his works which beholds Omnipotencie in the creation of the world which sees a world of miracles in Man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a great world in a little one which hears God in his thunder considers who is Father of the Rain and who begets the drops of the Dew out Job 38. of whose womb the Ice came Meditation is that spiritual rumination that chewing of the cudd which brings and calls back all the works of God ab intestino memoriae ad os cogitationis from the bowels and stomach of the Memory as St. Augustine speaks to the mouth of the Thoughts that there we may feed upon them with fresh delight and make them comfortable and wholsome to our souls which prepareth us contrà omnia fidei excidia as Hilary speaketh against all those temptations which are dangerous and deleterial to our Faith We cannot doubt but that he who delights in what God hath done hath also surrendred his will to God and said from his very heart Let the will of God be done Nazianzene in Orat. 39. yet adds another and that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an holy emulation to work great works to be Gods unto our selves Not to create a new world but the help of Gods grace to create new hearts in our selves to bind and fetter the common enemy of mankind to open the windows of goals and wash our sins with the tears of our repentance to strike those rocks our stony hearts that the waters of contrition may gush forth in a holy consideration of Gods Immensity and Power to gain to our selves with St. Paul a kind of Omnisciency to have all knowledge and a kind of Omnipotency 1 Cor. 13. 2. through Christ who strengthneth us to be able to do all things And by Phil. 4. 13. these by falling down in a reverent Admiration of what God hath wrought by our continual Praises and Gratulations and Hallelujahs by walking every day about the gallery of our souls and viewing with delight those many pictures and various representations of his wonderful works by a holy Aemulation to work something in our own souls which may resemble what he hath wrought in the world by recounting with our selves that that great God did not make us thus wonderfully to be his miracles and to do trifles by these as by so many faithful interpreters we best acknowledge and express our conformity to Gods Absolute Will We pass now to shew what conformity we owe to the Natural Will of God which we call voluntatem desiderii inclinationis his Will of Desire and Inclination his Prime and Antecedent Will by which he desires the happiness of all mankind and administers all the means to bring them to it And here I can conceive no difficulty at all but if Gods Natural Will be to have all men saved then certainly the same mind should be in us 1 Tim. 2. 4. which is in God and we should pray that all men may be saved Shall God will it and we not pray for it Shall the cataracts of Gods Mercy and Goodness stand wide open and we quite shut up the passage of our Devotion Is it impossible that God naturally should will the damnation of any man and is it possible that we should think there be some men for whom we ought not to pray I have read the Catalogues of old Heresies written by St. Augustine and Philastrius and I find some of them to be such ridiculous phansies such intellectual meteors that I have much wondred those Worthies would once stain their papers with them or take such pains to deliver them to posterity Methinks they should have destroyed those monsters in their birth and not have graced them so much as to have told after-ages that they ever were or had so much as being in the Church But I do not remember that there is any one of them of so monstrous a shape as this That it is not lawful to pray for the salvation of all men This sure was reserved for these after-ages to attend upon its mis-shapen damm that ill-begotten phansie of the absolute Decree of Reprobation I could not once conceive that any should delight in so killing a phansie which quite cutteth off all hope of salvation from some men and leaves them in a far worse case than the Gadarenes Hoggs For the Devils entring into Luke 8. them presently carried them into the sea and drowned them and so left them but according to this doctrine some men are prepared on purpose by God to be an habitation of devils and to dwell with devils for ever But these severe men who cut off all hope of life from some and with it the prayers of the Church are all Sheep themselves pure and innocent so sure of their salvation that I can find small reason they have to pray for it but that they may neglect this duty as well as they do others as necessary upon this presumptuous ground But why may not we pray for all 1 Tim. 2. 6. men as well as Christ give himself a price for all And is it not commanded that prayers and intercessions should be made for all men Which if we 1 Tim. 2. 1. neglect that judgment which we have laid at other mens doors will be brought home at last unto our own Besides Gods Will they say of damning men is secret and if it be unlawful to pray for that which he is resolved not to do a great part of our devotion must needs expire and the incense of those many prayers of the Saints cannot send up any pleasant savour who begg those things at his hands which his will was never to reach forth and give To Faith the number of the elect appears but small but to Charity the Church is large and copious and she sees none which is not or may not be a member thereof It may be said perhaps that I erre when I pray that all may be saved Be it so but it is an error of my Charity and therefore a most necessary error For it is the very property of Charity thus to erre And it is not a lye but a commendable office and acceptable in Gods sight in my prayers to wish the eternal happiness of him who perhaps shall be for ever miserable These holy mistakes of Charity shall never be imputed nor be numbred amongst my sins of Ignorance For he that errs not thus he that hopes not the best he can of every man he sees wants something yet and comes short of a good Christian Christianum est errare It is the part of every Christian and a singular duty thus to erre The reason is manifest For there is no heart so much stone which God cannot malleate and out of which he cannot raise a child unto Abraham Sin may reign in our mortal bodies ad mortem to make us lyable to death and it may reign ad difficultatem that it will be very difficult to shake
his bringing them again from captivity and the like How many millions of his servants hath he delivered how many of his enemies hath he destroyed whose names notwithstanding are no where recorded It was an observation of the Junior Pliny Facta dictáque illustrium virorum alia majora alia clariora All men have not gained credit in the world according to their desert Some things of no great worth are very famous in the world when as many things of better worth are less spoken of and perchance lie altogether buried in obscurity caruerunt quia vate sacro because they lighted not on such who would transmit them to posterity But God is the same yesterday and to day and for ever the same in the preservation of his people Israel then and the same in the preservation of his servants now the same in these his Risings which have left no mark or impression behind them and the same in those which are writ in the bloud of his enemies Adjutor in opportunitatibus an helper in time of need a God who when we are fallen lowest and when our enemies are even treading us down under their feet if we trust in him will up and arise For in the next place if we weigh it well it cannot be otherwise the parties being so opposite God and the wicked that they cannot both subsist together Either God must be disarmed or his enemies be scatter'd If then God ariseth the dispersion of the wicked is a kind of emanation from him For they cannot stand in his sight And you may observe it They seldom gather together till they are half perswaded there is no God at all Again the strength of the whole is not onely from the union but from the parts and such parts there may be as you can never collect and draw together so as to make the collection strong but at last though it hath been artificially wound together it will fly to pieces And therefore when a greater power appears it must needs be broken and scatter'd What parts have smoke But thin and vanishing ones Vides magnam molem habes quod videas non habes quod teneas saith the Father We may see as it were a mountain of smoke we may see it but we cannot hold it It may be terrible to the eye but we cannot grasp it in our hand And commonly such are the congregations and collections of the wicked They are but as Wax hard in shew but inclinable in respect of the materials it is made of to melt They are like smoke humidâ non solidâ magnitudine of some bulk but of no solidity ready to vanish and fly asunder Their very consultations are but as smoke the parts of them we see will scarce hang together Lastly their very gathering together is one cause of their Scattering as plants naturally breed that worm which destroyeth them Do the wicked gather together against God and his Church This collection is one degree and approach to scattering and dissolution For when their thought is as high as the Crown their Head deserves to be as high as the Gallows It is now but a lump of Wax anon having felt the heat you cannot discern the form that it had It is but smoke and its very elevation is its dissolution Quantò sit superior tantò faciliùs disperit The higher it is raised the thinner it grows and the sooner it vanisheth You see it lifted up and anon you see it not at all So then to conclude all Gods enemies may gather themselves together but they shall be scattered they may stand out against him in some shew of opposition but at last they shall flee like Wax their consultations may have some form and shape but at the fire of God's Exsurgat at his Rising who is a consuming fire they shall melt and be spread abroad and dilated amd receive no other Impression but that of God's wrath And we may make it our Prayer or we may prophesy Thus let God arise and so let thine enemies perish O Lord but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might That we may prophesy it is most certain For Prophetia vox Domini saith Tertullian Prophesy is the voice of God Nay without any Divine inspiration we may foretell the destruction of the wicked as a thing as certain as if it were done before our eyes They have their destiny in their name If enemies to God they must be scatter'd and perish If this counsell or this work be of men it will surely come to nought said Gamaliel that great Doctor of the Law 'T is true Gods enemies shall perish but not whilst they are ours unless we make it a Prayer as well as a Prophesy For God many times raiseth up those whom himself will at last rise against to punish their sins who profess his name O Assyrian the rod of mine Anger and the staffe in their hand is mine indignation I will send him against an Hypocriticall Nation and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge to take the spoil and to take the prey and to tread them down like the mire of the streets As if he had said I will send the Heathen that know me not to punish my people in Jewry who call upon my name I will send the superstitious Papist to whip the hypocritical Protestant I will make a rod to whip my people and when that is done I will burn it And therefore that God may scatter the wicked whilst they are our enemies we must not be too bold to prophesie till we have fallen on our faces before God and tendred these words as a prayer for our selves and for our distressed bretheren in Ireland And this is our duty as we are brethren and members of that body which is one this God commands that we do good unto and pray for all sorts of men but especially those of the houshold of faith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was in the Ancients 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 part of their Letany as it is of ours They prayed for men diseased for prisoners and captives for men in persecution And they prayed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with great earnestness and intention Pete quaere insta petendo quaerendo crescis ut capias Let us put up our petitions let us renew them and press them again and again let us multiply them every moment till we come to the growth to be fit to receive that which till we pray for till we and our distressed brethren be rid both of our enemies and of our fears And are our Prayers of such force as to chase away our enemies Yes St. James saith they will prevail much if they be fervent For as our enemies are only nostris vitiis fortes made strong by our sins and arm'd as it were against us with our iniquity as they fight against a nation not so much with their own sword as with the luxury
not seem a strange thing that men should refuse their meat which would satisfie them and so prodigally sell themselves all themselves for that which is not bread as the Prophet Isa 55. 2. speaketh May it not go for a wonder that men should debauch their Understanding which should be their counsellor for their advantage and satisfaction and make it their purveyor for their wealth their surveyor in the works of the flesh and no better then a pander to their lusts that they should bow their Will to that which it would have even when it doth embrace it but determines its act and demolisheth it again in the twinkling of an eye that they should make their Memory a Treasury of nothing but that which should be buried in the land of oblivion that their Affections those incorporeal heads as Basil calls them should catch and grasp nothing but ayr and emptiness and then that they should prostitute all the members of their Body to be instrumental to the Soul in these her excursions and wanton sallies upon vanity to fetch in that which brings leaness unto it the snow of Lebanon in stead of waters out of the river of the Lord But after all this when I have so long fed on husks to deceive my self into a perswasion that I have been all this while at my Fathers house and feasted at his table to supply my defects and emptiness out of the book of life and to conclude my name is written amongst the elect when my tongue is an open sepulchre and I am to every good work reprobate that I should feed my self with a groundless and irregular thought of Gods mercy which though it be over all his works yet is not over a stubborn and unrepentant sinner which is none of his works that I should lay me down in peace and sleep upon this pillow upon this hope That a sigh at last will go for mortification and a prayer at my death for the obedience of my life and a confession when I can scarce speak for that faith which worketh by charity Hear O Heavens and wonder nay rather why art not thou troubled O my Soul and astonished within me For what is this but to sleep at the gates of Hell and to pass unto torment in a dream of satisfaction to build our selves a pillar of assurance to lean upon and then to fall into pieces with it to stuff a hollow and false faith with vain and improfitable imaginations as the souldier did his head-piece which he felt hard under him with chaff and then thought he had made his pillow easier In a word what is it but to feed on poyson instead of meat to smile and flatter our selves to death to call in flesh and bloud with these deceitful thoughts to favour us and to breath nothing but false hopes till our breath departeth and these hopes and these thoughts perish with it O then as the Wiseman speaks if we be wise let us be wise to our selves wise to edification and not to ruine wise with that wisdome which is from above and not with that which is earthly sensual devilish as full of deceit as the Deceiver himself as full of falshood as the Father of lyes but let us hearken to the Lord God who will teach us to profit let us be wise unto salvation And this is our wisdome to chuse that which will satisfie To draw to a conclusion If this be the prerogative of Godliness to be alone in this work so that nothing else can work us satisfaction let her have prerogative also in our hearts and exercise full power and autority and dominion over our desires to chase away from them all heterogenious and deceitful appearances to banish all that are enemies unto her that so we may captivate our Wills unto her and not bring her into subjection to our Wills not first distaste and refuse her and then make use of her name first bid her depart from our coasts and then in her name not cast out devils but let them in or be as malicious and mischievous as they In the name of Religion and Piety why should that be Religion to day which in the dayes before us went under the name of Impiety Why should Religion pass away with the fashion of the world and change as often as that Why should we take away its prerogative and give it to the World to command our desires and to command Religion to attend and promote them in our hastning to wealth and to turn covetous in our grinding the face of the poor and to turn cruel in our pursuit of honor and so turn ambitious as if nothing of Piety and Religion were desirable but the name and the things of this world were the only object that could not fill our desires and satisfie them And so we make up a religious Mammonist a religious Oppressor a religious Tyrant a religious Atheist we joyn together God and the Devil the name of God and a Devil incarnate Thus it falls out when we invert the order of things It is too frequent and common a thing in the world to cry up Religion and Godliness as the Ephesians did their Diana Demesnius his Rhetorick From this craft we have our gain is that which moulds and fashions Religion It shall be no longer Religion then it brings on advantage if it prove dangerous it shall loose both its name and prerogative Hence it cometh to pass that as there are many that are called Gods and called Lords so there are many Religions 1 Cor. 8. 5. The Covetous hath his the Ambitious hath his the Wanton hath his and the Schismatick hath his many Religions and none at all none that can satisfie us Thus whilst we seek satisfaction in every object to which our lusts and affections lead us we find something which we call by that name but whilst we look upon it it slips from us and we see it no more it doth but smile upon us and leaves us If we seek it in Beauty that is but colour and it is changed whilst we look on it Who saw when that eye sunk which took so many hearts who observed when that face wrinkled which was so gazed on All we can say is this Star is shott this Heaven is shriveled as a scrowl If we look for it in Riches they have wings and fly away Satisfaction dwells not in a misers bagg Yet we rise up Prov. 23. 5. early and lye down late we labour and sweat we cheat and oppress we venture our bodies and we venture our souls we venture nay cast away that which would satisfie us indeed only to gain this satisfaction to dye rich and we had rather pass with that esteem then with the honor of a Saint And so we pass away we dye rich and our money and this miserable satisfaction perisheth with us The fool in the Gospel sung a Requiem to his soul at the sight of his barns and that
ventures upon Christians in their childhood in their spring in their new birth that they may never grow up to the stature of men be seen in their blossom but not in their blade or ear that they may never be perfect men in Christ Jesus Thus he set upon the first Adam and thus he set upon the second and thus he sets upon the sons of Adam We shall briefly lay before you both the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 both the Doctrine and the Reason and shew you both that it is so and why it is so That the Devil takes his time and opportunity and the reason Why he takes this as his time And with these we shall exercise your Christian Devotion at this time Then was Jesus led forth By this example of our Captain we his Souldiers may learn what to expect and draw that lesson for our direction which the Wise-man gave his son My son if thou come to serve the Lord Ecclus. 2. 1. prepare thy soul for tentation No Moses but meets with a James and Jambres to withstand him no Samson but shall meet with the Philistines If Nehemiah will build up Jerusalem there will be Samballats and Tobiahs to weaken his hand from the work that it be not done If Jeremiah prophesie the Princes will put him in prison If there be a great door and effectually opened to St. Paul there will be many enemies If we run not on to the same riot with the world the world will run against us to overthrow us If we turn our face from the Devil he will after us to give us a fall Still the better the work is the more resistance and opposition it shall find We read that the children of Israel gathered together to Mispeh and drew water and poured it out before the Lord and fasted that day and 1 Sam. 7. 6. said there We have sinned against the Lord that is They abjured their sins they washed them with their tears they macerated their bodies with fasting they put on a strong resolution to serve the Lord. And see The Philistines no sooner heard of it but suddenly upon the very report the Lords of the Philistines went up against them Now they had cast away from them their false Gods and had solemnly kept the Fast not a few souldiers but the Princes and Lords of the Philistines are up in arms And Gregory gives the reason Quia cum altiori vitâ proficimus maligni spiritus qui semper benè agentibus invident nobis infestiores sunt Because the evil Spirits are most enraged when we are least like them and the Devil is never more a Devil then when we have renounced him For he deals with us as Laban did with Jacob. For twenty years together whilst he served Gen. 31. 23. him Jacob led a quiet and peaceable life but when he left his service and fled from him then Laban pursues him as an enemy So whilst we do the Devil service and are led by him according to his will we find not those fightings without and terrors within we are not sensible of molestation but run on with ease in those wayes which lead unto death but when upon better deliberation we resolve with our selves to shake off his yoke and to fling his bonds from us then he prepares his deadly weapons he smites us with the hand and smites us with the tongue he disgraces our endeavours and disgraces the work it self he pursues us as Laban did Jacob flings his darts thick after us and every day multiplies his tentations When Jacob had sent all he had over the brook Jabboh and was left alone Gen. 32. 24. the Text says a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day I cannot but reject the phansie of Procopius out of the Rabines That this Man was no other but the Devil yet the reason upon which they grounded their opinion is it self grounded upon a truth That the Devil did now invade and set upon him because he was now slipt out of his hands and had withdrawn himself out of that place where Idolatry breathed that he might worship God in sincerity and truth For thus doth the Devil present himself unto us in a shape of beauty and delight like an Angel of light whilst we sleep in darkness but when we are awake and bestir our selves to fly from that wrath which is now visible to our eye he sets upon us and wrestles with us toucheth the hollow of our thigh puts it out of joynt that we may faint and sink under our resolution Non obsidet mortuos sed impugnat viventes he fights not against the dead but the living Non impugnat adversarius nisi milites Christi saith Cyprian Christs Adversary strikes at none but Christs souldiers Those who are down already he passeth by but his malice heaves at them that stand that they may fall He will not bestow a dart upon thee while thou art dead in sin but when thou beginnest to breathe in the land of the living then his fiery weapons fly about He sets not upon thee in the stews or in the tavern or in a seditious rout for this is his own work and he fights not against himself but he sets upon thee in the holy City in the Temple in the congregation of Saints If thou hast a good thought he will strive to strangle it in the birth If thou speakest a good word he will silence thee If thou hast built up a strong resolution to defie him his deadly weapons are up to beat it down and demolish it But if thou strive forward to the top of Sion to the top of perfection then to stagger thee and tumble thee down is his master-piece He deals with us as the Aegyptians did with the Hebrews For two hundred years they were in slavery indeed but their burdens were not so great When they spoke of sacrificing to the Lord the Aegyptians upbraid them with idleness Vacant idcirco vociferantur Exod. 5. 8. They are idle and therefore they say Let us go and sacrifice But when they thought of flight and desired to depart out of those coasts when Moses and Aaron cry Let the people go then Pharaoh cryes Get ye to your burdens OPPRIMANTUR OPERIBUS Let there more work be laid upon them and let them labor therein In this manner doth our enemy deal with us When we willingly serve him when we are as ready to take a bate as he is to offer it when we are pleased with his flattery and fall down to those Idols which he sets up he is not rough and fierce but a gentle Devil but when we bid him go when we shake off his fetters then he is a tyrant The application is St. Bernards That he layes a greater task of brick upon those who are going out of Aegypt St. Chrysostom Hom. 31. in Gen. compares him to a Pirate who hoiseth up sails and follows those ships
Accuser and the Devil are the very same it will concern us to be very wary that we calumniate not our brethren lest we resemble him our Enemy rather then Jesus our Advocate When Michael the Arch-angel contended with this Devil and disputed with him about the body of Moses he brought no rayling accusation And why should one Jude 19. Christian do that to another which an Arch-angel would not do to the Devil himself Why should not our words rather kindle at the fire of Heaven then of Hell In the second place let us take heed to our own wayes that this Enemy throw us not down and then accuse us for falling Let us watch over our own steps that when he makes his approach he may find nothing in us no malice no bitterness nothing which he may put into his Bill Let us say within our selves when he comes to tempt us This language is fair but if we hearken to it he will change his dialect and be that Lyon which shall roar against us He smileth in this Beauty but this Beauty will be a snare He courts us in this Honor but if we go up with him to the pinacle he will tumble us down He shines in these Riches but if we come near we shall find him a consuming fire The fairest speech he gives is but a kind of prologue or preface to an Accusation and when he speaks friendly to us we may be sure he will strike us through the fifth ribb Let us then say with Joseph How can I commit this wickedness and sin against God who would save me and how can I commit this and help the Devil my enemy to accuse me In the affairs of this world we are very sly and cautelous and will not give any advantage to those whom we suppose to be no well-willers unto us Nay many times we abstein from things not unlawful in the presence of those we do not love because we fear whatsoever we do will be misinterpreted and can expect no better gloss then that which Malice will make And shall we be so confident on the greatest enemy of mankind as to help his Malice and to further and promote the desire which he hath of our ruines Shall I fill this Accusers mouth with arguments against my self and even furbish and whet the sword of my Executioner This is a folly which we cannot but be ashamed of and yet in every sin we commit we commit this folly But yet in the last place as St. John saith If we sin we have an Advocate so say I If we sin and the Devil put up his bill of Accusation against us as most certainly he will let us learn to accuse our selves and that will make his Accusation void and cancel his Bill From a broken and a contrite heart let us say We have sinned and he hath nothing to say Let us confess our sins and we have put the Adversary to silence Let us plead Guilty and Christ is ready to blot out the hand-writing which is against us and to take it away and nayl it to his cross When I slander my brother I do the Devils office When I yield to him I help him When I sin I do but prompt him what he should say against me and as much as in me is make the Devil no lyar But when I rip up my heart and lay it open to God when I breathe forth my sins and my sorrows before him when I tender up a Bill against my self a Bill of my sins bedewed with my own tears and coloured with my Saviviours bloud the Devil may roar but not prevail he may accuse me but not be heard because I am quit already by proclamation They that believe and repent shall be saved Confessio poenarum compendium Our serious acknowledgment makes a short work prevents our Enemy sets a period to Sin and Punishment If we accuse our selves no accusation shall hurt us and if we judge our selves no sentence shall pass upon us and whatsoever libel this Accuser shall put up against us JESUS shall cancel who is our Advocate To whom with the Father and the holy Ghost be all honour and glory for evermore The Seventh and Twentieth SERMON PART I. MATTH XXII 11 12. And when the King came in to see the guests he saw there a man which had not on a wedding-garment And he saith unto him Friend how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment And he was speechless GReat Feasts have their solemnities great Not such attendance at the marriage of a Peasant as of a Prince not such noyse and pomp at Nabal 's sheep-shearing as when Ahasuerus feasted his Nobles in his palace at Shushan Ever as the person is such is the state of celebration and ceremony We have here the Feast of a King at the marriage of his son the dinner prepared the fatlings killed the viands and dainties on the table all things ready A royal Feast not to some few provinces but to every nation and to all people not to the Nobles and Princes and Captains alone to honorable men of high place and employment but to the Farmer and the Merchant men taken up and drowned in worldly affairs to those in the broad streets and high-wayes men that walk and talk away their life men that have little to do and to those in the by-lanes of the city men that can do little to the halt the maimed the blind to men knit and revitted to the world and to men little better than cast out of the world to all sorts to as many as could be found both bad and good The King invites all because the Feast concerns all And that the house may be filled and the wedding furnisht with guests he takes the cup of blessings the cup of salvation and drinks a Health to all the world A royal Feast indeed where the gates lye open to all commers And as it is a royal Feast so it is a lasting a standing Feast perpetuae incorruptibilitatis saith Fulgentius not as the King of Persia 's for a hundred and fourscore dayes but as the Marriage is for ever As Desponsabo Hos 2. 19. te mihi in aeternum so Feriabitur in aeternum The Marriage is not to be cut off by a divorce nor the Feast by time It is an everlasting Marriage and an eternal Holiday IN PRINCIPIO In the beginning there it begun and if we take in the purpose of the King ANTE PRINCIPIUM before the beginning before there was a Before before the foundations of the Eph. 1. 4. world were laid But take the calculations we hear of it In Paradise the symbolum is cast in and notice given The Seed of the woman shall break the Serpents head After Abraham is plainly invited to this Feast I will be Gen. 17 7. thy God and the God of thy seed To this give all the Prophets witness Acts 10. 43. Isaiah composeth the Epithalamium or Marriage-song
gracious to me that the child may live But when the child was dead he arose from the earth and washed and anointed himself Which was a lively expression of his submission to the will of God God revealed the destruction of Niniveh the Ninivites repent and he destroyed it not A sure rule it is Promissa obligant minae non obligant God binds himself more by his promises than by his threatnings In what he promises he never fails but what he threatens doth not alwayes come to pass But they tell us there be some persons whom God will not suffer us to pray for as he forbad Samuel to mourn and pray for Saul and the Prophet Jeremiah Pray not for this people To which it might easily be replyed that the case is not the same but differs as much as a temporal loss from a spiritual and the loss of a kingdome and captivity from the loss of a soul and eternal separation from God But I will rather make use of that excellent passage of Tertullian in his book De Idololatria who being urged with the example of Moses lifting up the Serpent in the wilderness maketh answer that it was an extraordinary precept and a type of the Cross and therefore stood in no opposition with that command Thou shalt not make any graven image nor did God forbid what he commands nor command what he did forbid Well saith the Father Si eundem Deum observes habes legem ejus If thou serve the same God which Moses did thou hast his law that Thou shalt not make a graven image but if thou look upon the precept in obedience to which the Serpent was set up tu imitare Mosem nec facias adversùs legem simulacrum aliquod nisi tibi Deus jusserit do then also imitate Moses and set no image up till God commands thee In like manner if thy error lead thee to this perswasion That there be some for whom thou oughtest not to pray because Samuel and Jeremy were forbid to pray for the King and People of the Jews look not upon the two Prophets but upon the Law and the Rule which makes our prayers oecumenical and our Devotion as large as the whole world But if their example still run in thy eyes then stay the doing of it till thou mayest do it as they did it Do it by command These are indeed but scruples and they weigh no more And we may say of these and many the like doubts raised by the Schools as Tully did of the Latine tongue in his time Non tam praeclarum scire Latinè loqui quà m turpe nescire It advantageth not us at all to know these doubts and questions but perhaps it may be some disparagement not to know and assoil them We therefore leave this point and proceed to God's Permissive Will by which he is resolved not to intercede by his Omnipotencie and hinder those sins which if he permitted not could not once have being And to this Will of his we cannot but yield conformity unless we forget that we are Men and Christians and destined to a crown of happiness For if Sin were not permitted what use were there of our Passions and Reason or why hath Man a Will Christianity were indeed but fabula as the Heathens terms it a very sigment and Obedience nothing For it is impossible that he should be obedient who cannot possibly disobey And what reward is due to him whose actions are meerly natural who doth what he doth and cannot do otherwise Permission of Sin is that which makes a way to virtue The Devil and outward Temptations and the World we count enemies but they are such enemies as the unrighteous Mammon in the Gospel we may make friends of them Chrysostome hath a tract upon this subject 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Why God doth not take the Devil out of the world but suffers him to walk about and he resolves the question thus That it is for our good For we who perhaps would be evil if there were no Devil at all have now opportunity to resist and vanquish him and so to gain an everlasting crown of glory So for the World I may so use it that I may enjoy God the Flesh I may 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Father speaks fight against it and make it my slave and captive Temptations They are materiam virtutum the very matter out of which we shape those works which we call Virtues The Devil He is indeed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the wickedest and most malitious enemy we have but we may make him as profitable and useful to us as any friend And if all these dangers and this opposition from the World the Flesh and the Devil be of purpose placed in our way that we may struggle with them and conquer and be crowned he that is a Man a Christian candidatus aeternitatis who sues for any place in heaven will readily say FIAT VOLUNTAS DEI Let the will of God be done in this respect and conform himself to this his Permissive Will For by yielding our assent to this Will of God we assent only to this that it is necessary that Sin should be permitted But we do not therefore pray that wicked men may take their swinge and run-on in the wayes of wickedness without controul No our Devotion is set to a contrary key We pray and we are bound to pray that God will put a bit into the mouth of every wicked person that he will rule the raging of the sea and the madness of the people that he will put a hook into the nostrils of that great Leviathan For as there is permissio so there is rectio and moderatio As God permits Sin so by his wisdome and moderation it comes to pass that all the intents of wicked men do not take effect Scelera semper festinant quasi contra innocentiam ipsam festinatione praevaleant saith Gregory Wickedness is ever on the wing but it doth not alwayes fly to the mark It makes haste as if haste would prevail against Innocency but God that God who rideth upon the cherubim and flyeth upon the wings of the wind overtakes it and sets up a bulwark against it to stop it in its course Pharaoh i◠in his chariot and drives furiously after the Israelites but God takes off his chariot-wheels and drowns him in the sea Haman procures a decree against all the Jews the Posts to go out and are hastned by the King But God by his over-ruling Providence crosseth the bloudy design the Kings heart is turned Haman is hanged on the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai and a gracious Edict issueth out in favour of Gods people The Scripture is full of instances of this kind All which may teach us to yield our assent that it is convenient and necessary that sin should be permitted and to interceed by our frequent prayers and devotion that although God in his wisdome hath left every man
ignorant that he knows not whether the ground he treads upon stands still or moves God whose Thoughts do as far exceed our Thoughts as the Heavens do the Earth nay more for the distance between us and the highest Star is known and calculated but the distance between us and God passes all Arithmetick It is infinite Why then should we sawcily pry into the hidden Councels of God If he hath let down a Veil before his Holy of Holies how should we dare to tear it asunder and prophanely break into his Mysteries What must we know before we will believe have a Demonstration for all God does to give us satisfaction Why perhaps we shall never answer Zeno's argument against Motion and shall we therefore sit still all the days of our life and say we cannot stir perhaps it is impossible to solve Pyrrho's objections against Reality shall we therefore fondly conceit that every thing we see is but an appearance only that it is but your fancy that I seem now to speak and nothing but your imagination that you think you hear me aâ—â—f our whole life were but one continued Dream And is it not as much madness to mistrust the truth and faithfulness of God confirmed by so many Clouds of Witnesses evinced by so many Ages of Instances because we cannot answer this one objection against It because we cannot see through this one single particular of Providence Why then should we think it any indiscretion with Abraham to believe against Hope or to be sure though we have least reason to expect it That the only way for a man to become a great Nation is to kill his only Child and the means to overcome Canaan was to go alone and a stranger into it Pray why should we not believe our Saviour that to save is to loose and to preserve is to destroy Why should we imagine our selves any wiser then St. Paul who committed his body to God until the last day and perswaded himself that God was able to keep it until that day 2 Tim. 1. 12. though it past through so many transmutations and changes into beasts fowl and fish nay though it became part of another Man which is to rise together with him in the same Body Yet this seeming contradiction did not startle the Apostle He was sure of the thing though he knew not how it could come to pass I know whom I have believed says the Apostle in the same place Yet though Almighty God might challenge our Obedience without giving us account of his matters though we ought to conclude the Lord righteous in all his ways and holy in all his works when to our eye of flesh he appears neither holy nor righteous but rather the contrary though our understandings be shallow and Gods Judgments profound though the Well be deep and we have nothing to draw yet God like a most gracious Prince when he might absolutely command vouchsafes a reason why we should obey submitting himself to our slender capacities he appears at our Barrs and to settle our wandring thoughts to leave us quite without excuse exposes himself to be impleaded by us to be judg'd by us to be examined by us Which leads me to the Objection which seems to overthrow the Righteousness of God Wherefore does the way of the wicked prosper Wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously The occasion of this Question I told you was because the Prophets adversaries did continually prosper and had power to do him hurt not simply because the wicked prosper'd but that by this their prosperity they had means and opportunity to mischief him to smite him with their tongue by secret whisperings and smite him with their fists to hurry him from one prison to another and at last clap him up in the Dungeon sealing him up there unto unevitable destruction Now the Prophet demands of God in this Question why he did not disappoint the plots and contrivances of all those who had designed his ruine being God had sent him as an especial Ambassador to his people So as we may resolve the Question into this Why does God suffer the wicked to have any Power to oppress the righteous A Question if we consider the time in which the Prophet lived not altogether idle or impertinent for he lived under the Law a Covenant of Works unto which God had annexed Blessings and Cursings in outward appearance altogether temporal Deut. 28. But on the contrary this Prophet found by sad experience that he fled from his Enemies and not they from him that not they but he groped at noon days being cast into a Dungeon which was only a larger Sepulchre and that the Iron yoke was put upon his not their necks all which was contrary to the express words of the promise as you may read at large in that Chapter Which made him think God had forgotten to be gracious and to ask wherefore does the way of the wicked prosper wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously Nevertheless had the Prophet consider'd with himself rightly he would not have thought this so strange a thing even under the Law where God seems to set bounds and terms even to his Almighty power and to confine his absolute Dominion and Royalty over the Creature by making Promises Oaths and Contracts with his People Yet he never pass'd away the Land of Canaan or any thing in it so absolutely but that still he reserv'd the title and propriety of it to himself All souls are mine saith the Lord And the Land shall not be sold for ever for the Land is mine and ye are sojourners and strangers with me Levit. 25. 23. God granted the use of it to them yet kept still the Right and full disposal of it to himself for the Lord calls them for all this Grant but sojourners and strangers who held what they possest under God and continued in it no longer then he gave them leave from whom he might take it away and bestow it on whom he pleased And truly if we allow God the power but of a temporal Prince and grant him to be King of Israel only we must allow him the liberty of changing altering and dispensing with his own Laws For we read how Nebuchadnezzar might slay whom he would and whom he would he might keep alive within his own Realms set up whom he would and whom he would he might put down Dan. 5. 3. And least you might imagine such an unlimited power over the Subject unlawful God is said to give him this power in the same verse and can we think for all his promises the Lord of the whole Earth may not challenge as much Soveraignty as a Prince but of a single Shire enjoyes As then he in whom the Supream power of a State resides when he grants out property of life liberty and estate to his Subjects does not by this Charter debar himself the liberty of taking them away again if the use of
less then his Father and yet his Fathers Equal the Son of David and yet Davids Lord A case which plunged the great Rabbies among the Pharisees who had not yet learned this wisdom nor known this knowledge of the Holy But most true it is Non fallit in vocabulis Deus God speaks of things as they are nor is there any ambiguity in his words He tells us he is God and he tells us he is man He tells us that his dwelling-place is in Heaven and he tells us that he came down into the world He tells us he is from everlasting and he tells us he was born in the fulness of time Et quod à Deo discitur totum est And what he tells us is all that can be said Nor must our Curiosity strive to enter in at the Needles eye where he hath open'd an effectual Door Indeed it was the Devils policie when his Altars were overthrown when his Oracles were silenced when he was driven from his Temples when his God-head was laid in the dust and when Pagans and Idolaters his subjects and slaves came in willingly in the days of Christs power to strive dimidiare Christum to divide Christ into halves and when Christ became the language of the whole world to confound their language that men might not understand one anothers speech And like a subtle enemy when he was beat out of the field he made it his master-piece to raise a civil dissension in the City of God Proh quanta etiamnum patitur Verbum saith the Father Good God! how much doth Christ yet suffer in his Church He came into the world and the world knew him not He came unto his own and his own received him not He comes down but as a Phantasin as a mear Creature so Anius as an adopted Son so Phocius which is in effect to say he came not down at all For if he be a meer creature the Descent is not so low And if he be adopted to this work it is rather a rise then a Descension And if he be but the Son of Mary made the Son of God and not the Son of God made the Son of Mary it is no Descent at all I do not love to rake these mis-shapen Monsters out of their dust but that I see at this day they walk too boldly upon the face of the earth and knock and that with some violence to have admittance into the Church And therefore it will behove us to take the whole armour of Faith and to stand upon our defence conservare vocabula in luce proprietatum to preserve the propriety of words entire to walk by that light which they cast and not with those Hereticks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to make use of those Phrases which speak Christ Man and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to pass by those which magnifie him as God but to joyn together 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his good pleasure and his power to say that he came into the world and to say that he created the world to say he was the scorn of men and to say he was the Image of his Father in a word ipsi Deo de se credere to believe God in that he speaks of himself And then we may turn aside and behold this great sight and make it our glory and crown to say Descendit Rex not Solomon but the King of Kings the King of Glory is come down And so I pass from the Descent or Coming down to the Manner of it Descendit sicut pluvia c. The Manner of his Descent is as wonderfull as the Descent it self It is as full of wonder that he thus came down as that he would come down especially if we consider the place to which he came the World a Babylon of confusion a Sodom a Land of Philistines of Giants who made it as a Law to fight against the God of Heaven We might have expected rather that he should have come cown as a Fire to consume us as a Tempest to devour us as Thunder to amaze us then as Rain to fall softly upon us or as a Shower to water and refresh us that he should have come down to blast and dig us up by the roots rather then to yield us juice and life to grow green and flourish Indeed we could expect no less But his mercy is above all his works and then far above our expectation far above all that we could conceive far above our sins which were gone over our heads and hung there ready to fall in vengeance upon us And rather then they should fall as hailstones and coals of fire he himself comes down like rain and as showers that water the earth Justice would have stay'd him and for him sent down a Thunderbolt but Mercy prevail'd and had the better of Justice and in this manner brings him down himself And here to shew you the manner of his coming down we shall observe a threefold Descent in uterum matris into the Virgins womb in mundum into the World and in homines into the Souls of men For as the Virgins womb was thalamus Christi the Bride-chamber of Christ wherein the Holy Ghost did knit the indissoluble knot between his Humane nature and his Deity so the World was the place where he pitcht his Tent and the John 1. 14. Soul of man is the Temple of the Lord where the same quickning Spirit by the operation of Faith makes up that eternal union and conjunction between the Members and the Head And into all these he came down 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith St. Chrysostom and we find the very same words in the sixth Councel of Constantinople quietly and without any noise at all like Rain which we may know is fallen by the moistures of the Fleece or Grass but not hear when it falls And first thus he came down into the Virgins womb as upon the Grass and made her fruitful to bring forth the Son of God and as into a fleece of wooll out of which he made up tegmen carnis the vail and garment of his flesh and so without noise so unconceivably that as it is an Article of our Faith and the very language of a Christian to say He is come down so it is a question which poseth the whole world and none but himself can resolve the Quomodo How he came down For as he came down and was made Man not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not by any alteration or mutation of his Divine Essence sine periculo statûs sui saith Tertullian without any danger of the least change of his state not by converting the Godhead into Flesh as Cerinthus nor the Flesh into the Godhead as Valentius no nor by compounding and mingling the Natures so that after the union there should remain one entire Nature of them both but by an invisible inconceivable ineffable union So also did the blessed Virgin
Thunder upon our Brethren Shall he consider us as a Fleece of woll or as Grass and shall we make one another a mark and an anvil for injuries to beat on Shall Butter and Honey be his meat and shall we feed on Gall and Wormwood Shall he not break a bruised reed and shall we make it our glory to break in pieces the Cedars of Libanus Shall he come to save and shall we destroy one another Shall he come without noise and shall we make it our study to fill the world with tumult and confusion Shall he give eyes to the blind and we put them out Cloths to the naked and we strip them Leggs to the lame and we cripple them Shall he raise men from the dead and we kill them And if we do it can we be so bold as to say we are Christians or that Christ dwelleth in us of a truth Will he abide in this region of blackness and darkness in this place of noise and thunder and distraction No the humble and contrite the meek and merciful is the place of his rest He that came down in humility will not stay with the proud heart he that came down in silence will not dwell in a Chaos in confusion Therefore put you on the Lord Jesus Christ put on his Meekness his Humility As children of Christ put on tender bowels and compassion And let your bowels yearn over the poor to relieve him over the weak to strengthen him over the injurious to forgive him And let us be as Rain to soften and quicken not as Fire to consume one another And then He who thus came down into the Womb thus into the World thus into our Souls thus into the Sacrament in silence without noise or tumult like Rain or Dew having thus watered us and distilled his graces upon us by virtue of this his first Advent at his second Advent when he shall descend with a shout and with the voice of the Archangel though he come with more terrour yet shall he let fall his dew as the dew of herbs and drop upon our rottenness and corruption And they that dwell in the dust shall awake and sing And in those his dayes shall the righteous flourish and abundance of Peace not only so long as the Moon endureth but in new Heavens and new Earth shall dwell Righteousness and Peace for evermore The First SERMON PART I. MATTH V. 5. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth BLessedness is that which all men desire the Sun which every eye looks upon And in this Sermon of our Saviour it streams down upon us in several beams and strictures in Poverty of Spirit in Mourning in Meekness which seem to us as dark and thick clouds but are beams by which we have light to see the way to the Kingdom of Heaven to comfort and the inheritance of the Earth Now the two first Virtues or Beatitudes call them what you please and if they be Virtues they are Beatitudes though not formally yet by communication and if Blessedness be the garland to crown them they must be Virtues The two first I say Poverty of Spirit and Mourning are set in opposition to our Concupiscible appetite Which if not checkt and held back by these stoops at every prey is ensnar'd with wealth and crown'd in pleasure and like those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those artificial Engines or Clocks the Philosopher speaketh of are turned about disorderly parvâ motione factâ at the least touch and representation of unlawful and forbidden objects whether it be a wedge of Gold or the lips of the Harlot whither wealth or pleasure And therefore our best Master hath placed these two as assistant Angels to order the motion of that power in the desire of earthly blessings and continue her motion in the search of those things which are above even Poverty of Spirit and a voluntary Abdication of those pleasures which smile upon us as friends at their entrance but at their Exit when they turn their backs upon us are as terrible as Hell it self He that hath his mind so spiritually steer'd that it declines not to the wealth and pomp of the world nor to the delights which it affords howsoever his way be rugged and uneven and his passage cloudy and tempestuous shall notwithstanding at the end thereof find a Kingdom and Consolation And now to these two in its due place and by a kind of nearer method is added 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Meekness and Sweetness of Disposition to restrain the Irascible faculty or appetite as those did the Concupiscible Thus they stand in the original and Greek Copy and the Latine Fathers read them so Nor could the Jesuite find any reason why they should not be so placed in the vulgar Translation and he thinks they were misplaced by the error of the Scribe and put between Poverty and Mourning Sure I am there is good reason why Meekness should stand in the place it doth For from whence come wars and fightings amongst us saith St. James come they not from hence even from our lusts that war in our members And the Schools teach us that Anger proceeds from the concourse of many passions We lust and have not We hope for wealth and are poor and destitute we would sport away our time in pleasure but some intervening cross accident casts us down and for this we are angry Jacob hath Esau's birth-right and Esau will kill him Naboth denies his Vineyard and Ahab is on his bed Jonathan loves David and Saul is ready to nail him to the wall with his Javelin The Samaritanes deny entertainment the Disciples would presently call down fire from Heaven to consume them Irascibilis propugnatrix concupiscibilis saith Gerson These two seditious Tribunes of the Soul the Irascible and the Concupiscible faculty mutually uphold each other My Desire my Hope my Grief are the fewel of my Anger He that stands in my way to wealth or pleasure is my enemy and setteth me on fire which nothing can quench but Poverty of Spirit and Contempt of pleasure When we are weaned from the world and the vanities thereof when we are crucified to the world and the world unto us we are then aptinati fitted for this third Beatitude and gain strength against Anger and against all Thirst and Desire of revenge If I know how to abound and how to want if I can sit down in the House of Mourning and judge those miserable whom the world calls happy and pity them whom most men bow to I am then idoneus auditor a fit man to hear our Saviour preaching from the Mount and proclaiming to all the world Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth And thus much of the dependence this third Beatitude hath on the former two Meekness then you see stands in its right place after Poverty of Spirit and Mourning which make its way plain and usher it in I will not here compare them For
they are all three Beatitudes Circumincidunt mutuò they are involved one within another and such a connexion and kind of consanguinity there is betwixt them that one partakes of the denomination of the other Poverty is meek and Meekness is poor he that mourns is meek and he that is meek is ready to mourn As the Philosopher said of the Will that it was either appetitus intellectivus or intellectus appetitivus either Appetite with Understanding or Understanding with Appetite But yet without the least detraction from the former we may commend Meekness as the virtue which when our Saviour teacheth he maketh himself the example He indeed is Schola virtutum a Scool and Academy of virtue and every action of his was a Sermon That he was poor it is plain For he had not so much as the Foxes had a hole to hide his head His Grief we may see run down his cheeks when he weepeth over Ierusalem But when he commends Meekness he doth it by the best example Himself He stands up and placeth himself before our eyes and bids us look on him All the virtues which make a Christian we must learn from Christ but there is never an express Discite à me for I am meek and you shall find rest to your souls And indeed Meekness as it is a most necessary virtue for a Christian so is most hard to learn It is a hard matter to quench Anger and to restrain all Desire of Revenge Plato tells us that Anger is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not easily subdued almost invincible and Aristotle that it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a vehement and violent passion and that it is a far easier thing to be strong against the allurements of pleasure then to prevail against the heat and force of Wrath. I may make a covenant with my eyes and shut out Lust I may put a knife to my Throat and so keep off Intemperance I may sell all that I have and give to the poor I may mourn like a Dove and chatter like a Crane but to repress Anger to take off all Desire of revenge not to hurt an enemy to love an enemy to do good to an enemy is that which our Saviour here commends and the hardest Task of a Christian Therefore St. Chrysostom is plain that God doth not look so graciously upon Fasting and Mourning no not upon Virginity and contempt of the World as upon this vertue of Meekness which so sweetly composeth the Mind and makes one man a God unto another by covering his sins bearing his burden and condemning and burying his malice in patience and forgiveness We see here in my Text it stands in meer conjunction with Blessedness and hath the promise both of this life and also of that which is to come Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth Our method now shall be First to shew you 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 very briefly what this virtue is which bears so goodly an inscription and that in respect 1. Of the Nature of it 2. Of the Subject of it in whom it is and of whom it is required 3. Of the Object on whom it is to be shew'd and exercised And when we have briefly laid before you this virtue in its full extent we shall in the next place more easily perswade you that it is a Virtue most proper most necessary for a Christian without which he cannot live nor move nor have a being And this will make way for that which sweetneth and gives a relish to all these the Reason which our Saviour here gives why the Meek are blessed For they shall inherit the earth To shew you what Meekness is we must distinguish it from that behaviour which hath nothing of it but a bare and naked representation and doth then most deceive us when it is most like it The Father will tell us that Virtues and Vices are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 meer borderers one upon another and the Stoick that Philosophie is so sacred and venerable a thing ut siquid illi simile est ipso mendacio placeat that its very counterfeit doth please us He that retireth from the world and betaketh himself to vacancy and idleness is soon taken for a great Philosopher Craft goes for Wisdom Silence and Reservedness for Policy and as St. Bernard tells us Diabolus suos habet martyres that the Devil hath his martyrs so saith St. Augustine Diabolus habet suos mansuetos the Devil also hath his meek ones as well as Christ Look upon the common deportment of men and you would think that Meekness were no stranger upon earth but a virtue common to the children of men You may see it floating on the tongue bowing the body dressing the countenance with a smile falling down at your very feet excusing faults undervaluing injuries making crimes errors and errors virtues by interpretation Every man almost is mansuetus quasi ad manum suetus as Festus gives the Etymon as mild and gentle as if he were brought up to hand Nothing more common in the world nothing more deceives us Experience hath taught us that Anger when it is loud and sudden breaths it self out like the wind whilst it strives to overthrow and therefore we have learnt with the Tyrant in Tacitus Velare odium fallacibus blanditiis to hide our anger in a complement to speak quietly to our enemy that we may smite to the heart to kiss him that we may betray him We rake up our revengeful thoughts as we do fire under the ashes ut non compareat nisi cùm adurat that it may be felt sooner then seen and burn and consume our enemy on the sudden The greatest mischief we do is cum praefatione clementiae with a preface of mildness and with a friendly address I love you is the word which being inerpreted is I will destroy you Meekness shall we call this We may as well call the Devil meek qui arridet ut saeviat blanditur ut fallat who smiles that he may rage and flatters that he may deceive and never biteth more deadly then when he fawns But yet this is Meekness in the worlds account which goes for no more with us then a fair spoken man meek Joab and meek Absalom and meek Judas courteous Divels which gain the applause of men even then when they deceive them nor doth Meekness shew it self in the full perfection of beauty otherwise then in a smile a cringe a kiss a complement when that smile may be a snare that cringe a stab that complement a lye and that kiss treason For experience hath proved that to be true which St. Augustine hath taught us Potest odium blandiri charitas saevire Charity may come with a rod and Malice turn Parasite the one to better us the other to deceive us There is oyl in the reproof of a friend but there is wormwood and bitterness and poison in the oyl of an enemy Now we cannot deny but these may
be the outward expressions of Christian Meekness which is not lockt up and imprisoned in the heart but manifests its self in the outward gesture for certainly he is no meek man whose tongue is either a rasour or a sword but yet Revenge and Rancor of heart may borrow these expressions may make its approaches in a pleasing posture and may break an enemies head with oyl And indeed Revenge is never more bloudy then when it speaks in a still voice and the dialect of Love Nemo hostilius vulnerat quà m qui amabili manu no wound more deadly then that which is given with a friendly hand For he strikes home and without fear who is not feared when he strikes That we may therefore take this old Devil off the stage which makes such desolation in the shape of an Angel of light we will set before you the common provocations of Anger in repressing of which our Meekness especially consists The Philosopher in his Rhetoricks l. 2. c. 2. hath furnisht us with three The first is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 contempt of our persons which is a sharp provocation And he is undoubtedly a great Proficient in the School of Meekness who hath learnt to be contemned Therefore David makes it his Prayer Remove from me reproach and contempt Such a temptation he lookt upon with fear and trembling The second is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an incommodation or despiteful usage Which frequently affronts us men being many times of that vile disposition as to delight in mischief and to look upon it as a purchase though they reap no other fruit then the bare doing of it The last is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is injury with grief and loss and disgrace Our Saviour here points out to it in this Chapter when he tells us of a Blow on the cheek of Taking our coat of Violence And the second he mentions in express terms v. 44. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 pray for them who despitefully use you Now he that hath learnt to be contemned he that can drink down injuries and digest them he that is so spiritually poysed and ballasted that no tempest no wind of the unrighteous can shake him he that is as ready to forgive as wicked persons are to wrong him he that so absteins from offense as if he pardon'd no man and yet so pardon'd others as if himself were an offender may challenge a title to this Beatitude and to the inheritance of the earth And now further to display the beauty of this Virtue we will proceed to shew you the extent of it The Philosophers may seem to have too narrowly confined it If therefore we will behold Meekness in its full proportion we must look for it not at Athens but Jerusalem not in the Philosophers Schools but in porticu Solomonis in the house of Wisdome in the Gospel of Christ Reckon up all the Precepts which Philosophy hath given us all the examples which have been shewn and though we shall find enough to shame us Christians yet we shall not find that degree of Meekness which is required of Christians We read in Tully that Justice requires that we endammage none nisi lacessiti injuriâ till we are provok't by some injury And Lactantius well censureth it Simplicem verà mque sententiam duorum verborum adjectione corripit he spoiled a good sentence by the addition of two words lacessiti injuriâ provokt by injury For a Christian hurts no man though he be provokt Seneca speaks more like a Christian Magni animi est omnium veniam dare nullius petere It proceeds from a great and well-subacted mind to pardon all injuries but to walk in that simplicity that it needs ask pardon of none But yet this doth not fully express a Christian Who doth not only pardon injuries but in a manner reward them It is a great commendation which Tully gives Caesar that he forgot nothing but injuries nor ever hurt an enemy nisi in agris stantem but fighting in the field He was one of the stoutest and greatest Champions of the world He stood the shock of fifty set battles besides all sieges and outrodes He took a thousand Cities and walled Towns He over-run three hundred several Countries And in his Wars were slain well-near twelve hundred thousand men besides all those which dyed in the Civil Warrs And yet he protested of himself and that most truly that he never drew bloud but in the field Here is indeed a pattern of Meekness and such a pattern that most Christians are unwilling to take out yet this doth not reach home Novam certè mansuetudinem docet Christus Certainly Christ hath drawn out Meekness in other colours and except our Meekness exceed the Heathens we shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Will you see the full extent of Meekness It is hard to shew it For as I find it in the Fathers who walkt by the light of Scripture it is made almost boundless Not to be angry To forgive Not to revenge these yet do not reach it To suffer with patience and a quiet mind the greatest injuries this is not home To forgive seventy times seven times this number is yet short to teach our Meekness to keep time with the Malice and Injustice of men It must yet press further and manifest it self not only in suffering but in doing Dost thou know saith St. Chrysostom that thy brother intends particular mischief against thee that he would embrue his hand in thy bloud 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yet kiss that hand For the Lord did not refuse to kiss that mouth which made the bargain for his bloud Hath he robbed thee of all thy goods Be not angry but if by chance any thing be left give it willingly to him who hath taken away all Nay saith Basil if thine enemy hunger though thou hast but one loaf to sustein thy self yet give it him and rely upon Gods Providence to feed thee You will say now perhaps that I have stretched it too far even beyond its line and compass and as Pythagoras instructed his Scholars to do where there was burthen enough already laid on more If I have yet I have done it magnis autoribus and have no less then St. Chrysostom and St. Basil for my defence Indeed Meekness cannot be too far extended where with evil handling it hath been shrunk up almost to nothing What kiss his hand Nay off with his head Feed our enemy with bread Nay strike a dagger into his throat This goes for current Doctrine not in the Camp alone amongst barbarous Souldiers but in the habitations of peace amongst Christians As for true Meekness we find it in paginis non in operibus in our looks perhaps but not the least syllable or character of it in our manners and deportment I have often wondred that Christians should make so little esteem of this Virtue which is theirs alone and especially directed unto them The very Pagans by the light of
Nature saw the horror of revenge and abhorr'd it ferus est legúmque videtur Vindictam praestare sibi could Claudian say And the Jew though many things were by way of indulgence permitted him for the hardness of his heart yet renounced it utterly You may hear the Jews of Alexandria speak it plainly in Philo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lord we delight not to take revenge upon an enemy Only the Christian who hath received this Precept in that latitude in which neither Nature nor the Law did ever tender it hath more estranged himself from it then either Jew or Pagan no heathen story ever finding out a parallel to the malice of a Christian I speak this to our shame But the Philosopher will tell us Corruptio optimi est pessima The most pure complexions are most noisome when they putrifie and of all men a wicked Christian is the worst And indeed something there is in our very Religion which the Devil makes use of to deceive us The Gospel is news of Peace and speaks nothing but forgiveness and salvation Our Saviour is a meek Saviour we are sure and because he is willing to pardon us when we fall down before him we nourish a false hope that he will pardon us our malice also and forgive us our debts though we take our brother by the throat Besides Revenge may be numbred amongst those sins which go down glibly and with delight because no humane Law doth punish it nay in some case doth seem to countenance it Adultery and Drunkenness and suck like sins carry shame in their very foreheads and when they are committed strike the Soul with some regret and sorrow which many times begets a repentance not to be repented of but Ambition and Revenge which is commonly a handmaid to Ambition these lurk secretly in our heart and are commonly in men of great wisdom and spirit who will not have their credit poured out upon the ground as water but preserve it choicely as a precious ointment They carry commonly content and honors and riches with them for their reward And therefore we conceive that these Precepts of Meekness and Forgiveness are spoken rather cohortatoriè quà m verè rather by way of exhortation then strictly exacting that we should perform them And now though the meek be blessed yet we count it a kind of happiness that we are not meek and for the inheritance of the earth we can never purchase it we think with so sheepish a disposition And therefore what morosity do we put on How punctual are we in our behaviour that we be not wanting to our selves where the Law can help us We love the Proverb well that tells us that he that makes himself a Sheep the Wolf will eat him For Meekness and Forgiveness you shall hear of it perhaps in our last Will and Testament We refer that to our Death-bed when indeed we should have nothing else to do but to dye And if we give up our last gasp meekly we are meek enough And now tell me Beloved when Meekness is thus contracted nay lost in our manners can we blame these holy men who have enlarg'd the curtains of her habitation and required more at the hands of a Christian then perhaps ever any Christian attained to There is no danger here of excess no there is no fear but that in this we will come short Meliùs ultrà quà m citra stant mores I cannot do too much I may too little And as Quintilian speaks where he gives the rules of a perfect Oratour omnia sunt praecipienda ut plura fiant We command all to be done that we may do the most For suppose we observed our Saviours Precepts literally Suppose I gave him my cloak that took away my coat and went two miles with him that compell'd me to go one Suppose I kist the hand that strook me and made my enemy the sole inheritor of all my estate what inconvenience would follow hence or what danger could it bring unto my soul Nay how like would this make me to the Protomartyr St. Stephen who pray'd for his enemies and to the great Martyr as the Fathers call him Christ himself who died for his enemies The world perhaps might put upon me a fools coat but what need I fear this imputation when Angels clap their hands and applaud my Meekness and God himself hath promised a robe of Glory That folly is my glory which makes me wise unto salvation Beloved the Doctrines which teach Perfection are not dangerous nor can they be too often urged in this dull and heavy age which hath so long talkt of Imperfection that Imperfection is almost become a duty We must be no better then we are we are Pelagians and proud if we conceive any hope of it As if our Saviour when he commands us to be perfect did speak more than he meant intending only this that we should be imperfect Be not deceived God requires at our hands Perfection and the fulfilling of his Law But indeed it is one thing what God requires and another what he will accept He will accept of our endeavours if they be serious and if we strive forward to perfection But if our endeavours grow feeble and faint and fail upon conceit of I know not what weakness he will not accept them If we think that any degree of Meekness is enough we have forfeited our Blessedness and the Promise is made of none effect The Oratour in his Institutions speaking of men that were famous for their strength of memory of Themistocles who learnt the Persian tongue in one year of Mithrydates who spake as many several Languages as he govern'd Nations which were no fewer then two and twenty of Cyrus who could call his Souldiers by name tells us the truth of this was uncertain habenda tamen fides est vel in hoc ut qui crediderit speret Yet saith he every man that desires to improve his memory by industry ought to believe it that believing it to be so he may hope also by practice to gain as good a memory as they Quicquid enim fieri potuit potest For whatsoever hath been once done by any man may be done again by every man The same may we apply to our present purpose Do we read of any that kissed that hand that struck them That gave their enemies bread when themselves were like to starve for hunger That gave him a Talent who had rob'd them of a Mite let us not entertain these stories as fabulous but believe that it was and should be so ut qui crediderit speret that Belief may raise our Hope and the Hope that so much may be done may make it easier for us to do the most to cool our Anger to curb our Desire of Revenge to empty our hearts of all gall and bitterness to be like unto Moses who under the Law was the meekest man upon the earth and to Christ himself who was brought as a
But besides their open and professed adversaries they found enemies amongst those who were of their own houshold What was there which could make men miserable or move their impatience which did not break in upon them every day Could Contempt They were counted the off-scouring of the world Could Violence It was counted Religion to kill them Could Hatred Accusabantur vocabula the very name of CHRISTIAN was an accusation If there were any seeds of evil in them so much fire as is in the Flint there was outward violence enough to strike it out So that a Christian may seem to be as he spake of Palladius coagulum omnium aerumnarum the very compound of all calamities and the Centre wherein all miseries meet Now it is almost natural to Misery to breath it self out in complaints as Lovers use to do to complain to the Day and the Night to the Sun and the Moon Flesh and bloud draws it self in at the very sight and approach of any thing that distasts it and when it is touched it swells and evaporateth A hard thing it is for men in disgrace not to be impatient and a common thing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for men who have struggled long with afflictions with injustice and injuries to grow fierce and revengeful and because they are contemned of all to hate all and to treasure up that wrath which if ever opportunity breath upon it will break forth and burn like fire Whence the Historian observes of Otho that he was longo exsilio efferatus grown fierce and cruel upon long exile Agrippam ignominiâ accensum that the disgrace which Agrippa received had much altered his disposition Therefore our Saviour here to prevent the like in his Disciples who but for the hope of that which is to come were of all men most miserable teacheth them a new method of Revenging injuries by forgiving them of Subduing misery by enduring it of Conquering an enemy by falling down at his feet to take up no other buckler then Meekness against the worst of those evils which he saw would befall them And thus he provided that though the Religion which he did set up might displease yet those whom he sent forth to publish it should offend no man and save themselves as it were by the fire of Persecution This is the Policy which Christ hath established in his Church and by which he establisheth the pillars of it For Meekness in the Sepulchre the Land of Oblivion in which all injuries are buried never to rise again nor see the light when I forgive I do by Injuries as God doth by my Sins forget them cast them behind my back and blot them out that no tittle of them appear to raise an angry thought But Anger and Revenge are an irrational and treacherous remedy They take not away the evil but double it invenom and inrage it make that a Scorpion which was but a whip and that a monster which to Meekness is nothing they perpetuate and transmit it from youth to age from age to the very hour of death nay from one generation to another The sting of an Injury is Impatience and the strength of Impatience is Revenge but to forgive an injury is to swallow it up in victory I call it therefore the Wisdom and Policy of Christ though the world call it by another name and count them but fools that practise it For lay open all the Books in the world which have been written of Republicks and Government yet we find not any directions which can propagate a Government and make it everlasting But now perhaps we see a State flourish but anon it will decline and at last have its fatal period and fall to pieces But this Christian Wisdom makes the Church and every Member of it as immovable as a Rock more glorious in adversity then in peace more happy in a tempest then in a calm victorious when ready to fall and most safe when forsaken Besides the Wisdom of this world how oft doth it meet with a check how often is it defeated and in a while changeth its name and is turn'd into folly How many digg a pit and fall into it How many hath their Wit brought almost home to their intendments and then left them looking after them with anger and grief How many hath it brought to the end of their desires and ruined them there How many have built up their hopes with one hand and demolished them with the other The Devil saith Basil is the great Politician of the world but yet he is deceived with his own Sophistry and taken in his own craft and in setting hard at the Church he falls himself to the ground or if he destroy a soul he doth but add torment to himself and with his own malice enrage the fire of Hell The Jews to keep out the Romans did banish themselves and taking counsel together against Christ they put him to death at whose death the Veil of the Temple rent in twain All the imaginations of men have been either faint and feeble at first or else making haste to that which they proposed they have lost that which they so eagerly pursued and overtook nothing but what they look't upon with horror All the wisdom in the world if you put it into the balance will be found but light but this necessary wisdom this wisdom which is from above never fails but though it be sowen in dishonour it riseth again in honour and through scorn and contempt through poverty and death it self it makes its way to that effect which it is as powerful to produce as it is weak in shew Oh that we were wise so wise as to rely on the wisdom of God which through uncouth and desolate paths through the wilderness through a sea of bloud will safely waft us over to the heaven where we would be and not trust to our own sensual vain and uncertain providence which though the way be smooth and pleasant yet reaps nothing but bitterness in the end which carries us on in a giddy staggering pleasing displeasing course but evermore into the pit which makes our feet like Hinds feet lifts us up on the wings of Hope and at last knocks out our brains against the mark we aimed at which brings us to the honey we long for and smothers us in the Hive Number up all the fatal miscarriages of the Sons of men and you shall find they were all from this and this alone That they took upon them to be wiser then God If we were content our wayes should be as Gods wayes and would walk in those wayes which he hath appointed and steer our course by his Compass we should then look upon Revenge as a fury and cleave to Meekness as our Angel-keeper we should soon see the weakness and folly of the one and the victories and trophies of the other we should find the one the most noxious thing in the world and the other most necessary For in
her Antichrist whilst our selves are drunk with the bloud of our brethren But Dii talem terris avertite pestem God banish from the earth this kind of Popery And let us be able to make that glorious profession which the Christians did to the Heathens in the times of Nazianzene QUAM LIBERTATEM VOBIS ERIPUIMUS When our Emperour was a Christian and the Church had peace and flourish'd what one part of your liberty did we deprive you of Did we spoil you of your wealth or cast you into prison Did we raise up the people to rage against you Did we call for the sword of the Magistrate and invite the secular Power to destroy you Did we degrade you from your honours or remove you from your offices Did we displace your Praetors They are the Fathers own words What did you hear from us but hearty wishes earnest exhortations and vehement prayers for your salvation So far were we from shedding your bloud that we were ready to powre out our own for your souls This was all our violence and indeed you esteem'd it so You imputed to us even our very meekness as a crime and counted our patience to be violence This we can but this you cannot say for your selves You by most exquisite torments would force us to a false Religion who by our very Religion are forbid to use any violence to draw you to a true one It is true the Kingdom of Heaven cannot be taken but by violence but it is by violence upon our selves upon our Anger to bridle it upon our fleshly Lusts to controll them upon our unruly Affections to moderate them upon the Old man to crucifie him We make our addresses unto you in the spirit of meekness we beseech you to be reconciled unto Christ but we were never taught to present our Religion to you on the point of the sword O that we could make this glorious profession This is the Gospel-way the only way to open the Gates of Heaven to our selves and others For we wrestle not saith St. Paul against flesh and bloud against the Neros and Nabals of the earth against the Jews who solemnly curse us three times a day saith St. Hierome against the Turk who delights in our bloud against the Papists who make it a sport to anathematize us nor against those who hate them with a perfect hatred and are worse then they not against the Slanderer whose tongue is a rasour nor against the Oppressour who hath the teeth of a Lion nor against the Detractour whose whisper is as the sting of a Scorpion and hurts unseen but we fight against Principalities and Powers and the Rulers of the darkness of this world These are a Christian mans enemies and with these he solemnly wageth war And his weapons are answerable the Breastplate of Righteousness the Shield of Faith the Helmet of Salvation and the Sword of the Spirit which though they are mighty to pull down strong holds yet will they not touch an enemy that appears in the shape of a man The Breast-plate of Righteousness will not defend me from them that shoot their arrows in private The Shield of Faith though it quench the fiery darts of Satan yet will not quench that fire destroy that Tongue which is a world of iniquities And the Sword of the Spirit cannot beat back the malice of an inraged enemy or smite down those that hate us But if we believe and trust to this part of providence which the Wisdom of the Father hath taught us we shall see greater things then these We shall find our selves disarm'd with never a hand to strike with a tongue that cannot curse with weapons which may resist a Devil but cannot hurt a man which will cast down a sin but not an enemy not able to move when the heathen rage and when the enemy drives towards us like Jehu furiously making the greatest preparation against our own Impatience fighting against our Anger when we will not hold up a hand against those that hate us for the Truths sake Rom. 8. 36 37 killed all the day long and appointed as sheep for the slaughter yet in all these things more then conquerors These are the riches of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria These are the victories and trophees of a Christian a ploughed back a face spit upon hands bound and feet in fetters and a heart melting and bleeding for them that do it and powring forth supplications and prayers for them the only coals he heapeth upon their heads And thus the Christian doth seculi fluctus calcare praeeunte Christo he treads upon the proud waves of this world Christ going before him he walks in Christ's steps he wadeth not in the bloud of his enemies but in his own to that inheritance which is laid up for him He learneth of Christ who is meek and lowly and so heals every malidy binds up every wound wipeth off all disgrace triumphs over all the evil in the world and so finds that rest unto his soul which our Pride our Animosities our Rage can never purchase us To conclude Though Meekness do not open the Gates of Heaven yet it makes our admittance more easie Though it be not sufficient to save us yet it is a fair means to make us wise unto salvation Though it do not merit remission of sins yet it makes us like to our Father which is in Heaven And at the great day of retribution this also which we have done shall be mentioned and our Father shall say unto us Well done true and faithful servants You have bowed down your backs to the smiter you have loved your enemies and prayed for your persecutors behold I have loosed you and forgiven you all your debt enter into your Masters joy To which He bring us who hath dearly bought us with his bloud JESUS CHRIST the Righteous The Fifth SERMON PART I. EPHES. V. 1. Be ye therefore followers of God as dear children THE words are plain and need not the gloss of any learned Interpreter That God is our Father and we his children That as children we must be followers of him in those wayes which lead us to him There is no man so much a child in understanding but will understand this without a Philip without any man to help or guide him But yet Beloved many times the plainest places of Scripture require our pains and labour as much as the obscurest and are far more useful and necessary then high and deep speculations as we find a stone out of the Quarry more fit to build a house with then a Diamond These words which I have read as plain as they are are as a rich Mine which being well searcht into will yield abundance of ore even the rich treasury of that wisdom which will make us wise unto salvation If we desire Wealth the earth is the Lords and all that therein is if Strength he is the Lord of hosts if Wisdom He created her and
but apply it to our present occasion For enemies God hath who are gather'd together and our prayer is they may be scattered enemies shall hate him and defie him to his face and these who should be glad to see to fly from his face Our hope is they are but smoke and may be driven away but wax in appearance a hard and solid body strongly united and compact together by the devils art but yet as wax will melt before the fire of his wrath and when it shall please God to arise shall perish at the presence of God You may if you please take the words either as a Prayer or as a Prophesy as a Prayer that they may or as a Prophesy that they shall be scatter'd Or you may read it SURGENTE DOMINO As soon as the Lord shall arise his enemies shall be scatter'd and so make it a Theological axiome and so it is a proposition aeternae veritatis everlastingly true true in the first age of the world and true in the last age of the world and will be true to the worlds end We may make it our prayer that they may be destroyed and we may prophesy that they shall be destroyed Summa votorum est non ex incerto poscentis sed ex cognitione scientiâque sperantis saith Hilary It is a prayer not proceeding from a doubting and wavering heart as if God did at sometimes deliver his Church and at others fail and leave her to the will of her enemies but grounded upon certain knowledge and infallible assurance that he will arise and not keep silence and avenge himself of his enemy For there is a kind of presage and prophesy in Prayer If we pray as we should he hath promised to grant our request Which is a fairer assurance than any Prophet can give us Let God arise and God will arise is but the difference of a Tense and the Hebrews commonly use the one for the other Whoever compiled this Psalm most plain it is that he borrowed it from Moses who when the Ark set forward used this very form Rise up O Lord and let thine enemies be scatter'd and let them that hate thee fly before thee and when it rested Return O Lord to the many Thousands of Israel Now Numb 10 35. 36. the occasion of this Psalm is diversly given The Jews refer it to the overthrow of the army of Senacherib when the Angel of the Lord smote in one night a hundred fourscore and five thousand of the Assyrians Others to Davids victories over his neighbouring enemies the Ammonites Moabites Syrians and Idumaeans Others to the pomp and triumph in 2 Kings 19. 35. which the Ark was removed by David from Kiniathaarim to the house of Obed-Edom and from thence to Sion its resting-place The Fathers most of them apply it unto Christ who most gloriously triumphed over the Devil and the powers of this world and shewed them openly who led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men as S. Paul himself borroweth the words out of this Psalm Take the Cliff how you please the Notes will follow and we Eph. 4. 8. may take them up No Assyrian so cruel no Rabshakeh so loud no Ammonite no Moabite no Philistine so bloudy as a Jesuite or a Jesuited Papist Take in the Devil himself and then you have a parallel the wicked one indeed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Basil terms him the wonderfull mischief who like the Tyrant in the Story if all men in the world had but one neck would strike it off at a blow as his instruments at this day would ruine three Kingdoms by shaking of one Or if you please suppose now you saw the children of Israel moving their tents and the Ark which was the pledge and testimony of Gods presence on the Levites shoulders and the same thought almost will apply it to the Church where we may be sure God is as present as he was in the Ark. Indeed wicked persons as wicked as the Amalekites have a long time endeavoured and do now strive to throw it down from the shoulders of those that bear it and cannot endure to hear that God should be worshipped in spirit and truth But no Amalekite no Ammonite no Jebusite no Philistine did overthrow the one no Jesuite no Devil shall prevail against the other but the Ark shall be brought to its resting-place and the Church which is the pillar of truth shall be upheld by the Truth and after many removals after many persecutions after many oppositions though the Devil rage and wicked men take counsel together shall be brought in triumph to its resting place and appear before God in Sion God will never fail his Church Though his enemies gather themselves together they shall be scatter'd though they fight against him with hatred and malice they shall fly before him They are but smoke and they shall vanish they are but wax and they shall melt away Upon an Exsurgit follows a dissipabuntur If God arise all the plots and machinations of his enemies shall be but as smoke You may pray for it you may conclude upon it Let God arise and let his enemies be scatter'd or God will arise and his enemies shall be scatter'd they also that hate him shall fly before him c. In which Prayer or Prophesy or Conclusion you may as in a glass behold the providence of God over his people and the destiny and fatal destruction of wicked men Or you may conceive God sitting in heaven and looking down upon the children of men and laughing to scorn all the designs of his enemies his Exsurgat his Rising as a tempest to scatter them and as a fire to melt them And these two Exsurgat and Dissipabuntur the Rising of God and the Destruction of his enemies divide the Text and present before our eyes two parties or sides as it were in main opposition Now though the Exsurgat be before the Dissipabuntur God's Rising before the Scattering yet there must be some persons to rowse God up and awake him before he will rise to destroy We will therefore as the very order of nature requir'd consider first the persons which are noted out unto us by three several appellations as by so many marks and brands in their forehead They are 1. enemies 2. haters of God 3. wicked men But God Rising in this manner is more especially against the Fact than the Person and against the Person but for the Fact We must therefore search and enquire after that and we find it wrapt up and secretly lurking in the Dissipabuntur in their punishment For Scattering supposeth a gathering together as Corruption doth Generation That then which moved God to rise was this His enemies they that hated him the wicked were gathered together and consulted against God and his Church As we see it this day and seeing it are here meet together to fall down before God in all humility that he may arise and scatter them
will be as ready to blaspheme God nay in slandring his brother he doth blaspheme his Father which is in Heaven He that taketh his brother by the throat rather then his humour should be crossed if God were within reach would pluck him out of heaven And thus we grind him in our Oppression we rob him by our Sacriledge we wound him by our Cruelty we pollute him with our Lust If he make Laws we make it our strength to break them If he raise one to the pinnacle of state and leave us in the dust we quarrel at his Justice If he establish Government we desire change And though he build his Church and found it upon himself yet we are ready with axes and hammers and all the power we have to demolish it When he hath a controversy with us we hold a controversy with him and nothing pleaseth us but the work of our own hands Men never fight against God till the thunderbolt is in his hand ready to fall on them And now we may descry those peculiar Enemies and Haters of God whom the Prophet here prays against even those who are enemies to the Truth and the peace of the Church I told you that this prayer was uttered by Moses at the removing of the Ark. When the Ark was lifted up on the Levites shoulders the voice and acclamamation was EXSURGAT DOMINUS Let the Lord arise And therefore we may observe that Moses Num. 10. and David did call the very Ark it self God not that they were so idolatrous as to make a wooden God but that they knew the Ark to be the surest testimony of Gods presence here on earth So that God's enemies are those who are enemies to the Ark to the Church of God and to the peace of the Church And let men flatter themselves as they please with this or that fair pretence they shall certainly learn this lesson in the end That they may as well fight against God himself as against the Church That neither they nor the gates of Hell can prevail against it To draw this yet closer to our purpose the Ark was a type of the Church nay by the Apostles quotation of this Psalm the words though they are verified in both yet are more applyable to the Church then the Ark. And though we do not call the Church God yet we shall find that God is married unto her that he is ready to hide her under his wing that he is jealous of the least touch the least breath that comes toward her to hurt her that he that toucheth her toucheth the apple of his eye When the Church complains to God of her enemies God also complains as if he himself suffered persecution When Saul breathed forth threatnings and slaughters against the Disciples of the Lord he presently hears a voice Saul Saul why persecutest thou me And that voice was the voice of God which struck him to the ground When Acts 9. and Acts 7. 51. St. Stephen tells the stiff-necked Jews that they alwayes resisted the Holy Ghost he presently in the next verse gives the reason Which of the Prophets have not your fathers persecuted So that to persecute the Prophets that blessed Protomartyr may make the Commentary is to resist 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to fall cross with the Holy Ghost with God himself Touch not mine anointed Psal 105. 19. saith God and do my Prophets no harm Touch them not for they are mine And whatsoever you do unto one of them is done unto me is true in the bad sense as well as in the good For certainly God cannot be toucht any other way Our Blasphemys our Uncleanness or Rebellions though they fight against him yet touch him not but when wicked men conspire against the Truth and the professors of it when their Swords are drawn not onely to touch but to strike them through then up God riseth and bestirs himself as if he were in danger to be toucht and hurt We know all that the Devil worketh against mankind is done out of malice to God himself Prius votum Daemonis fuit Deum esse alterum nè Deus esset His first attempt was to be God his second that there should be no God at all to destroy that Majesty which he could not atchieve Which since it is impossible for him to compass all his devises and machinations are nullum sinere ex portione Dei esse as the Father speaks to rob God of his inheritance to strike at his heart whose knee bows unto him to persecute them that sincerely worship him and to make all men like unto himself enemies to God To this end he sets upon the Ark he levels his forces against the Church of Christ he sends forth his emissaries his instruments his Apostles as Synesius calls them to undermine it without and raises mutinies within Not a heresie but he hammers it not a schisme but he raiseth it not a sword but he draws it not a rebellion but he beats up the drum INIMICI EJUS Gods enemies are the Devil and his complices who say of Jerusalem the place of his rest and delight down with it down with it even to the very Psal 137 7. ground We know now where to rank his disciples our enemies this day who have already shaken the pillars of one Kingdom and if God rise not up will ruine all Whose religion is rebellion and whose faith is faction whom nothing can quiet but a Desunt vires a want of strength Poor souls they are willing to suffer for the holy cause they are obedient to Government loyal to their Prince true to their Country that is They are very willing to suffer any thing when they can do nothing They will not strike a stroke not they not indeed when Authority is too strong for them and hath bound them hand and foot But if some wished opportunity unshackle them if these cords fall from them and they are once loose then these dead men arise and stand up upon their feet and make up an exceeding great army They were before as Ezekiels dry Bones very dry but when some Ezek. 37. 2. fair opportunity as a gale of wind hath breathed upon them behold they live Live I and come to the field and fight against that Authority under which they lay before as quietly as if they had been dead And where can we rank these but amongst the enemies of God They saw the Ark in its resting place the Church reformed and flourishing setled and establisht by the religious care of three glorious Princes They beheld their holy Father the Pope every day more and more in disgrace amongst us and I am half perswaded had it not been for the turbulent and irregular zeal of some few amongst us who think they never love Religion till they toy and play the wantons with it his Honour had ere this lain in the dust For when were the skirts of that Church more discover'd when
was her shame more laid open to the world by many amongst us who for their great pains have no better reward then to be called his Shavelings This they saw and their heart waxt hot within them and at last this fire kindled which is now ready to consume us Before they whisper'd in secret now they speak it on the house-top before they husht up their malice in silence now they noise it out by the drum Enemies to the Ark enemies to the Church enemies to Government and Order enemies to Peace which particulars make up this entire sum INIMICI DEI enemies to God But now what if we see RELIGIONIS ERGO written upon their designs and that this Rebellion was raised and is upheld for the cause of God and Religion shall we then call them Gods enemies who fight his battels who venture their lives for the common cause for Christs Vicar for Religion for the Church for God himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All they intend is good Nihil malè sed rem sacram facio So said Cillicon I do no evil I do but sacrifice when he betrayed a City Let us rise up in arms let us cut the heretiques throats let us destroy them that they be no more a Nation It is no harm at all but an acceptable sacrifice to God Sed quid verba audio cùm facta videam what are words when we feel the smart of their blows All this will not change their title nor blot their names out of the Devils Kalender out of the number of those that hate God For a man may be an enemy to God and yet do some things for Gods sake And it is too common a thing in the world sub religionis titulo evertere religionem to cry up Religion when we beat it down The Father well said Many good intentions are burning in Hell Multa non illicita vitiat animus It is true indeed The mind and intention may make a lawfull action evil but it cannot make an evil action good Propose what end you please set up Religion the Church and God himself yet Treason and Rebellion are sins which strike at his Majesty No enemies to those who stroke us with one hand and strike us with the other who dig down the foundation and then paint the walls We may observe when Reason and Scripture fail them they bring in the Church at a dead lift and when they are put to silence by the evidence of the Truth then they urge the Authority of the Church and make this word to be like Anaxagoras his Mâ—ne in Aristotle to answer all Arguments The Church is their scarre-sun by which they fright poor silly souls from their faith The Church must make good Purgatory Transubstantiation Invocation of Saints c. And indeed this is the best and worst Argument they have And as they make it an Argument for their grossest errors so they have learnt to make it an excuse for Treason for Rebellion for Murder And to the Church they are enemies because they love the Church Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum Such heart and life and bloud doth the fair pretence of the Church and Religion put into wicked men so desperately do they fight against God under his own colours No sin I will not say venial but meritorious drawn on for the advantage of the Catholick cause But for all these glorious pretences enemies they are and Haters of God and to bring in the third appellation wicked persons not sinners of an ordinary rank but gyant-like sinners who fight against God with a high hand Now there is a great difference saith Hilary inter impium peccatorem betwen a Sinner and a Wicked man For every wicked man is a sinner but every sinner is not a wicked man Et carent impietate qui non carent crimine and they may be guilty of sin who are not guilty of Impiety The justest man alive falls seven times a day but this fall is not a rising against God not contumelious to his Majesty But the wicked make sin their trade nay their Religion Deum non ex Dei ipsius professione sed ex arbitrij sui voluntate metiuntur saith the same Father They measure God not by those lines by which he is pleased to manifest himself but by their own perverse will They entitle his Wisdom to their fraud his Justice to their rebellion his Truth to their treason He could not have given us a better mark and character of these men What pretend they the Holy cause the Honour of God the Liberty of Conscience the promoting of Religion and these pretences make the fact fouler and their rebellion more abominable because they thwart the plain definitions and the evident commands of God and break his Law under colour of doing his will Nec minoris est impietatis Deum fingere quam negare It is as great impiety and wickedness to frame a God unto our selves as to deny him to feign a God who will applaud sin countenance murder reward rebellion and crown treason So that to conclude this these men may well bear all these titles of Enemies of Haters of God of wicked persons If there were ever any such in the world these are they But to drive it yet a little more home There is not the like danger of enemies when they are sever'd and asunder as when they are collected as it were into one mass and body not so much danger in a rout as in a well-drawn army Vis unita fortior Let them keep at distance one from another and their malice will not reach to the hurt of any but themselves but being gathered and knit together in one band their malice is strong to do mischief to others The rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against Psal â— his anointed Paquine renders it fundati sunt were founded Before they were but as pieces scatter'd here and there but being gather'd gather'd together they have a foundation to build on While the vapours are here and there dispersed upon the earth they present no appearance of evil but when they are drawn up into the ayr and are compact they become a Comet and are ominous and portend shipwracks and seditions and the ruine of Kings and Common-wealths And such a Comet hangs over us at this day in which we see many thousands are drawn together not by virtue of the stars or any kindly heat from heaven but by an irregular zeal and a false perswasion that they can do God no better service than to destroy us Before they were gathered together in mind and resolution but that was but as the gathering together of a heap of stones in a field now they are knit together as in a building And now we may cry out with the Prophet Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Sion for the time to have Psal 102. 13. mercy upon her yea the appointed time is come When God's enemies when they
who hate him when the wicked are gathered together then is the time for God to arise And so I pass from their part which is to gather themselves to God's which is to arise and scatter them EXSURGAT DEUS Let God arise By this Rising of God we may perhaps be induced to conceive that God doth sometimes sit down and sleep and not regard us that he is willing his people should suffer and that his enemies should wash their feet in their bloud that he lets loose the raines to the wicked too long and maketh not that haste which he promiseth to help the oppressed But this were to make him like the heathen Gods who did meridiari sleep at noon Which was the reason the Gentiles never enter'd their Temples at that hour of the day for fear of waking them No He that keepeth Israel doth neither slumber nor sleep but is awake at all times and hours and moments unto all the world And the reason is manifest Non habet in se diversitatem sui quicquid est simplex saith Novatian well God is a most pure and uncompounded Essence and therefore not capable of any diversity in himself not awake to day and asleep to morrow not fitting now and rising anon but everlastingly present to all the world From him no cloud or darkness can shadow us no secret grot or cave hide us He hath 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Greek Father speaks an eye which cannot sleep He seeth all things ad nudum lucidum naked and plain even when they are vailed over with the darkest night Why then is God said to arise St. Hilary gives the reason Per corporalem significationem spiritualis instruitur We must upon this corporal and sensible expression build up a Spiritual sense and not so much consider God as our selves He doth neither sleep nor arise nor forget nor remember nor depart nor draw near but secundum nostrorum meritorum differentiam but fits himself to the different quality of our works When our enemies consult together against us and are ready to prevail then to us he is asleep When he breaks them to pieces like a potters vessel then he is risen When we offend him he is absent and when we repent and fulfill his will he is present with us Whilst we are his servants and obey him his friends and love him nemo officiosior Deo none more officious and more active to help us than God but when we dissemble with him and call him Father but honour him not non est praevaricator suae perspicaciae Though his forbearance makes us believe he sees us not yet he is no doubter and prevaricator nor will he betray his omniscience His sleep is his patience which he shews both toward the righteous and the wicked For God is not slack in rising as some count slackness not slack to the wicked for vengeance hangs over their head not slack to the righteous for salvation is at hand To the one he is as asleep to heap coals of fire upon his head to leave him without excuse to the other he seems not to be risen that being exercised under the cross they may awake him and long and cry for deliverance Hoc est paululum unde pendet aeternitas On this little space of his seeming rest depend eternity of punishment to the one and eternity of peace to the other God hath these pauses and intervals in all his proceedings in his punishments and in his deliverances and he useth a kind of deliberation and works as it were by the rule When God would build up Jerusalem he promiseth that a line should be stretched forth upon her Zech. 1. 16. And when he would destroy the Idumaeans he threatens Extendetur super eam mensura that he would stretch out upon it the line of confusion When he Isa 34. 11. will destroy and when he will build he stretcheth out a line Which is a metaphor taken from Building And it shews that he doth not suddenly lift up his hand to strike nor stretch it forth to help but applys the lines prepareth his instruments works by line and measure and takes as much leasure time in destroying as artificers do in building he waits and expects that his Patience may make way for his Justice on the one and magnifie his Mercy and Goodness on the other How long did the Lord endure the old world even an hundred and twenty years while the Ark was a preparing The Amorites till their wickedness was full How long did ne bear with his own people first the ten Tribes then the other two even till there was no hope of amendment till the Prophets cried out NOAH It is desperate Now the reason of this his delay of this his not rising at that instant we expect is to make it manifest to the world that his wayes are not as our wayes Therefore many times he presents himself in a shape contrary to our expectation and doth those things which bear a resemblance of some repudiancie to his known and declared will as it were on purpose to put our Faith and Constancy to a tryal whether we will take him to be our God or no and worship him as well in his thunder as in his still voice or else to besiege and compass-in the wicked and obstinate offendors to shut them up in their own net to bury them in the pit which they have made to strike them through with their own sword and as they have trifled with his judgments so to deal with them as that they shall not easily know how or when they are led to destruction or not know it till it be too late For many times the wrath of God comes upon them as the Psalmist speaks when the meat is yet in their mouthes when they feed sweetly upon their hopes and dream of victory and triumph Thus he who promises to love and defend his children as with a shield sometimes he handles them as if he never loved them or had left off to love them or would not hear and help them and he stands as it were at a distance from them though even at this distance he is nigh to them that fear him Again though he have threatned to raine fire and brimstone upon the wicked yet many times he delays and makes as if he would not punish them nay he seems to cast a look of favour upon them delayes not the blow onely that it may fall the heavier but many times gives them those rewards which are promised to godliness fills their garners makes them mighty in power crowneth them with happiness and gives them their hearts desire but then in this great security upon the sudden when their prosperity hath befooled them when they are ready to conclude they are therefore good because they are temporally happy he falls upon them and makes that which was their triumph their ruine and now he strikes them at once for all strikes the
tabret out of their hand infatnates their counsels makes them see that they are the poorer for their riches the weaker for their power the baser for their honour and leaves them to their captain the Devil who alwayes leads in the forefront of a rebellion and then how fearfully and horribly are they consum'd and brought to utter desolation Yet a little while and the wicked Psal 37 10. shall not be Nor is this unjust with God For he doth not tell the wicked that this little while is theirs and that they may do what they please without fear of punishment But the wicked abuse this his long-suffering and indulgence sport in this little while though the end be death Which should have been looked upon as an invitation to repentance Therefore this stay yet a little while before God arise this his Patience hath its effect answerable to the disposition and temper of those on whom it is shewed a bad on the repentant and a good on the penitent sinner For as God is said in Scripture to laugh at the destruction of those who run on in their evil wayes so he may seem in a manner to mock their security with his proceedings and to use the same method in punishing which they do in offending They defer their repentance and he defers his punishment He hath them in a line and when they are run on to the end of it he pulls them on their backs It is the nature of Delay in other things to keep back and hinder proceedings which fail many times and sink to the ground in the very pause For not to do a thing seasonably is to rob our selves of the faculty and power of doing it at all But in Gods punishing of the wicked it is otherwise Gravitate supplicii moram pensat He supplies and makes up the delay in punishing with the smart of the blow when it lights His wrath like wind shut up long in the caverns of the earth at last breaks forth in a tempest His Patience makes way for his Justice Though he seem to be asleep and not to see what is done by his enemies yet at the appointed time he will not fail an inch Plures idcirco Domino non credunt quia saeculo iratum tamdiu nesciunt Many men think that God observes not what they do because he presently thunders not from heaven nor sends into the world what the Tyrant wished for in his days some strange and unheard of calamity Many men run on in their sin because God sends not a fire into their bones to make them sensible of his displeasure But de artifice non nisi artifex Ignorance of God is the cause why we judge so corruptly of his Providence and Justice Sometimes he displays it before the sun and the people in the open destruction of the wicked sometimes it works invisibly and we can no more find it out then the way of an arrow in the air or of a ship in the sea And this peradventure we may esteem a sleep but whether secretly or openly he doth at last make it evident that he hath set banks and prefixed a time which his enemies shall not pass Though they work never so secretly though they make Religion a veil to cover and mantle their designs yet he will find them out and strike them to the ground even in those Meanders and Labyrinths which they made to hide themselves in And when they are risen and think they stand strong and can never be moved in an hour when they think not on him nay in an hour when they think he hath been with them in their armies and fought their battels and been their Lord of Hosts he will arise as a man out of sleep and make his sword drunk in the bloud of his enemies We may pray for it we may prophesy it EXSURGAT DEUS c. Let God arise and his enemies shall be scatter'd they also that hate him shall flee before him And so I pass to the effect or end of Gods Arising DISSIPABUNTUR INIMICI His enemies shall be scatter'd c. And we need not doubt of event For when God ariseth there ariseth Power and Wisdom in respect of which all the strength in the world is but weakness and all the wisdom in the world but foolishness A look of his is able to disperse all the Nations of the earth What then is his Rising In St. Hieromes time the Sun was darkned by a Tempest and men presently thought the world was at an end and so it is with the wicked When God begins to look up they dive under water like ducks at every pibble that is thrown What then will they do when he shall speak in thunders and rain down hailstones and coals of fire upon them Look forward and you shall see their end They shall be scatter'd They shall flee They shall vanish They shall melt away What did Sennacherib get by advancing his banner against the City of the Lord Even this to preach by his statue Let him that looketh upon me learn to fear God What did Acts 12. 23. Herod get by casting Peter into prison He was smitten by an Angel and eaten up of worms What did Pharaoh gain by flinging the children of Israel into the river He brought him into his Court who deprived him of his crown and life The wicked are insnared in the work of their own Psal 9. 16. hands saith David For this saith Basil is not onely inflicted as a punishment but it is the very nature of Sin to make a net and dig a pit for it self What gained those hellish Traytors in the time of the Virgin Queen and in the time of that King of peace King James I am almost ashamed in this place to tell you Nothing but an halter and everlasting ignominy and shame Let the wicked be never so wise yet there is a wiser than they and let them be never so strong yet there is a stronger than they Do you yet doubt whether God's Rising be visible in the execution of his wrath upon his enemies Behold then his creature up in arms with him There is a spiritual writ of outlawry gone out against them and every man they meet every stone in the streets every beast of the field is ready to become their executioners When God riseth up every creature is a souldier an Angel overcomes the Assyrians an army of Frogs and Lice over-run Aegypt Haylstones from Heaven destroy the Canaanites The pouder flasheth in the faces of the traiterous pioners Infelix exitus Haereticorum The unhappy end of Heretiques is not so good a note of the Church as the Cardinal would make it but sure it is an evident mark that God is risen up and shews the EXSURGAT in Capital letters Many glorious examples we have of God's Rising of old in Humane and Divine Histories As the Apostle speaks the time would fail me to speak of his leading his people out of Aegypt
set forth we are at our journeys end All excellency and perfection in Christianity we can put off to others that have more time to learn it commorari in eo quod novimus quà m discere quod nondum scimus melius putamus and we had rather dwell upon little than trouble our selves in the obtaining of more The Jew is content with his Ceremonies and the Christian with his outward Profession but less significant than they And all this proceedeth from a carelessness and indifferency in the wayes of godliness This is certainly a great hindrance to our studies in Christianity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Opinion is a great retarder of proficiency Many had won more ground had they with Job feared their own works been jealous of their ways and circumspect in their walk had they had that holy Jealousy and Mistrustfulness which is inseparably joyned to this Fear of Covetousness and Circumspection But indeed this Fear is most requisite in respect of those enemies of our Souls which are ever in readiness to surprize us which being more subtile than strong could never overcome us but by our own weapons They are many indeed the lust of the flesh the lust of the eyes and the pride of life John 2. 16. every passion every vain object but these could never prevail against us if this Fear did keep us awake For let us weigh it well and we shall find that it is not the strength of our adversaries nor their multitude nor yet our own weakness which strikes us to the ground but want of that cautelousness and circumspection which we should use Dyed Abner as a Fool dyeth saith David lamenting over Abner thy hands were not bound 1 Sam. 3. 33 34. nor thy feet put into fetters but as a man falleth before the wicked so fallest thou This is the case of many Christians Their hands are not bound nor their feet put into fetters no outward violence no strength of the enemy but only their own unwariness hath overthrown them I should be loth to make the Devil less devil than he is yet I may be bold to say that many men are cut off by themselves and their own folly when the Devil beareth the blame And St. Chrysostom gives the reason for me For if there were any inforcing necessity in the Devils temptations then in good reason all that are tempted must necessarily yield and miscarry And in one of his Epistles to Olimpias considering how careless Adam was and open to admit of counsel so weak and forceless he concludes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he would have fallen if the Devil had not been No marvail if he surprize us when he finds us asleep in our watch He doth no more than Iphicrates did to his Centinel whom he found fast asleep Tales relinquit quales invenit He striketh us through with his Spear and wounds us to death and leaves us but as he found us in a dead sleep to sleep for ever Satana nullae feriae The Devil is ever in arms But if we stood upon our guard and were ready to resist he could never hurt us So necessary a thing is this Fear of Cautelousness and Circumspection that if we had no other defence or buckler but this yet we could never be overthrown Mater timidi rarò flet A wary and fearful child seldom brings sorrow to his mother and a careful and fearful Christian can never be cut off And therefore to keep this Jealousy awake in us the Apostle awakes one Fear with another the Fear of Circumspection with the fear of Punishment He sets up a NE EXCID ARIS a fear of being cut off to bring on the other For naturally fear of evil works a Fear of Jealousy and Circumspection and this fear of Cautelousness ushers-in that fear by which we may call Abba Father For seeing evil before us ready to seize upon us we begin to advise with our selves how to avoid it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sayth Aristotle Fear brings us to Consultation Call the Steward Luk. 16. 3. to an account and he is straight at his QUID FACIAM What shall I do When a King goes to war and War is a bloudy and fearful trade Luk. 14. 31. Luk. 16. 4. the Text tells us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he first sits down and takes council Fear is the mother of Advise and Consultation dies with Fear When we presume Counsel is needless and when we despair it is too late Alexander was as bold a leader as we read of in any history yet the Historian observes That upon some great hazard his confidence was chang'd to pensiveness and solicitude Ipsam fortunam verebatur He began to mistrust that fortune which had formerly crown'd him with so many conquests It is even so with Christians For the most part we boldly venture on in the wayes of dangers but when the bitterness of Death shews it self or the fond face of a Nè excidaris is set before us our courage fayls and we begin to mistrust that security which thrust us forward in the wayes of evil and made us bold adventurers for Hell There be three things fayth St Basil which perfect and consummate every consultation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 First we consult then we establish and settle our consultation and last of all we gain a constancy and perseverance in those actions which our consultations have engaged us in And all these three we have from this servile Fear Did we not fear we should not consult Did not Fear urge and prick us forward we should not determine And when this breath goeth forth our counsels fall and all our thoughts perish The best preservative of a Branch now grafted is a Nè excidaris the sight and fear of that knife which may cut him off For this servile Fear though it hath got an ill name in the world yet is of singular use and for want of it many branches have been cut off and cast away How many go to Hell in a pleasant dream How many have been cut off because they never feared it How many hath a feigned and momentany assurance destroy'd for ever Cheerful they are rejoyce in the Lord alwaies no Law concerns them no curse can reach them if it thunder they melt not and if the tempest rise they are asleep as for Fear it is not in all their wayes And this they make a mark and infallible note of a Child of God Timor Capitalis Diabolicus Fear is deadly and diabolical A pleasing errour this but very dangerous For alass this Joy may be but an abortive begot by the conquest of some few temptations this Cheerfulness may be an incantation This Assurance insensibility and this Security stupefaction For as the Historian observes of men in place and authority Cùm se fortunae committunt etiam naturam dediscunt When they rely only upon their greatness and authority they loose their very nature and turn savage and quite
to beat on who have been viri perpessitii as Seneca speaks of Socrates men of great sufferance who have suffer'd not only their goods to be torn from them by oppression and wrong but their reputations to be wounded with the sharp rasor of detraction and have withstood the shock of all spectantibus similes with the patience of a looker on should be raised and comforted with a promise of that which their Meekness gave up to the spoil and that by the providence of God which loves to thwart the practice of the world they should be made heirs even of those possessions which the hand of Violence hath snatched from them It is a common proverb in the world Cum lupis ululandum That amongst a company of Wolves we must howl as loud as they for he that amongst Wolves will make himself a Sheep shall be sure to be eaten Vim vi repellere To arm our selves with force against violence and with Circumspection against deceit To be ready to strike with one hand whilst we defend ourselves with the other are lessons written upon every post the neglect of which will entitle us to Folly though in other things we be as wise as Solomon What though we speak with the tongues of men and angels What though we understand all mysteries and all knowledg What though we have all faith even to remove mountains yet if we want this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this quickness and dexterity of wit in removing those obstacles and retardances which are laid in our way to honour and wealth we are but as sounding brass or tinckling Cymbals not to fright our enemies but to make them sport and melody But St. Hierome will tell us Aliud est judicium tribunalis Christi aliud anguli susurrorum that there is great difference between the Judgment of the world and the Tribunal-seat of Christ What a vain fellow was David to day sayth Mich. when he danced before the Ark. He did it as a man after my own 2 Sam. 6. 20. heart saith God He is a weak man saith the world and knows not to tread those paths which lead to honour and preferment but He is my Souldier sayth Christ and will take the kingdom of heaven by force It is a very small thing to be judged of the world or of mans judgment O let 1 Cor. 4. 3. me even wear that fools coat which shall be changed for a robe of glory The language of the world is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He that will be rich must ask council of his wits must betake himself to violence must sometimes lurk like a serpent and at other times roar like a lion For this sheepish virtue of Meekness is like the equus Sejanus a certain horse which none could ever thrive that kept him This Divinity goes for Orthodox in the world But David a man of war of whom it was sung that he killed his ten thousands tenders us a doctrine of another strain shews yet a more excellent way by so ridiculous and contemptible a virtue as Meekness to purchase the inheritance of the Earth And indeed if we look nearer upon Meekness and behold the beauty of her countenance we shall even fall in love with her as with the most thriving virtue as with a virtue which will place us in a more firm and setled possession of that which is ours then all the Engins of deceit then all the weapons of the mighty But because most men are hard of belief when they are told that Godliness is great gain and that we may encrease our stock by loosing it with Patience and rely on their own brain and reach as a surer staff to walk with then the Providence of God I will make this yet plainer by reason and lay it open and naked to the very eye To this end we may observe two divers and contrary dispositions in the nature of Man by which we may divide and distinguish almost all the world The one rough and stern and contentious which is most remarkable in evil men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Demosthenes For wickedness is commonly bold and daring and contentious I never yet saw the Face of brass but the Heart was adamant Take it in St. James expression The wisdom which descendeth not from above is earthly sensual and divilish full of tumult and confusion The other that which the Philosopher calls â—â—m 3. 15. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a soft and sweet and flexible disposition which is the common character of a good man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sayth the same Orator For Goodness is peaceable and gentle easy to be intreated ready to be diminished and brought low by oppression evil and sorrow Now take a survey of them both The first naturally produceth Fear Fear as naturally begetteth Hatred which is longer-lived than Fear Hatred raiseth up Contention saith Solomon which seldom endeth but in the destruction of those we hate whom we cease not to hate till they cease to be But Meekness is her own safeguard and castle of defense Rerum tutela suarum Certa magis and keeps us in quieter possession of that which is ours then the Law can do Whoever yet took up arms against the Meek Who will pursue a fly or a dead dog Who will strive with him that will not fight I confess we have of late seen a generation I cannot say of Christians I cannot say of Men I know not what to call them whose word is Kill and Slay not only those who are in arms against us but those damned Neutrals For so they call them who will not help them kill and slay But this is not natural and common but monstrous and unusual All that Meekness probably can expose us to is contempt Et quot contemptu tuti How many have made themselves contemptible to keep themselves safe Sure I am Brutus was never wiser then when he put on the person of a fool I know it is a very hard matter to perswade the world of the truth of this which I have taught For as St. Peter tells us there shall come mockers who will say Where are the promises of his comming and do not all things continue alike since the creation So there may be who will ask Where is the promise of the possession of the earth made good unto the Meek Is it not with them as it is with other men Nay is it not worse with them than with any men Is any man poor and they are not poor Is any man weak and they are not weak Is any man persecuted and they are not persecuted Are not the Meek every day driven out of their possessions And are they not driven out because they are Meek He that shall look into the state and condition of Meek men will peradventure be fully perswaded there is just cause of these complaints And therefore to drown and silence them we must remove some errors which are cast as a cloud
Hunger his Sweating his Dying are the glorious and honorable marks of a victorious Captain And as Souldiers use to shew their wounds and skarrs as the badges of honor and to publish and make it known Haec vulnera has cicatrices pro patria These wounds we have received these skarrs we bear about us for the defense of our country so may we magnifie our Saviour in that he fought and dyed for us men and for our salvation Timeamus nobis de reverentiâ istâ Let us be very wary that we offend not Christ out of too much reverence May it therefore please you to fix your eyes and duly consider this Duel or single Combate between Christ and the Devil our Captain and our Enemy In this Text we have the Preparation to it and therein these circumstances remarkable 1. the Persons Jesus a Saviour and the Devil a Destroyer Jesus an Advocate and the Devil an Accuser of the Brethren and a Calumniator The Lyon who fights for us and the Lyon who seeks to devour us 2. The manner how Christ was brought into the field He was led by the Spirit 3. The Time when Then After he was baptized and had the holy Ghost descend upon him in the shape of a Dove and had heard a voice from heaven saying This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased then he was led forth 4. The Place where he fought it out the Wilderness This was campus certaminis the field where this hardiment was to be tryed this battel fought 5. His preparation to it he fasted forty dayes and forty nights 6. And lastly the Opportunity which the Devil took to set upon him He set upon him when he was a hungry and this we find in the Preparation The Battel or Contention is spiritual and it is called Tentation And in all battel 's the tryal is who shall be the strongest The Tentation is threefold I. to Distrust from the consideration of want II. to Presumption from the providence and praedestination of God III. to flat and gross Idolatry from hope of the pomp and glory of this world First if we want the Devil concludes God cares not for us Secondly if he care for us we may do what we please Thirdly we may have what we please if we will but fall down and worship him The price of the whole world is but a bow or prostration of the body These are the three darts which are thrown at Christ by an enemy of craft and advantage And Christ puts forth his buckler and quencheth them and the Devil being disarmed runs out of the field or at least makes a retreat The Text says The devil left him and behold Angels came and ministred unto him I have presented you with a short view of the whole Come we now to the particulars First I shall speak of the Persons In every action that passeth in the world the circumstance of the person carries it weight and leaves a kind of impression upon it and maketh it more or less remarkable to our view Rei pondus etiam persona consummat saith the Orator That which makes up the full value of an action that which consummates and seals it up is the Person It was not so much for the Levites to bear the Ark as for David to dance before it It was not so remarkable for a Publicane to invite Christ to his house as for Christ to dine with him It was not so much that the first Adam should fall as it was that the second should be tempted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Nazianzene It is more for him to be pursued then it is for us to be taken A strange thing it may seem that he who had the Devil fast in a chain should let him loose to assault him Sed nihil imperiosius charitate Nothing is so imperious nothing hath so commanding a power as Love It makes us forget our selves put off our selves lose our selves And it made the Word flesh It brought down Christ from Heaven from amongst thoose troops of Angels and Arch-angels into the wilderness amongst the wild beasts It brought him to hunger who feedeth the young Ravens which call upon him It offered up him to the Tempter who knew no sin The Schools conclude that Christ was obedient not according to his Divine will but humane and therefore that he was tempted as Man it was no derogation from the Majesty of his Godhead And therefore he presents himself as a Man in the form of a servant that he might be a mark for the Devil to shoot at He hungers that he might tempt him to distrust He stands upon the pinacle to make it appear possible that he might throw himself down He follows him to the mountain and beholds what the Devil did shew him And it is very probable that had the Devil been fully perswaded he was God he would never have cast away his darts Having Scripture as you see at his fingers ends he knew well enough that God could not sin and that Wisdom it self could not be deceived For all Deceit proceeds sayes Clemens as well from the Ignorance of the party deceived as from the Crafts of the deceiver as an overthrow doth from the Weakness of him that falls as much as from the Strength of the conquerer Hoc unum non nisi duo faciunt To be tempted and to sin are two distinct things and cannot be done but by two When we fall the Devil and Our selves fling us down And therefore Nazianzene Orat. 46. layes it down as a positive truth that the Devil did attempt Christ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because covered with the veil of Flesh And 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because of his Humanity which was visible And in another place he tells us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the Devil was entrapped with Christs Humanity Or suppose he knew him to be God yet it might fall out with him as it doth with us when we are his captives What we know we know not and those conclusions which before we were able to make good by demonstration in the heat of some passion we forget as if we never had heard them St. Gregory I am sure thought so as he declares himself 2. Moral Antiquus hostis Christum in mundum venisse cognovit Our old enemy knew well enough that Christ was come into the world when he cryed out in the persons possessed What have we to do with thee Jesus thou Son of God But when he saw he was passible and did suffer those things which were common to mortal men when he saw he was a hungry and when he saw him disgraced he was in doubt as men are who halt between two opinions and know not which to subscribe to Omne quod de ejus Divinitate suspicatus est fastu superbiae suae rei in dubium venit By his pride and disdain he began to be jealous and suspicious even of that suspicion he formerly had of his Godhead
learned I. That he wes led into the Wilderness to find that Sheep which was lost in Paradise in the desart of the world II. To provoke the Enemy and conquer him in his own place for he is said to walk through dry places III. To draw the picture as it were and propose to Matth. 1â— 13. us the true patern of a Poenitentiary who must learn to go out of the world by contemning it as those did whose faith is commended Hebr. 11. Of whom the world was not worthy who wandred in desarts and in mountains and in dens and caves of the earth IV. To be free from importunity and trouble that he might fast without interruption his full forty dayes V. For prayer which requires the collection and retirement of the whole man VI. To add autority to his preaching and doctrine that by his secession he might be thought to be sent from God as Elijah and John Baptist were VII Some have been so bold as to conclude that here he laid the foundation of a Monastical and Eremitical life as if because Christ went aside for forty dayes they were most like unto Christ who did seclude themselves in desarts in caves in cells or shut up themselves between two walls all the dayes of their life Many other reasons have been framed according to the several constitutions and tempers of mens minds and aâ— every man hath been willing to find himself in Christ We shall make choice of some few not censuring any but the last and draw up all within the compass of these three 1. That he was led into the wilderness to prepare himself for his great work and office or rather to teach us so to do and not to venture upon any high employment without due preparation 2. To sequester himself for prayer to teach us to be alone to take our selves from the world when we pray 3. Lastly by this his retirement to draw to us a resemblance of a Christian mans life which is nothing else but a secession and a holy pilgrimage out of the world And having past over these we shall in the close remove the pretended reason which draws down this action of Christ to countenance and confirm that high and ungrounded estimation which many have of a solitary life placing perfection in that alone as if a Christian never appeared in his full beauty but when he comes forth in a Monks cowle or in the habit of a Pilgrime and Eremite Of these in their order And first our blessed Saviour before he puts his hand to that great work which was enjoyned him by his Father withdraws himself from the society of men and from the sight of his parents afflicts his body with fasting and fills his mind with holy and divine meditations And this he did as for us men and our salvation so for our instruction also teaching us not only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by his precepts but also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by his example to fit and prepare our selves for our office and not to attempt any work of his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with unwashed hands Thus did Moses and Elijah and Jeremiah 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 separate themselves for a while to God alone saith Nazianzene then to receive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a divine initiation and then to give precepts to work miracles and prophesie Thus did Basil and Nazianzene and Augustine and other holy men of God withdraw themselves and laying aside all other cares were intent on themselvs alone and on God And in this solitude as in a heavenly shop as the Father speaks they did shape and form Christ in themselves that from thence they might come forth more able servants of their Master and more learned teachers to the people and might present Christ unto them as they by long study had formed him in themselves present him as a meek Saviour to the Angry as a liberal Redeemer to the Covetous as a Patient Master to the Froward that they might present him in such a shape as that the beauty of it might transform others into the likeness of him Thus did they go as it were with Moses into the Sanctuary and seek for light and counsel from God that they might after break forth into action and shine as bright in the world It is reported of Augustine and he writes of it himself that being urged by Valerian the Bishop to take the common care and government of the people upon him he earnestly withstood him and with many intreaties besought him that in the time of Lent he might cease from that labor and prepare himself for that office legendo orando plangendo by reading and prayer and mourning and thus become acquainted with those wayes and means whereby which he might labor with more happiness in his work Many like examples might be brought But this hath been the practice not only of holy men but of heathen men Thus did Tully and Antony and Crassus make way to that honor and renown which they afterward purchased in eloquence Thus did they pass à solitudine in scholas à scholis in forum from their secret retirements into the schools and from the schools into the pleading-place Thus did Demosthenes by his looking-glass in his chamber learn that gesture which might take the eye of the spectator and by the noise of the sea learnt to bear the tumult of the auditory So that Valerius Maximus says wittily of him Alterum Demosthenem mater alterum industria enixa est His Mother brought forth one Demosthenes and his Industry another And this even Nature it self teacheth Nihil magnum citò vult effici Nature hath so ordered it that nothing of any great moment can be suddenly brought forth Every work must find us fitted and prepared for it or else when we set about it we shall find it will fly out of our reach For every great work is res difficilis morosa coy and hard to be woed Hence the Philosopher gives it as a reason that there be so few wise men Quia sapientiam paâ—â—i dignam putant quam nisi in transitu cognoscant Because most men have so low an opinion of Wisdom that they think her not worth the saluting but by the by Let us look into our selves and we shall find the reason why we are no better then we are is Because we do not reverence our selves but think that any thing will become us that we may retain the honor of a Man and yet stoop down to those actions which make us worse then the beasts that perish And this befalls us in the performance of any great work The reason why we do not perfect it as we should is Because we do not reverence it as we should We think to give an Almes is but to fling a mite into the treasury to Fast but to abstein for a day to Pray but to say Lord hear me or which is worse to multiply words without sense to Preach
made easier every day by the word of the Spirit by the Gospel of Christ by the power of which the Eye that was open to vanity is pluckt out the Hand that was reaching at forbidden things is cut off the Ear which was open to Every Sirens song is stopped the Phansie checked the Appetite dulled the Affections bridled and the whole man sequestred and abstracted out of the world And now in the second place if we consider the nature of the Spirit what should he inspire Man with but with that which fits him and his condition Whither can he who made him lead him but to himself to his original To all that are in the world the voice of the Spirit is Come out of it escape for your lives Look not behind you neither stay in it Fly into the wilderness Rest your selves in the contemplation of the Goodness and Mercy of God This is the dialect of the Spirit nor can he speak otherwise For Heaven and Earth are not so opposite as the Prince of this world and the Spirit of God Who hates Mammon till we make it our friend reviles the things of this world till they help to promote us to things above forbids those things which are without till we make them useful to those things which are within Who convinceth reproveth condemneth and will judge the world If you are so greedy of the things of this world that you would have stones made bread if you go into the City and climb the pinacle of the Temple if from the mountain you take a survey of the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them you may know who hath you by the hand The Text doth intimate that the Devil doth then take us up The Spirit of God leads us in the wayes of Gods Providence unknown to the world he takes us into the wilderness far from the noyse and business of this world he leads us not to the mountain to view kingdoms but draws us down into the valley there by an humble dependance on God to learn to contemn the world The Flesh fighteth against the Spirit and so doth the world and these are contrary And as many as are led by the Spirit are the sons of God saith St. Paul Which they cannot be till they renounce the World For what is our Filiation our Adoption but a receiving us out of the world into his family We must leave the world behind us before we can say Abba Father In a word the Spirit of God doth in a manner destroy the World before its dissolution makes that which men so run after so wooe so fight for as dung or at best it makes the world but a Prison which we must struggle to get out of but a Sodom out of the which we must haste to escape to the holy Hill to the mountain lest we be consumed or but a Stage to act our parts on where when we have reviled disgraced and trod it under foot we must take our Exit and go out Let us now draw down all this to our selves by use and application Here we may easily see what it is to which the Spirit leads us It leads us out of the world into the wilderness from the busie noyse and tumults there to the quiet and sweet repose we may find in the contemplation and working of a future estate He leads the carnal man to make him spiritual For what Ezek. 2. 6. is a Christian mans life but a going out of a world full of Scorpions a leaving it behind him by the Conduct of the Spirit The Spirit leads us not cannot lead us to the Flesh nor to the World which spreads a bed of roses for the Flesh to lye down and sport in For this is against the very nature of the Spirit as much as it is for light bodies to descend or heavy ones to move upwards Fire may descend the Earth may be removed out of its place the Sun may stand still or go back the sweet influences of the Pleiades may be bound and the bonds of Orion may be loosed Nature may change its course at the word and beck of the God of Nature But this is one thing which God cannot do He cannot change himself The Spirit of God is a lover of Man a hater of the World and from the World he leads Man to himself He led not Cain into the field it was a field of bloud He led not Dinah to see the daughters of the land she went out and was defiled He led not David to the roof of his house it was a fatal prospect it was but a look and it let in the lust of the flesh the lust of the eyes and the pride of life even all that is in the world at once into his heart But he leads thee to thy chamber there to commune with thy own heart He leads thee to the house of mourning to learn the end of all men He leads thee to the Temple to behold the beauty of the Lord. He leads thee from Bethaven to Bethel from the world to the place where his honor dwelleth These are the Spirits leadings His Dictons are Blessed are the poor Blessed are the meek Blessed are they that mourn This is no part of the musick of this World We find in our books of that Semiramis that famous Queen of Babylon caused this inscription to be written on her Tomb THAT HE THAT OPENED IT SHOULD FIND IN IT GREAT TREASURE which when Darius had read allured by this fair and promising inscription he brake it up but within found no treasure but a writing that told him that if he had not been a notorius wicked person he would not have broken-up the sepulchres of the dead to look for treasure We may indeed when we read of Riches and Pleasure and Glory in the Word of great Riches lasting Pleasures infinite Joy feed our selves with false hopes here but these are but as a fair inscription upon a Tomb when we have broken them up read them uncovered in their proper sense we shall find nothing but Poverty and Sorrow and Dishonor within and withal a sharp reproof for those who search the Gospel to find the World there or walk to Ophir to the hills of the robbers to a Mahumetical Paradise a Kingdome of Saints upon earth a Thousand years pleasure and perswade themselves the Spirit hath them by the hand and leads them to it Beloved Sensuality and Ambition are two the greatest enemies the Spirit hath and the Spirit fights against them If Diotrephes will have the highest seat the Spirit leads him not If the ground of our Religion be From hence have we our gain it is the Prince of this world and not the Spirit who leads us If we make Religion to Lackey it after us and accomplish our lusts we have left the Spirit behind us Mammon is our guide If the Bishop of Rome dream of Kingdoms of Universal power and Infallibile judgment
an angry Power and an offended Majesty Inviderat quia doluerat saith Tertullian He did envy us because he was grieved and his Pain increaseth with his Malice The first desire which threw him down was That he might be God and the next when he was fallen That there should be no God at all And being now in chains of everlasting darkness he hates that light which he cannot see And since God himself is at that infinite distance from him so full of power and majesty that his Malice cannot reach him he opposeth himself to the works of his hands and seeks to destroy him in his image as the poor man when he could not get his enemy into his hands whipt his statue Being much troubled saith Tertullian that God had given Man dominion over the works of his hands in Dei imagine quo sit in Deum odio ostendit he manifests his hatred to God in his image which he strives to deface Some think he envied the Hypostatical Union but this conjecture is not probable Most certain it is his extreme Misery enrageth his Malice and his Malice whets his Will and endeavors and maketh him very subtle to invent strange stratagems by which if we be not very wary he will steal our names from Christ to whom we have given them up and put them in his roll Nor is the working of his Malice hindred by the bad effect it produceth For the more he suffers the more malicious he is and the more malicious he is the more he suffers He grieves and is troubled that Men built up of flesh and bloud should keep the love of God on earth which he being a glorious Spirit lost in heaven that mortal Man should ascend to that pitch of happiness from whence he being an immortal Angel was flung down And though he know that his pains are increased by the condemnation of those whom he hath prevailed with to sin yet he strives to increase the number though with the increase of his pains and is content to suffer more so that more may suffer with him Nor need we wonder that the Devil who is so subtle a Serpent fails in such a point of wisdome For as his Subtlety and Wisdome is great so is his Malice which even in Man doth darken the eye of Reason and makes the Devil every day more a Devil to himself so that though he be very cunning to bring souls unto punishment yet he hath no wisdome to keep off the increase of it from himself Very busie he is to frame his accusations though when we come to the barr he must also be condemned as accessory Now as these two Malice and Envy which we have joyntly handled and together because they are so like are as inward incitements unto the Devil to accuse us so also is his Pride For he is king over all the children of pride as Job speaketh And this may be one cause though not the chief why he cannot repent Hoc vitio misericordiae medicina respuitur This is the sin which shuts down the portcullis to Mercy So that if God should have provided a plaster for his Malice his Pride would have refused it Infelix superbia dedignatur sub praeceptis coelestibus vivere Such is the infelicity of Pride that it can never be induced to be brought unto obedience of the heavenly commandments This was the sin which pluckt off his Angels wings and flung him down from heaven For not content to be no greater then he was he was made less then he was Ob hoc minus est quà m fuit quòd eo quod minus erat frui noluit saith Augustine Being not content to be an Angel of light he became a Devil and when heaven would not hold him unless he might be a God he was thrown into hell Nor is his Pride the less because his Malice is great For the Schools conclude that he preserved his naturals entire as his subtilty and agility He was a Spirit still and Pride as Malice proceeds from infirmity from decay And though we say that Pride as a moth will breed even in Humilities mantle yet it rather proceeds from our unnecessary gazing on it and misconstruing it then from the virtue it self The Devil is a spirit of an excellent essence and it cannot be said unto him saith the Father as it may be to Man Why art thou proud Dust and Ashes Again there be many sins which Men are subject to of which he cannot be actually guilty as Adultery Luxury Covetousness and the like therefore he is the bolder to accuse us And to this he incites us thinking his sin more hurtful to us then his punishment And this he is ready to lay to our charge that we as he have an ambition to be like unto the Highest and in every sin affect a kind of equality with God Still he would be as God our ruler and king the God of this world to lead or drive us at his pleasure And as God commands obedience that it may be well with us so doth he proclaim us rebels and since he cannot be our judge takes a pride in being our accuser Here his Art and Skill magnifieth it self that he can destroy what God was willing to save that he can make him hate what naturally he loved Here his Will and Eloquence is seen in drawing out arguments to which Man cannot answer in making our Sins our unrepented Sins cry louder then the Bloud of Christ in laying before Gods eyes those wounds which his mercy cannot heal Here he striveth to pluck God out of his throne by telling him he cannot be God and pardon such offenders Here he is wise and just still that Angel which would be equal with God Variis quisque causis ad accusandum compellitur There be divers causes saith Seneca which move men to accuse one another Some are spur'd on by Ambition others by Hatred some by Hope of reward But the Devils motives are his Malice and Envy to mankind and that which made him a Devil his Pride And now having shewed you the Devil as an Accuser we pass to the Application That we may learn to hate and detest that sin of Defamation lest if we leave our Brotherhood with our Advocate we get no better a Father then the Father of lies For we must not think the Devil is an Accuser only in defaming of us but also in teaching us to defame and accuse one another in speaking by us as he did by the Priests of his Temples and through our mouths breathing forth slanders as oracles He was an Accuser in the Jews and taught them to call Christ a wine-bibber a companion of publicanes and sinners to disgrace his Miracles and call them the works of Beelzebub He taught Elymas his own child as St. Paul calls him to pervert Acts 13. 10. the right wayes of the Lord. He taught the Heathen to call the first Christians Impostors and Traytors and Atheists to lay to
of Glory In fine non est modus saith the Philosopher in his Politicks When we look on the end our desires are vehement our thoughts restless no ADVENIAT is loud enough till we have attained it And for this alone we are as eager for the means because they conduce and help forward to the end What wrong then is done to the Framer and Fashioner of the Heart when we make that which should be the palace of the great King a den of thieves and rebels and traytors How do we despite the spirit of grace and as much as in us lyes unking him and thrust him out of his Dominions When his word goeth out very swiftly and flyeth from one end of the world to the other when he sendeth Ambassadours of peace to all the world when he destroys his enemies and worketh wonders when he hath drawn out a form of government promulged his laws and backt them with promises and threatnings when he hath mightily shewed himself to be our King by great signs and miracles he doth not yet account himself to reign But when thou openest thy heart and givest him possession of every corner of thy soul then he sits as King in his holy place For as the Philosopher tells us that the confirmation of Laws consisteth not only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the wise and discreet framing of them but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the right and due observance of them So though Christ be King from all eternity and cannot be devested of his Kingly office yet then only he calls his Kingdome compleat when we are subject and obedient to him when he hath gotten possession of the Heart where he may walk not as he did in Paradise terrible to Adam who had forfeited his allegiance but as in a garden of pleasures to delight himself with the sons of men For here in the Heart of man sitteth Reason as chief here is the counsel-table here is polity here are decrees here are good purposes and resolutions hither resort those nuntii those messengers which convey those auxiliary forces which either our Senses or the blessed Angels or the Spirit of God provide and send unto it So many Virtues and Vices as there are so many castles and towers are set up where so many battles are fought so many conquests made Here Holiness is besieged Religion shaken here it is either betrayed or defended Here if the Fear of this great King stand not as sentinel the strong tower of our constancies falls to the ground the Scepter and Crown is broken and Reason is thrust out of the throne whilst the enemy regeth Our Affections as in a popular sedition rush in with violence and Christ standeth as secluded and only as looker on Reign he may 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Lord of all the world omnipotent as Nazianzene saith and will rule over all whether they will or no but not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as one who hath brought us under his command to obey his laws and ordinances Both Christs Kingdoms we pray for here for that of Grace for that of Glory the one being the end of our prayers and of our hopes the other a most necessary means to attain it No reigning as Kings in the one unless we serve as Subjects in the other no crown there without allegiance here no glory without grace But because it is impossible for the most piercing eye to discover the rules and laws and order of the Kingdome of Glory we will stay our meditations upon the way which leadeth to it and shew wherein the Kingdome of Grace consists We told you the seat and place of this Kingdome is the Heart of men For who can meddle with ordering mens hearts but Christ alone Princes Laws may sound in the Ears may bind the Tongues may manacle the Hands may command our Goods farther they cannot go Illâ se jactet in aulà Aeolus But to set up an imperial throne and reign in the Heart this none but Christ can do Now by the Heart we do not mean that fleshy part which as the Father speaks is as the center in the body which saith St. Basil was first created first received life and then conveys and derives it to every part Nor do we mean with some the Will nor with others the Affections But by the Heart we understand all the powers and faculties of the soul the Understanding Will and Affections which when they move in an obedient course by the rules and laws of any Kingdome yield us the surest sign and token 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of a divine conversation conformable to Christ himself The Kingdome of Christ saith Nazianzene consists in the obteining of that which is most perfect 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But the most perfect thing in the world is the knowledge of God By which he doth not mean a bare knowledge of the King and of his Laws but a submission of our Will and a captivating of our Affections that we may walk in obedience and newness of life according to these laws Aristotle tells us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He that will erect a Commonwealth must also frame laws and fit them to that form of commonwealth which he intends We cannot make the same laws sit a Popular estate and a Monarchy The different complexions of States and Republicks you may see in their Laws as the faces of Princes in their coyns Now as Christ is the wonderful Counsellor so He came out of the loins of Judah and is a Lawgiver too and hath drawn out Laws like unto his Kingdome As his Isa 9. 6. Gen. 49. 10. Psal 60. 7. 108. 8. Scepter is a Scepter of righteousness so are his Laws just No man no devil can question them Socrates and Plato and the wisest of the Philosophers though strangers to him and aliants from his Kingdome yet would no doubt have subscribed to his Laws As his Kingdome is heavenly so are his Laws from heaven heavenly written by the finger of Wisdome it self As he is an everlasting Prince so are his Laws eternal But I will not now stand to shew the difference between these Laws and the Laws by which the Kingdome of the world be governed For what will fall-in more fitly with the TUUM the Pronoun possessive which points out a Kingdom by it self and with which other Kingdoms cannot be compared The Kingdome of God Luke 17. 21. is then within us when the Understanding maketh haste to the object thereof the Truth of God to apprehend it and the Will is ready to meet the object thereof our soveraign Good to embrace it and the Affections wait and give attention upon the will to further our possession of it when we have such wisdom such holiness such courage and desires as are fit for a subject of Christ to bring him unto and keep him in true fidelity and obedience for ever For Christs Laws do not pass only to restrain the Will but to
Divinitatis as Tertullian calls it the very work and invention of the Deity though it breathe nothing but peace and joy though it have not only authority but reason to plead for it yet the sound of it was no sooner heard but the world was in a tumult The heathen did rage and the people imagine a vain thing The Kings of the earth did set themselves against the Lord and against his Anointed Do the Angels proclaim it Men oppose it Doth Psalm 2. Christ preach it and confirm it by wonders Let him be crucified say the Jews Ecquis Christus cum sua fabula say the Gentiles after Away with Christ and his Legend Whilst it was yet in its swathing-bands it was brought to the barr the professors of it are punished and tortured non ut dicant quae faciunt sed ut negent quod sunt not to reveal what they do but to deny what they are For this the most chast wife is devorced from her husband the most obedient son disinherited by his father the most trusty and faithful servant shut out of doors by his master even for the Religion of the Gospel which made the Wife chast the Son obedient and Servant faithful Ex aemulatione Judaei ex natura domestici nostri The Jew is spurred on by his envy nay she finds enemies in her own house the Church of God and even Christians oppose her because of the truth it self whose nature it is to offend It is a just complaint that our Saviour came into the world and the world received him not would not receive him as a King but groaned under him as a cruel Tyrant His edicts his commands his proclamations his precepts were hard and harsh sayings none could bear them So it stands with Christian Religion Cum odio sui caepit It was hated as soon as it was Nor indeed can it be otherwise For it offends the whole world It stands between the Wanton and his lust the Ambitious and his pomp the Covetous and his mammon Christ is truth and his Kingdome is a Kingdome of righteousness and truth noâ— is there any thing in the world more scandalous and offensive than the Truth Old Simeon tells Mary of Christ This child is set for the falling and rising again Luke 2. 34. of many in Israel Not that Christ saith St. 〈◊〉 is contrary â—â— himself a Saviour and a Destroyer a Friend and an Enemy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but for the divers opinions and affections of men which abusing his love make him an enemy and the Saviour of the world a Destroyer I might name here many hinderances of the growth of â—he Gospel as Heresie which is a most poysonous viper biting not the heel but the very heart of it Infidelity which robs Christ of his subjects contracts his Kingdome into a narrow room and into a small number Disorder which rents it which works confusion there All these are impedimenta lets and hinderances to the propagation of the Gospel not like those impedimenta militiae the luggage and carriage of an army without which it cannot subsist but obicem ponentia fences and bulwarks and barricadoes against the King of Heaven if it were possible to stay him in his victorious march and to damm up that light which must shine from one end of the earth unto the other But this perhaps might fill up our discourse and make it swell beyond its bounds The greatest hinderance which we must pray against is an evil thought which flyes about the world That there is no Hinderance but these no opposition to the truth but Heresie no sin but Infidelity no breaking of order but in a Schism This it is to be feared not only hinders the propagation of the Gospel in credendis in respect of outward profession but blasts and shrinks it up in agendis in respect of outward practice and of that obedience without which we are meer aliens and strangers from this Kingdome This doth veritatem defendendo concutere this shakes that truth which should make us fruitful to every good work by being so loud in the defense of it It is a truth I think confest by all That the errors of our Understanding for the most part are not of so great alloy as those of the Will That it is not so dangerous to be ignorant of some truth as it is to be guilty of any evil yet all the heat of contention is spent here all our quarrels and digladiations are about these nay all our Religion is this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 earnestly to contend not who shall be the truest subjects in Christs Kingdome but who shall be most loud to cry down Heresie and Schism And this phansie I take to be as great a viper as Heresie as poysonous as Infidelity and the first ground and original of all Schisms in the world Whose zeal is so hot against an Oath as against an Error Who says Anathema to the Wanton What curse upon the Oppressor but of the Orphan and the Widow And from whence come wars from whence come fightings amongst us but from this corrupt imagination That we do better service in the Church of Christ which is the Kingdome of God by the loud defence than by the serious practice of the truth And all this while we mistake this Kingdome and the Religion which we profess which is absoluta simplex a Religion of great perfection and simplicity non quaerens strophas verborum and needs not the help of wit and sophistry God leads us not unto his Kingdome by knotty and intricate Disputes In absoluto nobis facili aeternitas saith Hilary Our journey to it is most easie It will come unto us sine pompa apparatu without pomp or observation It was Erasmus his complaint in the dayes of our Fore-fathers Ecclesiam sustineri syllogismis That this Kingdome was upheld not by piety and obedience but by syllogistical disputes as the surest props I could be infinite in this argument but I am unwilling to loose my way whilst I pursue a thief The sum of all is That this ADVENIAT is not only an invitation to draw this Kingdome nearer but an antidote against Heresie Infidelity and Schism and also against this corrupt conceit That Religion doth in labris natare is most powerful when it floats upon the tongue And we must raise it up as an engine to bruise the head of these vipers to cast down imaginations and every thing that exalteth it self against the Kingdome of Christ Again as this ADVENIAT fits all ages of the Church and was the language which Christ taught his Disciples when the Church was yet an Embrio in semine principiis not yet brought forth in perfect shape so is it a most proper and significant word verbum rei accommodatum a word fitted to the matter in hand the Kingdome here mentioned which must come to us before we can come to it Nothing more free and voluntary more
have us to wait upon him at distance When he teacheth us to call him FATHER he seems to call us too near to him that we go not too far but when he commands us to say Thy will be done he teacheth us like Servants to know our place that we come not too near nor be too familiar with him I will yet add one reason more and that from Christ himself who was now come into the world not to do his own will but the will of him that sent him This will be now declares to all the world Which was but darkly seen before wrapt up in types hid in visions vailed in the ceremonies of the Law but now it is made manifest to all the world So that we may find a kind of triumph in this Form the acclamations of Love and Joy FIAT Thy will be done For as Job said Shall we receive good things at the hands of God and not evil so on the contrary shall we set a FIAT set our seal to the evils which God sends and not to the good news to the voice of his thunder when he scatters his enemies and not to the voice of his Angel which proclaims peace The Redemption of mankind by the comming of Christ was praecipua pars providentiae the fairest piece in which the Providence of God shewed it self decreed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 before the foundations of the world were laid This FIAT then Thy will be done is he voice of Faith and Obedience and Gratitude The Grammarians tell us there be some words which will not fit a Tragedy and Donatus had a conceit Si ferrum nominetur in comaedia transit in tragoediam That but to name a Sword in a Comedy were enough to fright it into a Tragedy But these words will serve and fit both fit us on our good dayes and fit us on our bad fit us in our sorrow and in our joy in the house of mourning and at a triumph as fit for us the first comming of Christ as for the second But this is not all For this flows but from a decree of God what he would do on the earth and what he would do for us And this might awake the most sullen Ingratitude We are all willing to set a FIAT to those decrees which are made for our good Will God send his Son His will be done Here a FIAT hath not enough of the wing and therefore the gloss which our Heart gives is Oh Lord make no long tarrying But besides this as Christ came to do his Fathers will so he came to teach us his will also Certainly to think otherwise is a most dangerous error For what is it but to make the Gospel of Christ to be the Gospel of sinful man nay the Gospel of the Devil What is it but to poyson the many wholsome precepts we find there This shuts up the FIAT within the compass of the absolute Decree and our Petition is no more then this That God would be as good as his word and fulfill those promises on us which he made before the foundations of the world were laid Gods Promises are like his Threats conditional If thou believe I will give unto thee eternal life If thou overcome thou shalt be crowned Is it not good news to the heavy-laden that by comming to Christ he may be eased to the rich that he may make such friends of Mammon as may at last receive him into everlasting habitations to the captive that he may shake his shackles off and to every Christian that if he will but fight he shall purchase a Kingdome The Gospel is not the less Gospel because it conteins precepts and laws Evangelical Laws is no contradiction at all Will you hear our Saviour speak like a Law-giver This is my commandment And You shall be my Disciples if you do what I command you Will you see him in his robes as a Judge Behold him in flaming fire taking vengeance on them 2 Thess 1. 8. that know not God And who are they Even those that obey not the Gospel of Christ And how shall they be judged According to my Gospel Rom. 2. 16. saith St. Paul We need not stand longer on this point But if they will not grant us this we will yet increase further upon them and shew this Petition to be most proper to the Gospel For it is not only This is my commandment but A new commandment give I unto you For though at sundry John 13. 34. times and in divers manners God had revealed his Will to our Fathers by the Prophets yet in these last dayes he hath spoken by his Son more plainly and more fully expressing his will then ever heretofore and after which he will never speak again For the Grace of God is made manifest by the 2 Tim. 1. 10. appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ who hath abolisht death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel And as it is his last Will so it removes those indulgences and dispensations which were granted under the Law and which stood as a thick cloud before the eyes of the Jews that they could not fully and clearly discern the full purport of his Will Hac ratione munit nos Christus adversus Diaboli latitudines saith Tertullian The opening of Gods Will by Christ is as a fense to keep us from those latitudes and exspatiations and extravagancies and shews us yet a more excellent way discovering unto us the danger of those sins which heretofore under the Law went under that name The Jews were Gods peculiar people and to them he gave his statutes and his testimonies but yet he did not expect that perfection from a Jew which he doth from a Christian Our Saviour doth not only clear the Law from those corrupt glosses with which the Jewish Doctors had infected it but also ampliavit expanxit legem totam retro vetustatem as Tertullian speaketh Who hath believed our report and to whom is the arm of the Lord Isa 53. 1. revealed saith the Prophet Some report the Prophets made but not all nor were they fully heard It is the Will of God that we deny our selves that we take up our cross that we use this world as if we used it not living in the world but out of the world non exercentes quod nati sumus not being what indeed we are Where find we these lessons this his Will but in the Gospel A vain attempt it is to draw them into the Decalogue by force by I know not what Analogie by long and far-fetcht deductions For by the same art I may contract all the ten Commandments into one No man commits a sin but ipso facto in some proportioned sense he hath set up another God which is only forbid in the first Commandment We use not to commit those secrets to every messenger which we do to our son Nor did the Prophets the Messengers of Christ know
will not be so eager but a dish of herbs will be as a stalled Oxe and we shall be content with our daily Bread which the hand of Providence puts into our mouths Again in the second place as we are taught in this Petition to rely upon the Providence of God so are we also put in mind to take heed that whilst we make haste to be rich we slack not in our duty to God that that which is ordein'd but as a pillar to uphold our bodies be not made a stumbling-block and an occasion of that disaffection to piety and holiness which will destroy both body and soul Grave and wise Philosophers have very highly extolled Poverty which is so loathed of the world Enimvero paupertas philosophiae vernacula frugi sobriae parvo potens For Poverty was born and bred with Philosophy as it were in the same house frugal and sober powerful to do much with a little It was she that raised Common-wealths and built Cities and was the mother and nurse of all the Arts and Sciences we may add the mother of that Religion which will bring us into everlasting habitations That we may learn to bear Poverty with patience and escape that great snare of the Devil the love of riches our Saviour hath here appointed us our Dimensum commanded us to pray for our daily Bread and in taking away all care for the morrow hath taught us obstare principiis to be so far from caring for the riches of this world as not to think of them to beware of Covetousness and the very beginnings of it not to be familiar with them not to look upon them Nemo diu tutus periculo proximus That which was but a suggestion at first may become a fierce and violent desire That which was but a pleasing sight may be a raging thought The sight of the wedge of Gold may ingender that evil which will trouble all Israel and make us fly before our enemies At first we desire 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 faith Aristotle but two half-pence and when we have handled them they multiply in our imagination and in our desire are as bigg as talents 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Our sinful desires if we cut them not off are infinite like Numbers nullum est post quod non sit aliud there is none which is last but still one follows another and when one is full another opens to be filled And are as the Oratour speaks pleni spei vacui commodorum when our garners are stored and our purse full yet are we empty still and possess nothing but new hopes Irritat se saevitia As Cruelty doth chafe and enrage it self and as Beasts grow more fierce after they have tasted bloud so Covetousness doth whet it self and grows more keen and eager at the sight of those heaps which she hath raised Where St. John tells us 1 Epist 2. 16. that all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh the lust of the eyes and the pride of life A judicious and learned Writer interprets the lust of the eyes to be Covetousness because covetous persons love to handle and see their wealth nummos contemplari to behold their money and feed their eye with that of which they will not take one part to feed or cloth the body And therefore when riches increase we must not joyn our selves to them as to friends but fear and suspect them as enemies in fidem cum armis venire trust our selves with them but with weapons in our hand When they glitter we must turn away our eye when they flatter not be attentive when they gain us the cringe and applause of the common rout not listen or hearken to it We must account them enemies and thus make them friends and as Nazianzene speaks of his brother Caesarius we must sub larva servire mundo act our part as upon a stage seem to be what we are not and as the Apostle speaks buy as if we possessed not and use the world as if we used it not we must run and press forward to the mark and as for the world we must in transitu nosse know it only as we pass and in the by For conclusion then It will be good for us timere actus nostros to be afraid of our own actions to be jealous of our wishes ever to suspect the worst not to make the fear of Poverty an excuse for Covetousness not to cry out We must live when we eat and build and purchase as if we were to live for ever Quid tibi cum Deo est si tuis legibus It is not for us who are to be ruled by the Law of God to determine what is our daily Bread and what not or to call those things necessaries which are superfluous but rather to fit our selves for those lessons which we tremble to hear of as Felâ—â— did at the mention of judgment to learn to gain riches without care and leave them without sorrow that they may not cost us our sweat when they come nor put us to the charge of a tear when they depart nay further to hate and contemn them to sell and give them to the poor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to bring our bodies in subjection to our souls and our temporalities to our spiritual estate sic uti mundo ut fruamur Deo so to use the world as that we may enjoy Christ And all these To hate and contemn riches To sell and fling them away To cast them on the waters are not paradoxes but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the inventions of Faith the endeavours of true Zeal and Devotion nay they are the commands of Jesus Christ Who did willingly part with his life for us who count it death to part but with a mite for him We who are to present our selves as pure virgins unto Christ must keep 2 Cor. 11. 2. our selves undefiled and unspotted from the world we must not delight to look James 1. 27. upon the beauty nor tast the pleasures nor handle the riches of this world for fear we forsake our first love and make his jealousie burn like fire Omnia Psal 79. 5. virginis virgo Every part and faculty of a Virgin is so a virgin her Eye shut up by covenant her Ear deaf to profane babling her Hand not defiled with pitch and her Soul an elaboratory of pure and holy thoughts And so are a Christian mans affections pure and untouched He hopes not for wealth but for the reward of justice He fears not poverty but the flames of Hell He desires no honor but to be like unto the Angels When he dwells in the midst of Canaan in a land flowing with milk and honey his conversation is in heaven his Love his Hope his Joy his Delight his Contentation all are levelled on Eternity and concentred in Christ alone And being thus qualified not only Sufficiency but Abundance not onely that which is necessary but great riches
it should may bring-in universitatem donorum as Tertullian calls it that Academy that world of spiritual gifts and endowments which may be as a court of guard about us to defend and protect us in all our waies against the craft and malice of our enemies may awake our Security which arms our Enemy and remove our Distrust which disarms us ut non metuamus quicquam cavèamus omnia as Tully speaks that we may not neglect our foe nor yet be afraid to meet him that we may fear nothing but yet be shy and suspicious of every thing not fear the approach of a Tentation yet be as cautelous and wary as if it were now at hand Gods All-sufficiency may take my eye from the World and make me look-up upon Him who is the giver of all things His Omniscience may make me not to dare to look toward a Tentation no not in the twilight nor when it comes with the advantage of Secresie And His Jealousie may make me jealous over my self with a godly jealousie that I may present my self as a chast virgin unto God In a word The Knowledge of Our seâ—â—es that we are made according to the image of God of Tentations that they are the baseâ—â— and vilest things in the world and like the Painters shop have veri nihil omnia falsa nothing true in them nothing but colour and shew and lastly of God who is an infinite and glorious Essence who so provides for us that we need not Tentations who looks down upon us that we may not dare to touch them and who is jealous over us and will severely punish us if we cast Him off who onely can truly be said TO BE for Shews for Promises for Nothing for Sin which will make us worse than Nothing These I say driven home and fastned in our hearts by due and frequent meditation may circle us round about and so keep us in on every side so check and restrain us that we may not be led into tentation We have now done with the first part of this Petition The Six and Fourtieth SERMON PART VI. MATTH VI. 13. But deliver us from evil AS we pray not to be led into tentation so we further pray to be delivered from evil For Tentations as they are tentations and no more are not evil to those who are tempted but they are evils inherent and proper to the tempter himself Till they prevail they are the matter and occasion of virtue as well as of vice and alwayes work for the best to those who are strong in the Lord and in the power of his might Non laetatur Daemon cùm affligimur sed cùm succuâ—â—imus The Enemy takes no delight to see us beat upon by Afflictions or woo'd by Pleasures or conversing in the World for here he stands as one doubtful of the victory in a possibility to receive a â—â—il as well as to give one Then he triumphs when Afflictions have driven us from our hold when Pleasures have detain'd us in the way which we walk and are become so gracious unto us as to command our will and affections when we love the world and the things of the world Then he rejoyceth as a conqueror doth when the day is won And this may be the reason why this particle and clause is added not as another Petition different from the former but as an illustration and explication of it For to be delivered from evil takes off all fear and secures us from the force and violence of Tentations Indeed Evil is that which we all naturally shun and to be delivered from it is a part of every mans Litany In the first of Jonah when the storm was high the mariners cryed every man unto his God and awaked Jonah to call upon his The very Heathen sacrificed Diis depellentibus to those Gods whom they thought to have power to drive away the evil which they feared and to free them from danger They had their Goddess Pellonia and their Deos Averruncos therefore so called for turning away evils from them Evil hath but a sad aspect and at the first shew and appearance makes us look about us for succour It is terrible afar off in the very story and picture and representation and moves our affections when it nothing concerns us Augustine tells us that he wept at the very reading of the story of Dido in Virgil. And it is common unto us so to be affected with those evils which others have long since undergone as if they were now in the approach toward us and we our selves in present danger But when Evil comes near us indeed and is ready to seize upon us then it shaketh the whole course of our nature it changeth the countenance it calls-up all the powers of the soul and drives us to consultation When the stormy wind is raised then we cry unto the Lord in our trouble that he may deliver us out of our distress For the very fear of Evil is a kind of distress Satìs malum est apud timentes quicquid timetur Whatsoever is feared is evil enough to them that fear it And in this respect we may admit of St. Basils nice distinction between 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 between Saving and Delivering For we desire not only to be saved and preserved as men weak and impotent and obnoxious to a fall but to be freed and delivered as men walking in the midst of snares as men already in a kind of captivity And certainly it will be good for us often to represent Evil unto our selves and place it in its full horror before our eyes that having a foretast as it were of it our prayer may be the more hearty and earnest against it to consider what a wound and bruise such a one received how one hath been slain with Luxury and another with Pride how Beauty hath deceived one and Wine mocked another to behold the Devil in his true shape that we may call upon our Father which is in heaven not only to save us in this present life but to deliver us for ever from the Enemy that he devour not our souls as a Lion We have then you see two terms in this clause Evil and Deliverance And if it be evil what can we more properly pray for then for deliverance To draw then the lines by which we are to pass we must consider 1. What is here meant by Evil. 2. What it is we desire when we pray for deliverance And in the first place St. Augustine will tell us that Evil is of no essence at all and Nyssen that it is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by any proper subsistence it hath that it is nothing else but a kind of corruption and perversion of that manner and order which Nature hath set down and prescribed It was the great business of many years in the times of our fore-fathers to find-out the original fountain from whence it springs The
it self or whatsoever may be disadvantageous unto us or that of St. Augustine who forgetting that he had made seven Petitions in his second Book upon the Sermon on the Mount makes this clause the same with the former bring nothing contrary to truth or indeed to this interpretation Having therefore shut-up and concluded all evil in him who is the Father of Evil we will 1. consider him first as an enemy to Mankind 2. lay-down reasons why he is so and why we should make preparation against him and 3. discover some Stratagems which he useth to bring his enterprises to pass And first that the Devil is our enemy we need not doubt For the Apostle hath openly proclaimed him so We wrestle not with flesh and Ephes 6. 12. bloud against Men as weak and mortal as our selves but against principalities against powers against the rulers of the darkness of this world that is against the Devil and his Angels against spiritual wickedness in high places that is as himself speaks in the second Chapter against those spirits which rule in the air And therefore St. Basil gives us 1. his Name which is SATANAS an adversary and DIABOLUS a Devil because he is both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a fellow-worker with us in sin and when it is committed an accuser 2. his Nature He is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 incorporeal 3. his Dignity It is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a principality 4. the Place of his principality He is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the air and is therefore called the Prince of this world His Anger is implacable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as immortal as himself not as Mans who is never angry but with particulars 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as with Cleon and Socrates but not with man Satans Anger and Hatred is bent against the whole nature of Man Cùm sit ipse poenalis quaerit ad poenam comites Being even a punishment unto himself he would have all men with him come under the same lash And if he cannot win a Soul by invasion he attempts it by stratagem To this end as he makes use of Pleasure and Content so he doth of Affliction and Sorrow Operatio ejus est hominum eversio His very working and operation is nothing else but for the eversion and ruine of mankind Nec definit perditus perdere being fallen himself he would draw all men after him The bodies of men he plagueth with diseases and their souls with sudden and unusual distractions being able through the subtility and spirituality of his nature to work-upon both invisibilis in actu in effectu apparens invisible and insensible in the act but manifestly seen in the effect He cheated men with oracles struck them with diseases and pretended a cure desinens laedere curasse credebatur when he did not hurt them he was thought to have healed them By these arts he insinuated him self into the minds of ignorant men and at last was honoured with Temples and Altars and Sacrifices and gained a Principality and kind of Godhead in the world But now his Oracles are stilled his Altars beat down and he is driven out of his Temples But yet he is a Devil still and an Enemy and rules in the air and upon permission may make use of one creature to destroy another And his Power is just though his Will be malicious Quod ipse facere iniquè appetit hoc Deus fieri non nisi justè permittit What he wickedly desires to do that God may suffer justly to be done We will not not say that the evil Spirits visibly fight against us and try it out with fists as those foolish Monks in St. Hierom boasted of themselves that they had often tried this kind of hardiment with them to make themselves a miracle to the ignorant rout who are more taken with lies than with truth We are not apt to believe that story or rather fable in St. Hierome of Paul the Hermite who met the Devil first as a Hippocentaur next as a Satyr and last of all as a Shee-wolf or that of Hilarion to whom were presented many fearful things the roaring of Lions the noise of an Army and a chariot of fire coming upon him and Wolves and Foxes and Sword-players and wicked Women and I cannot tell what For it is scarce expressable what a creating faculty Melancholy and Solitariness and Phansie have ut non videant quae sunt videre se putent quae non sunt that when we do not see those things which are yet they make us believe we see those things which are not We will not speak of Spirits possessing the bodies of men Which power we cannot deny but they have Yet I am perswaded these after-ages have not frequently seen any such dismal effects The world hath been too much troubled with lies and many counterfeits have been discovered even in our times And for us Protestants we see no such signs no such wonders But these Devils are as common as Flies in Summer amongst them who boast of an art and skill they have in casting them out You would think they enterd men on purpose that these men might shew their activity in driving them away and so confirm and make good their Religion make themselves equal to those primitive Christians quorum verbis tanquam flagris verberati nomina aedebant who with their very words would make them roar as if they had been beaten with whips till they confest they were devils and did tell their names We may say of these in our daies as he doth of superstitious Dreams Ipsâ jam facilitate auctoritatem perdiderunt They are too common to be true And because so many of these strange relations have been manifestly false we may be pardoned if we detrect a little and believe not those few which are true For the mixture of fictions in many a good history hath many times made even Truth it self seem fabulous But yet though we suspend our belief and do not suddenly and hand over head subscribe unto these we are not like those Philosophers in Tully qui omnia ad sensus referebant who referred all to their senses and would believe no more than what they did see For these evil Spirits may be near us and we see them not they may be about our paths and we discern them not Many effects of theirs no doubt we may see and yet can have no assurance that they were theirs For that light of their intellectual nature is not put-out but they know how to apply active qualities to passive and diversly upon occasion to temper natural causes being well seen and versed in the book of Nature And this knowledge of theirs is enlarged and advanced by the experience of so many thousand years and their experience promoted and confirmed by an indefatigable and uncessant survey of the things of this world which is not stayed and held back by any pause or interval nor needs any repair or help by
rest and sleep as ours quasi per quasdam ferias as the Father speaks as by so many daies of vocation and rest but every moment they observe things and every moment draw new conclusions and every moment collect and infer one thing out of another Besides as Tertullian tells us momento ubique sunt their motion and apprehension is swift and sudden Totus mundus illis locus unus est The whole world is to them but as one place and what is done in every place they soon know in any place We do not meet them as Hippocentaurs but we meet them as Tyrants We cannot say we have seen the Devil in the shape of a Fox but yet we are not ignorant of his wiles and crafty enterprises And though his hand be invisible when he smites us for he is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an incorporeal hangman as Chrysostom calls him yet we may feel him in our impatience and falling from God What speak we of the possession of our body when it is too manifest that he possesses our soul For do we see a man with a mouth like a sepulchre and a tongue like a rasor with a talking eye and a restless hand starting at the motion of every leaf drooping at the least breath of affliction amazed at the sight of white and red colour stooping at every clod of earth transported at every turn of his eye afraid where no fear is mourning for the absence of that which will hurt him and rejoycing at that stoln bread which will be as gravel between his teeth Do we see him sometimes fall into the water and sometimes into the fire sometimes cold and stupid and anon active and furious we may well conclude and account him as one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of those who are possest with a Devil That he insinuates himself into the Soul of Man that being of so subtile an essence he works upon the Spirits by inflaming or cooling upon the Phansie by strange representations making it a wanton and on the Understanding by presenting of false light and sending-in strong illusions it is plain and evident and we need not doubt But the manner how he worketh is even as invisible as himself and therefore it were a great vanity to enquire after it Stultum est calumniam in eo inquisitionis intendere in quo comprehendi quod quaeritur per naturam suam non potest saith Hilary It is a great folly to run-on in the pursuit of the knowledge of that which before we set forth we know we cannot attain And therefore saith the Father Nemo ex me scire quaerat quod me nescire scio nisi fortè ut nescire discat quod sciri non posse sciendum est Let no man desire to know of me that which I know I cannot know unless peradventure he would learn to be ignorant of that which he must know he cannot but be ignorant Let others define and determine and set-down what manner they please we may rest upon that of St. Augustine Facilius est in alterius definitione videre quod non probem quà m quicquam bene definiendo explicare In this point it is easier to refute anothers opinion than to establish our own and to shew that the Devil doth not work thus than plainly to set-down and say Thus he works It is enough for us to know that as God is a friend so the Devil is an enemy as God inspires good thoughts so the Devil inspireth evil that he can both smite the body and wound the soul that he hath 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Basil speaks divers and various operations and can alter with the occasion that he knows in what breast to kindle Lust into what heart to pour the venom of Envy whom to cast-down with Sorrow and whom to deceive with Joy that his snares are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of many shapes and forms which he useth to draw-on that sin to which he sees man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 most inclinable and prone and gives every man poyson in that which he best loves as Agrippina did to Claudius her husband in Mushromes Now to proceed The Reasons why the Devil thus greedily thirsts after the ruine and destruction of Mankind are derived from his Hatred to God and his Envy to Man His first wish which threw him down from heaven was To be a God and being fallen he wished in the next place that there should be no God at all willing to abolish that Majesty which he could not attain Odium timor spirat saith Tertullian Hatred is the very breath of Fear We never begin to hate God till we haâ—e committed something for which we have reason to fear him And the Devil being now in chains of everlasting darkness doth hate that Light which he cannot see And because God himself is at that infinite distance from him that his Malice cannot reach him he is at enmity with whatsoever hath being and essence and conservation from God or is answerable and agreeable to his will but especially with Man because God hath past a gracious decree to save him and put him in a fair possibility of the inheriâ—â—nce of that heaven from whence he was thrown down He manifests his hâ—â—â—ed to God in hating his Image which he doth labour to deface now blurring it with Luxury anon with Pride and every day bespotting it with the world striving to destroy that new-creature which Christ hath purchast with his bloud just as some Traitours have used to stab their Prince in his picture or as the poor man in Quintilian who not able to wreak his anger on the person of his rich and powerful enemy did solace himself in whipping his statue And as the Devils Hatred to God so his Envy to Man enrageth him For through envy of the Devil came sin into the world It is Bernards opinion that Man was created to supply the defect of Angels in heaven and to repair that breach which their fall had made in the celestial Jerusalem But most probable nay without question it is that the Devil with his hellish troop are therefore so fiery and hot against us because they see and are verily perswaded that those men whom they cannot withdraw from obedience to God shall by the power of Christ be raised to that height of glory from which he and his Angels were cast-down and shall in a manner supply their place in heaven whilst they lay bound in chains of everlasting darkness And therefore though he gave Man a fall in Paradise yet he still envieth his hope as Timagenes was grieved when he saw Rome on fire because he knew it would be built-up fairer than it was before it was burnt Quoniam emulari non licet nunc invidet as he speaks in Plautus Because he cannot emulate us in our rise he envies us and that happiness which he cannot make the object of his Hope he makes the object of his Malice as they who are tumbled