scattered promiscuously on all which God is pleas'd to deal out to all Men by the hands of his Ministers the Angels But they come not down on the Ladder but to his Jacobs nor rescue any out of the spiritual Sodom but his Lots Nor did the Almighty ever design them to be Ministers for good to any but the Righteous Over them he gives his Angels charge and They are styl'd Their Angels with an Emphasis and Psal. 34. 7. The Angel of the Lord tarrieth round about them that fear him and delivereth them And as our Apostle endured all things for the Elect sake so doe the Angels doe all for them To this purpose 't is observed That God never speaks by his Angels but he puts some character on those he speaks to as such as fear the Lord are heirs of Salvation and the like And this is so true that if wicked Men enjoy any good in this life by the Angels 't is for the Elect's sake they doe so I will bless them that bless thee says God to Abraham Gen. 12. 3. Even Reprobates fare the better here for the Saints God sometimes gratifies his Children with the Temporal preservation of the wicked as he did St. Paul with the Lives of those Infidels that were in the Ship with him Act. 27. 24. and Lot with all that were in Zoar. The Jews have a Saying Absque stationibus non staret Orbis The Prayers of God's People uphold the World The Holy Seed are Statumen Terrae Esay 6. 13. with David They bear up the Pillars of the Earth Hippo could not be taken while St. Augustine lived nor Sodom destroy'd while Lot was in it And St. Ambrose is said to have been the Wall of Italy And therefore 't is ill policy as well as impiety in any to wrong the Saints of God much more to endeavour to root them out of the World as Heathen Persecutors did Wherein they resembled the Stag in the Emblem that by feeding on those Leaves which hid him from the Hunter did but betray themselves to his fury and Sampson-like by pulling down those Pillars brought the house upon their own heads Were it not for the Elect God would make a short work in the Earth and no flesh should be saved Every Angel of his would then be a destroying one so that whether they preserve or punish the wicked 't is still in order to the Salvation of those who shall be the heirs of it And now what remains but that while we behold God's Angels ascending and descending we make their Ladder ours too to mount up to God who sits at the top of it and employs them for our good and with them give him the glory of those his benefits which they convey unto us For all the helps and assistances they afford us are nothing without his And therefore when God promised Moses that an Angel should go before Israel but withall threatned them with the subduction of his own Presence I marvel not if that Holy Man were no less troubled than if they had been left destitute and guardless and that he ceased not his importunity till he had won the gratious Engagement of the Almighty for his Presence in that whole Expedition For what is the greatest Angel in Heaven without his Maker Or what are their Services to us if his Favour go not along with them Let him then have the chiefest glory who is the Author of them The Psalmist directs us to this duty For no sooner had he said Psal. 34. 7. The Angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him but he adds in the following Verse O tast and see how gratious the Lord is To let us know whom we are beholding to for all the good Angels doe us and to whom we are to pay our Thanks Yet while we pay the main tribute of our Thanks to God he is content we should have a respect too for his Ambassadors They are to be honoured for his sake and next to him that sends them Nor can any Reverence be too high which diminishes not of that we owe to our common Maker We ought to be willing to give them so much as they will be willing to take from us If we go beyond these bounds we offend them as much as St. John did when he would have ador'd them The excess of Respects to them have turn'd to abominable Impiety which however St. Hierome seems to impute to the Jews ever since the Prophet's time yet Simon Magus was the first that we find guilty of this impious flattery of the Angels who fondly holding that the World was made by them could not think fit to present them with less than divine Honour And near a-kin to these were the Angelici of old who professing true Christianity and Detestation of Idolatry as having learn'd that God only was to be worshipped properly yet reserved a certain kind of lesser Adoration to the Angels Against this opinion and practice the Apostle seems to bend his style in his Epistle to the Colossians forbidding a voluntary humility in worshipping of Angels whether grounded upon the superstition of ancient Jews as St. Hierome or the Ethnick Philosophy of some Platonicks as Estius imagines or the damnable Precepts of the Simonians and Cerinthians as Tertullian we need not enquire Nothing is more clear than the Apostle's Inhibition nor more evident than the Papists direct opposition to that Inhibition who are no less guilty of the same voluntary humility than they were who thought it too much boldness to come immediately to God without making their way to his favour by the Mediation of Angels which whether it be not justly to be charged on Papists let any sober Man judge Surely as the Good Angels deserve our Reverence so do they not desire our Adoration The Evil Angels indeed still required it and the Devil begg'd it of Christ that he would fall down and worship him Mat. 4. 9. but the Good refuse it Revel 19. 10. And therefore St. Bernard is too liberal when he tells us we owe to the Good spirits Reverence for their Presence Devotion for their Love and Trust for their Custody The former indeed we doe and we come short of our Duty to them if we entertain not in our Hearts a high and venerable conceit of their wonderfull Majesty Glory and Greatness and such a reverential awe of their Presence as to doe nothing which may offend them Take heed that ye despise not these little ones says our Lord for their Angels are with my Father in Heaven They may perhaps forgive us these will not And therefore we shall doe well to consider whether they who behold the face of God will endure to look upon us much less to assist us when we doe that which makes God turn his face from us We are a spectacle to Angels as well as Men 1 Cor. 4. 9. They are observers and witnesses of all our Actions but especially
not any Excellency they had in their own Nature being not good but only in respect of what was worse It being better to sacrifice to God than to Devils nor otherwise than as Types of the Lamb slain from the Foundation of the World and did therefore vanish as soon as He was once offered upon the Cross Whereas true Religion remains still a Juge Sacrificium and is more lasting than the Heavens themselves which as it was long in the World before any Command came forth for Sacrifice So is it now most glorious when Jewish Altars are down 'T is not confin'd to time or place nor ever to be dispenc'd with as we find legal Sacrifices oft-times were And as 't is in the sight of God the best of all Sacrifices who requires Mercy and not bruitish Oblations so is it a most Reasonable Service being not founded in mera voluntate imponentis but in the Reason of the thing it self the Sacrifice not of a Brute Beast but of a man endued with Reason and withal most suitable to the Nature of God who as He is a Spirit will be worshipped in Spirit and in Truth and as He is a most wise God will not away with the Sacrifice of Fools Eccles. 5. 1. But will have the Evangelical as well as the Legal Sacrifices salted with salt our words and actions seasoned with discretion For we are fed with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well as with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well with the Rational as with the sincere milk of the Gospel so far is Christian Religion from divesting men of their reason that it strictly requires them to be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh them a reason of the hope that is in them 1 Pet. 3. 15. Being in it it self as 't is easie to demonstrate of all other the most Reasonale service and to present God with any other worship were but to offer strange Fire before him And now let me bespeak you in like manner as Naaman's Servants did their Master 2 Kings 5. 13. If the Lord had bid us do some great thing should we not do it Might he not require of us as of the Jews whole Herds of Cattle and Woods of Spices and Incense Nay which is more the Sacrifice of our Bodies in the most strict and severe Sense He might surely as being Lord of all but here we see He does not No other Bloud now to be shed but what St. Bernard calls sanguinem animi vulnerati that of a wounded troubled Spirit of a broken and contrite heart Slay thy lust and thou shalt offer him a Beast give him thy Reason or which is perhaps dearer to thee Thy Will and thou shalt sacrifice a Man to him He will accept thy Tears for drink-offerings and prefer thy very Fasts to meat-offerings Thou needest not appear before thy God empty while thou presentest thy self to him every part of thy Body and every faculty of thy Soul nay every thing thou possessest and which many times thou accountest more pretious than that very Soul of thine may be a Sacrifice and a far more acceptable one too than all the Beasts of the Forrest Give the Lord thy Heart and that will be the Fat of thy Sacrifice As thy Charity the true fire of it without which the Incense of thy Prayers and of thy Devotions will not smoak nor ever ascend up to Heaven nay without which Martyrdom it self will prove a vain and insignificant oblation and though thou shouldst give thy Body to be burnt yet thou shouldst be nothing In a word give thy God thy self and in such a manner as He requires thee to do it and thou canst give him no more and yet when all this is done no more than what he first gave thee Thus shalt thou make him Thine and be infinitely more thy self by being His. 'T is like laying up Treasure in the Temple which thereby becomes more sacred and more assured too But then in the last place let us remember that what we have once solemnly dedicated to God cannot without Sacriledge be alienated Our Bodies being once his they are no more then our own For to whom we yield our selves Servants to obey his Servants we are to whom we obey Rom. 6. 16. Our gifts here like God's must be without Repentance nor can we recall much less employ them to any other use either of the World or Satan as we cannot serve God and Mammon so neither ought we to give him the Lean and this the Fat of our Sacrifice If our God will not part stakes surely he will not content himself with the worser share Let us then give him all and that all will be our Heart and our Affections that when we appear before him our Souls may ascend up to him as the Angel did in the flame of the Altar and that Flame may still be kept alive upon it be a continual Sacrifice such as may never cease and we may do that constantly on Earth which shall be our Eternal Employment in Heaven still praise and adore our Creator Then shall he change these our Sacrifices into everlasting Temples for himself to dwell in what we now present him natural Bodies turn into spiritual and make these our vile ones like unto his glorious one Which God of his Infinite Mercy grant c. Amen Soli Deo Gloria in aeternum A SERMON ON ESAY V. 20. The former Part of the Verse Wo unto them that call Evil good and Good Evil. THE great Creator has never been wanting to Man in prescribing him such Laws as might be sufficient if obeyed to make him happy whether we consider him in the State of Primitive Integrity or out of it In the former God so left him in the hands of his own Councel as to make himself his own Rule Nature was to him instead of Revelation he had then the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil planted in him Conscience was his Oracle and Reason his Guide and to know his Duty was but to consult himself God did not only wind him up as a Watch to a regular Motion but did withal place in him a Sun-dial to set himself by if he should go false so that his very Essence and Rule was then so much the same that to transgress was not so much to break a Law as a Man Nor did he by his Fall wholly forfeit all his natural Advantages either to himself or his Posterity For though our first Parent brake the natural Tables as Moses afterwards did those of Stone yet from the scattered pieces thereof set together we may all of us though imperfectly spell out our Duty The worst of men are born with a certain Decalogue Their Souls are not mere Rasae Tabulae there is a Book of Conscience wherein the different Characters of Good and Evil are plainly legible and by the help of those practical Notions which make
of our religious Duties And for this cause ought the Woman to have power on her head because of the Angels says St. Paul 1 Cor. 11. 10. While Zachary and the People were praying he sees an Angel of God who as Gideon's Angel went up in the smoak of the Sacrifice came down in the fragrant smoak of his Incense too Those glorious Spirits are indeed always with us but most in our Devotions They rejoyce to be with us while we are with our God nor will they any longer be with us than while we are with Him while we keep in his ways they will keep us safe if we go out of his Precincts we forfeit their Protection They will certainly leave us when we forsake God and when the Good ones go from us the Evil will come to us as in Saul's case And therefore to prevent the coming of the bad let us be sure to make the good ones our friends which we shall best doe by being like them by imitating them in their Obedience as our Saviour bids us in their Purity and Humility as also in their Charity by ministring to others though never so mean as they doe to us who are so much below them that so we may be the true heirs of Salvation be sure of their Protection here and enjoy their Society hereafter Which God of his infinite Mercy grant for his sake who is the Angel of the Covenant c. Amen Soli Deo gloria in aeternum A SERMON Preached on All-saints-day COLOS. I. 12. Giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in light SAint John reflecting on the Honour and Dignity of God's Children is so affected with that very Thought that in a Divine Rapture he breaks forth Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the Sons of God! 1 Joh. 3. 1. And then describing the future happiness that Relation should entitle us to he does it in such terms as shew it unconceivable ver 2. We are now says he the Sons of God but it doth not yet appear what we shall be In like manner St. Paul speaking of the Joys above describes them Negatively telling us rather what they are not than what they are Eye hath not seen nor Ear heard neither have entred into the Heart of Man the things which God hath prepared far them that love him 1 Cor. 2. 9. That is they exceed the apprehension not only of humane Sense but Understanding Now if any could have given us an exact description of those things then surely these two Apostles For since Heaven did as it were come down to the one in Visions and Revelations and the other went up thither having been caught up into it Who fitter than these Persons to display the Glories of that Place which themselves had seen And yet we see the only account they give or indeed could give us of them is but this That they are unaccountable not to be reacht by Thought nor to be known but by Enjoyment But how obscure soever or inexpressible those Glories appear to such as expect them This is certain that they are reserved and laid up in a sure place for as many as God shall account worthy of them An Estate they have in Reversion though now incapable of its actual Possession during their minority They are Heirs apparent of Salvation even in this their nonage and are as sure of Heaven as if they were already in it For it is their certain Inheritance Yet lest any should wax proud of their Title they are to remember that they owe it not to themselves but to the mere goodness of their Heavenly Father who both gives them the thing it self and their capacity for it Gives them Heaven and makes Heavenly too and therefore may justly challenge their most hearty acknowledgment of so great a Mercy which is that the Apostle requires of these Colossians That they should give thanks to the Father who had made them meet to be partakers of the Inheritance of the Saints in light So that we have in these words 1. A Description of the future Happiness of God's Children consisting of two Particulars 1. That it is their Inheritance 2. An Inheritance in light 2. The Persons who are the true Heirs and Proprietaries thereof The Saints 3. The Manner of its Conveyance to them and that is by Free-gift It descends not to them by any natural succession nor is it the fruit of their own pains or purchase But 't is God the Father that makes them both Partakers and meet Partakers thereof 4. Lastly Here is a Duty on their part to be performed arising from so high an Obligation That since the Father had been so bountifull in bestowing on them so goodly an Inheritance they should not fail to be thankfull to Him for it Giving thanks c. These be the Parts whereof briefly in their order And first of the Inheritance it self with the Nature and Condition thereof An Inhertaince in light An Inheritance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Singular 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There is it seems but one common Inheritance as but one common Salvation wherein all God's Saints are Heirs in solidum And let not this trouble any of them For Heaven is big enough and God sufficient for All. There not the Elder Brother is the only Heir and goes away with the Inheritance when many times the younger are Beggars but we shall All be Heirs and Co-heirs with Christ. Earthly Inheritances are indeed impaired and lessened by being parcelled out But this Inheritance in light like light loseth nothing by being communicated to All wherein every one shall have his Part and that Part shall be his All. Each vessel of honour shall be filled up it shall have as much as it can hold and that is as much as it shall desire All shall shine as stars in the Kingdom of their Father though with different lustre As one star differeth from another star in glory 1 Cor. 15. 41. Joh. 14. 2. All shall be in their Father's house but in several Mansions and with several Portions assigned them Which difference shall be so far from abating that it shall increase their mutual Glory when none shall complain that another hath too much and himself too little when each other's share shall be his own and more his own for being another's so that he shall be glorified in that very glory wherein his fellow Saint shall outshine him and his own Crown for this reason be brighter because his Neighbour's shall be so And as this Inheritance here is but one so is it a durable one That very name speaks a lasting Title What comes thus unto us we look upon as our own and our own for ever And indeed without Propriety and that perpetual all we have or enjoy is nothing We are at best but usu-fructuaries not true Possessors