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
Father and the influences of the Holy Ghost our souls are not onely recovered from the state of flesh and reduced back to the intirenesse of animall operations but they are heightned into spirit and transformâ—d into a new nature And this is a new Article and now to be considered S. Hierom tels of the Custome of the Empire When a Tyrant was overcome they usâ—d to break the head of his Statues and upon the same Trunk to set the head of the Conquerour and so it passed wholly for the new Prince So it is in the kingdom of Grace As soon as the Tyrant sin is overcome and a new heart is put into us or that we serve under a new head instantly we have a new Name given us and we are esteemed a new Creation and not onely changed in manners but we have a new nature within us even a third part of essentiall constitution This may seem strange and indeed it is so and it is one of the great mysteriousnesses of the Gospel Every man naturally consists of soul and body but every Christian man that belongs to Christ hath more For he hath body and soul and spirit My Text is plain for it If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his and by Spirit is not meant onely the graces of God and his gifts enabling us to do holy things there is more belongs to a good man then so But as when God made man he made him after his own image and breath'd into him the spirit of life and he was made in animam viventem into a living soul then he was made a man So in the new creation Christ by whom God made both the worlds intends to conform us to his image and he hath given us the spirit of adoption by which we are made sons of God and by the spirit of a new life we are made new creatures capable of a new state intitled to another manner of duration enabled to do new and greater actions in order to higher ends we have new affections new understandings new wils Vetera transierunt ecce omnia nova facta sunt All things are become new And this is called the seed of God when it relates to the principle and cause of this production but the thing that is produced is a spirit and that is as much in nature beyond a soul as a soul is beyond a body This great Mystery I should not utter but upon the greatest authority in the world and from an infallible Doctor I mean S. Paul who from Christ taught the Church more secrets then all the whole Colledge besides And the very God of peace sanctifie you wholly and I pray God that your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blamelesse unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are not sanctified wholly nor preserved in safety unlesse besides our souls and bodies our spirit also be kept blamelesse This distinction nice and infinitely above humane reason but the word of God saith the same Apostle is sharper then a two-edged sword piercing even to the dividing asunder the soul and the spirit and that hath taught us to distinguish the principle of a new life from the principle of the old the celestiall from the naturall and thus it is This spirit as I now discourse of it is a principle infused into us by God when we become his children whereby we live the life of Grace and understand the secrets of the Kingdom and have passions and desires of things beyond and contrary to our naturall appetites enabling us not onely to sobriety which is the duty of the body not onely to justice which is the rectitude of the soul but to such a sanctity as makes us like to God * For so saith the Spirit of God Be ye holy as I am be pure be perfect as your heavenly Father is pure as he is perfect which because it cannot be a perfection of degrees it must be in similitudine naturae in the likenesse of that nature which God hath given us in the new birth that by it we might resemble his excellency and holinesse And this I conceive to be the meaning of S. Peter According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain to life and godlinesse that is to this new life of godlinesse through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and vertue whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises that by these you might be partakers of the Divine nature so we read it But it is something mistaken it is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Divine nature for Gods nature is indivisible and incommunicable but it is spoken participativè or per analogiant partakers of a Divine nature that is of this new and God-like nature given to every person that serves God whereby he is sanctified and made the childe of God and framed into the likenesse of Christ. The Greeks generally call this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a gracious gift an extraordinary superaddition to nature not a single gift in order to single purposes but an universall principle and it remains upon all good men during their lives and after their death and is that white stone spoken of in the Revelation and in it a new name written which no man knoweth but he that hath it And by this Gods sheep at the day of judgement shall be discerned from goats If their spirits be presented to God pure and unblameable this great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this talent which God hath given to all Christians to improve in the banks of grace and of Religion if they bring this to God increased and grown up to the fulnesse of the measure of Christ for it is Christs Spirit and as it is in us it is called the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ then we shall be acknowledged for sons and our adoption shall passe into an eternall inheritance in the portion of our elder Brother I need not to apply this Discourse The very mystery it self is in the whole world the greatest engagement of our duty that is imaginable by the way of instrument and by the way of thankfulnesse Quisquis magna dedit voluit sibi magna rependi He that gives great things to us ought to have great acknowledgements and Seneca said concerning wise men That he that doth benefit to others hides those benefits as a man layes up great treasures in the earth which he must never see with his eyes unlesse a great occasion forces him to dig the graves and produce that which he buried but all the while the man was hugely rich and he had the wealth of a great relation so it is with God and us For this huge benefit of the Spirit which God gives us is for our good deposited in our souls not made for forms and ostentation not to be looked upon or serve little ends but growing in the secret of our
infirmity but when it wants the grace of God or is mastered with passâ—ons and sinfull appetites and that infirmity is the state of unregeneration 3. The violence or strength of a temptation is not sufficient to excuse an action or to make it accountable upon the stock of a pitiable and innocent infirmity if it leaves the understanding still able to judge because a temptation cannot have any proper strengths but from our selves and because we have in us a principle of basenesse which this temptation meets and onely perswades me to act because I love it Joseph met with a temptation as violent and as strong as any man and it is certain there are not many Christians but would fall under it and call it a sin of infirmity since they have been taught so to abuse themselves by sowing fig-leaves before their nakednesse but because Joseph had a strength of God within him the strength of chastity therefore it could not at all prevail upon him Some men cannot by any art of hell be tempted to be drunk others can no more resist an invitation to such a meeting then they can refuse to die if a dagger were drunk with their heart blood because their evil habits made them weak on that part And some man that is fortified against revenge it may be will certainly fall under a temptation to uncleannesse for every temptation is great or small according as the man is and a good word will certainly lead some men to an action of folly while another will not think ten thousand pound a considerable argument to make him tell one single lie against his duty or his conscience 4. No habituall sin that is no sin that returns constantly or frequently that is repented of and committed again and still repented of and then again committed no such sin is excusable with a pretence of infirmity Because that sin is certainly noted and certainly condemned and therefore returns not because of the weaknesse of nature but the weaknesse of grace the principle of this is an evil spirit an habituall aversation from God a dominion and empire of sin and as no man for his inclination and aptnesse to the sins of the flesh is to be called carnall if he corrects his inclinations and turns them into vertues so no man can be called spirituall for his good wishes and apt inclinations to goodnesse if these inclinations passe not into acts and these acts into habits and holy customs and walkings and conversation with God But as natural concupiscence corrected becomes the matter of vertue so these good inclinations and condemnings of our sin if they be ineffective and end in sinfull actions are the perfect signes of a reprobate and unregenerate estate The sum is this An animal man a man under the law a carnall man for as to this they are all one is sold under sin he is a servant of corruption he falls frequently into the same sin to which he is tempted he commends the Law he consents to it that it is good he does not commend sin he does some little things against it but they are weak and imperfect his lust is stronger his passions violent and unmortified his habits vitious his customs sinfull and he lives in the regions of sin and dies and enters into its portion But a spirituall man a man that is in the state of grace who is born anew of the Spirit that is regenerate by the Spirit of Christ he is led by the Spirit he lives in the Spirit he does the works of God cheerfully habitually vigorously and although he sometimes slips yet it is but seldom it is in small instances his life is such as he cannot pretend to be justified by works and merit but by mercy and the faith of Jesus Christ yet he never sins great sins If he does he is for that present falne from Gods favour and though possibly he may recover and the smaller or seldomer the sin is the sooner may be his restitution yet for the present I say he is out of Gods favour But he that remains in the grace of God sins not by any deliberate consultive knowing act he is incident to such a surprize as may consist with the weaknesse and judgement of a good man but whatsoever is or must be considered if it cannot passe without consideration it cannot passe without sin and therefore cannot enter upon him while he remains in that state For he that is in Christ in him the body is dead by reason of sin and the Gospel did not differ from the Law but that the Gospel gives grace and strength to do whatsoever it commands which the Law did not and the greatnesse of the promise of eternall life is such an argument to them that consider it that it must needs be of force sufficient to perswade a man to use all his faculties and all his strength that he may obtain it God exacted all upon this stock God knew this could do every thing Nihil non in hoc praesumpsit Deus said one This will make a satyr chast and Silenus to be sober and Dives to be charitable and Simon Magus himself to despise reputation and Saul to turn from a Persecutor to an Apostle For since God hath given us reason to choose and a promise to exchange for our temperance and faith and charity and justice for these I say happinesse exceeding great happinesse that we shall be Kings that we shall reigne with God with Christ with all the holy Angels for ever in felicities so great that we have not now capacities to understand it our heart is not big enough to think it there cannot in the world be a greater inducement to engage us a greater argument to oblige us to do our duty God hath not in heaven a bigger argument it is not possible any thing in the world should be bigger which because the Spirit of God hath revealed to us if by this strength of his we walk in his wayes and be ingrafted into his stock and bring forth his fruits the fruits of the Spirit then we are in Christ and Christ in us then we walk in the spirit and the Spirit dwels in us and our portion shall be there where Christ by the Spirit maketh intercession for us that is at the right hand of his Father for ever and ever Amen Sermon III. THE DESCENDING AND ENTAILED CVRSE Cut off Exodus 20. part of the 5. verse I the Lord thy God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me 6. And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my Commandements IT is not necessary that a Common-wealth should give pensions to Oratours to disswade men from running into houses infected with the plague or to intreat them to be out of love with violent torments or to create in men evil opinions concerning famine or painfull deaths Every man hath
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
that she might for ever be so far distant from a vice that she might onely see it and loath it but never tast of it so much as to be put to her choice whether she would be vertuous or no. God intending to secure this soul to himself would not suffer the follies of the world to seize upon her by way of too neer a trial or busie temptation 3. She was married young and besides her businesses of religion seemed to be ordained in the providence of God to bring to this Honourable family a part of a fair fortune and to leave behinde her a fairer issue worth ten thousand times her portion and as if this had been all the publick businesse of her life when she had so far served Gods ends God in mercy would also serve hers and take her to an early blessednesse 4. In passing through which line of providence she had the art to secure her eternal interest by turning her condition into duty expressing her duty in the greatest eminency of a vertuous prudâ—nt and rare affection that hath been known in any example I will not give her so low a testimony as to say onely that she was chast She was a person of that severity modesty and close religion as to that particular that she was not capable of uncivil temptation and you might as well have suspected the sun to smell of the poppy that he looks on as that she could have been a person apt to be sullyed by the breath of a foul question 5. But that which I shall note in her is that which I would have exemplar to all Ladies and to all women She had a love so great for her Lord so intirely given up to a dear affection that she thought the same things and loved the same loves and hated according to the same enmities and breathed in his soul and lived in his presence and languished in his absence and all that she was or did was onely for and to her Dearest Lord Si gaudet si flet si tacit hunc loquitur Coenat propinat poscit negat innuit unus Naevius est and although this was a great enamel to the beauty of her soul yet it might in some degrees be also a reward to the vertue of her Lord For she would often discourse it to them that conversed with her that he would improve that interest which he had in her affection to the advantages of God and of religion and she would delight to say that he called her to her devotions he encouraged her good inclinations he directed her piety he invited her with good books and then she loved religion which she saw was not onely pleasing to God and an act or state of duty but pleasing to her Lord and an act also of affection and conjugal obedience and what at first she loved the more forwardly for his sake in the using of religion left such relishes upon her spirit that she found in it amability enough to make her love it for its own So God usually brings us to him by instruments of nature and affections and then incorporates us into his inheritance by the more immediate relishes of Heaven and the secret things of the Spirit He only was under God the light of her eyes and the cordiall of her spirits and the guide of her actions and the measure of her affections till her affections swelled up into a religion and then it could go no higher but was confederate with those other duties which made her dear to God Which rare combination of duty and religion I choose to expresse in the words of Solomon She forsook not the guide of her youth nor brake the Covenant of her God 6. As she was a rare wife so she was an excellent Mother For in so tender a constitution of spirit as hers was and in so great a kindnesse towards her children there hath seldom been seen a stricter and more curious care of their persons their deportment their nature their disposition their learning and their customs And if ever kindnesse and care did contest and make parties in her yet her care and her severity was ever victorious and she knew not how to do an ill turn to their severer part by her more tender and forward kindnesse And as her custome was she turned this also into love to her Lord. For she was not onely diligent to have them bred nobly and religiously but also was carefull and solicitous that they should be taught to observe all the circumstances inclinations the desires and wishes of their Father as thinking that vertue to have no good circumstances which was not dressed by his copy and ruled by his lines and his affections And her prudence in the managing her children was so singular and rare that when ever you mean to blesse this family and pray a hearty and a profitable prayer for it beg of God that the children may have those excellent things which she designed to them and provided for them in her heart and wishes that they may live by her purposes and may grow thither whither she would fain have brought them All these were great parts of an excellent religion as they concerned her greatest temporal relations 7. But if we examine how she demeaned her self towards God there also you will finde her not of a common but of an exemplar piety She was a great reader of Scripture confining her self to great portions every day which she read not to the purposes of vanity and impertinent curiosities not to seem knowing or to become talking not to expound and Rule but to teach her all her duty to instruct her in the knowledge and love of God and of her Neighbours to make her more humble and to teach her to despise the world and all its gilded vanities and that she might entertain passions wholly in designe and order to heaven I have seen a female religion that wholly dwelt upon the face and tongue that like a wanton and an undressed tree spends all its juice in suckers and irregular branches in leafs and gumme and after all such goodly outsides you should never eat an apple or be delighted with the beauties or the perfumes of a hopefull blossome But the religion of this excellent Lady was of another constitution It took root downward in humility and brought forth fruit upward in the substantiall graces of a Christian in charity and justice in chastity and modesty in fair friendships and sweetnesse of society She had not very much of the forms and outsides of godlinesse but she was hugely carefull for the power of it for the morall essentiall and usefull parts such which would make her be not seem to be religious 8. She was a very constant person at her prayers and spent all her time which Nature did permit to her choice in her devotions and reading and meditating and the necessary offices of houshold government every one of which is an action of religion
of the greater concernment that we be curious to hear in order to such purposes which are perfective of the soul and of the spirit and not to dwell in fancy and speculation in pleasures and trifling arrests which continue the soul in its infancy and childhood never letting it go forth into the wisdom and vertues of a man I have read concerning Dionysius of Sicily that being delighted extremely with a Ministrel that sung well and struck his Harp dexterously he promised to give him a great reward and that raised the fancy of the Man and made him play better But when the musick was done and the man waited for his great hope the King dismissed him empty telling him that he should carry away as much of the promised reward as himself did of the Musick and that he had payed him sufficiently with the pleasure of the promise for the pleasure of his song both their ears had been equally delighted and the profit just none at all So it is in many mens hearing Sermons they admire the Preacher and he pleases their ears and neither of them both bear along with them any good and the hearer hath as little good by the sermon as the Preacher by the ayr of the peoples breath when they make a noise and admire and understand not And that also is a second caution I desire all men would take 2. That they may never trouble the affairs of preaching and hearing respectively with admiring the person of any man To admire a preacher is such a reward of his pains or worth as if you should crown a Conqueror with a garland of roses or a Bride with Laurell it is an undecency it is no part of the reward which could be intended for him For though it be a good natur'd folly yet it hath in it much danger for by that means the Preacher may lead his hearers captive and make them servants of a faction or of a lust it makes them so much the lesse to be servants of Christ by how much they call any man Master upon earth it weakens the heart and hands of others it places themselves in a rank much below their proper station changing from hearing the word of God to admiration of the person and faces of men and it being a fault that falls upon the more easie natures and softer understandings does more easily abuse a man and though such a person may have the good fortune to admire a good man and a wise yet it is an ill disposition and makes him liable to every mans abuse Stupidum hominem quâvis oratione percelli said Heraclitus An undiscerning person is apt to be cozened by every oration And besides this That Preacher whom some do admire others will most certainly envy and that also is to be provided against with diligence and you must not admire too forwardly for your own sake lest you fall into the hands of a worse preacher and for his sake whom when you admire you also love for others will be apt to envy him 3. But that must by all men be avoided for envy is the worst counsellour in the world and the worst hearer of a wise discourse I pity those men who live upon flattery and wonder and while they sit at the foot of the Doctors chair stare in his face and cry 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rarely spoken admirably done they are like callow and unfeathered birds gaping perpetually to be fed from anothers mouth and they never come to the knowledge of the truth such a knowledge as is effective and expressed in a prudent and holy life But those men that envy the preacher besides that they are great enemies of the Holy Ghost and are spitefully evil because God is good to him they are also enemies to themselves He that envies the honours or the riches of another envies for his own sake and he would fain be rich with that wealth which sweats in his neighbours coffers but he that envies him that makes good sermons envies himself and is angry because himself may receive the benefit and be improved or delighted or instructed by another He that is apt fondly to admire any mans person must cure himself by considering that the Preacher is Gods minister and servant that he speaks Gods word and does it by the Divine assistance that he hath nothing of his own but sin and imperfection that he does but his duty and that also hardly enough that he is highly answerable for his talent and stands deeply charged with the cure of souls and therefore that he is to be highly esteemed for the work sake not for the person his industry and his charity is to be beloved his ability is to be accounted upon another stock and for it the preacher and the hearer are both to give God thanks but nothing is due to the man for that save onely that it is the rather to be imployed because by it we may better be instructed but if any other reflexion be made upon his person it is next to the sin and danger of Herod and the people when the â—sine Oration was made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with huge fancy the people were pleased and Herod was admired and God was angry and an Angel was sent to strike him with death and with dishonour But the envy against a preacher is to be cured by a contrary discourse and we must remember that he is in the place of God and hath received the gift of God and the aids of the holy Ghost that by his abilities God is glorified and we are instructed and the interests of vertue and holy religion are promoted that by this means God who deserves that all souls should serve him for ever is likely to have a fairer harvest of glory and service and therefore that envie is against him that if we envie because we are not the instrument of this good to others we must consider tha we desire the praise to our selves not to God Admiration of a man supposes him to be inferiour to the person so admired but then he is pleased so to be but envie supposes him as low and he is displeased at it and the envious man is not onely lesse then the other mans vertue but also contrary the former is a vanity but this is a vice that wants wisdom but this wants wisdom and charity too that supposes an absence of some good but this is a direct affliction and calamity 4. And after all this if the preacher be not despised he may proceed cheerfully in doing his duty and the hearer may have some advantages by every Sermon I remember that Homer sayes the woers of Penelope laught at Vlisses because at his return he called for a loaf and did not to shew his gallantry call for swords and spears Vlysses was so wise as to call for that he needed and had it and it did him more good then a whole armory would in his case so is the plainest part
the law was a state of bondage and infirmity as S. Paul largely describes him in the seventh Chapter to the Romanes but he that hath the Spirit is made alive and free and strong and a conquerour over all the powers and violencies of sin such a man resists temptations falls not under the assault of sin returns not to the sin which he last repented of acts no more that errour which brought him to shame and sorrow but he that falls under a crime to which he still hath a strong and vigorous inclination he that acts his sin and then curses it and then is tempted and then sins again and then weeps again and calls himself miserable but still the inchantment hath confined him to that circle this man hath not the Spirit for where the Spirit of God is there is liberty there is no such bondage and a returning folly to the commands of sin But because men deceive themselves with calling this bondage a pitiable and excusable infirmity it will not be uselesse to consider the state of this question more particularly lest men from the state of a pretended infirmity fall into a reall death 1. No great sin is a sin of infirmity or excusable upon that stock But that I may be understood we must know that every sin is in some sense or other a sin of infirmity When a man is in the state of spirituall sicknesse or death he is in a state of infirmity for he is a wounded man a prisoner a slave a sick man weak in his judgement and weak in his reasoning impotent in his passions of childish resolutions great inconstancy and his purposes untwist as easily as the rude conjuncture of uncombining cables in the violence of a Northern tempest and he that is thus in infirmity cannot be excused for it is the aggravation of the state of his sin he is so infirm that he is in a state unable to do his duty Such a man is a servant of sin a slave of the Devil an heir of corruption absolutely under command and every man is so who resolves for ever to avoid such a sin and yet for ever falls under it for what can he be but a servant of sin who fain would avoid it but cannot that is he hath not the Spirit of God within him Christ dwels not in his soul for where the Son is there is liberty and all that are in the Spirit are sons of God and servants of righteousnesse and therefore freed from sin But then there are also sins of infirmity which are single actions intervening seldom in litle instances unavoidable or through a faultlesse ignorance Such as these are alwayes the allays of the life of the best men and for these Christ hath payd and they are never to be accounted to good men save onely to make them more wary and more humble Now concerning these it is that I say No great sin is a sin of excusable or unavoidable infirmity Because whosoever hath received the Spirit of God hath sufficient knowledge of his duty and sufficient strengths of grace and sufficient advertency of minde to avoid such things as do great and apparent violence to piety and religion No man can justly say that it is a sin of infirmity that he was drunk For there are but three causes of every sin a fourth is not imaginable 1. If ignorance cause it the sin is as full of excuse as the ignorance was innocent But no Christian can pretend this to drunkennesse to murder to rebellion to uncleannesse For what Christian is so uninstructed but that he knows Adultery is a sin 2. Want of observation is the cause of many indiscreet and foolish actions Now at this gap many irregularities do enter and escape because in the whole it is impossible for a man to be of so present a spirit as to consider and reflect upon every word and every thought but it is in this case in Gods laws otherwise then in mans the great flies cannot passe thorow without observation little ones do and a man cannot be drunk and never take notice of it or tempt his neighbours wife before he be aware therefore the lesse the instance be the more likely it is to be a sin of infirmity and yet if it be never so little if it be observed then it ceases to be a sin of infirmity 3. But because great crimes cannot pretend to passe undiscernably it follows that they must come in at the door of malice that is of want of Grace in the absence of the Spirit they destroy where ever they come and the man dies if they passe upon him It is true there is flesh and blood in every regenerate man but they do not both rule the flesh is left to tempt but not to prevail And it were a strange condition if both the godly and the ungodly were captives to sin and infallibly should fall into temptation and death without all difference saue onely that the godly sins unwillingly and the ungodly sins willingly But if the same things be done by both and God in both be dishonoured and their duty prevaricated the pretended unwillingnesse is the signe of a greater and a baser slavery and of a condition lesse to be endured For the servitude which is against me is intollerable but if I choose the state of a servant I am free in my minde Libertatis servaveris umbram Si quicquid jubeare velis certain it is that such a person who fain would but cannot choose but commit adultery or drunkennesse is the veriest slave to sin that can be imagined and not at all freed by the Spirit and by the liberty of the sons of God and there is no other difference but that the mistaken good man feels his slavery and sees his chains and his fetters but therefore it is certain that he is because he sees himself to be a slave No man can be a servant of sin and a servant of righteousnesse at the same time but every man that hath the Spirit of God is a servant of righteousnesse and therefore whosoever finde great sins to be unavoidable are in a state of death and reprobation as to the present because they willingly or unwillingly it matters not much whether of the two are servants of sin 2. Sins of infirmity as they are small in their instance so they put on their degree of excusablenesse onely according to the weaknesse or infirmity of a mans understanding So far as men without their own fault understand not their duty or are possessed with weaknesse of principles or are destitute and void of discourse or discerning powers and acts so far if a sin creeps upon them it is as naturall and as free from a law as is the action of a childe But if any thing else be mingled with it if it proceed from any other principle it is criminall and not excused by our infirmity because it is chosen and a mans will hath no
either maliciously or ignorantly and we stand upright in that particular by innocence and sometimes by penitence and all this while our Conscinence is our friend Sometimes our conscience does accuse us unto God and then we stand convict by our own judgement Sometimes if our conscience acquit us yet we are not thereby justified For as Moses accused the Jews so do Christ and his Apostles accuse us not in their personss but by their works and by their words by the thing it self by confronting the laws of Christ and our practises Sometimes the Angels who are the observers of all our works carry up sad tidings to the Court of Heaven against us Thus two Angels were the informers against Sodom but yet these were the last for before that time the cry of their iniquity had sounded loud and sadly in Heaven and all this is the direct and proper effect of his jealousie which sets spies upon all the actions and watches the circumstances and telâ—s the steps and attends the businesses the recreations the publications and retirements of every man and will not suffer a thought to wander but he uses means to correct it's errour and to reduce it to himself For he that created us and daily feeds us he that intreats us to be happy with an opportunity so passionate as if not we but himself were to receive the favour he that would part with his onely Son from his bosome and the embraces of eternity and give him over to a shameful and cursed death for us Cannot but be supposed to love us with a great love and to own us with an intire title and therefore that he would fain secure us to himself with an undivided possession and it cannot but be infinitely reasonable for to whom else should any of us belong but to God Did the world create us Or did lust ever do us any good Did Sathan ever suffer one stripe for our advantage Does not he study all the wayes to ruine us Doe the Sun or the stars preserve us alive Or do we get understanding from the Angels Did ever any joynt of our body knit or our heart ever keep one true minute of a pulse without God Had not we been either nothing or worse that is infinitely eternally miserable but that God made us capable and then pursued us with arts and devices of great mercy to force us to be happy Great reason therefore there is that God should be jealous lest we take any of our duty from him who hath so strangely deserved it all and give it to a creature or to our enemy who cannot be capable of any But however it will concern us with much caution to observe our own wayes since we are made a spectacle to God to Angels and to Men God hath set so many spies upon us the blessed Angels and the accursed Devils good men and bad men the eye of Heaven and eye of that eye God himself all watching lest we rob God of his Honour and our selves of our hopes For by his prime intention he hath chosen so to get his own glory as may best consist with our felicity His great designe is to be glorified in our being saved 3. Gods jealousie hath a sadder effect then all this For all this is for mercy but if we provoke this jealousie if he findes us in our spiritual whoredoms he is implacable that is he is angry with us to eternity unlesse we returne in time and if we do it may be he will not be appeased in all instances and when he forgives us he will make some reserves of his wrath he will punish our persons or our estate he will chastise us at home or abroad in our bodies or in our children for he will visit our sins upon our children from generation to generation and if they be made miserable for our sins they are unhappy in such parents but we bear the curse and the anger of God even while they bear his rod God visits the sins of the Fathers upon the children Thatâ—s the second Great stroke he strikes against sin and is now to be considered That God doth so is certain because he saith he doth and that this is just in him so to do is also as certain therefore because he doth it For as his lawes are our measures so his actions and his own will are his own measures He that hath right over all things and all persons cannot do wrong to any thing He that is essentially just and there could be no such thing as justice or justice it self could not be good if it did not derive from him it is impossible for him to be unjust But since God is pleased to speak after the manner of men it may well consist with our duty to enquire into those manners of consideration whereby we may understand the equity of God in this proceeding and to be instructed also in our own danger if we persevere in sin 1. No man is made a sinner by the fault of another man without his own consent For to every one God gives his choice and sets life and death before every of the sons of Adam and therefore this death is not a consequent to any sin but our own In this sense it is true that if the fathers eat sowre grapes the childrens teeth shall not be set on edge and therefore the sin of Adam which was derived to all the world did not bring the world to any other death but temporall by the intermediall stages of sickness and temporal infelicities And it is not said that sin passed upon all men but death that also no otherwise but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in as much as al men have sinned as they have followed the steps of their father so they are partakers of this death And therefore it is very remarkable that death brought in by sin was nothing superinduced to man man onely was reduced to his own naturall condition from which before Adams fall he stood exempted by supernaturall favour and therefore although the taking away that extraordinary grace or priviledge was a punishment yet the suffering the naturall death was directly none but a condition of his creation naturall and therefore not primarily evil but if not good yet at least indifferent And the truth and purpose of this observation will extend it self if we observe that before any man died Christ was promised by whom death was to lose its sting by whom death did cease to be an evil and was or might be if we do belong to Christ a state of advantage So that we by occasion of Adams sin being returned to our naturall certainty of dying do still even in this very particular stand between the blessing and the cursing If we follow Christ death is our friend If we imitate the praevarication of Adam then death becomes an evil the condition of our nature becomes the punishment of our own sin not of Adams for although his sin brought death in
rather choose to die then to sin it is not so much as the beginning of repentance But in Holy Scripture when the people are called to repentance and sorrow which is ever the prologue to it marches sadly and first opens the seene it is ever expressed to be great clamorous and sad it is called a weeping sorely in the verse next after my text a weeping with the bitternesse of heart a turning to the Lord with weeping fasting and mourning a weeping day and night the sorrow of heart the breaking of the spirit the mourning like a dove and chattering like a swallow and if we observe the threnes and sad accents of the Prophet Jeremy when he wept for the sins of his Nation the heart-breakings of David when he mourned for his adultery and murder and the bitter tears of Saint Peter when he washed off the guilt and basenesse of his fall and the denying his Master we shall be sufficiently instructed in this praeludium or introduction to repentance and that it is not every breath of a sigh or moisture of a tender eye not every crying Lord have mercy upon me that is such a sorrow as begins our restitution to the state of grace and Divine favour but such a sorrow that really condemnes our selves and by an active effectual sentence declares us worthy of stripes and death of sorrow and eternall paines and willingly endures the first to prevent the second and weeps and mourns and fasts to obtain of God but to admit us to a possibility of restitution and although all sorrow for sins hath not the same expression nor the same degree of pungency and sensitive trouble which differs according to the temper of the body custome the sexe and accidental tendernesse yet it is not a Godly sorrow unlesse it really produce these effects that is 1. That it makes us really to hate 2. actually to decline sin and 3. produce in us a fear fo Gods anger a sense of the guilt of his displeasure and 4. Then such consequent trouble as can consist with such apprehension of the Divine displeasure which if it expresse not in tears and hearty complaints must be expressed in watchings and strivings against sin in confessing the goodnesse and justice of God threatning or punishing us in patiently bearing the rod of God in confession of our sins in accusation of our selves in perpetual begging of pardon and mean and base opinions of our selves and in al the natural productions from these according to our temper and constitution it must be a sorrow of the reasonable faculty the greatest in its kinde and if it be lesse in kinde or not productive of these effects it is not a godly sorrow not the exordium of repentance But I desire that it be observed that sorrow for sins is not Repentance not that duty which gives glory to God so as to obtain of him that he will glorifie us Repentance is a great volume of duty and Godly sorrow is but the frontispiece or title page it is the harbinger or first introduction to it or if you will consider it in the words of Saint Paul Godly sorrow worketh repentance sorrow is the Parent and repentance is the product and therefore it is a high piece of ignorance to suppose that a crying out and roaring for our sins upon our deathbed can reconcile us to God our crying to God must be so early and so lasting as to be able to teeme and produce such a daughter which must live long and grow from an Embryo to an infant from infancy to childhood from thence to the fulnesse of the stature of Christ and then it is a holy and a happy sorrow but if it be a sorrow onely of a death-bed it is a fruitlesse shower or like the rain of Sodom not the beginning of repentance but the kindling of a flame the comencement of an eternal sorrow For Ahab had a great sorrow but it wrought nothing upon his spirit it did not reconcile his affections to his duty and his duty to God Judas had so great a sorrow for betraying the innocent blood of his Lord that it was intolerable to his Spirit and he burst in the middle and if meer sorrow be repentance then hell is full of penitents for there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth for evermore Let us therefore beg of God as Calebs daughter did of her Father dedisti mihi terram aridam da etiam irrigâ—am thou hast given me a dry land give me also a land of waters a dwelling place in tears rivers of tears ut quoniam non sumus digni oculos orando ad coelum levare at simus digni oculos plorando caecare as Saint Austins expression is that because we are not worthy to lift up our eyes to heaven in prayer yet we may be worthy to weep our selves blinde for sin the meaning is that we beg sorrow of God such a sorrow as may be sufficient to quench the flames of lust and surmount the hills of our pride and may extinguish our thirst of covetousnesse that is a sorrow that shall be an effective principle of arming all our faculties against sin and heartily setting upon the work of grace and the persevering labours of a holy life * I shall onely adde one word to this That our sorrow for sin is not to be estimated by our tears and our sensible expressions but by our active hatred and dereliction of sin and is many times unperceived in outward demonstration It is reported of the Mother of Peter Lombard Gratian and Comestor that she having had three sons begotten in unhallowed embraces upon her death-bed did omit the recitation of those crimes to her confessour adding this for Apology that her three sons proved persons so eminent in the Church that their excellency was abundant recompence for her demerit and therefore she could not grieve because God had glorified himself so much by three instruments so excellent and that although her sin had abounded yet Gods grace did superabound Her Confessor replied at dole Saltem quod dolere non possis grieve that thou canst not grieve and so must we alwayes fear that our trouble for sin is nor great enough that our sorrow is too remisse that our affections are indifferent but we can onely be sure that our sorrow is a godly sorrow when it worketh repentance that is when it makes us hate and leave all our sin and take up the crosse of patience or penance that is confesse our sin accuse our selves condemn the action by hearty sentence and then if it hath no other emanation but fasting and prayer for its pardon and hearty industry towards its abolition our sorrow is not reproveable For sorrow alone will not do it there must follow a total dereliction of our sin and this is the first part of repentance Concerning which I consider that it is a sad mistake amongst many that do some things towards
to sin now because it is pleasant how do ye know that your appetite will alter will it not appear pleasant to you next week and the next week after that and so for ever And still you sin and still you will repent that is you will repent when the sin can please you no longer For so long as it can please you so long you are tempted not to repent as well as now to act the sin And the longer you lie in it the more you will love it So that it is in effect to say I love my sin now but I will hereafter hate it onely I will act it a while longer and grow more in love with it and then I will repent that is then I will be sure to hate it when I shal most love it 2. To repent signifies to be sorrowful to be ashamed and to wish it had never been done And then see the folly of this temptation I would not sin but that I hope to repent of it that is I would not do this thing but that I hope to be sorrowful for doing it and I hope to come to shame for it heartily to be ashamed of my doings and I hope to be in that condition that I would give all the world I had never done it that is I hope to feel and apprehend an evil infinitely greater then the pleasures of my sin are these arguments fit to move a man to sin what can affright a man from it if these invite him to it it is as if a man should invite one to be a partner of his treason by telling him if you will joyn with me you shal have all these effects by it you shall be hang'd drawn and quarter'd and your blood shall be corrupted and your estate forfeited and you shall have many other reasons to wish you had never done it He that should use this Rhetorick in earnest might well be accounted a mad man This is to scare a man not to allure him and so is the other when we understand it truely 3. For I consider He that repents wishes he had never done that sin Now I ask does he wish so upon reason or without reason Surely if he may when he hath satisfied his lust ask God pardon and be admitted upon as easie termes for the time to come as if he had not done the sin he hath no reason to be sorrowful or wish he had not done it For though he hath done it and pleased himself by enjoying the pleasure of sin for that season yet all is well again and let him onely be carefull now and there is no hurt done his pardon is certain How can any man that understands the reason of his actions and passions wish that he had never done that sin in which then he had pleasure and now he feels no worse inconvenience But he that truely repents wishes and would give all the world he had never done it Surely then his present condition in respect of his past sin hath some very great evil in it why else should he be so much troubled True and this it is He that hath committed sins after baptisme is fallen out of the favour of God is tied to hard duty for the time to come to cry vehemently unto God to call night and day for pardon to be in great fear and tremblings of heart lest God should never forgive him lest God will never take off his sentence of eternal paines and in this fear and in some degrees of it he will remain all the dayes of his life and if he hopes to be quit of that yet he knowes not how many degrees of Gods anger still hang over his head how many sad miseries shall afflict and burne and purifie him in this world with a sharpnesse so poinant as to divide the marrow from the bones and for these reasons a considering man that knows what it is to repent wishes with his soul he had never sinned and therefore grieves in proportion to his former crimes and present misery and future danger And now suppose that you can repent when you will that is that you can grieve when you will though no man can do it no man can grieve when he please though he could shed tears when he list he cannot grieve without a real or an apprehended infelicity but suppose it and that he can fear when he please and that he can love when he please or what he please that is suppose a man to be able to say to his palate though I love sweet meats yet to morrow I will hate and loath them and believe them bitter and distastful things suppose I say all these impssibilities yet since repentance does suppose a man to be in a state of such real misery that he hath reason to curse the day in which he sinned is this a fit argument to invite a man that is in his wits to sin to sin in hope of repentance as if dangers of falling into hell and fear of the Divine anger and many degrees of the Divine judgements and a lasting sorrow and a perpetual labour and a never ceasing trembling and a troubled conscience and a sorrowful spirit were fit things to be desired or hoped for The sum is this He that commits sins shall perish eternally if he never does repent And if he does repent and yet untimely he is not the better and if he does not repent with an intire a perfect and complete repentance he is not the better But if he does yet repentance is a duty full of fears and sorrow and labour a vexation to the spirit an afflictive paenal or punitive duty a duty which suffers for sin and labours for grace which abides and suffers little images of hell in the way to heaven and though it be the onely way to felicity yet it is beset with thorns and daggers of sufferance and with rocks and mountains of duty Let no man therefore dare to sin upon hopes of repentance for he is a foole and a hypocrite that now chooses and approves what he knows hereafter he must condemn 2. The second generall consideration is The necessity the absolute necessity of holy living God hath made a Covenant with us that we must give up our selves bodies and souls not a dying but a living and healthfull sacrifice He hath forgiven all our old sins and we have bargained to quit them from the time that we first come to Christ and give our names to him and to keep all his Commandements We have taken the Sacramentall oath like that of the old Romane Militia 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we must beleeve and obey and do all that is commanded us and keep our station and fight against the flesh the world and the devil not to throw away our miliâ—ary girdle and we are to do what is bidden us or to die for it even all that is bidden us according to our power For pretend not that Gods Commandements are
sin A sin is either in its bosom or in its retinue But the ignorance that I now intend is a voluntary chosen delightful ignorance taken in upon designe even for no other end but that we may perish quietly and infallibly God hath opened all the windows of Heaven and sent the Sun of Righteousnesse with glorious apparition and hath discoverd the abysses of his own wisdom made the second person in the Trinity to be the doctor and preacher of his sentences and secrets and the third person to be his Amanuensis or scribe and our hearts to be the Book in which the doctrine is written and miracles and prophecies to be its arguments and all the world to be the verification of it and those leaves contain within their folds all that excellent morality which right reason pickt up after the shipwrack of nature and all those wise sayings which singly made so many men famous for preaching some one of them all them Christ gathered and added some more out of the immediate book of Revelation So that now the wisdom of God hath made every mans heart to be the true Veronica in which he hath imprinted his own lineaments so perfectly that we may dresse our selves like God and have the aire and features of Christ our Elder-Brother that we may be pure as God is perfect as our Father meek and humble as the Son and may have the holy Ghost within us in gifts and Graces in wisdom and holinesse This hath God done for us and see what we do for Him We stand in our own light and quench Gods we love darknesse more then light and entertain our sâ—lves accordingly For how many of us are there that understand nothing of the wayes of God that know no more of the law of Jesus Christ then is remaining upon them since they learned the childrens Catechisme But amongst a thousand how many can explicate and unfold for his own practise the ten Commandments And how many sorts of sins are there forbidden which therefore passe into action and never passe under the scrutinies of repentance because they know not that they are sinnes Are there not very many who know not the particular duties of meeknesse and never consider concerning Long suffering and if you talk to them of growth in Grace or the spirit of obsignation or the melancholy lectures of the Crosse and imitation of and conformitie to Christs sufferings or adherences to God or rejoycing in him or not quenching the spirit you are too deep learned for them And yet these are duties set down plainly for our practise necessary to be acted in order to our Salvation We brag of light and reformation and fulnesse of the spirit in the mean time we understand not many parts of our dutie We enquire into something that may make us talk or be talked of or that we may troâ—ble a Church or disturb the peace of mindes but in things that concern Holy living and that wisdom of God whereby we are wise unto Salvation never was any age of Christendom more ignorant then we For if we did not wink hard we must needs see that obedience to supreâ—â— Powers Denying of our selves Humility Peacefulnesse and Charity are written in such Capital text letters that it is impossible to be ignorant of them And if the heart of man had not rare arts to abuse the understanding it were not to be imagined that any man should bring the 13. Chapter to the Romans to prove the lawfulnesse of taking up Armes against our rulers but so we may abuse our selves at noon and go to bed if we please to call it midnight And there have been a sort of wittie men that maintained that snow was hot I wonder not at the probleme but that a man should beleeve his paradox and should let eternity go away with the fallacie and rather lose heaven then leave his foolish argument is a signe that wilfulnesse and the deceiving heart is the Sophister and the great ingredient into our Deception But that I may be more particular the heart of man uses devices that it may be ignorant 1. We are impatient of honest and severe reproofe and order the circumstances of our persons and address that we shall never come to the true knowledge of our condition Who will endure to heare his curate tell him that he is Covetous or that he is proud 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is Calumny and Reviling if he speak it to his head and relates to his person and yet if he speak onely in general every man neglects what is not recommended to his particular But yet if our Physitian tell us you look well Sir but a Feaver lurks in your spirits 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 drink Julips and abstain from flesh no than thinks it shame or calumny to be told so but when we are told that our liver is inflamed with lust or anger that our heart is vexed with envie that our eyes rowl with wantonnesse And though we think all is well yet we are sick sick unto death neer to a sad and fatal sentence we shall think that man that tells us so is impudent or uncharitable and yet he hath done him no more injury then a deformed man receives daily from his looking-glasse which if he shall dash against the wall because it showes him his face just as it is his face is not so ugly as his manners And yet our heart is so impatient of seeing its own staines that like the Elephant it tramples in the pure streames and first troubles them then stoops and drinks when he can least see his huge deformitie 2. In order to this we heap up teachers of our own and they guide us not whither but which way they please for we are curious to go our own way and carelesse of our Hospitall or Inne at night A faire way and a merry company and a pleasant easie guide will entice us into the Enemies quarters and such guides we cannot want Improbitati occasio nunquam defuit If we have a minde to be wicked we shall want no prompters and false teachers at first creeping in unawares have now so filled the pavement of the Church that you can scarce set your foot on the ground but you tread upon a snake Cicero l. 7. ad Atticum undertakes to bargain with them that kept the Sybils books that for a sum of money they shall expound to him what he please and to be sure ut quidvis potius quam Regem proferrent They shall declare against the government of kings say that the Gods will endure any thing rather then Monarchy in their beloved republick And the same mischief God complains of to be among the Jews the Prophets prophecie lies and my people love to have it so and what will the end of these things be even the same that Cicero complain'd of Ad opinionem imperitorum fictas esse Religiones Men shall have what Religion they please and God
your anger peevishnesse and morosity these are the daily sufferings of a Christian and if we performe them well wil have the same reward and an equal smart and greater labour then the plain suffering the hangmans sword This I have discoursed to represent unto you that you cannot be exempted from the similitude of Christs sufferings that God will shut no age nor no man from his portion of the crosse that we cannot fail of the result of this predestination nor without our own fault be excluded from the covenant of sufferings judgement must begin at Gods house and enters first upon the sons and heirs of the kingdom and if it be not by the direct persecution of Tyrants it will be by the persecution of the devil or infirmities of our own flesh But because this was but the secondary meaning of the text I return to make use of all the former discourse 1. Let no Christian man make any judgement concerning his condition or his cause by the external event of things for although in the law of Moses God made with his people a covenant of temporal prosperity and his Saints did binde the kings of the Amâ—rites and the Philistines in chains and their nobles with links of iron and then that was the honour which all his Saints had yet in Christ Jesus he made a covenant of sufferings most of the graces of Christianity are suffering graces and God hath predestinated us to sufferings and we are baptised into suffering and our very communions are symbols of our duty by being the sacrament of Christs death and passion and Christ foretold to us tribulation and promised onely that he would be with us in tribulation that he would give us his spirit to assist us at tribunals and his grace to despise the world and to contemn riches and boldnesse to confesse every article of the Christian faith in the face of armies and armed tyrants and he also promised that all things should work together for the best to his servants that is he would out of the eater bring meat and out of the strong issue sweetnesse and crowns and scepters should spring from crosses and that the crosse it self should stand upon the globes and scepters of Princes but he nevâ—r promised to his servants that they should pursue Kings and destroy armies that they should reign over the nations and promote the cause of Jesus Christ by breaking his commandments The shield of faith and the sword of the spirit the armour of righteousnesse and the weapons of spiritual warfare these are they by which christianity swelled from a small company and a lesse reputation to possesse the chaires of Doctors and the thrones of princes and the hearts of all men But men in all ages will be tampering with shadows and toyes The Apostles at no hand could endure to hear that Christs kingdom was not of this world and that their Master should die a sad and shameful death though that way he was to receive his crown and enter into glory and after Christs time when his Disciples had taken up the crosse and were marching the Kings high way of sorrows there were a very great many even the generality of Christians for two or three ages together who fell on dreaming that Christ should come and reign upon earth again for a thousand years and then the Saints should reigne in all abundance of temporal power and fortunes but these men were content to stay for it till after the resurrection in the mean time took up their crosse and followed after their Lord the King of sufferings But now a dayes we finde a generation of men who have changed the covenant of sufferings into victories and triumphs riches and prosperous chances and reckon their Christianity by their good fortunes as if Christ had promised to his servants no heaven hereafter no spirit in the mean time to refresh their sorrows as if he had enjoyned them no passive graces but as if to be a Christian and to be a Turk were the same thing Mahomet entered and possessed by the sword Christ came by the crosse entered by humility and his saints possesse their souls by patience God was fain to multiply miracles to make Christ capable of being a man of sorrows and shall we think he will work miracles to make us delicate He promised us a glorious portion hereafter to which if all the sufferings of the world were put together they are not worthy to be compared and shall we with Dives choose our portion of good things in this life If Christ suffered so many things onely that he might give us glory shall it be strange that we shall suffer who are to receive this glory It is in vain to think we shall obtain glories at an easier rate then to drink of the brook in the way in which Christ was drenched When the Devil appeared to Saint Martin in a bright splendid shape and said he was Christ he answered Christus non nisi in cruce apparet suis in hac vita And when Saint Ignatius was newly tied in a chain to be led to his martyrdom he cryed out nunc incipio esse Christianus And it was observed by Minutius Felix and was indeed a great and excellent truth omnes viri fortes quos Gentiles praedicabant in exemplum aerumnis suis inclytistoruerunt The Gentiles in their whole religion never propounded any man imitable unlesse the man were poor or persecuted Brutus stood for his countries liberty but lost his army and his life Socrates was put to death for speaking a religious truth Cato chose to be on the right side but happened to fall upon the oppressed and the injured he died together with his party Victrix causa Deis placuit sed victa Catoni And if God thus dealt with the best of Heathens to whom he had made no cleare revelation of immortal recompences how little is the faith and how much lesse is the patience of Christians if they shall think much to suffer sorrows since they so clearly see with the eye of faith the great things which are laid up for them that are faithful unto the death Faith is uselesse if now in the midst of so great pretended lights we shall not dare to trust God unlesse we have all in hand that we desire and suffer nothing for all we can hope for They that live by sense have no use of faith yet our Lord Jesus concerning whose passions the gospel speaks much but little of his glorifications whose shame was publick whose pains were notorious but his joyes and transfigurations were secret and kept private he who would not suffer his holy mother whom in great degrees he exempted from sin to be exempted from many and great sorrows certainly intends to admit none to his resurrection but by the doors of his grave none to glory but by the way of the crosse If we be planted into the likenesse of his death we shall be also of his
hearts and poor cottages and small fortunes A Christian so long as he preserves his integrity to God and to religion is bold in all accidents he dares die and he dares be poor but if the persecutor dies he is undone Riches are beholding to our fancies for their value and yet the more we value the riches the lesse good they are and by an overvaluing affection they become our danger and our sin But on the other side death and persecution loose all the ill that they can have if we do not set an edge upon them by our fears and by our vices From our selves riches take their wealth and death sharpens his arrows at our forges and we may set their prices as we please and if we judge by the spirit of God we must account them happy that suffer And therefore that the prevailing oppressor Tyrant or persecutor is infinitly miserable onely let God choose by what instruments he will govern the world by what instances himself would be served by what waies he will chastise the failings and exercise the duties and reward the vertues of his servants God sometimes punishes one sinne with another pride with adultery drunkennesse with murder carelesnesse with irreligion idlenesse with vanity penury with oppression irreligion with blasphemy and that with Atheisme and therefore it is no wonder if he punishes a sinner by a sinner And if David made use of villains and profligate persons to frame an armie and Timoleon destroyâ—d the Carthaginians by the help of souldiers who themselves were sacrilegious and Physitians use the poison to expel poisons and all common-wealths take the basest of men to be their instruments of justice and executions we shall have no further cause to wonder if God raises up the Assyrians to punish the Israelites and the Egyptians to destroy the Assyrians and the Ethiopians to scourge the Egyptians and at last his own hand shall separate the good from the bad in the day of separation in the day when he makes up his Iewels 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Soph. Elect. God hath many ends of providence to serue by the hands of violent and vitious men by them he not onely checks the beginning errours and approaching sins of his predestinate but by them he changes governments and alters kingdoms and is terrible among the sons of men for since it is one of his glories to convert evil into good and that good into his own glory and by little and little to open and to turn the leaves and various folds of providence it becomes us onely to dwell in duty and to be silent in our thoughts and wary in our discourses of God and let him choose the time when he will prâ—â—e his vine and when he will burn his thorns how long he will smite his servants and when he will destroy his enemies In the dayes of the primitive persecutions what prayers how many sighings how deep groanes how many bottles of tears did God gather into his repository all praying for ease and deliverances for Halcyon dayes and fine sunshine for nursing fathers and nursing mothers for publick assemblies and open and solemn sacraments And it was 3 hundred years before God would hear their prayers and all that while the persecuted people were in a cloud but they were safe and knew it not and God kept for them the best wine untill the last they ventured for a crown and fought valiantly they were faithful to the death and they received a crown of life and they are honored by God by angels and by men whereas in all the prosperous ages of the Church we hear no stories of such multitudes of Saints no record of them no honour to their memorial to accident extraordinary scarce any made illustrious with a miracle which in the dayes of suffering were frequent and popular And after all our fears of sequestration and poverty of death or banishment our prayers against the persecution and troubles under it we may please to remember that twenty years hence it may be sooner it wil not be much longer all our cares and our troubles shall be dead and then it shall be enquired how we did bear our sorrows and who inflicted them and in what cause and then he shall be happy that keeps company with the persecuted and the persecutors shall be shut out amongst dogs and unbelievers He that shrinks from the yoke of Christ from the burden of the Lord upon his death-bed will have cause to remember that by that time all his persecutions would have been past and that then there would remain nothing for him but rest and crowns and scepters When Lysimachus impatient and overcome with thirst gave up his kingdom to the Getae and being a captive and having drank a lusty draught of wine and his thirst was now gone he fetched a deep sigh and said Miserable man that I am who for so little pleasure the pleasure of one draught lost so great a Kingdom such will be their case who being impatient of suffering change their persecution into wealth and an easie fortune they shall finde themselves miserable in the separations of eternity losing the glories of heaven for so little a pleasure illiberaliâ— ingrate voluptatis causa as Plutarch calls it for illiberal and ungratefull pleasure in which when a man hath entred he loses the rights and priviledges and honours of a good man and gets nothing that is profitable and useful to holy purposes or necessary to any but is already in a state so hateful and miserable that he needs neither God nor man to be a revenger having already under his splendid robe miseries enough to punish and betray this hypocrisy of his condition being troubled with the memory of what is past distrustful of the present suspicious of the future vitious in their lives and full of pageantry and out-sides but in their death miserable with calamities real eternal and insupportable and if it could be other wise vertue it self would be reproached with the calamity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I end with the advice of Saint Paul In nothing be terrified of your 〈…〉 Sermon XI The Faith and Patience of the SAINTS OR The righteous cause oppressed Part III. 〈…〉 from dishonour As long as they belong to God it is necessary that they suffer persecution or sorrow no rules can teach them to avoid that but the evil of the suffering and the danger must be declined and we must use such spirituall arts as are apt to turn them into health and medicine For it were a hard thing first to be scourged and then to be crucified to suffer here and to perish hereafter through the fiery triall and purging fire of afflictions to passe into hell that is intollerable
and to be prevented with the following cautions least a man suffers like a fool and a malefactour or inherits damnation for the reward of his imprudent suffering 1. They that suffer any thing for Christ and are ready to die for him let them do nothing against him For certainly they think too highly of martyrdom who beleeve it able to excuse all the evils of a wicked life A man may give his body to be burned and yet have no charity and he that dies without â—harity dies without God for God is love And when those who fought in the dayes of the Maccabees for the defence of true Religion and were killed in those holy warres yet being dead were found having about their necks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or pendants consecrated to idols of the Jamnenses it much allayed the hope which by their dying in so good a cause was entertained concerning their beatificall resurrection He that overcomes his fear of death does well but if he hath not also overcome his lust or his anger his baptisme of blood will not wash him clean Many things may make a man willing to die in a good cause Publike reputation hope of reward gallantry of spirit a confident resolution and a masculine courage or a man may be vexed into a stubborn and unrelenting suffering But nothing can make a man live well but the grace and the love of God But those persons are infinitely condemned by their last act who professe their religion to be worth dying for and yet are so unworthy as not to live according to its institution It were a rare felicity if every good cause could be mannaged by good men onely but we have found that evil men have spoiled a good cause but never that a good cause made those evil men good and holy If the Governour of Samaria had crucified Simon Magus for receiving Christian Baptisme he had no more died a martyr then he lived a saint For dying is not enough and dying in a good cause is not enough but then onely we receive the crown of martyrdom when our death is the seal of our life and our life is a continuall testimony of our duty and both give testimony to the excellencies of the religion and glorifie the grace of God If a man be gold the fire purges him but it burns him if he be like stubble cheap light and uselesse For martyrdom is the consummation of love But then it must be supposed that this grace must have had its beginning and its severall stages and periods and must have passed thorow labour to zeal thorow all the regions of duty to the perfections of sufferings and therefore it is a sad thing to observe how some empty souls will please themselves with being of such a religion or such a cause and though they dishonour their religion or weigh down the cause with the prejudice of sin beleeve all is swallowed up by one honourable name or the appellative of one vertue If God had forbid nothing but heresie and treason then to have been a loyall man or of a good beleef had been enogh but he that forbad rebellion forbids also swearing and covetousnesse rapine and oppression lying and cruelty And it is a sad thing to see a man not onely to spend his time and his wealth and his money and his friends upon his lust but to spend his sufferings too to let the canker-worm of a deadly sin devour his Martyrdom He therefore that suffers in a good cause let him be sure to walk worthy of that honour to which God hath called him Let him first deny his sins and then deny himself and then he may take up his crosse and follow Christ ever remembring that no man pleases God in his death who hath walked perversely in his life 2. He that suffers in a cause of God must be indifferent what the instance be so that he may serve God I say he must be indifferent in the cause so it be a cause of God and indifferent in the suffering so it be of Gods appointment For some men have a naturall aversation to some vices or vertues and a naturall affection to others One man will die for his friend and another will die for his money Some men hate to be a rebell and will die for their Prince but tempt them to suffer for the cause of the Church in which they were baptized and in whose communion they look for heaven and then they are tempted and fall away Or if God hath chosen the cause for them and they have accepted it yet themselves will choose the suffering Right or wrong some men will not endure a prison and some that can yet choose the heaviest part of the burden the pollution and stain of a sin rather then lose their money and some had rather die twice then lose their estates once In this our rule is easie Let us choose God and let God choose all the rest for us it being indifferent to us whether by poverty or shame by lingring or a sudden death by the hands of a Tyrant Prince or the despised hands of a base usurper or a rebell we receive the crown and do honour to God and to Religion 3. Whoever suffer in a cause of God from the hands of cruell and unreasonable men let them not be too forward to prognosticate evil and death to their enemies but let them solace themselves in the assurance of the divine justice by generall consideration and in particular pray for them that are our persecutours Nebuchadnezzar was the rod in the hand of God against the Tyrians and because he destroyed that city God rewarded him with the spoil of Egypt and it is not alwayes certain that God will be angry with every man by whose hand affliction comes upon us And sometimes two armies have met and fought and the wisest man amongst them could not say that either of the Princes had prevaricated either the lawes of God â—or of Nations and yet it may be some superstitious easie and half witted people of either side wonder that their enemies live so long And there are very many cases of warre concerning which God hath declared nothing and although in such cases he that yeelds and quits his title rather then his charity and the care of so many lives is the wisest and the best man yet if neither of them will do so let us not decree judgements from heaven in cases where we have no word from heaven and thunder from our Tribunals where no voice of God hath declared the sentence But in such cases where there is an evident tyranny or injustice let us do like the good Samaritan who dressed the wounded man but never pursued the thief let us do charity to the afflicted and bear the crosse with noblenesse and look up to Jesus who endured the crosse and despised the shame but let us not take upon us the office of God who will judge the Nations righteously
and when he hath delivered up our bodies will rescue our souls from the hands of unrighteous judges I remember in the story that Plutarch tels concerning the soul of Thespesius that it met with a Prophetick Genius who told him many things that should happen afterwards in the world and the strangest of all was this That there should be a King Qui bonus cum sit tyrannide vitam finiet An excellent Prince and a good man should be put to death by a rebell and usurping power and yet that Prophetick soul could not tell that those rebels should within three yeers die miserable and accursed deaths and in that great prophecy recorded by Saint Paul That in the last dayes perillous times should come and men should be traitours and selvish having forms of godlinesse and creeping into houses yet could not tell us when these men should come to finall shame and ruine onely by a generall signification he gave this signe of comfort to Gods persecuted servants But they shall proceed no further for their folly shall be manifest to all men that is at long running they shall shame themselves and for the elects sake those dayes of evil shall be shortned But you and I may be dead first And therefore onely remember that they that with a credulous heart and a loose tongue are too decretory and enunciative of speedy judgements to their enemies turn their religion into revenge and therefore do beleeve it will be so because they vehemently desire it should be so which all wise and good men ought to suspect as lesse agreeing with that charity which overcomes all the sins and all the evils of the world and sits down and rests in glory 4. Do not trouble your self by thinking how much you are afflicted but consider how much you make of it For reflex acts upon the suffering it self can lead to nothing but to pride or to impatience to temptation or apostacy He that measures the grains and scruples of his persecution will soon sit down and call for ease or for a reward will think the time long or his burden great will be apt to complain of his condition or set a greater value upon his person Look not back upon him that strikes thee but upward to God that supports thee and forward to the crown that is set before thee and then consider if the losse of thy estate hath taught thee to despise the world whether thy poor fortune hath made thee poor in spirit and if thy uneasie prison sets thy soul at liberty and knocks off the fetters of a worse captivity For then the rod of suffering turns into crowns and scepters when every suffering is a precept and every change of condition produces a holy resolution and the state of sorrows makes the resolution actuall and habituall permanent and persevering For as the silk-worm eateth it self out of a seed to become a little worm and there feeding on the leaves of mulberies it grows till its coat be off and then works it self into a house of silk then casting its pearly seeds for the young to breed it leaveth its silk for man and dieth all white and winged in the shape of a flying creature So is the progresse of souls when they are regenerate by Baptisme and have cast off their first stains and the skin of worldly vanities by feeding on the leaves of Scriptures and the fruits of the vine and the joyes of the Sacrament they incircle themselves in the rich garments of holy and vertuous habits then by leaving their blood which is the Churches seed to raise up a new generation to God they leave a blessed memory and fair example and are themselves turned into Angels whose felicity is to do the will of God as their imployments was in this world to suffer it fiat voluntas tua is our daily prayer and that is of a passive signification thy will be done upon us and if from thence also we translate it into an active sence and by suffering evils increase in our aptnesses to do well we have done the work of Christians and shall receive the reward of Martyrs 5. Let our suffering be entertained by a direct election not by collateral ayds and phantastick assistances It is a good refreshment to a weak spirit to suffer in good company and so Phoeion encouraged a timerous Greek condemned to die and he bid him be confident because that he was to die with Phocion and when 40. Martyrs in Cappadocia suffered and that 〈◊〉 souldier standing by came and supplyed the place of the one Apostate who fell from his crown being overcome with pain it added warmth to the frozen confessors and turnd them into consummate Martyrs But if martyrdom were but a phantastick thing or relyed upon vain accidents and irregular chances it were then very necessary to be assisted by images of things and any thing lesse then the proper instruments of religion But since it is the greatest action of the religion and relies upon the most excellent promises and its formality is to be an action of love and nothing is more firmely chosen by an after election at least then an act of love to support Martyrdom or the duty of sufferings by false arches and exteriour circumstances is to build a tower upon the beams of the Sun or to set up a woodden ladder to climbe up to Heaven the soul cannot attain so huge and unimaginable felicities by chance and instruments of fancy and let no man hope to glorifie God and go to Heaven by a life of sufferings unlesse he first begin in the love of God and from thence derive his choice his patience and considence in the causes of vertue and religion like beams and warmth and influence from the body of the Sun Some there are that fall under the burden when they are pressed hard because they use not the proper instruments in fortifying the will in patience and resignation but endeavour to lighten the burden in imagination and when these temporary supporters fail the building that relies upon them rushes into coldnesse recidivation and lukewarmnesse and among all instances that of the main question of the Text is of greatest power to abuse imprudent and lesse severe persons Nullos esse Deos inane coelum Affirmat Selius probatque Quod se videt dum negat haec beatum When men choose a good cause upon confidence that an ill one cannot thrive that is not for the love of vertue or duty to God but for profit and secular interests they are easily lost when they see the wickednesse of the enemy to swell up by impunity and successe to a great evil for they have not learned to distinguish a great growing sin from a thriving and prosperous fortune Vlla si juris tibi pejerati Poena Barine noeuisset unquam Dente si nigro fieret vel uno turpior ungui Crederem They that beleeve and choose because of idle fears and unreasonable fancies or by
mistaking the accounts of a man for the measures of God or dare not commit treason for fear of being blasted may come to be tempted when they see a sinner thrive and are scandalized all the way if they die before him or they may come to receive some accidentall hardnesses and every thing in the world may spoil such persons and blast their resolutions Take in all the aids you can and if the fancy of the standers by or the hearing a cock crow can adde any collaterall aids to thy weaknesse refuse it not But let thy state of sufferings begin with choice and be confirmed with knowledge and rely upon love and the aids of God and the expectations of heaven and the present sense of duty and then the action will be as glorious in the event as it is prudent in the enterprise and religious in the prosecution 6. Lastly when God hath brought thee into Christs school and entered thee into a state of sufferings remember the advantages of that state consider how unsavoury the things of the world appear to thee when thou art under the arrest of death remember with what comforts the Spirit of God assists thy spirit set down in thy heart all those entercourses which happen between God and thy own soul the sweetnesses of religion the vanity of sins appearances thy newly entertained resolutions thy longings after heaven and all the things of God and if God finishes thy persecution with death proceed in them if he restores thee to the light of the world and a temporall refreshment change but the scene of sufferings into an active life and converse with God upon the same principles on which in thy state of sufferings thou dost build all the parts of duty If God restores thee to thy estate be not lesse in love with heaven nor more in love with the world let thy spirit be now as humble as before it was broken and to what soever degree of sobriety or austerity thy suffering condition did enforce thee if it may be turned into vertue when God restores thee because then it was necessary thou shouldest entertain it by an after choice do now also by a praâ—election that thou mayest say with David It is good for me that I have been afflicted for thereby I have learned thy commandments and Paphnutius did not do his soul more advantage when he lost his right eye and suffered his left knee to be cut for Christianity and the cause of God then that in the dayes of Constantine and the Churches peace he lived not in the toleration but in the active piety of a Martyrs condition not now a confessor of the faith onely but of the charity of a Christian we may every one live to have need of these rules and I do not at all think it safe to pray against it but to be armed for it and to whatsoever degree of sufferings God shal call us we see what advantages God intends for us and what advantages we our selves may make of it I now proceed to make use of all the former â—â—scourse by removing it a little further even into its utmost spiritual sense which the Apostle does in the last words of the text If the righteous scarcely be saved where shall the wicked and the sinner appear These words are taken out of the proverbs * according to the translation of the 70. If the righteous scarcely â—s safe where the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implyes that he is safe but by intermedâ—â— difficulties and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he is safe in the midst of his persecutions they may disturb his rest and discompose his fancy but they are like the firy charriot to Elias he is encircled with fire and rare circumstances and strange usages but is carried up to Heaven in a robe of flames and so was Noah safe when the flood came and was the great type and instance too of the verification of this proposition he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he was put into a strange condition perpetually wandring shut up in a prison of wood living upon faith having never had the experience of being safe in flouds And so have I often seen young and unskilful persons sitting in a little boat when every little wave sporting about the sides of the vessel and every motion and dancing of the barge seemed a danger and made them cling fast upon their fellows and yet all the while they wereas safe as if they sat under a tree while a gentle winde shaked the leaves into a refreshment and a cooling shade And the unskiful unexperienced Christian shrikes out when ever his vessel shakes thinking it alwayes a danger that the watry pavement is not stable and resident like a rock and yet all his danger is in himself none at all from without for he is indeed moving upon the waters but fastned to a rock faith is his foundation and hope is his anchor and deathis his harbour and Christ is his pilot and heaven is his countrey and all the evils of poverty or affronts of tribunals and evil judges of fears and sadder apprehensions are but like the loud wind blowing from the right point they make a noise and drive faster to the harbour and if we do not leave the ship and leap into the sea quit the interests of religion and run to the securities of the world cut our cables and dissolve our hopes grow impatient and hug a wave and die in its embraces we are as safe at sea safer in the storm which God sends us then in a calm when we are be friended with the world 2. But 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may also signifie raro If the righteous is seldom safe which implyes that sometimes he is even in a temporal sense God sometimes sends Halcyon dayes to his Church and when he promised Kings and Queens to be their nurses he intended it for a blessing and yet this blessing does of teâ—imes so ill succeed that it is the greater blessing of the two not to give us that blessing too freely but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this is scarcly done and yet sometimes it is and God sometimes refreshes languishing piety with such arguments as comply with our infirmities and though it be a shame to us to need such allectives and infant gauds such which the heathen world and the first rudiments of the Israelites did need God who pitties us and will be wanting in nothing to us as he corroborates our willing spirits with proper entertainments so also he supports our weak flesh and not onely cheers an afflicted soul with beams of light and antepasts and earnests of glory but is kinde also to our man of flesh and weaknesse and to this purpose he sends thunder-bolts from heaven upon evil men dividing their tongues infatuating their counsels cursing their posterity and ruining their families 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sometimes God destroyes their armies or
riches to despise such a goodnesse However that we may see the greatnesse of this treasure of goodnesse God seldom leaves us thus for he sees be it spoken to the shame of our natures and the dishonour of our manners he sees that his mercies do not allure us do not make us thankful but as the Roman said felicitate corrumpimur we become worse for Gods mercy and think it will be alwayes holiday and are like the Christal of Arabia hardned not by cold but made crusty and stubborn by the warmth of the divine fire by its refreshments and mercies therefore to demonstrate that God is good indeed he continues his mercise still to us but in another instance he is merciful to us in punishing us that by such instruments we may be led to repentance which will scare us from sin he delivers us up to the paedagogy of the divine judgements and there begins the second part of Gods method intimated in the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or forbearance God begins his cure by causticks by incisions and instruments of vexation to try if the disease that will not yeild to the allectives of cordials and perfumes friction and baths may be forced out by deleteries scarifications and more salutary but least pleasing Physicke 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 forbearance it is called in the text which signifies laxamentum or inducias that is when the decrees of the divine judgements temporal are gone out either wholly to suspend the executio◠of them which is induciae or a reprieve or else when God hath struck once or twice he takes off his hand that is laxamentum an ease of remission of his judgment in both these although in judgement God remembers mercy yet we are under discipline we are brought into the paenitential chamber at least we are shewed the rod of God and if like Moses rod it turnes us into serpents and that we repent not but grow more Devils yet then it turnes into a rod again and finishes up the smiting or the first designed affliction But I consider it first in general the riches of the divine goodnesse is manifest in beginning this new method of curing us by severity and by a rod. And that you may not wonder that I expound this forbearance to be an act of mercy punishing I observe that besides that the word supposes the method changed and it is a mercy about judgements and their manner of execution it is also in the nature of the thing in the conjunction of circumstances and the designes of God a mercy when he threatens us or strike us into repentance We think that the way of blessings and prosperous accidents is the finer way of securing our duty and that when our heads are anointed our cups crowned and our tables full the very caresses of our spirits will best of all dance before the Ark and sing perpetual Anthemes to the honour of our Benefactor and Patron God and we are apt to dream that God will make his Saints raigne here as kings in a millenary kingdom and give them the riches and fortunes of this world that they may rule over men and sing psalms to God for ever But I remember what Xenophanes saies of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God is like to men neither in shape nor in counsel he knowes that his mercies confirm some and encourage more but they convert but few alone they lead men to dissolution of manners and forgetfulnesse of God rather then repentance not but that mercies are competent and apt instruments of grace if we would but because we are more dispersed in our spirits and by a prosperous accident are melted into joy and garishness and drawn off from the sobriety of recollection Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked Many are not able to suffer and endure prosperity it is like the light of the sun to a weak eye glorious indeed in it self but not proportioned to such an instrument Adam himself as the Rabbins say did not dwell one night in Paradise but was poisoned with prosperity with the beauty of his fair wife and a beauteous tree and Noah and Lot were both righteous and examplary the one to Sodom the other to the old world so long as they lived in a place in which they were obnoxious to the common suffering but as soon as the one of them had scaped from drowing and the other from burning and were put into security they fell into crimes which have dishonoured their memories for above thirty generations together the crimes of drunkennesse and incest wealth and a full fortune make men licenciously vitious tempting a man with power to act all that he can desire or designe vitiously Inde irae faciles Namque ut opes nimias mundo fortuna subacto Intulit et rebus mores cessere secundis Cultus gest are decoros vix nuribus rapuere mares totoque accersitur orbe Quo gens quaeque perit Lucan And let me observe to you that though there are in the new Testament many promises and provisions made for the poor in that very capacity they haveing a title to some certain circumstances and additionals of grace and blessing yet to rich men our blessed Saviour was pleased to make none at all but to leave them involved in general comprehensions and to have a title to the special promises onely by becomming poor in spirit and in preparation of minde though not in fortune and possession How ever it is hard for God to perswade us to this till we are taught it by a sad experience that those prosperities which we think will make us serve God cheerfully make us to serve the world and secular ends diligently and God not at all Repentance is a duty that best complies with affliction 〈◊〉 is a symbolical estate of the same complexion and constitution half the work of repentance is done by a sad accident our spirits are made sad our gayeties mortified our wildnesse corrected the water springs are ready to run over but if God should grant our desires and give to most men prosperity with a designe to lead them to repentance all his pompe and all his employment and all his affections and passions and all his circumstances are so many degrees of distance from the conditions and natures of repentance It was reported by Dio concerning Neros mother that she often wished that her Son might be Emperour and wished it with so great passion that upon that condition she cared not though her Son might kill her Her first wish and her second fear were both granted but when she began to fear that her Son did really designe to murder her she used all the art and instruments of diversion that a witty and a powerfull a timerous person and a woman could invent or apply Just so it is with us so we might have our wishes of prosperity we promise to undergo all the severities of repentance but when we are landed upon our desire then every degree of
over-lay thy infant-vertue or drown it with a flood of breast-milk Sermon XV. Of Growth in Grace Part II. 5. HE is well grown in or towards the state of grace who is more patient of a sharp reproof then of a secret flattery For a reprehension contains so much mortification to the pride and complacencies of a man is so great an affront to an easie and undisturbed person is so empty of pleasure and so full of profit that he must needs love vertue in a great degree who can take in that which onely serves her end and is displeasant to himself and all his gayeties A severe reprehender of anothers vice comes dressed like Jacob when he went to cozen his brother of the blessing his outside is rough and hairy but the voice is Jacobs voice rough hands and a healthfull language get the blessing even against the will of him that shall feel it but he that is patient and even not apt to excuse his fault that is lesse apt to anger or to scorn him that snatches him rudely from the flames of hell he is vertues Confessor and suffers these lesser stripes for that interest which will end in spirituall and eternall benedictions They who are furious against their monitors are incorrigible but it is one degree of meeknesse to suffer discipline and a meek man cannot easily be an ill man especially in the present instance he appears at least to have a healthfull constitution he hath good flesh to heal his spirit is capable of medicine and that man can never be despaired of who hath a disposition so neer his health as to improve all physick and whose nature is relieved by every good accident from without But that which I observe is That this is not onely a good disposition towards repentance and restitution but is a signe of growth in grace according as it becomes naturall easie and habituall Some men chide themselves for all their misdemeanours because they would be represented to the censures and opinions of other men with a fair Character and such as need not to be reproved others out of inconsideration sleep in their own dark rooms and untill the charity of a Guide or of a friend draws the curtain and lets in a beam of light dream on untill the graves open and hell devours them But if they be called upon by the grace of God let down with a sheet of counsels and friendly precepts they are presently inclined to be obedient to the heavenly monitions but unlesse they be dressed with circumstances of honour and civility with arts of entertainment and insinuation they are rejected utterly or received unwillingly Therefore although upon any termes to endure a sharp reproof be a good signe of amendment yet the growth of grace is not properly signified by every such sufferance For when this disposition begins amendment also begins and goes on in proportion to the increment of this To endure a reproof without adding a new sin is the first step to amendments that is to endure it without scorn or hatred or indignation 2. The next is to suffer reproof without excusing our selves For he that is apt to excuse himself is onely desirous in a civill manner to set the reproof aside and to represent the charitable monitour to be too hasty in his judgement and deceived in his information and the fault to dwell there not with himself 3. Then he that proceeds in this instance admits the reprovers sermon or discourse without a private regret he hath no secret murmurs or unwillingnesses to the humiliation but is onely ashamed that he should deserve it but for the reprehension it self that troubles him not but he looks on it as his own medicine and the others charity 4. But if to this he addes that he voluntary confesses his own fault and of his own accord vomits out the loads of his own intemperance and eases his spirit of the infection then it is certain he is not onely a professed and hearty enemy against sin but a zealous and a prudent and an active person against all its interest and never counts himself at ease but while he rests upon the banks of Sion or at the gates of the temple never pleased but in vertue and religion Then he knows the state of his soul and the state of his danger he reckons it no objection to be abased in the face of man so he may be gracious in the eyes of God And that 's a signe of a good grace and a holy wisdom That man is grown in the grace of God and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Justus in principio sermonis est accusator sui said the Wise man The righteous accuseth himself in the beginning that is quickly lest he be prevented And certain it is he cannot be either wise or good that had rather have a reall sin within him then that a good man should beleeve him to be a repenting sinner that had rather keep his crime then lose his reputation that is rather to be so then to be thought so rather be without the favour of God then of his neighbour Diogenes once spied a young man coming out of a Tavern or place of entertainment who perceiving himself observed by the Philosopher with some confusion stepped back again that he might if possible preserve his fame with that severe person But Diogenes told him Quanto magis intraveris tanto magis eris in cauponâ The more you go back the longer you are in the place where you are ashamed to be seen and he that conceals his sin still retains that which he counts his shame and his burden Hippocrates was noted for an ingenious person that he published and confessed his errour concerning the futures of the head and all ages since Saint Austin have called him pious for writing his book of retractations in which he published his former ignorances and mistakes and so set his shame off to the world invested with a garment of modesty and above half changed before they were seen I did the rather insist upon this particular because it is a consideration of huge concernment and yet much neglected in all its instances and degrees We neither confesse our shame nor endure it we are privately troubled and publikely excuse it we turn charity into bitternesse and our reproof into contumacy and scorne and who is there amongst us that can endure a personall charge or is not to be taught his personall duty by generall discoursings by parable and apologue by acts of insinuation and wary distances but by this state of persons we know the estate of our own spirits When God sent his Prophets to the people and they stoned them with stones and sawed them asunder and cast them into dungeons and made them beggers the people fell into the condition of Babylon Quam curavimus non est sanata We healed her said the Prophets But she would not be cured Derelinquamus eam that 's her
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
be compared to a wise soul and a prudent spirit and he that wants it hath a lesse vertue and a defenselesse minde and will suffer a mighty hazard in the interest of eternity Its parts and proper acts consist in the following particulars 1. It is the duty of Christian prudence to choose the end of a Christian that which is perfective of a man satisfactory to reason the rest of a Christian and the beatification of his spirit and that is to choose and desire and propound to himself heaven and the fruition of God as the end of all his acts and arts his designes and purposes For in the nature of things that is most eligible and most to be pursued which is most perfective of our nature and is the acquiescence the satisfaction and proper rest of our most reasonable appetites Now the things of this world are difficult and uneasie full of thornes and empty of pleasures they fill a diseased faculty or an abused sense but are an infinite dissatisfaction to reason and the appetites of the soul they are short and transient and they never abide unlesse sorrow like a chain be bound about their leg and then they never stir till the grace of God and religion breaks it or else that the rust of time eats the chain in pieces they are dangerous and doubtfull few and difficult fordid and particular not onely not communicable to a multitude but not diffusive upon the whole man there being no one pleasure or object in this world that delights all the parts of man and after all this they are originally from earth and from the creatures onely that they oftentimes contract alliances with hell and the grave with shame and sorrow and all these put together make no great amability or proportion to a wise mans choice But on the other side the things of God are the noblest satisfactions to those desires which ought to be cherished and swelled up to infinite their deliciousnesse is vast and full of relish and their very appendant thorns are to be chosen for they are gilded they are safe and medicinall they heal the wound they make and bring forth fruit of a blessed and a holy life The things of God and of religion are easie and sweet they bear entertainments in their hand and reward at their back their good is certain and perpetual and they make us cheerfull to day and pleasant to morrow and spiritual songs end not in a sigh and a groan neither like unwholesome physick do they let loose a present humour and introduce an habitual indisposition But they bring us to the felicity of God the same yesterday and to day and for ever they do not give a private and particular delight but their benefit is publike like the incense of the altar it sends up a sweet smell to heaven and makes atonement for the religious man that kindled it and delights all the standers by and makes the very air wholesome there is no blessed soul goes to heaven but he makes a generall joy in all the mansions where the Saints do dwell and in all the chappels where the Angels sing and the joyes of religion are not univocal but productive of rare and accidental and praeternatural pleasures for the musick of holy hymnes delights the ear and refreshes the spirit and makes the very bones of the Saint to rejoyce and charity or the giving alms to the poor does not onely ease the poverty of the receiver but makes the giver rich and heals his sicknesse and delivers from death and temperance though it be in the matter of meat and drink and pleasures yet hath an effect upon the understanding and makes the reason sober and his will orderly and his â—ffections regular and does things beside and beyond their natural and proper efficacy for all the parts of our duty are watered with the showers of blessing and bring forth fruit according to the influence of heaven and beyond the capacities of nature And now let the voluptuous person go and try whether putting his wanton hand to the bosome of his Misâ—â—s will get half such honour as Scaevola put upon his head when he put his hand into the fire Let him see whether a drunken meeting will cure a fever or make him wise A hearty and a persevering prayer will Let him tell me if spending great summes of money upon his lusts will make him sleep soundly or be rich Charity will Alms will increase his fortune and a good conscience shall charme all his cares and sorrows into a most delicious slumber well may a full goblet wet the drunkards tongue and then the heat rising from the stomack will dry the spunge and heat it into the scorchings and little images of hell and the follies of a wanton bed will turn the itch into a smart and empty the reins of all their lustfull powers but can they do honour or satisfaction in any thing that must last and that ought to be provided for No All the things of this world are little and trifling and limited and particular and sometimes necessary because we are miserable wanting and imperfect but they never do any thing toward perfection but their pleasure dies like the time in which it danced a while and when the minute is gone so is the pleasure too and leaves no footstep but the impression of a sigh and dwells no where but in the same house where you shall finde yesterday that is in forgetfulnesse and annihilation unlesse its onely childe sorrow shall marry and breed more of its kinde and so continue its memory and name to eternall ages It is therefore the most necessary part of prudence to choose well in the main stake and the dispute is not much for if eternall things be better then temporall the soul more noble then the body vertue more honourable then the basest vices a lasting joy to be chosen before an eternall sorrow much to be preferred before little certainty before danger publike good things before private evils eternity before moments then let us set down in religion and make heaven to be our end God to be our Father Christ our elder Brother the Holy Ghost the earnest of our inheritance vertue to be our imployment and then we shall never enter into the portion of fools and accursed ill-choosing spirits Nazianzen said well Malim prudentiae guttam quà m foecundioris fortunae pelagus One drop of prudence is more usefull then an ocean of a smooth fortune for prudence is a rare instrument towards heaven and a great fortune is made oftentimes the high-way to hell and destruction However thus farre prudence is our duty every man can be so wise and is bound to it to choose heaven and a cohabitation with God before the possessions and transient vanities of the world 2. It is a duty of Christian prudence to pursue this great end with apt means and instruments in proportion to that end No wise man will sail to Ormus
an infidel and denies the faith by such unseasonably dying or being undone which by that testimony he did intend gloriously to confesse he serves the end of ambition and popular services but not the sober ends of religion he discourages the weak and weakens the hands of the strong and by upbraiding their warinesse tempts them to turn it into rashnesse or despair he affrights strangers from entring into religion while by such imprudence he shall represent it to be impossible at the same time to be wise and to be religious it turns all the whole religion into a forwardnesse of dying or beggery leaving no space for the parts and offices of a holy life which in times of persecution are infinitely necessary for the advantages of the institution But God hath provided better things for his servants Quem fata cogunt ille cum veniâ est miser He whom God by an inevitable necessity calls to sufferance he hath leave to be undone and that ruine of his estate or losse of his life shall secure first a providence then a crown At si quis ultro se malis offert volens seque ipse torquet perdere est dignus bona Queis nescit uti But he that invites the cruelty of a Tyrant by his own follyes or the indiscretions of an unsignificant and impertinent zeal suffers as a wilful person and enters into the portion and reward of fools And this is the precept of our Blessed Saviour next after my text Beware of men use your prudence to the purposes of avoiding their snare 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Man is the most harmful of all the wilde beasts ye are sent as sheep among wolves be therefore wise as serpents when you can avoid it suffer not men to ride over your heads or trample you under foot that 's the wisdom of Serpents and so must we that is by all just complyances and toleration of all indifferent changes in which a duty is not destroyed and in which we were not active so to preserve our selves that we might be permitted to live and serve God and to do advantages to religion so purchasing time to do good in by bending in all those flexures of fortune and condition which we cannot help and which we do not set forward and which we never did procure and this is the direct meaning of Saint Paul see then that ye walk circumspectly not as fools but as wise Redeeming the time because the dayes are evil that is we are fallen into times that are troublesome dangerous persecuting and afflictive purchase as much respite as you can Buy or redeem the time by all honest arts by humility by fair carriage and sweetnesses of society by civility and a peaceful conversation by good words and all honest offices by praying for your persecutors by patient sufferance of what is unavoidable And when the Tyrant draws you forth from all these guards and retirements and offers violence to your duty or tempts you to do a dishonest act or to omit an act of obligation then come forth into the Theater and lay your necks down to the hangmans axe and fear not to die the most shamful death of the crosse or the gallows for so have I known angels ascending and descending upon those ladders and the Lord of glory suffered shame and purchased honour upon the crosse Thus we are to walk in wisdom towards them that are without redeeming the time for so Saint Paul renewes that permission or commandment Give them no just cause of offence with all humility and as occasion is offered represent their duty and invite them sweetly to felicities and vertue but do not in ruder language upbraid and reproach their basenesse and when they are in corrigible let them alone lest like cats they run mad with the smell of delicious ointments And therefore Pothinus Bishop of Lyons being asked by the unbaptized President who was the God of the Christians answered 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If you be disposed with real and hearty desires of learning what you ask you shall quickly know But if your purposes be in direct I shall not preach to you to my hurt and your no advantage Thus the wisdom of the primitive Christians was careful not to prophane the temples of the heathen not to revile their false Gods and when they were in duty to represent the follies of their religion they chose to do it from their own writings and as relators of their own records they fled from the fury of a persecution they hid themselves in caves and wandred about in disguises and preached in private and celebrated their synaxes and communions in grots and retirements and made it appear to all the world they were peaceable and obedient charitable and patient and at this price bought their time 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 As knowing that even in this sense time was very pretious and the opportunitie of giving glory to God by the offices of an excellent religion was not too deare a purchase at that rate But then when the wolves had entred into the folds and seized upon a lamb the rest fled and used all the innocent arts of concealment Saint Athanasius being overtaken by his persecutors but not known and asked whether he saw Athanasius passing that way pointed out forward with his finger non longè abest Athanasius the man is not far off a swift foot-man will easily overtake him And Saint Paul divided the councell of his Judges and made the Pharisees his parties by a witty insinuation of his own belief of the resurrection which was not the main question but an incident to the matter of his accusation And when Plinius secundus in the face of a Tyrant court was pressed so invidiously to give his opinion concerning a good man in banishment and under the disadvantage of an unjust sentence he diverted the snare of Marcus Regulus by referring his answer to a competent judicatory according to the laws being prefled again by offering a direct answer upon a just condition which he knew they would not accept and the third time by turning the envy upon the impertinent and malicious Orator that he won great honour the honour of a severe honesty and a witty man and a prudent person The thing I have noted because it is a good pattern to represent the arts of honest evasion and religious prudent honesty which any good man may transcribe and turn into his own instances if an equal case should occur For in this case the rule is easy If we are commanded to be wise and redeeme our time that we serve God and religion we must not use unlawful arts which set us back in the accounts of our time no lying Subterfuges no betraying of a truth no treachery to a good man no insnaring of a brother no secret renouncing of any part or proposition of our religion no denying to confesse the article when we are called to it For when
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
all the evils of the Church and all the good that happens to evil men every day of danger the periods of sicknesse and the day of death are dayes of tempest and storm and our faith wil suffer shipwrack unlesse it be strong and supported and directed But who shall guide the vessel when a stormy passion or a violent imagination transports the man who shall awaken his reason and charm his passion into slumber instruction How shal a man make his fears confident and allay his confidence with fear and make the allay with just proportions and steere evenly between the extremes or call upon his sleeping purposes or actuate his choices or binde him to reason in all the wandrings and ignorances in his passion and mistakes For suppose the man of great skil and great learning in the wayes of religion yet if he be abused by accident or by his own will who shall then judge his cases of conscience and awaken his duty and renew his holy principle and actuate his spiritual powers For Physitians that prescribe to others do not minister to themselves in cases of danger and violent sicknesses and in matter of distemperature we shall not finde that books alone will do all the work of a spiritual Physitian more then of a natural I will not go about to increase the dangers and difficulties of the soul to represent the assistance of a spiritual man to be necessary But of this I am sure our not understanding and our not considering our soul make us first to neglect and then many times to lose it But is not every man an unequal judge in his own case and therefore the wisdom of God and the laws hath appointed tribunals and Judges and arbitrators and that men are partial in the matter of souls it is infinitely certain because amongst those milions of souls that perish not one in ten thousand but believes himself in a good condition and all sects of Christians think they are in the right and few are patient to enquire whether they be or no then adde to this that the Questions of souls being clothed with circumstances of matter and particular contingency are or may be infinite and most men are so infortunate that they have so intangled their cases of conscience that there where they have done something good it may be they have mingled half a dozen evils and when interests are confounded and governments altered and power strives with right and insensibly passes into right and duty to God would fain be reconciled with duty to our relatives will it not be more then necessary that we should have some one that we may enquire of after the way to heaven which is now made intricate by our follies and inevitable accidents But by what instrument shall men alone and in their own cases be able to discern the spirit of truth from the spirit of illusion just confidence from presumption fear from pusillanimity are not all the things and assistances in the world little enough to defend us against pleasure and pain the two great fountains of temptation is it not harder to cure a lust then to cure a feaver and are not the deceptions and follies of men and the arts of the Devil and inticements of the world the deceptions of a mans own heart and the evils of sin more evil and more numerous then the sicknesses and diseases of any one man and if a man perishes in his soul is it not infinitely more sad then if he could rise from his grave and die a thousand deaths over Thus we are advanced a second step in this prudential motive God used many arts to secure our souls interest and there is infinite dangers and infinite wayes of miscarriage in the souls interest and therefore there is great necessity God should do all those mercies of security and that we should do all the under-ministeries we can in this great work But what advantage shall we receive by a spiritual Guide much every way For this is the way that God hath appointed who in every age hath sent a succession of spiritual persons whose office is to minister in holy things and to be stewards of Gods houshold shepherds of the flock dispensers of the mysteries under mediators and ministers of prayer preachers of the law expounders of questions monitors of duty conveiances of blessings and that which is a good discourse in the mouth of another man is from them an ordinance of God and besides its natural efficacy and perswasion it prevails by the way of blessing by the reverence of his person by divine institution by the excellency of order by the advantages of opinion and assistances of reputation by the influence of the spirit who is the president of such ministeries and who is appointed to all Christians according to the despensation that is appointed to them to the people in their obedience and frequenting of the ordinance to the Priest in his ministery and publick and privat offices To which also I adde this consideration that as the Holy Sacraments are hugely effective to spiritual purposes not onely because they convey a blessing to the worthy suscipients but because men cannot be worthy suscipients unlesse they do many excellent acts of vertue in order to a previous disposition so that in the whole conjunction and transaction of affaires there is good done by way of proper efficacy and divine blessing so it is in following the conduct of a spiritual man and consulting with him in the matter of our souls we cannot do it unless we consider our souls and make religion our businesse and examine our present state and consider concerning our danger and watch and designe for our advantages which things of themselves wil set a man much forwarder in the way of Godlinesse besides thath naturally every man will lesse dare to act a sin for which he knows he shall feel a present shame in his discoveries made to the spiritual Guide the man that is made the witnesse of his conversation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Holy men ought to know all things from God and that relate to God in order to the conduct of souls and there is nothing to be said against this if we do not suffer the devil in this affaire to abuse us as he does many people in their opinions teaching men to suspect there is a designe and a snake under the plantain But so may they suspect Kings when they command obedience or the Levites when they read the law of tithes or Parents when they teach their children temperance or Tutors when they watch their charge However it is better to venture the worst of the designe then to lose the best of the assistance and he that guides himself hath much work and much danger but he that is under the conduct of another his work is easy little and secure it is nothing but diligence and obedience and though it be a hard thing to rule well yet
nothing is easier then to follow and to be obedient Sermon XXII Of Christian Prudence Part III. 7. AS it is a part of Christian prudence to take into the conduct of our soules a spiritual man for a guide so it is also of great concernment that we be prudent in the choice of him whom we are to trust in so great an interest Concerning which it will be impossible to give characters and significations particular enough to enable a choice without the interval assistances of prayer experience and the Grace of God He that describes a man can tell you the colour of his hair his stature and proportions and describe some general lines enough to distingush him from a Cyclops or a Saracen but when you chance to see the man you will discover figures or little features of which the description had produced in you no Phantasme or expectation And in the exteriour significations of a sect there are more semblances then in mens faces and greater uncertainty in the signes what is faulty strives so craftily to act the true and proper images of things and the more they are defective in circumstances the more curious they are in forms and they also use such arts of gaining Proselytes which are of most advantage towards an effect and therefore such which the true Christian ought to pursue and the Apostles actually did and they strive to follow their patterns in arts of perswasion not onely because they would seem like them but because they can have none so good so effective to their purposes that it follows that it is not more a duty to take care that we be not corrupted with false teachers then that we be not abused with false signes for we as well finde a good man teaching a false proposition as a good cause managed by ill men and a holy cause is not alwayes dressed with healthful symptomes nor is there a crosse alwayes set upon the doores of those congregations who are infected with the plague of heresy When Saint John was to separate false teachers from true he took no other course but to remark the doctrine which was of God and that should be the mark of cognisance to distinguish right shepheards from robbers and invaders every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God He that denieth it is not of God By this he bids his schollers to avoid the present sects of Ebion Cerinthus Simon Magus and such other persons that denied that Christ was at all before he came or that he came really in the flesh and a proper humanity This is a clear note and they that conversed with Saint John or believed his doctrine were sufficiently instructed in the present Questions But this note will signify nothing to us for all sects of Christians confesse Jesus Christ come in the flesh and the following sects did avoid that rock over which a great Apostle had hung out so plain a lantern In the following ages of the Church men have been so curious to signifie misbelievers that they have invented and observed some signes which indeed in some cases were true real appendages of false believers but yet such which were also or might be common to them with good men and members of the Catholick Church some few I shall remark and give a short account of them that by removing the uncertain we may fix our inquiries and direct them by certain significations lest this art of prudence turn into folly and faction errour and secular designe 1. Some men distinguish errour from truth by calling their adversaries doctrine new and of yesterday and certainly this is a good signe if it be rightly applyed for since all Christian doctrine is that which Christ taught his Church and the spirit enlarged or expounded and the Apostles delivered we are to begin the Christian aera for our faith and parts of religion by the period of their preaching our account begins then and whatsoever is contrary to what they taught is new and false and whatsoever is besides what they taught is no part of our religion and then no man can be prejudiced for believing it or not and if it be adopted into the confessions of the Church the proposition is alwayes so uncertain that it s not to be admitted into the faith and therefore if it be old in respect of our dayes it is not therefore necessary to be believed if it be new it may be received into opinion according to its probabilitie and no sects or interest are to be divided upon such accounts This onely I desire to be observed that when a truth returns from banishment by a postliminium if it was from the first though the Holy fire hath been buried or the river ran under ground yet that we do not call that new since newnesse is not to be accounted of by a proportion to our short lived memories or to the broken records and fragments of story left after the inundation of barbarisme and war and change of Kingdoms and corruption of Authors but by its relation to the fountain of our truths and the birth of our religion under our Fathers in Christ the holy Apostles and Disciples a Camel was a new thing to them that saw it in the fable But yet it was created as soon as a cow or the domestick creatures and some people are apt to call every thing new which they never heard of before as if all religion were to be measured by the standards of their observation or country customs Whatsoever was not taught by Christ or his Apostles though it came in by Papias or Dionysius by Arius or Liberius is certainly new as to our account and whatsoever is taught to us by the Doctors of the present age if it can shew its test from the beginning of our period for revelation is not to be called new though it be pressed with a new zeal and discoursed of by unheard of arguments that is though men be ignorant and need to learn it yet it is not therefore new or unnecessary 2. Some would have false teachers sufficiently signified by a name or the owning of a private Appellative as of Papist Lutheran Calvenists Zuinglian Socinian think it is enough to denominat them not of Christ if they are called by the name of a man And indeed the thing is in it self ill but then if by this mark we shall esteem false teachers sufficiently signified we must follow no man no Church nor no communion for all are by their adversaries marked with an appellative of separation and singularity and yet themselves are tenacious of a good name such as they choose or such as is permitted to them by fame and the people and a natural necessity of making a distinction Thus the Donatist called themselves the flock of God and the Novatians called the Catholicks traditors and the Eustathians called themselves Catholikes and the worshippers of images made Iconoclast to be a name
of scorn and men made names as they listed or as the fate of the market went And if a Doctor preaches a doctrine which another man likes not but preaches the contradictory he that consents and he that refuses have each of them a teacher by whose name if they please to wrangle they may be signified It was so in the Corinthian Church with this onely difference that they divided themselves by names which signified the same religion I am of Paul and I of Apollo and I am of Peter and I of Christ these Apostles were ministers of Christ and so does every teacher new or old among the Christians pretend himself to be Let that therefore be examined if he ministers to the truth of Christ and the religion of his master let him be entertained as a servant of his Lord but if an appellative be taken from his name there is a faction commenced in it and there is a fault in the men if there be none in the doctrine but that the doctrine be true or false to be received or to be rejected because of the name is accidental and extrinsecall and therefore not to be determined by this signe 3. Amongst some men a sect is sufficiently thought to be reproved if it subdivides and breaks into little fractions or changes its own opinions indeed if it declines its own doctrine no man hath reason to beleeve them upon their word or to take them upon the stock of reputation which themselves being judges they have forfeited and renounced in the changing that which at first they obtruded passionately And therefore in this case there is nothing to be done but to beleeve the men so farre as they have reason to beleeve themselves that is to consider when they prove what they say and they that are able to do so are not persons in danger to be seduced by a bare authority unlesse they list themselves for others that sink under an unavoidable prejudice God will take care for them if they be good people and their case shall be considered by and by But for the other part of the signe when men fall out among themselves for other interests or opinions it is no argument that they are in an errour concerning that doctrine which they all unitedly teach or condemn respectively but it hath in it some probability that their union is a testimony of truth as certainly as that their fractions are a testimony of their zeal or honesty or weaknesse as it happens and if we Christians be too decretory in this instance it will be hard for any of us to keep a Jew from making use of it against the whole religion which from the dayes of the Apostles hath been rent into innumerable sects and under-sects springing from mistake or interest from the arts of the Devil or the weaknesse of man But from hence we may make an advantage in the way of prudence and become sure that all that doctrine is certainly true in which the generality of Christians who are divided in many things yet do constantly agree and that that doctrine is also sufficient since it is certain that because in all Communions and Churches there are some very good men that do all their duty to the getting of truth God will not fail in any thing that is necessary to them that honestly and heartily desire to obtain it and therefore if they rest in the heartinesse of that and live accordingly and superinduce nothing to the destruction of that they have nothing to do but to rely upon Gods goodnesse and if they perish it is certain they cannot help it and that is demonstration enough that they cannot perish considering the justice and goodnesse of our Lord and Judge 4. Whoever break the bands of a Society or Communion and go out from that Congregation is whose Confession they are baptized do an intolerable scandal to their doctrine and persons and give suspicious men reason to decline their Assemblies and not to choose them at all for any thing of their authority or outward circumstances and Saint Paul bids the Romans to mark them that cause divisions and offences But the following words make their caution prudent and practicable contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned and avoid them they that recede from the doctrine which they have learned they cause the offence and if they also obtrude this upon their congregations they also make the division For it is certain if we receive any doctrine contrary to what Christ gave and the Apostles taught for the authority of any man then we call men Masters and leave our Master which is in heaven and in that case we must separate from the Congregation and adhere to Christ but this is not to be done unlesse the case be evident and notorious But as it is hard that the publike doctrine of a Chruch should be rifled and misunderstood and reproved and rejected by any of her wilful or ignorant sons and daughters so it is also as hard that they should be bound not to see when the case is plain and evident There may be mischiefs on both sides but the former sort of evils men may avoid if they will for they may be humble and modest and entertain better opinions of their Superiours then of themselves and in doubtful things give them the honour of a just opinion and if they do not do so that evil will be their own private for that it become not publike the King and the Bishop are to take care but for the latter sort of evil it will certainly become universal If I say an authoritative false doctrine be imposed and is to be accepted accordingly for then all men shall be bound to professe against their conscience that is with their mouthes not to confesse unto salvation what with their hearts they believe unto righteousnesse The best way of remedying both the evils is that Governours lay no burden of doctrines or lawes but what are necessary or very profitable and that Inferiours do not contend for things unnecessary nor call any thing necessary that is not till then there will be evils on both sides and although the Governours are to carry the Question in the point of law reputation and publike government yet as to Gods Judicature they will bear the bigger load who in his right do him an injury and by the impresses of his authority destroy his truth But in this case also although separating be a suspicious thing and intolerable unlesse it be when a sin is imposed yet to separate is also accidentall to truth for some men separate with reason some men against reason therefore here all the certainty that is in the thing is when the truth is secured and all the security to the men will be in the humility of their persons and the heartinesse and simplicity of their intention and diligence of inquiry The Church of England had reason to separate from the Confession and practises of Rome in
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
and as it is purer then the beams of the morning so it is stronger then a tempest or the combination of all the windes though united by the prince that ruleth in the aire And we finde that the Nicene faith prevailed upon all the world though some Arian Bishops went from Ariminum to Nice and there decreed their own articles and called it the faith read at Nice and used all arts and all violence and all lying and all diligence to discountenance it yet it could not be it was the truth of God and therefore it was stronger then all the gates of hell then all the powers of darknesse and he that tells a lie for his religion or goes about by fraud and imposture to gain proselytes either dares not trust his cause or dare not trust God True religion is open in its articles honest in its prosecutions just in its conduct innocent when it is accused ignorant of falsehood sure in its truth simple in its sayings and as Julius Capitolinus said of the Emperour Verus it is morum simplicium quae adumbrare nihil possit it covers indeed a multitude of sins by curing them and obtaining pardon for them but it can dissemble nothing of it self it cannot tell or do a lie but it can become a sacrifice a good man can quit his life but never his integrity That 's the first duty the sum of which is that which Aquilius said concerning fraud and craft bona fides the honesty of a mans faith and religion is destroyed cum aliud simulatum aliud actum sit when either we conceale what we ought to publish or do not act what we pretend 2. Christian simplicity or the innocence of prudence relates to laws both in their sanction and execution that they be decreed with equity and proportioned to the capacity and profit of the subjects and that they be applied to practise with remissions and reasonable interpretations agreeable to the sence of the words and the minde of the lawgiver but laws are not to be cosened and abused by contradictory glosses and phantastick elusions as knowing that if the majesty and sacrednesse of them be once abused and subjected to contempt and unreasonable and easy resolutions their girdle is unloosed and they suffer the shame of prostitution and contempt When Saul made a law that he that eat before night should die the people perswaded him directly to rescind it in the case of Jonathan because it was unequal and unjust that he who had wrought their deliverance and in that working it was absent from the promulgation of the law should suffer for breaking it in a case of violent necessity and of which he heard nothing upon so faire and probable a cause and it had been well that the Persian had been so rescued who against the laws of his country killed a Lion to save the life of his Prince in such cases it is fit the law be rescinded and dispensed with all as to certain particulars so it be done ingenuously with competent authority in great necessity and without partiality But that which I intend here is that in the rescission or dispensation of the law the processe be open and free and such as shall preserve the law and its sacrednesse as well as the person and his interest The laws of Sparta forbad any man to be twice Admiral but when their affaires required it they made Araeus titular and Lysander supravisor of him and Admiral to all real and effective purposes this wanted ingenuity and laid a way open for them to despise the law which was made patient of such a weak evasion The Lacedemonian Embassador perswaded Pericles to turn the tables of the law which were forbidden to be removed and an other ordained in a certain case that the laws should sleep 24. hours A third decreed that June should be called May because the time of an election appointed by the law was elapsed these arts are against the ingenuity and simplicitie of laws and lawgivers and teach the people to cheat in their obedience when their Judges are so fraudulent in the administration of their laws Every law should be made plain open honest significant and he that makes a decree and intricates it on purpose or by inconsideration layes a snare or leaves one there and is either an imprudent person and therefore unfit to govern or else he is a Tyrant and a vulâ—ur It is too much that a man can make a law by an arbitrary power But when he shall also leave the law so that every of the ministers of Justice and the Judges shall have power to rule by a loose by an arbitrary by a contradictory interpretation it is intolerable They that rule by prudence should above all things see that the patrons and Advocates of innocence should be harmlesse and without an evil sting 3. Christian simplicity relates to promises and acts of grace and favour and its caution is that all promises be simple ingenuous agreeable to the intention of the promiser truly and effectually expressed and never going lesse in the performance then in the promise and words of the expression concerning which the cases are several 1. First all promises in which a third or a second person hath no interest that is the promises of kindnesse and civilities are tied to passe into performance secundum aequum bonum and though they may oblige to some small inconvenience yet never to a great one and I will visit you to morrow morning because I promised you and therefore I will come etiamsi non concoxero although I have not slept my full sleep but Si febricitavcro if I be in a feaver or have reason to fear one I am disobliged For the nature of such promises bears upon them no bigger burthen then can be expounded by reasonable civilities and the common expectation of kinde and the ordinary performances of just men who do excuse and are excused respectively by all rules of reason proportionably to such small entercourses and therefore although such conditions be not expressed in making promises yet to perform or rescind them by such laws is not against Christian simplicity 2. Promises in matters of justice or in matters of grace as from a superiour to an inferiour must be so singly and ingenuously expressed intended and performed accordingly that no condition is to be reserved or supposed in them to warrant their non-performance but impossibility or that which is next to it an intolerable inconvenience in which cases we have a natural liberty to commute our promises but so that we pay to the interested person a good at least equal to that which we first promised And to this purpose it may be added that it is not against Christian simplicity to expresse our promises in such words which we know the interested man will understand to other purposes then I intend so it be not lesse that I mean then that he hopes for When our Blessed Saviour
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