bowells When Christ is disseised and dispossest his truth profligated and thrown out of a nation that professed it before when Christ is wounded by the blasphemies of others and crucified by thee in thy relapses to repented sinnes wilt thou not say to Them to Thy selfe in the behalfe of Christ why persecute yee me Wilt thou not make Christs case thine as hee made thine his Art not thou the bowells of Christ If not and thou art not if thou have not this sense of his suffering thou hast no interest in his death by thy Baptisme nor in his Resurrection by thy feeble halfe repentances But in the duty of a child as thou art a servant in the simplicity of a child as thou hast sucked from him in the interest and inheritance of a child as thou art the Son of his bowells in all these capacities and with all these we have done God calls thee come ye children and that is our next step the Action Come Passing thus from the Persons to the action Venite Come we must aske first what this comming is The whole mystery of our redemption is expressed by the Apostle in this word venit that Christ Iesus is come into the world All that thou hast to do is to come to and to meet him Where is he At home in his own house in the Church Which is his house which is his Church That to thee in which he hath given thee thy Baptisme if that do still afford thee as much as is necessary for thy salvation Come thither to the participation of his ordinances to the exercises of Religion there The gates of heaven shall be opened to you at last in that word Venite benedicti come ye blessed the way to those gates is opened to you now in the same word Venite filii come ye children come Christ can come and does often into thy bed-chamber in the visitation of his private Spirit but here he calls thee out into the congregation into the communion of Saints And then the Church celebrates Christs coming in the flesh a moneth before he comes in four Sundays of Advent before Christmas When thou comest to meet him in the Congregation come not occasionally come not casually not indifferently not collaterally come not as to an entertainment a show a spectacle or company come solemly with preparation with meditation He shall have the lesse profit by the prayer of the Congregation that hath not been at his private prayer before he came Much of the mystery of our Religion lay in the venturus that Christ was to come all that the law and Prophets undertooke for was that venturus that Christ was to come but the consummation of all the end of the law and the Prophets is in the venit he is come Do not clogge thy coming with future conditions and contingencies thou wilt come if thou canst wake if thou canst rise if thou canst be ready if thou like the company the weather the man We finde one man who was brought in his bed to Christ but it was but one Come come actually come earnestly come early come often and come to meet him Christ Jesus and no body else Christ is come into the world and therefore thou needest not goe out of the world to meet him He doth not call thee from thy Calling but in thy Calling The Dove went up and down from the Arke and to the Arke and yet was not disappointed of her Oliveleafe Thou maiest come to this place at due times and maiest doe the businesses of the world in other places too and still keep thy Olive thy peace of Conscience If no Hereticall recusancy thou dost like the Doctrine no schismaticall recusancy thou dost like the Discipline no lasie recusancy thou forbearest not because thou canst not sit at thine ease no proud recusancie that the company is not good enough for thee if none of these detain thee thou maist be here even when thou art not here God may accept thy desire as in many cases thou maist be away when thou art here as in particular thou art if being here thou do not hearken to that which is said here for that is added to the coming and follows in a third consideration after the capacity Children and the Action Come The disposition Hearken Come ye children hearken Upon those words of David Conturbata sunt ossa mea St. Basil faith well Habet anima ossa sua The soul hath bones as well as the body And in this Anatomy and dissection of the soul as the bones of the soul are the constant and strong resolutions thereof and as the seeing of the soul is understanding The eyes of your understanding being opened so the Hearing of the soul is hearkning in these religious exercises we doe not htar except we hearken for hearkning is the hearing of the soul. Some men draw some reasons out of some stories of some credit to imprint a belief of extasie and raptures That the body remaining upon the floore or in the bed the soul may be gone out to the contemplation of heavenly things But it were a strange and a perverse extasie that the body being here at a religious exercise and in a religious posture the soul should be gone out to the contemplation and pursuit of the pleasures or profits of this world You come hither but to your own funeralls if you bring nothing hither but your bodies you come but to be enterred to be laid in the earth if the ends of your comming be earthly respects prayse and opinion and observation of men you come to be Canonized to grow Saints if your souls be here and by grace here alwayes diffused grow up to a sanctification Bonus es Domine animae quaerenti te Thou art good O Lord to that soul that seeks thee It is St. Augustines note that it is put in the singular Animae to that soul Though many come few come to him A man may thread Sermons by half dozens a day and place his merit in the nūber a man may have been all day in the perfume and incense of preaching and yet have receivd none of the savor of life unto life Some things an Ape can do as wel as a Man some things an Hypocrite as wel as a Saint We cannot see now whether thy soul be here now or no but to morrow hereafter in the course of thy life they which are near thee know whether thy former faults be mended or no know whether thy soul use to be at Sermons as well as thy body uses to go to Sermons Faith comes by hearing saith the Apostle but it is by that hearing of the soul Hearkning Considering And then as the soul is infused by God but diffused over the whole body so there is a Man so Faith is infused from God but diffused into our works and so there is a Saint Practise is the Incarnation of Faith Faith
in your private and publique devotions will ye not fast for this kingdome in cutting off superfluities will ye not fight for this kingdome in resisting suggestions will ye not take Counsaile for this kingdome in consulting with religious friends will ye not give subsidies for this kingdome in relieving their necessities for whom God hath made you his stewards weigh and measure your selves and spend that be negligent of that which is least and worst in you Is your soule lesse then your body because it is in it How easily lies a letter in a Boxe which if it were unfolded would cover that Boxe unfold your soule and you shall see that it reaches to heaven from thence it came and thither it should pretend whereas the body is but from that earth and for that earth upon which it is now which is but a short and an inglorious progresse To contract this the soule is larger then the body and the glory and the joyes of heaven larger then the honours and the pleasures of this world what are seventy years to that latitude of continuing as long as the Ancient of dayes what is it to have spent our time with the great ones of this time when when the Angels shall come and say that Time shall be no more we shall have no beeing with him who is yesterday and to day and the same for ever we see how ordinarily ships goe many leagues out of their direct way to fetch the winde Spiritus spirat ubi vult sayes Christ the spirit blowes where he will and as the Angel took Habakkâ—k by the haire and placed him where he would this winde the spirit of God can take thee at last by thy gray haires and place thee in a good station then Spirat ubi vult he blowes where he will and spirat ubi vis he blowes where thou wilt too if thou beest appliable to his inspirations They are but hollow places that returne Ecchoes last syllables It is but a hollownesse of heart to answer God at last Be but as liberall of thy body in thy mortifications as in thy excesse and licentiousnesse and thou shalt in some measure have followed Gods example for the publique to pretermit the private for the larger and better to leave the narrower and worser respects To proceed when we made that observation that God pretermitted the private for the publique we noted that God did not say non bonum Homini It was not good for man to be alone man might have done well enough in that state so as his solitarinesse might have been supplied with a farther creation of more men In making the inventaries of those goods which man possesseth in the world we see a great Author says In possessionibus sunt amici inimici not onely our friends but even our enemies are part of our goods and we may raise as much profit from these as from those It may be as good a lesson to a mans sonne Study that enemy as Observe that friend As David says propitius fuisti ulciscens Thou heardst them ô Lord our God and wast favour able unto them and didst punish all their inventions it was part of his mercy part of his favour that he did correct them So we may say to our enemy I owe you my watchfulnesse upon my selfe and you have given me all the goodnesse that I have for you have calumniated all my indifferent actions and that kept me from committing enormous ill ones And if then our enemies be in possessionibus to be inventaried amongst our goods might not man have been abundantly rich in friends without this addition of a woman Quanto congruentius says S. Augustine how much more conveniently might two friends live together then a man and a woman God doth not then say non bonum homini man got not so much by the bargaine especially if we consider how that wife carried her selfe towards him but that for his particular he had been better aloneâ— nor he does not say now non bonum hunc hominem esse solum It is not good for any man to be alone for Qui potest capere capiat says Christ he that is able to receive it let him receive it What That some make themselves Eunuchs for the kingdome of heaven that is the better to un-entangle themselves from those impediments which hinder them in the way to heaven they abstaine from mariage and let them that can receive it receive it Now certainly few try whether they can receive this or no. Few strive few fast few pray for the gift of continency few are content with that incontinency which they have but are sorry they can expresse no more incontinency There is a use of mariage now which God never thought of in the first institution of mariage that it is a remedy against burning The two maine uses of mariage which are propagation of Children and mutuall assistance were intended by God at the present at first but the third is a remedy against that which was not then for then there was no inordinatenesse no irregularity in the affections of man And experience hath taught us now that those climates which are in reputation hottest are not uninhabitable they may be dwelt in for all their heat Even now in the corruption of our nature the clime is not so hot as that every one must of necessity mary There may be fire in the house and yet the house not on fire there may be a distemper of heate and yet no necessity to let blood The Roman Church injures us when they say that we prefer mariage before virginity and they injure the whole state of Christianity when they oppose mariage and chastity as though they were incompatible and might not consist together They may for mariage is honourable and the bed undefiled and therefore it may be so S. Augustine observes in mariage Bonuam fidei a triall of one anothers truth and that 's good And bonum prolis a lawfull meanes of propagation and that 's good and bonum Sacramenti a mysticall representation of that union of two natures in Christ and of him to us and to his Church and that 's good too So that there are divers degrees of good in mariage But yet for all these goodnesses God does not say non bonum it is not good for any man to be alone but Qui capere potest capiat according to Christs comment upon his Fathers text He that can containe and continue alone let him doe so But though God do not say non homini It is not good for the man that he be alone nor quemvis hominem it is not good for every man to be alone yet considering his generall purpose upon all the world by man he sayes non bonum for that end it is not good that man should be alone because those purposes of God could not consist with that solitude of man In that production and in that survay
aquarum by the power of waters many waters and in this verse this witnesse is delivered in the plurall spirit and waters and so waters in that signification which signification they have often in the Scriptures that is affliction and tribulation be good testimonies that our Lord Jesus doth visit us though the waters of Coâ—trition and repentant teares be another good testimony of that too yet that water which testifies the presence of Jesus so as that it doth always infallibly bring Jesus with it for the Sacraments are never without Grace whether it be accepted or no there it is â— That water which is made equall with the preaching of the Word so farre as to be a fellow-witnesse with the Spirit that is onely the Sacrament of baptisme without which in the ordinary dispensation of God no soule can be surer that Jesus is come to him then if he had never heard the Word preached he mistakes the spirit the first witnesse if he refuse the water the second The third witnesse upon earth is bloud and that is briefly the Communion of the body and bloud of Iesus in the Lords Supper But how is that bloud upon earth I am not ashamed to confesse that I know not how but the bloud of Christ is a witnesse upon earth in the Sacrament and therefore upon the earth it is Now this Witnesse being made equall with the other two with preaching and with baptisme it is as necessary that he that will have an assuranceâ— that Iesus is come into him doe receive this Sacrament as that he doe heare Sermâ—nâ— and that he be baptized An over vehement urging of this necessity brought in an erroneous custome in the Primitive Church That they would give the Sacrament of the body of Christ to Children as soon as they were baptized yea and to dead man too But because this Sacrament is accompanied with precepts which can belong onely to Men of understanding for they must doe it in Remembrance and they must discerne the Lords body therefore the necessity lies onely upon such as are come to those graces and to that understanding For they that take it and doe not discerne it not know what they do they take it dangerously But else for them to whom this Sacrament belongs if they take it not their hearing of Sermons and their baptisme doth them no good for what good can they have done them if they have not prepared themselves for it And therefore as the Religion of the Church holds a stubborne Recusant at the table at the Communion bord as farre from her as a Recusant at the Pew that is a Non-communicant as ill as a not commer or a not hearer so I doubt not but the wisdome of the state weighs them in the same balance For these three agree in one says the text that is first they meet in one Man and then they testifie the same thing that is Integritatem Iesu that Iesus is come to him in outward Meanes to save his soule If his conscience find not this testimony all these availe him nothing If we remaine vessells of anger and of dishonour still we are under the Vae vâ—bis Hypocritis woe unto you Hypocrites that make cleane onely the outside of your cuppes and Platters That baptize and wash your owne and your childrens bodies but not their mindes with instructions When we shall come to say Docuisti in plateis we have heard thee preach in our streets we have continued our hearing of thy Word when we say Manducavimus coram te we have eate in thy presence at thy table yea Manducavimus tâ— we have eaten thee thy selfe yet for all this outward show of these three witnesses of Spirit and Water and bloud Preaching and Baptisme and Communion we shall heare that fearfull disclaiming from Christ Jesus Nescio vos I know not whence you are But these witnesses he will always heare if they testifie for us that Jesus is come unto us for the Gospell and the preaching thereof is as the deed that conveys Iesus unto us the water the baptisme is as the Seale that assures it and the bloud the Sacrament is the delivery of Christ into us and this is Integritas Iesu the entire and full possession of him To this purpose therefore as we have found a Trinity in heaven and a Trinity in earth so we must make it up a Trinity of Trinities and finde a third Trinity in our selves God created one Trinity in us the observation and the enumeration is Saint Bernards which are those three faculties of our soule the reason the memory the will That Trinity in us by another Trinity too by suggestion towards sin by delight in sinne by consent to sinne is fallen into a third Trinity The memory into a weaknesse that that comprehends not God it glorifies him not for benefits received The reasen to a blindnesse that that discernes not what is true and the will to a perversnesse that that wishes not what 's good But the goodnesse of God by these three witnesses on earth regenerates and reestablishes a new Trinity in us faith and hope and charity Thus farre that devout Man carries it And if this new Trinity faith and hope and charity witnesse to us Integritatem Christi all the worke of Christ If my faith testifie to me that Christ is sealed to my soule and my hope testifie that at the Resurection I shall have a perfect fruition in soule and body of that glory which he purchased for every beleever and my charity testifies to the world that I labour to make sure that salvation by a good life then there 's a Trinity of Trinities and the six are made nine witnesses There are three in heaven that testifie that this is done for all Mankinde Three in the Church that testifie this may be done for me and three in my soule that testifie that all this is applied to me and then the verdict and the Judgement must necessarily goe for me And beloved this Judgement will be grounded upon this intirenesse of Jesus and therefore let me dismisse you with this note That Integritas is in continuitate not in contignitate It is not the touching upon a thing nor the comming neare to a thing that makes it intire a fagot where the sticks touch a peece of cloth where the threds touch is not intire To come as neare Christ as we can conveniently to trie how neare we can bring two Religions together this is not to preserve Integritatem Iesu In a word Intirenesse excludes deficiency and redundancy and discontinuance we preserve not intirenesse if we preserve not the dignity of Christ in his Church and in his discipline and that excludes the defective Separatist we doe not preserve that entirenesse if we admit traditions and additions of Men in an equality to the word of God and that excludes the redundant Papist neither doe we preserve the entirenesse if we admit a discontinuance
well Articulus resurrectionis propria Ecclesiaevox It is the Christian Church that hath delivered to us the article of the resurrection Nature says it not Philosophy says it not it is the language and the Idiotisme of the Church of God that the resurrection is to be beleeved as an article of faith For though articles of faith be not facta Ecclesiae they are dicta Ecclesiae though the Church doe not make articles yet she declares them In the Creation the way was Dixit facta sunt God spake and so things were made In the Gospell the way is Fecit dicta sunt God makes articles of faith and the Church utters them presents them That 's manifestè verum evidently undeniably true that Nature and Philosophy say nothing of articles of faith But even in Nature and in Philosophy there is some preparation A priore and much illustration A posteriore of the Resurrection For first we know by naturall reason that it is no such thing as God cannot doe It implies no contradiction in it selfe as that new article of Transubstantiation does It implies no defectivenesse in God as that new article The necessity of a perpetuall Vicar upon earth does For things contradictory in themselves which necessarily imply a falshood things arguing a defectivenesse in God which implies necessarily a derogation to his nature to his naturall goodnesse to that which we may justly call even the God of God that which makes him God to us his mercy such things God himselfe cannot doe not things which make him an unmercifull a cruell a precondemning God But excepting onely such things God who is that Quod cum dicitur non potest dici whom if you name you cannot give him halfe his name for if you call him God he hath not his Christen name for he is Christ as well as God a Saviour as well as a Creator Quod cum astimatur non potest aestimari If you value God weigh God you cannot give him halfe his weight for you can put nothing into the balance to weight him withall but all this world and there is no single sand in the sea no single dust upon the earth no single atome in the ayre that is not likelyer to weigh down all the world then all the world is to coâ—â—â—pose pose God What is the whole world to a soule says Christ but what are all the soules of the world to God What is man that God should be mindefull of him that God should ever thinke of him and not forget that there is such a thing such a nothing Quod cum definitur ipsa definitione crescit says the same Father If you limit God with any definition hee growes larger by that definition for even by that definition you discerne presently that he is something else then that definition comprehends That God Quem omnia nesciunt metuendo sciunt whom no man knows perfectly yet every man knows so well as to stand in feare of him this incomprehensible God I say that works and who shall let it can raise our bodies again from the dead because to doe so implies no derogation to himselfe no contradiction to his word Our reason tells us he can doe it doth our reason tell us as much of his will that he will doe it Our reason tells us that he will doe whatsoever is most convenient for the Creature whom because he hath made him he loves and for his owne glory Now this dignity afforded to the dead body of man cannot be conceived but as a great addition to him Nor can it be such a diminution to God to take man into heaven as it was for God to descend and to take mans nature upon him upon Earth A King does not diminish himselfe so much by taking an inferior person into his bosome at Court as he should doe by going to live with that person in the Countrey or City and this God did in the incarnation of his Sonne It cannot be thought inconvenient it cannot be thought hard Our reason tells us that in all Gods works in all his materiall works still his latter works are easier then his former The Creation which was the first and was a meer production out of nothing was the hardest of all The specific ation of Creatures and the disposing of them into their severall kinds the making of that which was made something of nothing before a particular thing a beast afowle a fish a plant a man a Sun or Moon was not so hard as the first production out of nothing And then the conservation of all these in that order in which they are first created and then distinguished the Administration of these creatures by a constant working of second causes which naturally produce their effects is not so hard as that And so accordingly and in that proportion the last worke is easiest of all Distinction and specification easier then creation conservatioâ— and administration easier then that distinction and restitution by resurrection easiest of all Tertullian hath expressed it well Plus est fecisse quam refecisse dedisse quam reddidisse It is a harder work to make then to mend and to give thee that which was mine then to restore thee that which was thine Et institutio carnis quà m destitutio It is a lesse matter to recover a sicke man then to make a whole man Does this trouble thee says Iustin Martyr and Athenagor as proceeds in the same way of argumentation too in his Apology does this trouble thee Quòd homo à piscibus piscis ab homine comeditar that one man is devoured by a fish and then another man that eats the flesh of that fish eats and becomes the other man Id nec hominem resolvit in piscem nec piscem in hominem that first man did not become that fish that eate him nor that fish become that second man that eate it sed utriusque resolutio fit in elementa both that man and that fish are resolved into their owne elements of which they were made at first Howsoever it be if thine imagination could carry thee so low as to thinke not onely that thou wert become some other thing a fish or a dogge that had fed upon thee and so thou couldst not have thine owne body but therewithall must have his body too but that thou wert infinitely farther gone that thou wert anâ—â—ilated become nothing canst thou chuse but thinke God as perfect now at least as he was at first and can hee not as easily make thee up againe of nothing as he made thee of nothing at first Recogita quid fueris antequam esses Thinke over thy selfe what wast thou before thou wast any thing Meminisses utique si fuisses If thou hadst been any thing then surely thou wouldst remember it now Qui non eras factus es Cum iterum non eris fies Thou that wast once nothing wast made this
death But upon that part of the sentence In pulverem reverteris To dust thou shalt return there is no Non obstante though thou turn to God thou must turn into the grave for hee that redeem'd thee from the other death redeem'd not himself from this Carry this consideration to the last minute of the world when we that remain shall bee caught up in the clouds yet even that last fire may be our fever those clouds our winding sheets that rapture our dissolution and so with Saint Augustine most of the ancients most of the latter men think that there shall be a sudden dissolution of body and soul which is death and a sudden re-uniting of both which is resurrection in that instant Quis Homeo is Davids question What man is he that liveth and shall not see death Let us adde Quis Deoram What god is he amongst the Gentiles that hath not seen death Which of their three hundred Iupiters which of their thousands of other gods have not seen death Mortibus morjuntur we may adde to that double death in Gods mouth another death The gods of the Gentiles have dyed thrice In body in soul and in fame for though they have been glorified with a Deification nor one of all those old gods is at this day worshipt in any part of the world but all those temporary and transitory Gods are worn out and dead in all senses Those gods who were but men fall under Davids question Quis Home And that man who was truly God fals under it too Christ Jesus He saw death though he saw not the death of this text Corruption And if we consider the effusion of his precious blood the contusion of his sacred flesh the extention of those sinews and ligaments which tyed heaven and earth together in a reconciliation the departing of that Intelligence from that sphear of that high Priest from that Temple of that Dove from that Arke of that soul from that body that dissolution which as an ordinary man he should have had in the grave but that the decree of God declar'd in the infallibility of the manifold prophesies preserv'd him from it had been but a slumber in respect of these tortures which he did suffer The Godhead staid with him in the grave and so he did not corrupt but though our souls be gone up to God our bodies shall Corruption in the skin says Iob In the outward beauty These be the Records of velim these be the parchmins the endictments and the evidences that shall condemn many of us at the last day our own skins we have the book of God the Law written in our own hearts we have the image of God imprinted in our own souls wee have the character and seal of God stamped in us in our baptism and all this is bound up in this velim in this parchmin in this skin of ours and we neglect book and image and character and feal and all for the covering It is not a clear case if we consider the originall words properly That Iesabel did paint and yet all translators and expositors have taken a just occasion out of the ambiguity of those words to cry down that abomination of painting It is not a clear case if we consider the propriety of the words That Absolon was hanged by the hair of the head and yet the Fathers and others have made use of that indifferency and verisimilitude to explode that abomination of cherishing and curling haire to the enveagling and ensnaring and entangling of others Iudicium patietur aeternum says Saint Hierome Thou art guilty of a murder though no body die Quia vinum attulisti si faisset qui bibisset Thou hast poyson'd a cup if any would drink thou hast prepar'd a tentation if any would swallow it Tertullian thought he had done enough when he had writ his book De Habitu muliâ—bri against the excesse of women in clothes but he was fain to adde another with more vehemence De cultu foeminarum that went beyond their clothes to their skin And he concludes Illud ambitionis crimen there 's vain-glory in their excesse of clothes but Hoc prostitutionis there 's prostitution in drawing the eye to the skin Pliny says that when their thin silke stuffes were first invented at Rome Excogitatum ad faeminas denudandas It was but an invention that women might go naked in clothes for their skins might bee seen through those clothes those thinne stuffes Our women are not so carefull but they expose their nakednesse professedly and paint it to cast bird-lime for the passengers eye Beloved good dyet makes the best Complexion and a good Conscience is a continuall feast A cheerfull heart makes the best blood and peace with God is the true cheerfulnesse of heart Thy Saviour neglected his skin so much as that at last hee scarse had any all was torn with the whips and scourges and thy skin shall come to that absolute corruption as that though a hundred years after thou art buryed one may find thy bones and say this was a tall man this was a strong man yet we shall soon be past saying upon any relique of thy skinne This was a fair man Corruption seises the skinne all outward beauty quickly and so it does the body the whole frame and constitution which is another consideration After my skinne my Body If the whole body were an eye or an ear where were the body says Saint Paul but when of the whole body there is neither eye nor ear nor any member left where is the body And what should an eye do there where there is nothing to be seen but loathsomnesse or a nose there where there is nothing to be smelt but putrefaction or an ear where in the grave they doe not praise God Doth not that body that boasted but yesterday of that priviledge above all creatures that it onely could goe upright lie to day as flat upon the earth as the body of a horse or of a dogge And doth it not to morrow lose his other priviledge of looking up to heaven Is it not farther remov'd from the eye of heaven the Sunne then any dogge or horse by being cover'd with the earth which they are not Painters have presented to us with some horrour the sâ—cleton the frame of the bones of a mans body but the state of a body in the dissolution of the grave no pencil can present to us Between that excrementall jelly that thy body is made of at first and that jelly which thy body dissolves to at last there is not so noysome so putrid a thing in nature This skinne this outward beauty this body this whole constitution must be destroy'd says Iobâ— in the next place The word is well chosen by which all this is expressed in this text Nakaph which is a word of as heavy a signification to expresse an utter abolition and annihilation as perchance can be
it Moses required not reason to help him to be beleeved The holy Ghost hovered upon the waters and so God wrought The holy Ghost hovered upon Moses too and so he wrote And we beleeve these things to be so by the same Spirit in Moses mouth by which they were made so in Gods hand Onely beloved remember that a frame may be thrown down in much lesse time then it was set up A child an Ape can give fire to a Canon And a vapour can shake the earth And these fires and these vapours can throw down cities in minutes When Christ said Throw down this Temple and in three days I will raise it they never stopped upon the consideration of throwing it down they knew that might be soon done but they wondred at the speedy raising of it Now if all this earth were made in that minute may not all come to the generall dissolution in this minute Or may not thy acres thy miles thy Shires shrinke into feet and so few feet as shall but make up thy grave When he who was a great Lord must be but a Cottager and not so well for a Cottager must have so many acres to his Cottage but in this case a little peece of an acre five foot is become the house it selfe The house and the land the grave is all lower then that the grave is the Land and the Tenement and the Tenant too He that lies in it becomes the same earth that he lies in They all make but one earth and but a little of it But then raise thy selfe to a higher hope againe God hath made better land the land of promise a stronger city the new Ierusalem and inhabitants for that everlasting city Vs whom he made not by saying let there be men but by consultation by deliberation God said Let us make Man in our Image after our likenesse We shall pursue our great examples God in doing Moses in saying and so make hast in applying the parts But first receive them And since we have the whole world in contemplation consider in these words the foure quarters of the world by application by fair and just accommodation of the words First in the first word that God speaks here Faciamus Let us us in the plurall a denotation of divers Persons in one Godhead we consider our East where we must beginne at the knowledge and confession of the Trinity For though in the way to heaven we be travelled beyond the Gentiles when we come to confess but one God The Gentiles could not do that yet we are still among the Iews if we thinke that one God to be but one Person Christs name is Oriens the East if we will be named by him called Christians we must look to this East the confession of the Trinity There 's then our East in the Faciamus Let us us make man And then our West is in the next word Faciamus Hominem Though we be thus made made by the counsell made by the concurrence made by the hand of the whole Trinity yet we are made but men And man but in the appellation in this text and man there is but Adam and Adam is but earth but red earth earth dyed red in bloud in Soul-bloud the bloud of our own soules To that west we must all come to the earth The Sunne knoweth his going down Even the Sun for all his glory and heighth hath a going down and he knowes it The highest cannot devest mortality nor the discomfort of mortality When you see a cloud rise out of the west straightway you say there commeth a storme says Christ. When out of the region of your west that is your later days there comes a cloud a sicknesse you feele a storme even the best morall constancy is shaked But this cloud and this storme and this west there must be And that 's our second consideration But then the next words designe a North a strong and powerfull North to scatter and dissipate these clouds Ad imaginem similitudinem That we are made according to a pattern to an image to a likenesse which God proposed to himselfe for the making of man This consideration that God did not rest in that praeexistent matter out of which he made all other creatures and produced their formes out of their matter for the making of man but took a forme a patterne a modell for that work this is the North winde that is called upon to carry out of the perfumes of the garden to spread the goodnesse of God abroad This is that which is intended in Iob faire weather commeth out of the North. Our West our declination is in this that we are but earth our North our dissipation of that darknesse is in this that we are not all earth Though we be of that matter we have another forme another image another likenesse And then whose image and likenesse it is is our Meridionall height our noon our south point our highest elevation In Imagine nostra Let us make man in our Image Though our Sun set at noon as the Prophet Amos speakes though we die in our youth or fall in our height yet even in that Sunset we shall have a Noon For this Image of God shall never depart from our soule no not when that soule departs from our body And that 's our South our Meridionall height and glory And when we have thus seen this East in the faciamus That I am the workmanship and care of the whole Trinity And this West in the Hominem That for all that my matter my substance is but earth But then a North a power of overcomming that low and miserable state In Imagine That though in my matter the earth I must die yet in my forme in that Image which I am made by I cannot die and after all a South a knowledge That this Image is not the Image of Angels to whom we shall be like but it is by the same life by which those Angels themselves were made the Image of God himselfe When I am gone over this east and west and north and south here in this world I should be as sorry as Alexander was if there were no more worlds But there is another world which these considerations will discover and lead us to in which our joy and our glory shall be to see that God essentially and face to face after whose Image and likenesse we were made before But as that Pilot which had harbor'd his ship so farre within land as that he must have change of Winds in all the points of the Compasse to bring her out cannot hope to bring her our in one day So being to transport you by occasion of these words from this world to the next and in this world through all the Compasse all the foure quarters thereof I cannot hope to make all this voyage to day To day we shall consider onely our longitude our East and West
Halfe-pelagianisme to thinke grace once received to be sufficient Super-pelagianisme to thinke our actions can bring God in debt to us by merit and supererogation and Catarisme imaginary purity in Canonizing our selves as present Saints and condemning all that differ from us as reprobates All these are white spots and have the colour of goodnesse but are indications of leprosie So is that that God threatens Decorticatio ficus albi rami that the figtree shall be bark'd and the boughes thereof left white to be left white without barke was an indication of a speedy withering Ostensa candescunt arescunt says Saint Gregory of that place the bough that lies open without barke looks white but perishes the good works that are done openly to please men have their reward says Christ that is shall never have reward To pretend to doe good and not meane it To doe things good in themselves but not to good ends to goe towards good ends but not by good ways to make the deceiving of men thine end or the praise of men thine end all this may have a whiteness a colour of good but all this is a barking of the bough and an indication of a mischievous leprosie There is no good whiteness but a reflection from Christ Jesus in an humble acknowledgement that wee have none of our own and in a consident assurance that in our worst estate we may be made partakers of his We are all red earth In Adam we would not since Adam we could not avoid sinne and the Concomitants thereof miseries which we have called our West our cloud our darknesse But then we have a North that scatters these clouds in the next word Ad imaginem that we are made to another patterne in another likenesse then our own Faciamus hominem so far are we gone East and West which is halfe our Compasse and all this days voiage For we are strooke upon the sand and must stay another Tyde and another gale for our North and South SERMON XXIX Preached to the King at the Court. The second Sermon on GEN. 1. 26. And God said Let us make man in our Image after our likenesse BY fair occasion from these words we proposed to you the whole Compasse of mans voyage from his lanching forth in this world to his Anchoring in the next from his hoysing sayle here to his striking sayle there In which Compasse we designed to you his foure quarters first his East where he must beginne the fundamentall knowledge of the Trinity for that we found to be the specification and distinctive Character of a Christian where though that be so we shewed you also why we were not called Trinitarians but Christians and we shewed you the advantage that man hath in laying hold upon God in these severall notions that the Prodigall sonne hath an indulgent Father that the decayed Father hath an abundant Sonne that the dejected spirit hath a Spirit of comfort to fly to in heaven And as we shewed you from Saint Paul that it was an Atheisme to be no Christian without God says he as long as without Christ so we lamented the slacknesse of Christians that they did not seriously and particularly consider the persons of the Trinity and especially the holy Ghost in their particular actions And then we came to that consideration whether this doctrine were established or directly insinuated in this plurall word of our text Faciamus Let us us make man and we found that doctrine to be here and here first of any place in the Bible And finding God to speake in the plurall we accepted for a time that interpretation which some had made thereof that God spake in the Person of a Soveraigne Prince and therefore as they do in the plurall We. And thereby having established reverence to Princes we claim'd in Gods behalfe the same reverence to him That men would demeane themselves here when God is spoken to in prayer as reverently as when they speake to the King But after this we found God to speake here not onely as our King but as our maker as God himselfe and God in Counsell Faciamus and we applied thereunto the difference of our respect to a Person of that honorable rank when we came before him at the Counsell Table and when we came to him at his own Table and thereby advanced the seriousnesse of this consideration God in the Trinity And farther we failed not with that our Eastern winde Our West we considered in the next word Hominem that though we were made by the whole Trinity yet the whole Trinity made us but men and men in this name of our text Adam and Adam is but earth and that 's our West our declination our Sunset We passed over the foure names by which man is ordinarily expressed in the Scriptures and we found necessary misery in three of them and possible nay likely misery in the fourth in the best name We insisted upon the name of our text Adam earth and had some use of these notes First that if I were but earth God was pleased to be the Potter If I but a sheep he a shepheard If I but a cottage he a builder So he worke upon me let me be what he will We noted that God made us earth not ayre not fire That man hath bodily and worldly duties to performe and is not all Spirit in this life Devotion is his soule but he hath a body of discretion and usefulnesse to invest in some calling We noted too that in being earth we are equall We tryed that equality first in the root in Adam There if any man will be nobler earth then I he must have more originall sinne then I for that was all Adams patrimony all that he could give And we tryed this equality in another furnace in the grave where there is no meanes to distinguish Royall from Plebeian nor Catholique from Hereticall dust And lastly we noted that this our earth was red earth and considered in what respect it was red even in Gods hands but found that in the bloud-rednesse of sinne God had no hand but sinne and destruction for sinne was wholly from our selves which consideration we ended with this that there was Macula alba a white spot of leprosie as well as a red and we found the over-valuation of our own purity and the uncharitable condemnation of all that differ from us to be that white spot And so far we sayled with that Western winde And are come to our third point in this our Compasse our North. In this point the North we place our first comfort The North is not always the comfortablest clime nor is the North always a type of happines in the Scriptures Many times God threatens stormes from the North. But even in those Northern stormes we consider that action that they scatter they dissipate those clouds which were gathered and so induce a serenity And so fair weather comes from the North. And
man whom he hath not made him able to relieve So then no more being needfull to be said of the persons the poor nor of the Act showing of mercy to the poor there remaines no more in this last part but according to our way all the way to consider the origination and latitude of this last word Cahad this honouring of God The word does properly signifie Augere ampliare To enlarge God to amplifie to dilate God to make infinite God shall I dare to say more God certainely God to more then he was before O who can expresse this abundant this superabundant largenesse of Gods goodnesse to man that there is a power put into mans hands to enlarge God to dilate to propagate to amplifie God himselfe I will multiply this people says God and they shall not be few I will glorifie them and they shall not be small there 's the word of our text God enables me to glorifie him to amplifie him to encrease him by my mercy my almes For this is not onely that encrease that Saint Hierom intends that he that hath pity on the poor Foeneratur Domino he lends upon use to the Lord for this though it be an encrease is but an encrease to himselfe but he that showes mercy to the poore encreases God says our text dilates enlarges God How Corpus aptasti mihi when Christ comes into the world says Saint Paul he says to his Father Thou hast prepared and fitted a body for me That was his naturall body that body which he assumed in the bowels of the blessed Virgin They that pretend to enlarge this body by multiplication by making millions of these bodies in the Sacraments by the way of Transubstantiation they doe not honour this body whose honour is to sit in the same dimensions and circumscriptions at the right hand of God But then as at his comming into this world God had fitted him a body so in the world he had fitted himselfe another body a Mysticall body a Church purchased with his bloud Now this body this Mysticall body I feed I enlarge I dilate and amplifie by my mercy and my charity For as God says to Ierusalem Thou wast in thy bloud thou wast not salted nor swadled no eye pityed thee but thou wast cast out into the open field and I loved thee I washed thee I apparelled and adorned thee prosperataes in regnum I never gave thee over till I saw thee an established kingdome so may all those Saints of God say to God himselfe to the Sonne of God invested in this body this mysticall body the Church thou was cast out into the open field all the world persecuted thee and then we gave thee suck with our bloud we clothed thee with our bodies we built thee houses and adorned and endowed those houses to thine honour prosperatus es in regnum we never gave over spending and doing and suffering for thy glory till thou hadst an established kingdome over all the earth And so thou thy body thy mysticall body the Church is honoured that is amplified dilated enlarged by our mercy Magnificat Anima mea Dominum was the exultation of the blessed Virgin My soule doth magnifie the Lord. When the meditations of my heart digested into writing or preaching or any other declaration of Gods glory carry or advance the knowledge of God in other men then My soule doth magnifie the Lord enlarge dilate amplifie God But when I relieve any poor wretch of the houshold of the faithfull with mine almes then my mercy magnifies the Lord occasions him that receives to magnifie the Lord by this thanksgiving and them that see it to magnifie the Lord by their imitation in the like works of mercy And so far doe these two elegant words chosen here by the holy Ghost carry our meditation in the first Canan God makes the charitable man partaker of his own highest power mercy and in the other Cabad God enables us by this mercy to honour him so far as to dilate to enlarge to amplifie him that is that body which he in his Sonne hath invested by purchase his Church We have done If you will but claspe up all this in your owne bosomes if you will but lay it to your owne hearts you may goe A poorer thing is not in the world nor a sicker which you may remember to have been one signification of this word poore then thine own soule And therefore the Chalde paraphrase renders this text thus He that oppresses the poore reproaches his owne soule for his owne soule is as poore as any whom he can oppresse To a begger that needs and askes but bodily things thou wilt say Alasse poore soule and wilt thou never say Alasse poore soule to thy self that needest spirituall things If thy affections thy pleasures thy delights beg of thee and importune thee so farre to bestow upon them say unto them I have those that are nearer me then you Wife and Children and I must not empoverith them to give unto you I must not sterve my family to feed my pleasures But if this Wife and Children begge and importune so farre say unto them too I have one that is nearer me then all you a soule and I must not endanger that to satisfie you I must not provide Ioyntures and Portions with the damnifying with the damning of mine owne soule It is a miserable Alchimy and extracting of spirits that stills away the spirit the soule it selfe and a poore Philosophers Stone that is made with the coales of Hell-fire a lamentable purchase when the soule is payed for the land And therefore show mercy to this soule Doe not oppresse this soule not by Violence which was the first signification of this word Oppression Doe not violate doe not smother not strangle not suffocate the good motions of Gods Spirit in theeâ— for it is but a wofull victory to triumphe over thine owne conscience and but a servile greatnesse to be able to silence that Oppresse not thy soule by Fraud which was the second signification of this word Oppression Defraud not thy soul of the benefit of Gods Ordinances frequent these exercises come hither And be not here like Gideons fleece dry when all about it was wet parched in a remorselesnesse when all the Congregation about thee is melted into holy tears Be not as Gideons fleece dry when all else is wet nor as that fleece wet when all about it was dry Be not jealous of God stand not here as a person unconcerned disinteressed as though those gracious promises which God is pleased to shed down upon the whole Congregation from this place appertained not to thee but that all those Judgements denounced here over which they that stand by thee are able by a faithfull and cheerfull laying hold of Gods offers though they stand guilty of the same sinnes that thou doest to lift up their heads must still necessarily overflow and surround thee
we shall also see that all those particular that did aggravate the affliction in the former part That they were from the Lord from his Rod from the Rod of his wrath doe all exalt our comfort in this That it is a particular comfort that our afflictions are from the Lord Another that they are from his Rod and another also that they are from the Rod of his wrath First then in our first art and the first branch thereof The Generality of affliction considered in the nature thereof We met all generally in the first Treason against our selves without exception all In Adams rebellion who was not in his loins And in a second Treason we met all too in the Treason against Christ Iesus we met all All our sins were upon his shoulders In those two Treasons we have had no exception no exemption The penalty for our first Treason in Adam in a great part we doe all undergoe we doe all die though not without a lothnesse and colluctation at the time yet without a deliberate desire to live in this world for ever How loth soever any man be to die when death comes yet I thinke there is no man that ever formed a deliberate Prayer or wish that he might never die That penalty for our first Treason in Adam we do bear And would any be excepted from bearing any thing deduced from his second Treason his conspiracy against Christ from imitation of his Passion and fulfilling his sufferings in his body in bearing cheerfully the afflictions and tribulations of this life Omnis caro corruper at and thou art within that generall Indictment all flesh had corrupted his way upon Earth Statutum est omnibus mori and thou art within that generall Statute It is appointed unto all men once to die Anima quae peccaverit ipsa morietur and thou art within that generall Sentence and Judgement Every soul that sinneth shall die The death of the soul. Out of these generall Propositions thou canst not get And when in the same universality there commeth a generall pardon Deus vult omnes slavos God will have all men to be saved Because that Pardon hath in it that Ita quod that condition Omnem filium Hee scâ—urgeth every sonne whom he receiveth wouldst thou lose the benefit of that Adoption that Filiation that Patrimony and Inheritance rather then admit patiently his Fatherly chastisements in the afflictions and tribulations in this life Beloved the death of Christ is given to us as a Hand-writing for when Christ naild that Chirographum that first hand-writing that had passed between the Devill and us to his Crosse he did not leave us out of debt nor absolutely discharged but he laid another Chirographum upon us another Obligation arising out of his death His death is delivered to us as a writing but not a writing onely in the nature of a peece of Evidence to plead our inheritance by but a writing in the nature of a Copy to learne by It is not onely given us to reade but to write over and practise Not onely to tell us what he did but how we should do so too All the evills and mischiefes that light upon us in this world come for the most part from this Quia fruimur utendis because we thinke to injoy those things which God hath given us onely to use God hath given us a use of things and we set our hearts upon them And this hath a proportion an assimilation an accommodation in the death of Christ. God hath proposed that for our use in this world and we think to enjoy it God would have us doe it over again and we think it enough to know that Christ hath done it already God would have us write it and we doe onely read it God would have us practise the death of Christ and we do but understand it The fruition the enjoying of the death of Christ is reserved for the next life To this life belongs the use of it that use of it to fulfill his sufferings in our bodies by bearing the afflictions and tribulations of this life For Priùs Trophaeum Crucis erexit deinde Martyribus tradidit erigendum first Christ set up the victorious Trophee of his Crosse himself and then he delivered it over to his Martyrs to do as he had done Nor are they onely his Martyrs that have actually died for him but into the signification of that name which signifies a Witnesse fall all those who have glorified him in a patient and constant bearing the afflictions and tribulations of this life All being guilty of Christs death there lies an obligation upon us all to fulfill his sufferings And this is the generality of afflictions as we consider them in their own nature Now this generality is next expressed in this word of exaltation Gheber Ego vir I am the man It was that man that is denoted and signified in that name that hath lien under affliction and therefore no kinde of man was likely to scape There are in the Originall Scriptures four words by which man is called four names of man and any of the others if we consider the origination of the words might better admit afflictions to insult upon him then this Gheber vir I am the man At first man is called Ishe a word which their Grammarians derive à sonitu from a sound from a voice Whether mans excellency be in that that he can speak which no other creature can doe or whether mans impotency be in that that he comes into the world Crying in this denomination in this word man is but a sound but a voyce and that is no great matter Another name of man is Adam and Adam is no more but earth and red earth aud the word is often used for blushing When the name of man imports no more but so no more but the frailty of the earth and the bashfull acknowledgement and confession of that frailty in infinite infirmities there is no great hope of scaping afflictions in this name Adam Lesse in his third name Enosh for Enosh signifies aegrum calamitosum a person naturally subject to and actually possest with all kindes of infirmities So that this name of man Enosh is so farre from exempting him as that it involves him it overflows him in afflictions He hath a miserable name as well as a miserable nature Put them in fear O Lord says David that they may know they are but men but such men as are denoted in that name of man Enosh for there that name is expressed weak and miserable men Now to collect these as man is nothing but a frivolous an empty a transitory sound or but a sad and lamentable voice he is no more in his first name Ishe As man is nothing but red earth a moldring clod of infirmities and then blushing that is guilty sensible and ashamed of his own miserable condition and man is
washed in my own tears and either out of compunction for my self or compassion for others I passe through this world as through a valley of tears where tears settle and swell and when I passe out of this world I leave their eyes whose hands close mine full of tears too can these persons this Image of God this God himself this glorious God and this vessell of earth this earth it self this inglorious worm of the earth meet without disparagement They doe meet and make a mariage because I am not a body onely but a body and s oul there is a mariage and Christ maries me As by the Law a man might mary a captive woman in the Warres if he shaved her head and pared her nails and changed her clothes so my Saviour having fought for my soul fought to blood to death to the death of the Crosse for her having studied my soul so much as to write all those Epistles which are in the New Testament to my soul having presented my soule with his own picture that I can see his face in all his temporall blessings having shaved her head in abating her pride and pared her nails in contracting her greedy desires and changed her clothes not to fashion her self after this world my soul being thus fitted by himself Christ Jesus hath maried my soul maried her to all the three intendments mentioned in the secular mariage first in ustionem against burning That whether I burn my self in the fires of tentation by exposing my self to occasions of tentation or be reserved to be burnt by others in the fires of persecution and martyrdome whether the fires of ambition or envy or lust or the everlasting fires of hell offer at me in an apprehension of the judgements of God yet as the Spirit of God shall wipe all tears from mine eyes so the tears of Christ Jesus shall extinguish all fires in my heart and so it is a mariage In ustionem a remedy against burning It is so too In prolificationem for children first vae soli woe unto that single soul that is not maried to Christ that is not come into the way of having issue by him that is not incorporated in the Christian Church and in the true Church but is yet in the wildernesse of Idolatry amongst the Gentiles or in the Labyrinth of superstition amongst the Papists vae soli woe unto that single man that is not maried unto Christ in the Sacraments of the Church and vae sterili woe unto them that are barren after this spirituall mariage for that is a great curse in the Prophet Ieremy Scribe virum istum sterilem write this man childlesse that implied all calamities upon him And assoon as Christ had laid that curse upon the Fig-tree Let no fruit grow upon thee for ever presently the whole tree withered no fruit no leafes neither nor body left To be incorporated in the body of Christ Jesus and bring forth no fruits worthy of that profession is a wofull state too Vae soli woe unto the Gentiles not maried unto Christ and vae sterili woe unto inconsiderate Christians that think not upon their calling that conceive not by Christ but there is a vae praegnanti too wo unto them that are with child and are never delivered that have good conceptions religious dispositions holy desires to the advancement of Gods truth but for some collaterall respects dare not utter them nor bring them to their birth to any effect The purpose of his mariage to us is to have children by us and this is his abundant and his present fecundity that working now by me in you in one instant he hath children in me and grand children by me He hath maried me in ustionem and in prolem against burning and for children but can he have any use of me in adjutorium for a helper Surely if I be able to feed him and clothe him and harbour him and Christ would not condemne men at the last day for not doing these if man could not doe them I am able to help him too Great persons can help him over sea convey the name of Christ where it hath not been preached yet and they can help him home again restore his name and his truth where superstition with violence hath disseised him And they can help him at home defend his truth there against all machinations to displant and dispossesse him Great men can help him thus and every man can help him to a better place in his own heart and his own actions then he hath had there and to be so helped in me and helped by me to have his glory thereby advanced Christ hath maried my soul And he hath maried it in aeternum for ever which is the third and last Circumstance in this spirituall as it was in the secular mariage And here the aeternum is enlarged in the secular mariage it was an eternity considered onely in this life but this eternity is not begun in this world but from all eternity in the Book of life in Gods eternall Decree for my election there Christ was maried to my soul. Christ was never in minority never under years there was never any time when he was not as ancient as the Ancient of Days as old as his Father But when my soul was in a strange minority infinite millions of millions of generations before my soul was a soul did Christ mary my soul in his eternall Decree So it was eternall it had no beginning Neither doth he interrupt â—his by giving me any occasion of jealousie by the way but loves my soul as though there were no other soul and would have done and suffered all that he did for me alone if there had been no name but mine in the Book of life And as he hath maried me to him in aeternum for ever before all beginnings and in aeternum for ever without any interruptions so I know that whom he loves he loves to the end and that he hath given me not a presumptuous impossibility but a modest infallibility that no sin of mine shall divorce or separate me from him for that which ends the secular mariage ends not the spirituall not death for my death does not take me from that husband but that husband being by his Father preferr'd to higher titles and greater glory in another state I doe but goe by death where he is become a King to have my part in that glory and in those additions which he hath received there And this hath led us to our third and last mariage our eternall mariage in the triumphant Church And in this third mariage the persons are the Lamb and my soul The mariage of the Lamb is come and blessed are they that are called to the mariage Supper of the Lamb says S. Iohn speaking of our state in the generall Resurrection That Lamb that was brought to the slaughter and opened not his mouth
but every poore soule in the Church may heare all these three witnesses testifying to him Integrum Iesum suum that all which Christ Jesus hath done and suffered appertaines to him but yet to bring it nearer him in visible and sensible things There are tres de terra three upon earth too The first of these three upon earth is the Spirit which Saint Augustine understands of the spirit the soule of Christ for when Christ commended his spirit into the hands of his Father this was a testimony that he was Verus hemo that he had a soule and in that he laid downe his spirit his soule for no Man could take it from him and tooke it againe at his pleasure in his resurrection this was a testimony that he was Verus Deus true God And so says Saint Augustine Spiritus The spirit that is anima Christi the soule of Christ did testifie De integritate Iesu all that belonged to Jesus as he was God and as he was Man But this makes the witnesses in heaven and the witnesses in earth all one for the personall testimony of Christs preaching and living and dying the testimony which was given by these three Persons of the Trinity was all involv'd in the first rank of witnesses Those three which are in heaven Other later Men understand by the Spirit here the Spirit of every Regenerate Man and that in the other heavenly witnesses the spirit is Spiritus sanctus the spirit that is holy in it selfe the holy Ghost and here it is Spiritus sanctificatus that spirit of Man which is made holy by the holy Ghost according to that The same spirit beareth witnesse with our spirit that we are the children of God But in this sense it is too particular a witnesse too singular to be intended here for that speakes but to one Man at once The spirit therefore here is Spiritus oris the word of God the Gospell and the preaching and ministration thereof We are made Ministers of the New testament of the spirit that giveth life And if the ministration of death were glorious how shall not the ministration of the spirit be more glorious It is not therefore the Gospell meerly but the preaching of the Gospell that is this spirit Spiritus sacerdotis vehioulum Spiritus Dei The spirit of the Minister is not so pure as the spirit of God but it is the chariot the meanes by which God will enter into you The Gospell is the Gospell at home at your house and there you doe well to read it and reverence it as the Gospell but yet it is not Spiritus it is not this Spirit this first witnesse upon earth but onely there where God hath blessed it with his institution and ordinance that is in the preaching thereof The stewardship and the dispensation of the graces of God the directing of his threatnings against refractary and wilfull sinners the directing of his promises to simple and supple and conâ—rite penitents the breaking of the bread the applying of the Gospell according to their particular indigences in the preaching thereof this is the first witnesse The second witnesse here is The water and I know there are some Men which will not have this to be understood of the water of Baptisme but onely of the naturall effect of water that as the abtutions of the old law by water did purge us so we have an inward testimony that Christ doth likewise wash us cleane so the water here must not be so much as water but a metaphoricall and figurative water These men will not allow water in this place to have any relation to the sacrament and Saint Ambrose was so far from doubting that water in this place belonged to the sacrament that he applies all these three witnesses to the Sacrament of Baptisme Spiritus mentem renovat All this is done in Baptisme says he The Spirit renewes and disposes the mind Aqua perficit ad Lavacrum The water is applied to cleanse the body Sanguis Spectat ad preâ—lium and the bloud intimates the price and ransome which gives force and virtue to this sacrament And so also says he in another place In sanguine mors in the bloud there is a representation of death in the water of our buriall and in the spirit of our owne life Some will have none of these witnesses on earth to belong to baptisme not the water and Ambrose will have all spirit and water and bloud to belong to it Now both Saint Ambrose who applies all the three witnesses to Baptisme and those later men which deny any of the witnesses to belong to baptisme doe both depart from the generall acceptation of these words that water here and onely that signifies the Sacrament of baptisme For as in the first creation the first thing that the spirit of God is noted to have moved upon was the waters so the first creature that is sanctified by Christs institution to our Salvation is this element of water The first thing that produced any living sensible creature was the water Primus liquor qnod viveret edidit ne mirum sit quod in Baptismo aquae aâ—nimare noverunt water brought forth the first creatures says Tertullian That we should not wonder that water should bring forth Christians The first of Gods afficting miracles in Egypt was the changing of water into bloud and the first miracle of grace in the new Testament was the changing of water into wine at the mariage So that water hath still been a subject and instrument of Gods conversation with man So then Aqua janua ecclesiae we cannot come into the Church but by water by baptisme for though the Church have taken knowledge of other Baptismes Baptisma sanguinis which is Martyrdome and Baptisma Flaminis which is a religious desire to be baptized when no meanes can be got yet there is no other sacrament of Baptisme but Baptisma Fluminis the Baptisme of water for the rest Conveniunt in causando sed non in significando says the Schoole that is God doth afford a plentifull retribution to the other baptismes Flaminis and Sanguinis but God hath not ordained them to be outward seales and significations of his grace and to be witnesses of Iesus his comming upon earth as this water is And therefore they that provide not duly to bring their children to this water of life not to speake of the essentiall necessity thereof they take from them one of the witnesses that Iesus is come into them and as much as they can they shut the Church dore against them they leave them out of the Arke and for want of this water cast them into that generall water which overflowes all the rest of the world which are not brought within the Covenant by this water of baptisme For though in the first Translation of the new Testament into Syriaque that be said in the sixth verse that Jesus is come per manus
reuniting of body and soule in a blessed Resurrection Ite Surgite depart so as you may desire to rise Depart with an In manus tuas and with a Veni Domiâ—e Iesu with a willing surrendring of your soules and a cheerfull meeting of the Lord Jesus For else all hope of profit and permanent Rest is lost for as Saint Hierome interprets these very words Here we are taught that there is no rest in this life Sed quasiâ—â—â— mortuis resurgentes ad sublime tendere ambulare post Daminum Iesum we depart when we depart from sin and we rise when we raise our selves to a conformity with Christ And not onely after his example but after his person that is to hasten thither whither he is gone to prepare us a Room For this Rest in the Text though it may be understood of the Land of Promise and of the Church and of the Arke and of the Sabbath for if we had time to pursue them we might make good use of all these acceptations yet we accept Chrysostâ—me's acceptation best Requies est ipse Christus our rest is Christ himselfe Not onely that rest that is in Christ peace of conscience in him but that Rest that Christ is in eternall rest in his kingdome There remaineth a Rest to the people of God besides that inchoation of Rest which the godly have here there remains a fuller Rest. Iesus is entred into his Rest sayes the Apostle there his Rest was not here in this world and Let us study to enter into thatâ— Rest sayes he for no other can accomplish our peace It is righteousnesse with God is recompence tribulation to them that trouble you and to you which are troubled Rest but when in this world no when the Lord Iesus shall sheâ— himselfe from heaven with his mighty Angels then comes your Rest for for the grave the body lies still but it is not a Rest because it is not sensible of that lying still In heaven the body shall rest rest in the sense of that glory This Rest then is not here Not onely not Here at this Here was taken in the first interpretation Here in the Earth but not Here in the second interpretation not in Repentance it selfe for all the Rest of this life even the spirituall Rest is rather a Truce then a peace rather a Cessation then an end of the war For when these words I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians Every one shall fight against his brother and every one against his neighbour City against City and Kingdome against Kingdome may be interpreted and are so interpreted of the time of the Gospell of Christ Jesus when Christ himselfe says Nolite putare quod venerim mittere pacem in terrâ Never think that I came to settle peace or Rest in this world Nay when Christ sayes None of them that were bidden shall come to his supper and that may be verified of any Congregation none of us that are call'd now shall come to that Rest a Man may be at a security in an opinion of Rest and be far from it A man may be neerer Rest in a troubled Conscience then in a secure Here we have often Resurrections that is purposes to depart from sin but they are such Resurrections as were at the time of Christs Resurrection when as the strongest opinion is Resurrexerunt iterum morituri Many of the dead rose but they died again we rise from our sins here but here we fall again Monumenta aperta sunt it is Saint Hierome's note The graves were opened presently upon Christs death but yet the bodies did not arise till Christs Resurrection The godly have an opening of their graves they see some light some of their weight some of their Earth is taken from them but a Resurrection to enter into the City to follow the Lamb to come into an established security that they have not till they be united to Christ in heaven Here we are still subject to relapses and to looking back Memento uxoris Lâ—t Ipsa in loco manet transeuntes monet Shee is fixed to a place that she might settle those that are not fix'd Vt quid in statuam salis conversa si non homines ut sapiant condiat to teach us the danger of looking back till we be fix'd she is fix'd When the Prophetâ— Eliahâ— was at the dore of Desperation an Angell touch'd him and said Vp and eat and there was bread and water provided and he did eat but he slept again and we have some of these excitations and we come and eat and drink even the body and bloud of Christ but we sleep again we doe not perfect the work Our Rest Here then is never without a fear of losing it This is our best state To fear leâ—t at any time by forsaking the promise of entring into his rest we should seem to be depriv'd The Apostle disputes not neither doe I whether we can be depriv'd or no but he assures us that we may fall back so far as that to the Church and to our own Consciences we may seem to be depriv'd and that 's argument enough that here is no Rest. To end all though there be no Rest in all this world no not in our sanctification here yet this being a Consolation there must be rest some where And it is In superna Civitate unde amicus non exit quâ inimicus non intrat In that City in that Hierusalem where there shall never enter any man whom we doe not love nor any goe from us whom we doe love Which though we have not yet yet we shall have for upon those words because I live ye shall live also Saint Augustine sayes that because his Resurrection was to follow so soon Christ takes the present word because I doe live But because their life was not to be had here he says Vivetis you shall live in heaven not Vivitis for here we doe not live So as in Adam we all die even so in Christ shall all be made alive says the Apostle All our deaths are here present now now we dy our quickning is reserv'd for heaven that 's future And therefore let us attend that Rest as patiently as we doe the things of this world and not doubt of it therefore because we see it not yet even in this world we consider invisible things more then visible Vidimus pelagus non autem mercedem The Merchant sees the tempestuous Sea when he does not see the commodities which he goes for Videmus terram non autem messem The Husbandman sees the Earth and his labour when he sees no harvest and for these hopes that there will be a gain to the Merchant and a harvest to the Labourer Naturae fidimus we rely upon Creatures for our Resurrection fide usâ—orem habemus Coranatum Not Nature not Sea
gate into Heaven in thy selfe If thou beest not sensible of others mens poverties and distresses yet Miserere animae tuae have mercy on thine own soule thou hast a poor guest an Inmate a sojourner within these mudwals this corrupt body of thine be mercifull and compassionate to that Soule cloath that Soul which is stripp'd and left naked of all her originall righteousnesse feed that Soule which thou hast starv'd purge that Soule which thou hast infected warm and thaw that Soul which thou hast frozen with indevotion coole and quench that Soul which thou hast inflamed with licentiousness Miserere animae tuae begin with thine own Soule be charitable to thy self first and thou wilt remember that God hath made of one bloud all Mankind and thou wilt find out thy selfe in every other poor Man and thou wilt find Christ Jesus himselfe in them all Now of those divers gates which God opens in this life those divers exercises of charity the particular which we are occasion'd to speak of here is not the cloathing nor feeding of Christ but the housing of him The providing Christ a house a dwelling whether this were the very place where Solomons Temple was after built is perplexedly and perchance impertinently controverted by many but howsoever here was the house of God and here was the gate of Heaven It is true God may be devoutly worshipped any where In omni loco dominationis ejus benedic anima mea Domino In all places of his dominion my Soule shall praise the Lord sayes David It is not only a concurring of men a meeting of so many bodies that makes a Church If thy soule and body be met together an humble preparation of the mind and a reverent disposition of the body if thy knees be bent to the earth thy hands and eyes lifted up to heaven if thy tongue pray and praise and thine ears hearken to his answer if all thy senses and powers and faculties be met with one unanime purpose to worship thy God thou art to this intendment a Church thou art a Congregation here are two or three met together in his name and he is in the midst of them though thou be alone in thy chamber The Church of God should be built upon a Rock and yet Iob had his Church upon a Dunghill The bed is a scene and an embleme of wantonnesse and yet Hezekiah had his Church in his Bed The Church is to be placed upon the top of a Hill and yet the Prophet Ieremy had his Church in Luto in a miry Dungeon Constancy and setlednesse belongs to the Church and yet Ionah had his Church in the Whales belly The Lyon that roares and seeks whom he may devour is an enemy to this Church and yet Daniel had his Church in the Lions den Aquae quietudinum the waters of rest in the Psalme were a figure of the Church and yet the three children had their Church in the fiery furnace Liberty life appertaine to the Church and yet Peter Paul had their Church in prison and the thiefe had his Church upon the Crosse. Every particular man is himselfe Templum Spiritus sancti a Temple of the holy Ghost yea Solvite templum hoc destroy this body by death and corruption in the grave yet there shall be Festum encaeniorum a renuing a reedifying of all those Temples in the generall Resurrection when we shall rise againe not onely as so many Christians but as so many Christian Churches to glorifie the Apostle and High-priest of our profession Christ Jesus in that eternall Sabbath In omni loco domiâ—ationis ejus Every person every place is fit to glorifie God in God is not tyed to any place not by essence Implet continendo implet God fills every place and fills it by containing that place in himselfe but he is tyed by his promise to a manifestation of himselfe by working in some certain places Though God were long before he required or admitted a sumptuous Temple for Solomons Temple was not built in almost five hundred years after their returne out of Egypt though God were content to accept their worship and their sacrifices at the Tabernacle which was a transitory and moveable Temple yet at last he was so carefull of his house as that himselfe gave the modell and platforme of it and when it was built and after repaired again he was so jealous of appropriating and confining all his solemne worship to that particular place as that he permitted that long schisme and dissention between the Samaritans and the Iews onely about the place of the worship of God They differed not in other things but whether in Mount Sion or in Mount Garizim And the feast of the dedication of this Temple which was yearly celebrated received so much honor as that Christ himselfe vouchsafed to be personally present at that solemnity though it were a feast of the institution of the Church and not of God immediatly as their other festivalls were yet Christ forbore not to observe it upon that pretence that it was but the Church that had appointed it to be observed So that as in all times God had manifested and exhibited himselfe in some particular places more then other in the Pillar in the wildernesse and in the Tabernacle and in the poole which the Angell troubled so did Christ himselfe by his owne presence ceremoniously justifie and authorise this dedication of places consecrated to Gods outward worship not onely once but anniversarily by a yearly celebration thereof To descend from this great Temple at Jerusalem to which God had annexed his solemne and publique worship the lesser Synagogues and Chappell 's of the Iews in other places were ever esteemed great testimonies of the sanctity and piety of the founders for Christ accepts of that reason which was presented to him in the behalfe of the Centurion He is worthy that thou shouldst do this for him for he loveth our Nation And how hath he testified it He hath built us a Synagogue He was but a stranger to them and yet he furthered and advanced the service of God amongst them of whose body he was no member This was that Centurions commendation Et quanto commedatior qui adificat Ecclesiam How much more commendation deserve they that build a Church for Christian service And therefore the first Christians made so much haste to the expressing of their devotion that even in the Apostles time for all their poverty and persecution they were come to have Churches as most of the Fathers and some of our later Expositors understand these words Have ye not houses to eate and drinke or doe ye despise the Church of God to be spoken not of the Church as it is a Congregation but of the Church as it is a Material building Yea if we may beleeve some authors that are pretended to be very ancient there was one Church dedicated to the memory
that thou art now and when thou shalt be nothing againe thou shalt be made better then thou art yet And Redderationem quâ factus es ego reddam rationem quâ fies Doe thou tell me how thou wast made then and I will tell thee how thou shalt be made hereafter And yet as Solomon sends us to creatures to creatures of a low rank station to Ants Spiders for instruction so Saint Gregory sends us to creatures to learne the Resurrection Lux quotidie moritur quotidie resurgit That glorious creature that first creature the light dyes every day and every day hath a resurrection In arbustis folia resurrectione erumpunt from the Cedar of Libanus to the Hyssop upon the wall every leafe dyes every yeare and every yeare hath a Resurrection Vbi in brevitate seminis tam immensa arbor latuit as he pursues that meditation If thou hadst seen the bodies of men rise our of the grave at Christs Resurrection could that be a stranger thing to thee then if thou hadst never seen nor hard not imagined it before to see an Oake that spreads so farre rise out of an Akorne Or if Churchyards did vent themselves every spring and that there were such a Resurrection of bodies every yeare when thou hadst seen as many Resurrections as years the Resurrection would be no stranger to thee then the spring is And thus this and many other good and reverend men and so the holy Ghost himselfe sends us to Reason and to the Creature for the doctrine of the Resurrection Saint Paul allowes him not the reason of a man that proceeds not so Thou fool says he that which thou sowest is not quickned except it dye but then it is It is truly harder to conceive a translation of the body into heaven then a Resurrection of the body from the earth Num in hominibus terra degenerat quae omnia regenerare consuevit Doe all kinds of earth regenerate and shall onely the Churchyard degenerate Is there a yearely Resurrection of every other thing and never of men Omnia pereunde servantur All other things are preserved and continued by dying Tu homo solus ad hoc morieris ut pereas And canst thou O man suspect of thy selfe that the end of thy dying is an end of thee Fall as low as thou canst corrupt and putresie as desperately as thou canst sis nihil thinke thy selfe nothing Ejus est nihilum ipsum cujus est totum even that nothing is as much in his power as the world which he made of nothing And as he called thee when thou wast not as if thou hadst been so will he call thee againe when thou art ignorant of that being which thou hast in the grave and give thee againe thy former and glorifie it with a better being The Iews then if they had no other helpes might have as naturall men may preparations a Priore and illustrations a Posteriore for the doctrine of the Resurrection The Iews had seen resuscitations from the dead in particular persons and they had seen miraculous cures done by their Prophets And Gregory Nyssen says well that those miraculous cures which Christ wrought with a Tolle grabatum and an Este sanus and no more they were praeludia resurrectionis halfe-resurrections prologues and inducements to the doctrine of the resurrection which shall be transacted with a Surgite mortui and no more So these naturall helps in the consideration of the creature are praeludia resurrectionis they are halfe-resurrections and these naturall resurrections carry us halfe way to the miraculous resurrection But certainely the Iews who had that which the Gentiles wanted The Scriptures had from them a generall though not an explicite knowledge of the resurrection That they had it we see by that practise of Iudas the Maccabee in gathering a contribution to send to Ierusalem which is therefore commended because he was therein mindefull of the Resurrection Neither doth Christ find any that opposed the doctrine of the Resurrection but those who though they were tolerated in the State because they were otherwise great persons were absolute Heretiques even amongst the Iews The Sadduces And Saint Paul when finding himselfe to bee oppressed in Judgement hee used his Christian wisedome and to draw a strong party to himselfe protested himselfe to bee of the sect of the Pharisees and that as they and all the rest in generall did he maintained the Resurrection he knew it would seem a strange injury and an oppression to be called in question for that that they all beleeved Though therefore our Saviour Christ who disputed then onely against the Sadduces argued for the doctrine of the Resurrection onely from that place of the Scripture which those Sadduces acknowledged to be Scripture for they denied all but the bookes of Moses and so insisted upon those words I am the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Iacob yet certainely the Iews had established that doctrine upon other places too though to the Sadduces who accepted Moses onely Moses were the best evidence It is evident enough in that particular place of Daniel Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt And in Daniel that word many must not be restrained to lesse then all Daniel intends by that many that how many soever they are they shall all arise as Saint Paul does when he says By one mans disobedience many were made sinners that is All for death passed over all men for all have sinned And Christ doth but paraphrase that place of Daniel who says Multi many when he says Omnes all All that are in the grave shall heare his voyce and shall come forth They that have done good unto the resurrection of life and they that have done evill to the resurrection of damnation This then being thus far settled that the Iews understood the resurrection and more then that they beleeved it and therefore as they had light in nature they had assurance in Scripture come we now to that which was our last purpose in this first part whether in this text in these words of Iob though after my skin wormes destroy my body there be any such light of the Resurrection given It is true that in the new Testament where the doctrine of the resurrection is more evidently more liquidly delivered then in the old though it be delivered in the old too there is no place cited out of the book of Iob for the resurrection and so this is not But it is no marvaile both upon that reason which we noted before that they who were to be convinced were such as received onely the books of Moses and therefore all citations from this booke of Iob or any other had been impertinently and frivolously employed and because in the new Testament
vestruâ—â— it is not for you to know times and seasons Before in his state of mortality 〈…〉 ignor antibus he pretended to know no more of this then they that knew nothing After when he had invested immortality per sui exceptionem says that Father he excepts none but himselfe all the rest even the Apostles were left ignorant thereof For this non est vestrum it is not for you is part of the last sentence that ever Christ spake to them If it be a convenient answer to say Christ knew it not as man how bold is that man that will pretend to know it And if it be a convenient interpretation of Christs words that he knew it not that is knew it not so as that he might tell it them how indiscreet are they who though they may seem to know it will publish it For thereby they fill other men with scruples and vexations and they open themselves to scorne and reproach when their predictions prove false as Saint Augustine observed in his time and every age hath given examples since of confident men that have failed in these conjectures It is a poore pretence to say this intimation this impression of a certaine time prepares men with better dispositions For they have so often been found false that it rather weakens the credit of the thing it selfe In the old world they knew exactly the time of the destruction of the world that there should be an hundred twenty years before the flood came And yet upon how few did that prediction though from the mouth of God himselfe work to repentance Naâ—â— found grace in Gods eyes but it was not because he mended his life upon that prediction but he was grations in Gods sight before At the day of our death we write Pridiâ—râ—surrâ—ctioniâ— the day before the resurrection It is Vigilia resurectionis Our Easter Eve Adveniat regnum tuum possesse my soule of thy kingdome then And Fiâ—â— voluntas tua my body shall arise after but how soon after or how late after thy will bee done then by thy selfe and thy will bee knowne till then to thy selfe We passe on As in Massa damnata the whole lump of mankind is under the condemnation of Adams sinne and yet the good purpose of God severs some men from that condemnation so at the resurrection all shall rise but not all to glory But amongst them that doe Ego says Iob I shall I as I am the same man made up of the samebody and the same soule Shall I imagine a difficulty in my body because I have lost an Arme in the East and a leg in the West because I have left some bloud in the North and some bones in the South Doe but remember with what ease you have sate in the chaire casting an account and made a shilling on one hand a pound on the other or five shillings below ten above because all these lay easily within your reach Consider how much lesse all this earth is to him that sits in heaven and spans all this world and reunites in an instant armes and legs bloud and bones in what corners so ever they be scattered The greater work may seem to be in reducing the soul That that soule which sped so ill in that body last time it came to it as that it contracted Originall sinne then and was put to the slavery to serve that body and to serve it in the ways of sinne not for an Apprentiship of seven but seventy years after that that soul after it hath once got loose by death and liv'd God knows how many thousands of years free from that body that abus'd it so before and in the sight and fruition of that God where it was in no danger should willingly nay desirously ambitiously seek this scuttered body this Eastern and Western and Northern and Southern body this is the most inconsiderable consideration and yet Ego I I the same body and the same soul shall be recompact again and be identically numerically individually the same man The same integrity of body and soul and the same integrity in the Organs of my body and in the faculties of my soul too I shall be all there my body and my soul all my body all my soul I am not all here I am here now preaching upon this text and I am at home in my Library considering whether S. Gregory or S. Hierome have said best of this text before I am here speaking to you and yet I consider by the way in the same instant what it is likely you will say to one another when I have done you are not all here neither you are here now hearing me and yet you are thinking that you have heard a better Sermon somewhere else of this text before you are here and yet you think you could have heard some other doctrine of down-right Predestinations and Reprobation roundly delivered somewhere else with more edification to youâ— you are here and you remember your selves that now yee think of it This had been the fittest time now when every body else is at Church to have made such and such a private visit and because you would bee there you are there I cannot say you cannot say so perfectly so entirely now as at the Resurrection Ego I am here I body and soul I soul and faculties as Christ sayd to Peter Noli timere Ego sum Fear nothing it is I so I say to my selfe Noli timere My soul why art thou so sad my body why dost thou languish Ego I body and soul soul and faculties shall say to Christ Jesus Ego sum Lord it is I and hee shall not say Nescio te I know thee not but avow me and place me at his right hand Ego sum I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath Ego sum and I the same man shall receive the crown of glory which shall not fade Ego I the same person Ego videbo I shall see I have had no looking-glasse in my grave to see how my body looks in the dissolution I know not how I have had no houre-glasse in my grave to see how my time passes I know not when for when my eylids are closed in my death-bed the Angel hath said to me that time shall be no more Till I see eternity the ancient of days I shall see no more but then I shall Now why is Iob gladder of the use of this sense of seeing then of any of the other He is not He is glad of seeing but not of the sense but of the Object It is true that is said in the School Viciniùs se habent potentiae sensitivae ad animam quà m corpus Our sensitive faculties have more relation to the soul then to the body but yet to some purpose and in some measure all the senses shall be in our glorifyed bodies In actu or in potentiâ
kingdome here and there is a Communion in Armes as well as a communion in Triumph Leaving then that acceptation of flesh and bloud which many thinke to be intended in this text that is Animalis caro flesh and bloud that must be maintained by eating and drinking and preserved by propagation and generation that flesh and that bloud cannot inherit heaven where there is no marying nor giving in mariage but Erimus sicut Angeli we shall be as the Angels though such a heaven in part Mahomet hath proposed to his followers a heaven that should abound with worldly delights and such a heaven the Disciples of Origen and the Millenarians that look for one thousand years of all temporall felicity proposed to themselves And though amongst our latter men Cajetan doe thinke that the Apostle in this text bent himselfe upon that doctrine non caro non Animalis caro flesh and bloud that is no carnall no worldly delights are to be looked for in heaven leaving that sense as too narrow and too shallow for the holy Ghost in this place in which he hath a higher reach we shall determine our selves at this time in these too acceptations of this phrase of speech first non caro that is non caro corrupta flesh and bloud cannot sinfull flesh corrupt flesh flesh not discharged of sinfull corruption here by repentance and Sanctification and the operation of Gods spirit such flesh cannot inherit the kingdome of God here Secondly noncar◠is non car◠corruptibilis flesh and bloud cannot that is flesh that is yet subject to corruption and dissolution and naturall passions and impressions tending to defectivenesse flesh that is still subject to any punishment that God lays upon flesh for sinne such flesh cannot inherit the kingdome of God hereafter for our present possession of the kingdome of God here our corrupt flesh must be purged by Sanctification here for the future kingdome our naturall Corruptiblenesse must be purged by glorification there We will make the last part first as this flesh and this bloud by devesting the corruptiblenesse it suffers here by that glorification shall inherit that kingdome and not stay long upon it neither For of that we have spoken conveniently before of the resurrection it selfe Now we shall looke a little into the qualities of bodies in the resurrection and that not in the intricacies and subtilties of the Schoole but onely in that one patterne which hath been given us of that glory upon earth which is the Transfiguration of Christ for that Transfiguration of his was a representation of a glorified body in a glorified state And then in the second place we shall come to our first part what that flesh and bloud is that is denied to be capable of the inheritance of that kingdome here that is that earnest of heaven and that inchoation of heaven which may be had in this world and in that part we shall see what this inheritance what this title to heaven here and what this kingdome of God that heaven which is proposed to us here is First then for the first acceptation which is of the later resurrection no man denies that which Melancthon hath collected and established to be the summe of this text Statuit resurrectionem in corpore sed non quale jam corpus est The Apostle establishes a resurrection of the body but yet not such a body as this is It is the same body and yet not such a body which is a mysterious consideration that it is the same body and yet not such as it selfe nor like any other body of the same substance But what kind of body then We content ourselves with that Transfiguratio specimen appositissimum Resurrectionis the Transfiguration of Christ is the best glasse to see this resurrection and state of glory in But how was that transfiguration wrought We content our selves with Saint Hieromes expressing of it non pristinam amisit veritatem vel formam corporis Christ had still the same ture and reall body and he had the same forme and proportion and lineaments and dimensions of his body in it selfe Transfiguratio non faciem subtraxit sed splendorem ad didit sayes he It gave him not another face but it super-immitted such a light such an illustration upon him as by that irradiation that coruscation the beames of their eys were scattered and disgregated dissipated so as that they could not collect them as at other times nor constantly and confidently discerne him Moses had a measure a proportion of this but yet when Moses came down with his shining face though they were not able to looke long upon him they knew him to be Moses When Christ was transfigured in the presence of Peter Iames and Iohn yet they knew him to be Christ. Transfiguration did not so change him nor shall glorification so change us as that we shall not be known There is nothing to convince a man of error nothing in nature nothing in Scriptures if he beleeve that he shall know those persons in heaven whom he knew upon earth and if he conceive soberly that it were a lesse degree of blessednesse not to know them then to know them he is bound to beleeve that he shall know them for he is bound to beleeve that all that conduces to blessednes shall be given him The School resolves that at the Judgement all the sins of all shall be manifested to all even those secret sinfull thoughts that never came out of the heart And when any in the School differs or departs from this cōmon opinion they say onely that those sins which have been in particular repented shall not be manifested all others shall And therefore it is a deep uncharitablenes to reproach any man of sins formerly repented and a deep uncharitablenesse not to beleeve that he whom thou seest at the Communion hath repented his former sins Reproach no man after thou hast seen him receive with last years sins except thou have good evidence of his Hypocrisie then or of his Relapsing after For in those two cases a man remaines or becomes againe guilty of his former sinnes Now if in heaven they shall know the hearts of one another whose faces they never knew before there is lesse difficulty in knowing them whom we did know before From this transfiguration of Christ in which the mortall eye of the Apostles did see that representation of the glory of Christ the Schooles make a good argument that in heaven we shall doe it much more And though in this case of the Transfiguration in which the eyes of mortall men could have no proportion with that glory of heaven this may bee well said to have been done either Moderando lumen that God abated that light of glory or Confortando visum that God exalted their sense of seeing supernaturally no such distinctions or modifications will bee needfull in heaven because how highly soever the body of my
Father or of my friend shall bee glorifyed there mine eyes shall be glorifyed as much and we are both kept in the same proportion there as wee had towards one another here here my naturall eye could see his naturall face and there mine eye is as much mended as his body is and my sense as much exalted as mine object And as well as I may know that I am I I may know that He is He for I shall not know my selfe nor that state of glory which I am then in by any light of Nature which I brought thither but by that light of Glory which I shall receive there When therefore a man finds that this consideration does him good in his conversation and retards him towards some sinnes how shall I stand then when all the world shall see that my solicitation hath brought such a woman to the stews to the Hospitall to hell who had scap'd all this if I had not corrupted her at first which no man in the world knew before and all shall know then Or that my whispering and my calumny hath overthrown such a man in his place in his reputation in his fortune which he himself knew not before and all shall know then Or that my counsell or my example hath been a furtherance to any mans spirituall edification here He that in rectified reason and a rectified conscience finds this in Gods name let him beleeve yea for Gods sake let him take heed of not beleeving that we shall know one another Actions and Persons in the Resurrection as the Apostles did know Christ at the Transfiguration which was a Type of it This Transfiguration then upon earth was the same glory which Christ had after in heaven Qualis venturus talis apparuit such as all eyes shall see him to be when he comes in glory at last those Apostles saw him then but of the particular circumstances even of this transfiguration upon earth there is but little said to us Let us modestly take that which is expressed in it and not search over-curiously farther into that which is signifyed and represented by it which is the state of glory in the Resurrection First his face shin'd as the Sunne says that Gospell he could not take a higher comparison for our Information and for our admiration in this world then the Sunne And then the Saints of God in their glorifyed state are admitted to the same comparison The righteous shall shine out as the Sunne in the Kingdome of the Father the Sunne of the firmament which should be their comparison will be gone But the Sun of grace and of glory the Son of God shall remain and they shall shine as he that is in his righteousnesse In this transfiguration his clothes were white says the text but how white the holy Ghost does not tell us at once as white as snow says Saint Mark as white as light says Saint Matthew Let the garments of the glorifyed Saints of God be their bodies and then their bodies are as white as snow as snow that fall's from heaven and hath touâ—ht no pollution of the earth For though our bodies have been upon earth and have touched pitch and have been defiled yet that will not lye in proof not be given in evidence Though he that drew me and I that was drawen too know in what unclean places and what unclean actions this body of mine hath been yet it lyes not in proof it shall not be given in evidence for Accusator fratrum The accuser of the brethren is cast down the Devill shall find nothing against me And if I had spontaneum Daemonem as Saint Chrysostome speaks a bosome Devill and could tempt my self though there had been no other tempter in this world so I have spontanâ—um Demonem a bosome accuser a conscience that would accuse me there if I accuse my self there I reproach the mercy of God who hath seal'd my pardon and made even my body what sins soever had discoloured it as white as snow As white as snow and as white as light says that Gospel Light implies an active power Light is operative and works upon others The bodies of the Saints of God shall receive all impressions of glory in themselves and they shall doe all that is to bee done for the glory of God there There they shall stand in his service and they shall kneel in his worship and they shall fall in his reverence and they shall sing in his glory they shall glorifie him in all positions of the body They shall be glorified in themselves passively and they shall glorifie God actively sicut Nix sicut Lux their beeing their doing shall be all for him Thus they shall shine as the Sun Thus their garments shall be white white as snow in being glorified in their own bodies white as light in glorifying God in all the actions of those bodies Now there is thus much more considerable and applyable to our present purpose in this tranfiguration of Christ that there was company with them Be not apt to think heaven in an Ermitage or a Monastery or the way to heaven a sullen melancholy Heaven and the way to it is a Communion of Saints in a holy cheerfulnesse Get thou thither make sure thine own salvation but be not too hasty to think that no body gets thither except he go thy way in all opinions and all actions There was company in the transfiguration but no other company then Moses and Elias and Christ and the Apostles none but they to whom God had manifested himself otherwise then to a meer naturall man otherwise then as a generall God For in the Law and in the Padagogie and Schoolmastership and instruction thereof God had manifested himself particularly by Moses In Elias and the Prophets whom God sent in a continuall succession to refresh that manifestation which he had given of himself in the Law before in the example of these rules in him who was the consummation of the Law and the Prophets Christ Iesus And then in the Application of all this by the Apostles and by the Church established by them God had more particularly manifested himself then to naturall men Moses Elias Christ and the Apostles make up the houshold of the faithfull and none have interest in the Resurrection but in and by these These to whom and by whom God hath exhibited himself to his Church by other notions then as one universall God For nothing will save a man but to believe in God so as God hath proposed himself in his Son in his Scriptures in his Christ. These were with him in the transfiguration and they talked with him says that text As there is a Communion of Saints so there is a Communication of Saints Think not heaven a Charter-house where men who onely of all creatures are enabled by God to speak must not speak to one another The Lord of heaven is
well to be angry even unto death Ieremy was under this tentation too Ionas was angry because his Prophesie was not performed because God would not second his Prophesie in the destruction of Nineveh Ieremy was angry because his Prophesie was like to be performed he preached heavy Doctrin and therfore his Auditory hated him Woe is me my Mother says he that thou hast born me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth I preach but the messages of God and vae mihi si non wo be unto me if I preach not them I preach but the sense of Gods indignation upon mine own soul in a conscience of mine own sins I impute nothing to another that I confesse not of my selfe I call none of you to confession to me I doe but confesse my self to God and you I rack no mans memory what he did last year last week last night I onely gather into my memory and powr out in the presence of my God and his Church the sinfull history of mine own youth and yet I am a contentious man says Ieremy a worm and a burthen to every tender conscience says he and I strive with the whole earth I am a bitter and satyricall preacher This is that that wearies mee says hee I have neither lent on usury nor men have lent me on usury yet as though I were an oppressing lender or a fraudulent borrower every one of them doth curse me This is a naturall infirmity which the strongest men being but men cannot devest that if their purposes prosper not they are weary of their industry weary of their lifes But this is Summa ingratitude in Deum mâ—lle non esse quà m miserum esse There cannot be a greater unthankfulnesse to God then to desire to be Nothing at all rather then to be that that God would have thee to be To desire to be out of the world rather then to glorifie him by thy patience in it But when this infirmity overtakes Gods children Patiuntur ut homtines sustinent ut Dei amici They are under calamities as they are râ—en but yet they come to recollect themselves and to beat those calamities as the valiant Souldiers as the faithfull servants as the bosome friends of almighty God Si vis discere qualis esse debiâ—s disce post gratiam says the same Father Learn patience not from the stupidity of Philosophers who are but their own statues men of stone without sense without affections and who placed all their glory in a Non facies ut te dicam analum that no pain should make them say they were in pain nor from the perâ—iâ—acy of Heretiques how to bear a calamity who gave their bodies to the fire for the establishing of their Disciples but take out a new lesson in the times of Grace Consider the Apostles there Gaudentes Gloriantes They departed from the Councell rejoycing that they were counted worthy to suffer rebuke for his name It was Ioy and all Ioy says S. Iames It was Glory and all Glory says S. Paul Absit mihi God forbid that I should glory save in the Crosse of our Lord Iesus Christ And if I can glory in that to glory in that is to have a conscience testifying to me that God receives glory by my use of his correction I may come to God reason with God plead with God wrastle with God and be received and sustained by him This was Davids case in our Text therefore he doth not stray into the infirmities of these great and good Men Moses Iob Elias Ieremy and Ionah whose errours it is labour better bestowed carefully to avoid then absolutely to excuse for that cannot be done But David presents onely to God the sense of his corrections and implies in that that since the cure is wrought since Gods purpose which is by corrections to bring a sinner to himself and so to God is effected in him God would now be pleased to remember all his other gracious promises too and to admit such a zealous prayer as as he doth from Esay after Be not angry O Lord above measure that is above the measure of thy promises to repentant souls or the measure of the strength of our bodies Neither remember iniquities for ever But loe wee beseech thee Behold we are thy people To end this first part because the other extends it self in many branches Then when we are come to a sense of Gods purpose by his corrections it is a seasonable time to flie to his mercy and to pray that he would remove them from us and to present our Reasons to spare us for thy corrections have wrought upon us Give us this day our daily bread for thou hast given us stones and scorpions tribulations and afflictions and we have fed upon them found nourishment even in those tribulations and afflictions and said thee grace for them blessed and glorified thy name for those tribulations and afflictions Give us our Cordials now and our Restoratives for thy physick hath evacuated all the peccant humour and all our naturall strength shine out in the light of thy countenance now for this long cold night hath benum'd us since the drâ—sse is now evaporated now withdraw thy fire since thy hand hath anew cast us now imprint in us anew thine Image since we have not disputed against thy corrections all this while O Lord open thou our lips now and accept our remembring of thee that we have not done so Accept our Petition and the Reason of our Petition for thine Arrows stick fast in us and thy hand presseth us sore David in a rectified conscience findes that he may be admitted to present reasons against farther corrections And that this may be received as a reason That Gods Arrows are upon him for this is phrase or a Metaphore in which Gods indignation is often expressed in the Scripture He sent out his Arrows and scattered them sayes David magnifying Gods goodness in his behalf against his enemies And so again God will ordaine his Arrrowes for them that persecute me Complebo sagittas says God I will heap mischiefs upon them and I will spend mine arrows upon them yea Inebriabo sanguine I will make mine Arrows drunk in their bloud It is Idiotismus Spiritus sancti a peculiar character of the holy Ghosts expressing Gods anger in that Metaphore of shooting Arrows In this place some understand by these Arrows foul and infectious diseases in his body derived by his incontinence Others the sting of Conscience and that fearfull choice which the Prophet offered him war famine and pestilence Others his passionate sorrow in the death of Bethsheba's first childe or in the Incest of Amnon upon his sister or in the murder upon Amnon by Absolon or in the death of Absolen by Ioab or in many other occasions of sorrow that surrounded David and his family more perchance then any such family in the
upon thee and true that God is angry vehemently angry But Expone juststiam irae Dei deal clearly with the world and clear God and confesse it is because of thy sinne When Cain says My sin is greater then can be forgiven that word Gnavon is ambiguous it may bee sinne it may bee punishment and wee know not whether his impatience grew out of the horrour of his sinne or the weight of his punishment But here wee are directed by a word that hath no ambiguity Kata signifies sin and nothing but sinne Here the holy Ghost hath fixed thee upon a word that will not suffer thee to consider the punishment nor the cause of the punishment the anger but the cause of that anger and all the sin Wee see that the bodily sicknesse and the death of many is attributed to one kind of sinne to the negligent receiving of the Sacrament For this cause many are weak and sick amongst you and many sleep Imaginem judicii ostenderat God had given a representation of the day of Judgement in that proceeding of his for then we shall see many men condemned for sinnes for which we never suspected them so wee thinke men dye of Fevers whom we met lately at the Sacrament and God hath cut them off perhaps for that sin of their unworthy receiving the Sacrament My miseries are the fruits of this Tree Gods anger is the arms that spreads it but the root is sin My sin which is another consideration We say of a Possession Transit cum onere It passes to me with the burthen that my Father laid upon it his debt is my debt so does it with the sin too his sin by which he got that possession is my sin if I know it and perchance the punishment mine though I know not the sin Adams sin 6000 years agoe is my sin and their sin that shall sinne by occasion of any wanton writings of mine will be my sin though they come after Wofull riddle sin is but a privation and yet there is not such another positive possession sin is nothing and yet there is nothing else I sinned in the first man that ever was and but for the mercy of God in something that I have said or done might sin that is occasion sin in the last man that ever shall be But that sin that is called my sinne in this text is that that is become mine by an habituall practise or mine by a wilfull relapse into it And so my sin may kindle the anger of God though it bee but a single sinne One sinne as it is delivered here in the singular and no farther Because of my sinne Every man may find in himself Peccatum complicatum sinne wrapped up in sinne a body of sin We bring Elements of our own earth of Covetousnesse water of unsteadfastnesse ayre of putrefaction and fire of licentiousnesse and of these elements we make a body of sinne as the Apostle says of the Naturall body There are many members but one body so we may say of our sin it hath a wanton eye a griping hand an itching ear an insatiable heart and feet swift to shed blood and yet it is but one body of sin It is all â—and yet it is but One But let it be simply and singularly but One which is a miracle in sin truly I think an impossibility in sin to be single to be but One for that unclean Spirit which possessed the man that dwelt amongst the tombs carryed it at first as though he had been a single Devill and he alone in that man I I adjure thee says he to Christ and torment not me not me so far in the singular but when Christ puts him to it he confesses we are many and my name is legion So though thy sinne slightly examined may seem but One yet if thou dare presse it it will confesse a plurality a legion if it be but One yet if that One be made thine by an habituall love to it as the plague needs not the help of a Consumption to kill thee so neither does Adultery need the help of Murder to damn thee For this making of any One sin thine thine by an habituall love thereof will grow up to the last and heaviest waight intimated in that phrase which is also in this clause of the Text In facie paccati that this sin will have a face that is a confidence and a devesting of all 〈◊〉 or disguises There cannot bee a heavier punishment laid upon any sinne then Christ lays upon scandall It were better for him a mil-stone were hanged about his neck and hee drowned in the Sea If something worse then such a death belong to him surely it is eternall Death And this this eternall death is interminated by Christ in cases where there is not always sinne in the action which wee doe but if we doe any action so as that it may scandalize another or occasion sin in him we are bound to study and favour the weaknesse of other men and not to doe such things as they may think sins We must prevent the mis-interpretation yea the malice of other men for though the fire be theirs the fewell or at least the â—ellows is ours The uncharitablenesse the malice is in them but the awaking and the stirring thereof is in our carelesnesse who were not watchfull upon our actions But when an action comes to be sin indeed and not onely occasionally sin because it scandalizes another but really sin in it selfe then even the Poet tels you Maxima debetur pueris reverentia si quid Tâ—rpe paras Take heed of doing any sinne in the sight of thy Child for if we break through that wall we shall come quickly to that faciâ—m Sacerdotis non erubuerunt they will not be afraid nor ashamed in the presence of the Priest they will look him in the face nay receive at his hands and yet sin their sinne that minute in their hearts and to that also faciem seniorum non erubuerunt they will not be afraid nor ashamed of the Office of the Magistrate but sin for nothing or sin at a price bear out or buy out all their sins They sin as Sodom and bide it not is the highest charge that the Holy Ghost could lay upon the sinner When they come to say Our lips are ours who is Lord ever us They will say so of their hands and of all their bodies They are ours who shall forbid us to doe what wee will with them And what lack these open sinners of the last judgement and the condemnation therof That judgement is that men shall stand naked in the sight of one another and all their sinnes shall be made manifest to all and this open sinner does so and chuses to doe so even in this world When David prays so devoutly to be cleansed from his secret sins and Saint Paul glories so devoutly in having renounced the
to descend from heaven yet it did first ascend from the earth and retains still some such earthly parts as sheep cannot digest So howsoever these Revelations and Inspirations seem to fall upon us from heaven they arise from the earth from our selves from our own melancholy and pride or our too much homelinesse and familiarity in our accesses and conversation with God or a facility in beleeving or an often dreaming the same thing And with these Dews of Apparitions and Revelations did the Romane Church make our fathers drunk and giddy And against these does S. Augustine devoutly pray and praise God that he had delivered him from the curiosity of sipping these dews of hearkning after these apparitions and revelations But so ordinary were these apparitions then as that any son or nephew or friend could discern his fathers or uncles or companions soul ascending out of Purgatory into heaven and know them as distinctly as if they kept the same haire and beard and bodily lineaments as they had upon earth And as a ship which hath struck Sail will yet goe on with the winde it had before for a while so now when themselves are come to acknowledge That it was the unanime opinion of the Fathers that the souls of the dead did not appeare after death but that it was still the Devil howsoever sometimes that that he proposed were holy religious yet we see a great Author of theirs attribute so much to these apparitions and revelations that when he pretends to prove all controversies by the Fathers of the Church he every where intermingles that reverend Book of Brigids Revelations that they might also have some Mothers of the Church too which is not disproportionall in that Church if they have had a woman Pope to have Mothers of the Church too I speak not this as though God might not or did not manifest his will by women The great mystery of the Resurrection of Christ was revealed to women before men and to the sinfullest woman of company first But I speak of that bold injury done to the mysteries of the Christian Religion by pouring out that dew upon the grasse the Revelations of S. Brigid upon the controversies of Religion A book of so much blasphemy and impertinency and incredibility that if a Heathen were to be converted he would sooner be brought to beleeve Ovids Metamorphoses then Brigids Revelations to conduce to Religion And this is also another conformity between the two Babylons the Chaldean and the Italian Babylon that we could not receive our grasse pure but infected and dewed with these frivolous nay pernicious apparitions and Revelations But press we a little closer to the very steps metaphor of the holy Ghost who here lays the corrupting of the sheeps grasse in this That the shepheards had troden it down And this treading down will be pertinently considered two ways Tertullian in his Book De habitu muliebri notes two excesses in womens dressing One he cals Ornatum the other cultum One mundum muliebrem the other according to the liberty that he takes in making words Immundum muliebrem the first is a superfluous diligence in their dressing but the other an unnaturall addition to their complexion the first he pronounces to be always ad ambitionem for pride but the other ad prostitutionem for a worse for the worst purpose These two sorts of Excesses doe note these two kindes of treading down the grasse which we intend of which one is the mingling of too much humane ornament and secular learning in preaching in presenting the word of God which word is our grasse The other is of mingling humane Traditions as of things of equall value and obligation with the Commandements of God For the first humane ornament if in those pastures which are ordain'd for sheep you either plant rare and curious flowers delightfull onely to the eye or fragrant and odoriferous hearbs delightfull onely to the smell nay be they medicinall hearbs usefull and behovefull for the preservation and restitution of the health of man yet if these specious and glorious flowers and fragrant and medicinall hearbs be not proper nourishment for sheep this is a treading down of the grasse a pestering and a suppressing of that which appertained to them So if in your spirituall food our preaching of the Word you exact of us more secular ornament then may serve as Saint Augustine says Ad ancillationem to convey and usher the true word of life into your understandings and affections for both those must necessarily be wrought upon more then may serve ad vehiculum for a chariot for the word of God to enter and triumph in you this is a treading down of the grasse a filling of that ground which was ordained for sheep with things improper and impertinent to them If you furnish a Gallery with stuffe proper for a Gallery with Hangings and Chairs and Couches and Pictures it gives you all the conveniencies of a Gallery walks and prospect and ease but if you pester it with improper and impertinent furniture with Beds and Tables you lose the use and the name of a Gallery and you have made it a Wardrobe so if your curiosity extort more then convenient ornament in delivery of the word of God you may have a good Oration a good Panegyrique a good Encomiastique but not so good a Sermon It is true that Saint Paul applies sentences of secular Authors even in matters of greatest importance but then it is to persons that were accustomed to those authors and affected with them and not conversant not acquainted at all with the phrase and language of Scripture amongst us now almost every man God be blessed for it is so accustomed to the text of Scripture as that he is more affected with the name of David or Saint Paul then with any Seneca or Plutarch I am far from forbidding secular ornament in divine exercises especially in some Auditories acquainted with such learnings I have heard men preach against witty preaching and doe it with as much wit as they have and against learned preaching with as much learning as they could compasse If you should place that beast which makes the Bezoar stone in a pasture of pure but onely grasse it is likely that out of his naturall faculty he would petrifie the juyce of that grasse and make it a stone but not such a medicinall stone as he makes out of those herbes which he feeds upon Let all things concur in the name of God to the advancing of his purpose in his ordinance which is to make his will acceptable to you by his word onely avoid excesse in the manner of doing it Saint Augustines is an excellent rule when after in his book De Doctrina Christiana he had taught a use of all Arts in Divinity he allows them onely thus far ut cum ingenia his reddantur exercitatiora cavendum ne reddantur maligniora that when a man by
these helps is the more ful and the more ready the more able for Church service he be not also thereby made the more bold and the more confident Nec ament decipere verisimili sermone lest because he is able to make any thing seem probable and likely to the people by his eloquence he come to infuse paradoxicall opinions or schismaticall or which may be beleeved either way problematicall opinions for certain and constant truths and so be the lesse conversant and the lesse diligent in advancing plaine and simple and fundamentall doctrines and catechisticall which are truely necessary to salvation as though such plaine and ordinary and catechisticall doctrines were not worthy of his gifts and his great parts In a word in sheep-pastures you may plant fruit trees in the hedge-rowes but if you plant them all over it is an Orchard we may transfer flowers of secular learning into these exercises but if they consist of those they are but Themes and Essays But why insist we upon this Was there any such conformity between the two Babylons as that the Italian Babylon can be said to have troden down the grasse in that kinde with overcharging their Sermons with too much learning Truly it was far very very far from it for when they had prevailed in that Axiome and Aphorisme of theirs that it was best to keep the people in ignorance they might justly keep the Priest in ignorance too for when the people needed no learned instruction what needed the Church a learned instructer And therefore I laid hold of this consideration the treading down of grass by oppressing it with secular learning there by to bring to your remembrance the extreme ignorance that damp'd the Roman Church at that time where Aristotles Metaphysicks were condemned for Heresie and ignorance in generall made not onely pardonable but meritorious Of which times if at any time you read the Sermons which were then preached and after published you will excuse them of this treading down the grass by oppressing their auditories with over-much learning for they are such Sermons as will not suffer us to pity them but we must necessarily scorne and contemne and deride them Sermons at which the gravest and saddest man could not choose but laugh not at the Sermon God forbid nor at the plainness and homeliness of it God forbid but at the Soloecismes the barbarismes the servilities the stupid ignorance of those things which fall within the knowledge of boys of the first forme in every School This was their treading down of grass not with over-much learning but with a cloud a dampe an earth of ignorance After an Oxe that oppresseth the grass after a Horse that devours the grass sheep will feed but after a Goose that stanches the grass they will not no more can Gods sheep receive nourishment from him that puts a scorne upon his function by his ignorance But in the other way of treading down grass that is the word of God by the Additions and Traditions of men the Italian Babylon Rome abounded superabounded overflowed surrounded all And this is much more dangerous then the other for this mingling of humane additions and traditions upon equall necessity and equall obligation as the word of God it selfe is a kneading an incorporating of grasse and earth together so as that it is impossible for the weake sheep to avoid eating the meat of the Serpent Dust shalt thou eate all the days of thy life Now man upon his transgression was not accursed nor woman The sheep were not accursed But the earth was and the Serpent was and now this kneading this incorporating of earth with grasse traditions with the word makes the sheep to eate the cursed meat of the cursed Serpent Dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life Now in this treading down this grasse this way this suppressing it by traditions be pleased to consider these two applications some traditions doe destroy the word of God extirpate it annihilate it as when a Hog doth root up the grass In which case not onely that turfe withers and is presently useless and unprofitable to the sheep but if you dig never so low after down to the Center of the earth it is impossible ever to finde any more grass under it so some traditions doe utterly oppose the word of God without having under them any mysterious signification or any occasion or provocation of our devotion which is the ordinary pretext of traditions and Ceremoniall additions in their Church And of this sort was that amongst the Iews of which our blessed Saviour reproches them that whereas by the law children were to relieve decayed parents they had brought in a tradition of Commutation of Compensation that if those children gave a gift to the Priest or compounded with the Priest they were discharged of the former obligation And of this sort are many traditions in the Roman Church where not onely the doctrines of men but the doctrine of Devills as the Apostle calls the forbidding of Mariage and of meats did not onely tread down but root up the true grass The other sort of Traditions and Ceremonies doe not as the Hog root up the grass but as a Mole cast a slack and thin earth upon the face of the grass Now if the shepheard or husbandman be present to scatter this earth againe the sheep receive no great harme but may safely feed upon the wholesome grass that is under but if the sheep who are not able to scatter this earth nor to finde the grass that lies under be left to their own weakness they may as easily starve in this case as in the other the Mole may damnifie them as much as the Hog And of this sort are those traditions which induce Ceremonies into the Church in vestures in postures of the body in particular things and words and actions in Baptisme or Mariage or any other thing to be transacted in the Church These ceremonies are not the institutions of God immediately but they are a kind of light earth that hath under it good and usefull significations which when they be understood conduce much to the encrease and advancement of our devotion and of the glory of God And this is the iniquity that we complaine of in the Roman Church that when we accuse them of multiplying impertinent and insupportable ceremonies they tell us of some mysterious and pious signification in the institution thereof at first They tell us this and it is sometimes true But neither in Preaching nor practise doe they scatter this earth to their own sheep or shew them the grass that lies under but suffer the people to inhere and arrest their thoughts upon the ceremony it selfe or that to which that ceremony mis-leads them as in particular for the time will not admit many examples when they kneel at the Sacrament they are not told that they kneel because they are then in the act of
every poor soul or inferiour person whom he met in the street and then bid his man give him so much money as the Law would for damages And this oppressing with scorne this proceeding without any respect of fame we note for hast but in two things in the Italian Babylon Rome first in that Book their Taxa Camerae and then in that doctrine their Reservatio Casuum that they durst compose and divulge such a book as their Taxa Camerae which is an Index a Repertory for all sinnes and in which every man may see beforehand how much money an Adultery an Incest a Murder a Parricide or any other sinne whose name he would never have thought of but by that Remembrancer that book will cost him that so he may sinne and not undoe himself sinne according to his means and within his compasse that they durst let the world see such a book was argument enough that they were fear'd up and scorned all that all men could think or say or doe in opposition So also is their Reservation of Cases that though all Priests have an equall power of remitting all sins yet are some sinnes reserved onely to Prelates some onely to the Popes Legats some onely to the Pope himselfe Is not this a scornfull spurning and kicking of the world a plain telling them that all is done for money and shall be so say all the world what it can They have a nationall custome in civill curtesies in that place in Italy to offer entertainments and lendings of money and the like but it must not be accepted It is a discurtesie to take their courteous offers in earnest Will they play so with the great Seale of heaven the remission and absolution of sins and send out their Priests with that commission whose sinnes yee forgive are forgiven but see you forgive none upon which we have set a higher price and reserved to our selves They had such a fashion in old Rome whilest the Republique stood He that was admitted to Triumph must invite the Consuls to the feast and the Consuls must promise to come but they must forbeare lest their presence should diminish the glory of the Triumpher So the Priest must professe that he hath as he hath indeed power to remit all sinnes but there are a great many that he must not meddle withall They practise this reservation upon higher persons then their ordinary Priests upon Cardinals A Cardinall is created and by that creation he hath a voice in all the great affairs of the world but at his creation Os clauditur à Papa he that made him makes him dumbe and he that out of the nature of his place is duly to be heard over all the world must not be heard in the Consistory the Pope gives him an universall voice and then shuts his mouth He makes him first a Giant and then a dwarfe in an houre He makes him thunder and speechlesse all at once fearfull to the Kings of the earth if he might speak but he must not They were not content to make Merchandize of our souls but they make plays jests scornes of matter of salvation and play fast and loose with that soveraign Balsamum of our souls the absolution and remission of sins Though no doubt many of them confess in their own bosomes that which one of them professes ingenuously and publiquely Diffiteri non possumus abusum Reservationum stragem animarum in iis we cannot deny the abuse of reservations even to the butchery of those poor souls who by reason of these reservations want their absolution Dolendum deflendum pecuniâ numeratâ omnia dispensare This deserves all our teares all our sighs that for money and not without it all sinnes are dispensed withall but there are fixed seasons for salvation some remissions and pardons are reserved to certain times of the year and there are fixt shops of salvation some remissions and pardons are appropriated to certain Fairs and Markets and cannot be given that is sold at any other time or place And farther we cannot we need not extend this accommodation of the words of our text literally intended of the condition of Gods Children in Babylon but pregnantly appliable to the condition of our Fathers in the Italian Babylon Rome But having at this time seen the oppressions that those shepheards inflicted there for the rest which are many and important considerations as first that they staid that they eate that grasse that yet they remained Gods sheep and remained his flock his Church though a Church under a greater Church And then the behaviour of the sheep whilst they staid there their obedience to Gods call in comming from them when he called them and made them way And lastly the little ground that our Separatists can have for their departing from us either by Israels departing from Babylon or our Fathers departing from Rome must be the exercise of your devotion another day SERMON XXV Preached at White-Hall The second Sermon on EZEK 34. 19. And as for my flock they eate that which yee have troden with your feet and they drink that which yee have fouled with your feet AS by way of accommodation we have considered these words as they concern the iniquity and oppression of the shepheards that is the chief rulers amongst the Iews in the Chaldean Babylon and as they are appliable to the condition of our Fathers in the Italian Babylon Rome so now in this exercise are we to consider the behaviour of the sheep their nature and their demeanour under all these pressures in which we have many steps to goe All these first Manebant that for all this ill usage there they did stay they did not breake out not scatter themselves manebant And then Edebant though their grasse were troden and their water troubled yet they did eat that grasse and they did drink that water Edebant And doing so Manebant Oves they continued sheep they lost not the nature nor property of sheep Manebant Oves and Oves Dei they continued Gods sheep for the Devill hath his sheep too my sheep says God not those which bad been mine when they eat fresh grasse and drunke pure water but then when they eat troden grasse and drunke troubled water they were Gods sheep And more then that they were Grex Dei Gods flock for those whom our former translation calls my sheep the latter calls my flock God hath single sheep in many corners of the heathen but these though thus fed were his flock his Church But then though they staid Gods leasure and lived long upon this ill diet yet when God was pleased to call them out of Babylon out of Babylon they went when God was pleased to lead our Fathers out of Rome they left it And justly howsoever our Adversaries load us with contumelious names for that departure in which branch we shall see the vanity of their criminations and imputations to us for that secession from them
prepared a Whale to transport Ionas before Ionas was cast into the Sea God prepared thee a holy Patience before he reduced thee to the exercise of that Patience If thou couldest apprehend nothing done for thy self yet all the mercies that God hath exhibited to others are former mercies to thee in the Pattern and in the Seal and in the Argument thereof They have had them therefore thou shalt All Gods Prophecies are thy Histories whatsoever he hath promised others he hath done in his purpose for thee And all Gods Histories are thy Prophesies all that he hath done for others he owes thee Hast thou a hardnesse of heart knowest thou not that Christ hath wept before to entender that hardnesse hast thou a palenesse of soul in the apparition of God in fire and in judgement knowest thou not that Christ hath bled before to give a vigour and a vegetation and a verdure to that palenesse is thy sinne Actuall sinne knowest thou not that there is a Lamb bleeding before upon the Altar to expiate that Is thy terrour from thy inherence and encombrance of Originall sinne knowest thou not that the effect of Baptism hath blunted the sting of that sinne before art thou full of sores putrid and ulcerous sores full of wounds through and through piercing wounds full of diseases namelesse and complicate diseases knowest thou not that there is a holy Charm a blessed Incantation by which thou art though not invulnerable yet invulnerable unto death wrapt up in the eternall Decree of thine Election that 's thy pillar the assurance of thine Election If thou shake that if thou cast down that Pillar if thou distrust thine Election with Samson who pulled down pillars in his blindnesse in thy blindnesse thou destroyest thy self Begin where thou wilt at any Act in thy self at any act in God yet there was mercy before that for his mercy is eternall eternall even towards thee I could easily think that that that past between God and Moses in their long conversation that that that past between Christ and Moses in his trans-figuration that that that past between Saint Paul and the Court of Heaven in his extasie was instruction and manifestation on one part and admiration and application on the other part of the mercy of God Earth cannot receive Heaven cannot give such another universall soul to all all persons all actions as Mercy And were I the childe of this Text that were to live a hundred years I would ask no other marrow to my bones no other wine to my heart no other light to mine eyes no other art to my understanding no other eloquence to my tongue then the power of apprehending for my self and the power of deriving and conveying upon others by my Ministery the Mercy the early Mercy the everlasting Mercy of yours and my God But we must passe to the consideration of this immense Light in that one Beam wherein it is exhibited here that is long life The childe shall die a hundred years old Long life is a blessing as it is an image of eternity as Kings are blessings because they are Images of God And as to speak properly a King that possest the whole earth hath no proportion at all to God he is not a dramme not a grain not an atome to God so neither if a thousand Methusalems were put in one life had that long life any proportion to eternity for Finite and Infinite have no proportion to one another But yet when we say so That the King is nothing to God we speak then between God and the King and we say that onely to assist the Kings Religious humiliation of himself in the presence of God But when we speak between the King and our selves his Subjects there we raise our selves to a just reverence of him by taking knowledge that he is the Image of God to us So though long life be nothing to eternity yet because we need such Glasses and such Images as God shews us himself in the King so he shewes us his eternitie in a long life In this that the Patriarchs complain every where of the shortnesse of life and neernesse of death Iacob at a hundred and thirtie yeares tells Pharaoh that his dayes were few In this that God threatens the shortnesse of life for a punishment to Eli God saies There shall not be an old man in thy house for ever In this that God brings it into Promise and enters it as into his Audite and his revenue With long life will I satisfie him and shew him my salvation That God would give him long life and make that long life a Type of Eternity In this that God continues that promise into performance and brings it to execution in some of his chosen servants at a hundred and twenty Moses his eyes were not dim nor his naturall force abated and Caleb saith of himself I am this day 85. yeares old and as my strength was at first for warre so is my strength now In all these and many others we receive so many testimonies that God brings long life out of his Treasurie as an immediate blessing of his And therefore as such his blessing let us pray for it where it is not come yet in that apprecation and acclamation of the antient generall Councells Multos annos Caesari Aeternâ—s annos Caesari Long life to our Cesar in this world everlasting life to our Cesar in the world to come and then let us reverence this blessing of long life where it is come in honouring those Ancient heads by whose name God hath been pleased to call himself Antiquuâ— dierum the ancient of dayes and let us not make this blessing of long life impossible to our selves by disappointing Gods purpose of long life upon us by our surfets our wantonnesse our quarrels which are all Goths and Vandals and Giants called in by our selves to fight with God against us But yet so receive we long life as a blessing as that we may also find a blessing in departing from this life For so manifold and so multiforn are his blessings as even death it self hath a place in this Sphear of blessings The childe shall live a hundred yeares but yet The childe shall die When Paradise should have extended as man should have multiplied and every holy family every religious Colony have constituted a new Paradise that as it was said of Egypt when it abounded with Hermitages in the Primitive persecutions That Egypt was a continuall City of Hermitages so all the world should have been a continuall Garden of Paradises when all affections should have been subjects and all creatures servants and all wives helpers then life was a sincere blessing But but a mixt blessing now when all these are so much vitiated onely a possible blessing a disputable a conditionable a circumstantiall blessing now If there were any other way to be saved and to get to Heaven then by being born
I remember foure names by which man is often called in the Scriptures and of those foure three doe absolutely carry misery in their significations Three to one against any man that he is miserable One name of Man is Ish and that they derive à Sonitu Man is but a voice but a sound but a noise he begins the noise himselfe when he comes crying into the world and when he goes out perchance friends celebrate perchance enemies calumniate him with a diverse voice a diverse noise A melancholique man is but a groaning a sportfull man but a song an active man but a Trumpet a mighty man but a thunderclap Every man but Ish but a found but a noyse Another name is Enosh is meer Calamity misery depression It is indeed most properly Oblivion And so the word is most elegantly used by David Quid est homo where the name of man is Enosh And so that which we translate What is man that thou art mindefull of him is indeed What is forgetfulnesse that thou shouldest remember it That thou shouldest thinke of that man whom all the world hath forgotten First man is but a voice but a sound But because fame and honour may come within that name of a sound of a voice therefore he is overtaken with another dampe man is but oblivion his fame his name shall be forgotten One name man hath that hath some taste of greatnesse and power in it Gheber And yet I that am that man says the Prophet for there that name of man Gheber is used I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of Gods wrath Man Ish is so miserable as that he afflicts himselfe cryes and whines out his own time And man Enosh so miserable as that others afflict him and bury him in ignominious oblivion And man that is Gheber the greatest and powerfullest of men is yet but that man that may possibly nay that may justly see affliction by the rod of Gods wrath and from Gheber be made Adam which is the fourth name of man indeed the first name of man the name in this text and the name to which every man must refer himselfe and call himselfe by Earth and red Earth Now God did not say of man as of other creatures Let the earth bring forth hearbs and fruits and trees as upon the third day nor let the earth bring forth cattell and wormes as upon the sixth day the same day that he made man Non imperiaâ—i verbo sed familiari manu says Tertullian God calls not man out with an imperious Command but he leads him out with a familiar with his own hand And it is not Fiat homo but Faciamus not let there be but let us make man Man is but an earthen vessell 'T is true but when we are upon that consideration God is the Potter If God will be that I am well content to be this Let me be any thing so that that I am be from my God I am as well content to be a sheep as a Lion so God will be my Shepheard and the Lord is my shepheard To be a Cottage as a Castle so God will be the builder And the Lord builds and watches the City the house this house this City mee To be Rye as Wheate so God will be the husbandman And the Lord plants me and waters and weeds and gives the encrease and to be clothed in leather as well as in silke so God will be the Merchant and he cloathed me in Adam and assures me of clothing in clothing the Lillies of the field and is fitting the robe of Christs righteousness to me now this minute Adam is as good to me as Ghebaer a clod of earth as a hill of earth so God be the Potter God made man of earth not of ayre not of fire Man hath many offices that appertaine to this world and whilest he is here must not withdraw himselfe from those offices of mutuall society upon a pretence of zeale or better serving God in a retired life A ship will no more come to the harbour without Ballast then without Sailes a man will no more get to heaven without discharging his duties to other men then without doing them to God himselfe Man liveth not by bread onely says Christ But yet he liveth by bread too Every man must doe the duties every man must beare the incumbrances of some calling Pulvises Thou art earth he whom thou treadest upon is no less and he that treads upon thee is no more Positively it is a low thing to be but earth and yet thy low earth is the quiet Center There may be rest acquiescence content in the lowest Condition But comparatively earth is as high as the highest Challenge him that magnifies himselfe above thee to meet thee in Adam There bid him if he will have more Nobility more Greatness then thou take more originall sinne then thou hast If God have submitted thee to as much sinne and penalty of sinne as him he hath afforded thee as much and as noble earth as him And if he will not try it in the root in your equality in Adam yet in another Test another Furnace in the grave he must There all dusts are equall Except an Epitaph tell me who lies there I cannot tell by the dust nor by the Epitaph know which is the dust it speakes of if another have been laid before or after in the same grave Nor can any Epitaph be confident in saying here lies but here was laid For so various so vicissitudinary is all this world as that even the dust of the grave hath revolutions As the motions of an upper Spheare imprint a motion in a lower Spheare other then naturally it would have So the changes of this life worke after death And as envy supplants and removes us alive a shovell removes us and throwes us out of our grave after death No limbeque no weights can tell you this is dust Royall this Plebeian dust no Commission no Inquisition can say this is Catholique this is Hereticall dust All lie alike and all shall rise alike alike that is at once and upon one Command The Saint cannot acclerate The Reprobate cannot retard the Resurrection And all that rise to the right hand shall be equally Kings and all at the left equally what The worst name we can call them by or affect them with is Devill And then they shall have bodies to be tormented in which Devills have not Miserable unexpressible unimaginable Miserable condition where the sufferer would be glad to be but a Devill where it were some happinesse and some kinde of life to be able to dye and a great preferment to be nothing He made us all of earth and all of red earth Our earth was red even when it was in Gods hands a rednesse that amounts to a shamefastnesse to a blushing at our own infirmities is imprinted in us by Gods hand For this rednesse
is but a Conscience a guiltinesse of needing a continuall supply and succession of more and more grace And we are all red red so even from the beginning and in our best state Adam had the Angells had thus much of this infirmity that though they had a great measure of grace they needed more The prodigall child grew poore enough after he had received his portion and he may be wicked enough that trusts upon former or present grace and seeks not more This rednesse a blushing that is an acknowledgement that we could not subsist with any measure of faith except we pray for more faith nor of grace except we seek more grace we have from the hand of God And another rednesse from his hand too the bloud of his Sonne so that bloud was effused by Christ in the value of the ransome for All and accepted by God in the value thereof for All and this redness is in the nature thereof as extensive as the redness derived from Adam is Both reach to all So we were red earth in the hands of God as redness denotes our generall infirmities and as redness denotes the bloud of his Sonne our Saviour all have both But that redness which we have contracted from bloud shed by our selves the bloud of our own soules by sinne was not upon us when we were in the hands of God That redness is not his tincture not his complexion No decree of his is writ in any such red inke Our sinnes are our owne and our destruction is from ourselves We are not as accessaries and God as principall in this soule-murder God forbid we are not as executioners of Gods sentence and God the Malefactor in this soule-damnation God forbid Cain came not red in his brothers bloud out of Gods hands nor David red with Vriahs bloud nor Achitophel with his own nor Iudas with Christs or his owne That that Pilat did illusorily God can doe truely wash his hands from the bloud of any of these men It were a weake Plea to say I killed not that man but 't is true I commanded one who was under my command to kill him It is rather a prevarication then a justification of God to say God is not the author of sinne in any man but t is true God makes that man sinne that sinne God is Innocency and the beames that flow from him are of the same nature and colour Christ when he appeared in heaven was not red but white His head and haires were white as white wooll and as snow not head onely but haires too He and that that growes from him he and we as we come from his hands are white too His Angels that provoke us to the Imitation of that pattern are so in white Two men two Angels stood by the Apostles in white apparell The imitation is laid upon us by precept too At all times let thy garments be white Those actions in which thou appearest to the world innocent It is true that Christ is both My beloved is white and ruddy says the Spouse But the white was his owne his rednesse is from us That which Zipporah said to her husband Moses in anger the Church may say to Christ in thankfulnesse Verè sponsus Sanguinum thou art truly a bloudy husband to me Damim sanguinum of blouds blouds in the plurall for all our blouds are upon him This was a mercy to the Militant Church that even the Triumphant Church wondred at it They knew not Christ when he came up to heaven in red Who is this that commeth in red garments Wherefore is thy apparell red like him that treadeth in the winepresse They knew he went down in white in intire innocency and they wondred to see him returne in red But he satisfies them Calcavi you thinke I have troden the winepresse and you mistake it not I have troden the winepresse and Calcavi solus I have troden it alone all the redness all the bloud of the whole world is upon me And as he adds Non vir de gentibus of all people there was none with me with me so as to have any part in the Merit So of all people there was none without me without me so as to be excluded by me without their own fault from the benefit of my merit This redness he carried up to heaven for by the bloud of his Crosse came peace both to the things in earth and the things in heaven For that peccability that possibility of sinning which is in the Nature of the Angels of heaven would breake out into sinne but for that confirmation which those Angels have received in the bloud of Christ. This rednesse he carried to heaven and this rednesse he hath left upon earth that all we miserable clods of earth might be tempered with his bloud that in his bloud exhibited in his holy and blessed Sacrament our long robes might be made white in the bloud of the Lambe that though our sinnes be robes habits of sinne though long robes habits of long continuance in sinne yet through that rednesse which our sinnes have cast upon him we might come to participate of that whitenesse that righteousnesse which is his owne We that is all we for as to take us in who are of low condition and obscure station a cloud is made white by his sitting upon it He sate upon a great white cloud so to let the highest see that they have no whitenesse but from him he makes the Throne white by sitting upon it He sate upon a great white Throne It had not been great if it had not been white White is the colour of dilatation goodnesse onely enlarges the Throne It had not been white if he had not sate upon it That goodness onley which consists in glorifying God and God in Christ and Christ in the sincerity of his truth is true whitenesse God hath no rednesse in himselfe no anger towards us till he considers us as sinners God cast no rednesse upon us inflicts no necessity no constraint of sinning upon us We have dyed ourselves in sinnes as red as Scarlet we have drowned our selves in such a red Sea But as a garment that were washed in the red Sea would come out white so wonderfull works hath God done at the red Sea says David so doth his whitenesse worke through our red and makes this Adam this red earth Calculum candidum that white stone that receives a new name not Ish not Enosh not Gheber no name that tasts of misery or of vanity but that name renewed and manifested which was imprinted upon us in our elections the Sonnes of God the irremoveable the undisinheritable Sonnes of God Be pleased to receive this note at parting that there is Macula Alba a spot and yet white as well as a red spot a whitenesse that is an indication of a Leprosie as well as a rednesse Whole-pelagianisme to thinke nature alone sufficient
Inquisition of Spaine But great inquirers into other men are easie neglecters of themselves The Image of God is not in mans body this way Nor that third way which others have imagined that is that when God said Let us make man after our likenesse God had respect to that forme which in the fulnesse of time his Sonne was to take upon him upon earth Let us make him now says God at first like that which I intend hereafter my Son shall be For though this were spoken before the fall of man and so before any occasion of decreeing the sending of Christ yet in the Schoole a great part of great men adhered to that opinion that God from all eternity had a purpose that his Sonne should become man in this world though Adam had not fallen Non ut Medicus sed ut Dominus ad nobilitandum genus humanum say they though Christ had not come as a Redeemer if man had not needed him by sin but had kept his first state yet as a Prince that desired to heap honour upon him whom he loves to doe man an honour by his assuming that nature Christ say they should have come and to that Image that forme which he was to take then was man made in this text say these imaginers But alas how much better were wit and learning bestowed to prove to the Gentiles that a Christ must come that they beleeve not to prove to the Iews that the Christ is come that they beleeve not to prove to our own Consciences that the same Christ may come again this minute to Judgment we live as though we beleeved not that then to have filled the world and torne the Church with frivolous disputations whether Christ should have come if Adam had not fallen Wo unto fomentors of frivolous disputations None of these ways not because God hath a body not because God assumed a body not because it was intended that Christ should be born before it was intended that man should be made is this Image of God in the body of man Nor hath it in any other relation respect to the body but as we say in the Schoole Arguitivè and Significativè that because God hath given man a body of a nobler forme then any other creature we inferre and argue and conclude from thence that God is otherwise represented in man then in any other creature So far is this Image of God in the body that as you see some Pictures to which the very tables are Jewells some Watches to which the very cases are Jewells and therefore they have outward cases too and so the Picture and the Watch is in that outward case of what meaner stuffe soever that be so is this Image in this body as in an outward case so as that you may not injure nor enfeeble this body neither by sinfull intemperance and licentiousnesse nor by inordinate fastings or other disciplines of imaginary merits while the body is alive for the Image of God is in it nor to defraud thy body of decent buriall and due solemnities after death for the Image of God is to returne to it But yet the body is but the out-cafe and God lookes not for the gilding or enamelling or painting of that but requires the labour and cost therein to be bestowed upon the Tablet it selfe in which this Image is immediately that is the soule And that 's truly the Vbi the place where this Image is And there remaines onely now the operation thereof how this Image of God in the soule of man works The Sphear then of this intelligence the Gallery for this Picture the Arch for this Statue the Table and frame and shrine for this Image of God is properly immediately the soule of man Not immediately so as that the soule of man is a part of the Essence of God For so effentially Christ onely is the Image of God Saint Augustine at first thought so Putaham te Deus Corpus Lucidum me frustum de illo Corpore I tooke thee ô God says that Father to be a Globe of fire and my soule a sparke of that fire thee to be a body of light and my soule to be a beame of that light But Saint Augustine does not onely retract that in himselfe but dispute against it in the Manichees But this Image is in our soule as our soule is the wax and this Image the seale The Comparison is Saint Cyrills and he addes well that no seale but that which printed the wax at first can fit that wax and fill that impression after No Image but the Image of God can fit our soule Every other seale is too narrow too shallow for it The magistrate is sealed with the Lion The woolfe will not fit that seale the Magistrate hath a power in his hands but not oppression Princes are sealed with the Crown The Miter will not fit that seale Powerfully and gratiously they protect the Church and are supreame heads of the Church But they minister not the Sacraments of the Church They give preferments but they give not the capacity of preferment They give order who shall have but they give not orders by which they are enabled to have that have Men of inferiour and laborious callings in the world are sealed with the Crosse a Rose or a bunch of Grapes will not answer that seale Ease and plenty in age must not be looked for without Crosses and labour and industry in youth All men Prince and People Clergy and Magistrate are sealed with the Image of God with the profession of a conformity to him and worldly seales will not answer that nor fill up that seale We should wonder to ses a Mother in the midst of many sweet Children passing her time in making babies and puppets for her own delight We should wonder to see a man whose Chambers and Galleries were full of curious master-peeces thrust in a Village Fair to looke upon six-penny pictures and three farthing prints We have all the Image of God at home and we all make babies fancies of honour in our ambitions The master-peece is our own in our own bosome and we thrust in countrey Fairs that is we endure the distempers of any unseasonable weather in night-journies and watchings we indure the oppositions and scornes and triumphs of a rivall and competitor that seeks with us and shares with us we indure the guiltinesse and reproach of having deceived the trust which a confident friend reposes in us and solicit his wife or daughter we endure the decay of fortune of body of soule of honour to possesse lower Pictures pictures that are not originalls not made by that hand of God nature but Artificiall beauties And for that body we give a soule and for that drugge which might have been bought where they bought it for a shilling we give an estate The Image of God is more worth then all substances and we give it for colours for dreames for shadowes But the
how much more may we conceive an unexpressible association that 's too far off an assimilation that 's not neare enough an identification the Schoole would venture to say so with God in that state of glory Where as the Sunne by shining upon the Moone makes the Moone a Planet a Star as well as it selfe which otherwise would be but the thickest and darkest part of that Spheare so those beames of Glory which shall issue from my God and fall upon me shall make me otherwise a clod of earth and worse a darke Soule a Spirit of darkenesse an Angell of Light a Star of Glory a something that I cannot name now not imagine now nor to morrow nor next yeare but even in that particular I shall be like God that as he that asked a day to give a definition of God the next day asked a week and then a moneth and then a yeare so undeterminable would my imaginations be if I should goe about to thinke now what I shall be there I shall be so like God as that the Devill himselfe shall not know me from God so far as to finde any more place to fasten a tentation upon me then upon God nor to conceive any more hope of my falling from that kingdome then of Gods being driven out of it for though I shal not be immortall as God yet I shall be as immortall as God And there 's my Image of God of God considered altogether and in his unity in the state of Glory I shall have also then the Image of all the three Persons of the Trinity Power is the Fathers and a greater Power then he exercises here I shall have there here he overcomes enemies but yet here he hath enemies there there are none here they cannot prevaile there they shall not be So Wisedome is the Image of the Sonne And there I shall have better Wisdome then spirituall Wisdome it selfe is here for here our best Wisedome is but to goe towards our end there it is rest in our end here it is to seek to bee Glorified by God there it is that God may be everlastingly glorified by mee The Image of the holy Ghost is Goodnesse here our goodnesse is mixt with some ill faith mixt with scruples and good workes mixt with a love of praise and hope of better mixt with feare of worse There I shall have sincere goodnesse goodnesse impermixt intemerate and indeterminate goodnesse so good a place as no ill accident shall annoy it so good company as no impertinent no importune person shall disorder it so full a goodnesse as no evill of sinne no evill of punishment for former sinnes can enter so good a God as shall no more keep us in fear of his anger nor in need of his mercy but shall fill us first and establish us in that fulnesse in the same instant and give us a satiety that we can with no more and an infallibility that we can lose none of that and both at once Where as the Cabalists expresse our nearenesse to God in that state in that note that the name of man and the name of God Adam and Iehovah in their numerall letters are alike and equall so I would have leave to expresse that inexpressible state so far as to say that if there can be other world imagined besides this that is under our Moone and if there could be other Gods imagined of those worlds besides this God to whose Image we are thus made in Nature in Grace in Glory I had rather be one of these Saints in this heaven then of those Gods in those other worlds I shall be like the Angels in a glorified Soul and the Angels shall not be like me in a glorified body The holy noblenesse and the religious ambition that I would imprint in you for attaining of this Glory makes me medismiss you with this note for the feare of missing that Glory that as we have taken just occasion to magnifie the goodnesse of God towards us in that he speakes plurally Faciamus Let us All us do this and so powers out the blessings of the whole Trinity upon us in this Image of himselfe in every Person of the three and in all these wayes which we have considered so when the anger of God is justly kindled against us God collects himselfe summons himself assembles himselfe musters himselfe and threatens plurally too for of those foure places in Scripture in which onely as we noted before God speakes of himselfe in a Royall plurall God speakes in anger and in a preparation to destruction in one of those foure intirely as intirely he speakes of mercy but in one of them in this text here he says meerly out of mercy Faciamus Let us us all us make man and in the same plurality the same universality he says after Descendamus confundamus Let us us all us goe downe to them and confound them as meerly out of indignation and anger as here out of mercy And in the other two places where God speakes plurally he speakes not meerly in mercy nor meerly in justice in neither but in both he mingles both So that God carries himselfe so equally herein as that no Soul no Church no State may any more promise it selfe patience in God if it provoke him then suspect anger in God if we conforme our selves to him For from them that set themselves against him God shall withdraw his Image in all the Persons and all the Attributes the Father shall withdraw his Power and we shall be enfeebled in our forces the Sonne his Wisdome and we shall be infatuated in our counsailes the holy Ghost his Goodnesse and we shall be corrupted in our manners and corrupted in our Religion and be a prey to temporall and spirituall enemies and change the Image of God into the Image of the Beast and as God loves nothing more then the Image of himselfe in his Sonne and then the Image of his Sonne Christ Jesus in us so he hates nothing more then the Image of Antichrist in them in whom he had imprinted his Sonnes Image that is declinations towards Antichrist or concurrencies with Antichrist in them who were borne and baptized and catechised and blessed in that profession of his truth That God who hath hitherto delivered us from all cause or colour of jealousies or suspitions thereof in them whom he hath placed over us to conforme us to his Image in a holy life that sinnes continued and multiplyed by us against him doe not so provoke him against us that those two great helps the assiduity of Preaching and the personall and exemplary piety and constancy in our Princes be not by our sinnes made unprofitable to us For that 's the heighth of Gods malediction upon a Nation when the assiduity of preaching and the example of a Religious Prince does them no good but aggravates their fault SERMON XXX Preached to the Countesse of Bedford then at Harrington house
midnight not to see where we all see him in the Congregation and to see him with terror in the Suburbs of despaire in the solitary chamber Man may sayes Scotus man must he cannot chuse sayes Thomas man hath seen God sayes the holy Ghost Man that is every man and that 's our last branch in this first part The inexcusablenesse goes over man over all men Because they would not see invisible things in visible they are inexcusable all Death passed upon all men for all have sinned All sinners all dead Is Gods right hand shorter then his left his mercy shrunk and his justice stretched no certainly certainly every man may see him Man cannot hide himselfe from God God does not hide himselfe from man not from any man Col-Adam Omnis home even in that low name that lowest acceptation of man as he is but derived from earth as he is but earth he may see God We have divers names for man in Hebrew at least foure This that makes him but earth Adam is the meanest and yet Col-Adam Every man may see God David cals us to the contemplation of the heavens Coeli enarrant and Iob to the contemplation of the firmament of the Pleiades and Orion and Arcturus and the ordinances of heaven but it is not onely the Mathematician that sees God Demini terra the earth is the Lords and all that dwell therein all in all corners of the earth may see him David tels us They that go down to the sea in ships they see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep but it is not onely the Mariner the discoverer that discovers God but he that puts his hand to the plough and looks not back may see God there Let him be filius terra the sonne of the earth without noble extraction without knowne place of uncertaine parents even Melchisedeck was so Let him be filius percussionis the sonne of affliction a man that hath inward heavy sentences and heavy executions of the law Let him be filius mortis the sonne of death as Saul said to Ionathan of David a man designed to dye nay let him be filius Belial the sonne of iniquity and of everlasting perdition there is no lownesse no naturall no spirituall dejection so low but that that low man may see God Let him be filius terrae the sonne of the earth and of no body else let him be Dominus terrae Lord of the earth busied upon the earth and nothing else let him be hospes terrae a guest a tenant an inmate of the earth halfe of him in the earth and the rest no where else this poore man this worldly man this dying man may see God To end this you can place the spheare in no position in no station in which the earth can eclipse the Sun you can place this clod of earth man in no ignorance in no melancholy in no oppression in no sinne but that he may but that he does see God The Marrigold opens to the Sunne though it have no tongue to say so the Atheist does see God though he have not grace to confesse it We have past through our first part and the three branches of that The object God in his works and the faculty that apprehends seeing that is knowing and the person indued with the faculty every man even Adam In our second part which is a tacite answer to a likely objection Is not God in the highest heaven afar off yes but man may see afar off we have the same three branches too and yet not the same the same object God but in another manifestation then in his worke in glory the same faculty seeing but with other manner of eyes glorified eyes the same person man but not man as he is Adam a meere naturall and earthly man but man as he is Enosh who by having tasted Gods corrections or by having considered the miseries of this world is prepared for the joy and glory of the next And in this part we will begin with the person man Man may behold it afar off How different are the wayes of God from the ways of man the eyes of God from the eyes of man and the wayes and eyes of a godly man from the eyes and wayes of a man of this world We looke still upon high persons and after high places and from those heights we thinke we see far but he that will see this object must lye low it is best discerned in the dark in a heavy and a calamitous fortune The naturall way is upward I can better know a man upon the top of a steeple then if he were halfe that depth in a well but yet for higher objects I can better see the stars of heaven in the bottome of a well then if I stood upon the highest steeple upon earth If I twist a cable of infinite fadomes in length if there be no ship to ride by it nor anchor to hold by it what use is there of it If Mannor thrust Mannor and title flow into title and bags powre out into chests if I have no anchor faith in Christ if I have not a ship to carry to a haven a soule to save what 's my long cable to me If I adde number to number a span a mile long if at the end of all that long line of numbers there be nothing that notes pounds or crownes or shillings what 's that long number but so many millions of millions of nothing If my span of life become a mile of life my penny a pound my pint a gallon my acre a sheere yet if there be nothing of the next world at the end so much peace of conscience so much joy so much glory still all is but nothing multiplied and that is still nothing at all 'T is the end that qualifies all and what kinde of man I shall be at my end upon my death-bed what trembling hands and what lost legs what deafe eares and what gummy eyes I shall have then I know and the nearer I come to that disposition in my life the more mortified I am the better I am disposed to see this object future glory God made the Sun and Moon and Stars glorious lights for man to see by but mans infirmity requires spectacles and affliction does that office Gods meaning was that by the sun-shine of prosperity and by the beames of honour and temporall blessings a man should see farre into him but I know not how he is come to need spectacles scarse any man sees much in this matter till affliction shew it him God made the ballance even riches may show God and poverty may show God let the two Testaments the old and the new be the ballance and so they are even the blessednesse of the old Testament runs all upon temporall blessings and worldly riches Blessed in the city and in the field blessed in the fruit of thy cattell and
company in the reformation of Religion A miracle scarce lesse then the first propagation thereof in the primitive Church In how few yeares did God make the number of learned â—riters the number of persons of all qualities the number of Kings in whose Dominions the reformed Religion was exercised equall to the number of them who adhered to the Roman Church And yet thou must not depart from this contemplation till thou have made thy self an argument of all this till thou have concluded out of this that God hath made love to thy soule thy weake soule thy sick and foule and sinfull soule That he hath written to thee in all his Scriptures sent Ambassage to thee in all his preachers presented thee in all his temporall and spirituall blessings That he hath come to thee even in actions of uncle annesse in actions of unfaithfulnesse towards men in actions of distrustfulnesse towards God and hath checked thy conscience and delivered thee from some sins even then when thou wast ready to commit them as all the rest That that God who is but one in himselfe is yet three persons That those three who were all-sufficient to themselves would yet make more make Angels make man make a Christ make him a Spouse a Church and first propagate that by so weake men in so hard a doctrine and in so short a space over all the world and then reforme that Church againe so soone to such a heighth as these I say are to all the world so be thou thy self and Gods exceeding goodnesse to thee an argument That that God who hath shewed himself so loath to lose thee is certainly loath to lose any other soule but as he communicates himself to us all here so he would have us all partake of his joy and glory hereafter he that fils his Militant Church thus would not have his Triumphant Church empty So far we consider the accessiblenesse the communicablenesse the conversation of our good and gracious God to us in the generall There is a more speciall manner intimated even in the first word of our Text After this After what After he had seene the servants of God sealed sealed This seale seales the contract betweene God and Man And then consider how generall this seale is First God sealed us in imprinting his Image in our soules and in the powers thereof at our creation and so every man hath this seale and he hath it as soone as he hath a soule The wax the matter is in his conception the seale the forme is in his quickning in his inanimation as in Adam the waxe was that red earth which he was made of the seale was that soule that breath of life which God breathed into him Where the Organs of the body are so indisposed as that this soule cannot exercise her faculties in that man as in naturall Idiots or otherwise there there is a curtaine drawn over this Image but yet there this Image is the Image of God is in the most naturall Idiot as well as in the wisest of men worldly men draw other pictures over this picture other images over this image The wanton man may paint beauty the ambitious may paint honour the covetous wealth and so deface this image but yet there this image is and even in hell it selfe it will be in him that goes down into hell uri potest in gehenna non exuri sayes St. Bernard The image of God may burne in hell but as long as the soule remaines that image remaines there too And then thou who wouldest not burne their picture that loved thee wilt thou betray the picture of the Maker thy Saviour thy Sanctifier to the torments of hell Amongst the manifold and perpetuall interpretations of that article He descended into hell this is a new one that thou senâ—est him to hell in thy soule Christ had his Consummatum est from the Iewes he was able to say at last All is finished concerning them shall he never have a Consummatum est from thee never be at an end with thee Never if his Image must burne eternally in thy soule when thou art dead for everlasting generations Thus then we were sealed all sealed all had his image in our creation in the faculties of our soules But then we were all sealed againe sealed in our very flesh our mortall flesh when the image of the invisible God Christ Iesus the onely Sonne of God tooke our nature for as the Tyrant wished that all mankinde were but one body that he might behead all mankinde at a blow so God tooke into his mercie all mankinde in one person As intirely as all mankinde was in Adam all mankinde was in Christ and as the seale of the Serpent is in all by originall sinne so the seale of God Christ Iesus is on us all by his assuming our nature Christ Jesus tooke our souls and our bodies our whole nature and as no Leper no person how infectiously soever he be diseased in his body can say surely Christ never tooke this body this Leprosie this pestilence this rottennesse so no Leprous soule must say Christ never tooke this pride this adultery this murder upon himself he sealed us all in soule and body when he tooke both and though both dye the soule in sin daily the body in sicknesse perchance this day yet he shall afford a resurrection to both to the soule here to the body hereafter for his seale is upon both These two seales then hath God set upon us all his Image in our soules at our making his Image that is his Sonne upon our bodies and soules in his incarnation And both these seales he hath set upon us then when neither we our selves nor any body else knew of it He sets another seale upon us when though we know not of it yet the world the congregation does in the Sacrament of Baptisme when the seale of his Crosse is a testimony not that Christ was borne as the former seale was but that also he dyed for us there we receive that seale upon the forehead that we should conforme our selves to him who is so sealed to us And after all these seales he offers us another and another seale Set me as a seale upon thy heart and as a seale upon thine arme says Christ to all us in the person of the spouse in the Heart by a constant faith in the Arme by a declaratory works for then are we sealed and delivered and witnessed that 's our full evidence then have we made sure our salvation when the works of a holy life doe daily refresh the contract made with God there at our Baptisme and testifie to the Church that we doe carefully remember what the Church promised in our behalfe at that time for otherwise beloved without this seale upon the arme that is a stedfast proceeding in the works of a holy life we may have received many of the other seales and yet deface
them all Grieve not the holy Ghost whereby you are sealed unto the day of Redemption says the Apostle they were sealed and yet might resist the Spirit and grieve the Spirit and quench the Spirit if by a continuall watchfulnesse over their particular actions they did not refresh those seales formerly received in their Creation in Christs incarnation in their Baptisme and in their beginnings of faith to themselves and plead them to the Church and to the world by such a declaration of a holy life But these seales being so many and so univesall that argues still that which we especially seek to establish that is the Accessiblenesse the communicablenesse the sociablenesse the affection shall I say the Ambition that God hath to have us all Now how is this extensivenesse declared here in our text It is declared in the great number of those who were sealed both before and after to the consideration of both which we are invited by this phrase which beginnes the text After this for before that Iohn saw this there were one hundred forty foure thousand sealed Is that then that one hundred forty foure thousand intended for a small number If it had been so it would rather have been said of such a Tribe but twelve thousand and but twelve thousand of such a Tribe but God as expressing a joy that there were so many repeats his number of twelve thousand twelve times over of Iuda twelve thousand of Levi twelve thousand and twelve thousand of every Tribe So that then we may justly take this number of twelve and twelve thousand for an indefinite and uncertain number and as Saint Augustine does wheresoever he finds that number of twelve as the twelve Thrones where the Saints shall judge the world and divers such we may take that number of twelve and twelve pro universitate salvandorum that that number signifies all those who shall be saved If we should take the number to be a certaine and exact number so many and no more yet this number hath relation to the Iews onely And of the Iews it is true that there is so long a time of their exclusion so few of them doe come in since Christ came into the world as that we may with Saint Augustine interpret that place of Genesis where Abrahams seed is compared both to the Starres of heaven and to the dust of the earth that the Stars of heaven signifie those that shall be saved in heaven and the dust of the earth those that perish and the dust of the earth may be more then the Stars of heaven though by the way there are an infinite number of Stars more then we can distinguish and so by Gods grace there may be an infinite number of soules saved more then those of whose salvation we discerne the ways and the meanes Let us embrace the way which God hath given us which is the knowledge of his Sonne Christ Iesus what other way God may take with others how he wtought upon Iob and Naaman and such others as were not in the Covenant let us not inquire too curiously determine too peremptorily pronounce too uncharitably God be blessed for his declaring his good-wil towards us his will be done his way upon others Truly even those places which are ordinarily understood of the paâ—city of the Iews that shall be saved will receive a charitable interpretation and extension God says in Ieremy I will take you one out of a City two out of a family yet he says he wil do this therefore because he is married to them so that this seems to be an act of his love And therefore I had rather take it that God would take a particular care of them one by one then that he would take in but one and one As it is in that place of Esay In that day ye shall be gathered one by one o yee children of Israel that is in the day of Christ of his comming to and toward Judgement Howsoever they come in but thinly yet by the way yet the Apostle pleads in their behalfe thus Hath God cast away his people God forbid At this present says he there is a Remnant then when they had newly crucified Christ God had a care of them God hath given them the spirit of slumber says he also it is but a slumber not a death not a dead sleep Have they stumbled that they should fall Fall utterly God forbid But says he as concerning the Gospell they are enemies for your sakes that is that room might be made for you the Gentiles but as touching election they are beloved for their Fathers sakes that is they have interest by an ancient title which God will never disannull And therefore a great part of the ancient and later men too doe interpret divers passages of Saint Paul of a generall salvation of the Iews that all shall be effectually wrought upon to salvation before the second comming of Christ. I end this concerning the Iews with this note that in all these Tribes which yeelded to this sealing twelve thousand a peece the Tribe of Dan is left out it is not said that any were sealed of the Tribe of Dan many have enquired the reason and satisfied themselves over easily with this that because Antichrist was to come of that Tribe that Tribe is forsaken It is true that very many of the Fathers Irenaeus Ambrose Augustine Gregory and more then these have thought so that Antichrist must be of that Tribe but yet for all that profession which they make in the Roman Church of adhering to the Fathers one amongst them says Incertum be the Fathers as clear and as unanimous as they will in it it is a very uncertain a very disputable thing and another says fabulosum est be the Fathers as earnest as they will it is but a poeticall and a fabulous thing that Antichrist must come of the Tribe of Dan. But he that hath most of the workes of Antichrist upon him of any person in the world now is thus far of the Tribe of Dan Dan signifies Iudgement And he will needs be the Judge of all faith and of all actions too and so severe a Judge as to give an irrevocable Judgement of Damnation upon all that agree not with them in all points Certainly this Tribe of Dan that is of such uncharitable Judges of all other men that will afford no salvation to any but themselves are in the greatest danger to be left out at this generall seale nothing hinders our own salvation more then to deny salvation to all but our selves This then which was done before though it concerne but the Iews was in a great number and was a great argument of Gods sociable application of himselfe to man but that which was after was more A great multitude which no man could number of all nations c. Gods mercy was not confined nor determined upon the Iews
shrewd acts towards it to the prejudice of the contrary opinion yet none of these were so light as they were nothing but light Moses himselfe who received and delivered the law was not so and to intimate so much there was an illustration and irradiation upon his face but not so of all his body Nay Christ Iesus himselfe who fulfilled the law as man was not so which he also intimated in the greatest degree of glorification which he accepted upon earth which was his transfiguration for though it be said in that That the fashion of his Countenance was changed and his garment was white and glistered yet lineamenta Petro agnoscibilia servavit hee kept that former proportion of body that Peter could know him by it So that this was not a glorifying of the body and making it thorough light but hee suffered his Divine nature to appeare and shine thorough his flesh and not to swallow or annihilate that flesh All other men by occasion of this flesh have darke clouds yea nights yea long and frozen winter nights of sinne and of the works of darknesse Christ was incapable of any such nights or any such clouds any approaches towards sinne but yet Christ admitted some shadowes some such degrees of humane infirmity as by them he was willing to show that the nature of man in the best perfection thereof is not vera lux tota lux true light all light which he declared in that Si possible and that Transeat calix If it hee possible let this cup passe words to which himselfe was pleased to allow so much of a retractation and a correction Veruntamen yet Father whatsoever the sadnesse of my soule have made mee say yet not my will but thine be done not mine but thine so that they were not altogether all one humane infirmity made some difference So that no one man not Christ considered but so as man was tota lux all light no cloud No not mankinde consider it collectively can bee light so as that there shall bee no darknesse It was not so when all mankind was in one person in Adam It is said sometimes in School that no man can keep the commandements yet man collectively may keep them They intend no more herein but that some one man may abstaine from doing any act against worshipping of Images another from stealing another from adultery and others from others But if it were possible to compose a man of such elements as that the principallest vertues and eminencies of all other men should enter into his composition and if there could bee found a man as perfect in all particular vertues as Moses was in meeknesse who was a meeke man above all the men that were upon the earth yet this man would not bee vera lux tota lux true light all light Moses was not so meeke but that hee slew the Egyptian nor so meek but that hee disputed and expostulated with God many times passionately Every man is so far from beeing tota lux all light as that he hath still within him a darke vapor of orginall sinne and the cloud of humane flesh without him Nay not onely no man for so we may consider him in the whole course of his life but noone act of the most perfect and religious man in the world though that act employ but halfe a minute in the doing thereof can bee vera lux true light all light so perfect light as that it may serve another or thy selfe for a lanthorne to his or thy feet or a light to his or thy steps so that hee or thou may thinke it enough to doe so still For another man may doe so good works as it may justly work to thy shame and confusion and to the aggravating of thy condemnation that thou livest not as well as hee yet it would not perchance serve thy turne to live but so well for to whom God gives more of him he requires more No man hath veram lucem true light thorough light no man hath meridiem Augem that high point that casts no shadow because besides originall sinne that ever smoakes up and creates a foote in the soule and besides naturall infirmities which become sinnes when wee consider Grace no man does carry his good actions to that heighth as by that grace which God affords him hee might doe Slacker men have a declination even in their mornings a West even in their East coolings and faintnesses and after-noones as soon as they have any dawnings any breake of day any inchoation of any spirituall action or purpose Others have some farther growth and increasing and are more diligent in the observation of spirituall duties but yet they have not their meridiem their Augem their noon their south point no such heighth as that they might not have a higher by that grace which they have received In the best degree of our best actions particularly in this service which wee doe to God at this houre if we brought with us hither a religious purpose to sanctifie this festivall if wee answer to the callings of his most blessed Spirit whilest wee are here if wee carry away a detestation of our sinnes and a holy purpose of amendment of life this is a good degree of proficiency and God bee blessed if any of us all arrive to that degree but yet this is not vera lux true light all light for who amongst us can avoid the testimony of his conscience that since he begun this present service to God his thoughts have not strayed upon pleasures and vanities or profit and leapt the walls of this Church yea perchance within the walls of this flesh which should bee the Temple of the holy Ghost Besides to become vera lux tota lux true light thorough light requires persebrrance to the end So that till our naturall light goe out wee cannot say that wee have this light for as the darknesse of hell fire is so this light of this heavenly fire must bee everlasting If ever it go cleane out it was never throughly kindled but kindled to our farther damnation it was never vera lux true light for as one office of the law is but to show sinne so all the light of grace may end in this to show me my desperate estate from the abuse of grace In all Philosophy there is not so darke a thing as light As the sunne which is fons lucis naturalis the beginning of naturall light is the most evident thing to bee seen and yet the hardest to be looked upon so is naturall light to our reason and understanding Nothing clearer for it is clearnesse it selfe nothing darker it is enwrapped in so many scruples Nothing nearer for it is round about us nothing more remote for wee know neither entrance nor limits of it Nothing more easie for a child discerns it nothing more hard for no man understands it It is apprehensible by sense and not comprehensible by reason
wardrobe not to make an Inventory of it but to finde in it something fit for thy wearing Iohn Baptist was not the light he was not Christ but he bore witnesse of him The light of faith in the highest exaltation that can be had in the Elect here is not that very beatificall vision which we shall have in heaven but it beares witnesse of that light The light of nature in the highest exaltation is not faith but it beares witnesse of it The lights of faith and of nature are subordinate Iohn Baptists faith beares me witnesse that I have Christ and the light of nature that is the exalting of my naturall faculties towards religious uses beares me witnesse that I have faith Onely that man whose conscience testifies to himself and whose actions testifie to the world that he does what he can can beleeve himself or be beleeved by others that he hath the true light of faith And therefore as the Apostle saith Quench not the Spirit I say too Quench not the light of Nature suffer not that light to goe out study your naturall faculties husband and improve them and love the outward acts of Religion though an Hypocrite and though a naturall man may doe them Certainly he that loves not the Militant Church hath but a faint faith in his interest in the Triumphant He that cares not though the materiall Church fall I am afraid is falling from the spirituall For can a man be sure to have his money or his plate if his house be burnt or to preserve his faith if the outward exercises of Religion faile He that undervalues outward things in the religious service of God though he begin at ceremoniall and rituall things will come quickly to call Sacraments but outward things and Sermons and publique prayers but outward things in contempt As some Platonique Philosophers did so over-refine Religion and devotion as to say that nothing but the first thoughts and ebullitions of a devout heart were fit to serve God in If it came to any outward action of the body kneeling or lifting up of hands if it came to be but invested in our words and so made a Prayer nay if it passed but a revolving a turning in our inward thoughts and thereby were mingled with our affections though pious affections yet say they it is not pure enough for a service to God nothing but the first motions of the heart is for him Beloved outward things apparell God and since God was content to take a body let not us leave him naked nor ragged but as you will bestow not onely some cost but some thoughts some study how you will clothe your children and how you will clothe your servants so bestow both cost and thoughts thinke seriously execute cheerfully in outward declarations that which becomes the dignity of him who evacuated himselfe for you The zeale of his house needs not eat you up no nor eat you out of house and home God asks not that at your hands But if you eat one dish the lesse at your feasts for his house sake if you spare somewhat for his reliefe and his glory you will not be the leaner nor the weaker for that abstinence Iohn Baptist bore witnesse of the light outward things beare witnesse of your faith the exalting of our naturall faculties beare witnesse of the supernaturall We do not compare the master and the servant and yet we thank that servant that brings us to his master We make a great difference between the treasure in the chest and the key that opens it yet we are glad to have that key in our hands The bell that cals me to Church does not catechise me nor preach to me yet I observe the sound of that bell because it brings me to him that does those offices to me The light of nature is far from being enough but as a candle may kindle a torch so into the faculties of nature well imployed God infuses faith And this is our second couple of lights the subordination of the light of nature and the light of faith And a third payre of lights of attestation that beare witnesse to the light of our Text is Lux aeternorum Corporum that light which the Sunne and Moone and those glorious bodies give from heaven and lux incensionum that light which those things that are naturally combustible and apt to take fire doe give upon earth both these beare witnesse of this light that is admit an application to it For in the first of these the glorious lights of heaven we must take nothing for stars that are not stars nor make Astrological and fixed conclusions out of meteors that are but transitory they may be Comets and blazing starres and so portend much mischiefe but they are none of those aeterna corpora they are not fixed stars not stars of heaven So is it also in the Christian Church which is the proper spheare in which the light of our text That light the essentiall light Christ Jesus moves by that supernaturall light of faith and grace which is truly the Intelligence of that spheare the Christian Chruch As in the heavens the stars were created at once with one Fiat and then being so made stars doe not beget new stars so the Christian doctrine necessary to salvation was delivered at once that is intirely in one spheare in the body of the Scriptures And then as stars doe not beget stars Articles of faith doe not beget Articles of faith so as that the Councell of Trent should be brought to bed of a new Creed not conceived before by the holy Ghost in the Scriptures and which is a monstrous birth the child greater then the Father as soon as it is borne the new Creed of the Councell of Trent to containe more Articles then the old Creed of the Apostles did Saint Iude writing of the common salvation as he calls it for Saint Iude it seems knew no such particular salvation as that it was impossible for any man to have salvation is common salvation exhorts them to contend earnestly for that faith which was once delivered unto the Saints Semel once that is at once semel simul once altogether For this is also Tertullians note that the rule of faith is that it be una immobilis irreformabilis it must not be deformed it cannot be Reformed it must not be mard it cannot be mended whatsoever needs mending and reformation cannot be the rule of faith says Tertullian Other foundation can no man lay then Christ not onely no better but no other what other things soever are added by men enter not into the nature and condition of a foundation The additions and traditions and superedifications of the Roman Church they are not lux aeternorum corporum they are not fixed bodies they are not stars to direct us they may be meteors and so exercise our discourse and Argumentation they may raise controversies And they may be Comets and so
exercise our feares and our jealousies they may raise rebellions and Treasons but they are not fixed and glorious bodies of heaven they are not stars Their non-communions for communions where there are no communicants are no communions when they admit no bread at all no wine at all all is transubstantiated are no communions their semi-communions when they admit the bread to be given but not the wine their sesqui-communions Bread and Wine to the taste and to all other trialls of bread and wine and yet that bread and wine the very body and the very bloud of Christ their quotidian miracles which destroy and contradict even the nature of the miracle to make miracles ordinary and fixed constant and certain for as that is not a miracle which nature does so that 's not a miracle which man can doe certainly constantly infallibly every day and every day every Priest can miraculously change bread into the body of Christ and besides they have certaine fixed shops and Marts of miracles in one place a shop of miracles for barrennesse in another a shop for the tooth-ache To contract this their occasionall Divinity doctrines to serve present occasions that in eighty eight an Hereticall Prince must necessarily be excommunicated and an Hereticall Prince excommunicated must necessarily be deposed but at another time it may be otherwise and conveniencies and dispensations may be admitted these and such as these traditionall occasionall Almanack Divinity they may bee Comets they may be Meteors they may raine bloud and raine fire and raine hailestones hailstones as big as Talents as it is in the Revelation milstones to grinde the world by their oppressions but they are not lux aeternorum corporum the light of the stars and other heavenly bodies for they were made at once and diminish not encrease not Fundamentall articles of faith are always the same And that 's our application of this lux aeternorum corporum the light of those heavenly bodies to the light of our Text Christ working in the Church Now for the consideration of the other light in this third couple which is lux incensionum the light of things which take and give light here upon earth if we reduce it to application and practise and contract it to one Instance it will appeare that the devotion and zeale of him that is best affected is for the most part in the disposition of a torch or a knife ordained to take fire and to give light If it have never been lightned it does not easily take light but it must be bruised and beaten first if it have been lighted and put out though it cannot take fire of it self yet it does easily conceive fire if it be presented within any convenient distance Such also is the soule of man towards the fires of the zeale of Gods glory and compassion of others misery If there be any that never tooke this fire that was never affected with either of these the glory of God the miseries of other men can I hope to kindle him It must be Gods worke to bruise and beat him with his rod of affliction before he will take fire Paulus revelatione compulsus ad fidem St. Paul was compelled to believe not the light which he saw but the power which he felt wrought upon him not because that light shined from heaven but because it strooke him to the earth Agnoscimus Christum in Paulo prius cogentem deinde docentem Christ begun not upon St. Paul with a catechisme but with a rod. If therefore here be any in Pauls case that were never kindled before Almighty God proceed the same way with them and come so neare to a friendship towards them as to be at enmity with them to be so mercifull to them as to seeme unmercifull to be so well pleased as to seeme angry that so by inflicting his medicinall afflictions he may give them comfort by discomfort and life by death and make them seeke his face by turning his face from them and not to suffer them to continue in a stupid inconsideration and lamentable senslesnesse of their miserable condition but bruise and breake them with his rod that they may take fire But for you who have taken this fire before that have been enlightned in both Sacraments and in the preaching of the word in the meanes and in some measure of practise of holinesse heretofore if in not supplying oyle to your Lamps which God by his ordinance had kindled in you you have let this light go out by negligence or inconsideration or that storms of worldly calamities have blowne it out do but now at this instant call to minde what sin of yesterday or t'other day or long ago begun and practised and prevailed upon you or what future sinne what purpose of doing a sinne to night or to morrow possesses you do but thinke seriously what sinne or what crosse hath blown out that light that grace which was formerly in you before that sinne or that crosse invaded you and turne your soul which hath been enlightned before towards this fire which Gods Spirit blowes this minute and you will conceive new fire new zeale new compassion As this Lux incensionum kindles easily when it hath been kindled before so the soule accustomed to the presence of God in holy meditations though it fall asleep in some darke corner in some sinne of infirmity a while yet upon every holy occasion it takes fire againe and the meanest Preacher in the Church shall worke more upon him then the foure Doctors of the Church should be able to do upon a person who had never been enlightned before that is never accustomed to the presence of God in his private meditations or in his outward acts of Religion And this is our third couple of lights that beares witnesse that is admit an application to the light of our Text and then the fourth and last couple which we consider is Lux Depuratarum Mixtionum the light and lustre of precious stones and then Lux Repercussionum the light of Repercussion and Reflexion when one body though it have no light in it self casts light upon other bodies In the application of the first of these lights Depuratarum Mixtionum precious stones we shall onely apply their making and their value Precious stones are first drops of the dew of heaven and then refined by the sunne of heaven When by long lying they have exhal'd and evaporated and breathed out all their grosse matter and received another concoction from the sunne then they become precious in the eye and estimation of men so those actions of ours that shall be precious or acceptable in the eye of God must at first have been conceived from heaven from the word of God and then receive another concoction by a holy deliberation before we bring those actions to execution lest we may have mistaken the roote thereof Actions precious or acceptable in Gods eye must be holy purposes
what ground he sayes or does or suffers that which he suffers and does and sayes Howsoever he pretend the honour of God in his testimony yet if the thing be materially false false in it self though true in his opinion or formally false true in it self but not known to be so to him that testifies it both ways he is an incompetent witnesse And this takes away the honour of having been witnesses for Christ and the consolation and style of Martyrs both from them who upon such evidence as can give no assurance that is traedi tions of men have grounded their faith in God and from them who take their light in corners and conventicles and not from the City set upon the top of a hill the Church of God Those Roman Priests who have given their lives those Separatists which have taken a voluntary banishment are not competent witnesses for the glory of God for a witnesse must know and qui testatur de scientia testetur de modo scientiae sayes the Law He that will prove any thing by his knowledge must prove how he came by that knowledge The Papist hath not the knowledge of his Doctrine from any Scripture the Separatist hath not the knowledge of his Discipline from any precedent any example in the primitive Church How farre then is that wretched and sinfull man from giving any testimony or glory to Christ in his life who never comes to the knowledge and consideration why he was sent into this life who is so farre from doing his errand that he knowes not what his errand was not whether he received any errand or no. But as though that God who for infinite millions of ages delighted himself in himself and was sufficient in himself and yet at last did bestow six dayes labour for the creation and provision of man as though that God who when man was sowr'd in the lumpe poysoned in the fountaine withered in the roote in the loins of Adam would then ingage his Sonne his beloved Sonne his onely Sonne to be man by a temporary life and to be no man by a violent and a shamefull death as though that God who when he was pleased to come to a creation might have left out thee amongst privations amongst nothings or might have shut thee up in the close prison of a bare being and no more as he hath done earth and stones or if he would have given thee life might have left thee a Toad or if he would have given thee a humane soule might have left thee a heathen without any knowledge of God or if he had afforded thee a Religion might have left thee a Iew or though he had made thee a Christian might have left thee a Papist as though that God that hath done so much more in breeding thee in his true Church had done all this for nothing thou passest thorough this world like a flash like a lightning whose beginning or end no body knowes like an Ignis fatuus in the aire which does not onely not give light for any use but not so much as portend or signifie any thing and thou passest out of the world as thy hand passes out of a basin of water which may bee somewhat the fouler for thy washing in it but retaines no other impression of thy having been there and so does the world for thy life in it When God placed Adam in the world he bad him fill it and subdue it and rule it and when he placed him in paradise he bad him dresse and keepe paradise and when he sent his children into the over-flowing Laud of promise he bad them fight and destroy the Idolaters to every body some task some errand for his glory And thou comest from him into this world as though he had said nothing unto thee but Go and do as you see cause Go and do as you see other men do Thou knowest not that is considerest not what thou wast sent to doe what thou shouldest have done but thou knowest much lesse what thou hast done The light of nature hath taught thee to hide thy sinnes from other men and thou hast been so diligent in that as that thou hast hid them from thy self and canst not finde them in thine owne conscience if at any time the Spirit of God would burne them up or the blood of Christ Jesus wash them out thou canst not finde them out so as that a Sermon or Sacrament can work upon them Perchance thou canst tell when was the first time or where was the first place that thou didst commit such or such a sinne but as a man can remember when he began to spell but not when he began to reade perfectly when he began to joyne his letters but not when he began to write perfectly so thou remembrest when thou wentest timorously and bashfully about sinne at first and now perchance art ashamed of that shamefastnesse and sorry thou beganst no sooner Poore bankrupt that hast sinned out thy soule so profusely so lavishly that thou darest not cast up thine accounts thou darest not aske thy selfe whether thou have any soule left how farre art thou from giving any testimony to Christ that darest not testifie to thy selfe nor heare thy conscience take knowledge of thy transgressions but haddest rather sleepe out thy daies or drinke out thy daies then leave one minute for compunction to lay hold on and doest not sinne alwaies for the love of that sinne but for feare of a holy sorrow if thou shouldest not fill up thy time with that sinne God cannot be mocked saith the Apostle nor God cannot be blinded He seeth all the way and at thy last gaspe he will make thee see too through the multiplying Glasse the Spectacle of Desperation Canst thou hope that that God that seeth this darke Earth through all the vaults and arches of the severall spheares of Heaven that seeth thy body through all thy stone walls and seeth thy soul through that which is darker then all those thy corrupt flesh canst thou hope that that God can be blinded with drawing a curtain between thy sinne and him when he is all eye canst thou hope to put out that eye with putting out a candle when he hath planted legions of Angels about thee canst thou hope that thou hast taken away all Intelligence if thou have corrupted or silenced or sent away a servant O bestow as much labour as thou hast done to finde corners for sin to finde out those sinnes in those corners where thou hast hid them As Princes giveâ— pardons by their own hands but send Judges to execute Justice come to him for mercy in the acknowledgement of thy sinnes and stay not till his Justice come to thee when he makes inquisition for blood and doe not think that if thou feel now at this presentâ— a little tendernesse in thy heart a little melting in thy bowels a little dew in thine eyes that if thou beest come to know that thou art a
about striking the rock and wouldst not thou be glad to change sinnes with either of them Are not thy sinnes greater heavier sinnes And yet wouldest thou not be sorry to undergoe their punishments are not thy punishments lesse Hast thou found hony says the holy Ghost in Solomon and he says it promiscuously and universally to every body eate as much as is sufficient Every man may And then Ionathan found that hony and knew not that it was forbidden by Sauls proclamation and did but taste it and that in a case of extreme necessity and Ionathan must die Any man might eate enough He did but taste and he must die If the Angels if Adam if Balaam if Moses if Ionathan did if the Serpent in the text could consider this how much cheaper God hath made sinne to thee then to them might they not have colour in the eye of a naturall man to expostulate with God Might not Ananias and Saphira who onely withheld a little of that which but a little before was all their own and now must die for that have been excusable if they had said at the last gaspe How many direct Sacrileges hath God forborne in such and such and we must die Mighty not Eâ— and Onan after their uncleane act upon themselves onely for which they died have been excusable if they had said at the last gaspe How many direct adulteries how many unnaturall incests hath God forborne in such and such and we must die How many loads of miserable wretches maist thou have seen suffer at ordinary executions when thou mightest have said with David Lord I have done wickedly but these sheep what have they done What had this Serpent done The Serpent was more subtile then any other beast It is a dangerous thing to have a capacity to doe evill to be fit to be wrought upon is a dangerous thing How many men have been drawn into danger because they were too rich How many women into solicatation and tentation because they were too beautifull Content thy selfe with such a mediocrity in these things as may make thee fit to serve God and to assist thy neighbour in a calling and be not ambitious of extraordinary excellency in any kinde It is a dangerous thing to have a capacity to do evill God would do a great work and he used the simplicity of the Asse he made Balaams Asse speak But the Devill makes use of the subtilty of the craft of the Serpent The Serpent is his Instrument no more but so but so much he is his instrument And then says S. Chrysostome Pater noster execuratur gladium as a naturall father would so our heavenly father does hate that which was the instrument of the ruine of his children Wherein hath he expressed that hate not to binde our selves to Iosephus his opinion though some of the ancients in the Christian Church have seconded that opinion too that at that time the Serpent could goe upright and speak and understand and knew what he did and so concurred actually and willingly to the temptation and destruction of man though he were but anothers instrument he became odious to God Our bodies of themselves if they had no souls have no disposition to any evill yet these bodies which are but instruments must burn in hell The earth was accursed for mans sin though the earth had not been so much as an instrument of his sin Onely because it was after to conduce to the punishment of his children it was accursed God withdrew his love from it And in the law those beasts with which men committed bestiality were to be stoned as well as the men How poor a plea will it be to say at the last day I got nothing by such an extortion to mine own purse it was for my master I made no use of that woman whom I had corrupted it was for a friend Miserable instrument of sin that hadst not the profit nor the pleasure and must have the damnation As the Prophet cals them that help us towards heaven Saviours Saviours shall come up on Mount Sion so are all that concurre instrumentally to the damnation of others Devils And at the last day we shall see many sinners saved and their instruments perish Adam and Eve both God interrogated and gave them time to meditate and to deprecate To Adam he says Where art thou and who told thee that thou wast naked And to Eve What is this that thou hast done But to the Serpent no such breathing The first words is Quia fecisti no calling for evidence whether he had done it or no but Because thou hast done it thou art accursed Sin is Treason against God and in Treason there is no Accessory The instrument is the Principall We passe from that first Part the consideration of heavy Judgements upon faults in appearance but small derived from the punishment of the Serpent though but an Instrument Let no man set a low value upon any sin let no man think it a little matter to sin some one sin and no more or that one sin but once and no oftner or that once but a little way in that sin and no father or all this to do another a pleasure though he take none in it himself as though there were charity in the society of sin and that it were an Alms to help a man to the means of sinning The least sin cost the blood of the Son of God and the least sinner may lose the benefit of it if he presume of it No man may cast himself from a Pinnacle because an Angel may support him no man may kill himself because there is a Resurrection of the body nor wound his soul to death by sin because there may be a resurrection of that by grace Here is no roome for presumption upon God but as little for desperation in God for in the punishment of the Serpent we shall see that his Mercy and Justice are inseparable that as all the Attributes of God make up but one God Goodnesse and Wisdome and Power are but one God so Mercy and Justice make up but one act they doe not onely duly suceed and second one another they doe not onely accompany one another they are not onely together but they are all one As Manna though it tasted to one man like one thing to another like another for it tasted to every man like that that that man liked best yet still was the same Manna so for Gods corrections they have a different taste in different persons and howsoever the Serpent found nothing but Judgement yet we find mercy even in that Judgement The evening and the morning make up the day says Moses as soon as he had named evening comes in morning no interposing of the mention of a dark and sad night between As soon as I hear of a Judgement I apprehend Mercy no interposing of any dark or sad suspition or diffidence
nor over-mourne for that which as we have induced it upon our selves so God shall deliver us from at last that is both death and corruption after death and captivity in that comfortlesse state but for the resurection For so long we are to be dust and so long lasts the Serpents life Satans power over man dust must he eate all the days of his life In the meane time for our comfort in the way when this Serpent becomes a Lyon yet there is a Lyon of the Tribe of Iudah that is too strong for him so if he who is Serpens serpens humi the Serpent condemned to creep upon the ground doe transforme himselfe into a flying Serpent and attempt our nobler faculties there is Serpens exaltatus a Serpent lifted up in the wildernesse to recover all them that are stung and feel that they are stung with this Serpent this flying Serpent that is these high and continued sinnes The creeping Serpent the groveling Serpent is Craft the exalted Serpent the crucified Serpent is Wisdome All you worldly cares all your crafty bargaines all your subtill matches all your diggings into other means estates all your hedgings in of debts all your planting of children in great allyances all these diggings and hedgings and plantings savour of the earth and of the craft of that Serpent that creeps upon the earth But crucifie this craft of yours bring all your worldly subtilty under the Crosse of Christ Jesus husband your farmes so as you may give a good account to him presse your debts so as you would be pressed by him market and bargaine so as that you would give all to buy that field in which his treasure and his pearle is hid and then you have changed the Serpent from the Serpent of perdition creeping upon the earth to the Serpent of salvation exalted in the wildernesse Creeping wisedome that still looks downward is but craft Crucified wisedome that looks upward is truly wisedome Between you and that ground Serpent God hath kindled a war and the nearer you come to a peace with him the farther ye go from God and the more ye exaspetate the Lord of Hosts and you whet his sword against your own souls A truce with that Serpent is too near a peace to condition with your conscience for a time that you may continue in such a sin till you have paid for such a purchase married such a daughter bought such an annuity undermined and eaten out such an unthrift this truce though you mean to end it before you die is too near a peace with that Serpent between whom and you God hath kindled an everlasting war A cessation of Arms that is not to watch all his attempts and tentations not to examine all your particular actions A Treaty of Peace that is to dispute and debate in the behalf and favour of a sin to palliate to disguise to extenuate that sin this is too near a peace with this Serpent this creeping Serpent But in the other Serpent the crucified Serpent God hath reconciled to himself all things in heaven and earth and hell You have peace in the assistance of the Angels of heaven Peace in the contribution of the powerfull prayers and of the holy examples of the Saints upon earth peace in the victory and triumph over the power of hell peace from sins towards men peace of affections in your selves peace of conscience towards God From your childhood you have been called upon to hold your peace To be content is to hold your peace murmure not at God in any corrections of his and you doe hold this peace That creeping Serpent Satan is war and should be so The crucified Serpent Christ Jesus is peace and shall be so for ever The creeping Serpent eats our dust the strength of our bodies in sicknesses and our glory in the dust of the grave The crucified Serpent hath taken our flesh and our blood and given us his flesh and his blood for it And therefore as David when he was thought base for his holy freedome in dancing before the Ark said he would be more base so since we are all made of red earth let him that is red be more red Let him that is red with the blood of his own soul be red again in blushing for that rednesse and more red in the Communion of the blood of Christ Jesus whom we shall eat all the days of our life and be mystically and mysteriously and spiritually and Sacramentally united to him in this life and gloriously in the next In this state of dust and so in the territory of the Serpent the Tyrant of the dead lies this dead brother of ours and hath lien some years who occasions our meeting now and yearly upon this day and whose soul we doubt not is in the hands of God who is the God of the living And having gathered a good Gomer of Manna a good measure of temporall blessings in this life and derived a fair measure thereof upon them whom nature and law directed it upon and in whom we beseech God to blesse it hath also distributed something to the poor of this Parish yearly this day and something to a meeting for the conserving of neighbourly love and something for this exercise In which no doubt his intention was not so much to be yearly remembred himself as that his posterity and his neighbours might be yearly remembred to doe as he had done For this is truly to glorifie God in his Saints to sanctifie our selves in their examples To celebrate them is to imitate them For as it is probably conceived and agreeably to Gods Justice that they that write wanton books or make wanton pictures have additions of torment as often as other men are corrupted with their books or their pictures so may they who have left permanent examples of good works well be beleeved to receive additions of glory and joy when others are led by that to do the like And so they who are extracted and derived from him and they who dwelt about him may assist their own happiness and enlarge his by following his good example in good proportions Amen SERMON XLVIII Preached at St. Dunstans LAMENT 3. 1. I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath YOU remember in the history of the Passion of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus there was an Ecce homo a shewing an exhibiting of that man in whom we are all blessed Pilat presented him to the Jews so with that Ecce homo Behold the man That man upon whom the wormwood and the gall of all the ancient Prophecies and the venome and malignity of all the cruell instruments thereof was now poured out That man who was left as a tender plant and as a roote out of a dry ground without forme or beauty or comelinesse that wee should desire to see him as the Prophet Esay exhibits him That man who upon the brightnesse of
expressed that David determined himself or declared his choice of any of the three Hee might conceive a hope that God would forbear all three As when another Prophet Nathan had told him The childe shall surely die yet David said for all that determined assurance Who can tell whether the Lord will be gracious to me that the child may live and he fasted a fast and mourned and prayed for the childes life Beloved no commination of God is unconditioned or irrevocable But in this case David intimates some kinde of election Let me fall into the hands of the Lord for his mercies are exceeding great and not into the hands of men Susanna when shee was surprised and in a straight too though of another kind she resolves that it is better for her to fall into the hands of men let men defame her let men accuse her condemn her execute her rather then sin in the sight of God and so fall into his hands So that if wee compare offences wee were better offend all the Princes of the earth then offend God because he is able to cast body and soul into hell fire But when the offence is done for the punishment which follows God forgives a treason sooner then thy neighbour will a trespasse God seales thee a Quietus est in the bloud of his Son sooner then a Creditor will renue a bond or withdraw an Action and a Scandalum magnatum will lie longer upon thee here then a blasphemâ— against God in that Court. And therefore as it is one degree of good husbandry in ill husbands to bring all their debts into one hand so doest thou husband thy afflictions well if thou put them all upon thy debts to God and leave out the consideration of Instruments And he shall deale with thee as hee did with David there that plague which was threatned for three days he will end in one In that trouble which if men had had their will upon thee would have consumed thee thou shalt stand unconsumed For if a man wound thee it is not in his power though hee be never so sorry for it whether that wound shall kill thee or no but if the Lord wound thee to death he is the life he can redeem thee from death and if hee doe not he is thy resurrection and recompenses thee with another and a better life And so lies our first comfort that it is Ejus His The Lords And a second is that it is In virga ejus In his rod. Iob would fain have come to a cessation of arms before hee came to a treaty with God Let the Lord take away his rod from me sayes he and let not his fear terrifie me Them would I speak As long as his rod was upon him and his fears terrified him it was otherwise he durst not But truly his feares should not terrifie us though his rod be upon us for herein lies our comfort That all Gods rods are bound up with that mercy which accompanied that rod that God threatned David to exercise upon his son Solemon If he commit iniquity I will chasten him with the rod of men I will let him fall into the hands of men This was heavy Therefore it is eased with that Cordiall But my mercy shall not depart away from him as I took it from Saul But for this mercy the oppressions of men were mercilesse But all Gods rods are bound up with this mercy and therein lies our comfort And for the rods of other men O my people be not afraid of the Assyrian says God Why blessed Lord shalâ— the Assyrian doe thy people no harm yes says God there He shall smite them with a rod and he shall lift up his staffe against them Some harm he shall doe He shall smite them with a rod And he shall threaten more offer at more he shall lift up his staffe where then is the peoples reliefe and comfort In this The Lord of Hosts shall stir up a scourge for him God shall appear in that notion of power The Lord of Hosts and he shall encounter his enemies and the enemies of his friends with a scourge upon them against their rod upon us Gods own rods are bound up in mercy they end in mercy And for the rods of other men God cuts them in pieces and their owners with his sword Gods owne rods even towards his owne Children are sometimes as that rod which he put into Moses hand was chang'd into Serpents Gods owne rods have sometimes a sting and a bitternesse in them but then they are chang'd from their owne nature Naturally Gods roddes towards us are gentle and harmlesse When Gods rod in Moses hand was changed to a Serpent it did no harme that did but devoure the other Serpents when Gods rods are heaviest upon us if they devoure other rods that is enable us to put off the consideration of the malice and oppression of other Men and all displeasure towards them and lay all upon God for our sinnes these serpentine rods have wrought a good effect When Moses his Rod was a Serpent yet it return'd quickly to a Rod againe how bitter so ever Gods corrections be they returne soone to their naturall sweetnesse and though the correction continue the bitternesse does not with this Rod Moses tam'd the Sea and divided that but he drowned none in that Sea but the Aegyptians Gods rod will cut and divide between thy soule and spirit but he will destroy nothing in thee not thy Morality not thy Christianity but onely thine owne Aegyptians thy Persecutors thy concupiscencies But all this while we have but deduced a comfort out of thy Word Quia Virga though that be a rod but this is a comfort Quia Virga therefore because that is a Rod for this word which is here a Rod is also in other places of Scriptures an Instrument not of correction but direction Feed thy sheep with thy Rod saies God and there it is a Pastorall Rod the direction of the Church Virga rectitudinis virgaregni tui saies David The Scepter of thy kingdome is a right Scepter and there its a royall rod the protection of the state so that all comforts that are deriv'd upon us by the direction of the Church and by the protection of the State are recommended to us and conferr'd upon us in this His Rod. Nor is it onely a Rod of comfort by implication and consequence but expresly and literally it is so Though I should walke thorough the valley of the shadow of death I will feare no evill Thy rod and thy staffe they comfort me He had not onely a comfort though he had the rod but he had not had so much comfort except he had had it we have not so good evidence of the joyes of the next life except we have the sorrowes of this The discomfort then lies not in this That the affliction is ejus his the Lords
all that belonged to our faithâ— All consists in this that he was Iesus capable in his nature to be a Saviour that he was Christus ordained and sent for that office and then Quod venit that be was come and come in aqus sanguine in water and bloud in sacraments which might apply him to us That he was Iesus a person capable his miracles testified aloud and frequently that he was Christ anointed and sent for that his reference of all his actions to his Father testified both these were enwrapped in that that he was the Sonne of God and that he professed himselfe upon the earth to be so for so it appeares plainely that he had plainely done We have a law say the Jews to Pilate and by our law he ought to die because he made himselfe the Sonne of God And for the last part that he came In aqua sanguine in water and bloud in such meanes as were to continue in the Church for our spirituall reparation and sustentation he testified that in preaching so piercing Sermons in instituting so powerfull Sacraments in assuring us that the love of God expressed to mankind in him extended to all persons and all times God so loved the world that he gave his onely begotten Sonne that whoseever beleeveth in him should not perish but have life everlasting And so the words beare record De Integritate of this Intirenesse of the whole worke of our Redemption and therefore Christ is not onely truely called a Martyr in that sense as Martyr signifies a witnesse but he is truly called a Martyr in that sense as we use the word ordinarily for he testified this truth and suffered for the testimony of it and therefore he is called Jesus Christ Martyr a faithfull witnesse And there is Martyrium a Martyrdome attributed to him where it is said Jesus Christ under Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession so he was a speaking and a doing and a suffering witnesse Now for the third witnesse in heaven which is the holy Ghost we may contract our selves in that for the whole work was his Before Ioseph and Mary came together she was found with Child of the holy Ghost which if we take it as Saint Basil and divers others of the Fathers doe that Ioseph found it by the holy Ghost that is the holy Ghost informed him of it then here the holy Ghost was a witnesse to Ioseph of this Conception but we rather take it as it is most ordinarily taken that the Angell intimated this to Ioseph That that which was conceived in her was of the holy Ghost and then the holy Ghost did so primarily testifie this decree of God to send a Iesus and a Christ for our Redemption that himselfe was a blessed and bountifull actor in that Conception he was conceived by him by his overshadowing So that the holy Ghost did not onely testifie his comming but he brought him And then for his comming in Aqua sanguine in water and bloud that is in Sacraments in meanes by which he might be able to make his comming usefull and appliable to us first the holy Ghost was a pregnant witnesse of that at his Baptisme for the holy Ghost had told Iohn Baptist before-hand That upon whomsoever he should descend and tarry still that should be he that should baptize with the holy Ghost and then according to those Markes he did descend and tarry still upon Christ Iesus in his baptisme And after this falling upon him and tarrying upon him which testified his power in all his life expressed in his doctrine and in his Sermons after his death and Resurrection and Ascension the holy Ghost gave a new testimony when he fell upon the Apostles in Cloventongues and made them spirituall channells in which this water and bloud the meanes of applying Christ to us should be convey'd to all Nations and thus also the third witnesse in heaven testified De integritate of this intirenesse of Iesus Of these three witnesses then which are of heaven we shall need to adde no more but that which the text addes that is That these three are one that is not onely one in Consent they all testifie of one point they all speake to one Intergatory Ad integritatem Christi to prove this intirenesse of Christ but they are Vnum Essentia The Father the Sonne and the holy Ghost are all one Godhead and so meant and intended to be in this place And therefore as Saint Hierome complained when some Copies were without this seventh verse that thereby we had lost a good argument for the unity of the three Persons because this verse said plainely that the three witnesses were all one so I am sorry when I see any of our later expositors deny that in this place there is any proofe of such an unity but that this Vnum sunt They are one is onely an unity of consent and not of essence It is an unthrifty prodigality howsoever we be abundantly provided with arguments from other places of Scriptures to prove this Vnity in Trinity to cast away so strong an argument against Iew and Turke as is in these words for that and for the consubstantiality of Christ which was the Tempest and the Earthquake of the Primitive Church raised by Arius and his followers then and God knowes not extinguished yet Thus much I adde of these three witnesses that though they be in heaven their testimony is upon the earth for they need not to testifie to one another this matter of Jesus The Father heares of it every day by the continuall intercession of Christ Jesus The Sonne feeles it every day in his new crucifying by our sinnes and in the perfecution of his Mysticall body here The holy Ghost hath a bitter sense of it in our sinnes against the holy Ghost and he hath a loving sense of it in those abundant seas of graces which flow continually from him upon us They need no witnesses in heaven but these three witnesses testifie all this to our Consciences And therefore the first author that is observed to have read and made use of this seventh verse which was one of the first Bishops of Rome he reads the words thus Tres in nobis there are three in us which beare witnesse in heaven they testifie for our sakes and to establish our assurance De Integritate Iesu that Jesus is come and come with meanes to save the world and to save us And therefore upon these words Saint Bernard collects thus much more that there are other witnesses in heaven which restifie this worke of our Redemption Angels and Saints all the Court all the Quire of heaven testifie it but catera nobis occults says he what all they doe we know not but according to the best dispositions here in this world we acquaint our selves and we choose to keep company with the best and so not onely the poore Church s the earth