be a title of a
recovery and the same sacrifice of Christ hath its power over us Christ is in his possession though he be disturbed but then our restitution consists upon the only condition of a renovation of our integrity as are the degrees of our Innocence so are our degrees of Confidence 23. Now because the intermedial state is divisible various successive and alterable so also is our condition of Pardon Our flesh shall no more return as that of a little child our wounds shall never be perfectly cured but a scar and pain and danger of a relapse shall for ever afflict us our sins shall be pardoned by parts and degrees to uncertain purposes but with certain danger of being recalled again and the Pardon shall never be 〈◊〉 till that day in which all things have their consummation 24. And this is evident to have been God's usual dealing with all those upon whom his Name is called God pardoned David's sins of Adultery and Murther but the Pardon was but to a certain degree and in a limited expression God hath taken away thy sin thou shalt not die but this Pardon was as imperfect as his condition was Nevertheless the child that is born unto thee that shall die Thus God pardoned the Israelites at the importunity of Moses and yet threatned to visit that sin upon them in the day of Visitation And so it is in Christianity when once we have broke and discomposed the golden chain of Vocation Election and Justification which are intire links and methodical periods of our happiness when we first give up our names to Christ for ever after our condition is imperfect we have broken our Covenant and we must be saved by the excrescencies and overflowings of mercy Our whole endeavour must be to be reduced to the state of our Baptismal innocence and integrity because in that the Covenant was established And since our life is full of defailances and all our endeavours can never make us such as Christ made us and yet upon that condition our hopes of happiness were established I mean of remaining such as he had made us as are the degrees of our Restitution and access to the first federal condition so also are the degrees of our Pardon but as it is always in imperfection during this life and subject to change and defailance so also are the hopes of our felicity never certain till we are taken from all danger never perfect till all that is imperfect in us is done away 25. And therefore in the present condition of things our pardon was properly expressed by David and S. Paul by a covering and a not imputing For because the body of sin dies visibly and fights perpetually and disputes with hopes of victory and may also prevail all this life is a condition of suspense our sin is rather covered than properly pardoned God's wrath is suspended not satisfied the sin is not to all purposes of anger imputed but yet is in some sence remanent or at least lies ready at the door Our condition is a state of Imperfection and every degree of imperfection brings a degree of Recession from the state Christ put us in and every recession from our Innocence is also an abatement of our Confidence the anger of God hovers over our head and breaks out into temporal Judgments and he retracts them again and threatens worse according as we approach to or retire from that first Innocence which was the first entertainment of a Christian and the Crown of the Evangelical Covenant Upon that we entertained the mercies of Redemption and God established it upon such an Obedience which is a constant perpetual and universal sincerity and endeavour and as we perform our part so God verifies his and not only gives a great assistance by the perpetual influences of his Holy Spirit by which we are consigned to the day of Redemption but also takes an account of Obedience not according to the standard of the Law and an exact scrutiny but by an Evangelical proportion in which we are on one side looked upon as persons already redeemed and assisted and therefore highly engaged and on the other side as compassed about with infirmities and enemies and therefore much pitied So that as at first our Calling and Election is presently good and shall remain so if we make it sure so if we once prevaricate it we are rendred then full of hazard difficulty and uncertainty and we must with pains and sedulity work out our Salvation with fear and trembling first by preventing a fall or afterwards by returning to that excellent condition from whence we have departed 26. But although the pardon of sins after Baptism be during this life difficult imperfect and revocable yet because it is to great effects for the present and in order to a complete Pardon in the day of Judgment we are next to enquire what are the parts of duty to which we are obliged after such prevarications which usually interrupt the state of Baptismal innocence and the life of the Spirit S. John gives this account If we say we have fellowship with God and walk in darkness we lie and do not the truth But if we walk in the light as he is in the light we have communion one with another and the bloud of Jesus cleanseth us from all sin This state of duty S. Paul calls a casting off the works of darkness a putting on the armour of light a walking honestly a putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. And to it he confronts making provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof S. Peter describing the duty of a Christian relates the proportion of it as high as the first precedent even God himself As he which hath called you is holy so be ye holy in all manner of conversation Not fashioning your selves according to the former lusts And again Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness And S. John with the same severity and perfection Every one that hath this hope that is every one who either does not or hath no reason to despair purifieth himself even as God is pure meaning that he is pure by a Divine purity which God hath prescribed as an imitation of his Holiness according to our capacities and possibilities That Purity must needs be a laying aside all malice and guile and hypocrisies and envies and evil speakings so S. Peter expresses it a laying aside every weight and the sin that does so easily beset us so S. Paul This is to walk in the light as he is in the light for in him is no darkness at all which we have then imitated when we have escaped the corruption that is in the world through lusts that is so as we are not held by them that we take them for our enemies for the object and party of our contestation and spiritual
avail but a new Creature nothing but Faith working by Charity nothing but a keeping the Commandments of God And as many as walk according to this rule peace be on them and mercy they are the Israel of God 38. This consideration I intended to oppose against the carnal security of Death-bed penitents who have it is to be feared spent a vicious life who have therefore mocked themselves because they meant to mock God they would reap what they sowed not But be not deceived saith the Apostle he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption but he 〈◊〉 soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting Only this let us not be weary of well-doing for in due season we shall reap if we faint not meaning that by a persevering industry and a long work and a succession of religious times we must sow to the Spirit a work of such length that the greatest danger is of fainting and intercision but he that sows to the Spirit not being weary of well-doing not fainting in the long process he and he only shall reap life everlasting But a purpose is none of all this If it comes to act and be productive of a holy life then it is useful and it was like the Eve of a Holiday festival in the midst of its abstinence and vigils it was the beginnings of a Repentance But if it never come to act it was to no purpose a mocking of God an act of direct hypocrisie a provocation of God and a deceiving our own selves you are unhappy you began not early or that your earlier days return not together with your good purposes 39. And neither can this have any other sentence though the purpose be made upon our death-bed For God hath made no Covenant with us on our death-bed distinct from that he made with us in our life and health And since in our life and present abilities good purposes and resolutions and vows for they are but the same thing in differing degrees did signifie nothing till they came to act and no man was reconciled to God by good intentions but by doing the will of God can we imagine that such purposes can more prevail at the end of a wicked life than at the beginning that less piety will serve our turns after 50 or 60 years impiety than after but 5 or 10 that a wicked and sinful life should by less pains be expiated than an unhappy year For it is not in the state of Grace as in other exteriour actions of Religion or Charity where God will accept the will for the deed when the external act is inculpably out of our powers and may also be supplied by the internal as bendings of the body by the prostration of the Soul Alms by Charity Preaching by praying for conversion These things are necessary because they are precepts and obligatory only in certain circumstances which may fail and we be innocent and disobliged But it is otherwise in the essential parts of our duty which God hath made the immediate and next condition of our Salvation such which are never out of our power but by our own fault Such are Charity Forgiveness Repentance and Faith such to which we are assisted by God such which are always put by God's grace into our power therefore because God indispensably demands them In these cases as there is no revelation God will accept the will for the deed the purpose for the act so it is unreasonable to expect it because God did once put it into our powers and if we put it out we must not complain of want of fire which our selves have quench'd nor complain we cannot see when we have put our own lights out and hope God will accept the will for the deed since we had no will to it when God put it into our powers These are but fig leaves to cover our nakedness which our sin hath introduced 40. For either the reducing such vows and purposes to act is the duty without which the purpose is ineffectual or else that practice is but the sign and testimony of a sincere intention and that very sincere intention was of it self accepted by God in the first spring If it was nothing but a sign then the Covenant which God made with Man in Jesus Christ was Faith and Good meaning not Faith and Repentance and a man is justified as soon as ever he purposes well before any endeavours are commenced or any act produced or habit ratified and the duties of a holy life are but shadows and significations of a Grace no part of the Covenant not so much as smoak is of fire but a mere sign of a person justified as soon as he made his vow but then also a man may be justified five hundred times in a year as often as he makes a new vow and confident resolution which is then done most heartily when the Lust is newly satisfied and the pleasure disappears for the instant though the purpose disbands upon the next temptation Yea but unless it be a sincere purpose it will do no good and although we cannot discern it nor the man himself yet God knows the heart and if he sees it would have been reduced to act then he accepts it and this is the hopes of a dying man But faint they are and dying as the man himself 41. For it is impossible for us to know but that what a man intends as himself thinks heartily is sincerely meant and if that may be insincere and is to be judged only by a never-following event in case the man dies it cannot become to any man the ground of hope nay even to those persons who do mean sincerely it is still an instrument of distrust and fears infinite since his own sincere meaning hath nothing in the nature of the thing no distinct formality no principle no sign to distinguish it from the unsincere vows of sorrowful but not truly penitent persons 2. A purpose acted and not acted differ not in the principle but in the effect which is extrinsecal and accidental to the purpose and each might be without the other a man might live holily though he had not made that vow and when he hath made the vow he may fail of living holily And as we should think it hard measure to have a damnation encreased upon us for those sins which we would have committed if we had lived so it cannot be reasonable to build our hopes of Heaven upon an imaginary Piety which we never did and if we had lived God knows whether we would or not 3. God takes away the godly lest malice should corrupt their Understandings and for the Elects sake those days are shortned which if they should continue no flesh should escape but now shall all that be laid upon their score which if God had not so prevented by their death God knows they would have done And God deals with
intanglings of ten thousand thoughts and the impertinences of a disturbed fancy and the great hindrances of a sick body and a sad and weary spirit All these represent a Death-bed to be but an ill station for a Penitent If the person be suddenly snatched away he is not left so much as to dispute if he be permitted to languish in his sickness he is either stupid and apprehends nothing or else miserable and hath reason to apprehend too much However all these difficulties are to be passed and overcome before the man be put into a saveable condition From this consideration though perhaps it may infer more yet we cannot but conclude this difficulty to be as great as the former danger that is vast and ponderous and insupportable 45. Thirdly Suppose the Clinick or death-bed Penitent to be as forward in these employments and as successfull in the mastering many of the Objections as reasonably can be thought yet it is considerable that there is a Repentance which is to be repented of and that is a Repentance which is not productive of fruits of amendment of life that there is a period set down by God in his Judgment and that many who have been profane as Esau was are reduced into the condition of Esau and there is no place left for their Repentance though they seek it carefully with tears that they who have long refused to hear God calling them to Repentance God will refuse to hear them calling for grace and mercy that he will laugh at some men when their calamity comes that the five foolish Virgins addressed themselves at the noise of the Bridegroom 's coming and begg'd oil and went out to buy oil and yet for want of some more time and an early diligence came too late and were shut out for ever that it is no-where revealed that such late endeavours and imperfect practices shall be accepted that God hath made but one Covenant with us in Jesus Christ which is Faith and Repentance consigned in 〈◊〉 and the signification of them and the purpose of Christ is that we should henceforth no more serve sin but mortifie and kill him perpetually and destroy his kingdom and extinguish as much as in us lies his very title that we should live holily justly and soberly in this present world in all holy conversation and godliness and that either we must be continued or reduced to this state of holy living and habitual sanctity or we have no title to the Promises that every degree of recession from the state Christ first put us in is a recession from our hopes and an insecuring our condition and we add to our 〈◊〉 only as our Obedience is restored All this is but a sad story to a dying person who sold himself to work wickedness in an habitual iniquity and aversation from the conditions of the holy Covenant in which he was sanctified 46. And certainly it is unreasonable to plant all our hopes of Heaven upon a Doctrine that is destructive of all Piety which supposes us in such a condition that God hath been offended at us all our life long and yet that we can never return our duties to him unless he will unravel the purposes of his Predestination or call back time again and begin a new computation of years for us and if he did it would be still as uncertain For what hope is there to that man who hath fulfilled all iniquity and hath not fulfilled righteousness Can a man live to the Devil and die to God sow to the flesh and reap to the Spirit hope God will in mercy reward him who hath served his enemy Sure it is the Doctrine of the avail of a death-bed Repentance cannot easily be reconciled with God's purposes and intentions to have us live a good life for it would reconcile us to the hopes of Heaven for a few thoughts or words or single actions when our life is done it takes away the benefit of many Graces and the use of more and the necessity of all 47. For let it be seriously weighed To what purpose is the variety of God's Grace what use is there of preventing restraining concomitant subsequent and persevering Grace unless it be in order to a religious conversation And by deferring Repentance to the last we despoil our Souls and rob the Holy Ghost of the glory of many rays and holy influences with which the Church is watered and refreshed that it may grow from grace to grace till it be consummate in glory It takes away the very being of Chastity and Temperance no such Vertues according to this Doctrine need to be named among Christians For the dying person is not in capacity to exercise these and then either they are troublesome without which we may do well enough or else the condition of the unchaste and intemperate Clinick is sad and deplorable For how can he eject those Devils of Lust and Drunkenness and Gluttony from whom the disease hath taken all powers of election and variety of choice unless it be possible to root out long-contracted habits in a moment or acquire the habits of Chastity Sobriety and Temperance those self-denying and laborious Graces without doing a single act of the respective vertues in order to obtaining of habits unless it be so that God will infuse habits into us more immediately than he creates our reasonable Souls in an instant and without the cooperation of the suscipient without the working out our Salvation with fear and without giving all diligence and running with patience and resisting unto bloud and striving to the last and enduring unto the end in a long fight and a long race If God infuses such habits why have we laws given us and are commanded to work and to do our duty with such a succession and lasting diligence as if the habits were to be acquired to which indeed God promises and ministers his aids still leaving us the persons obliged to the law and the labour as we are capable of the reward I need not instance any more But this doctrine of a death-bed Repentance is inconsistent with the duties of Mortification with all the vindictive and punitive parts of Repentance in exteriour instances with the precepts of waiting and watchfulness and preparation and standing in a readiness against the coming of the Bridegroom with the patience of well-doing with exemplary living with the imitation of the Life of Christ and conformities to his Passion with the kingdom and dominion and growth of Grace And lastly it goes about to defeat one of God's great purposes for Cod therefore concealed the time of our death that we might always stand upon our guard the Holy Jesus told us so Watch for ye know not what hour the Lord will come but this makes men seem more crafty in their late-begun Piety than God was provident and mysterious in concealing the time of our dissolution 48. And now if
it be demanded How long time must our Repentance and holy living take up what is the last period of commencement of our Piety after which it will be unaccepted or ineffectual will a month or a year or three years or seven suffice For since every man fails of his first condition and makes violent recessions from the state of his Redemption and his Baptismal grace how long may he lie in that state of recession with hopes of Salvation To this I answer He cannot lie in sin a moment without hazarding his Eternity every instant is a danger and all the parts of its duration do increase it and there is no answer to be given antecedently and by way of rule but all the hopes of our restitution depends upon the event It is just as if we should ask How long will it be before an Infant comes to the perfect use of Reason or before a fool will become wise or an ignorant person become excellently learned The answer to such questions must be given according to the capacity of the man to the industry of his person to his opportunities or hinderances to his life and health and to God's blessing upon him Only this every day of deferring it lessens our hopes and increases the difficulty and when this increasing divisible difficulty comes to the last period of impossibility God only knows because he measures the thoughts of man and comprehends his powers in a span and himself only can tell how he will correspond in those assistences without which we can never be restored Agree with thy adversary quickly while thou art in the way Quickly And therefore the Scripture sets down no other time than to day while it is yet called to day But because it will every day be called to day we must remember that our duty is such as requires a time a duration it is a course a race that is set before us a duty requiring patience and longanimity and perseverance and great care and diligence that we faint not And supposing we could gather probably by circumstances when the last period of our hopes begins yet he that stands out as long as he can gives probation that he came not in of good will or choice that he loves not the present service that his body is present but his heart is estranged from the yoak of his present imployment and then all that he can do is odious to God being a sacrifice without a heart an offertory of shells and husks while the Devil and the Man's Lusts have devoured the Kernels 49. So that this question is not to be asked beforehand but after a man hath done much of the work and in some sence lived holily then he may enquire into his condition whether if he persevere in that he may hope for the mercies of Jesus But he that enquires beforehand as commonly he means ill so he can be answered by none but God because the satisfaction of such a vain question depends upon future contingencies and accidents depending upon God's secret pleasure and predestination He that repents but to day repents late enough that he put it off from yesterday It may be that some may begin to day and find mercy and to another person it may be too late but no man is safe or wise that puts it off till to morrow And that it may appear how necessary it is to begin early and that the work is of difficulty and continuance and that time still encreases the objections it is certain that all the time that is lost must be redeemed by something in the sequel equivalent or sit to make up the breach and to cure the wounds long since made and long festering and this must be done by doing the first works by something that God hath declared he will accept in stead of them the intension of the following actions and the frequent repetition must make up the defect in the extension and coexistence with a longer time It was an act of an heroical Repentance and great detestation of the crime which Thomas Cantipratanus relates of a young Gentleman condemned to die for robberies who endeavouring to testifie his Repentance and as far as was then permitted him to expiate the crime begged of the Judge that tormentors might be appointed him that he might be long a dying and be cut in small pieces that the severity of the execution might be proportionable to the immensity of his sorrow and greatness of the iniquity Such great acts do facilitate our Pardon and hasten the Restitution and in a few days comprise the elapsed duty of many moneth 's but to relie upon such acts is the last remedy and like unlikely Physick to a despairing person if it does well it is well if it happen otherwise he must thank himself it is but what in reason he could expect The Romans sacrificed a Dog to Mana Geneta and prayed Ne quis domi natorum bonus fiat that none of their Domesticks might be good that is that they might not die saith Plutarch because dead people are called good But if they be so only when they die they will hardly find the reward of goodness in the reckonings of Eternity when to kill and to make good is all one as Aristole observed it to be in the Spartan Covenant with the Tegeatae and as it is in the case of Penitents never mending their lives till their lives be done that goodness is fatal and the prologue of an eternal death 50. I conclude this point with the words of S. Paul God will render to every man according to his deeds To them 〈◊〉 by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality to them 〈◊〉 life But to them that are contentious and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness to them indignation and wrath Tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doth evil 51. Having now discoursed of Repentance upon distinct principles I shall not need to consider upon those particulars which are usually reckoned parts or instances of Repentance such as are Contrition Confession and Satisfaction Repentance is the fulfilling all righteousness and includes in it whatsoever is matter of Christian duty and expresly commanded such as is Contrition or godly Sorrow and Confession to God both which are declared in Scripture to be in order to Pardon and purgation of our sins A contrite and a broken heart O God thou wilt not despise and If we consess our sins God is just and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all iniquity To which add concerning Satisfaction that it is a judging and punishing of our selves that it also is an instrument of Repentance and a fruit of godly sorrow and of good advantage for obtaining mercy of God For indignation and revenge are reckoned by S. Paul effects of a godly sorrow and the blessing which encourages its practice is instanced by
as all our happiness consists so God takes greatest complacency and delights in it above all his other Works He punishes to the third and fourth Generation but shews mercy unto thousands Therefore the Jews say that Michael 〈◊〉 with one wing and Gabriel with two meaning that the pacifying Angel the Minister of mercy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but the exterminating Angel the Messenger of wrath is slow And we are called to our approximation to God by the practice of this Grace we are made partakers of the Divine nature by being merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful This mercy consists in the affections and in the effects and actions In both which the excellency of this Christian Precept is eminent above the goodness of the moral precept of the old Philosophers and the piety and charity of the Jews by virtue of the Mosaic Law The Stoick Philosophers affirm it to be the duty of a wise man to succour and help the necessities of indigent and miserable persons but at no hand to pity them or suffer any trouble or compassion in our affections for they intended that a wise person should be dispassionate unmoved and without disturbance in every accident and object and concernment But the Blessed Jesus who came to reconcile us to his Father and purchase us an intire possession did intend to redeem us from sin and make our passions obedient and apt to be commanded even and moderate in temporal affairs but high and active in some instances of spiritual concernment and in all instances that the affection go along with the Grace that we must be as merciful in our compassion as compassionate in our exteriour expressions and actions The Jews by the prescript of their Law were to be merciful to all their Nation and confederates in Religion and this their Mercy was called Justice He hath dispersed abroad and given to the poor his righteousness or Justice 〈◊〉 for ever But the mercies of a Christian are to extend to all Do good to all men especially to the houshold of Faith And this diffusion of a Mercy not only to Brethren but to Aliens and Enemies is that which S. Paul calls goodness still retaining the old appellative for Judaical mercy 〈◊〉 For scarcely for a 〈◊〉 man will one die yet peradventure for a good man some will even dare to die So that the Christian Mercy must be a mercy of the whole man the heart must be merciful and the hand operating in the labour of love and it must be extended to all persons of all capacities according as their necessity requires and our ability permits and our endearments and other obligations dispose of and determine the order 14. The acts of this Grace are 1. To pity the miseries of all persons and all calamities spiritual or temporal having a fellow-feeling in their afflictions 2. To be afflicted and sad in the publick Judgments imminent or incumbent upon a Church or State or Family 3. To pray to God for remedy for all afflicted persons 4. To do all acts of bodily assistence to all miserable and distressed people to relieve the Poor to redeem Captives to forgive Debts to disabled persons to pay Debts for them to lend them mony to feed the hungry and clothe the naked to rescue persons from dangers to defend and relieve the oppressed to comfort widows and fatherless children to help them to right that suffer wrong and in brief to do any thing of relief support succour and comfort 5. To do all acts of spiritual 〈◊〉 to counsel the doubtful to admonish the erring to strengthen the weak to resolve the scrupulous to teach the ignorant and any thing else which may be instrumental to his Conversion Perseverance Restitution and Salvation or may rescue him from spiritual dangers or supply him in any ghostly necessity The reward of this Vertue is symbolical to the Vertue it self the grace and glory differing in nothing but degrees and every vertue being a reward to it self The merciful shall receive mercy mercy to help them in time of need mercy from God who will not only give them the great mercies of Pardon and Eternity but also dispose the hearts of others to pity and supply their needs as they have done to others For the present there is nothing more noble than to be beneficial to others and to lift up the poor 〈◊〉 of the mire and rescue them from misery it is to do the work of God and for the future nothing is a greater title to a mercy at the Day of Judgment than to have shewed mercy to our necessitous Brother it being expressed to be the only rule and instance in which Christ means to judge the world in their Mercy and Charity or their Unmercifulness respectively I was hungry and ye fed me or ye fed me not and so we stand or fall in the great and eternal scrutiny And it was the prayer of Saint Paul Onesiphorus shewed kindness to the great Apostle The Lord shew him a mercy in that day For a cup of charity though but full of cold water shall not lose its reward 15. Sixthly Blessed are the Pure 〈◊〉 heart for they shall see God This purity of heart includes purity of hands Lord who shall dwell in thy Tabernacle even he that is of clean hands and a pure heart that is he that hath not given his mind unto vanity nor sworn to deceive his Neighbour It signifies justice of action and candour of spirit innocence of manners and sincerity of purpose it is one of those great circumstances that consummates Charity For the end of the Commandment is Charity out of a pure heart and of a good Conscience and Faith unfeigned that is a heart free from all carnal affections not only in the matter of natural impurity but also spiritual and immaterial such as are Heresies which are theresore impurities because they mingle secular interest or prejudice with perswasions in Religion Seditions hurtful and impious Stratagems and all those which S. Paul enumerates to be works or fruits of the flesh A good Conscience that 's a Conscience either innocent or penitent a state of Grace 〈◊〉 a not having prevaricated or a being restored to our Baptismal purity Faith unfeigned that also is the purity of Sincerity and excludes Hypocrisie timorous and half perswasions neutrality and indifferency in matters of Salvation And all these do integrate the whole duty of Charity But Purity as it is a special Grace signifies only honesty and uprightness of Soul without hypocrisie to God and dissimulation towards men and then a freedom from all carnal desires so as not to be governed or led by them Chastity is the purity of the body Simplicity is the purity of the spirit both are the Sanctification of the whole Man for the entertainment of the Spirit of Purity and the Spirit of Truth 16. The acts of this Vertue are 1. To quit all Lustful thoughts not to take delight in
was a Law of Works that is especially and in its first intention But this being less perfect the Holy Jesus inverted the order 1. For very little of Christianity stands upon the outward action Christ having appointed but two Sacraments immediately and 2. a greater restraint is laid upon the passions desires and first motions of the spirit than under the severity of Moses and 3. they are threatned with the same curses of a sad eternity with the acts proceeding from them and 4. because the obedience of the spirit does in many things excuse the want of the outward act God always requiring at our hands what he hath put in our power and no more and 5. lastly because the spirit is the principle of all actions moral and spiritual and certainly productive of them when they are not impeded from without therefore the Holy Jesus hath secured the fountain as knowing that the current must needs be healthful and pure if it proceeds through pure chanels from a limpid and unpolluted principle 4. And certainly it is much for the glory of God to worship him with a Religion whose very design looks upon God as the searcher of our hearts and Lord of our spirits who judges the purposes as a God and does not only take his estimate from the outward action as a man And it is also a great reputation to the Institution it self that it purifies the Soul and secures the secret cogitations of the mind It punishes Covetouiness as it judges Rapine it condemns a Sacrilegious heart as soon as an Irreligious hand it detests hating of our Brother by the same aversation which it expresses against doing him 〈◊〉 He that curses in his heart shall die the death of an explicite and bold Blasphemer murmur and repining is against the Laws of Christianity but either by the remissness of Moses's Law or the gentler execution of it or the innovating or lessening glosses of the Pharisees he was esteemed innocent whose actions were according to the letter not whose spirit was conformed to the intention and more secret Sanctity of the Law So that our Righteousness must therefore exceed the Pharisaical standard because our spirits must be pure as our hands and the heart as regular as the action our purposes must be sanctified and our thoughts holy we must love our Neighbour as well as relieve him and chuse Justice with adhesion of the mind as well as carry her upon the palms of our hands And therefore the Prophets foretelling the Kingdom of the Gospel and the state of this Religion call it a writing the Laws of God in our hearts And S. Paul distinguishes the Gospel from the Law by this only measure We are all Israelites of the seed of Abraham heirs of the same inheritance only now we are not to be accounted Jews for the outward consormity to the Law but for the inward consent and obedience to those purities which were secretly signified by the types of Moses They of the Law were Jews outwardly their Circumcision was outward in the flesh their praise was of men We are Jews inwardly our Circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit and not in the letter and our praise is of God that is we are not judged by the outward act but by the mind and the intention and though the acts must sollow in all instances where we can and where they are required yet it is the less principal and rather significative than by its own strength and energy operative and accepted 5. S. Clemens of Alexandria saith the Pharisees righteousness consisted in the not doing evil and that Christ superadded this also that we must do the contrary good and so exceed the Pharisaical measure They would not wrong a Jew nor many times relieve him they reckoned their innocence by not giving offence by walking blameless by not being accused before the Judges sitting in the gates of their Cities But the balance in which the Judge of quick and dead weighs Christians is not only the avoiding evil but doing good the following peace with all men and holiness the proceeding from faith to faith the adding vertue to vertue the persevering in all holy conversation and godliness And therefore S. Paul commending the grace of universal Charity says that Love worketh no ill to his neighbour therefore Love is the fulfilling of the Law implying that the prime intention of the Law was that every man's right be secured that no man receive wrong And indeed all the Decalogue consisting of Prohibitions rather than Precepts saving that each Table hath one positive Commandment does not obscurely verifie the doctrine of S. Clement's interpretation Now because the Christian Charity abstains from doing all injury therefore it is the fulfilling of the Law but because it is also patient and liberal that it suffers long and is kind therefore the Charity commanded in Christ's Law exceeds that Charity which the Scribes and Pharisees reckoned as part of their Righteousness But Jesus himself does with great care in the particulars instance in what he would have the Disciples to be eminent above the most strict Sect of the Jewish Religion 1. in practising the moral Precepts of the Decalogue with a stricter interpretation 2. and in quitting the Permissions and licences which for the hardness of their heart Moses gave them as indulgences to their persons and securities against the contempt of too severe Laws 6. The severity of exposition was added but to three Commandments and in three indulgences the permission was taken away But because our great Law-giver repeated also other parts of the Decalogue in his after-Sermons I will represent in this one view all that he made to be Christian by adoption 7. The first Commandment Christ often repeated and enforced as being the basis of all Religion and the first endearment of all that relation whereby we are capable of being the sons of God as being the great Commandment of the Law and comprehensive of all that duty we owe to God in the relations of the vertue of Religion Hear O Israel the Lord thy God is one Lord and Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind and with all thy strength This is the first Commandment that is this comprehends all that which is moral and eternal in the first Table of the 〈◊〉 8. The Duties of this Commandment are 1. To worship God alone with actions proper to him and 2. to love and 3. obey him with all our faculties 1. Concerning Worship The actions proper to the Honour of God are to offer Sacrifice Incense and Oblations making Vows to him Swearing by his Name as the instrument of secret testimony confessing his incommunicable Attributes and Praying to him for those Graces which are essentially annexed to his dispensation as Remission of sins Gifts of the Spirit and the grace of 〈◊〉 and Life
fall into hypocrisie or deceit or if a Christian Asseveration were not of value equal with an Oath And therefore Christ forbidding promissory Oaths and commanding so great simplicity of spirit and honesty did consonantly to the design and perfection of his Institution intending to make us so just and sincere that our Religion being infinite obligation to us our own Promises should pass for bond enough to others the Religion receive great honour by being esteemed a sufficient security and instrument of publick entercourse And this was intimated by our Lord himself in that reason he is pleased to give of the prohibition of swearing Let your communication be Yea yea Nay nay for whatsoever is more cometh of evil that is As good Laws come from ill manners the modesty of cloathing from the shame of sin Antidotes and Physick by occasion of poisons and diseases so is Swearing an effect of distrust and want of faith or honesty on one or both sides Men dare not trust the word of a Christian or a Christian is not just and punctual to his Promises and this calls for confirmation by an Oath So that Oaths suppose a fault though they are not faults always themselves whatsoever is more than Yea or Nay is not always evil but it always cometh of evil And therefore the Essenes esteemed every man that was put to his Oath no better than an infamous person a perjurer or at least suspected not esteemed a just man and the Heathens would not suffer the Priest of Jupiter to swear because all men had great opinion of his sanctity and authority and the Scythians derided Alexander's caution and timorous provision when he required an Oath of them Nos religionem in ipsa side novimus Our faith is our bond and they who are willing to deceive men will not stick to deceive God when they have called God to witness But I have a caution to insert for each which I propound as an humble advice to persons eminent and publickly interested 22. First That Princes and such as have power of decreeing the injunction of promissory Oaths be very curious and reserved not lightly enjoyning such Promises neither in respect of the matter trivial nor yet frequently nor without great reason enforcing The matter of such Promises must be only what is already matter of Duty or Religion for else the matter is not grave enough sor the calling of God to testimony but when it is a matter of Duty then the Oath is no other than a Vow or Promise made to God in the presence of men And because Christians are otherwise very much obliged to do all which is their duty in matters both civil and religious of Obedience and Piety therefore it must be an instant necessity and a great cause to superinduce such a confirmation as derives from the so sacredly invocating the Name of God it must be when there is great necessity that the duty be actually performed and when the Supreme power either hath not power sufficient to punish the delinquent or may miss to have notice of the delict For in these cases it is reasonable to bind the faith of the obliged persons by the fear of God after a more special manner but else there is no reason sufficient to demand of the subject any farther security than their own faith and contract The reason of this advice relies upon the strictness of the words of this Precept against promissory Oaths and the reverence we owe to the name of God Oaths of Allegiance are fit to be imposed in a troubled State or to a mutinous People But it is not so fit to tie the People by Oath to abstain from transportations of Metal or Grain or Leather from which by Penalties they are with as much security and less suspicion of iniquity restrained 23. Secondly Concerning assertory Oaths and Depositions in Judgment although a greater liberty may be taken in the subject matter of the Oath and we may being required to it swear in Judgment though the cause be a question of money or our interest or the rights of a Society and S. Athanasius purged himself by Oath before the Emperour Constantius yet it were a great pursuance and security of this part of Christian Religion if in no case contrary Oaths might be admitted in which it is certain one part is perjured to the ruine of their Souls to the intricating of the Judgment to the dishonour of Religion but that such rules of prudence and reasonable presumption be established that upon the Oath of that party which the Law shall chuse and upon probable grounds shall presume for the sentence may be established For by a small probability there may a surer Judgment be given than upon the confidence of contradictory Oaths and after the sin the Judge is left to the uncertainty of conjectures as much as if but one part had sworn and to much more because such an Oath is by the consent of all men accepted as a rule to determine in Judgment By these discourses we understand the intention of our Blessed Master in this Precept and I wish by this or any thing else men would be restrained 〈◊〉 that low cheap unreasonable and unexcusable vice of customary Swearing to which we have nothing to invite us that may lessen the iniquity for which we cannot pretend temptation nor alledge infirmity but it begins by wretchlesness and a malicious carelesness and is continued by the strength of habit and the greatest immensity of folly And I consider that Christian Religion being so holy an Institution to which we are invited by so great promises in which we are instructed by so clear revelations and to the performance of our duties compelled by the threatnings of a sad and insupportable eternity should more than sufficiently endear the performance of this Duty to us The name of a Christian is a high and potent antidote against all sin if we consider aright the honour of the name the undertaking of our Covenant and the reward of our duty The Jews eat no Swines flesh because they are of Moses and the Turks drink no Wine because they are Mahumetans and yet we swear for all we are Christians than which there is not in the world a greater conviction of our baseness and irreligion Is the authority of the Holy Jesus so despicable are his Laws so unreasonable his rewards so little his threatnings so small that we must needs in contempt of all this profane the great Name of God and trample under foot the Laws of Jesus and cast away the hopes of Heaven and enter into security to be possessed by Hell-torments for Swearing that is for speaking like a fool without reason without pleasure without reputation much to our disesteem much to the trouble of civil and wise persons with whom we joyn in society and entercourse Certainly Hell will be heat seven times hotter for a customary Swearer and every degree of
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
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
and the caltel upon a thousand hills are God's and they find the poor man meat the Rich also need this Prayer because although they have the bread yet they need the blessing and what they have now may perish or be taken from them and as preservation is a perpetual creation so the continuing to rich men what God hath already bestowed is a continual giving it Young men must pray because their needs are like to be the longer and Old men because they are present but all these are to pray but for the present that which in estimation of Law is to be reckoned as imminent upon the present and part of this state and condition But it is great improvidence and an unchristian spirit for old men to heap up provisions and load their sumpters still the more by how much their way is shorter But there is also a bread which came down from heaven a diviner nutriment of our Souls the food and wine of Angels Christ himself as he communicates himself in the expresses of his Word and Sacraments and if we be destitute of this bread we are miserable and perishing people We must pray that our Souls also may feed upon those celestial viands prepared for us in the antepasts of the Gospel till the great and fuller meal of the Supper of the Lamb shall answer all our prayers and 〈◊〉 every desire 8. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us Not only those sins of infirmity invasion and sudden surprise which like excrescencies of luxuriant trees adhere to many actions by inadvertency and either natural weakness or accidental prejudice but also all those great sins which were washed off from our Souls and the stain taken away in Baptism or when by choice and after the use of Reason we gave up our names to Christ when we first received the adoption of sons for even those things were so pardoned that we must for ever confess and glory in the Divine mercy and still ascertain it by performing what we then promised and which were the conditions of our covenant For although Christ hath taken off the guilt yet still there remains the disreputation and S. Paul calls himself the chiefest of sinners not referring to his present condition but to his former persecuting the Church of God which is one of the greatest crimes in the world and for ever he asked pardon for it and so must we knowing that they may return if we shake off the yoke of Christ and break his cords from us the bands of the covenant Evangelical the sins will return so as to undo us And this we pray with a tacite obligation to forgive for so only and upon that condition we beg pardon to be given or continued respectively that is as we from our hearts forgive them that did us injury in any kind never entertaining so much as a thought of revenge but contrariwise loving them that did us wrong for so we beg that God should do to us and therefore it is but a lesser revenge to say I will forgive but I will never have to do with him For if he become an object of Charity we must have to do with him to relieve him because he needs prayers we must have to do with him and pray for him and to refuse his society when it is reasonably and innocently offered is to deny that to him which Christians have only been taught to deny to persons excommunicate to persons under punishment i. e. to persons not yet forgiven and we shall have but an evil portion if God should forgive our sins and should not also love us and do us grace and bestow benefits upon us So we must forgive others so God forgives us 9. And lead us not into temptation S. Cyprian out of an old Latin copy reads it Suffer us not to be led into temptation that is Suffer us not to be overcome by temptation And therefore we are bound to prevent our access to such temptation whose very approximation is dangerous and the contact is irregular and evil such as are temptations of the flesh yet in other temptations the assault sometimes makes confident and hardens a resolution For some spirits who are softned by fair usages are steeled and emboldned by a persecution But of what nature soever the temptations be whether they be such whose approach a Christian is bound to fear or such which are the certain lot of Christians such are troubles and persecutions into which when we enter we must count it joy yet we are to pray that we enter not into the possession of the temptation that we be not overcome by it 10. But deliver us from evil From the assaults or violence of evil from the Wicked one who not only presents us with objects but heightens our concupiscence and makes us imaginative phantastical and passionate setting on the temptation making the lust active and the man full of appetite and the appetite full of energy and power therefore deliver us from the Evil one who is interested as an enemy in every hostility and in every danger Let not Satan have any power or advantage over us and let not evil men prevail upon us in our danger much less to our ruine Make us safe under the covering of thy wings against all fraud and every violence that no temptation destroy our hopes or break our strength or alter our state or overthrow our glories In these last Petitions which concern our selves the Soul hath affections proper to her own needs as in the former proportion to God's glory In the first of these the affection of a poor indigent and necessitous Begger in the second of a delinquent and penitent servant in the last of a person in affliction or danger And after all this the reason of our confidence is derived from God 11. For thine is the kingdom the power and the glory for ever That is These which we beg are for the honour of thy kingdom for the manifestation of thy power and the glory of thy Name and mercies And it is an express Doxology or Adoration which is apt and 〈◊〉 to conclude all our Prayers and addresses to God 12. These are the generals and great Treasures of matter to which all our present or sudden needs are reducible and when we make our Prayers more minute and particular if the instance be in matter of duty and merely spiritual there is no danger but when our needs are temporal or we are transported with secular desires all descending to particulars is a confining the Divine Providence a judging for our selves a begging a temptation oftentimes sometimes a mischief and to beg beyond the necessities of our life is a mutiny against that Providence which assigns to Christians no more but food and raiment for their own use all other excrescencies of possessions being entrusted to the rich man's 〈◊〉 only as to a steward and he shall be accountable for the
the Holy Jesus that he framed all his Laws in compliance to that design He that returns good for evil a soft answer to the asperity of his enemy kindness to injuries lessons the contention always and sometimes gets a friend and when he does not he shames his enemy Every little accident in a family to peevish and angry persons is the matter of a quarrel and every quarrel discomposes the peace of the house and sets it on fire and no man can tell how far that may burn it may be to a dissolution of the whole fabrick But whosoever obeys the Laws of Jesus bears with the infirmities of his relatives and society seeks with sweetness to remedy what is ill and to prevent what it may produce and throws water upon a spark and lives sweetly with his wife affectionately with his children providently and discreetly with his servants and they all love the Major-domo and look upon him as their Parent their Guardian their Friend their Patron their Proveditore But look upon a person angry peaceless and disturbed when he enters upon his threshold it gives an alarm to his house and puts them to flight or upon their defence and the Wife reckons the joy of her day is done when he returns and the Children enquire into their Father's age and think his life tedious and the Servants curse privately and do their service as slaves do only when they dare not do otherwise and they serve him as they serve a Lion they obey his strength and fear his cruelty and despise his manners and hate his person No man enjoys content in his family but he that is peaceful and charitable just and loving forbearing and forgiving careful and provident He that is not so his house may be his Castle but it is manned by enemies his house is built not upon the sand but upon the waves and upon a tempest the foundation is uncertain but his ruine is not so 8. And if we extend the relations of the man beyond his own walls he that does his duty to his Neighbour that is all offices of kindness gentleness and humanity nothing of injury and affront is certain never to meet with a wrong so great as is the inconvenience of a Law-suit or the contention of neighbours and all the consequent dangers and inconvenience Kindness will create and invite kindness an injury provokes an injury And since the love of Neighbours is one of those beauties which Solomon did admire and that this beauty is within the combination of precious things which adorn and reward a peaceable charitable disposition he that is in love with spiritual excellencies with intellectual rectitudes with peace and with blessings of society knows they grow amongst rose bushes of Vertue and holy obedience to the Laws of Jesus And for a good man some will even dare to die and a sweet and charitable disposition is received with fondness and all the endearments of the Neighbourhood He that observes how many families are ruined by contention and how many spirits are broken by the care and contumely and fear and spite which are entertained as advocates to promote a Suit of Law will soon confess that a great loss and peaceable quitting of a considerable interest is a purchace and a gain in respect of a long Suit and a vexatious quarrel And still if the proportion rises higher the reason swells and grows more necessary and determinate For if we would live according to the Discipline of Christian Religion one of the great plagues which vex the world would be no more That there should be no wars was one of the designs of Christianity and the living according to that Institution which is able to prevent all wars and to establish an universal and eternal peace when it is obeyed is the using an infallible instrument toward that part of our political happiness which consists in Peace This world would be an image of Heaven if all men were charitable peaceable just and loving To this excellency all those precepts of Christ which consist in forbearance and forgiveness do cooperate 9. But the next instance of the reward of holy Obedience and conformity to Christ's Laws is it self a Duty and needs no more but a mere repetition of it We must be content in every state and because Christianity teaches us this lesson it teaches us to be happy for nothing from without can make us 〈◊〉 unless we joyn our own consents to it and apprehend it such and entertain it in our sad and melancholick retirements A Prison is but a retirement and opportunity of serious thoughts to a person whose spirit is confined and apt to sit still and desires no enlargement beyond the cancels of the body till the state of Separation calls it forth into a fair liberty But every retirement is a prison to a loose and wandring fancy for whose wildness no 〈◊〉 are restraint no band of duty is consinement who when he hath broken the first hedge of duty can never after endure any enclosure so much as in a Symbol But this Precept is so necessary that it is not more a duty than a rule of prudence and in many accidents of our lives it is the only cure of sadness for it is certain that no providence less than divine can prevent evil and cross accidents but that is an excellent remedy to the evil that receives the accident within its power and takes out the sting paring the nails and drawing the teeth of the wild beast that it may be tame or harmless and medicinal For all Content consists in the proportion of the object to the appetite and because external accidents are not in our power and it were nothing excellent that things happened to us according to our first desires God hath by his grace put it into our own power to make the happiness by making our desires descend to the event and comply with the chance and combine with all the issues of Divine Providence And then we are noble persons when we borrow not our content from things below us but make our satisfactions from within And it may be considered that every little care may disquiet us and may increase it self by reflexion upon its own acts and every discontent may discompose our spirits and put an edge and make afflictions poynant but cannot take off one from us but makes every one to be two But Content removes not the accident but complies with it it takes away the sharpness and displeasure of it and by stooping down makes the lowest equal proportionable and commensurate Impatience makes an Ague to be a Fever and every Fever to be a Calenture and that Calenture may expire in Madness But a quiet spirit is a great disposition to health and for the present does alleviate the sickness And this also is notorious in the instance of Covetousness The love of money is the root of all evil which while some
have coveted after they have pierced themselves with many sorrows Vice makes poor and does ill endure it 10. For he that in the School of Christ hath learned to determine his desires when his needs are served and to judge of his needs by the proportions of nature hath nothing wanting towards Riches Vertue makes Poverty become rich and no Riches can satisfie a covetous mind or rescue him from the affliction of the worst kind of Poverty He only wants that is not satisfied And there is great infelicity in a Family where Poverty dwells with discontent There the Husband and Wife quarrel for want of a full table and a rich wardrobe and their love that was built upon false arches sinks when such temporary supporters are removed they are like two Milstones which set the Mill on fire when they want corn and then their combinations and society were unions of Lust or not supported with religious love But we may easily suppose S. Joseph and the Holy Virgin-Mother in Egypt poor as hunger forsaken as banishment disconsolate as strangers and yet their present lot gave them no afflicton because the Angel fed them with a necessary hospitality and their desires were no larger than their tables and their eyes look'd only upwards and they were careless of the future and careful of their duty and so made their life pleasant by the measures and discourses of Divine Philosophy When Elisha stretched himself upon the body of the child and laid hands to hands and applied mouth to mouth and so shrunk himself into the posture of commensuration with the child he brought life into the dead trunk and so may we by applying our spirits to the proportions of a narrow fortune bring life and vivacity into our dead and lost condition and make it live till it grows bigger or else returns to health and salutary uses 11. And besides this Philosophical extraction of gold from stones and Riches from the dungeon of Poverty a holy life does most probably procure such a proportion of Riches which can be useful to us or consistent with our felicity For besides that the Holy Jesus hath promised all things which our heavenly Father knows we need provided we do our duty and that we find great securities and rest from care when we have once cast our cares upon God and placed our hopes in his bosome besides all this the temperance sobriety and prudence of a Christian is a great income and by not despising it a small revenue combines its parts till it grows to a heap big enough for the emissions of Charity and all the offices of Justice and the supplies of all necessities whilest Vice is unwary prodigal and indiscreet throwing away great revenues as tributes to intem perance and vanity and suffering dissolution and forfeiture of estates as a punishment and curse Some sins are direct improvidence and ill husbandry I reckon in this number Intemperance Lust Litigiousness Ambition Bribery Prodigality Caming Pride Sacrilege which is the greatest spender of them all and makes a fair estate evaporate like Camphire turning it into nothing no man knows which way But what the 〈◊〉 gave as an estimate of a rich man saying He that can maintain an Army is rich was but a short account for he that can maintain an Army may be beggered by one Vice and it is a vast revenue that will pay the debt-books of Intemperance or Lust. 12. To these if we add that Vertue is honourable and a great advantage to a fair reputation that it is praised by them that love it not that it is honoured by the followers and family of Vice that it forces glory out of shame honor from contempt that it reconciles men to the fountain of Honour the Almighty God who will honour them that honour him there are but a few more excellencies in the world to make up the Rosary of temporal Felicity And it is so certain that Religion serves even our temporal ends that no great end of State can well be served without it not Ambition not desires of Wealth not any great design but Religion must be made its usher or support If a new Opinion be commenced and the Author would make a Sect and draw Disciples after him at least he must be thought to be Religious which is a demonstration how great an instrument of reputation Piety and Religion is and if the pretence will do us good offices amongst men the reality will do the same besides the advantages which we shall receive from the Divine Benediction The power of godliness will certainly do more than the form alone And it is most notorious in the affairs of the Clergy whose lot it hath been to fall from great riches to poverty when their wealth made them less curious of their duty but when Humility and Chastity and exemplary Sanctity have been the enamel of their holy Order the people like the Galatians would pull out their own eyes to do them benefit And indeed God hath singularly blessed such instruments to the being the only remedies to repair the breaches made by Sacrilege and Irreligion But certain it is no man was ever honoured for that which was esteemed vicious Vice hath got mony and a curse many times and Vice hath adhered to the instruments and purchaces of Honour But among all Nations whatsoever those called Honourable put on the face and pretence of Vertue But I chuse to instance in the proper cognisance of a Christian Humility which seems contradictory to the purposes and reception of Honour and yet in the world nothing is a more certain means to purchase it Do not all the world hate a proud man And therefore what is contrary to Humility is also contradictory to Honour and Reputation And when the Apostle had given command that in giving honour we should one go before another he laid the foundation of praises and Panegyricks and Triumphs And as Humility is secure against affronts and tempests of despight because it is below them so when by imployment or any other issue of Divine Providence it is drawn from its 〈◊〉 and secrecy it shines clear and bright as the purest and most polished metals Humility is like a Tree whose Root when it sets deepest in the earth rises higher and spreads fairer and stands surer and lasts longer every step of its descent is like a rib of iron combining its parts in unions indissoluble and placing it in the chambers of security No wise man ever lost any thing by cession but he receives the hostility of violent 〈◊〉 into his embraces like a stone into a lap of wooll it rests and sits down soft and innocently but a stone falling upon a stone makes a collision and extracts fire and finds no rest and just so are two proud persons despised by each other contemned by all living in perpetual dissonancies always fighting against asfronts 〈◊〉 of every person disturbed by every accident
satisfie his curiosity but is certain never to enter that way It is like enquiring into fortunes concerning which Phavorinus the Philosopher spake not unhandsomely They that foretell events of destiny and secret providence either foretell sad things or prosperous If they promise prosperous and deceive you are made miserable by a vain speculation If they threaten ill fortune and say false thou art made wretched by a false fear But if they foretell adversity and say true thou art made miserable by thy own apprehension before thou art so by destiny and many times the fear is worse than the evil feared But if they promise felicities and promise truly what shall come to pass then thou shalt be wearied by an impatience and a suspended hope and thy hope shall ravish and deflower the joys of thy possession Much of it is hugely applicable to the present Question and our Blessed Lord when he was petitioned that he would grant to the two sons of Zebedee that they might sit one on the right hand and the other on the left in his Kingdom rejected their desire and only promised them what concerned their duty and their suffering referring them to that and leaving the final event of men to the disposition of his Father This is the great Secret of the Kingdom which God hath locked up and sealed with the counsels of Eternity The sure foundation of God standeth having this seal The Lord knoweth who are his This seal shall never be broken up till the great day of Christ in the mean time the Divine knowledge is the only 〈◊〉 of the final sentences and this way of God is unsearchable and past finding out And therefore if we be solicitous and curious to know what God in the counsels of Eternity hath decreed concerning us he hath in two fair Tables described all those sentences from whence we must take accounts the revelations of Scripture and the book of Conscience The first recites the Law and the conditions the other gives in evidence the first is clear evident and conspicuous the other when it is written with large characters may also be discerned but there are many little accents periods distinctions and little significations of actions which either are there written in water or fullied over with carelesness or blotted with forgetfulness or not legible by ignorance or misconstrued by interest and partiality that it will be extremely difficult to read the hand upon the wall or to copy out one line of the eternal sentence And therefore excellent was the counsel of the Son of Sirach 〈◊〉 not out the things that are 〈◊〉 hard for thee 〈◊〉 search the things that are above thy strength 〈◊〉 what is 〈◊〉 thee think thereupon with reverence for it is not 〈◊〉 for thee 〈◊〉 see with thine eyes the things that are in secret For whatsoever God hath revealed in general concerning Election it concerns all persons within the pale of Christianity He hath conveyed notice to all Christian people that they are the sons of God that they are the 〈◊〉 of Eternity coheirs 〈◊〉 Christ partakers of the Divine nature meaning that such they are by the design of God and the purposes of the manifestation of his Son The Election 〈◊〉 God is disputed in Scripture to be an act of God separating whole Nations and rejecting others in each of which many particular instances there were contrary to the general and universal purpose and of the elect nations many particulars perished and many of the rejected people sate down with Abraham Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of Heaven and to those persons to whom God was more particular and was pleased to shew the scrowls of his eternal counsels and to reveal their particular Elections as he did to the twelve Apostles he shewed them wrapped up and 〈◊〉 and to take off their confidences or presumptions he gave probation in one instance that those scrowls may be cancelled that his purpose concerning particulars may be altered by us and 〈◊〉 that he did not discover the bottom of the Abysse but some purposes of special grace and 〈◊〉 design But his peremptory final 〈◊〉 Decree he keeps in the cabinets of the eternal ages never to be unlocked till the Angel of the Covenant shall declare the unalterable universal Sentence 3. But as we take the measure of the course of the Sun by the dimensions of the shadows made by our own bodies or our own instruments so must we take the measures of Eternity by the span of a man's hand and guess at what God decrees of us by considering how our relations and endearments are to him And it is observable that all the confidences which the Spirit of God hath created in the Elect are built upon Duty and stand or fall according to the strength or weakness of such supporters We know we are translated from death to life by our love unto the Brethren meaning that the performance of our duty is the best consignation to Eternity and the only testimony God gives us of our Election And therefore we are to make our judgments accordingly And here I consider that there is no state of a Christian in which by virtue of the Covenant of the Gospel it is effectively and fully declared that his sins are actually pardoned but only in Baptism at our first coming to Christ when he redeems us from our 〈◊〉 conversation when he makes us become Sons of God when he justifies us 〈◊〉 by his grace when we are purified by Faith when we make a Covenant with Christ to live 〈◊〉 ever according to his Laws And this I shall suppose I have already proved and explicated in the Discourse of Repentance So that whoever is certain he hath not offended God since that time and in nothing transgresseth the Laws of Christianity he is certain that he actually remains in the state of Baptismal purity but it is too certain that this certainty remains not long but we commonly throw some dirt into our waters of Baptism and stain our white robe which we then put on 4. But then because our restitution to this state is a thing that consists of so many parts is so divisible various and uncertain whether it be arrived to the degree of Innocence and our Innocence consists in a Mathematical point and is not capable of degrees any more than Unity because one stain destroys our being innocent it is therefore a very difficult matter to say that we have done all our duty towards our restitution to Baptismal grace and if we have not done all that we can do it is harder to say that God hath accepted that which is less than the conditions we entred into when we received the great Justification and Pardon of sins We all know we do less than our duty and we hope that God makes abatements for humane infirmities but we have but a few rules to judge by and they not infallible in themselves and we yet
more fallible in the application whether we have not mingled some little minutes of malice in the body of infirmities and how much will bear excuse and in what time and to what persons and to what degrees and upon what endeavours we shall be pardoned So that all the interval between our losing baptismal grace and the day of our death we walk in a cloud having lost the certain knowledge of our present condition by our prevarications And indeed it is a very hard thing for a man to know his own heart And he that shall observe how often himself hath been abused by confidences and secret imperfections and how the greatest part of Christians in name only do think themselves in a very good condition when God knows they are infinitely removed from it and yet if they did not think themselves well and sure it is unimaginable they should sleep so quietly and walk securely and consider negligently and yet proceed 〈◊〉 he that considers this and upon what weak and false principles of Divinity men have raised their strengths and perswasions will easily consent to this that it is very easie for men to be deceived in taking estimate of their present condition of their being in the state of Grace 5. But there is great variety of men and difference of degrees and every step of returning to God may reasonably add one degree of hope till at last it comes to the certainty and top of hope Many men believe themselves to be in the state of Grace and are not many are in the state of Grace and are infinitely fearful they are out of it and many that are in God's favour do think they are so and they are not deceived And all this is certain For some sin that sin of Presumption and Flattery of themselves and some good persons are vexed with violent fears and temptations to despair and all are not and when their hopes are right yet some are strong and some are weak for they that are well perswaded of their present condition have perswasions as different as are the degrees of their approach to innocence and he that is at the highest hath also such abatements which are apt and proper for the conservation of humility and godly 〈◊〉 I am guilty of nothing saith S. Paul but I am not hereby justified meaning thus Though I be innocent for ought I know yet God who judges otherwise than we judge may find something to reprove in me It is God that judges that is concerning my degrees of acceptance and hopes of glory If the person be newly recovering from a state of sin because his state is imperfect and his sin not dead and his lust active and his habit not quite extinct it is easie for a man to be too hasty in pronouncing well He is wrapt up in a cloak of clouds hidden and encumbred and his brightest day is but twilight and his discernings dark conjectural and imperfect and his heart is like a cold hand newly applied to the fire full of pain and whether the heat or the cold be strongest is not easie to determine or like middle colours which no man can tell to which of the extremes they are to be accounted But according as persons grow in Grace so they may grow in confidence of their present condition It is not certain they will do so for sometimes the beauty of the tabernacle is covered with goats hair and skins of beasts and holy people do infinitely deplore the want of such Graces which God observes in them with great complacency and acceptance Both these cases say that to be certainly perswaded of our present condition is not a Duty Sometimes it is not possible and sometimes it is better to be otherwise But if we consider of this Certainty as a Blessing and a Reward there is no question but in a great and an eminent Sanctity of life there may also be a great confidence and fulness of perswasion that our present being is well and gracious and then it is certain that such persons are not deceived For the thing it self being sure if the perswasion answers to it it is needless to dispute of the degree of certainty and the manner of it Some persons are heartily perswaded of their being reconciled and of these some are deceived and some are not deceived and there is no sign to distinguish them but by that which is the thing signified a holy life according to the strict rules of Christian Discipline tells what persons are confident and who are presumptuous But the certainty is reasonable in none but in old Christians habitually holy persons not in new Converts or in lately lapsed people for concerning them we find the Spirit of God speaking with clauses of restraint and ambiguity a perhaps and who knoweth and peradventure the thoughts of thy heart may be forgiven thee God may have mercy on 〈◊〉 And that God hath done so they only have reason to be confident whom God hath blessed with a lasting continuing Piety and who have wrought out the habits of their precontracted vices 6. But we find in Scripture many precepts given to holy persons being in the state of Grace to secure their standing and perpetuate their present condition For He that endureth unto the end he only shall be saved said our Blessed Saviour and He that standeth let him take heed lest he fall and Thou standest by Faith be not high-minded but fear and Work out your Salvation with fear and trembling Hold fast that 〈◊〉 hast and let no man take the crown from thee And it was excellent advice for one Church had lost their first love and was likely also to lose their crown And S. Paul himself who had once entred within the veil and seen unutterable glories yet was forced to endure hardship and to fight against his own disobedient appetite and to do violence to his inclinations for fear that whilest he preached to others himself should become a cast-away And since we observe in holy story that Adam and Eve fell in Paradise and the Angels fell in Heaven it self stumbling at the very jewels which pave the streets of the celestial Jerusalem and in Christ's family one man for whom his Lord had prepared a throne turned Devil and that in the number of the Deacons it is said that one turned Apostate who yet had been a man full of the Holy Ghost it will lessen our train and discompose the gayeties of our present confidence to think that our securities cannot be really distinguished from danger and uncertainties For every man walks upon two legs one is firm invariable constant and eternal but the other is his own God's Promises are the objects of our Faith but the events and final conditions of our Souls which is consequent to our duty can at the best be but the objects of our Hope And either there must in this be a less certainty or
spirit when Rebellion and Pride when secular Interest or ease and Licenciousness set men up against the Laws the Laws then are upon the defensive and ought not to give place It is ill to cure particular Disobedience by removing a Constitution decreed by publick wisdom for a general good When the evil occasioned by the Law is greater than the good designed or than the good which will come by it in the present constitution of things and the evil can by no other remedy be healed it concerns the Law-giver's charity to take off such positive Constitutions which in the authority are merely humane and in the matter indifferent and evil in the event The summ of this whole duty I shall chuse to represent in the words of an excellent person S. Jerome We must for the avoiding of Scandal quit everything which may be omitted without prejudice to the threefold truth of Life of Justice and Doctrine meaning that what is not expresly commanded by God or our Superiours or what is not expresly commended as an act of Piety and Perfection or what is not an obligation of Justice that is in which the interest of a third person or else our own Christian liberty is not totally concerned all that is to be given in sacrifice to Mercy and to be made matter of Edification and Charity but not of Scandal that is of danger and sin and falling to our neighbour The PRAYER O Eternal Jesus who art made unto us Wisdom Righteousness Sanctification and Redemption give us of thy abundant Charity that we may love the eternal benefit of our 〈◊〉 Soul with a true diligent and affectionate care and tenderness Give us a fellow-feeling of one another's calamities a readiness to bear each others burthens aptness to forbear wisdom to advise counsel to direct and a spirit of meekness and modesty trembling at our 〈◊〉 fearful in our Brother's dangers and joyful in his restitution and securities Lord let all our actions be pious and prudent our selves wise as Serpents and innocent as Doves and our whole life exemplar and just and charitable that we may like Lamps shining in thy Temple serve thee and enlighten others and guide them to thy Sanctuary and that shining clearly and burning zealously when the Bridegroom shall come to bind up his Jewels and beautifie his Spouse and gather his Saints together we and all thy Christian people knit in a holy fellowship may enter into the joy of our Lord and partake of the eternal refreshments of the Kingdom of Light and Glory where thou O Holy and Eternal Jesu livest and reignest in the excellencies of a Kingdom and the infinite durations of Eternity Amen DISCOURSE XVIII Of the Causes and Manner of the Divine Judgments 1. GOD's Judgments are like the Writing upon the wall which was a missive of anger from God upon Belshazzar it came upon an errand of Revenge and yet was writ in so dark characters that none could read it but a Prophet When-ever God speaks from Heaven he would have us to understand his meaning and if he declares not his sence in particular signification yet we understand his meaning well enough if every voice of God lead us to Repentance Every sad accident is directed against sin either to prevent it or to cure it to glorifie God or to humble us to make us go forth of our selves and to rest upon the centre of all Felicities that we may derive help from the same hand that smote us Sin and Punishment are so near relatives that when God hath marked any person with a sadness or unhandsome accident men think it warrant enough for their uncharitable censures and condemn the man whom God hath smitten making God the executioner of our uncertain or ungentle sentences Whether sinned this man or his parents that 〈◊〉 was born blind said the Pharisees to our blessed LORD Neither this man nor his parents was the answer meaning that God had other ends in that accident to serve and it was not an effect of wrath but a design of mercy both directly and collaterally God's glory must be seen clearly by occasion of the curing the blind man But in the present case the answer was something different Pilate slew the Galileans when they were sacrificing in their Conventicles apart from the Jews For they first had separated from Obedience and paying Tribute to Caesar and then from the Church who disavowed their mutinous and discontented Doctrines The cause of the one and the other are linked in mutual complications and endearment and he who despises the one will quickly disobey the other Presently upon the report of this sad accident the people run to the Judgment-seat and every man was ready to be accuser and witness and judge upon these poor destroyed people But Jesus allays their heat and though he would by no means acquit these persons from deserving death for their denying tribute to Caesar yet he alters the face of the tribunal and makes those persons who were so apt to be accusers and judges to act another part even of guilty persons too that since they will needs be judging they might judge themselves for Think not these were greater sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered such things I tell you nay but except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish meaning that although there was great probability to believe such persons 〈◊〉 I mean and Rebels to be the greatest sinners of the world yet themselves who had designs to destroy the Son of God had deserved as great damnation And yet it is observable that the Holy Jesus only compared the sins of them that suffered with the estate of the other Galileans who suffered not and that also applies it to the persons present who told the news to consign this Truth unto us That when persons consederate in the same crimes are spared from a present Judgment falling upon others of their own society it is indeed a strong alarm to all to secure themselves by Repentance against the hostilities and eruptions of sin but yet it is no exemption or security to them that escape to believe themselves persons less sinful for God sometimes decimates or tithes delinquent persons and they die for a common crime according as God hath cast their lot in the decrees of Predestination and either they that remain are sealed up to a worse calamity or left within the reserves and mercies of Repentance for in this there is some variety of determination and undiscerned Providence 2. The purpose of our Blessed Saviour is of great use to us in all the traverses and changes and especially the sad and calamitous accidents of the world But in the misfortune of others we are to make other discourses concerning Divine Judgments than when the case is of nearer concernment to our selves For first when we see a person come to an unfortunate and untimely death we must not conclude such a man perishing
and miserable to all eternity It was a sad calamity that fell upon the Man of Judah that returned to eat bread into the Prophet's house contrary to the word of the Lord He was abused into the act by a Prophet and a pretence of a command from God and whether he did violence to his own understanding and believed the man because he was willing or did it in sincerity or in what degree of sin or excuse the action might consist no man there knew and yet a Lion slew him and the lying Prophet that abused him escaped and went to his grave in peace Some persons joyned in society or interest with criminals have perished in the same Judgments and yet it would be hard to call them equally guilty who in the accident were equally miserable and involved And they who are not strangers in the affairs of the world cannot but have heard or seen some persons who have lived well and moderately though not like the 〈◊〉 of the Holocaust yet like the ashes of Incense sending up good perfumes and keeping a constant and slow fire of Piety and Justice yet have been surprised in the midst of some unusual unaccustomed irregularity and died in that sin A sudden gayety of fortune a great joy a violent change a friend is come or a marriage-day hath transported some persons to indiscretions and too bold a licence and the indiscretion hath betrayed them to idle company and the company to drink and drink to a fall and that hath hurri'd them to their grave And it were a sad sentence to think God would not repute the untimely death for a punishment great enough to that deflexion from duty and judge the man according to the constant tenor of his former life unless such an act was of malice great enough to outweigh the former habits and interrupt the whole state of acceptation and grace Something like this was the case of 〈◊〉 who espying the tottering Ark went to support it with an unhallowed hand God smote him and he died immediately It were too severe to say his zeal and indiscretion carried him beyond a temporal death to the ruines of Eternity Origen and many others have made themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdome of Heaven and did well after it but those that did so and died of the wound were smitten of God and died in their folly and yet it is rather to be called a sad consequence of their indiscretion than the express of a final anger from God Almighty For as God takes off our sins and punishments by parts remitting to some persons the sentence of death and inflicting the fine of a temporal loss or the gentle scourge of a lesser sickness so also he lays it on by parts and according to the proper proportions of the man and of the crime and every transgression and lesser deviation from our duty does not drag the Soul to death eternal but God suffers our Repentance though imperfect to have an imperfect effect knocking off the fetters by degrees and leading us in some cases to a Council in some to Judgment and in some to Hell-fire but it is not always certain that he who is led to the prison-doors shall there lie entombed and a Man may by a Judgment be brought to the gates of Hell and yet those gates shall not prevail against him This discourse concerns persons whose life is habitually fair and just but are surprised in some unhandsome but less criminal action and 〈◊〉 or suffer some great Calamity as the instrument of its expiation or amendment 3. Secondly But if the person upon whom the Judgment falls be habitually vicious or the crime of a clamorous nature or deeper tincture if the man sin a sin unto death and either meets it or some other remarkable calamity not so feared as death provided we pass no farther than the sentence we see then executed it is not against Charity or prudence to say this calamity in its own formality and by the intention of God is a Punishment and Judgment In the favourable cases of honest and just persons our sentence and opinions ought also to be favourable and in such questions to encline ever to the side of charitable construction and read other ends of God in the accidents of our neighbour than Revenge or express Wrath. But when the impiety of a person is scandalous and notorious when it is clamorous and violent when it is habitual and yet corrigible if we find a sadness and calamity dwelling with such a sinner especially if tho punishment be spiritual we read the sentence of God written with his own hand and it is not 〈◊〉 of opinion or a pressing into the secrets of Providence to say the same thing which God hath published to all the world in the 〈◊〉 of his Spirit In such cases we are to observe the severity of God on them that fall severity and to use those Judgments as instruments of the fear of God arguments to hate sin which we could not well do but that we must look on them as verifications of God's threatning against great and impenitent sinners But then if we descend to particulars we may easily be deceived 4. For some men are diligent to observe the accidents and chances of Providence upon those especially who differ from them in Opinion and whatever ends God can have or whatever sins man can have yet we lay that in fault which we therefore hate because it is most against our interest the contrary Opinion is our enemy and we also think God hates it But such fancies do seldom serve either the ends of Truth or Charity Pierre Calceon died under the Barber's hand there wanted not some who said it was a Judgement upon him for condemning to the fire the famous Pucelle of France who prophesied the expulsion of the English out of the Kingdom They that thought this believed her to be a Prophetess but others that thought her a Witch were willing to 〈◊〉 out another conjecture for the sudden death of the Gentleman Garnier Earl of Gretz kept the Patriarch of Jerusalem from his right in David's Tower and the City and died within three days and by Dabert the Patriarch it was called a Judgment upon him for his Sacrilege But the uncertainty of that censure appeared to them who considered that Baldwin who gave commission to Garnier to withstand the Patriarch did not die but Godsrey of 〈◊〉 did die immediately after he had passed the right of the Patriarch and yet when Baldwin was beaten at Rhamula some bold People pronounced that then God punished him upon the Patriarch's score and thought his Sacrilege to be the secret cause of his overthrow and yet his own Pride and Rashness was the more visible and the Judgment was but a cloud and passed away quickly into a succeeding Victory But I instance in a trisle Certain it is that God removed the Candlestick from the Levantine Churches because he had
which we shall no more be at war with Reason nor so much with Sense and not at all with Faith And for persons of the contradictory perswasion who to avoid the natural sence affirm it only to be figurative since their design is only to make this Sacrament to be Christ's Body in the sence of Faith and not of Philosophy they may remember that its being really present does not hinder but that all that reality may be spiritual and if it be Christ's Body so it be not affirmed such in a natural sence and manner it is still only the object of Faith and spirit and if it be affirmed only to be spiritual there is then no danger to Faith in admitting the words of Christ's institution This is my Body I suppose it to be a mistake to think what soever is real must be natural and it is no less to think spiritual to be only figurative that 's too much and this is too little Philosophy and Faith may well be reconciled and whatsoever objection can invade this union may be cured by modesty And if we profess we understand not the manner of this Mystery we say no more but that it is a Mystery and if it had been necessary we should have construed it into the most latent sence Christ himself would have given a Clavis and taught the Church to unlock so great a Secret Christ said This is my Body this is my 〈◊〉 S. Paul said The bread of blessing that we break is the communication of the body of Christ and the Chalice which we bless is the communication of the bloud of Christ and We are all one body because we eat of one bread One proposition as well as the other is the matter of Faith and the latter of them is also of Sense one is as literal as the other and he that distinguishes in his belief as he may place the impropriety upon which part he please and either say it is improperly called Bread or improperly called Christ's Body so he can have nothing to secure his proposition from errour or himself from boldness in decreeing concerning Mysteries against the testimonies of Sense or beyond the modesty and simplicity of Christian Faith Let us love and adore the abyss of Divine Wisdom and Goodness and entertain the Sacrament with just and holy receptions and then we shall receive all those fruits of it which an earnest disputer or a peremptory dogmatizer whether he happen right or wrong hath no warrant to expect upon the interest of his Opinion 4. In the Institution of this Sacrament Christ manifested first his Almighty Power secondly his infinite Wisdome and thirdly his unspeakable Charity First his Power is manifest in making the Symbols to be the instruments of conveying himself to the spirit of the Receiver He nourishes the Soul with Bread and feeds the Body with a Sacrament he makes the Body spiritual by his Graces there ministred and makes the Spirit to be united to his Body by a participation of the Divine nature In the Sacrament that Body which is reigning in Heaven is exposed upon the Table of blessing and his Body which was broken for us is now broken again and yet remains impassible Every consecrated portion of bread and wine does exhibit Christ intirely to the faithful Receiver and yet Christ remains one while he is wholly ministred in 10000 portions So long as we call these mysterious and make them intricate to exercise our Faith and to represent the wonder of the Mystery and to encrease our Charity our being inquisitive into the abyss can have no evil purposes God hath instituted the Rite in visible Symbols to make the secret Grace as presential and discernible as it might that by an instrument of Sense our spirits might be accommodated as with an exteriour object to produce an internal act But it is the prodigy of a miraculous power by instruments so easie to produce effects so glorious This then is the object of Wonder and Adoration 5. Secondly And this effect of Power does also remark the Divine Wisdome who hath ordained such Symbols which not only like spittle and clay toward the curing blind eyes proclaim an Almighty Power but they are apposite and proper to signifie a Duty and become to us like the Word of Life and from Bread they turn into a Homily For therefore our wisest Master hath appointed Bread and Wine that we may be corporally united to him that as the Symbols becoming nutriment are turned into the substance of our bodies so Christ being the food of our Souls should assimilate us making us partakers of the Divine Nature It also tells us that from hence we derive life and holy motion for in him we live and move and have our being He is the staff of our life and the light of our eyes and the strength of our spirit He is the Viand for our journey and the antepast of Heaven And because this holy Mystery was intended to be a Sacrament of Union that Lesson is morally represented in the Symbols That as the salutary juice is expressed from many clusters running into one 〈◊〉 and the Bread is a mass made of many grains of Wheat so we also as the Apostie infers from hence himself observing the analogy should be one bread and one bodr because we partake of that one bread And it were to be wished that from hence also all Christians would understand a signification of another Duty and that they would 〈◊〉 communicate as remembring that the Soul may need a frequent ministration as well as the Body its daily proportion This consideration of the Divine Wisdome is apt to produce Reverence Humility and Submission of our understanding to the immensity of God's unsearchable abysses 6. Thirdly But the story of the Love of our dearest Lord is written in largest characters who not only was at that instant busie in doing Man the greatest good even then when man was contriving his death and his dishonour but contrived to represent his bitter Passion to us without any circumstances of horror in symbols of pleasure and delight that we may taste and see how gracious our LORD is who would not transmit the record of his Passion to us in any thing that might trouble us No Love can be greater than that which is so beatifical as to bestow the greatest good and no Love can be better expressed than that which although it is productive of the greatest blessings yet is curious also to observe the smallest circumstances And not only both these but many other circumstances and arguments of Love concur in the Holy Sacrament 1. It is a tenderness of affection that ministers wholsome Physick with arts and instruments of pleasure And such was the Charity of our Lord who brings health to us in a golden Chalice life not in the bitter drugs of Egypt but in spirits and quintessences giving us apples of Paradise at the same time yielding food and health
and tyranny over Consciences 14. The duty of Preparation that I here discourse of is such a Preparation as is a disposition to life it is not a matter of convenience or advantage to repent of our sins before the Communion but it is of absolute necessity we perish if we neglect it for we cat 〈◊〉 and Satan enters into us not Christ. And this Preparation is not the act of a day or a week but it is a new state of life no man that is an habitual sinner must come to this Feast till he hath wholly changed his course of life And then according as the actions of infirmity have made 〈◊〉 or greater invasion upon his peace and health so are the acts of Repentance to be proportioned in which the greatness of the prevarications their neighbourhood to death or their frequent repetition and the conduct of a Spiritual man are to give us counsel and determination When a ravening and hungry Wolf is destitute of prey he 〈◊〉 the turf and loads his stomach with the glebe he treads on but as soon as he finds better food he vomits up his first load Our secular and sensual affections are loads of earth upon the Conscience and when we approach to the Table of the Lord to eat the bread of the elect and to drink the wine of Angels we must reject such impure adhesions that holy persons being nourished with holy Symbols may be sanctified and receive the eternal reward of Holiness 15. But as none must come hither but they that are in the state of Grace or Charity and the love of God and their Neighbours and that the abolition of the state of sin is the necessary preparation and is the action of years and was not accepted as sufficient till the expiration of divers years by the Primitive Discipline and in some cases not till the approach of Death so there is another Preparation which is of less necessity which supposes the state of Grace and that oil is burning in our lamps but yet it is a preparation of ornament a trimming up the Soul a dressing the spirit with degrees and instances of Piety and progresses of perfection and it consists in setting apart some portion of our time before the Communion that it be spent in Prayer in Meditations in renewing the vows of holy Obedience in Examining our Consciences in Mortifying our lesser irregularities in Devotions and actions of precise Religion in acts of Faith of Hope of Charity of Zeal and holy desires in acts of Eucharist or Thanksgiving of Joy at the approach of so blessed opportunity and all the acts of Vertue whatsoever which have indefinite relation to this and to other mysteries but yet are specially to be exercised upon this occasion because this is the most perfect of external 〈◊〉 and the most mysterious instrument of sanctification and perfection There is no time or degree to be determined in this Preparation but they to whom much is forgiven will love much and they who 〈◊〉 the excellence and holiness of the Mystery the glory of the Guest that comes to inhabit and the undecency of the closet of their Hearts by reason of the adherencies of impurity the infinite benefit then designed and the increase of degrees by the excellence of these previous acts of Holiness will not be too inquisitive into the necessity of circumstances and measures but do it heartily and devoutly and reverently and as much as they can ever esteeming it necessary that the actions of so great solemnity should by some actions of Piety attending like handmaids be distinguished from common imployments and remarked for the principal and most solemn of religious actions The Primitive Church gave the holy Sacrament to Infants immediately after Baptism and by that act transmitted this Proposition That nothing was of absolute necessity but Innocency and purity from sin and a being in the state of Grace other actions of Religion are excellent addition to the dignity of the person and honour of the mystery but they were such of which Infants were not capable The summ is this After the greatest consociation of religious duties for Preparation no man can be sufficiently worthy to communicate let us take care that we be not unworthy by bringing a guilt with us or the remanent affection to a sin Est gloriosus sanè convictus Die Sed illi qui invitatur non qui invisus est 16. When the happy hour is come in which the Lord vouchsafes to enter into us and dwell with us and be united with his servants we must then do the same acts over again with greater 〈◊〉 intension confess the glories of God and thy own unworthiness praise his mercy with ecstasie of thanksgiving and joy make oblation of thy self of all thy faculties and capacities pray and read and meditate and worship And that thou mayest more opportunely do all this rise early to meet the Bridegroom pray for special assistance enter into the assembly of faithful people chearfully attend there diligently demean thy self reverently and before any other meat or drink receive the Body of thy Saviour with pure hands with holy intention with a heart full of joy and faith and hope and wonder and Eucharist These things I therefore set down irregularly and without method because in these actions no rule can be given to all persons and only such a love and such a Religion in general is to be recommended which will over-run the banks and not 〈◊〉 stand confined within the margent of rules and artificial prescriptions Love and Religion are boundless and all acts of grace relating to the present Mystery are sit and proportioned entertainments of our Lord. This only remember that we are by the Mystery of one bread confederated into one body and the communion of Saints and that the 〈◊〉 which we then commemorate was designed by our Lord for the benefit of all his Church Let us be sure to draw all faithful people into the society of the present Blessing joyning with the holy Man that ministers in prayers and offerings of that Mystery for the 〈◊〉 of all sorts of men of Christ's Catholick Church And it were also an excellent act of Christian communion and agreeable to the practice of the Church in all Ages to make an Oblation to God for the poor that as we are 〈◊〉 by Christ's body so we also should 〈◊〉 Christ's body making such returns as we can a grain of Frankincense in exchange for a Province an act of duty and Christian Charity as Eucharistical for the present Grace that all the body may rejoyce and glory in the Salvation of the Lord. 17. After thou hast received that pledge of immortality and antepast of glory even the Lord's Body in a mystery leave not thy Saviour there alone but attend him with holy thoughts and colloquies of Prayer and Eucharist It was sometime counted infamous for a woman to entertain a second love till the body of her
endeavour is the Sacrifice which God delights in that in the firmament of Heaven there are little Stars and they are most in number and there are but few of the greatest magnitude that there are children and babes in Christ as well as strong men and amongst these there are great difference that the interruptions of the state of Grace by intervening crimes if they were rescinded by Repentance they were great danger in the intervall but served as increment of the Divine Glory and arguments of care and diligence to us at the restitution These and many more are then to be urged when the sick person is in danger of being swallowed up with over-much sorrow and therefore to be insisted on in all like cases as the Physician gives him Cordials that we may do charity to him and minister comfort not because they are always necessary even in the midst of great sadnesses and discomforts For we are to secure his love to God that he acknowledge the Divine Mercy that he believe the Article of Remission of sins that he be thankful to God for the blessings which already he hath received and that he lay all the load of his discomfort upon himself and his own incapacities of mercy and then the sadness may be very great and his tears clamorous and his heart broken all in pieces and his Humility lower than the earth and his Hope indiscernible and yet no danger to his final condition Despair reflects upon God and dishonours the infinity of his Mercy And if the sick person do but confess that God is not at all wanting in his Promises but ever abounding in his Mercies and that it is want of the condition on his own part that makes the misery and that if he had done his duty God would save him let him be assisted with perpetual prayers with examples of lapsed and returning sinners whom the Church celebrates for Saints such as Mary Magdalen Mary of Egypt Asra Thasis Pelagia let it be often inculcated to him that as God's Mercy is of it self infinite so its demonstration to us is not determined to any certain period but hath such latitudes in it and reservations which as they are apt to restrain too great boldness so also to become sanctuaries to disconsolate persons let him be invited to throw himself upon God upon these grounds that he who is our Judge is also our Advocate and Redeemer that he knows and pities our infirmities and that our very hoping in him does indear him and he will deliver us the rather for our confidence when it is balanced with reverence and humility and then all these supernumerary fears are advantagious to more necessary Graces and do more secure his final condition than they can disturb it 11. When Saint Arsenius was near his death he was observed to be very tremulous sad weeping and disconsolate The standers by asked the reason of his fears wondring that he having lived in great Sanctity for many years should not now rejoyce at the going forth of his prison The good man confessed the fear and withall said it was no other than he had always born about with him in the days of his pilgrimage and what he then thought a duty they had no reason now to call either a fault or a misery Great sorrows fears and distrustings of a man 's own condition are oftentimes but abatements of confidence or a remission of joys and gayeties of spirit they are but like salutary clouds dark and fruitful and if the tempted person be strengthened in a love of God though he go not farther in his hopes than to believe a possibility of being saved than to say God can save him if he please and to pray that he will save him his condition is a state of Grace it is like a root in the ground trod upon humble and safe not so fine as the state of flowers yet that which will spring up in as glorious a Resurrection as that which looks fairer and pleases the sense and is indeed a blessing but not a duty 12. But there is a state of Death-bed which seems to have in it more Question and to be of nicer consideration A sick person after a vicious and base life and if upon whatsoever he can do you give him hopes of a Pardon where is your promise to warrant it if you do not give him hopes do you not drive him to Despair and ascertain his ruine to verifie your proposition To this I answer that Despair is opposed to Hope and Hope relies upon the Divine Promises and where there is no Promise there the Despair is not a sin but a mere impossibility The accursed Spirits which are sealed up to the Judgment of the last Day cannot hope and he that repents not cannot hope for pardon And therefore if all which the state of Death-bed can produce be not the duty of Repentance which is required of necessity to Pardon it is not in such a person properly to be called Despair any more than it is Blindness in a stone that it cannot see Such a man is not within the capacities of Pardon and therefore all those acts of exteriour Repentance and all his sorrow and resolution and tears of emendation and other preparatives to interiour Repentance are like oil poured into mortal wounds they are the care of the Physician and these are the cautions of the Church and they are at no hand to be neglected For if they do not alter the state they may lessen the judgment or procure a temporal blessing and if the person recover they are excellent beginnings of the state of Grace and if they be pursued in a happy opportunity will grow up into Glory 13. But if it be demanded whether in such cases the Curate be bound to give Absolution I can give no other answer but this that if he lie under the Censure of the Church the Laws of the Church are to determine the particular and I know no Church in the World but uses to absolve Death-bed Penitents upon the instances of those actions of which their present condition is capable though in the Primitive Ages in some cases they denied it But if the sick person be under no positive Censure and is bound only by the guilt of habitual vice if he desires the Prayers of the Church she is bound in charity to grant them to Pray for Pardon to him and all other Graces in order to Salvation and if she absolves the Penitent towards God it hath no other efficacy but of a solemn Prayer and therefore it were better that all the charity of the Office were done and the solemnity omitted because in the earnest Prayer she co-operates to his Salvation as much as she can and by omitting the solemnity distinguishes evil livers from holy persons and walks securely whilst she refuses to declare him pardoned whom God hath not declared to be so And possibly that form of Absolution which the Churches
Saul's seven sons were hanged for breaking the League of Gibeon and Ahab's sin was punished in his posterity he escaping and the evil was brought upon his house in his son's days In all these cases the evil descended upon persons in near relation to the sinner and was a punishment to him and a misery to these and were either chastisements also of their own sins or if they were not they served other ends of Providence and led the afflicted innocent to a condition of recompence accidentally procured by that infliction But if for such relation's sake and oeconomical and political conjunction as between Prince and People the evil may be transmitted from one to another much rather is it just when by contract a competent and conjunct person undertakes to quit his relative Thus when the Hand steals the Back is whipt and an evil Eye is punished with a hungry Belly Treason causes the whole Family to be miserable and a Sacrilegious Grandfather hath sent a Locust to devour the increase of the Nephews 8. But in our case it is a voluntary contract and therefore no Injustice all parties are voluntary God is the supreme Lord and his actions are the measure of Justice we who had deserved the punishment had great reason to desire a Redeemer and yet Christ who was to pay the ransome was more desirous of it than we were for we asked it not before it was promised and undertaken But thus we see that Sureties pay the obligation of the principal Debtor and the Pledges of Contracts have been by the best and wisest Nations slain when the Articles have been broken The Thessalians slew 250 Pledges the Romans 300 of the Volsci and threw the Tarentines from the Tarpeian rock And that it may appear Christ was a person in all sences competent to do this for us himself testifies that he had power over his own life to take it up or lay it down And therefore as there can be nothing against the most exact justice and reason of Laws and punishments so it magnifies the Divine Mercy who removes the punishment from us who of necessity must have sunk under it and yet makes us to adore his Severity who would not forgive us without punishing his Son for us to consign unto us his perfect hatred against Sin to conserve the sacredness of his Laws and to imprint upon us great characters of fear and love The famous Locrian Zaleucus made a Law that all Adulterers should lose both their eyes his son was first unhappily surprised in the crime and his Father to keep a temper between the piety and soft spirit of a Parent and the justice and severity of a Judge put out one of his own eyes and one of his Sons So God did with us he made some abatement that is as to the person with whom he was angry but inflicted his anger upon our Redeemer whom he essentially loved to secure the dignity of his Sanctions and the sacredness of Obedience so marrying Justice and Mercy by the intervening of a commutation Thus David escaped by the death of his Son God chusing that penalty for the expiation and Cimon offered himself to prison to purchase the liberty of his Father Miltiades It was a filial duty in Cimon and yet the Law was satisfied And both these concurred in our great Redeemer For God who was the sole Arbitrator so disposed it and the eternal Son of God submitted to this way of expiating our crimes and became an argument of faith and belief of the great Article of Remission of sins and other its appendent causes and effects and adjuncts it being wrought by a visible and notorious Passion It was made an encouragement of Hope for he that spared not his own Son to reconcile us will with him give all things else to us so reconciled and a great endearment of our Duty and Love as it was a demonstration of his And in all the changes and traverses of our life he is made to us a great example of all excellent actions and all patient sufferings 9. In the midst of two Thieves three long hours the holy Jesus hung clothed with pain agony and dishonour all of them so eminent and vast that he who could not but hope whose Soul was enchased with Divinity and dwelt in the bosom of God and in the Cabinet of the mysterious Trinity yet had a cloud of misery so thick and black drawn before him that he complained as if God had forsaken him but this was the pillar of cloud which conducted Israel into Canaan And as God behind the Cloud supported the Holy Jesus and stood ready to receive him into the union of his Glories so his Soul in that great desertion had internal comforts proceeding from consideration of all those excellent persons which should be adopted into the fellowship of his Sufferings which should imitate his Graces which should communicate his Glories And we follow this Cloud to our Country having Christ for our Guide and though he trode the way leaning upon the Cross which like the staffe of Egypt pierced his hands yet it is to us a comfort and support pleasant to our spirits as the sweetest Canes strong as the pillars of the earth and made apt for our use by having been born and made smooth by the hands of our Elder Brother 10. In the midst of all his torments Jesus only made one Prayer of sorrow to represent his sad condition to his Father but no accent of murmur no syllable of anger against his enemies In stead of that he sent up a holy charitable and effective Prayer for their forgiveness and by that Prayer obtained of God that within 55 days 8000 of his enemies were converted So potent is the prayer of Charity that it prevails above the malice of men turning the arts of Satan into the designs of God and when malice occasions the Prayer the Prayer becomes an antidote to malice And by this instance our Blessed Lord consigned that Duty to us which in his Sermons he had preached That we should forgive our enemies and pray for them and by so doing our selves are freed from the stings of anger and the storms of a revengeful spirit and we oftentimes procure servants to God friends to our selves and heirs to the Kingdom of Heaven 11. Of the two Thieves that were crucified together with our Lord the one blasphemed the other had at that time the greatest Piety in the world except that of the Blessed Virgin and particularly had such a Faith that all the Ages of the Church could never shew the like For when he saw Christ in the same condemnation with himself crucisied by the Romans accused and scorned by the Jews forsaken by his own Apostles a dying distressed Man doing at that time no Miracles to attest his Divinity or Innocence yet then he confesses him to be a Lord and a King and his Saviour He confessed his own
parent of as great Religion as the good women make their fancy their softness and their passion 12. Our Blessed Lord appeared next to Simon and though he and John ran forthtogether and S. John outran Simon although Simon Peter had denied and forsworn his Lord and S. John never did and followed him to his Passion and his death yet Peter had the savour of seeing Jesus first Which some Spiritual persons understand as a testimony that penitent 〈◊〉 have accidental eminences and priviledges sometimes 〈◊〉 to them beyond the temporal graces of the just and innocent as being such who not only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 against the remanent and inherent evils even of repented sins and their aptnesses to relapse but also because those who are true Penitents who understand the infiniteness of the Divine mercy and that for a sinner to pass from death to 〈◊〉 from the state of sin into pardon and the state of Grace is a greater gift and a more excellent and improbable mutation than for a just man to be taken into glory out of gratitude to God and indearment 〈◊〉 so great a change added to a fear of returning to such danger and misery will re-enforce all their industry and double their study and 〈◊〉 more diligently and watch more carefully and redeem the 〈◊〉 and make amends for their omissions and oppose a good to the former evils beside the duties of the 〈◊〉 imployment and then commonly the life of a holy Penitent is more holy active zealous and impatient of Vice and more rapacious of Vertue and holy actions and arises to greater 〈◊〉 of Sanctity than the even and moderate affections of just persons who as our Blessed Saviour's expression is 〈◊〉 no Repentance that is no change of state nothing but a perseverance and an improvement of degrees There is more joy in heaven before the Angels of God over 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that 〈◊〉 than 〈◊〉 ninety nine just persons that need it not for where sin hath abounded there doth grace super abound and that makes joy in Heaven 13. The Holy Jesus having received the affections of his most passionate Disciples the women and S. 〈◊〉 puts himself upon the way into the company of two good men going to Emmaus with troubled spirits and a reeling faith shaking all its upper building but leaving some of its foundation firm To them the Lord discourses of the necessity of the Death and Resurrection of the 〈◊〉 and taught them not to take estimate of the counsels of God by the designs and proportions of man for God by ways contrary to humane judgment brings to pass the purposes of his eternal Providence The glories of Christ were not made pompous by humane circumstances his Kingdom was spiritual he was to enter into Felicities through the gates of Death he refused to do Miracles before 〈◊〉 and yet did them before the people he confuted his accusers by silence and did not descend from the Cross when they offered to believe in him if he would but 〈◊〉 them to be perswaded by greater arguments of his power the miraculous circumstances of his Death and the glories of his Resurrection and by walking in the secret paths of Divine election hath commanded us to adore his footsteps to admire and revere his Wisdom to be satisfied with all the events of Providence and to rejoyce in him if by Afflictions he makes us holy if by Persecutions he supports and enlarges his Church if by Death he brings us to life so we arrive at the communion of his Felicities we must let him chuse the way it being sufficient that he is our guide and our support and our exceeding great reward For therefore Christ preached to the two Disciples going to 〈◊〉 the way of the Cross and the necessity of that passage that the wisdom of God might be glorified and the conjectures of man ashamed But whilest his discourse lasted they knew him not but in the breaking of bread he discovered himself For he turned their meal into a Sacrament and their darkness to light and having to his Sermon added the Sacrament opened all their discerning faculties the eyes of their body and their understanding too to represent to us that when we are blessed with the opportunities of both those instruments we want no exteriour assistence to guide us in the way to the knowing and enjoying of our Lord. 14. But the Apparitions which Jesus made were all upon the design of laying the foundation of all Christian Graces for the begetting and establishing Faith and an active Confidence in their persons and building them up on the great fundamentals of the Religion And therefore he appointed a general meeting upon a mountain in Galilee that the number of witnesses might not only disseminate the same but establish the Article of the Resurrection for upon that are built all the hopes of a Christian and if the dead rise not then are we of all men most miserable in quitting the present possessions and entertaining injuries and affronts without hopes of reparation But we lay two gages in several repositories the Body in the bosome of the earth the Soul in the 〈◊〉 of God and as we here live by Faith and lay them down with hope so the 〈◊〉 is a restitution of them both and a state of re-union And therefore although the glory of our spirits without the body were joy great enough to make compensation for mere than the troubles of all the world yet because one shall not be glorified without the other they being of themselves incomplete substances and God having revealed nothing clearly concerning actual and complete felicities till the day of Judgment when it is promised our bodies shall rise therefore it is that the Resurrection is the great Article upon which we rely and which Christ took so much care to prove and ascertain to so many persons because if that should be disbelieved with which all our felicities are to be received we have nothing to establish our Faith or entertain our Hope or satisfie our desires or make retribution for that state of secular inconveniences in which by the necessities of our nature and the humility and patience of our Religion we are engaged 15. But I consider that holy Scripture onely instructs us concerning the life of this world and the life of the Resurrection the life of Grace and the life of Glory both in the body that is a life of the whole man and whatsoever is spoken of the Soul considers it as an essential part of man relating to his whole constitution not as it is of it self an intellectual and separate substance for all its actions which are separate and removed from the body are relative and incomplete Now because the Soul is an incomplete substance and created in relation to the Body and is but a part of the whole man if the Body were as eternal and incorruptible as the Soul yet the separation of the one from the other would be
it self but in order to certain ends 272. 1. Why Jesus fasted Forty Dayes 128. 9. Vide Disc. of Fasting per tot Fear hallowed by Christ's fear 384. 3. It is the first of Graces 171. 5. Farewell-Sermon made by Jesus 350. 19. Flaminius condemned to Death for wanton Cruelty 168. 5. Fornication against the Law of God in all Ages 249. 37. Permitted to Strangers among the Jews ibid. Forgiving Injuries a Christian duty 252. G. GAdara built by Pompey 184. 15. Full of Sepulchres and Witches ibid. Gabriel ministers to the exaltation of his inferiours 3. 4. Galilaeans why slain by Pilate and what they were 326. 27. Garden why chosen for the place of the Agony 364. 383. 2. Gentleness a duty of Christians 323. 16. Giacchetus of Geneva his Death in the midst of his Lust 338. 5. God his Gifts effects of Predestination 156. 5. Those Gifts how to be prayed for 261 264. Consideration of his Presence a good remedy against Temptations 112. 29. The Vision of God preserveth the Blessed Souls from Sin ibid. 30. GOD's method in bringing us to him and treating us after 32. 4. He gives his Servants more than they look for 155. He gives more Grace to them that use the first well ibid. 32. 6. He rejoyces in his own works of mercy 187. 1. And in ours 227. 13. He requires not always the greatest degree of Vertue 234. 11. He is never wanting in necessaries to us 32. He changeth his purpose of the death of a Man for several reasons 308. 24. He works his ends by unlikely means 427. GOD certainly supports those in their necessities who are doing his work 68. 3. Gold and Frankincense and Myrrhe what signification they had in the gift of the Magi 34. 11. 28. 12. Grace it helps our Faculties but creates no new ones 31. 2. It works severally at several times 32. Being refused it hardens our Hearts 387. 369. Government supported by Christianity 68. 7. Gospel and the Law how they differ 193. 3. 296. 232. 3. H. HAsty persons and actions always unreasonable sometimes criminal 15. 1. Herod mock'd by the Magi 65. 1. 84. 1. His stratagem to surprize all the male children 66. The cause why he slew Zecharias 66. 5. Caesar's saying concerning him 66. 3. He felt the Divine vengeance 67. 6. His Malice near his Death defeated 67. 7. He pretended Religion to his secret design 68. 1. He slew 14000 Infants 66. 4. Fear of the Child Jesus proceeded from his mistake 70. 7. The Tetrarch overthrown by the King of Arabia 169. 6. His reception of Christ 352. 26. Is careless of inquiring after Christ 393. 9. Herodians what they were 290. 3. Herodias Daughter beheaded with Ice 169. 6. She and Herod banished ibid. Heron the Monk abused with an illusion 61. 23. Herminigilda refused to communicate with an Arian Bishop 188. 2. Hereticks served their ends of Heresie upon Women upon whom also they served their Lust 189. 5. Heroical actions of Repentance at our Death-bed more prevalent than any other hope then left 217. 49. Health promised and consigned in the Gospel by Miracles and by an ordinary Ministery 304. 15 16. There were two High-Priests the one President of the Rites of the Temple the other of the great Council 351. 23. Honour done to us to be returned to God 9. 6. It is due to what the Supreme power separates from common usages 172. 3. How it is to be estimated 253. 5. Honourable and Sacred all one 173. S. Hilarion a great Faster 273. 2. S. Hierom's advice concerning Fasting ibid. Holy Ghost descending upon Jesus at his Baptism 94. 3. Holiness of Religious places 172. It is a great preservative of Life 302. 13. Hope of Salvation encreases according to degrees of holy walking 315. Necessary in our Prayers 267. House of John Mark consecrated into a Church 174. 5. Hosanna what it signifies 347. 6. Onely sung to God ibid. Humane Nature by the Incarnation exalted above the Angels 3. Humane infirmity to be pitied not to be upbraided 384. Humility of Jesus 14. The surest way to Heaven 37. Of the Baptist 68. It makes good men more honourable 186. Its excellencies 302. 11 12. 367. Its Properties and Acts 364. seq Humility of the young Mar. of Castilion 367. 9. Hunger after Righteousness 373. 11. Hunger and Thirst spiritual how they differ ibid. Its Acts and Reward ibid. Husbands converted by their Wives 189. 3. J. JAirus begs help of Jesus for his Daughter 185. 20. His Daughter restored to Life 186. 21. Jesus discoursing wonderfully with the Doctors 75. 1. He wrought in the Carpenter's Trade before and after Joseph's death 76. 6. Baptized by John 93. 1. Attended by good Angels in the Wilderness 95. Was angry when the Devil tempted him to dishonour God 95. 8. 101. 15. He slept in a Storm 184. 14. Preached the first Year in peace 186. 22. Appeared several times after his Resurrection 419. He was known in the breaking of Bread ibid. He had but two days of Triumph all his Life 359. 5. And they both allayed with Sorrow ibid. 360. He was used inhospitably at Jerusalem ibid. Infinitely loving 360. He received all his Disciples with a Kiss 386. 8. Civil to his Enemies and beneficial to his Friends ibid. He was stripp'd naked and why 394. 10. He came eating and drinking and why 291. He invites all to him ibid. The Pharisees report him mad 291. He refused to be made a King 319. 1. Transfigured 322. 13. He shamed the Accusers of the Adulteress 324. 20. He teaches his Disciples to pray the second time 326. 26. Refuses to judge a Title of Land ibid. Blesseth 〈◊〉 327. 30. The Price of him 349. 14. All his great Actions in his Life had a mixture of Divinity and Humanity 387. 9. He was not compelled to bear the transverse Beam of the Cross 354. 30. He wept for Lazarus 345. And over Jerusalem 347. 7. Answered the Pharisees concerning Tribute to Caesar 347. 10. Prayed against the bitter Cup 450. 20. Smitten upon the Face 351. Accused of Blasphemy before the High-Priest ibid. Of Treason bëfore Pilate 352. 26. Nailed with Four Nails 354. 31. Provided for his Mother after his Death 355. 33. Recited the two and twentieth Psalm or part of it upon the Cross ibid. He felt the first Recompence of his Sorrows in the state of Separation 426. At the Resurrection he did redintegrate all his Body but the five Wounds ibid. He arose with a glorified Body 427. But veil'd with a Cloud of common Appearance ibid. Jewish Women hoped to be the Mother of the Messias 2. 5. Jews looked to be justified by external Innocence 243. 26. They were scrupulous in Rites careless of Moral Duties 392. 7. Could not put any Man to Death at Easter 352. 26. They eat not till the Solemnities of their Festival is over 272. 1. Jezabel pretended Religion to her design of Murther and Theft 68. 1. Illusions come often in likeness
in Sickness or suffered how far 404. 18. Predestination to be searched for in the Books of Scripture and Conscience 313. It is God's great Secret not to be inquired into curiously ibid. It was revealed to the Apostles concerning their own particulars and how ibid. It was conditional ibid. The ground of true Joy 223. 17. To be estimated above Priviledges ibid. Phavorinus his Discourse concerning enquiring into Fortunes 313. 2. Preparation to the Lord's Supper 374. 11. Of two sorts viz. of Necessity and of Ornament 365. A Duty of unlimited time ibid. Preparation to Death no other but a holy Life 397. 1. Parables 292. 10. 326. 25. 323. 345. Pilate's usage and deportment towards Jesus 395. 352. 26. He broke the Jewish and Tiberian Law in the Execution of Jesus 352. 28. Sent to Rome by Vitellius 395. 12. Banished to Vienna ibid. Killed himself ibid. Prayer of Jesus in the Garden made excellent by all the requisites of Prayer 384. 4. Prelates are Shepherds and Fishers 330. Their Duty and Qualifications ibid. 153. Pride incident to spiritual Persons 100. 88. Gifts extraordinary ought not to make us proud 156. Promise to God and Swearing by him in the matter of Vows is all one 269. 20. Promises made to single Graces not effectual but in conjunction with all parts of our Duty 218. Promises Temporal do also belong to the Gospel 302. Pierre Calceon condemned the Pucelle of France 337. 4. Peter rebuked for fighting 322. 21. Rebuked the saying of his Lord concerning the Passion 321. 10. He was sharply reproved for it ibid. 358. 2. He received the power of the Keys for himself and his Successors in the Apostolate 322. 324. Denied his Master 351. 23. Repented ibid. 391. Prophets must avoid suspicion of Incontinence 189. 4. Prophecy of Jesus 349. Prudence of a Christian described 156. Piety an excellent disposition to justifying Faith 190. Publican an Office of Honour among the Romans 185. 18. Hated by the Jews and Greeks ibid. Prejudice an enemy to Religion 189. It brings a Curse ibid. Publick fame a Rule of Honour 172. Purity Evangelical described 228. It s Act and Reward ibid. Q. QUarrel between Jews and Samaritans 182. The ground of it ibid. Question of Original Sin stated in order to Practice 38. 4. 296. 3. Questions Whether we are bound to suffer Death or Imprisonment rather than break a Humane Law 47. 21. Whether Christ did truly or in appearance onely increase in Wisdome 74. 5. Whether is more advantage to Piety a retired and contemplative or a publick and active Life 80. 5 6. Whether way of serving God is better the way of 〈◊〉 or the way of Affections 42. 8. 424. 11. Whether Faith of Ignorant persons produced by insufficient Arguments be acceptable 157. 7. 159. Whether purposes of good Life upon our Death-bed can be 〈◊〉 212. 39. How long time must Repentance of an evil Life begin before our Death 217. 48. Whether we be always bound to do absolutely the best thing 234. 11. Whether it be lawful for Christians to swear 238. 18. Whether it be lawful to swear by a Creature in such cases wherein it is permitted to swear by God 241. 23. Whether a Virgin may not kill a Ravisher 255. 7. Whether it be lawful to pray for Revenge 257. 10. Whether it be lawful for Christians to go to Law and in what cases 255. 8. Whether actual Intention in our Prayers be simply necessary 267. 16. Whether is better Publick or Private Prayer 270. 22. 75. Whether is better Vocal or Mental Prayer 270. 23. Whether a Christian ought to be or can be in this Life ordinarily certain of Salvation 313. Whether a thing in its own nature indifferent is to be thrown off if it have been abused to Superstition 330. 6. Whether it be lawful to fight a Dùell 253. 5 6 c. Whether men be to be kept from receiving the Sacrament for private Sins 376. 13. Whether is better to communicate often or seldom 378. 18. Whether a Death-bed Penitent after a wicked Life is to be absolved if he desires it 403. 13. Whether the same Person is to be communicated 407. 23. Whether Christ was in the state of Comprehension during his Passion 413. 414. Whether Christ suffered the pains of Hell upon the Cross ibid. How the Divine Justice could consist with Punishing the innocent Jesus 415. 7 8. Whether Saints enjoy the 〈◊〉 Vision before the Day of Judgment 423. 429. 15. R. RAshness an enemy to good Counsels and happy Events 11. Religion as excellent in its silent Affections as in its exteriour Actions 4. 30. Religion its Comforts and Refreshments 58. When necessary ibid. Not greedily to be sought after 100. 11 12. Vide Spiritual Sadness Religion pretended to evil purposes 66. 1. It is a publick Vertue 75. It observes the smallest things 272. It s Pretence does not hallow every Action 170. Religion of Holy Places 171. In differing Religions how the parties are to deme an themselves 187. Ministers of Religion to be content if their Labours be not successful 195. They are to have a Calling from the Church 196. Ought to live well ibid. Religion of a Christian purifies and reigns in the Soul 232. 3. It best serves our Temporal ends 303. Not to be neglected upon pretence of Charity 346. Affections of Religion are estimated by their own Excellency not by the Donative so it be our best 360. 8. Religious Actions to be submitted to the Conduct of spiritual Guides 48. A religious person left a Vision to obey his Orders 49. 25. Religious Actions to be repeated often by Sick and Dying persons 406. Rebellion against Prince and Priest more severely punished than Murmurers against GOD 50. 26. Repentance necessary to humane nature 198. The ends of its Institution 198. Revealed first by Christ as a Law 199. Not allowed in the Law of Moses for greater Crimes ibid. Repentance and Faith the two hands to apprehend Christ ibid. After Baptism not so clearly expressed to be accepted nor upon the same terms as before 199. 201. It is a collection of holy Duties 210. The extirpation of all vicious Habits 210. Described ibid. It is not meerly a Sorrow 211. 36. Nor meerly a Purpose 212. Too late upon our Death-bed 214. Publick Repentance must use the instruments of the Church 218. Must begin immediately after Sin 391. 398. Promoted by the Devil when it is too late 392. 7. Repentance of Esau ibid. Repentance accidentally may have advantages beyond Innocence 391. Repenting often and sinning often and 〈◊〉 changing is a sign of an ill condition 106. Revenues not to be greedily sought for by Ecclesiasticks 71. 9. They are dangerous to all men ib. That the Roman Empire was permitted to the power and management of the Devil the opinion of some 100. 14. How the Righteousness of Christians must exceed the Righteousness of Pharisees 233. Revenge forbidden 245. 253.
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
portion of happiness they expected besides that they hated Christianity because so expresly asserting the Resurrection being vexed to hear this Doctrine vented amongst the People intimated to the Magistrate that this Concourse might probably tend to an Uproar and Insurrection Whereupon they came with the Captain of the Temple Commander of the Tower of 〈◊〉 which stood close by on the North side of the Temple wherein was a Roman Garrison to prevent or suppress especially at Festival times Popular Tumults and Uproars who seized on the Apostles and put them into Prison The next Day they were convented before the Jewish Sanhedrim and being asked by what Power and Authority they had done this Peter resolutely answered That as to the Cure done to this impotent Person Be it known to them and all the Jews that it was perfectly wrought in the Name of that Jesus of Nazareth whom they themselves had crucified and God had raised from the dead and whom though they had thrown him by as waste and rubbish yet God had made head of the corner and that there was no other way wherein they or others could expect salvation but by this crucified Saviour Great was the boldness of the Apostles admired by the Sanhedrim it self in this matter especially if we consider that this probably was the very Court that had so lately sentenced and condemned their Master and being fleshed in such sanguinary proceedings had no other way but to go on and justifie one cruelty with another that the Apostles did not say these things in corners and behind the curtain but to their very faces and that in the open Court of Judicature and before all the People That the Apostles had not been used to plead in such publick places nor had been polished with the Arts of education but were ignorant unlearned men known not to be versed in the study of the Jewish Law 7. THE Council which all this while had beheld them with a kind of wonder and now remembred that they had been the companions and attendants of the late crucisied Jesus commanded them to withdraw and debated amongst themselves what they should do with them The Miracle they could not deny the fact being so plain and evident and therefore resolved strictly to charge them that they should Preach no more in the Name of Jesus Being called in again they acquainted them with the Resolution of the Council to which Peter and John replyed That they could by no means yield obedience to it appealing to themselves whether it was not more sit that they should obey God rather than them And that they could not but testifie what they had seen and heard Nor did they in this answer make any undue reflection upon the power of the Magistrates and the obedience due to them it being a ruled 〈◊〉 by the first dictates of reason and the common vote and suffrage of Mankind that Parents and Governours are not to be obeyed when their commands interfere with the obligations under which we stand to a superiour power All authority is originally derived from God and our duty to him may not be superseded by the Laws of any Authority deriving from him and even Socrates himself in a parallel instance when perswaded to leave off his excellent way of institution and instructing youth and to comply with the humour of his Athenian Judges to save his life returned this answer that indeed he loved and honoured the Athenians but yet resolved to obey God rather than them An answer almost the same both in substance and words with that which was here given by our Apostles In all other cases where the Laws of the Magistrate did not interfere with the commands of Christ none more loyal more compliant than they As indeed no Religion in the World ever secured the interests of Civil authority like the Religion of the Gospel It positively charges every soul of what rank or condition soever to be subject to the higher powers as a Divine ordinance and institution and that not for wrath only but for conscience sake it puts men in mind to be subject to Principalities and Powers and to obey Magistrates to submit to every Ordinance of man for the Lords sake both to the King as supreme and unto Governours as unto them that are sent by him for so it the will of God So far is it from allowing us to violate their persons that it suffers us not boldly to censure their actions to revile the gods despise 〈◊〉 and speak evil of Dignities or to vilifie and injure them so much as by a dishonourable thought commanding us when we cannot obey to suffer the most rigorous penalties imposed upon us with calmness and to possess our souls in patience Thus when these two Apostles were shortly after again summoned before the Council commanded no more to Preach the Christian Doctrine and to be scourged for what they had done already though they could not obey the one they chearfully submitted to the other without any peevish or tart reflections but went away rejoycing But what the carriage of Christians was in this matter in the first and best ages of the Gospel we have in another place sufficiently discovered to the World We may not withhold our obedience till the Magistrate invades God's Throne and countermands his authority and may then appeal to the sence of Mankind whether it be not most reasonable that Gods authority should first take place as the Apostles here appealed to their very Judges themselves Nor do we find that the Sanhedrim did except against the Plea At least whatever they thought yet not daring to punish them for fear of the People they only threatned them and let them go vvho thereupon presently return'd to the rest of the Apostles and Believers 8. The Church exceedingly multiplied by these means And that so great a Company most whereof were poor might be maintained they generally sold their Estates and brought the Money to the Apostles to be by them deposited in one common Treasury and thence distributed according to the several exigencies of the Church which gave occasion to this dreadful Instance Ananias and his Wife Saphira having taken upon them the profession of the Gospel according to the free and generous spirit of those times had consecrated and devoted their Estate to the honour of God and the necessities of the Church And accordingly sold their Possessions and turned them into Money But as they were willing to gain the reputation of charitable Persons so were they loth wholly to cast themselves upon the Divine providence by letting go all at once and therefore privately with-held part of what they had devoted and bringing the rest laid it at the Apostles feet hoping herein they might deceive the Apostles though immediately guided by the Spirit of God But Peter at his first coming in treated Ananias with these sharp inquiries Why he would suffer Satan to fill his heart with so big a
Daemons so as they should never return again and adds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That this Art was still in force among the Jews Instances whereof he tells us he himself had seen having beheld one Eleazar a Jew in the presence of 〈◊〉 his Sons and the great Officers of his Army curing Daemoniacks by holding a ring to their nose under whose Seal was hid the root of a certain Plant prescribed by Solomon at the scent whereof the Daemon presently took leave and was gone the Patient falling to the ground while the Exorcist by mentioning Solomon and reciting some Charms made by him stood over him and charged the evil Spirit never to return And to let them see that he was really gone he commanded the Daemon as he went out to overturn a cup full of water which he had caused to be set in the room before them In the number of these Conjurers now at Ephesus there were the seven Sons of 〈◊〉 one of the chief heads of the Families of the Priests who seeing what great things were done by calling over Daemoniacks the name of Christ attempted themselves to do the like Conjuring the evil Spirit in the name of that Jesus whom Paul preached to depart But the stubborn Laemon would not obey the warrant telling them he knew who Jesus and Paul were but did not understand what authority they had to use his name And not content with this forced the Daemoniack violently to fall upon them to tear their clothes and wound their bodies scarce suffering them to escape with the safety of their lives An accident that begot great terror in the minds of men and became the occasion of converting many to the Faith who came to the Apostle and confessed the former course and manner of their lives Several also who had traded in curious Arts and the mysterious methods of Spells and Charms freely brought their Books of Magick Rites whose price had they been to be sold according to the rates which men who dealt in those cursed mysteries put upon them would have amounted to the value of above One thousand Five hundred pounds and openly burnt them before the people themselves adjudging them to those flames to which they were condemned by the Laws of the Empire For so we find the Roman Laws prohibiting any to keep Books of Magick Arts and that where any such were found their Goods should be forfeited the Books publickly burned the persons banished and if of a meaner rank beheaded These Books the penitent converts did of their own accord 〈◊〉 to the fire not tempted to spare them either by their former love to them or the present price and value of them With so mighty an efficacy did the Gospel prevail over the minds of men 6. ABOUT this time it was that the Apostle writ his Epistle to the Galatians For he had heard that since his departure corrupt opinions had got in amongst them about the necessary observation of the legal Rites and that several Impostors were crept into that Church who knew no better way to undermine the Doctrine he had planted there than by vilifying his person slighting him as an Apostle only at the second hand not to be compared with Peter James and John who had familiarly conversed with Christ in the days of his flesh 〈◊〉 been immediately deputed by him In this Epistle therefore he reproves them with some necessary smartness and severity that they had been so soon led out of that right way wherein he had set them and had so easily suffered themselves to be imposed upon by the crasty artifices of seducers He vindicates the honour of his Apostolate and the immediate receiving his Commission from Christ wherein he shews that he came not behind the very best of those Apostles He largely refutes those Judaical opinions that had tainted and infected them and in the conclusion instructs them in the rules and duties of an holy life While the Apostle thus staid at Ephesus he resolved with himself to pass through 〈◊〉 and Achaia thence to Jerusalem and so to Rome But for the present altered his resolution and continued still at Ephesus 7. DURING his stay in this place an accident happened that involved him in great trouble and danger 〈◊〉 above all the Cities of the East was renowned for the famous Temple of Diana one of the stateliest Temples of the World It was as Pliny tells us the very wonder of magnificence built at the common charges of all Asia properly 〈◊〉 called 220 Years elsewhere he says 400 in building which we are to understand of its successive rebuildings and reparations being often wasted and destroyed It was 425 Foot long 220 broad supported by 127 Pillars 60 Foot high for its antiquity it was in some degree before the times of Bacchus equal to the Reign of the Amazons by whom it is generally said to have been first built as the Ephesian Embassadors told Tiberius till by degrees it grew up into that greatness and splendor that it was generally reckoned one of the seven wonders of the World But that which gave the greatest same and reputation to it was an Image of Diana kept there made of no very costly materials but which the crasty Priests perswaded the People was beyond any humane artifice or contrivement and that it was immediately formed by Jupiter and dropt down from Heaven having first killed or banished the Artists that made it as Suidas informs us that the cheat might not be discovered by which means they drew not Ephesus only but the whole World into a mighty veneration of it Besides there were within this Temple multitudes of Silver Cabinets or Chappelets little Shrines made in fashion of the Temple wherein was placed the Image of Diana For the making of these holy shrines great numbers of Silver-smiths were imployed and maintained among whom one Demetrius was a Leading-man who foreseeing that if the Christian Religion still got ground their gainful Trade would soon come to nothing presently called together the Men of his Profession especially those whom he himself set on work told them that now their welfare and livelihood were concerned and that the fortunes of their Wives and Children lay at stake that it was plain that this Paul had perverted City and Country and perswaded the People that the Images which they made and worshipped were no real Gods by which means their Trade was not only like to fall to the ground but also the honour and magnificence of the great Goddess Diana whom not Asia only but the whole Word did worship and adore Inraged with this discourse they cryed out with one voice that Great was Diana of the 〈◊〉 The whole City was presently in an uproar and seising upon two of S. Paul's Companions hurried them into the Theatre probably with a design to have cast them to the wild Beasts S. Paul hearing of their danger would have ventured himself among them had
Paul and by him returned with recommendatory Letters to Philemon his Master to beg his pardon and that he might be received into favour being now of a much better temper more faithful and diligent and useful to his Master than he had been before As indeed Christianity where 't is heartily entertained makes men good in all relations no Laws being so wisely contrived for the peace and happiness of the World as the Laws of the Gospel as may appear by this particular case of servants what admirable rules what severe Laws does it lay upon them for the discharge of their duties it commands them to honour their Masters as their Superiors and to take heed of making their authority light and cheap by familiar and contemptible thoughts and carriages to obey them in all honest and lawful things and that not with eye-service as men-pleasers but in singleness of heart as unto God that they be faithful to the trust committed to them and manage their Masters interest with as much care and conscience as if it were their own that they entertain their reproofs counsels corrections with all silence and sobriety not returning any rude surly answers and this carriage to be observed not only to Masters of a mild and gentle but of a cross and peevish disposition that whatever they do they do it heartily not as to men only but to the Lord knowing that of the Lord they shall receive the reward of the inheritance for that they serve the Lord Christ. Imbued with these excellent principles Onesimus is again returned unto his Master for Christian Religion though it improve mens tempers does not cancel their relations it teaches them to abide in their callings and not to despise their Masters because they are Erethren but rather do them service because they are faithful And being thus improved S. Paul the more confidently beg'd his pardon And indeed had not Philemon been a Christian and by the principles of his Religion both disposed and obliged to mildness and mercy there had been great reason why S. Paul should be thus importunate with him for Onesimus his pardon the case of servants in those days being very hard for all Masters were looked upon as having an unlimited power over their Servants and that not only by the Roman but by the Laws of all Nations whereby without asking the Magistrate's leave or any publick and formal trial they might adjudge and condemn them to what work or punishment they pleased even to the taking away of life it self But the severity and exorbitancy of this power was afterwards somewhat curb'd by the Laws of succeeding Emperors especially after the Empire submitted it self to Christianity which makes better provision for persons in that capacity and relation and in case of unjust and over-rigorous usage enables them to appeal to a more righteous and impartial Tribunal where Master and Servant shall both stand upon even ground where he that doth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done and there is no respect of persons 4. THE Christians at Philippi having heard of S. Paul's imprisonment at Rome and not knowing what straits he might be reduced to raised a contribution for him and sent it by Epaphroditus their Bishop who was now come to Rome where he shortly after fell dangerously sick But being recovered and upon the point to return by him S. Paul sent his Epistle to the Philippians wherein he gives them some account of the state of affairs at Rome gratefully acknowledges their kindness to him and warns them of those dangerous opinions which the Judaizing Teachers began to vent among them The Apostle had heretofore for some years liv'd at Ephesus and perfectly understood the state and condition of that place and therefore now by Tychicus writes his Epistle to the Ephesians endeavouring to countermine the principles and practices both of Jews and Gentiles to confirm them in the belief and obedience of the Christian doctrine to represent the infinite riches of the Divine goodness in admitting the Gentile world to the unsearchable treasures of Christianity especially pressing them to express the life and spirit of it in the general duties of Religion and in the duties of their particular relations Much about the same time or a little after he wrote his Epistle to the Colossians where he had never been and sent it by Epaphras who for some time had been his fellow-prisoner at Rome The design of it is for the greatest part the same with that to the Ephesians to settle and confirm them in the Faith of the Gospel against the errors both of Judaism and the superstitious observances of the Heathen World some whereof had taken root amongst them 5. IT is not improbable but that about this or rather some considerable time before S. Paul wrote his second Epistle to Timothy I know Eusebius and the Ancients and most Moderns after them will have it written a little before his Martyrdom induced thereunto by that passage in it that he was then ready to be offered and that the time of his departure was at hand But surely it 's most reasonable to think that it was written at his first being at Rome and that at his first coming thither presently after his Trial before Nero. Accordingly the passage before mentioned may import no more than that he was in imminent danger of his life and had received the sentence of death in himself not hoping to escape out of the paws of Nero But that God had delivered him out of the mouth of the Lion i. e. the great danger he was in at his coming thither Which exactly agrees to his case at his first being at Rome but cannot be reconciled with his last coming thither together with many more circumstances in this Epistle which render it next door to certain In it he appoints Timothy shortly to come to him who accordingly came whose name is joyned together with his in the front of several Epistles to the Philippians Colossians and to Philemon The only thing that can be levelled against this is that in this Epistle to Timothy he tells him that he had sent Tychicus to Ephesus by whom 't is plain that the Epistles to the Ephesians and Philippians were dispatched and that therefore this to Timothy must be written after them But I see no inconvenience to affirm that Tychicus might come to Rome presently after S. Paul's arrival there be by him immediately sent back to Ephesus upon some emergent affair of that Church and after his return to Rome be sent with those two Epistles The design of the Epistle was to excite the holy man to a mighty zeal and diligence care and fidelity in his office and to antidote the people against those poisonous principles that in those parts especially began to debauch the minds of men 6. AS for the Epistle to the Hebrews 't is very uncertain when or whence and for some Ages doubted by whom 't was written
them Indeed herein justly commendable that they could not brook the least dishonourable reflexion upon any Deity and therefore Apollonius Tyanaeus tells Timasion that the safest way was to speak well of all the Gods and especially at Athens where Altars were dedicated even to Unknown Gods And so S. Paul here found it for among the several Shrines and places of Worship and Devotion he took more particular notice of one Altar inscribd To the Unknown God The intire Inscription whereof the Apostle quotes only part of the last words is thought to have been this TO the Gods of Asia Europe and Africa to the strange and UNKNOWN GOD. Saint Hierom represents it in the same manner onely makes it Gods in the plural number which because says he S. Paul needed not he only cited it in the singular Which surely he affirms without any just ground and warrant though it cannot be denied but that Heathen Writers make frequent mention of the Altars of unknown Gods that were at Athens as there want not others who speak of some erected there to an unknown God This Notion the Athenians might probably borrow from the Hebrews who had the Name of God in great secrecy and veneration This being one of the Titles given him by the Prophet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a hidden God or a God that hides himself Sure I am that Justin Martyr tells us that one of the principal names given to God by some of the Heathens was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one altogether hidden Hence the Egyptians probably derived their great God Ammon or more truly Amun which signifies occult or hidden Accordingly in this passage of S. Paul the Syriac Interpreter renders it the Altar 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the hidden God The Jews were infinitely superstitious in concealing the Name of God not thinking it lawful ordinarily to pronounce it This made the Gentiles strangers at best both to the Language and Religion of the Jews at a great loss by what Name to call him only stiling him in general an uncertain unspeakable invisible Deity whence Caligula in his ranting Oration to the Jewes told them that wretches as they were though they refused to own him whom all others had confessed to be a Deity yet they could worship 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their own nameless God And hence the Gentiles derived their custom of keeping secret the name of their Gods Thus Plutarch tells us of the Tutelar Deity of Rome that it was not lawful to name it or so much as to enquire what Sex it was of whether God or Goddess and that for once revealing it Valerius Soranus though Tribune of the People came to an untimely end and was crucified the vilest and most dishonourable kind of death Whereof among other reasons he assigns this that by concealing the Author of their publick safety 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not he only but all the other Gods might have due honour and worship paid to them Hence in their publick adorations after the Invocation of particular Deities they were wont to add some more general and comprehensive form as when Cicero had been making his address to most of their particular Gods he concludes with a Caeteros item Deos Deasque omnes imploro atque obtestor Usually the form was DII DEAEQUE OMNES. The reason whereof was this that not being assured many times what that peculiar Deity was that was proper to their purpose or what numbers of Gods there were in the World they would not 〈◊〉 or offend any by seeming to neglect and pass them by And this Chrysostome thinks to have been particularly designed in the erection of this Athenian Altar 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they were afraid lest there might be some other Deity besides those whom they particularly worshipped as yet unknown to them though honoured and adored elsewhere and therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the more security they dedicated an Altar to the unknown God As for the particular occasion of erecting theso Altars at Athens omitting that of Pans appearing to Philippides mentioned by Occumenius the most probable seems to be this When a great Plague raged at Athens and several means had been attempted for the removal of it they were advised by 〈◊〉 the Philosopher to build an Altar and dedicate it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to the proper and peculiar Deity to whom it did appertain be he what he would A course which proving successful no doubt gave occasion to them by way of gratitude to erect more shrines to this unknown God And accordingly Laertius who lived long after S. Paul's time tells us that there were such nameless Altars he means such as were not inscribed to any particular Deity in and about Athens in his days as Monuments of that eminent deliverance 7. BUT whatever the particular cause might be hence it was that S. Paul took occasion to discourse of the true but to them unknown God For the Philosophers had before treated him with a great deal of scorn and derision asking what that idle and prating fellow had to say to them Others looking upon him as a propagater of new and strange Gods because he preached to them Jesus and Anastasis or the Resurrection which they looked upon as two upstart Deities lately come into the World Hereupon they brought him to the place where stood the famous Senate-house of the Areopagites and according to the Athenian humour which altogether delighted in curious novelties running up and down the 〈◊〉 and places of publick concourse to see any strange accident or hear any new report a vice which their own great Orator long since taxed them with they asked him what that new and strange Doctrine was which he preached to them Whereupon in a neat and elegant discourse he began to tell them he had observed how much they were over-run with superstition that their zeal for Religion was indeed generous and commendable but which miserably over-shot its due measures and proportions that he had taken notice of an Altar among them Inscribed To the unknown God and therefore in compassion to their blind and misguided zeal he would declare unto them the Deity which they ignorantly worshipped and that this was no other than the great God the Creator of all things the Supreme Governor and Ruler of the World who was incapable of being confined within any Temple or humane Fabrick That no Image could be made as a proper Instrument to represent him that he needed no Gifts or Sacrifices being himself the Fountain from whence Life Breath and all other blessings were derived to particular Beings That from one common original he had made the whole Race of Mankind and had wisely fixed and determined the times and bounds of their habitation And all to this end that Men might be the stronglier obliged to seek after him and sincerely to serve and worship him A duty which they might easily
attain to though otherwise sunk into the deepest degeneracy and over-spread with the grossest darkness he every where affording such palpable evidences of his own being and providence that he seemed to stand near and touch us It being intirely from him that we derive our life motion and subsistence A thing acknowledged even by their own Poct that We also are his Off-spring If therefore God was our Creator it was highly unreasonable to think that we could make any Image or Representation of Him That it was too long already that the Divine patience had born with the manners of Men and suffered them to go on in their blind Idolatries that now he expected a general repentance and reformation from the World especially having by the publishing of his Gospel put out of all dispute the case of a future judgment and particularly appointed the Holy Jesus to be the Person that should sentence and judge the World By whose Resurrection he had given sufficient evidence and assurance of it No sooner had he mentioned the Resurrection but some of the Philosophers no doubt Epicureans who were wont to laugh at the notion of a future state mocked and derided him others more gravely answered that they would hear him again concerning this matter But his discourse however scorned and slighted did not wholly want its desired effect and that upon some of the greatest quality and rank among them In the number of whom was Dionysius one of the grave Senators and Judges of the Areopagus and Damaris whom the Ancients not improbably make his Wife 8. THIS Dionysius was bred at Athens in all the learned Arts and Sciences at sive and twenty Years of Age he is said to have travelled into Egypt to perfect himself in the study of Astrology for which that Nation had the credit and renown Here beholding the miraculous Eclipse that was at the time of our Saviour's Passion he concluded that some great accident must needs be coming upon the World Returning to Athens he became one of the Senators of the Arcopagus disputed with S. Paul and was by him converted from his Errours and Idolatry and being thoroughly instructed was by him as the Ancients inform us made the first Bishop of Athens As for those that tell us that he went afterwards into France by the direction of Clemens of Rome planted Christianity at and became Bishop of Paris of his suffering Martyrdom there under Domitian his carrying his Head for the space of two Miles in his Hand after it had been cut off and the rest of his Miracles done before and after his Death I have as little leisure to enquire into them as I have faith to believe them Indeed the foundation of all is justly denied viz. that ever he was there a thing never heard of till the times of Charles the Great though since that Volumes have been written of this controversie both heretofore and of later times among which J. Sirmondus the Jesuit and Monsieur Launoy one of the learned Doctors of the Sorbon have unanswerably proved the Athenian and Parisian Dionysius to be distinct Persons For the Books that go under his name M. Daillé has sufficiently evinced them to 〈◊〉 of a date many Hundred Years younger than S. Denys though I doubt not but they may claim a greater Antiquity than what he allows them But whoever was their Author I am sure Suidas has over-stretched the praise of them beyond all proportion when he gives them this character 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that whoever considers the elegancy of his discourses and the profoundness of his notions and speculations must needs conclude that they are not the issue of any humane understanding but of some Divine and Immaterial Power But to return to our Apostle SECT IV. Of S. Paul's Acts at Corinth and Ephesus S. Paul's arrival at Corinth The opposition made by the Jews The success of his Preaching upon others His first Epistle to the Thessalonians when written His Arraignment before Gallio The second Epistle to the Thessalonians and the design of it S. Paul's voyage to Jerusalem His coming to Ephesus Disciples baptized into John's Baptism S. Paul's preaching at Ephesus and the Miracles wrought by him Ephesus noted for the study of Magick Jews eminently versed in Charms and Inchantments The Original of the Mystery whence pretended to have been derived The ill attempt of the Sons of Sceva to dipossess Daemons in the name of Christ. S. Paul's doctrine greatly successful upon this sort of men Books of Magick forbidden by the Roman Laws S. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians why and when written Diana's Temple at Ephesus and its great stateliness and magnificence The mutiny against S. Paul raised by Demetrius and his party S. Paul's first Fpistle to the Corinthians upon what occasion written His Epistle to Titus Apollonius Tyanaeus whether at Ephesus at the same time with S. Paul His Miracles pretended to be done in that City 1. AFTER his departure from Athens he went to Corinth the Metropolis of Greece and the residence of the Proconsul of Achaia where he found Aquila and Priscilla lately come from Italy banished out of Rome by the Decree of Claudius And they being of the same trade and profession wherein he had been educated in his youth he wrought together with them lest he should be unnecessarily burdensom unto any which for the same reason he did in some other places Hither after some time Silas and Timothy came to him In the Synagogue he frequently disputed with the Jews and Proselytes reasoning and proving that Jesus was the true Messiah They according to the nature of the men made head and opposed him and what they could not conquer by argument and sorce of reason they endeavoured to carry by noise and clamour mixed with blasphemies and revilings the last refuges of an impotent and baffled cause Whereat to testifie his resentment he shook his Garments and told them since he saw them resolved to pull down vengeance and destruction upon their own heads he for his part was guiltless and innocent and would henceforth address himself unto the Gentiles Accordingly he left them and went into the house of Justus a religious Proselyte where by his preaching and the many miracles which he wrought he converted great numbers to the Faith Amongst which were Crispus the chief Ruler of the Synagogue Gaius and Stephanus who together with their Families embraced the doctrine of the Gospel and were baptized into the Christian Faith But the constant returns of malice and ingratitude are enough to tire the largest charity and cool the most generous resolution therefore that the Apostle might not be discouraged by the restless attempts and machinations of his enemies our Lord appeared to him in a Vision told him that not withstanding the bad success he had hitherto met with there was a great harvest to be gathered in that place that he should not be afraid of his enemies but go