hath lived in sin will die in sorrow The Invalidity of a death-bed Repentance Part II. BUt I shall pursue this great and necessary truth first by shewing what parts and ingredients of repentance are assigned when it is described in holy Scripture Secondly by shewing the necessities the absolute necessities of a holy life and what it means in Scripture to live holily Thirdly by considering what directions or intimations we have concerning the last time of beginning to repent and what is the longest period that any man may venture with safety And in the prosecution of these particulars we shall remove the objections those aprons of fig-leaves which men use for their shelter to palliate their sin and to hide themselves from that from which no rocks or mountains shall protect them though they fall upon them that is the wrath of God First That repentance is not onely an abolition and extinction of the body of sin a bringing it to the altar and slaying it before God and all the people but that we must also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mingle gold and rich presents the oblation of good works and holy habits with the sacrifice I have already proved but now if we will see repentance in its stature and integrity of constitution described we shall finde it to be the one half of all that which God requires of Christians Faith and Repentance are the whole duty of a Christian. Faith is a sacrifice of the understanding to God Repentance sacrifices the whole will That gives the knowing this gives up all the desiring faculties That makes us Disciples this makes us servants of the Holy Jesus Nothing else was preached by the Apostles nothing was enjoyned as the duty of man nothing else did build up the body of Christian religion So that as faith contains all that knowledge which is necessary to salvation So repentance comprehends in it all the whole practise and working duty of a returning Christian And this was the sum totall of all that Saint Paul preached to the Gentiles when in his farewell Sermon to the Bishops and Priests of Ephesus he professed that he kept back nothing that was profitable to them and yet it was all nothing but this Repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ so that whosoever believes in Jesus Christ and repents towards God must make his accounts according to this standard that is to believe all that Christ taught him and to do all that Christ commanded and this is remarked in Saint Pauls Catechisme where he gives a more particular Catalogue of fundamentals he reckons nothing but Sacraments and faith of which he enumerates two principal articles resurrection of the dead and eternal judgement whatsoever is practical all the whole duty of man the practise of all obedience is called repentance from dead works which if we observe the singularity of the phrase does not mean sorrow For sorrow from dead works is not sense but it must mean mutationem status a conversion from dead works which as in all motions supposes two terms from dead works to living works from the death of sin to the life of righteousnesse I will adde but two places more out of each Testament one in which I suppose you may see every lineament of this great duty described that you may no longer mistake a grashopper for an Eagle Sorrow and holy purposes for the intire duty of repentance In the 18. of Ezek. 21. you shall finde it thus described But if the wicked will turne from all his sins that he hath committed and keep all my statutes and do that which is lawful and right he shall surely live he shall not die or as it is more fully described in Ezek. 33. 14 When I say unto the wicked Thou shalt surely die If he turn from his sin and do that which is lawful and right if the wicked restore the pledge give again that he had robbed walk in the statutes of life without committing iniquity he shall surely live he shall not die Here onely is the condition of pardon to leave all your sins to keep all Gods statutes to walk in them to abide to proceed and make progresse in them and this without the interruption by a deadly sin without committing iniquity to make restitution of all the wrongs he hath done all the unjust money he hath taken all the oppressions he hath committed all that must be satisfied for and repayed according to our ability we must make satisfaction for all injury to our Neighbours fame all wrongs done to his soul he must be restored to that condition of good things thou didst in any sense remove him from when this is done according to thy utmost power then thou hast repented truely then thou hast a title to the promise thou shalt surely live thou shalt not die for thy old sins thou hast formerly committed * Onely be pleased to observe this one thing that this place of Ezekiel is it which is so often mistaken for that common saying At what time soever a sinner repents him of his sins from the bottom of his heart I will put all his wickednesse out of my remembrance saith the Lord For although at what time soever a sinner does repent as repentance is now explained God will forgive him and that repentance as it is now stated cannot be done At what time soever not upon a mans deathbed yet there are no such words in the whole Bible nor any neerer to the sense of them then the words I have now read to you out of the Prophet Ezekiel Let that therefore no more deceive you or be made a colour to countenance a persevering sinner or a deathbed penitent Neither is the duty of Repentance to be bought at an easier rate in the New Testament You may see it described in the 2 Cor. 7. 11. Godly sorrow worketh repentance Well but what is that repentance which is so wrought This it is Behold the self same thing that ye sorrowed after a godly sort what carefulnesse it wrought in you yea what clearing of your selves yea what indignation yea what fear ye what vehement desire yea what zeal yea what revenge These are the fruits of that sorrow that is effectual these are the parts of repentance clearing our selves of all that is past and great carefulnesse for the future anger at our selves for our old sins and fear lest we commit the like again vehement desires of pleasing God and zeal of holy actions and a revenge upon our selves for our sins called by Saint Paul in another place a judging our selves lest we be judged of the Lord. And in pursuance of this truth the primitive Church did not admit a sinning person to the publike communions with the faithfull till besides their sorrow they had spent some years in an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in doing good works and holy living and especially in such actions which did contradict that wicked inclination which led
clothes all the money and civilities all the cheerfull looks and familiarity and fellowship of vices which in your life time made your spirit so gay and easie It will in the eternall loads of sorrow adde a duplicate of groans and indignation when it shall be remembred for how base and trifling interest and upon what weak principles we fell sick and died eternally 2. The next advise to persons thus tempted is that they would learn to separate duty from mistaken interest and let them be both served in their just proportions when we have learned to make a difference A wife is bound to her husband in all his just designes and in all noble usages and Christian comportments But a wife is no more bound to pursue her husbands vitious hatreds then to serve and promote his unlawfull and wandring loves It is not alwayes a part of duty to think the same propositions or to curse the same persons or to wish him successe in unjust designes And yet the sadnesse of it is that a good woman is easily tempted to beleeve the cause to be just and when her affection hath forced her judgement her judgement for ever after shall carry the affection to all its erring and abused determinations A friend is turned a flatterer if he does not know that the limits of friendship extend no further then the pale and inclosures of reason and religion No Master puts it into his covenant that his servant shall be drunk with him or give in evidence in his Masters cause according to his Masters scrolls and therefore it is besides and against the duty of a servant to sin by that authority it is as if he should set Mules to keep his sheep or make his Dogs to carry burdens it is besides their nature and designe and if any person falls under so tyrannicall relation let him consider how hard a Master he serves where the Devil gives the imployment and shame is his entertainment and sin is his work and hell is his wages Take therefore the counsel of the son of Syrac Accept no person against thy soul and let not the reverence of any man cause thee to fall 3. When passion mingles with duty and is a necessary instrument of serving God let not that passion run its own course and passe on to liberty and thence to licence and dissolution but let no more of it be entertained then will just do the work For no zeal of duty will warrant a violent passion to prevaricate a duty I have seen some officers of Warre in passion and zeal of their duty have made no scruple to command a souldier with the dialect of cursing and accents of swearing and pretended they could not else speak words effective enough and of sufficient authority and a man may easily be overtaken in the issues of his government while his authority serves it still with passion if he be not curious in his measures his passion will also serve it self upon the authority and over rule the Ruler 4. Let every such tempted person remember that all evil comes from our selves and not from others and therefore all pretences and prejudices all commands and temptations all opinions and necessities are but instances of our weaknesse and arguments of our folly For unlesse we listed no man can make us drink beyond our measures And if I tell a lie for my Masters or my friends advantage it is because I prefer a little end of money or flattery before my honour and my innocence They are huge follies which go up and down in the mouthes and heads of men He that knows not how to dissemble knows not how to reigne He that will not do as his company does must go out of the world and quit all society of men We create necessities of our own and then think we have reason to serve their importunity Non ego sum ambitiosus sed nemo aliter Romae potest vivere non ego sumptuosus sed urbs ipsa magnas impensas exigit Non est meum vitium quod iracundus sum quod nondum constitui certum vitae genus adolescentia haec facit The place we live in makes us expensive the state of life I have chosen renders me ambitious my age makes me angry or lustfull proud or peevish These are nothing else but resolutions never to mend as long as we can have excuse for our follies and untill we can cozen our selves no more There is no such thing as a necessity for a Prince to dissemble or for a servant to lie or for a friend to flatter for a civil person and a sociable to be drunk we cozen our selves with thinking the fault is so much derivative from others till the smart and the shame falls upon our selves and covers our heads with sorrow And unlesse this gap be stopped and that we build our duty upon our own bottoms as supported with the grace of God there is no vice but may finde a Patron and no age or relation or state of life but will be an engagement to sin And we shall think it necessary to be lustfull in our youth and revengefull in our manhood and covetous in our old age and we shall perceive that every state of men and every trade and profession lives upon the vices of others or upon their miseries and therefore they will think it necessary to promote or to wish it If men were temperate Physitians would be poor and unlesse some Princes were ambitious or others injurious there would be no imployment for souldiers The Vintners retail supports the Merchants trade and it is a vice that supports the Vintners retail and if all men were wise and sober persons we should have fewer beggers and fewer rich and if our Law-givers should imitate Demades of Athens who condemned a man that lived by selling things belonging to funeralls as supposing he could not choose but wish the death of men by whose dying he got his living we should finde most men accounted criminalls because vice is so involved in the affairs of the world that it is made the support of many trades and the businesse of great multitudes of men Certainly from hence it is that iniquity does so much abound and unlesse we state our questions right and perceive the evil to be designed onely from our selves and that no such pretence shall keep off the punishment 〈◊〉 the shame from our selves we shall fall into a state which is onely capable of compassion because it is irrecoverable and then we shall be infinitely miserable when we can onely receive an uâ—â—lesse and ineffective pity Whatsoever is necessary cannot be avoided He therefore that shall say he cannot avoid his sin is out of the mercies of this Text they who are appointed Guides Physitians of souls cannot to any purpose do their offices of pity It is necessary that we serve God and do our duty and secure the interest of our souls and be as carefull to preserve our
in a cock-boat or use a childe for his interpreter and that Generall is a Cyclops without an eye who chooses the sickest men to man his Towns and the weakest to fight his battels It cannot be a vigorous prosecution unlesse the means have an efficacy or worth commensurate to all the difficulty and something of the excellency of that end which is designed And indeed men use not to be so weak in acquiring the possessions of their temporals But in matters of religion they think any thing effective enough to secure the greatest interest as if all the fields of heaven and the regions of the Kingdom were waste ground and wanted a Colony of planters and that God invited men to heaven upon any terms that he might rejoyce in the multitude of subjects For certain it is men do more to get a little money then for all the glories of heaven Men rise up early and sit up late and eat the bread of carefulnesse to become richer then their neighbours and are amazed at every losse and impatient of an evil accident and feel a direct strom of passion if they suffer in their interest But in order to heaven they are cold in their religion indevout in their prayers incurious in their walking unwatchfull in their circumstances indifferent in the use of their opportunities infrequent in their discoursings of it not inquisitive of the way and yet think they shall surely go to heaven But a prudent man knows that by the greatnesse of the purchase he is to make an estimate of the value and the price When we ask of God any great thing As wisdom delivery from sicknesse his holy Spirit the forgivenesse of sins the grace of chastity restitution to his favour or the like do we hope to obtain them without a high opinion of the things we ask and if we value them highly must we not desire them earnestly and if we desire them earnestly must we not pray for them fervently and whatsoever we ask for fervently must not we beg for frequently and then because prayer is but one hand toward the reaching a blessing and God requires our cooperation and endeavour and we must work with both hands are we not convinced that our prayers are either faint or a designe of lazinesse when we either ask coldly or else pray loudly hoping to receive the graces we need without labour A prudent person that knows to value the best object of his desires will also know that he must observe the degrees of labour according to the excellency of the reward Prayer must be effectuall fervent frequent continuall holy passionate that must get a grace or secure a blessing The love that we must have to God must be such as to keep his commandements and to make us willing to part with all our estate and all our honour and our life for the testimony of a holy conscience Our charity to our neighbours must be expressive in a language of a reall friendship aptnesse to forgive readinesse to forbear in pitying infirmities in relieving necessities in giving our goods and our lives and quitting our privileges to save his soul to secure and support his vertue Our repentance must be full of sorrows and care of diligence and hatred against sin it must drive out all and leave no affections towards it it must be constant and persevering fearfull of relapse and watchfull of all accidents Our temperance must sometimes turn into abstinence and most commonly be severe and ever without reproof He that striveth for masteries is temperate saith Saint Paul in all things he that does all this may with some pretence and reason say he intends to go to heaven But they that will not deny a lust nor refrain an appetite they that will be drunk when their friends do merrily constrain them or love a cheap religion and a gentle and lame prayer short and soft quickly said and soon passed over seldome returning and but little observed How is it possible that they should think themselves persons disposed to receive such glorious crowns and scepters such excellent conditions which they have not faith enough to believe nor attention enough to consider and no man can have wit enough to understand But so might an Arâ—adian shepherd look from the rocks or thorow the clefts of the valley where his sheep graze and wonder that the messenger stayes so long from comming to him to be crowned King of all the Greek Ilands or to be adopted heir to the Macedonian Monarchy It is an infinite love of God that we have heaven upon conditions which we can perform with greatest diligence But truely the lives of men are generally such that they do things in order to heaven things I say so few so trifling so unworthy that they are not proportionable to the reward of a crown of oak or a yellow riband the slender reward with which the Romans payed their souldiers for their extraordinary valour True it is that heaven is not in a just sense of a commutation a reward but a gift and an infinite favour but yet it is not reached forth but to persons disposed by the conditions of God which conditions when we pursue in kinde let us be very carefull we do not fail of the mighty price of our high calling for want of degrees and just measures the measures of zeal and a mighty love 3. It is an office of prudence so to serve God that we may at the same time preserve our lives and our estates our interest and reputation for our selves and our relatives so farre as they can consist together Saint Paul in the beginning of Christianity was careful to instruct the forwardnesse and zeal of the new Christians into good husbandry and to catechize the men into good trades and the women into useful imployments that they might not be unprofitable For Christian religion carrying us to heaven does it by the way of a man and by the body it serves the soul as by the soul it serves God and therefore it endeavours to secure the body and its interest that it may continue the opportunities of a crown and prolong the stage in which we are to run for the mighty price of our salvation and this is that part of prudence which is the defensative and guards of a Christian in the time of persecution and it hath in it much of duty He that through an indiscreet zeal casts himself into a needlesse danger hath betrayed his life to tyranny and tempts the sin of an enemy he loses to God the service of many yeers and cuts off himself from a fair opportunity of working his salvation in the main parts of which we shall finde a long life and very many yeers of reason to be little enough he betrayes the interest of his relatives which he is bound to preserve he disables himself of making provision for them of his own house and he that fails in this duty by his own fault is worse then
XXVIII SERMONS PREACHED AT GOLDEN GROVE Being for the Summer half-year BEGINNING ON WHIT-SVNDAY And ending on the xxv Sunday after TRINITY TOGETHER WITH A Discourse of the Divine Institution Necessity Sacredness and Separation of the Office Ministeriall BY JER TAYLOR D. D. QVI SEQVITUR ME NON AMBULAT IN TENEBRIS LONDON Printed by R. N. for Richard Royston at the Angel in Ivie-Lane 1651. a recorder how prudent an observer how sedulous a practiser of holy discourses she was and that therefore it was that what did slide thorow her ear she was desirous to place before her eye that by those windows they might enter in and dwell in her heart But because by this truth I shall do advantage to the following discourses give me leave my Lord to fancy that this Book is derived upon your Lordship almost in the nature of a legacy from her whose every thing was dearer to your Lordship then your own eyes and that what she was pleased to beleeve apt to minister to her devotions and the religions of her pious and discerning soul may also be allowed a place in your closet and a portion of your retirement and a lodging in your thoughts that they may incourage and instruct your practise and promote that interest which is and ought to be dearer to you then all those blessings and separations with which God hath remarked your family and person My Lord I confesse the publication of these Sermons can so little serve the ends of my reputation that I am therefore pleased the rather to do it because I cannot at all be tempted in so doing to minister to any thing of vanity Sermons may please when they first strike the ear and yet appear flat and ignorant when they are offered to the eye and to an understanding that can consider at leisure I remember that a young Gentleman of Athens being to answer for his life hired an Orator to make his defence and it pleased him well at his first reading but when the young man by often reading it that he might recite it publikely by heart began to grow weary and dspleased with it the Orator bade him consider that the Judges and the people were to hear it but once and then it was likely they at that first instant might be as well pleased as he This hath often represented to my mind the condition and fortune of Sermons and that I now part with the advantage they had in their delivery but I have sufficiently answered my self in that and am at rest perfectly in my thoughts as to that particular if I can in any degree serve the interest of souls and which is next to that obey the piety and record the memory of that dear Saint whose name and whose soul is blessed for in both these ministeries I doubt not but your Lordship will be pleased and account as if I had done also some service to your self your religion makes me sure of the first and your piety puts the latter past my fears However I suppose in the whole account of this affair this publication may be esteemed but like preaching to a numerous Auditory which if I had done it would have been called either duty or charity and therefore will not now so readily be censured for vanity if I make use of all the wayes I can to minister to the good of souls But because my intentions are fair in themselves and I hope are acceptable to God and will be fairly expounded by your Lordship whom for so great reason I so much value I shall not trouble you or the world with an Apologie for this so free publishing my weaknesses I can better secure my reputation by telling men how they ought to entertain Sermons for if they that read or hear do their duty aright the Preacher shall soon be secured of his fame and untouched by censure 1. For it were well if men would not inquire after the learning of the sermon or its deliciousnesse to the ear or fancy but observe its usefulnesse not what concerns the preacher but what concerns themselves not what may make a vain reflexion upon him but what may substantially serve their own needs that the attending to his discourses may not be spent in vain talk concerning him or his disparagements but may be used as a duty and a part of religion to minister to edification and instruction When S. John reckoned the principles of evil actions he told but of three The lust of the flesh the lust of the eyes and the pride of life But there was then also in the world and now it is grown into age and strength and faction another lust the lust of the ear and a fift also the lust of the tongue Some people have an insatiable appetite in hearing and hear onely that they may hear and talk and make a party They enter into their neighbours house to kindle their candle and espying there a glaring fire sit down upon the hearth and warm themselves all day and forget their errand and in the mean time their own fires are not lighted nor their families instructed or provided for nor any need served but a lazie pleasure which is uselesse and imprudent Hearing or reading sermons is or ought to be in order to practise for so God intended it that faith should come by hearing and that charity should come by faith and by both together we may be saved For a mans ears as Plutarch cals them are virtutum ansae by them we are to hold and apprehend vertue and unlesse we use them as men do vessels of dishonour filling them with things fit to be thrown away with any thing that is not necessary we are by them more neerly brought to God then by all the senses beside For although things placed before the eye affect the minde more readily then the things we usually hear yet the reason of that is because we hear carelesly and we hear variety the same species dwels upon the eye and represents the same object in union and single representment but the objects of the ear are broken into fragments of periods and words and syllables and must be attended with a carefull understanding and because every thing diverts the sound and every thing cals off the understanding and the spirit of a man is truantly and trifling therefore it is that what men hear does so little affect them and so weakly work toward the purposes of vertue yet nothing does so affect the minde of man as those voices to which we cannot chuse but attend and thunder and all loud voices from Heaven rend the most stony heart and makes the most obstinate pay to God the homage of trembling and fear and the still voice of God usually takes the tribute of love and choice and obedience Now since hearing is so effective an instrument of conveying impresses and images of things and exciting purposes and fixing resolutions unlesse we hear weakly and imperfectly it will be
speak to us by his servants the Prophets by his Son by his Apostles by sermons by spirituall books by thousands of homilies and arts of counsell and insinuation and we sit as unconcerned as the pillars of a Church and hear the sermons as the Athenians did a story or as we read a gazet and if ever it come to passe that we tremble as Felix did when we hear a sad story of death of righteousnesse and judgement to come then we put it off to another time or we forget it and think we had nothing to do but to give the good man a hearing and as Anacharsis said of the Greeks they used money for nothing but to cast account withall so our hearers make use of sermons and discourses Evangelical but to fill up void spaces of our time to help to tell an hour with or without tediousnesse The reason of this is a sad condemnation to such persons they have not yet entertained the Spirit of God they are in darknesse they were washed in water but never baptized with the Spirit for these things are spiritually discerned They would think the Preacher rude if he should say they are not Christians they are not within the Covenant of the Gospel but it is certain that the spirit of Manifestation is not yet upon them and that is the first effect of the Spirit whereby we can be called sons of God or relatives of Christ. If we do not apprehend and greedily suck in the precepts of this holy Discipline as aptly as Merchants do discourse of gain or Farmers of fair harvests we have nothing but the Name of Christians but we are no more such really then Mandrakes are men or spunges are living creatures 3. The Gospel is called Spirit because it consists of Spiritual Promises and Spiritual precepts and makes all men that embrace it truly to be Spiritual men and therefore S. Paul addes an Epithete beyond this calling it a quickening Spirit that is it puts life into our Spirits which the law could not The law bound us to punishment but did not help us to obedience because it gave not the promise of Eternal life to its Disciples The Spirit that is the Gospel onely does this and this alone is it which comforts afflicted mindes which puts activenesse into wearyed Spirits which inflames our cold desires and does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 blows up sparks into live coles and coles up to flames and flames to perpetual burnings and it is impossible that any man who believes and considers the great the infinite the unspeakable the unimaginable the never ceasing joyes that are prepared for all the sons and daughters of the Gospel should not desire them and unlesse he be a fool he cannot but use means to obtain them effective hearty pursuances For it is not directly in the nature of a man to neglect so great a good there must be something in his manners some obliquity in his will or madnesse in his intellectuals or incapacity in his naturals that must make him sleep such a reward away or change it for the pleasure of a drunken feaver or the vanity of a Mistresse or the rage of a passion or the unreasonablenesse of any sin However this promise is the life of all our actions and the Spirit that first taught it is the life of our soules 4. But beyond this is the reason which is the consummation of all the faithful The Gospel is called the Spirit because by and in the Gospel God hath given to us not onely the Spirit of manifestation that is of instruction and of Catechisme of faith and confident assent but the Spirit of Confirmation or obsignation to all them that believe and obey the Gospel of Christ that is the power of God is come upon our hearts by which in an admirable manner we are made sure of a glorious inheritance made sure I say in the nature of the thing and our own persuasions also are confirmed with an excellent a comfortable a discerning and a reasonable hope in the strength of which and by whose ayde as we do not doubt of the performance of the promise so we vigorously pursue all the parts of the condition and are inabled to work all the work of God so as not to be affrighted with fear or seduced by vanity or oppressed by lust or drawn off by evil example or abused by riches or imprison'd by ambition and secular designes This the Spirit of God does work in all his Servants and is called the spirit of obsignation or the confirming spirit because it confirms our hope and assures our title to life eternall and by means of it and other its collateral assistances it also confirms us in our duty that we may not onely professe in word but live lives according to the Gospel And this is the sense of the Spirit mentionâ—d in the Text ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you That is if ye be made partakers of the Gospel or of the spirit of manifestation if ye be truly intitled to God and have received the promise of the Father then are ye not carnal men ye are spirituall ye are in the Spirit if ye have the Spirit in one sense to any purpose ye have it also in another if the Spirit be in you you are in it if it hath given you hope it hath also inabled and ascertainâ—d your duty For the Spirit of manifestation will but upbraid you in the shame and horrours of a sad eternity if you have not the Spirit of obsignation if the Holy Ghost be not come upon you to great purposes of holinesse all other pretences are vain ye are still in the flesh which shall never inherit the kingdom of God In the Spirit that is in the power of the spirit so the Greeks call him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who is possessed by a spirit whom God hath filled with a coelestial immission he is said to be in God when God is in him and it is a similitude taken from persons encompassed with guards they are in custodiâ that is in their power under their command moved at their dispose they rest in their time and receive laws from their authority and admit visiters whom they appoint and must be employed as they shall suffer so are men who are in the Spirit that is they beleeve as he teaches they work as he inables they choose what he calls good they are friends of his friends and they hate with his hatred with this onely difference that persons in custody are forced to do what their keepers please and nothing is free but their wils but they that are under the command of the Spirit do all things which the Spirit commands but they do them cheerfully and their will is now the prisoner but it is in liberâ custodiâ the will is where it ought to be and where it desires to be and it cannot easily
that Christ prayes in Heaven for us and if we do not pray on earth in the same manner according to our measures we had as good hold our peace our prayers are an abominable sacrifice and send up to God no better a perfume then if wee burned assa faetida or the raw flesh of a murdered man upon the altar of incense 6. The spirit of Christ and of prayer helps our infirmities by giving us confidence and importunity I put them together For as our faith is and our trust in God so is our hope and so is our prayer weary or lasting long or short not in words but in works and in desires For the words of prayer are no part of the spirit of prayer words may be the body of it but the spirit of prayer alwayes consists in holinesse that is in holy desires and holy actions words are not properly capable of being holy all words are in themselves seâ—vants of things and the holinesse of a prayer is not at all concerned in the manner of its expression but in the spirit of it that is in the violence of its desires and the innocence of its ends and the continuence of its imployment this is the verification of that great Prophecie which Christ made that in all the world the true worshippers should worship in spirit and in truth that is with a pure minde with holy desires for spiritual things according to the minde of the spirit in imitation of Christs intercession with perseverance with charity or love That is the spirit of God and these are the spiritualities of the Gospel and the formalities of prayer as they are Christian and Evangelicall 7. Some men have thought of a seventh way and explicate our praying in the spirit by a mere volubilty of language which indeed is a direct undervaluing the spirit of God and of Christ the spirit of manifestation and intercession it is to return to the materiality and imperfection of the law it is to worship God in outward forms and to think that Gods service consists in shels and rinds in lips and voices in shadows and images of things it is to retire from Christ to Moses and at the best it is a going from real graces to imaginary gifts and when praying with the spirit hath in it so many excellencies and consists of so many parts of holinesse and sanctification and is an act of the inner man we shall be infinitely mistaken if we let go this substance and catch at a shadow and sit down and rest in the imagination of an improbable unnecessary uselesse gift of speaking to which the nature of many men and the art of all learned men and the very use and confidence of ignorant men is too abundantly sufficient Let us not so despise the spirit of Christ as to make it no other then the breath of our lungs * For though it might be possible that at the first and when formes of prayer were few and seldome the spirit of God might dictatethe very words to the Apostles and first Christians yet it follows not that therfore he does so still to all that pretend praying with the spirit For if he did not then at the first dictate words as we know not whether he did or no why shall he be supposâ—d to do so now If he did then it follows that he does not now because his doing it then was sufficient for all men since for so the formes taught by the spirit were paternes for others to imitate in all the descending ages of the Church There was once an occasion so great that the spirit of God did think it a work â—it for him to teach a man to weave silke or embroider gold or woke in brasse as it happened to Besaleel and Aholiab But then every weaver or worker in brasse may by the same reason pretend that he works by the spirit as that he prayes by the spirit if by prayer he means forming the words For although in the ease of working it was certain that the spirit did teach in the ease of inditing or forming the words it is not certain whether he did or no yet because in both it was extraordinary if it was at all and ever since in both it is infinitely needlesse to pretend the Spirit in forms of every mans making even though they be of contrary religions and pray one against the other it may serve an end of a phantastic and hypochondriacal religion or a secret ambition but not the ends of God or the honour of the Spirit The Jews in their declensions to folly and idolatry did worship the stone of imagination that is certain smooth images in which by art magic pictures and little faces were represented declaring hidden things and stoln goods and God severely forbad this basenesse but we also have taken up this folly and worship the stone of imagination we beget imperfect phantasmes and speculative images in our phansy and we fall down and worship them never considering that the spirit of God never appears through such spectres Prayer is one of the noblest exercises of Christian religion or rather is it that duty in which all graces are concentred Prayer is charity it is faith it is a conformity to Gods will a desiring according to the desires of Heaven an imitation of Christs intercession and prayer must suppose all holinesse or else it is nothing and therefore all that in which men need Gods Spirit all that is in order to prayer Baptisme is but a prayer and the holy Sacrament of the Lords Supper is but a prayer a prayer of sacrifice representative and a prayer of oblation and a prayer of intercession and a prayer of thanksgiving and obedience is a prayer and begs and procures blessings and if the Holy Ghost hath sanctified the whole man then he hath sanctified the prayer of the man and not till then and if ever there was or could be any other praying with the spirit it was such a one as a wicked man might have and therefore it cannot be a note of distinction between the good and bad between the saints and men of the world But this onely which I have described from the fountains of Scripture is that which a good man can have and therefore this is it in which we ought to rejoyce that he that glories may glory in the Lord. Thus I have as I could described the effluxes of the Holy Spirit upon us in his great chanels But the great effect of them is this That as by the arts of the spirits of darknesse and our own malice our souls are turned into flesh not in the naturall sense but in the morall and Theologicall and animalis homo is the same with carnalis that is his soul is a servant of the passions and desires of the flesh and is flesh in its operations and ends in its principles and actions So on the other side by the Grace of God and the promise of the
dishonoured and despised his mercy which God intended as an instrument of our piety hath no better way to glorifie God then by returning to his duty to advance the honour of the Divine Attributes in which he is pleased to communicate himself and to have entercourse with man He that repents confesses his ownerrour and the righteousnesse of Gods lawes and by judging himself confesses that he deserves punishment and therefore that God is righteous if he punishes him and by returning confesses God to be the fountain of felicity and the foundation of true solid and permanent joyes saying in the sense and passion of the Disciples Whither shall we go for thou hast the words of eternall life and by humbling himself exalts God by making the proportions of distance more immense and vast and as repentance does contain in it all the parts of holy life which can be performed by a returning sinner all the acts and habits of vertue being but parts or instances or effects of repentance so all the actions of a holy life do constitute the masse and body of all those instruments whereby God is pleased to glorifie himself * For if God is glorified in the Sunne and Moon in the rare fabrick of the honey-combs in the discipline of Bees in the oeconomy of Pismires in the little houses of birds in the curiosity of an eye God being pleased to delight in those little images and reflexes of himself from those pretty mirrours which like a crevice in a wall thorow a narrow perspective transmit the species of a vast excellency much rather shall God be pleased to behold himself in the glasses of our obedience in the emissions of our will and understanding these being rationall and apt instruments to expresse him farre better then the naturall as being neerer communications of himself But I shall no longer discourse of the Philosophy of this expression certain it is that in the stile of Scripture repentance is the great glorification of God and the Prophet by calling the people to give God glory calls upon them to repent and so expresses both the duty and the event of it the event being Glory to God on high and peace on earth and good will towards men by the sole instrument of repentance And this was it which Joshuah said to Achan Give I pray thee glory to the Lord God of Israel and make confession unto him that one act of repentance is one act of glorifying God and this David acknowledged Against the onely have I sinned ut tu justificeris that thou mightest be justified or cleared that is that God may have the honour of being righteous and we the shame of receding from so excellent a perfection or as S. Paul quotes and explicates the place Let God be true and every man a liar as it is written that thou mightest be justified in thy sayings and mightest overcome when thou art judged But to clear the sense of this expression of the Prophet observe the words of S. John and men were scorched with great heat and blasphemed the name of God who hath power over those plagues and they repented not to give him glory So that having strength and reason from these so many authorities I may be free to read the words of my Text thus Repent of all your sins before God cause darknesse and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains and then we have here the duty of repentance and the time of its performance it must be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a seasonable and timely repentance a repentance which must begin before our darknesse begin a repentance in the day time ut dum dies est operemini that ye may work while it is to day lest if we stumble upon the dark mountains that is fall into the ruines of old age which makes a broad way narrow and a plain way to be a craggy mountain or if we stumble and fall into our last sicknesse instead of health God send us to our grave and instead of light and salvation which we then confidently look for he make our state to be outer darknesse that is misery irremediable misery eternall This exhortation of the Prophet was alwayes full of caution and prudence but now it is highly necessary since men who are so clamorously called to repentance that they cannot avoid the necessity of it yet that they may reconcile an evil life with the hopes of heaven have crowded this duty into so little room that it is almost strangled and extinct and they have lopped off so many members that they have reduced the whole body of it to the dimensions of a little finger sacrificing their childhood to vanity their youth to lust and to intemperance their manhood to ambition and rage pride and revenge secular desires and unholy actions and yet still further giving their old age to covetousnesse and oppression to the world and to the Devil and after all this what remains for God and for Religion Oh for that they wll do well enough upon their death-bed they will think a few godly thoughts they will send for a Priest to minister comfort to them they will pray and ask God forgivenesse and receive the holy Sacrament and leave their goods behinde them disposing them to their friends and relatives and some Dole and issues of the almes-basket to the poor and if after all this they die quietly and like a lambe and be â—anoniz'd by a brib'd flatterer in a funerall sermon they make no doubt but they are children of the kingdom and perceive not their folly till without hope of remedy they roar in their expectations of a certain but a horrid eternity of pains * Certainly nothing hath made more ample harvests for the Devil then the deferring of repentance upon vain confidences and lessening it in the extension of parts as well as intension of degrees while we imagine that a few tears and scatterings of devotion are enough to expiate the basenesse of a fifty or threescore yeers impiety This I shall endeavour to cure by shewing what it is to repent and that repentance implies in it the duty of a life or of many and great of long and lasting parts of it and then by direct arguments shewing that repentance put off to our death-bed is invalid and ineffectuall sick languid and impotent like our dying bodies and disabled faculties 1. First therefore Repentance implies a deep sorrow as the beginning and introduction of this duty not a superficiall sigh or tear not a calling our selves sinners and miserable persons this is far from that godly sorrow that worketh repentance and yet I wish there were none in the world or none amongst us who cannot remember that ever they have done this little towards the abolition of their multitudes of sins but yet if it were not a hearty pungent sorrow a sorrow that shall break the heart in pieces a sorrow that shall so irreconcile us to sin as to make us
impossible It is dishonourable to think God enjoyns us to do more then he enables us to do and it is a contradiction to say we cannot do all that we can and through Christ which strengthens me I can do all things saith S. Paul however we can do to the utmost of our strength and beyond that we cannot take thought impossibilities enter not into deliberation but according to our abilities and naturall powers assisted by Gods grace so God hath covenanted with us to live a holy life For in Christ Jesus nothing avayleth but a new creature nothing but faith working by charity nothing but keeping the Commandements of God They are all the words of S. Paul before quoted to which he addes and as many as walk according to this rule peace be on them and mercy This is the Covenant they are the Israel of God upon those peace and mercy shall abide if they become a new creature wholly transformed in the image of their minde if they have faith and this faith be an operative working faith a faith that produces a holy life a faith that works by charity if they keep the Commandements of God then they are within the Covenant of mercy but not else for in Christ Jesus nothing else avayleth * To the same purpose are those words Hebr. 12. 14. Follow peace with all men and holinesse without which no man shall see the Lord. Peace with all men implies both justice and charity without which it is impossible to preserve peace Holinesse implies all our duty towards God universall diligence and this must be followed that is pursued with diligence in a lasting course of life and exercise and without this we shall never see the face of God I need urge no more authorities to this purpose these two are as certain and convincing as two thousand and since thus much is actually required and is the condition of the Covenant it is certain that sorrow for not having done what is commanded to be done and a purpose to do what is necessary to be actually performed will not acquit us before the righteous judgement of God * For the grace of God hath appeared to all men teaching us that denying ungodlinesse and worldly lusts we should live godly justly and soberly in this present world for upon these termes alone we must look for the blessed hope the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ * I shall no longer insist upon this particular but onely propound it to your consideration To what purpose are all those Commandements in Scripture of every page almost in it of living holily and according to the Commandements of God of adorning the Gospel of God of walking as in the day of walking in light of pure and undefiled religion of being holy as God is holy of being humble and meek as Christ is humble of putting on the Lord Jesus of living a spirituall life but that it is the purpose of God and the intention and designe of Christ dying for us and the Covenant made with man that we should expect heaven upon no other termes in the world but of a holy life in the faith and obedience of the Lord Jesus Now if a vitious person when he comes to the latter end of his dayes one that hath lived a wicked ungodly life can for any thing he can do upon his death-bed be said to live a holy life then his hopes are not desperate but he that hopes upon this onely for which God hath made him no promise I must say of him as Galen said of consumptive persons 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the more they hope the worse they are and the relying upon such hopes is an approach to the grave and a sad eternity Peleos Priami transit vel Nestoris aet as fuerat serum jam tibi desinere Eja age rumpe moras quo te spectabimus usque Dum quid sis dubitas jam potes esse nihil And now it will be a vain question to ask whether or no God cannot save a dying man that repents after a vitious life For it is true God can do it if he please and he can raise children to Abraham out of the stones and he can make ten thousand worlds if he sees good and he can do what he list and he can save an ill living man though he never repent at all so much as upon his death-bed All this he can do but Gods power is no ingredient into this question we are never the better that God can do it unlesse he also will and whether he will or no we are to learn from himself and what he hath declared to be his will in holy Scripture Nay since God hath said that without actuall holinesse no man shall see God God by his own will hath restrained his power and though absolutely he can do all things yet he cannot do against his own word * And indeed the rewards of heaven are so great and glorious and Christ burden is so light his yoke is so easie that it is a shamelesse impudence to expect so great glories at a lesse rate then so little a service at a lower rate then a holy life It cost the Eternall Son of God his life blood to obtain heaven for us upon that condition and who then shall die again for us to get heaven for us upon easier conditions What would you do if God should command you to kill your eldest son or to work in the mines for a thousand yeers together or to fast all thy life time with bread and water were not heaven a great bargain even after all this and when God requires nothing of us but to live soberly justly and godly which very things of themselves to man are a very great felicity and necessary to his present well-being shall we think this to be a load and an unsufferable burden and that heaven is so little a purchase at that price that God in meer justice will take a death-bed sigh or groan and a few unprofitable tears and promises in exchange for all our duty Strange it should be so but stranger that any man should rely upon such a vanity when from Gods word he hath nothing to warrant such a confidence But these men do like the Tyrant Dionysius who stole from Apollo his golden cloak and gave him a cloak of Arcadian home-spun saying that this was lighter in summer and warmer in winter These men sacrilegiously rob God of the service of all their golden dayes and serve him in their hoary head in their furs and grave clothes and pretend that this late service is more agreeable to the Divine mercy on one side and humane infirmity on the other and so dispute themselves into an irrecoverable condition having no other ground to rely upon a death-bed or late-begun-repentance but because they resolve to enjoy the pleasures of sin and for heaven they will put that to the venture of an after-game
resurrection else on no termes Christ took away sin from us but he left us our share of sufferings and the crosse which was first printed upon us in the waters of baptisme must for ever be born by us in penance in mortification in self-denial and in martyrdom and toleration according as God shall require of us by the changes of the world and the condition of the Church For Christ considers nothing but souls he values not their estate or bodies supplying our want by his providence and being secured that our bodies may be killed but cannot perish so long as we preserve our duty and our consciences Christ our Captain hangs naked upon the crosse our fellow souldiers are cast into prison torne with Lions rent in sunder with trees returning from their violent bendings broken upon wheels rosted upon gridirons and have had the honour not onely to have a good cause but also to suffer for it and by faith not by armies by patience not by fighting have overcome the world sit anima mea cum Christianis I pray God my soul may be among the Christians and yet the Turks have prevailed upon a great part of the Christian world and have made them slaves and tributaries and do them all spite and are hugely prosperous but when Christians are so then they are tempted and put in danger and never have their duty and their interest so well secured as when they lose all for Christ and are adorned with wounds or poverty change or scorn affronts or revilings which are the obelisks and triumphs of a holy cause Evil men and evil causes had need have good fortune and great successe to support their persons and their pretences for nothing but innocence and Christianity can flourish in a persecution I summe up this first discourse in a word in all the Scripture and in all the Authentick stories of the Church we finde it often that the Devil appeared in the shape of an Angell of light but was never suffered so much as to conterfeit a persecuted sufferer say no more therefore as the murmuring Israelites said If the LORD be with us why have these evils apprehended us for if to be afflicted be a signe that God hath forsaken a man and refuses to own his religion or his question then he that oppresses the widow and murders the innocent and puts the fatherlesse to death and follows providence by doing all the evils that he can that is all that God suffers him he I say is the onely Saint and servant of God and upon the same ground the wolf and the fox may boast when they scatter and devour a flock of lambs and harmlesse sheep Sermon X. The Faith and Patience of the SAINTS OR The righteous cause oppressed Part II. IT follows now that we inquire concerning the reasons of the Divine Providence in this administration of affairs so far as he hath been pleased to draw aside the curtain and to unfold the leaves of his counsels and predestination and for such an inquiry we have the precedent of the Prophet Jeremy Righteous art thou O Lord when I plead with thee yet let us talk to thee of thy judgements wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper Wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously Thou hast planted them yea they have taken root they grow yea they bring forth fruit Concerning which in generall the Prophet Malachy gives this account after the same complaint made And now we call the proud happy and they that work wickednesse are set up yea they that tempt God are even delivered They that feared the Lord spake often one to another and the Lord hearkened and heard and a book of remembrance was written before time for them that feared the Lord and thought upon his Name and they shall be mine saith the Lord of Hosts in that day when I binde up my jewels and I will spare them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him Then shall ye return and discern betwen the righteous and the wicked between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not In this interval which is a valley of tears it is no wonder if they rejoyce who shall weep for ever and they that sow in tears shall have no cause to complain when God gathers all the mourners into his kingdom they shall reape with joy For innocence and joy were appointed to dwel together for ever And joy went not first but when innocence went away sorrow and sicknesse dispossessed joy of its habitation and now this world must be alwayes a scene of sorrows and no joy can grow here but that which is imaginary and phantastick there is no worldly joy no joy proper for this world but that which wicked persons fancy to themselves in the hopes and designes of iniquity He that covets his neighbours wife or land dreams of fine things and thinks it a fair condition to be rich and cursed to be a beast and die or to lie wallowing in his filthinesse but those holy souls who are not in love with the leprosie the Itch for the pleasure of scratching they know no pleasure can grow from the thorns which Adam planted in the hedges of Paradise and that sorrow which was brought in by sin must not go away till it hath returned us into the first condition of innocence the same instant that quits us from sin and the failings of mortality the same instant wipes all tears from our eyes but that is not in this world In the mean time God afflicts the godly that he might manifest many of his attributes and his servants exercise many of their vertues Nec fortuna probat causas sequiturque merentes sed vaga percunctos nullo discrimine fertur scilicet est aliud quod nos cogatque rogatque Majus in proprias ducat mortalia leges For without sufferings of Saints God should lose the glories of 1. Bringing good out of evil 2. Of being with us in tribulation 3. Of sustaining our infirmities 4 Of triumphing over the malice of his enemies 5. Without the suffering of Saints where were the exaltation of the crosse the conformity of the members to Christ their Head the coronets of Martyrs 6. Where were the trial of our faith 7. Or the exercise of long suffering 8. Where were the opportunities to give God the greatest love which cannot be but by dying and suffering for him 9. How should that which the world calls folly prove the greatest wisdom 10. and God be glorified by events contrary to the probability and expectation of their causes By the suffering of Saints Christian religion is proved to be most excellent whilst the iniquity and cruelty of the adversaries proves the illecebra sectae as Tertullians phrase is it invites men to consider the secret excellencies of that religion for which and in which men are so willing to die for that religion must needs be worth looking into which so many wise
of a miraculous and prodigious greatnesse that they might report good things of Canaan and invite the whole nation to attempt its conquest so Gods grace represents to the new converts and the weak ones in faith the pleasures and first deliciousnesses of religion and when they come to spie the good things of that way that leads to heaven they presently perceive themselves eased of the load of an evil conscience of their fears of death of the confusion of their shame and Gods spirit gives them a cup of sensible comfort and makes them to rejoyce in their prayers and weep with pleasures mingled with innocent passions and religious changes and although God does not deal with all men in the same method or in manners that can regularly be described and all men do not feele or do not observe or cannot for want of skill discern such accidental sweetnesses and pleasant grapes at his first entrance into religion yet God to every man does minister excellent arguments of invitation and such that if a man will attend to them they will certainly move either his affections or his will his fancy or his reason and most commonly both But while the spirit of God is doing this work of man man must also be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a fellow worker with God he must entertain the spirit attend his inspirations receive his whispers obey all his motions invite him further and utterly renounce all confederacy with his enemy sin at no hand suffering any root of bitternesse to spring up not allowing to himself any reserve of carnal pleasure no clancular lust no private oppressions no secret covetousnesse no love to this world that may discompose his duty for if a man prayes all day and at night is intemperate if he spends his time in reading and his recreation be sinful if he studies religion and practises self interest if he leaves his swearing and yet retaines his pride if he becomes chast and yet remains peevish and imperious this man is not changed from the state of sin into the first stage of the state of grace he does at no hand belong to God he hath suffered himself to be scared from one sin and tempted from another by interest and hath left a third by reason of his inclination and a fourth for shame or want of opportunity But the spirit of God hath not yet planted one perfect plant there God may make use of the accidentally prepared advantages But as yet the spirit of God hath not begun the proper and direct work of grace in his heart But when we leave every sin when we resolve never to return to the chaines when we have no love for the world but such as may be a servant of God then I account that we are entred into a state of grace from whence I am now to begin to reckon the commencement of this precept grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2. And now the first part of this duty is to make religion to be the businesse of our lives for this is the great instrument which will naturally produce our growth in grace and the perfection of a Christian. For a man cannot after a state of sin be instantly a Saint the work of heaven is not done by a flash of lightning or a dash of affectionate raine or a few tears of a relenting pity God and his Church have appointed holy intervals and have taken portions of our time for religion that we may be called off from the world and remember the end of our creation and do honour to God and think of heaven with hearty purposes and peremptory designes to get thither But as we must not neglect those times which God hath reserved for his service or the Church hath prudently decreed nor yet act religion upon such dayes with forms and outsides or to comply with customs or to seem religious so we must take care that all the other portions of our time be hallowed with little retirements of all thoughts and short conversations with God and all along be guided with a holy intention that even our works of nature may passe into the relations of grace and the actions of our calling may help towards the obtaining the price of our high calling while our eatings are actions of temperance our labours are profitable our humiliations are acts of obedience and our almes are charity our marriages are chaâ—â— and whether we eat or drink sleep or wake we may do all to the glory of God by a direct intuition or by a reflex act by designe or by supplment by fore sight or by an after election and to this purpose we must not look upon religion as our trouble and our hindâ—rance nor think almes chargeable or expensive nor our fastings vexatious and burdensom nor our prayers a wearinesse of spirit But we must make these and all other the dutis of religion our imployments our care the work and end for which we came into the world and remember that we never do the work of men nor serve the ends of God nor are in the proper imployment and businesse of our life but when we worship God or live like wise or sober persons or do benefit to our brother I will not turne this discourse into a reproofe but leave it represented as a duty Remember that God seâ—â— you into the world for religion we are but to passe through our pleasant fields or our hard labours but to lodge a little while in our faire palaces or our meaner cottages but to bait in the way at our full tables or with our spare diet but then onely man does his proper imployment when he prayes and does charity and mortifies his unruly appetites and restrains his violent passions and becomes like to God and imitates his holy Son and writes after the coppies of Apostles and Saints Then he is dressing himself for eternity where he must dwell or abide either in an excellent beatifical country or in a prison of amazment and eternal horrour And after all this you may if you please call to minde how much time you allovv to God and to your souls every day or every moneth or in a year if you please for I fear the account of the time is soon made but the account for the neglect vvill be harder And it vvill not easily be ansvvered that all our dayes and years are little enough to attend perishing things and to be svvallowed up in avaritious and vain attendances and we shall not attend to religion with a zeal so great as is our revenge or as is the hunger of one meale Without much time and a wary life and a diligent circumspection we cannot mortify our sins or do the first works of grace I pray God we be not found to have grown like the sinnews of old age from strength to remisnesse from thence to dissolution and infirmity and death Menedemus was wont to say that the young
of love to God but obedience and keeping his commandement Justice and charity are like the matter religion is the form of Christianity but although the form be more noble and the principle of life yet it is lesse discernable lesse materiall and lesse sensible and we judge concerning the form by the matter and by materiall accidents and by actions and so we must of our religion that is of our love to God and of the efficacy of our prayers and the usefulnesse of our fastings we must make our judgements by the more materiall parts of our duty that is by sobriety and by justice and by charity I am much prevented in my intention for the perfecting of this so very materiall consideration I shall therefore onely tell you that to these parts and actions of good life or of our growth in grace some have added some accidentall considerations which are rather signes then parts of it Such are 1. To praise all good things and to study to imitate what we praise 2. To be impatient that any man should excell us not out of envy to the person but of noble emulation to the excellency For so Themistocles could not sleep after the great victory at Marathon purchased by Miltiades till he had made himself illustrious by equall services to his countrey 3. The bearing of sicknesse patiently and ever with improvement and the addition of some excellent principle and the firm pursuing it 4. Great devotion and much delight in our prayers 5. Frequent inspirations and often whispers of the Spirit of God prompting us to devotion and obedience especially if we adde to this a constant and ready obedience to all those holy invitations 6. Offering peace to them that have injured me and the abating of the circumstances of honour or of right when either justice or charity is concerned in it 7. Love to the brethren 8 To behold our companions or our inferiours full of honour and fortune and if we sit still at home and murmur not or if we can rejoyce both in their honour and our own quiet that 's a fair work of a good man And now 9. After all this I will not trouble you with reckoning a freedom from being tempted not onely from being overcome but from being tried for though that be a rare felicity and hath in it much safety yet it hath lesse honour and fewer instances of vertue unlesse it proceed from a confirmed and heroicall grace which is indeed a little image of heaven and of a celestiall charity and never happens signally to any but to old and very eminent persons 10. But some also adde an excellent habit of body and materiall passions such as are chast and vertuous dreams and suppose that as a disease abuses the fancy and a vice does prejudice it so may an excellent vertue of the soul smooth and Calcine the body and make it serve perfectly and without rebellious indispositions 11. Others are in love with Mary Magdalens tears and fancy the hard knees of Saint James and the fore eyes of Saint Peter and the very recreations of Saint John Proh quam virtute praeditos omnia decent thinking all things becomes a good man even his gestures and little incuriosities And though this may proceed from a great love of vertue yet because some men do thus much and no more and this is to be attributed to the lustre of vertue which shines a little thorow a mans eye-lids though he perversely winks against the light yet as the former of these two is too Metaphysicall so is the later too Phantasticall he that by the fore-going materiall parts and proper significations of a growing grace does not understand his own condition must be content to work on still super totam materiam without considerations of Particulars he must pray earnestly and watch diligently and consult with prudent Guides and ask of God great measures of his Spirit and hunger and thirst after righteousnesse for he that does so shall certainly be satisfied and if he understands not his present good condition yet if he be not wanting in the down right endeavours of piety and in hearty purposes he shall then finde that he is grown in grace when he springs up in the resurrection of the just and shall be ingrafted upon a tree of Paradise which beareth fruit for ever Glory to God rejoycing to Saints and Angels and eternall felicity to his own pious though undiscerning soul. Prima sequentem honestum est in secundis aut tertijs consistere Cicero Sermon XVI Of Growth in Sinne OR The severall states and degrees of Sinners WITH The manner how they are to be treated Jude Epist. Ver. 22 23. And of some have compassion making a difference * And others save with fear pulling them out of the fire MAn hath but one entrance into the world but a thousand wayes to passe from thence and as it is in the natural so it is in the spiritual nothing but the union of faith and obedience can secure our regeneration and our new birth and can bring us to see the light of heaven but there are a thousand passages of turning into darknesse and it is not enough that our bodies are exposed to so many sad infirmities and dishonourable imperfections unlesse our soul also be a subject capable of so many diseases follies irregular passions false principles accursed habits and degrees of perversnesse that the very kindes of them are reducible to a method and make up the part of a science There are variety of stages and descents to death as there are diversity of torments and of sad regions of misery in hell which is the centre and kingdom of sorrows But that we may a little refresh the sadnesses of this consideration for every one of these stages of sin God hath measured out a proportion of mercy for if sin abounds grace shall much more abound and God hath concluded all under sin not with purposes to destroy us but Vt omnium misereatur that he might have mercy upon all that light may break forth from the deepest inclosures of darknesse and mercy may rejoyce upon the recessions of justice and grace may triumph upon the ruins of sin and God may be glorified in the miracles of our conversion and the wonders of our preservation and glories of our being saved There is no state of sin but if we be persons capable according to Gods method of healing of receiving antidotes we shall finde a sheet of mercy spread over our wounds and nakednesse If our diseases be small almost necessary scarce avoidable then God does and so we are commanded to cure them and cover them with a vail of pity compassion and gentle remedies If our evils be violent inveterate gangrened and incorporated into our nature by evil customes they must be pulled from the flames of hell with censures and cauteries and punishments and sharp remedies quickly and rudely their danger is present and sudden its effect is quick
without huge disturbances but by being also Atheistical in their opinions and to believe that the story of hell is but a bug-bear to affright children and fools easy believing people to make them soft and apt for government and designes of princes and this is an opinion that befriends none but impure and vicious persons others there are that believe God to be all mercy that he forgets his justice believing that none shall perish with so sad a ruine if they do but at their death-bed ask God forgivenesse and say they are sorry but yet continue their impiety till their house be ready to fall being like the Circassians whose Gentlemen enter not into the Church till they be threescore years old that is in effect till by their age they cannot any longer use rapine till then they hear service at their windows dividing unequally their life between sin and devotition dedicateing their youth to robbery and their old age to a repentance without restitution Our youth and our man-hood and old age are all of them due to God and justice and mercy are to him equally essential and as this life is a time of the possibilities of mercy so to them that neglect it the next world shall be a state of pure and unmingled justice Remember the fatal and decretory sentence which God hath passed upon all man-kinde it is appointed to all men once to die and after death comes judgement and if any of us were certain to die next morning with what earnestnesse should we pray with what hatred should we remember our sins with what scorn should we look upon the licentious pleasures of the world then nothing could be welcome unto us but a prayer book no company but a Comforter and a Guide of souls no imployment but repentance no passions but in order to religion no kindnesse for a lust that hath undone us and if any of you have been arrested with alarmes of death or been in hearty fear of its approach remember what thoughts and designes then possessed you how precious a soul was then in your account and what then you would give that you had despised the world and done your duty to God and man and lived a holy life It will come to that again and we shall be in that condition in which we shall perfectly understand that all the things and pleasures of the world are vain and unprofitable and irkesome and that he onely is a wise man who secures the interest of his soul though it be with the losse of all this world and his own life into the bargain When we are to depart this life to go to strange company and stranger places and to an unknown condition then a holy conscience will be the best security the best possession it wil be a horror that every friend we meet shall with triumph upbraid to us the sottishnesse of our folly Lo this is the goodly change you have made you had your good things in your life time and how like you the portion that is reserved to you for ever The old Rabbins those Poets of religion report of Moses that when the courtiers of Pharaoh were sporting with the childe Moses in the chamber of Pharaohs daughter they presented to his choice an ingot of gold in one hâ—â—d and a cole of fire in the other and that the childe snatched at tâ—e coal thrust it into his mouth and so singed and parched his tongue that he stammered ever after and certainly it is infinitely more childish in us for the glittering of the small gloworms and the charcoal of worldly possessions to swallow the flames of hell greedily in our choice such a bit will produce a worse stammering then Moses had for so the aâ—ccursed and lost souls have their ugly and horrid dialect they roare and blaspheme blaspheme and roare for ever And suppose God should now at this instant send the great Archangel with his trumpet to summon all the world to judgement would not all this seem a notorious visible truth a truth which you will then wonder that every man did not lay to his heart and preserve therein actual pious and effective consideration let the trumpet of God perpetually sound in your ears surgite mortui venite ad judicium place your selves by meditation every day upon your death-bed and remember what thoughts shall then possesse you and let such thoughts dwell in your understanding for ever and be the parent of all your resolutions and actions The Doctors of the Jews report that when Absalom hanged among the oakes by the haire of the head he seemed to see under him hell gaping wide ready to receive him and he durst not cut off the hair that intangled him for fear he should fall into the horrid lake whose portion is flames and torment but chose to protract his miserable life a few minuts in that pain of posture and to abide the stroke of his pursuing enemies His condition was sad when his arts of remedy were so vain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Soph. A condemned man hath but small comfort to stay the singing of a long psalm it is the case of every vitious person Hell is wide open to every impenitent persevering sinner to every unpurged person Noctes atque dies patet atri Janua Ditis And although God hath lighted his candle and the lantern of his word and clearest revelations is held out to us that we can see hell in its worst colours and most horrid representments yet we run greedily after bables into that praecipice which swallows up the greatest part of man-kinde and then onely we begin to consider when all consideration is fruitlesse He therefore is a huge fool that heaps up riches that greedily pursues the world and at the same time for so it must be heaps of wrath to himself against the day of wrath when sicknesse death arrests him then they appear unprofitable himself extreamly miserable if you would know how great that misery is you may take account of it by those fearful words and killing Rhetorick of Scripture It is a fearful things to fall into the hands of the living God and who can dwell with the everlasting burning That is No patience can abide there one houre where they must dwell for ever Sermon XX. OF CHRISTIAN PRVDENCE Matthew 10. latter part of Ver. 16. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmlesse as doves WHen our B. Saviour entailed a law a condition of sufferings promised a state of persecution to his servants and withall had charmed them with the bands unactive chains of so many passive graces that they should not be able to stir against the violence of Tyrants or abate the edge of axes by any instrument but their own blood being sent forth as sheep among wolves innocent and silent harmlesse and defencelesse certainly exposed to sorrow and uncertainly guarded in their persons their condition seemed nothing else but a designation to
slaughter and when they were drawn into the folds of the church they were betrayed into the hands of evil men infinitely and unavoidably and when an Apostle invited a proselyte to come to Christ it was in effect a snare laid for his life and he could neither conceal his religion nor hide his person nor avoid a captious question nor deny his accusation nor elude the bloody arts of Orators and informers nor break prisons nor any thing but die If the case stood just thus it was well eternity stood at the outer doors of our life ready to receive such harmlesse people but surely there could be no art in the designe no pitying of humane weaknesses no complying with the condition of man no allowances made for customs and prejudices of the world no inviting men by the things of men no turning nature into religion but it was all the way a direct violence and an open prostitution of our lives and a throwing away our fortune into a sea of rashnesse and credulity But therefore God ordered the affaires and necessities of religion in other wayes and to other purposes Although God bound our hands behinde us yet he did not tie our understandings up although we might not use our swords yet we might use our reason we were not suffered to be violent but we might avoid violence by all the arts of prudence and innocence if we did take heed of sin we might also take heed of men because in al contentions between wit and violence prudence rudenesse learning and the sword the strong hand took it first and the strong head possessed it last the strong man first governed and the witty man succeeded him and lasted longer it came to passe that the wisdom of the Father hath so ordered it that all his Disciples should overcome the power of the Roman legions by a wise religion and prudence and innocence should become the mightiest guards and the Christian although exposed to persecution yet is so secured that he shall never need to die But when the circumstances are so ordered that his reason is convinced that then it is fit he should fit I say in order to Gods purposes and his own For he that is innocent is safe against all the rods and the axes of all the Consuls of the world if they rule by justice and he that is prudent will also escape from many rudenesses and irregular violences that can come by injustice and no wit of man no government no armies can do more for Caesar perished in the midst of all his legions and all his honours and against chance and irregularities there is no provision lesse then infinite that can give security and although prudence alone cannot do this yet innocence gives the greatest title to that providence which onely can if he pleases and will if it be fitting Here then are the two armes defensive of a Christian Prudence against the evils of men Innocence against the evils of Devils and all that relates to his kingdom Prudence fences against persecution and the evil snares against the opportunities and occasions of sin it prevents surprizes it fortifies all its proper weaknesses it improves our talents it does advantage to the kingdom of Christ and the interests of the Gospel it secures our condition and instructs our choice in all the wayes and just passages to felicity it makes us to live profitably and die wisely and without it simplicity would turn to sillinesse zeal into passion passion into fury religion into scandal conversation into a snare civilities into temptation curtesies into danger and an imprudent person falls into a condition of harmelesse rich and unwary fools or rather of birds sheep and bevers who are hunted and persecuted for the spoils of their fleece or their flesh their skins or their entrails and have not the foresight to avoid a snare but by their fear and undefending follies are driven thither where they die infallibly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Every good man is incircled with many enemies and dangers and his vertue shall be rifled and the decency of his soul and spirit shall he discomposed and turned into a heap of inarticulate and disorderly fancies unlesse by the methods and guards of prudence it be mannaged and secured But in order to the following discourse and its method we are first to consider whether this be or indeed can be a commandement or what is it For can all men that give up their names in baptisme be enjoyned to be wise and prudent It is as if God would command us to be eloquent or witty men fine speakers or strait bodied or excellent schollers or rich men If he please to make us so we are so and prudence is a gift of God a blessing of an excellent nature and of great leisure and a wise opportunity and a severe education and a great experience and a strict observation and good company all which being either wholâ—y or in part out of our power may be expected as free gifts but cannot be imposed as commandments To this I answer That Christian prudence is in very many instances a direct duty in some an instance and advice in order to degrees and advantages where it is a duty it is put into every mans power where it is an advice it is onely expected according to what a man hath and not according to what he hath not and even here although the events of prudence are out of our power yet the endeavours and the observation the diligence and caution the moral part of it and the plain conduct of our necessary duty which are portions of this grace are such things which God will demand in proportion to the talent which he hath intrusted into our Banks There are in indeed some Christians very unwary and unwise in the conduct of their religion and they cannot all help it at least not in all degrees but yet they may be taught to do prudent things though not to be prudent persons if they have not the prudence of advice and conduct yet they may have the prudence of obedience and of disciples and the event is this without prudence their vertue is unsafe and their persons defenselesse and their interest is unguarded for prudence is a hand-maid waiting at the production and birth of vertue It is a nurse to it in its infancy its patron in assaults its guide in temptations its security in all portions of chance and contingency And he that is imprudent if he have many accidents and varieties is in great danger of being none at all or if he be at the best he is but a weak and an unprofitable servant uselesse to his neighbour vain in himself and as to God the least in the kingdom his vertue is contingent and by chance not proportioned to the reward of wisdom and the election of a wise religion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 No purchase no wealth no advantage is great enough to
disarm the Princes and it will be hard to perswade that Kings are bound to protect and nourish those that will prove ministers of their own exauctoration And no Prince can have juster reason to forbid nor any man have greater reason to deny communion to a family then if they go about to destroy the power of the one or corrupt the duty of the other The particulars of this rule are very many I shall onely instance in one more because it is of great concernment to the publike interest of Christendome There are some persons whose religion is hugely disgraced because they change their propositions according as their temporall necessities or advantages do return They that in their weaknesse and beginning cry out against all violence as against persecution and from being suffered swell up till they be prosperous and from thence to power and at last to Tyranny and then suffer none but themselves and trip up those feet which they humbly kissed that themselves should not be trampled upon these men tell all the world that at first they were pusillanimous or at last outragious that their doctrine at first served their fear and at last served their rage and that they did not at all intend to serve God and then who shall believe them in any thing else Thus some men declaim against the faults of Governours that themselves may governe and when the power was in their hands what was a fault in others is in them necessity as if a sin could be hallowed for comming into their hands Some Greeks at Florence subscribed the Article of Purgatory and condemned it in their own Diocesses And the Kings supremacy in causes Ecclesiastical was earnestly defended against the pretences of the Bishop of Rome and yet when he was thrust out some men were and are vâ—olent to submit the King to their Consistories as if he were Supreme in defiance of the Pope and yet not Supreme over his own Clergy These Articles are mannaged too suspitiously Omnia si perdas famam servare memento You lose all the advantages to your cause if you lose your reputation 5 It is a duty also of Christian prudence that the teachers of others by authority or reprovers of their vices by charity should also make their persons apt to do it without objection Lori pedem rectus derideat Aethiopem albus No man can endure the Gracchi preaching against sedition nor Verres prating against theevery or Milo against homicide and if Herod had made an oration of humility or Antiochus of mercy men would have thought it had been a designe to evil purposes He that means to gain a soul must not make his Sermon an ostentation of his Eloquence but the law of his own life If a Gramarian should speak solaecismes or a Musician sing like a bittern he becomes ridiculous for offending in the faculty he professes So it is in them who minister to the conversion of souls If they fail in their own life when they professe to instruct another they are defective in their proper part and are unskilfull to all their purposes and the Cardinal of Crema did with ill successe tempt the English priests to quit their chaste marriages when himself was deprehended in unchaste embraces For good counsel seems to be unhallowed when it is reached forth by an impure hand and he can ill be beleeved by another whose life so confutes his rules that it is plain he does not beleeve himself Those Churches that are zealous for souls must send into their ministeries men so innocent that evil persons may have no excuse to be any longer vitious When Gorgias went about to perswade the Greeks to be at peace he had eloquence enough to do advantage to his cause and reason enough to presse it But Melanthius was glad to put him off by telling him that he was not fit to perswade peace who could not agree at home with his wife nor make his wife agree with her maid and he that could not make peace between three single persons was unapt to prevail for the reuniting fourteen or fifteen Common-wealths And this thing Saint Paul remarks by enjoyning that a Bishop should be chosen such a one as knew well to rule his own house or else he is not fit to rule the Church of God And when thou perswadest thy brother to be chaste let not him deride thee for thy intemperance and it will ill become thee to be severe against an idle servant if thou thy self beest uselesse to the publike and every notorious vice is infinitely against the spirit of government and depresses the man to an evennesse with common persons Facinus quos inquinat aequat to reprove belongs to a Superiour and as innocence gives a man advantage over his brother giving him an artificiall and adventitious authority so the follies and scandals of a publike and Governing man destroyes the efficacy of that authority that is just and naturall Now this is directly an office of Christian prudence that good offices and great authority become not ineffective by ill conduct Hither also it appertains that in publike or private reproofs we observe circumstances of time of place of person of disposition The vices of a King are not to be opened publikely and Princes must not be reprehended as a man reproves his servant but by Categoricall propositions by abstracted declamations by reprehensions of a crime in its single nature in private with humility and arts of insinuation And it is against Christian prudence not onely to use a Prince or great Personage with common language but it is as great an imprudence to pretend for such a rudenesse the examples of the Prophets in the old Testament For their case was extraordinary their calling peculiar their commission special their spirit miraculous their authority great as to that single mission they were like thunder or the trump of God sent to do that office plainly for the doing of which in that manner God had given no commission to any ordinary minister And therefore we never finde that the Priests did use that freedom which the Prophets were commanded to use whose very words being put into their mouthes it was not to be esteemed an humane act or a lawfull manner of doing an ordinary office neither could it become a precedent to them whose authority is precarious and without coërcion whose spirit is allayed with Christian graces and duties of humility whose words are not prescribed but left to the conduct of prudence as it is to be advised by publike necessities and private circumstances in ages where all things are so ordered that what was fit and pious amongst the old Jews would be incivil and intolerable to the latter Christians He also that reproves a vice should also treat the persons with honour and civilities and by fair opinions and sweet addresses place the man in the regions of modesty and the confines of grace and the fringes of repentance For some men are more
restrained by an imperfect feared shame so long as they think there is a reserve of reputation which they may secure then they can be with all the furious declamations of the world when themselves are represented ugly and odious full of shame and actually punished with the worst of temporâ—â—â— evils beyond which he fears not here to suffer and from whence because he knows it will be hard for him to be redeemed by an afterâ—game of reputation it makes him desperate and incorrigible bâ— fraternall correption A zealous man hath not done his duty when he calls his brother drunkard and beast and he may better do it by telling him he is a man and sealed with Gods Spirit and honoured with the title of a Christian and is or ought to be reputed as a discreet person by his friends and a governour of a family or a guide in his countrey or an example to many and that it is huge pity so many excellent things should be sullied and allayed with what is so much below all this Then a reprover does his duty when he is severe against the vice and charitable to the man and carefull of his reputation and sorry for his reall dishonour and observant of his circumstances and watchfull to surprize his affections and resolutions there where they are most tender and most tenable and men will not be in love with vertue whither they are forced with rudenesse and incivilities but they love to dwell there whither they are invited friendly and where they are treated civilly and feasted liberally and lead by the hand and the eye to honour and felicity 6. It is a duty of Christian prudence not to suffer our souls to walk alone unguarded unguided and more single then in other actions and interests of our lives which are of lesse concernment Vae soli singulari said the Wise man Wo to him that is alone and if we consider how much God hath done to secure our souls and after all that how many wayes there are for a mans soul to miscarry we should think it very necessary to call to a spirituall man to take us by the hand to walk in the wayes of God and to lead us in all the regions of duty and thorow the labyrinths of danger For God who best loves and best knows how to value our souls set a price no lesse upon it then the life-blood of his Holy Son he hath treated it with variety of usages according as the world had new guises and new necessities he abates it with punishment to make us avoid greater he shortned our life that we might live for ever he turns sicknesse into vertue he brings good out of evil he turns enmities to advantages our very sins into repentances and stricter walking he defeats all the follies of men and all the arts of the Devil and layes snares and uses violence to secure our obedience he sends Prophets and Priests to invite us and to threaten us to felicities he restrains us with lawes and he bridles us with honour and shame reputation and society friends and foes he layes hold on us by the instruments of all the passions he is enough to fill our love he satisfies our hope he affrights us with fear he gives us part of our reward in hand and entertains all our faculties with the promises of an infinite and glorious portion he curbs our affections he directs our wills he instructs our understandings with Scriptures with perpetuall Sermons with good books with frequent discourses with particular observations and great experience with accidents and judgements with rare events of providence and miracles he sends his Angels to be our guard and to place us in opportunities of vertue and to take us off from ill company and places of danger to set us neer to good example he gives us his holy Spirit and he becomes to us a principle of a mighty grace descending upon us in great variety and undiscerned events besides all those parts of it which men have reduced to a method and an art and after all this he forgives us infinite irregularities and spares us every day and still expects and passes by and waits all our dayes still watching to do us good and to save that soul which he knowes is so precious one of the chiefest of the works of God and an image of divinity Now from all these arts and mercies of God besides that we have infinite reason to adore his goodnesse we have also a demonstration that we ought to do all that possibly we can and extend all our faculties and watch all our opportunities and take in all assistances to secure the interest of our soul for which God is pleased to take such care and use so many arts for its security If it were not highly worth it God would not do it If it were not all of it necessary God would not do it But if it be worth it and all of it be necessary why should we not labour in order to this great end If it be worth so much to God it is so much more to us for if we perish his felicity is undisturbed but we are undone infinitely undone It is therefore worth taking in a spirituall guide so far we are gone But because we are in the question of prudence we must consider whether it be necessary to do so For every man thinks himself wise enough as to the conduct of his soul and managing of his eternal interest and divinity is every mans trade and the Scriptures speak our own language and the commandments are few and plain and the laws are the measure of justice and if I say my prayers and pay my debts my duty is soon summed up and thus we usually make our accounts for eternity and at this rate onely take care for heaven but let a man be questioned for a portion of his estate or have his life shaken with diseases then it will not be enough to employ one agent or to send for a good woman to minister a potion of the juices of her country garden but the ablest Lawyers and the skilfullest Physitians the advice of friends and huge caution and diligent attendances and a curious watching concerning all the accidents and little passages of our disease and truly a mans life and health is worth all that and much more and in many cases it needs it all But then is the soul the onely safe and the onely trifling thing about us Are not there a thousand dangers and ten thousand difficulties and innumerable possibilities of a misadventure Are not all the congregations in the world divided in their doctrines and all of them call their own way necessary and most of them call all the rest damnable we had need of a wise instructor and a prudent choice at our first entrance and election of our side and when we are well in the matter of Faith for its object and jnstitution all the evils of my self and
the power of godlinesse never destroys any well built fabrick that was raised upon the reputation of religion and its pretences Nunquam est peccare utile quâ—â— semper est turpe said Cicero It is never profitable to sin because it is always base and dishonest and if the face of religion could do a good turn which the heart and substance does destroy then reâ—igion it self were the greatest hypocrite in the world and promises a blessing which it never can perform but must be beholding to its enemy to verifie its promises No. We shall be sure to feel the blessings of both the worlds if we serve in the offices of religion devoutly and charitably before men and before God if we ask of God things honest in the sight of men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Pythagoras gave in precept praying to God with a free heart and a publike prayer and doing before men things that are truly pleasing to God turning our heart outward and our face inwards that is conversing with men as in the presence of God and in our private towards God being as holy and devout as if we prayed in publike and in the corners of the streets Pliny praising of Ariston gave him the title of an honest and hearty religion Ornat hunc magnitudo animi quae nihil ad ostentationem omnia ad conscientiam refert rectèque facti non ex populi sermone mercedem sed ex facto petit And this does well state the question of a sincere religion and an ingenuous goodnesse It requires that we do nothing for ostentation but every thing for conscience and we may be obliged in conscience to publish our manner of lives but then it must be not that we may have a popular noise for a reward but that God may be glorified by our publike worshippings and others edified by our good examples Neither doth the sincerity of our religion require that we should not conceal our sins for he that sins and dares to own them publikely may become impudent and so long as in modesty we desire our shame should be hid and men to think better of us then we deserve I say for no other reason but either because we would not derive the ill examples to others or the shame to our selves we are within the protection of one of vertues sisters and we are not far from the gates of the kingdom of heaven easie and apt to be invited in and not very unworthy to enter But if any other principle draws the vail if we conceal our vices because we would be honoured for sanctity or because we would not be hindered in our designes we serve the interest of pride and ambition covetousnesse or vanity if an innocent purpose hides the ulcer it does half heal it but if it retires into the secrecy of sin and darknesse it turns into a plague and infects the heart and it dies infallibly of a double exulceration The Macedonian boy that kept the coal in his flesh and would not shake his arm lest he should disturbe the sacrifice or discompose the ministery before Alexander the Great concealed his pain to the honour of patience and religion But the Spartan boy who suffered the little fox to eat his bowels rather then confesse his theft when he was in danger of discovery payed the price of a bold hypocrisie that is the dissimulation reproveable in matter of manners which conceals one sin to make way for another 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lucian notes it of his Philosophical hypocrites dissemblers in matter of deportment and religion they seem severe abroad but they enter into the vaults of harlots and are not ashamed to see a naked sin in the midst of its uglinesse and undressed circumstances A mighty wrastler that had won a crown at Olympus for contending prosperously was observed to turn his head and go forward with his face upon his shoulder to behold a fair woman that was present and he lost the glory of his strength when he became so weak that a woman could turn his head about which his adversary could not These are the follies and weaknesses of man and dishonours to religion when a man shall contend nobly and do handsomly and then be taken in a base or a dishonorable action and mingle venome with his delicious ointment Quid quod olet gravius mistum dia pasmate virus Atque duplex animae longius exit odor When Fescenia perfumed her breath that she might not smell of wine she condemned the crime of drunkennesse but grew ridiculous when the wine broke thorow the cloud of a tender perfume and the breath of a Lozenge and that indeed is the reward of an hypocrite his laborious arts of concealment furnish all the world with declamation and severity against the crime which himself condemnes with his caution But when his own sentence too is prepared against the day of his discovery Notas ergo nimis fraudes deprensaque furta Jam tollas sis ebria simpliciter A simple drunkard hath but one fault But they that avoid discovery that they may drink on without shame or restraint adde hypocrisy to their vitious fulnesse and for all the amazements of their consequent discovery have no other recompence but that they pleased themselves in the security of their crime and their undeserved reputation Sic quae nigrior est cadente moro Cerussata sibi placet Lycoris for so the most easy and deformed woman whose girdle no foolish young man will unloose because shee is blacker then the falling mulbery may please her self under a skin of Cerusse and call her self fairer then Pharaohs daughter or the hinds living upon the snowy mountaines One thing more there is to be added as an instance to the simplicity of religion and that is that we never deny our religion or lie concerning our faith nor tell our propositions and articles deceitfully nor instruct Novices or catechumens with fraud but that when we teach them we do it honestly justly and severely not alwayes to speak all but never to speak otherwise then it is nor to hide a truth from them whose soules are concerned in it that it be known nequè enim id est celare cum quid reticias sed cum quod tuscias â—d ignorare emolumenti tui causâ velis eos quorum inter est id scire So Cicero determins the case of prudence and simplicity The discovery of pious frauds and the disclaiming of false but profitable and rich propositions the quitting honours fraudulently gotten and unjustly detained the reducing every man to the perfect understanding of his own religion so far as can concern his duty the disallowing false miracles legends and fabulous stories of cosening the people into awfulnesse fear and superstition these are parts of Christian simplicity which do integrate this duty for religion hath strengths enough of its own to support it self it needs not a devil for its advocate it is the breath of God
our nature or an appendage to it for whereas our constitution is weak our souls apt to diminution and impedite faculties our bodies to mutilation and imperfection to blindnesse and crookednesse to stammering and sorrows to baldnesse and deformity to evil conditions and accidents of body and to passions and sadnesse of spirit God hath in his infinite mercy provided for every condition rare suppletories of comfort and usefulnesse to make recompence and sometimes with an overrunning proportion for those natural defects which were apt to make our persons otherwise contemptible and our conditions intolerable God gives to blinde men better memories For upon this account it is that Rufinus makes mention of Didymus of Alexandria who being blinde was blessed with a rare attention and singular memory and by prayer and hearing and meditating and discoursing came to be one of the most excellent Divines of that whole age And it was more remarkable in Nicasius Machliniensis who being blockish at his book in his first childhood fell into accidental blindnesse and from thence continually grew to so quick an apprehension and so tenacious a memory that he became the wonder of his contemporaries and was chosen Rector of the College at Mechlin and was made licentiate of Theology at Lovaine and Doctor of both the laws at Colein living and dying in great reputation for his rare parts and excellent learning At the same rate also God deals with men in other instances want of children he recompences with freedom from care and whatsoever evil happens to the body is therefore most commonly single and unaccompanied because God accepts that evil as the punishment of the sin of the man or the instrument of his vertue or his security and is reckoned as a sufficient cure or a sufficient Antidote God hath laid laid a severe law upon all women thâ—â— in sorrow they shall bring forth children yet God hath so attempeâ—ed that sorrow that they think themselves more accursed if they want that sorrow and they have reason to rejoyce in that state the trouble of which is alleviated by a promise that they shall be saved in bearing children He that wants one eye hath the force and vigorousnesse of both united in that which is left him and when ever any man is afflicted with sorrow his reason and his religion himself and all his friends persons that are civil and persons that are obliged run into comfort him and he may if he will observe wisely finde so many circumstances of ease and remission so many designes of providence and studied favours such contrivances of collateral advantage and certain reserves of substantial and proper comforâ— that in the whole sum of affaires it often happens that a single crosse is a double blessing that even in a temporal sense it is better to go to the house of mourning then of joyes and festival egressions Is not the affliction of â—overty better then the prosperity of a great and tempting fortune does not wisdom dwell in a mean estate and a low spirit retired thoughts and under a sad roof and is it not generally true that sicknesse it self is appayed with religion and holy thoughts with pious resolutions and penitential prayers with returns to God and to sober councels and if this be true that God sends sorrow to cure sin and affliction be the hand-maid to grace it is also certain that every sad contingency in nature is doubly recompenced with the advantages of religion besides those intervening refreshments which support the spirit and refresh its instruments I shall need to instance but once more in this particular God hath sent no greater evil into the world then that in the sweat of our brows we shall eat our bread and in the difficulty and agony in the sorrows and contention of our souls we shall work out our salvation But see how in the first of these God hath out done his own anger and defeated the purposes of his wrath by the inundation of his mercy for this labour and sweat of our brows is so far from being a curse that without it our very bread would not be so great a blessing It is not labour that makes the Garlick and the pulse the Sycamore and the Cresses the cheese of the Goats and the butter of the sheep to be savoury and pleasant as the flesh of the Roe-buck or the milk of the Kine the marrow of Oxen or the thighs of birds If it were not for labour men neither could eat so much nor relish so pleasantly nor sleep so soundly nor be so healthful nor so useful so strong nor so patient so noble or so untempted and as God hath made us beholding to labour for the purchase of many good things so the thing it self ows to labour many degrees of its worth and value and therefore I need not reckon that besides these advantages the mercies of God have found out proper and natural remedies for labour Nights to cure the sweat of the day sleep to ease our watchfulnesse rest to alleviate our burdens and dayes of religion to procure our rest and things are so ordered that labour is become a duty and an act of many vertues and is not so apt to turne into a sin as is its contrary and is therefore necessary not onely because we need it for making provisions of our life but even to ease the labour of our rest there being no greater tediousnesse of spirit in the world then want of imployment and an unactive life and the lasie man is not onely unprofitable but also accursed and he groans under the load of his time which yet passes over the active man light as a dreame or the feathers of a bird while the disimployed is a desease and like a long sleeplesse night to himself and a load unto his country And therefore although in this particular God hath been so merciful in this infliction that from the sharpnesse of the curse a very great part of mankinde are freed and there are myriads of people good and bad who do not eat their bread in the sweat of their brows yet this is but an overrunning and an excesse of the divine mercy God did more for us then we did absolutely need for he hath disposed of the circumstances of this curse that mans affections are so reconciled to it that they desire it and are delighted in it and so the Anger of God is ended in loving Kindnesse and the drop of water is lost in the full chalice of the wine and the curse is gone out into a multiplied blessing But then for the other part of the severe law and laborious imposition that we must work out our spiritual interest with the labours of our spirit seems to most men to be so intolerable that rather then passe under it they quit their hopes of heaven and passe into the portion of Devils and what can there be to alleviate this sorrow that a man shall be perpetually sollicited with an
mercy which hath no cause but it self no measure of its emanation but our misery no natural limit but eternity no beginning but God no object but man no reason but an essential and an unalterable goodnesse no variety but our necessity and capacity no change but new instances of its own nature no ending or repentance but our absolute and obstinate refusall to entertain it 11. Lastly All the mercies of God are concentred in that which is all the felicity of man and God is so great a lover of souls that he provides securities and fair conditions for them even against all our reason and hopes our expectations and weak discoursings The particulars I shall remark are these 1. Gods mercy prevails over the malice and ignorances the weaknesseâ— and follies of men so that in the convention and assemblies of hereticks as the word is usually understood for erring and mistaken people although their doctrines are such that if men should live according to their proper and naturall consequences they would live impiously yet in every one of these there are persons so innocently and invincibly mistaken and who mean nothing but truth while in the simplicity of their heart they talk nothing but error that in the defiance and contradiction of their own doctrines they â—â—ve according to its contradictory He that beleeves contrition alone with confession to a Priest is enough to expiate ten thousand sins is furnished with an excuse easie enough to quit himself from the troubles of a holy life and he that hath a great many cheap wayes of buying off his penances for a little money even for the greatest sins is taught a way not to fear the doing of an act for which he must repent since repentance is a duty so soon so certainly and so easily performed But these are notâ—â—ious doctrines in the Roman Church and yet God so loves the souls of his creatures that many men who trust to these doctrines in their discourses dare not rely upon them in their lives But while they talk as if they did not need to live strictly many of them live so strictly as if they did not beleeve so foolishly He that tels that antecedently God hath to all humane choice decreed man to heaven or to hell takes away from man all care of the way because they beleeve that he that infallibly decreed that end hath unalterably appointed the means and some men that talk thus wildly live soberly and are over-wrought in their understanding by some secret art of God that man may not perish in his ignorance but be assisted in his choice and saved by the Divine mercies And there is no sect of men but are furnished with antidotes and little excuses to cure the venom of their doctrine and therefore although the adherent and constituent poison is notorious and therefore to be declined yet because it is collaterally cured and over-poured by the torrent and wisdom of Gods mercies the men are to be taken into the Quire that we may all joyn in giving of God praise for the operation of his hands 2. I said formerly that there are many secret and undiscerned mercies by which men live and of which men can give no account till they come to give God thanks at their publication and of this sort is that mercy which God reserves for the souls of many millions of men and women concerning whom we have no hopes if we account concerning them by the usuall proportions of revelation and Christian commandements and yet we are taught to hope some strange good things concerning them by the analogy and generall rules of the Divine mercy For what shall become of ignorant Christians people that live in wildnesses and places more desert then a primitive hermitage people that are baptized and taught to go to Church it may be once a yeer people that can get no more knowledge they know not where to have it nor how to desire it and yet that an eternity of pains shall be consequent to such an ignorance is unlike the mercy of God and yet that they should be in any dispositions towards an eternity of intellectuall joyes is no where set down in the leaves of revelation and when the Jews grew rebellious or a silly woman of the daughters of Abraham was tempted and sinned and punished with death we usually talk as if that death passed on to a worse but yet we may arrest our thoughts upon the Divine mercies and consider that it is reasonable to expect from the Divine goodnesse that no greater forfeiture be taken upon a law then was expressed in its sanction and publication He that makes a law and bindes it with the penalty of stripes we say he intends not to afflict the disobedient with scorpions and axes and it had been hugely necessary that God had scar'd the Jews from their sins by threatning the pains of hell to them that disobeyed if he intended to inflict it for although many men would have ventured the future since they are not affrighted with the present and visible evil yet some persons would have had more Philosophical and spiritual apprehensions then others and have been infallibly cured in all their temptations with the fear of an eternall pain and however whether they had or no yet since it cannot be understood how it consists with the Divine justice to exact a pain bigger then he threatned greater then he gave warning of so we are sure it is a great way off from Gods mercy to do so He that usually imposes lesse and is loth to inflict any and very often forgives it all is hugely distant from exacting an eternall punishment when the most that he threatned and gave notice of was but a temporall The effect of this consideration I would have to be this that we may publikely worship this mercy of God which is kept in secret and that we be not too forward in sentencing all Heathens and prevaricating Jews to the eternall pains of hell but hope that they have a portion in the secrets of the Divine mercy where also unlesse many of us have some little portions deposited our condition will be very uncertain and sometimes most miserable God knows best how intolerably accursed a thing it is to perish in the eternall flames of hell and therefore he is not easie to inflict it and if the â—oyes of heaven be too great to be expected upon too easie termes certainly the pains of the damned are infinitely too big to passe lightly upon persons who cannot help themselves and who iâ— they were helped with clearer revelations would have avoided it But as in these things we must not pry into the secrets of the Divine Oeconomy being sure whether it be so or no it is most just even as it is so we may expect to see the glories of the Divine mercy made publike in unexpected instances at the great day of manifestation And indeed our dead many times go forth from our hands very
extraregular miracles besides the sufficiencie of Moses and the Prophets and the New Testament and thousands more which we cannot consider now But this we can when God sent an Angel to pour plagues upon the earth there were in their hands Phialae aureae golden phials for the death of men is precious and costly and it is an expence that God delights not in but they were Phials that is such vessels as out of them no great evil could come at once but it comes out with difficulty sobbing and troubled as it passes forth it comes thorow a narrow neck and the parts of it croud at the port to get forth and are stifled by each others neighbourhood and all strive to get out but few can passe as if God did nothing but threaten and draw his judgements to the mouth of the Phial with a full body and there made it stop it self The result of this consideration is that as we fear the Divine judgements so that we adore and love his goodnesse and let the golden chains of the Divine mercy tie us to a noble prosecution of our duty and the interests of religion For he is the worst of men whom Kindnesse cannot soften nor endearments oblige whom gratitude cannot tie faster then the bands of life and death He is an ill natur'd sinner if he will not comply with the sweetnesses of heaven and be civill to his Angel guardian or observant of his Patron God who made him and feeds him and keeps all his faculties and takes care of him and endures his follies and waits on him more tenderly then a Nurse more diligently then a Client who hath greater care of him then his father and whose bowels yern over him with more compassion then a mother who is bountifull beyond our needs and mercifull beyond our hopes and makes capacities in us to receive more Fear is stronger then death and Love is more prevalent then Fear and kindnesse is the greatest endearment of Love and yet to an ingenuous person gratitude is greater then all these and obliges to a solemn duty when love fails and fear is dull and unactive and death it self is despised but the man who is hardened against kindnesse and whose duty is not made alive with gratitude must be used like a slave and driven like an ox and inticed with goads and whips but must never enter into the inheritance of sons Let us take heed for Mercy is like a rainbowe which God set in the clouds to remember mankinde it shines here as long as it is not hindered but we must never look for it after it is night and it shines not in the other world if we refuse mercy here we shall have justice to eternity Sermon XXVIII A FVNERAL SERMON Preached at the Obsequies of the Right Honorable and most vertuous Lady The Lady FRANCES Countesse of CARBERY Who deceased October the 9 th 1650. at her House Golden-Grove in CARMARTHEN-SHIRE To the right Honorable and truly Noble RICHARD Lord VAVGHAN Earl of Carbery Baron of Emlim and Molinger Knight of the Honorable Order of the Bath My Lord I Am not ashamed to professe that I pay this part of service to your Lordship most unwillingly for it is a sad office to be the chief Minister in the house of mourning and to present an interested person with a branch of Cypresse and a bottle of tears And indeed my Lord it were more proportionable to your needs to bring something that might alleviate your sorrow thâ—â— to dresse the hearse of your Dear Lady and to furnish it with such circumstances that it may dwell with you and lie in your closet and make your prayers and your retirements more sad and full of weepings But because the Divine providence hath taken from you a person so excellent a woman fit to converse with Angels and Apostles with Saints and Martyrs give me leave to present you with her picture drawn in little and in water-colours sullied indeed with tears and the abrupt accents of a real and consonant sorrow but drawn with a faithful hand and taken from the life and indeed it were too great a losse to be deprived of her example and of her rule of the original and the copy too The age is very evil and deserved her not but because it is so evil it hath the more need to have such lives preserved in memory to instruct our piety or upbraid our wickednesse For now that God hath cut this tree of Paradise down from its seat of earth yet so the dead trunk may support a part of the declining Temple or at least serve to kindle the fire on the altar My Lord I pray God this heap of sorrow may swell your piety till it breaks into the greatest joyes of God and of religion and remember when you pay a tear upon the grave or to the memory of your Lady that dear and most excellent soul that you pay two more one of repentance for those things that may have caused this breach and another of joy for the mercies of God to your Dear departed Saint that he hath taken her into a place where she can weep no more My Lord I think I shall so long as I live that is so long as I am Your Lordships most humble Servant TAYLOR 2 Samuel 14. 14. For we must needs die and are as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up again neither doth God respect any person yet doth he devise means that his banished be not expelled from him WHen our blessed Saviour and his Disciples viewed the Temple some one amongst them cryed out Magister aspice quales lapides Master behold what fair what great stones are here Christ made no other reply but foretold their dissolution and a world of sadnesse and sorrow which should bury that whole Nation when the teeming cloud of Gods displeasure should produce a storm which was the daughter of the biggest anger and the mother of the greatest calamitie which ever crushed any of the sons of Adam the time shall come that there shall not be left one stone upon another The whole Temple and the Religion the ceremonies ordained by God and the Nation beloved by God and the fabrick erected for the service of God shall run to their own period and lie down in their several graves Whatsoever had a beginning can also have am ending and it shall die unlesse it be daily watered with the puâ—â—s flowing from the fountain of life and refreshed with the dew of Heaven and the wells of God And therefore God had provided a tree in Paradise to have supported Adam in his artificial immortality Immortality was not in his nature but in the hands and arts in the favour and superadditions of God Man was alwaies the same mixture of heat and cold of drynesse and moisture ever the same weak thing apt to feel rebellion in the humors and to suffer the evils of a civil war in his body
sure enough 7. You may also watch whether they do not chose their proselyts amongst the rich and vitious that they mâ—y serve themselves upon his wealth and their disciple upon his vice 8. If their doctrines evidently and greatly serve the interest oâ— wealth or honour and are ineffective to piety 9. If they strive to gain any one to their confession and are negligent to gain them to good life 10. If by pretences they lessen the severity of Christs precepts and are easy in dispensations and licencious glosses 11. If they invent suppletories to excuse an evil man and yet to reconcile his bad life with the hopes of heaven you have reason to suspect the whole and to reject these parts of errour and designe which in themselves are so unhandsom alwayes and somtimes criminal He that shal observe the Church of Rome so implacably fierce for purgatory and the Popes supremacy from clerical immunities and the Superiority of the Ecclesiastical persons to secular for indulgencies and precious and costly pardons and then so full of devises to reconcile an evil life with heaven requiring onely contrition even at the last for the abolition of eternal guilt and having a thousand wayes to commute and take off the temporal will see he hath reason to be jealous that interest is in these bigger then the religion and yet that the danger of the soul is greater then that interest and therefore the man is to do accordingly Here indeed is the great necessity that we should have the prudence and discretion the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of serpents ut cernamus acutum Quam aut aquila aut serpens Epidaurius For so serpents as they are curious to preserve their heads from contrition or a bruise so also to safeguard themselves that they be not charmed with sweet and enticing words of false prophets who charm not wisely but cunningly leading aside unstable souls against these we must stop our ears or lend our attention according to the foregoing measures and significations but here also I am to insert two or three cautions 1. We cannot expect that by these or any other signes we shall be inabled to discover concerning all men whether they teach an errour or no. Neither can a man by these reprove a Lutheran or a Zuinglian a Dominican or a Franciscan a Russian or a Greek a Muscovite or a Georgian because those which are certain signes of false teachers do signifie such men who destroy an article of faith or a commandment God was careful to secure us from death by removing the Lepers from the camp and giving certain notices of distinction and putting a term between the living and the dead but he was not pleased to secure every man from innocent and harmlesse errors from the mistakes of men and the failings of mortality The signes which can distinguish a living man from a dead will not also distinguish a black man from a brown or a pale from a white It is enough that we decline those guides that lead us to hell but not to think that we are inticed to death by the weaknesses of every disagreeing brother 2. In all discerning of sects we must be careful to distinguish the faults of men from the evils of their doctrine for some there are that say very well and do very ill 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Multos Thyrsigeros paucos est cernere Bacchos Many men of holy calling and holy religion that are of unholy lives homines ignavâ operâ Philosophâ sententiâ But these must be separated from the institution and the evil of the men is onely to be noted as that such persons be not taken to our single conduct and personal ministery I will be of the mans religion if it be good though he be not but I will not make him my confessor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If he be not wise for himself I will not sit down at his feet lest we mingle filthinesse instead of being cleansed and instructed 3. Let us make one separation more then we may consider and act according to the premises If we espie a designe or an evil mark upon one doctrine let us divide it from the other that are not so spotted for indeed the publick communions of men are at this day so ordered that they are as fond of their errours as of their truthes and somtimes moct zealous for what they have least reason to be so and if we can by any arts of prudence separate from an evil proposition and communicate in all the good then we may love colleges of religious persons though we do not worship images and we may obey our Prelates though we do no injury to princes and we may be zealous against a crime though we be not imperious over mens persons and we may be diligent in the conduct of souls though we be not rapacious of estates and we may be moderate exactors of Obedience to human laws though we do not dispense with the breach of the divine and the Clergy may represent their calling necessary though their persons be full of modesty and humility and we may preserve our rights and not lose our charity For this is the meaning of the Apostle Try all things and retain that which is good from every sect and communitie of Christians take any thing that is good that advances holy religion and the Divine honour For one hath a better government a second a better confession a third hath excellent spiritual arts for the conduct of souls a fourth hath fewer errours and by what instrument soever a holy life is advantaged use that though thou grindest thy spears and arrows at the forges of the Philistines knowing thou hast no Master but Christ no religion but the Christian no rule but the Scriptures and the laws and right reason other things that are helps are to be used accordingly These are the general rules of Christian prudence which I have chosen to insist upon there are many others more particular indeed but yet worth not onely the enumerating but observing also and that they be reduced to practise For the prudence of a Christian does oblige and direct respectively all the children of the institution * that we be careful to decline a danger * watchful against a temptation * alwayes choosing that that is safe and fitted to all circumstances * that we be wise in choosing our company * reserved and wary in our friendships * and communicative in our charity * that we be silent and retentive of what we hear and what we think * not credulous * not unconstant * that we be deliberate in our election * and vigorous in our prosecutions that we suffer not good nature to discompose our duty but that we separate images from substances and the pleasing of a present company from our religion to God and our eternal interest for sometimes that which is counselled to us by Christian prudence is accounted folly by humane prudence and so it is
ever accounted when our duty leads us into a persecution * Hither also appertain that we never do a thing that we know we must repent of * that we do not admire too many things nor anything too much * that we be even in prosperity * and patient in adversity but transported with neither into the regions of despair or levity pusillanimity or Tyranny dejection or Garishnesse * alwayes to look upon the sear we have impressed upon our flesh and no more to handle dangers and knives to abstain from ambitious and vexatious suits not to contend with a mighty man * ever to listen to him who according to the proverb hath four ears Reason Religion wisdom and experience * rather to lose a benefit then to suffer a detriment and an evil * to stop the beginnings of evil * to pardon and not to observe all the faults of friends or enemies * of evils to choose the least * and of goods to choose the greatest if it be also safest * not to be insolent in successe but to proceed according to the probability of humane causes and contingencies * ever to be thankful for benefits * and profitable to others and useful in all that we can * to watch the seasons and circumstances of actions * to do that willingly which cannot be avoided lest the necessity serve anothers appetite and it be lost to all our purposes Insignis enim est prudentiae ut quod non facere non possis id facere ut libenter fecisse videaris * not to pursue difficult uncertain and obscure things with violence and passion These if we observe we shall do advantage to our selves and to the religion and avoid those evils which fools and unwary people suffer for nothing dying or bleeding without cause and without pity I end this with the saying of Socrates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vertue is but a shadow and a servile imployment unlesse it be adorned and instructed with prudence which gives motion and conduct spirits and vigourousnesse to religion making it not onely humane and reasonable but Divine and caelestial Sermon XXIII OF CHRISTIAN SIMPLICITY Matthew 10. latter part of Ver. 16. And harmlesse as doves OUR Blessed Saviour having prefac'd concerning Prudence addes to the integrity of the precept and for the conduct of our religion that we be simple as well as prudent innocent as well as wary harmlesse and safe to gether do well for without this blessed union prudence turns into craft and simplicity degenerates into folly Prudens simplicitas is Martial's character of a good man a wary and cautious innocence a harmlesse providence and provision Verâ simplicitate bonus a true simplicity is that which leaves to a man arms defensive his castles and strong forts but takes away his swords and spears or else his anger and his malice his peevishnesse and spite But such is the misery and such is the iniquity of mankinde that craft hath invaded all the contracts and entercourses of men and made simplicity so weak a thing that it is grown into contempt sometimes with and sometimes without reason Et homines simplices minimè malos the Romans called parum cautos saepè stolidos unwary fools and defenselesse people were called simple and when the innocency of the old simple Romans in Junius Brutus time in Fabritius and Camillus began to degenerate and to need the Aquilian law to force men to deal honestly quickly the mischief increased till the Aquilian law grew as much out of power as honesty was out of countenance And there and every where else men thought they got a purchase when they met with an honest man and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Aristotle calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A fool is a profitable person and he that is simple is little better then mad And so it is when simplicity wants prudence He that because he means honestly himself thinks every man else does so and therefore is unwary in all or any of his entercourses is a simple man in an evil sence and therefore Saint Gregory Nazianzen remarks Constantius with a note of folly for suffering his easie nature to be abused by Georgius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Princes simplicity so he calls it for reverence but indeed it was folly for it was zeal without knowledge But it was a better temper which he observed in his own father 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such a simplicity which onely wanted craft or deceit but wanted no prudence or caution and that is truly Christian simplicity or the sincerity of an honest and ingenious and a fearlesse person and it is a rare band not onely of societies and contracts but also of friendships and advantages of mankinde We do not live in an age in which there is so much need to bid men be wary as to take care that they be innocent Indeed in religion we are usually too loose and ungirt exposing our selves to temptation and others to offence and our name to dishonour and the cause it self to reproach and we are open and ready to every evil but persecution from that we are close enough and that alone we call prudence but in the matter of interest we are wary as serpents subtil as foxes vigilant as the birds of the night rapacious as Kites tenacious as grapling hooks and the weightiest anchors and above all false and hypocritical as a thin crust of ice spread upon the face of a deep smooth and dissembling pit if you set your foot your foot slips or the ice breaks and you sink into death and are wound in a sheet of water descending into mischief or your grave suffering a great fall or a sudden death by your confidence and unsuspecting foot There is an universal crust of hypocrisie that covers the face of the greatest part of mankinde Their religion consists in forms and outsides and serves reputation or a designe but does not serve God Their promises are but fair language and the civilities of the Piazzas or Exchanges and disband and unty like the air that beat upon their teeth when they spake the delicious and hopefull words Their oaths are snares to catch men and make them confident Their contracts are arts and stratagems to deceive measured by profit and possibility and every thing is lawfull that is gainfull and their friendships are trades of getting and their kindnesse of watching a dying friend is but the office of a vulture the gaping for a legacy the spoil of the carcasse and their sicknesses are many times policies of state sometimes a designe to shew the riches of our bed-chamber and their funeral tears are but the paranymphs and pious solicitors of a second Bride and every thing that is ugly must be hid and every thing that is handsome must be seen and that will make a fair cover for a huge deformity and therefore it is as they think necessary that men should alwayes have some pretences