famish Ordinary men must depend upon common providence but sure you may expect something more signal and worthy of that relation if it be true that you are the Son of God No saith our Saviour Man lives not by bread only c. If I am the Son of God as I am assured I am I must so much the more be at my Father's disposal and not prescribe to him He hath several ways to supply my necessity and I will leave the particular manner of it to his election Then the Devil taketh him and sets him upon a pinacle of the Temple and urges him If thou be the Son of God east thy self down for it is written he shall give his Angels charge over thee c. q. d. To be the Son of God and to have it set off with no pomp nor illustrious circumstance is a very mean thing unworthy of you and useless to you Assure your self if he own you in that quality and relation he will interpose between you and the greatest danger you can incurr and by some such experiment you shall draw the eyes of all men upon you Both this and the former attack are like to that of his Brethren Jo. 7. 4. If thou do these things shew thy self to the world q. d. Consult thy same and reputation aggrandize thy self by some magnificent circumstance or other But saith our Saviour it is written thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God i. e. I am not to require other proofs of God's power or providence over me then he thinks fit to give I must not thrust my self upon danger but when he casts me upon it then I may assure my self of his interposition for my safety NOW since this temptation to pride was the engine with which the first Adam was ruined and the second Adam assaulted there can be little reason to doubt but it is so also with the generality of men And albeit the more visible and immediate motives to some sins may be profit or pleasure yet that which is the first wheel and sets all on work is as I have hinted an arrogant opinion of our own worth or wisedom and derogation from the Divine Wisedom or justice in the frame of his Laws and methods of his providence as if he had not consulted so well the conveniency of our natures but that we could provide better for our selves then he hath done if we were permitted to be our own carvers from whence proceeds an impatience of his government and an inclination to rebell and cast off his yoke as it were easie to make appear in all the instances of sin whether intemperance fornication injustice or any the like but that I think it needless in so plain a case BUT there is one thing I cannot omit to observe in further confirmation of this point namely that our Saviour when he came into the world to restore mankind knowing well their disease like a wise Physician of Souls finds it necessary to cure them by the contrary therefore in the first place he prescribes to them a profound humility as the most sovereign Antidote against sin and the onely principle of stability in vertue he I say considering they had fallen by pride lays the foundation of their recovery in lowliness of spirit injoyning that men submit their own reasonings to the wisedom of God and by faith depend upon him And declaring that those who will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven or receive his religion must do it as little children that is must come to it without pride or prejudice and be ready to believe what he dictates to them without dispute or diffidence and in short must deny themselves and follow him Which one lesson if we thoroughly learn we cut off all the Avenues of Satan and everlastingly secure our selves against all temptation to Apostasy from Religion and rebelling against God 2. THE second instance of the Son's defection is his departure from his Father He gathers all together and takes his journey into a far Countrey Whereas the Elder Son always abides with his Father this Youngster as he desired not to be at his Father's provision so he was equally unwilling to be under his eye and the awe of his presence the inspection of a Father would check his freedom and restrain him in the full swing of pleasure he designed to take Home was an homely thing dull and tedious to him but a foreign Countrey would gratify his curiosity and minister some new delights to him Besides there he should be without controll accountable to no body which was the very thing his pride had made most valuable with him NOW that he had obtained what he desired his portion and his liberty he valued not the comfort of his Father's countenance nor needed his counsel nor set by his blessing for indeed he intended so to live as that he could not hope for it THUS the Prodigal Son and every habitual sinner treads in his steps Longinqua Regio saith S. Austin Q. Evan. l. 2. c. 33. is oblivio Dei by the far Country is meant forgetfulness of God And saith S. Jerome To depart from God is not local for God is every-where present but to be alienated in our minds and affections from him Agreeably to which in the 73. Psal v. 26. where we reade They that forsake the Lord shall perish the vulgar Latine strictly following the Hebrew hath it qui elongant se à Deo those that put themselves as far off from God as they can And so Holy Job chap. 21. 14. notes it to be the humour of profane and profligate persons to say to the Almighty depart from us we desire not the knowledge of thy way For it is manifest that as the sense of God is the great support and comfort of all good men in trouble their great animation and encouragement in all good duties and of mighty efficacy upon them to preserve them from all temptation to evil so it is equally the dread and torture of all wicked men and that which if it doth not check and restrain their wickedness will be sure to deprive them of the pleasure of it Wherefore when they cannot hinder that observant Majesty from overlooking them they are forced for their own quiet to be so absurd as to put the grossest gullery upon themselves and content themselves with the sottish security of turning away their eyes from beholding him THUS Adam when he had sinned hid himself in the Garden from the presence of the Lord for not only the Majesty Power and Justice of God strike a terrour to a guilty Conscience but the very contemplation of such purity and perfection shames and reproaches it Nor is the apprehension of God only troublesome to the offender after he hath committed sin but it is able to blast the very Embryo to nip it in the bud to disturb the deliberations and to be sure defeats much of the pleasure of conception For if the
work And who that either understands the frail contexture of his body or the many thousand accidents it is subject to can be warrantie for his own life one moment beyond the present or if that should be continued who shall secure us that a day of grace shall last as long as we live Who shall prescribe to the Almighty that he shall wait our leisure and accept us at last All which things considered he that only resolves to amend hereafter is certainly resolved not to amend now and therefore is in no state of repentance nor in the way of mercy WHEREFORE the true Penitent resolves presently to arise I have trifled too long already faith he It is no dallying any longer in a business of this nature I have been couzened by my own heart oft enough I will trust my self for day no longer I do not find my heart either more willing or more able to perform by all the time I have given it but quite contrary my ability is less and my debt greater my heart harder my affections more ingaged and lesse willing to come off I do not find that the longer I serve the Devil he is ever the likelier to manumit me nay I feel the longer I serve him the heavier chains he lays upon me If he can persuade me that it is yet too soon to return to God he will by the same Logick persuade me hereafter that it is too late And I find by experience that if my heart be bad to day it is likely to be worse to morrow I cannot think it reasonable to expect that God's Spirit will strive with me the more I resist him nor dare I trust that grace should abound the more my sin abounds A day neglected now for ought I know may be as much as my Soul is worth and may cost me eternity now by God's grace I find it in my heart to return and now I 'll put it in execution I will no more venture upon uncertainties nor forgo what is in my power for what is not I will not promise to pay hereafter what I am not willing now to perform No more therefore of the sluggard Yet a little sleep a little slumber a little folding of the hands to sleep I will now arise and return to my Father and to my duty which is 4. The Fourth and last property of vertuous resolution namely it is a through and uniform resolution which takes in the whole business and compass of Religion The Historian observes of the Romans in the degenerate times of their Common-wealth that now all their disputes were not an servirent sed cui not for liberty but who should be their Lord and they fought not to assert or recover their freedom but meerly to have the choice of their yoke and so whoever conquered they were certainly slaves In like manner some men being under convictions of Conscience of the evil and danger of the way they are in resolve upon a change but it is not to change themselves but their sins one for another The Drunkard becomes covetous the loose and licentious person exchanges his levity for morosity and from a common scandal becomes a busy body a judge and very censorious And so the man is disguised rather then amended and hath a new master but is nevertheless a slave Others perhaps there are who will go further and part with a sin without a succedaneum or entertaining any other in its room because it might happen that such a sin was grown less agreeable to their constitution too chargeable for their profit too dangerous to their reputation and peradventure also too uneasy for their Consciences but there are some other sins they can by no means think of forgoing Thus the Scripture observes of some Kings of Israel that were great reformers and expressed a mighty zeal against the Idolatry of Ahab and other corruptions who yet all their days stuck close to the sin of Jeroboam the Son of Nebat that kind of Idolatry was bound up with their interest and therefore must not be laid aside INDEED if we consider the matter well we shall find the power of an inlightned Conscience to be such as to prevail with any man to resolve either to forsake any one sin upon condition he might securely enjoy all the rest or at least not to stick at any one duty of Religion if thereby he might expiate his other commissions and omissions And the Jews had a corrupt Doctrine amongst them very agreeable to this humour namely that if a man observed some one remarkable precept of the Law it was enough to excuse him upon the whole and that notion of theirs seems to have given occasion to that question so often put to our Saviour Which is the great commandment of the Law For they disputed amongst themselves upon that supposition which was the one surest point to trust to whether to Sacrifice as some held or to Circumcision as others or to the observation of the Sabbath as a third c. I say their intent was to ask his opinion what branch of the Law God most insisted upon that in compliance therewith they might compendiously secure their own interest without the trouble of universal obedience but our Saviour being aware of the subtlety directs them in all the places forementioned to that Paragraph of the Law which was comprehensive of the whole viz. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy Soul c. THE Devil is so wary and frugal a Trader that he will comply with the Market and is content as I noted before to barter one sin for another or rather to compound for half then to lose all and is also so good a Philosopher as to know malum oritur ex quolibet defectu bonum constat ex integris causis That the volùntary omission of any one part of our duty nulls our obedience and that one sin will damn a man as well as many For he that retains a love to any one sin cannot be said to have a resolution against sin or to hate sin for it self and God is resolved to have us intirely his or not at all For he that makes any exceptions or reservations that capitulates with God deals not with him as with a God He therefore that takes up a penitent resolution is uniform and universal therein fully decrees with himself to omit nothing that he knows to be his duty nor to dispense with himself in the practice of any thing how gratefull soever to him that he knows to be a sin I know saith he God by his sovereignty hath a just title to my whole life and to all my powers he hath obliged me beyond all that ever I can correspond with he is jealous of his honour and hates to be served deceitfully and by halves he will admit of no rival no sharer with him he sees all my wandrings and will be sure to revenge my
zeal as cannot but be very observable nay his fervor is so great in these things that the only danger is of running into some excess lest he outgo the health and strength of his Body and forget the necessity of the common affairs of life IT is true there is great diversity in these passionate expressions of devotion according to the difference of men's tempers and constitutions but yet in every true Convert it is at the lowest quite another thing from the common flatness and formality that is too easy to be seen in other men nay the transports of this kind in new Converts are usually so great that it often gives them occasion afterwards to question their station and to doubt whether they have not apostatized and faln from their first love when they find they cannot maintain those spring-tides constantly at the same height through the whole course of their lives For the sake of which this is to be added that it is no argument against a man's sincerity that he wants some of the passionate expressions of devotion which he had at first in regard then the fresh sense he had of his miscarriages of his horrible danger together with the ravishing joy at the first glimpse of God's mercy in Christ were able strangely to move all his powers and to draw even those bodily passions into compliance with the sense of the mind which must certainly flag afterwards And therefore though it be a sure sign he is no Convert I mean from a debauched and wicked life who had no experience of something extraordinary in this kind at first yet on the other side it is no sign of decaying in grace if he find not the like all along 2. BUT to proceed secondly when the Son arose and went to his Father it is implied that he became obedient to his commands as well as that he lived in his presence and family And accordingly the Penitent in the next place contents not himself with any or all of the forementioned acts of devotion as not intending to put off God with complementall addresses for all worship without obedience is no better but applies himself with all humility and seriousness to frame his life according to his commands Heretofore he was a Son of Belial lawless and disobedient but now he saith with St Paul upon his conversion Acts 9. 6. What wilt thou have me to doe Lord He hath now found what hard service the Devil puts his vassals to and having had so bad a Master of him he doth not discourage himself with suspicions but submits his neck to the yoke of Christ Jesus and doth not say it is grievous as being of opinion with the Falisci who told Fabricius Melius nos sub vestro imperio quà m sub nostris legibus victuri sumus God's service is perfect freedom and it is liberty enough to obey wisedom and goodness ACCORDINGLY he indeavours from henceforth to live in all the statutes and commandments of the Lord blameless and exercises himself to have a Conscience void of offence both towards God and man He confines not his care to some one branch or part of his duty which is the common guise of hypocrites but resolves to be universally good and holy For he not only considers that one sin is sufficient to ruine a man as well as many as one disease may destroy a man's life as well as a complication but also he observes that the main difficulty of vertue lies in that men do not uniformly carry on the whole business before them and so the Devil gets that ground in one place which he seems to lose in another Besides the very principle that acts and governs him is the hearty love of God and goodness which makes him have an equal hatred to all sin and a zeal of every duty HE forsakes all his debauches for the pleasure of a good Conscience and makes experiment whether victory over his passions be not as delightfull as the gratification of them and whether intellectual joys be not as ravishing as sensual enjoyments and a regular conversation as easy and agreeable as the lawless and licentious He brings his senses in subjection to his reason and makes all those powers and faculties tributary to Religion which before made war against it This head of mine saith he which was wont to be employed in contrivances for the world or in catering for my lusts shall now be exercised in studying how I may doe most honour to my Maker This wit which was wont to goe out in froth or in scoffing at all that was serious shall now make apologies for what before it blasphemed This tongue shall learn to bless that was used to cursing and swearing My hands shall now dispense as liberally to charitable purposes as they have sordidly raked together before I will be as exemplary for sobriety and chastity as ever I was notorious for excesses and wherever I have wronged any body in my dealings I will now spare from my self to make them a recompence In short by the grace of God from henceforward there is neither pleasure shall tempt me nor profit allure me nor ambition corrupt me nor example sway me to doe any thing which I know to be evil and on the other side there shall neither difficulty discourage me nor tediousness of the course weary me in the race of vertue and holiness And to the intent that he may always make good this ground and persevere in this course he calls in all the Auxiliaries of Divine Grace places himself under the most advantageous circumstances and retrenches himself against all assaults or surprisals Herewithal he hath a principal care to keep his thoughts pure and holy that there may be no combustible matter in him for the Devil 's fiery darts to take hold of nor any beginning of a mutiny within him of the flesh against the spirit by which means a passage may be opened to the enemy And yet when this is done he will be always upon his guard too not trusting wholly to the innocency of his intentions as knowing both the subtilty and enterprizing nature of the Devil And that this watch may be constantly kept up he is sure not to allow himself the least degree of intemperance which would at least weaken his reason and inflame his passion and farther he is very choice of his company and very desirous to fortify himself by good neighbourhood and acquaintance that he may be quickened by their examples and lastly he will be always doing some good thing or other that temptation may not find him at leisure to give it entertainment MOREOVER in consideration that he hath lived a great while unprofitably and done far less then his duty he will strive if it be possible to do more then is matter of express duty now to make amends for fomer failing and therefore is far from the cold and frugal piety of those men that make a great stirr in seeking the
for deliberation there could be no perfect judgment and consequently but an imperfect consent AGAIN whilest a man is bending himself with all his might against some one extreme which he knows to be evil and therefore carefully declines he may perhaps in detestation of that incline too much to the other or whilest a man endeavours diligently to carry on both the affairs of this life and the concerns of Religion too it may happen that the solicitude and cares of the former may sometimes unseasonably crowd in and disturb him in the latter Nay once more through the infirmity of memory compared with the multiplicity of affairs which a wise and good man's care extends to it may not infrequently fall out that such a person for the present forgets or omits some duty of Religion Now it cannot be said that any of these cases are perfectly involuntary because it was not impossible but that extraordinary diligence and watchfullness might have provided against them nevertheless they are not deliberate sins nor was there any full consent of the will to them as is evident both by what we have said already and also by this that such persons we speak of very quickly feel remorse for them their hearts smite them upon the first reflexion upon what hath past and they presently recover themselves and double their watch and guard where they have thus found themselves overtaken These therefore and all other of the nature of these are properly called sins of infirmity BUT now on the other side when the matter of fact is notorious and palpable that it can admit of no dispute whether it be evil or no when a man is not surprized but makes his election doth not insensibly slip awry whilest he was in his right way but takes a wrong course is not overborn by an huge fear but is allured by the pleasures of sense when he hath time to consider and yet resolves upon that which is forbidden him here is little or nothing to extenuate the fact or mitigate his guilt it is a voluntary and therefore a presumptuous sin Such a distinction as this David seems to make Psal 19. 12 13. when he prays that he may understand his errours to the intent that with holy Joh where he had done iniquity he might doe so no more but earnestly begs that he may be kept from presumptuous sins i. e. from such voluntary and wilfull miscarriages as we have but now spoken of so saith he shall I be innocent and free from the great transgression For though sins of infirmity in the most proper sense are not without guilt at least if God should proceed in rigour with men yet in consideration of the goodness of God together with the evident pitiableness of their own circumstances they leave no horrour upon the mind no stain or ill mark upon the person much less a scar or a maim but the other besides their great guilt either terribly afflict or lay waste and stupify the Conscience they harden the heart break the powers of the soul and quench the Spirit of God as we shall have occasion to speak more at large hereafter AT present I think it may be very pertinent to observe that whereas S. John Ep. 1. Chap. 3. vers 4. seems to give a brief and compendious description of sin in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we render Sin is a transgression of the Law it is not altogether improbable but that the Apostle intended to express something more then is commonly understood by those words in English for besides that it seems a flat saying he that sinneth transgresseth the Law for sin is a transgression of the Law it is noted moreover by Learned men that the Apostle calls not sin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which had been the most proper word to denote a meer breach or transgression of the Law but uses the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies a great deal more namely lawlesness and dissoluteness the living without or casting off the yoke of the Law for so we find it elsewhere used in Scripture particularly 1 Tim. 1. 9. where we have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lawless and disobedient or ungovernable joyned together And thus the phrase of the Apostle before us will import not so much the meer matter of sin viz. the violation of a Law but the aggravation of it as a presumptuous sin namely the wilfullness and stubbornness of the sinner And if this gloss may be allowed we shall with much ease be able to understand a following passage in this Apostle which hath not a little exercised the heads of Divines nor less perplexed the Consciences of many serious persons Viz. vers 9. of this Chapter he writes thus he that is born of God doth not commit sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God Now if we take sin strictly and rigorously here for every thing that is contrary to the perfection of the Divine Law then it will be absolutely necessary that by the phrase he that is born of God we can understand none but our Saviour himself which is altogether besides the business forasmuch as he only was without sin in that sense but if we take the phrase in the latitude before intimated that is for voluntary wilfull and deliberate sins then the sense is both easie and comfortable namely that the man who is truely a Christian having not only the profession but the new nature temper and spirit of the Gospel though being a man and so incompassed with temptations and difficulties as every one is in this world he cannot avoid all surreptions yet the powerfull principles of Christianity setled in his heart will not fail to preserve him at least ordinarily from rebellion and wilfull disobedience AND this way of interpreting these and the like passages of the New Testament is strongly countenanced by what we find Luk. 1. 6. where it is said of Zachary and Elizabeth that they were both of them righteous before God walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless That is they were sincerely good and vertuous persons their hearts were principled with the fear and love of God and though they were not without the errours and failings incident to humanity yet they strictly made Conscience of their duty and did not deliberately depart from the way of God's commandments And that passage concerning David 1 King 15. 5. seems sufficient to put the matter out of doubt where it is said David did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord and turned not aside from any thing he commanded him all the days of his life save only in the matter of Vriah the Hittite Notwithstanding the Scripture reckons up several failings of David his passion for Absalom his numbring the People his approaching too near the Lord 's Annointed when he cut off the skirt of Saul's Garment for which his heart smote him his despondency
if not to make them truely good yet certainly to make them less evil And being thus general as I have shewed may be well called a third Talent of mankind 4. BUT I add in the fourth and last place God hath so far consulted the good of mankind and is so open handed to his Children that besides all the aforesaid he frequently vouchsafes them some intimations or other of his mind to enable them the better to understand their duty and pursue their happiness AS for such as are placed in his Church under the full and certain light of revelation that are pressed upon by the mighty motives of unspeakable rewards and punishments in another world and these inculcated upon them by a publick ministry maintained by God for that purpose and above all are under the vital operations of his Holy Spirit exciting their minds fortifying their apprehensions fixing their attentions and giving them as it were a view of the transactions in the other world This must be acknowledged a peculiar favour and not common to all as the other were yet if we consider well we shall find that the advantages of God's Church do in some respects extend beyond the pale of it for as we see the Sun affords some light to those upon whose Horizon he doth not appear so we find that Pythagoras and several of the industrious and vertuously disposed Pagans reaped great benefit by those Oracles that were not given to them but to the Nation of the Jews And we may easily discover a great improvement in the moral discourses of Pagans since our Saviour came into the World divine light reflecting as it were from the Church upon which the direct beams thereof fell to the rest of the World Besides which it is no way probable that a good God should so far neglect so great a part of mankind as was called Pagan as to afford them no intimations of his mind towards the bettering of their reasonings in those matters of importance which he principally created them for In respect to which Tully spake admirably Nemo unquam vir magnus sine afflatu divino That there was never a great and brave man in the World but had some impulses and inspirations from the Almighty And indeed when I seriously consider either the divine Attributes or the experience of men I see great reason to doubt whether ever there was that man that had not more or less some such kind of assistances from his Maker till he himself rendered himself unworthy thereof Which brings me to the second thing I promised to speak to Viz. 2. SECONDLY how vice and dissolution of manners spend and exhaust this stock God hath set mankind up withall and of this the account is very easy For in the first place it is plain that habits and facility of doing any thing are procured by frequent and repeated acts and as the more vertuous actions of any kind a man doth the more prone he is to doe so again so every vicious action which a man commits begets a propension and inclination to others of the same kind When a man hath used to subdue his passions to his reason they easily submit and bear the yoke but he that hath accustomed them to their full scope they swell and rage and will not easily be brought into order and this will be true although those two men were supposed to have equally violent passions naturally be it of what kind soever Custome we call a second nature but it hath the power to supplant the first and original nature putting new propensions as another bias upon the Spirit By which we see clearly how vice destroys the first talent of mankind that freedom which God set them up withall Which point gained affords us resolution of another question though not of this place namely hereby we see how it comes to pass that good and vertuous men rejoyce in the easiness and delights of a vertuous course when contrariwise evil and vicious men complain of impotency and pretend the horrible difficulties thereof for these contrary effects proceed from the same cause and shew the mighty power of custome on both sides AND then for the second talent of natural reason or understanding nothing is more plain then that vicious practices blind the eyes of the mind partly as the steams of lust and passion send up a cloud which dulls the higher regions of the Soul partly also as luxury commonly brings a stupid slothfullness upon the Spirits of men that they chuse rather to bury that talent then be at the trouble to employ it but principally as all wickedness prejudices men making it become their seeming interest to shut their eyes lest they should behold their shame or make the prosecution of that more uneasie and uncomfortable to them from which they are resolved not to desist And for that faculty which is properly called Conscience we have intimated already that the frequent injuries done to it render it callous and insensible AS for that which we called a third Talent namely the testimony which God in his providence usually gives to vertue and the discountenance to vice these the vicious man either Atheistically imputes to blind chance because he observes some exceptions and irregularities in the method of their dispensation or else turns the arguments God affords him of gratitude into grounds of security or his fatherly chastisements into occasion of fullenness and desperation or one way or other renders this talent unusefull BUT if it please God to do something extraordinary and awaken him by a peculiar address to him he doth as the Romans when Petilius fortunately digged up and brought to light the sacred Writings of Numa Pompilius which probably would have put them upon a better devotion then they were willing to comply with The Consul swore the Books were Dissolvendarum Religionum q. d. not calculated for the present Age whereupon they commanded them to be burnt So the sinner stubbornly opposes the light which would reproach his practice and disturb his security And thus we have seen what stock God sets men up with and how they mis-spend it 4. BUT to go on with the Parable the next news we hear of the Prodigal is that having spent all his patrimony in careless and riotous living and a famine succeeding his profusion he is now reduced to extremity and knows not whither to betake himself wherefore having no other choice he is constrained to join himself to a Citizen of that Country that is to become a slave It was wisely and truely said by one of the Ancients that frugality and temperance were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 homebred Philosophy or the most cheap and compendious way of attaining all moral wisedom and happiness for they make life easie and temptation little they prevent care and shut out fear they raise the spirit of a man by bestowing on him a kind of self-sufficiency such a man doth not maliciously despise
most frequent and most remarkable instances of such conversions In the Old Testament we have Manasses who was an Idolater a Witch and did evil in the sight of the Lord above all the abominations of the Amorites who seem to have been the most profligate people in the world and yet became at last a true penitent a holy and a vertuous person In the New Testament to omit St. Paul who saith of himself that from a blasphemer a persecutour and the chief of sinners he became an exemplary Christian and a zealous Apostle and Preacher of the Doctrine which before he destroyed We have great numbers of the most obstinate and wicked Jews converted and no less of Romans Corinthians Ephesians and of all other Cities and Countries who had grown old and hardened in a course of sin but became new and holy men Particularly the Apostle assures us of the Corinthians That they had been Fornicators Idolaters Adulterers Effeminate Thieves Covetous Drunkards And yet were washed were sanctified were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God 1 Cor. 6. 9 10 11. It is not therefore impossible saith the sinner but I may also recover my self out of the snares of the Devil I found it in my power to chuse evil why may I not hope to be able to chuse good nothing determined or necessitated me heretofore to sin why may I not then cast off the yoke of custome and by the grace of God apply my self to my duty This is a second consideration which inflames the Penitent to a resolution of amendment which when he hath in earnest entered upon he finds 3. AS his third inducement not onely to be possible but also easy at least far beyond what he heretofore imagined It was perhaps not an extenuating but a just reflection which the Historian makes upon all the famous exploits of Alexander the Great in Asia and in the Indies which had swelled his name to such a bulk Primus ausus est vana contemnere that it was not so much his more then humane courage or conduct which gave him those successes but that he had the luck or the sagacity to see through and despise the pageantry and empty shew of force and formidableness which those soft and luxurious Nations were only furnished with So it is in this case he that can but once despise those Ludibria oculorum those scare-crows and phantastical Ideas which men's own fear and cowardise represent to them he will presently find the business of Religion easy and expedite and that it is but resolving generously and the thing is done The way of vertue though through the folly of men it be an unfrequented path yet is it no sad and uncomfortable way no man abridges himself the delight of life by becoming vertuous no just contentment is denied him no power or so much as passion he hath that is altogether denied its proper satisfaction There is no inhumane austerity required of us no contradiction to our reason or violence to our nature imposed upon us God is no hard Pharaoh that seeks to break us with bitter bondage requiring the tale of bricks without straw He doth not bid us continue in the fire and not burn or require us to converse with the occasions of sin and escape the pollution but only to moderate our desires to mind our selves to set our intentions right and in a word to resolve to doe what we can both to avoid the occasion and to escape the infection AND as for that great bug-bear Custome why may we not break the fetters of our own making and dissolve an habit of our own beginning Sin it self was weak and timorous and bashfull at first but it got strength by time and by degrees and in the same manner it is to be supplanted oppose beginnings of good to beginnings of evil and an habit will be obtained and we shall confront one custome with another He that goeth forth weeping bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again rejoycing and bringing his sheaves with him THE way of vertue is therefore easy because it is recommended by our own reason though sense oppose it for the present let us be true to the former and the latter must and will give way A Law enacted by our own consent uses to find a ready and chearfull compliance that which is voted within us and carried by the free suffrage of our minds surely can never be accounted harsh and difficult and such are all the laws of vertue the rules thereof are convenient for the community suitable to our own natures and as fit for us to consent to as for God to enact ALL the opposition which the Devil or the flesh can make to the determination of our minds will quickly cease if we stand firm to our selves reason is as able to restrain sense as that is to bewitch and fascinate our minds or at least if we stop our ears we shall avoid all its charms charm it never so cunningly Besides all the importunities of the flesh will from such time as they begin to be denied grow sensibly weaker and weaker And for the Devil there is nothing so much incourages his attempts as our irresolution and feeble opposition he is both a more proud and a more cunning enemy then to endure too many repulses without hopes of success He knows well enough he cannot force us and if he cannot corrupt us will not long labour in vain This the Apostle St. James assures us of Resist the Devil and he will flee from you St. James 4. 7. ABOVE all the Holy Spirit of God will not fail to set in with us and make all easy to us if we cease to resist and quench his motions How that worketh in and upon us is not easy to discover for As the wind bloweth where it listeth and we hear the sound thereof but know not whence it cometh nor whither it goeth so is every one that is born of the Spirit notwithstanding we are assured that God will give his Holy Spirit to them that ask it and that that Spirit hath a mighty influence upon us without doing any violence to us and that its aids are incomparably greater then the Devils opposition For greater is he that is in us then he that is in the world and this is our great incouragement to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling because God worketh in us to will and to doe of his good pleasure THE mischief of all is therefore our want of resolution that we do but dally and trifle in this great business and hence all the difficulty arises Quo minùs timoris eo minùs fermè periculi Cowards run the greatest dangers in war and irresolute men find the most opposition and the greatest difficulty in a course of vertue Did we but collect our selves we should quickly find the face of things altered and all discouragements vanish ALL
told us shall never be forgiven And that sin it self whatsoever it consists in is only upon this account unpardonable because it hath a finally impenitent temper joyned with it otherwise were it possible that such a sinner should repent there would be no doubt of his pardon but bating that peculiar case there is no sin but God hath pardoned and will pardon I will not take upon me to say which were the greatest sins that ever were committed by mankind but I will instance in two that must needs be acknowledged to have been very great which yet have obtained pardon and they are the sin of our first Parents and the sin of the Jews in crucifying our Saviour IN the former of these there was the breach of a known Law and that so newly given as that it could not be forgotten and it was also an easy and reasonable Law God having allowed them all the Trees in the Garden and laid an interdict only upon that one and it was no hard matter to have denied themselves that for God's sake especially considering they came newly out of his hands and saw so freshly the display of his power and wisedom in the Creation of the World and had so many and great instances of his goodness towards themselves besides they had as yet no vitiated faculties nor so much as one example of sin before them but that of the Devils which they had seen to be most severely vindicated It was a hard thing to be first in the transgression and a bold thing to venture to provoke God and to be the first instance of sin to all posterity they had the concern of all mankind upon them as who they knew must stand or fall with them and having frequent tokens of God's presence with them to sin under his eye and to hearken to the suggestions of a vile Beast the Serpent against God was prodigiously strange and yet they did it and God was pleased to pardon them IN the latter of the instances namely the Jews crucifying our Saviour besides the greatness of the Person against whom they sinned putting to death the Lord of life and glory there was designed malice perjury and subornation contumely towards an holy Person ingratitude towards one that had done them all the good they were capable of there was contradiction to the plainest evidence of miracles of all kinds and to the conviction of their own Consciences Notwithstanding all which the same St. Peter who Acts 2. 23. had charged them home in these words Ye men of Israel have with wicked hands crucified and slain Jesus of Nazareth a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs which God by him did in the midst of you as ye your selves know c. yet in the 38. Verse he exhorts the same men to repentance and to be baptized that they may receive remission of sins and the singular favour of the gift of the Holy Ghost TO these and several other instances of great sins which might easily be added we may cast in for the greater evidence of the vastness of the divine mercy that he pardons not only single acts of sin how hainous soever but long courses and habits of sin and those of several natures and kinds as in Manasses and in the Publicans and Harlots but that we may rise higher yet in admiration of the divine clemency we observe 2. IN the second place that he pardons also relapsed sinners They have a saying Non licèt in bello his peccare that the first faults in war are severely vindicated because there all errours are fatal and searce leave a capacity of being repeated And there are some relations so near and intimate and their ligaments so nice and curious that a breach in them can never be repaired to knit again But the relation of a Father and the goodness of a God leave always room for pardon Nay further They say saith the Prophet Jeremiah if a man put away his Wife and she goe from him and become another man's shall he return to her again But thou O Israel hast plaid the harlot with many lovers yet return again unto me saith the Lord Jer. 2. 1 2. § VI. The doctrine of the Navatians carried a great breadth with it in the Primitive times which denied repentance to those that sinned after Baptism and for that reason it is thought many holy men in those days deferred their Baptism as long as they could that they might not defile their garments but goe from that washing unspotted out of the world The opinion seemed to proceed from extraordinary purity and holiness and therefore as I said prevailed much and had a great reputation in those times and it seems it took its rise from a mistake of a passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews Chap. 6. 4. However it was damned by the most learned and holy Fathers of the Church and particularly St. Basil and Gr. Nazianzen call it a damnable doctrine and destructive of Souls in that it discouraged and kept men off from repentance which God is always ready to admit of if it be sincere and such as we have before described IT is true which Clemens of Alexandria hath said that to make a common practice of sinning and then pretending repentance as if we would give God and the Devil their turns is an argument both of an impenitent and unbelieving temper for as he saith afterwards These frequent repentances as it were of course betray rather an intention of sinning again then any design of leaving it and therefore find no acceptance with God And it is also certain that a man that hath frequently relapsed having thereby exceedingly multiplied his guilt must needs feel very bitter pangs and sharp remorse when he doth return and will be ever after very apt to question his own sincerity and which is worse it is to be feared that like as it is with bones which have been often out and set again they will be very apt to slip awry so this person will be justly looked upon as in great danger and therefore hath a necessity of extraordinary watchfullness over himself But notwithstanding all this if such a man after several falls and slips shall stand right and firm at last and demonstrate the truth of his now penitent state by the following course of an holy life there is no question to be made of his acceptance with a mercifull God For God doth not proceed with men upon such terms as we do our passions are stirred many times and the provocation is too great for us to be able to concoct but he is pure mind and reason hath no boiling passion no revenge seeks only the good of his Creatures and so they become at last capable of his favour and blessing he is contented and hath his end Besides he that hath made it our duty that as often as our Brother offends against us and repents so often we should forgive
address of the Holy Spirit which we are considering of these are only the motions or visits which he vouchsafes to make pendente lite or whilst it is yet undetermined to whom men will ultimately belong That therefore which we are concerned about is the peculiar priviledge of very good men such as have cherished the motions entertained the visits and complied with the intimations of the Holy Spirit and when it is come to that from thenceforth he doth not visit them in transitu only or call upon them but resides and inhabits with them and becomes as it were a constant principle a Soul of their Souls in short they are the temples of the Holy Ghost THIS I take to be that which our Saviour means Jo. 14. 23. If any man love me he will keep my word and my Father will love him and we will come unto him and make our abode with him and that also of St. John in the name of our Saviour Rev. 3. 20. Behold I stand at the door and knock which phrase signifies the previous and more ordinary motions of his grace And if any man open to me i. e. if men attend to my admonitions and invitations and break off their custom of sin which barrs the door of their Souls against me then I will come in and sup with him c. i. e. then I will be a familiar guest or inhabitant with him and this is both interpreted and confirmed by St. Paul 1 Cor. 3. 16. Know ye not that ye are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you i. e. being sanctified and made fit for the residence of that heavenly Guest he hath taken possession of you as his house and temple and more expresly yet by St. John 1 Ep. 3 24. He that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him and he in him and hereby we know that he abideth with us by his Spirit which he hath given us § II. NOW this inhabitation or residence of the Holy Spirit is called a Seal and men are said to be sealed by the Holy Spirit because as seals use to denote propriety so God hereby marks out as it were such men for his own i. e. as those that he hath a peculiar concern about those that have an interest in him and he in them and this is of wonderfull comfort and advantage especially in these four respects 1. THE Spirit thus inhabiting men gives them a title not only to God's care and providence but to an inheritance of Sons to a participation of that unspeakable felicity wherewith himself is eternally happy and glorious So the Apostle concludes in the forementioned place Eph. 1. 13 14. After ye believed ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise which is the earnest of our inheritance untill the time of the purchased possession q. d. We are hereby assured of Heaven and glory hereafter though we are not yet in possession of it or this is the pledge of our adoption upon which the inheritance is intailed Hence it is that the same Apostle Rom. 8. 11. makes this an assured argument of our resurrection But if the Spirit of him that raised Jesus from the dead dwell in you he that raised Jesus from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you q. d. You cannot lie under the power of death and the bonds of the grave but God will assert you to life and immortality because you have a principle of life the Holy Spirit in you which will as surely revive you as it raised Jesus from the dead for by his residence in you you are marked out as belonging to God and thereby he hath taken possession of you for himself WHEN God owned the Tabernacle amongst the Jews built by Moses and after that the Temple built by Solomon and solemnly dedicated to him for his House or Palace wherein to dwell amongst that people it pleased him as it were to take livery and seisin by the cloud which on the behalf of the Divine Majesty hovered over them and was therefore not improperly called by the Jews the Shekinah or dwelling presence and God was said to dwell between the Cherubims because there this symbol of the divine presence subsisted And as in the Christian Church all those miracles which the primitive Christians were inabled to perform were principally to assure their minds that God owned them and although they were destitute of humane help and persecuted both by Jews and Gentiles yet God was with them in which respect the Holy Ghost is called the Comforter so often by our Saviour I say in those miraculous effusions of the Holy Spirit the cloud as it were sate over the mercy-seat in the Christian Church which was now departed from the Temple of the Jews and denoted the collection of believers both of Jews and Gentiles united under Christ Jesus to be now God's peculiar houshold and family So also to all holy men in all Ages God is present by his Spirit by which they become Temples of the Holy Ghost upon which the Apostle pronounces peremptorily Rom. 8. 9. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his Which I understand in this sense q. d. He is not arrived at the excellent state of Christianity that hath not experience of the residence of God's Holy Spirit in him ONLY this is to be remembred that this residence of the Holy Spirit in good men which we speak of is not to be judged of by miraculous effects nor are such to be expected now because those were proper only for the first Ages when whilst the Church was under persecuting Emperors and in its infancy God thought fit by such prodigious displays of his power and presence to make all the world see his concern for it and that as I said before he had taken possession of it but ordinarily and especially in the case of private Christians the presence of the Spirit with them discovers it self by such effects as these following For 2. THE Spirit of God though he doth not work miracles now yet doth he not meerly take up his residence in the hearts of holy men but actuates them prompts them forward in all good actions helps and strengthens them in their duty and inflames their resolution and zeal in all brave and generous enterprizes in respect of which we are said to be lead by the Spirit to live and walk in the Spirit Which is not so to be understood as if what good was done the Spirit did it for men nor much less as if he hurried men on whensoever they did well and so for defect of such motion were liable to bear the blame of their irregularities when they did evil for as on the one side he never moves but to that which is certainly good and agreeable to the standing rules of Scripture and natural reason so neither on the other hand when he incites to any such thing doth he overpower
the entertainments of sense are to us now as the pleasures of a man are beyond those of a beast or the faculty of reason is above the powers of the Body And although it be too observable that in this world men are commonly more taken with the latter then with the former it is not because this is greater then that or comparable to it but because the generality of men have drowned themselves in the Body and so lost all relish of intellectual pleasures therefore when the Body is refined and reason hath recovered thereby its just pre-eminence and become a true test and citerion of good and evil there will an unspeakable pleasure flow in this way NOR will the delight of the will in the close embraces of true and indubitable goodness be less ravishing then that of the mind in the apprehension of truth forasmuch as the former is as natural to and as peculiarly the entertainment of the one as the latter is of the other faculty and must most certainly afford so much a greater pleasure as he will which hath a kind of infinity in it self must consequently be able to take in more largely of the pleasure of its object And now that the man is delivered from the juggling and sophistry of Sathan and the false light of sense and carnal interest so that he apprehends true good in its native beauty it cannot be but he must be more taken with it then ever he was heretofore with the empty and guilded Pageantry of corporeal delights for it cannot be doubted but God hath taken care to reconcile every man's duty with his happiness and made that best for man which he doth most peculiarly require of him and every man will find it so when once temptation being removed he singly and sincerely applies himself to the experiment AND then for Conscience or the comfortable reflexion upon what hath been done well and vertuously I need say the less of that in regard every man in this life hath experience of the happy effects of it But alas in this world oftentimes melancholy of Body so much abates the comforts of it and either dark thoughts of God or the just sense of our own demerits by many miscarriages in time past do so much either disturb its reasonings or weaken its conclusions that few men know rightly the force of it and fewer live under the constant consolations thereof But when men come to Heaven and see God a God of love and goodness find their sincerity accepted and their sins done away have no cloud of ignorance nor melancholick panick fear upon them then they recount with triumph all the difficulties they have conquered the temptations they have resisted the afflictions they have sustained the self-denial they have used the vertuous choice they have made the manly prosecution they have performed the brave examples they have left behind them and the many evil ones they despised and escaped in short the good they have done and the evil they have eschewed and by all together the demonstration they have given of sincere love and loyalty to God which affords them a continual feast within themselves and then rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory AND then in the last place since as we have shewed the Body it self shall be raised again and glorified the meaning is not surely that it shall only become an accession to the felicity of the Soul or be happy by reflection only but doubtless all such bodily powers as are fit to be restored in this glorified state of a spiritual Body shall be accommodated with their proper and peculiar entertainments that so as that hath been denied and mortified in subserviency to the interest of the Soul in its former state it may now have its amends here And whereas it is certain some of the more gross powers of the Body shall be laid aside in this renovation of things because our Saviour hath told us that in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are as the Angels of God Mat. 22. 30. and the Apostle S. Paul expresses himself thus 1 Cor. 6. 13. Meats for the belly and the belly for meats but God shall destroy both it and them It seems therefore not improbable that as some of those offices shall cease so others more generous and excellent shall then be discovered in their stead And for all those that are restored with the Body they shall not be in vain but have their use their objects and their delights The Eyes shall probably please themselves with delightfull prospects the Ears be entertained with harmonies there shall be a kindly and delicious motion of the Spirits the whole Fabrick shall shine with light and beauty and shall have a wonderfull agility and vigorous motion so as to be able to mount the Heavens as we know the Body of our Saviour did after his Resurrection All this and whatsoever else is good or desirable or glorious or possible shall be the portion of good men in the other world TO which add that as that happiness shall be of the whole man and of all his powers and capacities and with the highest gratifications so that it may be meer sincere and perfect happiness indeed there shall be no allay or mixture of any thing that may give the least trouble or disturbance there shall be all the instances of joy all the ingredients of felicity and nothing else to the contrary No sad circumstance to imbitter his delights nothing to divert him or call him off from his enjoyments no weariness to interrupt his prosecutions nor satiety to make the fruition loathsom and tedious no fear or solicitude to abate his delight no temptation to disturb or molest him no danger of excesses to check and restrain him Here the former Prodigal may now swim in the highest and most generous pleasures without riot or intemperance without danger of exhausting either himself or them in a word here there is no fatal interchanges and vicissitudes of good and evil bitter and sweet as is usual in this world but simple unmixt constant joy and happiness IT was a rare and unparalleled happiness of Quintus Metellus of whom it is said that he had such a benign gale of prosperity constantly attended him that in all the tedious and perillous voyage of a very long life he never met with storm nor calm rock nor shelf but arrived at his Port in peace full of days and laden with blessings For saith the Historian he lived in the greatest honour and affluence having had the glory of being Consul the highest Magistracy of being General of a Roman Army the highest trust and of a triumph the greatest honour and felicity He lived to see his three Sons all arrive at the highest dignities and preferments that magnificent State of Rome could yield them his three Daughters all married to the best Families and by all these he had a numerous and hopefull progeny of