all that belonged to our faithâ— All consists in this that he was Iesus capable in his nature to be a Saviour that he was Christus ordained and sent for that office and then Quod venit that be was come and come in aqus sanguine in water and bloud in sacraments which might apply him to us That he was Iesus a person capable his miracles testified aloud and frequently that he was Christ anointed and sent for that his reference of all his actions to his Father testified both these were enwrapped in that that he was the Sonne of God and that he professed himselfe upon the earth to be so for so it appeares plainely that he had plainely done We have a law say the Jews to Pilate and by our law he ought to die because he made himselfe the Sonne of God And for the last part that he came In aqua sanguine in water and bloud in such meanes as were to continue in the Church for our spirituall reparation and sustentation he testified that in preaching so piercing Sermons in instituting so powerfull Sacraments in assuring us that the love of God expressed to mankind in him extended to all persons and all times God so loved the world that he gave his onely begotten Sonne that whoseever beleeveth in him should not perish but have life everlasting And so the words beare record De Integritate of this Intirenesse of the whole worke of our Redemption and therefore Christ is not onely truely called a Martyr in that sense as Martyr signifies a witnesse but he is truly called a Martyr in that sense as we use the word ordinarily for he testified this truth and suffered for the testimony of it and therefore he is called Jesus Christ Martyr a faithfull witnesse And there is Martyrium a Martyrdome attributed to him where it is said Jesus Christ under Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession so he was a speaking and a doing and a suffering witnesse Now for the third witnesse in heaven which is the holy Ghost we may contract our selves in that for the whole work was his Before Ioseph and Mary came together she was found with Child of the holy Ghost which if we take it as Saint Basil and divers others of the Fathers doe that Ioseph found it by the holy Ghost that is the holy Ghost informed him of it then here the holy Ghost was a witnesse to Ioseph of this Conception but we rather take it as it is most ordinarily taken that the Angell intimated this to Ioseph That that which was conceived in her was of the holy Ghost and then the holy Ghost did so primarily testifie this decree of God to send a Iesus and a Christ for our Redemption that himselfe was a blessed and bountifull actor in that Conception he was conceived by him by his overshadowing So that the holy Ghost did not onely testifie his comming but he brought him And then for his comming in Aqua sanguine in water and bloud that is in Sacraments in meanes by which he might be able to make his comming usefull and appliable to us first the holy Ghost was a pregnant witnesse of that at his Baptisme for the holy Ghost had told Iohn Baptist before-hand That upon whomsoever he should descend and tarry still that should be he that should baptize with the holy Ghost and then according to those Markes he did descend and tarry still upon Christ Iesus in his baptisme And after this falling upon him and tarrying upon him which testified his power in all his life expressed in his doctrine and in his Sermons after his death and Resurrection and Ascension the holy Ghost gave a new testimony when he fell upon the Apostles in Cloventongues and made them spirituall channells in which this water and bloud the meanes of applying Christ to us should be convey'd to all Nations and thus also the third witnesse in heaven testified De integritate of this intirenesse of Iesus Of these three witnesses then which are of heaven we shall need to adde no more but that which the text addes that is That these three are one that is not onely one in Consent they all testifie of one point they all speake to one Intergatory Ad integritatem Christi to prove this intirenesse of Christ but they are Vnum Essentia The Father the Sonne and the holy Ghost are all one Godhead and so meant and intended to be in this place And therefore as Saint Hierome complained when some Copies were without this seventh verse that thereby we had lost a good argument for the unity of the three Persons because this verse said plainely that the three witnesses were all one so I am sorry when I see any of our later expositors deny that in this place there is any proofe of such an unity but that this Vnum sunt They are one is onely an unity of consent and not of essence It is an unthrifty prodigality howsoever we be abundantly provided with arguments from other places of Scriptures to prove this Vnity in Trinity to cast away so strong an argument against Iew and Turke as is in these words for that and for the consubstantiality of Christ which was the Tempest and the Earthquake of the Primitive Church raised by Arius and his followers then and God knowes not extinguished yet Thus much I adde of these three witnesses that though they be in heaven their testimony is upon the earth for they need not to testifie to one another this matter of Jesus The Father heares of it every day by the continuall intercession of Christ Jesus The Sonne feeles it every day in his new crucifying by our sinnes and in the perfecution of his Mysticall body here The holy Ghost hath a bitter sense of it in our sinnes against the holy Ghost and he hath a loving sense of it in those abundant seas of graces which flow continually from him upon us They need no witnesses in heaven but these three witnesses testifie all this to our Consciences And therefore the first author that is observed to have read and made use of this seventh verse which was one of the first Bishops of Rome he reads the words thus Tres in nobis there are three in us which beare witnesse in heaven they testifie for our sakes and to establish our assurance De Integritate Iesu that Jesus is come and come with meanes to save the world and to save us And therefore upon these words Saint Bernard collects thus much more that there are other witnesses in heaven which restifie this worke of our Redemption Angels and Saints all the Court all the Quire of heaven testifie it but catera nobis occults says he what all they doe we know not but according to the best dispositions here in this world we acquaint our selves and we choose to keep company with the best and so not onely the poore Church s the earth
such a subjection as is a love and such a love as is upon a Reason for love is not alwayes so This is Quiauxor because our wife and that implies these three uses God hath given Man a wife Ad adjutorium ad sobolem ad medicinam for a Help for Children and for a Remedy and Physick Now the first Society and encrease we love naturally we would not be banish'd we would not be robb'd we would not be alone we would not be poor Society and encrease every Man loves but doth any Man love Physick he takes it for necessity but does he love it Husbands therefore are to love wives Ad Sobolem as the Mothers of their Children Ad adjutorium as the comforters of their lives but for that which is Ad medicinam for physick to avoid burning to avoid fornication that 's not the subject of our love our love is not to be placed upon that for so it is a love Quia mulier because she is a woman and not Quia uxor because she is my wife A Man may be a drunkard at home with his own wine and never goe out to Taverns A man may be an adulâ—erer in his wives bosome though he seek not strange women We come now to the other part the pattern of this love which is Christ Jesus we are commanded to be holy and pure as our Father is holy and pure but that 's a proportion of which we are incapable And therefore we have another Commandement from Christ Discite à me learn of me there is no more looked for but that we should still be Scholars and learners how to love we can never love so much as he hath lov'd It is still Discite still something to be learnt and added and this something is Quia mitis learn of me make me your pattern because I am meek and gentle not suspitious not forward not hard to be reconcil'd not apt to discomfort my spouse my Church not with a sullen silence for I speak to her alwayes in my Word not apt to leave her unprovided of apparell and decent ornaments for I have allow'd her such Ceremonies as conduce to edification not apt to pinch her in her diet she hath her two Courses the first and the second Sacrament And whensoever she comes to a spirituall hunger and thirst under the heat and weight of sin she knowes how and where there is plentifull refreshing and satisfaction to be had in the absolution of sinne Herein consists the substance of the Comparison Husbands love your wives as Christ did his Church that is expresse your loves in a gentle behaviour towards them and in a carefull providence of Conveniencies for them The comparison goes no farther but the love of Christ to his Church goes farther In which we consider first Quid factum what Christ did for his spouse for his Church It were pity to make too much hast in considering so delightfull a thing as the expressing of the love of Christ Jesus to his Church It were pity to ride away so fast from so pleasant so various a prospect where we may behold our Saviour in the Act of his liberality Giving in the matter of his liberality Giving himselfe and in the poor exchange that he took a few Contrite hearts a few broken spirits a few lame and blind and leprous sinners to make to himselfe and his Spirit a Church a house to dwell in no more but these and glad if he can get these First then Ille dedit He gave it was his own act as it was he that gave up the ghost he that laid down his soule and he that took it again for no power of Man had the power or disposition of his life It was an insolent and arrogant question in Pilate to Christ Nescis quia potestatem habcâ— Knowest not thou that I have power to Crucifie thee and have power to loose thee If Pilate thought that his power extended to Christ yet Tua damnaris sententia qui potestate latroneâ— absâ—lvis autorem vitae interficis His own words and actions condemned him when having power to condemn and absolve he would condemn the Innocent and absolve the guilty A good Judge does nothing sayes he Doâ—â—estice proposito voluntatis according to a resolution taken at home Nihil meditatum deme defert he brings not his judgement from his chamber to the bench but he takes it there according to the Evidence If pilate thought he had power his Conscience told him he misused that power but Christ tels him he could have none Nisi datum desuper Except it had been given him from above that is except Christ had given him power over himselfe for Christ speaks not in that place of Pilates generall power and Jurisdiction for so also all power is Desuper from above but for this particular power that Pilate boasts to have over him Christ tels him that he could have none over him except himselfe had submitted himselfe to it So before this passage with Pilat Iudâ—s had delivered Christ and there arose a sect of Heretiques Iudaists that magnified this act of Iudes and said that we were beholden to him for the hastning of our salvation because when he was come to the knowledge that God had decreed the Crucifying of Christ for Mankind Iudas took compassion of Mankind and hastned their Redemption by delivering up of Christ to the Iewes But Iudas had no such good purpose in his hast though our Iesus permitted Iudas to doe it and to doe it quickly when he said Quod facis fac citò For out of that ground in the Schooles Missia in divinis â—st movâ— operacio in Creatura When any person of the Trinity is said to be sent that onely denotes an extraordinary manner of working of that person Saint Augustine sayes truly that as Christ Misit seipsum he sent himself and Sanitificavit seipsum he sanctified himselfe so tradidit seipsum Iudas could not have given him if he had not given himselfe Pilate could not give him Iudas could not give him nay if we could consider severall wils in the severall Persons of the Trinity we might be bold to say That the Father could not have given him if he had not given himselfe We consider the unexpressible mercy of the Father in that he would accept any satisfaction at all for all our Sinnes We consider the unexpressible working of the Holy Ghost that brings this satisfaction and our soules together for without that without the application of the Holy Ghost we are as far from Christ's love now as we were from the Father 's before Christ suffered But the unexpressible and unconceiveable love of Christ is in this that there was in him a willingnesse a propensnesse a forwardnesse to give himselfe to make this great peace and reconciliation between God and Man It was himselfe that gave himselfe Nothing enclined him nothing wrought upon him but his own goodnesse
Sacrament yet he is always present in it Yet this plot the devill had upon the Church And whereas this first Epistle of Saint Iohn was never doubted to be Canonicall whereas both the other have been called into some question yet in this first Epistle the first verse of this text was for a long time removed or expung'd whether by malice of Heretiques or negligence of transcribers The first Translation of the new testament which was into Syriaque hath not this verse That which was first called Vulgata editio had it not neither hath Luther it in his Germane translation very many of the Latine Fathers have it not and some very ancient Greeke Fathers want it though more ancient then they have it for Athanasius in the Councell of Nice cites it and makes use of it and Cyprian beheaded before that Councell hath it too But now he that is one of the witnesses himselfe the Holy Ghost hath assured the Church that this verse belongs to the Scripture and therefore it becomes us to consider thankfully and reverently this first ranke of witnesses the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost The Father then hath testified De integritate Christi of this intirenesse that Christ should be all this and doe all this which we have spoken of abundantly he begunne before Christ was borne in giving his name Thou shalt call his name Iesus for he shall save his people from sin Well how shall this person be capable to doe this office of saving his people from sinne Why in him say God the father in the representation of an Angell shall be fulfilled that prophecy A virgin shall beare a Sonne and they shall call his name Emanuel which is by interpretation God with us This seemes somewhat an incertaine testimony of a Man with an Alià s dictus with two names God says he shall be called Iesus that the prophecy may be fulfilled which says he shall be called Emanuel but therein consists Integritas Christi this intirenesse he could not be Jesus not a Saviour except he were Emanuel God with us God in our nature Here then is Jesus a Saviour a Saviour that is God and Man but where is the Testimony De Christo that he was anointed and prepared for this sacrifice that this worke of his was contracted between the Father and him and acceptable to him It is twice testified by the Father both in Christs act of humiliation when he would be Baptized by Iohn when he would accept an ablution who had no uncleannesse then God says This is my beloved Sonne in whom I am well pleased he was well pleased in his person and he was well pleased in his act in his office And he testifies it againe in his first act of glory in his transfiguration where the Father repeates the same words with an addition Heare him God is pleased in him and would have Men pleased in him too He testified first onely for Iosephs sak that had entertained and lodged some scrupulous suspition against his wife the Blessed Virgine His second testimony at the baptisme had a farther extent for that was for the confirmation of Iohn Baptist of the preacher himselfe who was to convey his doctrine to many others His third testimony in the transfiguration was larger then the Baptisme for that satisfied three and three such as were to carry it farre Peter and Iames and Iohn All which no doubt made the same use of his testimony as we see Peter did who preached out of the strength of his manifestation we followed not deceivable fables but with our owne eyes we saw his Majesty for he received of God the Father honor and glory when there came such a voice to him from the Excellent glory This is my beloved Sonne in whom I am well pleased But yet the Father gave a more free a more liberall testimony of him then this at his Conception or Baptisme or Transfiguration when upon Christs prayer Father glorifie thy Name there came a voice from heaven I have both glorified it and will glorifie it againe For this all the people apprehended some imputed it to Thunder some to an Angel but all heard it and all heard Christs comment upon it That that voice came not for him but for their sakes so that when the Father had testified of a Iesus a Saviour and a Christ a Saviour sent to that purpose and a Sonne in whom he is pleased and whom we must heare when it is said of him moreover Gratificavit â—â—s in Dilectâ— he hath made us accepted in his beloved this is his way of comming in water and bloud that is in the sacraments of the Church by which we have assurance of being accepted by him and this is this Integritas Christi the intirenesse of Christ testified by our first witnesse that bears record in heaven The father The second witnesse in heaven is verâ—um The Word and that is a welcome message for it is Christ himselfe It is not so when the Lord sends a word The Lord sent a word unto Iacob and it lighted upon Israelâ— there the word is a judgement and an execution of the Judgement for that word that signifies 2 word there in the same letters exactly signifies a pestilence a Calamity It is a word and a blow but the word here is verbum cara that Word which for our sakes was made our selves The word then in this place is the second person in the Trinity Christ Iesus who in this Court of heaven where there is no corruption no falsification no passion but fair and just proceeding is admitted to be a witnesse in his owne cause It is Iesus that testifies for Iesus now when he was upon earth and said If I should beare witnesse of my selfe my witnesse were not true whether we take those words to be spoken per Coâ—nlventiam by an allowance and concession It is not true that is I am content that you should not beleeve my witnesse of my selfe to be true as Saint Cyrill understand them or whether we take them Humana mare that Christ as a man acknowledged truely and as he thought that inlegall proceeding a mans owne testimony ought not to be beleeved in his owne behalfe as Athanâ—â—ius and Saint Ambrose understand them yet Christ might safely say as he did Though I beare a record of my selfe yet my record is true why because I know whence I come and whither I goe Christ could not be Singularis â—â—stis a single witnesseâ— He was alwayes more then one witnesse because he had alwayes more then 〈◊〉 God and man and therefore Christ instructing Nicodemus speakes plurally we speake that 〈◊〉 know we testifie that we have seene and you receive not Testimoniâ—â— nâ—strum our witnesseâ— he does not say my witnesse but ours because although a singular yet he was a plurall person too His testimony then was credible but how did he testifie Integritatem this intirenesse
whole Trinity judges In the first judgement before all times which was Gods Judiciary separating of vessels of honour from vessels of dishonour in our Election and Reprobation In his second judgement which is in execution now which is Gods judiciary separating of servants from enemies in the seales and in the administration of the Christian Church and in the last judgement which shall be Gods Judiciary separating of sheep from goats to everlasting glory or condemnation in all these three judgements all the three Persons of the Trinity are Judges Consider God altogether and so in all outward works all the Trinity concurres because all are but one God but consider God in relation in distinct Persons and so the severall Persons do something in which the other Persons are not interessed The Sonne hath not a generation from himself so as he had from the Father and from the holy Ghost as a distinct person he had none at all the holy Ghost had a proceeding from the Father and Son but from the Sonne as a person who had his generation from another but not so from the Father Not to stray into clouds or perplexities in this contemplation God that is the whole Trinity judges still but so as the Sonne judgeth the Father judgeth not for that Judgment he hath committed That we may husband our hour well and reserve as much as we can for our two last considerations the Cui Quid to whom and that 's to the Sonne and what he hath committed and that 's all Iudgement we will not stand much upon this more needs not then this That God in his wisdome foreseeing that man for his weaknesse would not be able to settle himself upon God and his judgments as they are meerly heavenly and spirituall out of his abundant goodnesse hath established a judgement and ordained a Judge upon earth like himself and like our selves too That as no man hath seen God so no man should goe about to see his unsearchable decrees and judgements but rest in those sensible and visible meanes which he hath afforded that is Christ Jesus speaking in his Church and applying his blood unto us in the Sacraments to the worlds end God might have suffered Abraham to rest in the first generall promise Semen mulieris the Seed of the woman shall bruise the Serpents head but he would bring it neerer to a visible to a personall Covenant In semine tuo In thy Seed shall all nations be blessed he might well have let him rest in that appropriation of the promise to his race but he would proceed farther and seal it with a sensible seal in his flesh with Circumcision he might have let him rest in that ratification that a Messias should come by that way but he would continue it by a continuall succession of Prophets till that Messias should come and now that he is come and gone still God pursues the same way How should they believe except they hear and therefore God evermore supplies his Church with visible and sensible meanes and knowing the naturall inclination of man when he cannot have or cannot comprehend the originall and prototype to satisfie and refresh himself with a picture or representation So though God hath forbidden us that slippery and frivolous and dangerous use of graven Images yet hee hath afforded us his Sonne who is the image of the invisible God and so more proportionall unto us more apprehensible by us And so this committing is no more but that God in another form then that of God hath manifested his power of judging and this committing this manifestation is in Filio in his Son But in the entrance into the handling of this we aske onely this question Cui filio to which Sonne of God is this commission given Not that God hath more Sons then one but because that Sonne is his Sonne by a two-fold filiation by an eternall and inexpressible generation and by a temporary but miraculous incarnation in which of these rights is this commission derived upon him doth he judge as he is the Son of God or as he is the Son of man I am not ordinarily bold in determining points especially if they were fundamentall wherein I find the Fathers among themselves and the School in it selfe and the reverend Divines of the Reformation amongst themselves to differ But yet neither am I willing to raise doubts and leave the auditory unsatisfyed and unsetled we are not upon a Lecture but upon a Sermon and therefore we will not multiply variety of opinions summe up the Fathers upon one side in Saint Ambrose mouth and they will say with him Huic dedit ubique generundo non largiendo God gave his Sonne this commission then and when was that then then when he begot him and then he must have it by his eternall generation as the Son of God sum up the Fathers on the other side in Saint Augustines mouth and there they will say with him that it is so clear and so certain that whatsoever is said in the Scripture to be committed and given to Christ belongs to Christ as the Son of man and not as the Son of God as that th' other opinion cannot be maintained and at this distance we shall never bring them to meet but take in this rule Iudicium convenit ei ut homo causa ut Deus God hath given Christ this commission as man but Christ had not been capable of this commission if he had not been God too and so it is easily reconcil'd If we shall hold simply to the letter of the text Pater dedit then it will seem to have been committed to him in his eternall generation because that was a work of the Fathers onely and in that generation the holy Ghost had no part But since in this judgement which is now committed to him the holy Ghost hath a part for as we said before the Judgement is an act of the whole Trinity we must look for a commission from the whole Trinity and that is as he is man for tota Trinitas univit humanitatem The hypostaticall union of God and man in the person of Christ was a work of the whole Trinity Taking it then so setled that the capacity of this Judgment and if we may say so the future title to it was given to him as God by his essence in his eternall generation by which non vitae particeps sed vitae naturaliter est we cannot say that Christ hath life but that he is life for whatsoever the Father is he is excepting onely the name and relation of Father the capacity the ability is in him eternally before any imaginable any possible consideration of time But the power of the actuall execution of this Judgement which is given and is committed is in him as man because as the same Father says Ad heminem dicitur Quid habes quod non accepisti When Saint Past says What hast thou
another that plotted to betray thee And therefore if you can heare a good Organ at Church and have the musique of a domestique peace at home peace in thy walls peace in thy bosome never hearken after the musique of sphears never hunt after the knowledge of higher secrets then appertaine to thee But since Christ hath made you Regale Sacerdotium Kings and Priests in your proportion Take heed what you hear in derogation of either the State or the Church In declaring ill affections towards others the Holy Ghost hath imprinted these steps First he begins at home in Nature He that curseth Father or Mother shall surely be put to death and then as families grow out into Cities the Holy Ghost goes out of the house into the consideration of the State and says Thou shalt not curse the Ruler of the people no Magistrate And from thence he comes to the highest upon earth for in Samuel it comes to a cursing of the Lords Anointed and from thence to the highest in heaven Whosoever curseth his God shall bear his sinne and as though both those grew out of one another The cursing of the King and the cursing of God the Prophet Esai hath joyned them together They shall be hungry says he indigent poor penurious and they shall fret be transported with ungodly passion and they shall curse their King and their God If they doe one they will doe the other The Devil remembers from what height he is fallen and therefore still clambers upward and still directs all our sinnes in his end upon God Our end in a sin may be pleasure or profit or satisfaction of affections or passions but the Devils end in all is that God may be violated and dishonoured in that sinne And therefore by casting in ill conceptions and distasts first against Parents and Masters at home and then against subordinate Magistrates abroad and so against the Supreme upon earth He brings us to ill conceptions and distasts against God himself first to thinke it liberty to bee under no Governour and then liberty to be under no God when as onely those two services of a gracious God and of a good King are perfect freedome Therefore the wise King Solomon meets with this distemper in the root at first ebullition in the heart Curse not the King no not in thy thought for that Thought hath a tongue and hath spoken and sayd Amen in the eares of God That which thy heart hath said though the Law have not though the Jury have not though the Peers have not God hath heard thee say The word which Solomon uses there is Iadung and that our Translators have in the margin called Conscience Curse not the King no not in thy conscience Doe not thou pronounce that whatsoever thou dislikest cannot consist with a good conscience never make thy private conscience the rule of publique actions for to constitute a Rectitude or an Obliquity in any publique action there enter more circumstances then can have fallen in thy knowledge But the word that Selomon takes there Iadâ—ng signifies properly all waies of acquiring knowledge and Hearing is one of them and therefore Take heed what you heare Come not so neare evill speaking as to delight to heare them that delight to speake evill of Superiours A man may have a good breath in himself and yet be deadly infected if he stand in an ill ayre a man may stand in a cloud in a mist in a fogge of blasphemers till in the sight of God himself shall be dissolved into a blasphemous wretch and in that cloud in that mist God shall not know him that endured the hearing from him that adventured the speaking of those blasphemies The ear in such cases is as the clift in the wall that receives the voice and then the Echo is below in the heart for the most part the heart affords a returne and an inclination to those things that are willingly received at the ear The Echo returnes the last syllables The heart concludes with his conclusions whom we have been willing to hearken unto We make Satyrs and we looke that the world should call that wit when God knowes that that is in a great part self-guiltinesse and we doe but reprehend those things which we our selves have done we cry out upon the illnesse of the times and we make the times ill so the calumniator whispers those things which are true no where but in himselfe But thy greater danger is that mischievous purpose which we spake of before to endanger thee by hearing and to entangle thee in that Dilemma of which an ingenuous man abhors one part as much as a conscientious man does the other That thou must be a Delinquent or an Accuser a Traitour or an Informour God hath imprinted in thee characters of a better office and of more dignity of a Royall Priesthood as you have sparks of Royaltie in your soules Take heed what you hear of State-government as you have sparks of holy fire and Priesthood in your soules Take heed what you heare of Church-government which is the other consideration The Church is the spouse of Christ Noble husbands do not easily admit defamations of their wives Very religious Kings may have had wives that may have retained some tincture some impressions of errour which they may have sucked in their infancy from another Church and yet would be loth those wives should be publikely traduced to be Heretiques or passionately proclaimed to be Idolaters for all that A Church may lacke something of exact perfection and yet that Church should not be said to be a supporter of Antichrist or a limme of the beast or a thirster after the cup of Babylon for all that From extream to extream from east to west the Angels themselves cannot come but by passing the middle way between from that extream impurity in which Antichrist had damped the Church of God to that intemerate purity in which Christ had constituted his Church the most Angelicall Reformers cannot come but by touching yea and stepping upon some things in the way He that is come to any end remembers when he was not at the middle way he was not there as soon as he set out It is the posture reserved for heaven to sit down at the right hand of God Here our consolation is that God reaches out his hand to the receiving of those who come towards him And nearer to him and to the institutions of his Christ can no Church no not of the Reformation be said to have come then ours does It is an ill nature in any man to be rather apt to conceive jealousies and to suspect his Mothers honour or his sisters chastity then a strange womans It is an irreverent unthankfulnesse to think worse of that Church which hath bred us and fed us and led us thus far towards God then of a forein Church though Reformed too and in a good degree How often
and our North and South at another tyde and another gale First then we looke towards our East the fountaine of light and of life There this world beganne the Creation was in the east And there our next world beganne too There the gates of heaven opened to us and opened to us in the gates of death for our heaven is the death of our Saviour and there he lived and dyed there and there he looked into our west from the east from his Terasse from his Pinacle from his exaltation as himselfe calls it the Crosse. The light which arises to us in this east the knowledge which we receive in this first word of our text Faciamus Let us where God speaking of himselfe speakes in the Plurall is the manifestation of the Trinity the Trinity which is the first letter in his Alphabet that ever thinks to read his name in the book of life The first note in his Gammut that ever thinks to sing his part in the Quire of the Triumphant Church Let him him have done as much as all the Worthies and suffered as much as all Natures Martyrs the penurious Philosophers let him have known as much as they that pretend to know Omne scibile all that can be known nay and in-intelligibilia In-investigabilia as Turtullian speakes un-understandable things unrevealed decrees of God Let him have writ as much as Aristotle writ or as is written upon Aristotle which is multiplication enough yet he hath not learnt to spel that hath not learnt the Trinity not learnt to pronounce the first word that cannot bring three Persons into one God The subject of naturall philosophy are the foure elements which God made the Subject of supernaturall philosophy Divinity are the three elements which God is and if we may so speake which make God that is constitute God notifie God to us Father Sonne and holy Ghost The naturall man that hearkens to his owne heart and the law written there may produce Actions that are good good in the nature and matter and substance of the worke He may relieve the poore he may defend the oppressed But yet he is but as an open field and though he be not absolutely barren he bears but grasse The godly man he that hath taken in the knowledge of a great and a powerfull God and enclosed and hedged in himselfe with the feare of God may produce actions better then the meere naturall man because he referres his actions to the glory of his imagined God But yet this man though he be more fruitfull then the former more then a grassy field yet he is but a ploughed field and he bears but corne and corne God knowes choaked with weeds But that man who hath taken hold of God by those handles by which God hath delivered and manifested himselfe in the notions of Father Sonne and holy Ghost he is no field but a garden a Garden of Gods planting a Paradise in which grow all things good to eate and good to see spirituall resection and spirituall recreation too and all things good to cure He hath his beeing and his diet and his physique there in the knowledge of the Trinity his beeing in the mercy of the Father his physique in the merits of the Sonne his diet his daily bread in the daily visitations of the holy Ghost God is not pleased not satisfied with our bare knowledge that there is a God For it is impossible to please God without faith and there is no such exercise of faith in the knowledge of a God but that reason and nature will bring a man to it When we professe God in the Creed by way of beleefe Credo in Deum I beleeve in God in the same article we professe him to be a Father too I beleeve in God the father Almighty And that notion the Father necessarily implies a second Person a Sonne And then we professe him to be maker of heaven and earth And in the Creation the holy Ghost the Spirit of God is expresly named So that we doe but exercise reason and nature in directing our selves upon God We exercise not faith and without faith it is impossible to please God till we come to that which is above nature till we apprehend a Trinity We know God we beleeve in the Trinity The Gentiles multiplyed Gods There were almost as many Gods as men that beleeved in them And I am got out of that thrust and out of that noise when I am come into the knowledge of one God But I am got above staires got in the Bedchamber when I am come to see the Trinity and to apprehend not onely that I am in the care of a great and a powerfull God but that there is a Father that made me a Sonne that Redeemed me a holy Ghost that applies this good purpose of the Father and Sonne upon me to me The root of all is God But it is not the way to receive fruits to dig to the root but to reach to the boughs I reach for my Creation to the Father for my Redemption to the Sonne for my sanctification to the holy Ghost and so I make the knowledge of God a Tree of life unto me and not otherwise Truly it is a sad Contemplation to see Christians scratch and wound teare one another with the ignominious invectives and uncharitable names of of Heretique and Schismatique about Ceremoniall and Problematicall and indeed but Criticall verball controversies and in the meane time the foundation of all the Trinity undermined by those numerous those multitudinous Anthills of Socinians that overflow some parts of the Christian world and multiply every where And therefore the Adversaries of the Reformation were wise in their generation when to supplant the credit of both those great assistants of the Reformation Luther and Calvin they impute to Calvin fundamentall error in the Divinity of the second Person of the Trinity the Sonne And they impute to Luther a detestation of the very word Trinity and an expunction thereof in all places of the Liturgy where the Church had received that word They knew well if that slander could prevaile against those persons nothing that they could say could prevaile upon any good Christians But though in our doctrine we keep up the Trinity aright yet God knowes in our practice we doe not I hope it cannot be said of any of us that he beleeves not the Trinity but who amongst us thinkes of the Trinity considers the Trinity Father and Sonne doe naturally imply and induce one another and therefore they fall oftner into our consideration But for the holy Ghost who feels him when he feels him Who takes knowledge of his working when he works Indeed our Fathers provided not well enough for the worship of the whole Trinity nor of the holy Ghost in particular in the endowments of the Church and Consecrations of Churches and possessions in their names What a spirituall dominion in the prayers and worship of
the people what a temporall dominion in the possessions of the world had the Virgin Mary Queen of heaven and Queen of earth too She was made joint purchaser of the Church with her Sonne and had as much of the worship thereof as he though she paid her fine in milke and he in bloud And till a new Sect came in her Sonnes name and in his name the name of Jesus tooke the regency so farre out of that Queen Mothers hands and sued out her Sonnes Livery so farre as that though her name be used the Virgin Mary is but a feoffee in trust for them all was hers And if God oppose not these new usurpers of the world posterity will soon see Saint Ignatius worth all the Trinity in possessions and endowments as that sumptuous and splendid foundation of his first Temple at Rome may well create a conjecture and suspicion Travaile no farther Survay but this City And of their not one hundred Churches the Virgin Mary hath a dozen The Trinity hath but one Christ hath but one The holy Ghost hath none But not to goe into the City nor out of our selves which of us doth truly and considerately ascribe the comforts that he receives in dangers or in distresses to that God of all comfort the comforter the holy Ghost We know who procured us our Presentation and our dispensation you know who procured you your offices and your honours Shall I ever forget who gave me my comfort in sicknesse Who gave me my comfort in the troubles and perplexities and diffidencies of my conscience The holy Ghost brought you hither The holy Ghost opens your eares and your hearts here Till in all your distresses you can say Veni Creator Spiritus come holy Ghost and that you feel a comfort in his comming you can never say Veni Domine Iesu come Lord Jesus come to Judgement Never to consider the day of Judgement is a fearfull thing But to consider the day of Judgement without the comfort of the holy Ghost is a thousand times more fearfull This Seale then this impression this notion of the Trinity being set upon us in the first Creation in this first plurall word of our text Faciamus Let us for Father Sonne and holy Ghost made man and this seale being re-imprinted upon us in our second Creation our Regeneration in Baptisme Man is Baptized In the name of the Father of the Sonne and of the holy Ghost This notion of the Trinity being our distinctive Character from Iew and Gentile This being our specifique forme why does not this our forme this soule of our Religion denominate us why are we not called Trinitarians a name that would embrace the profession of all the Persons but onely Christians which limits and determines us upon one The first Christians amongst whose manifold Persecutions scorne and contempt was not the least in contempt and scorne were called Nazarai Nazarites in the mouth of the Vulgar and Galilâ—i Galilaeans in the mouth of Iulian and Iudaei Iews in the mouth of Nero when he imputed the burning of Rome his owne act to them and Christiani as Tertullian says that they could accuse Christians of nothing but the name of Christians and yet they could not call them by their right name but Chrestians which was gentle quiet easie patient men made to be troden upon They gave them divers names in scorne yet never called them Trinitarians Christians themselves amongst themselves were called by divers names in the Primitive Church for distinction Fideles the faithfull and Fratres the Brethren and Discipuli Disciples And after by common custome at Antioch Christians And after that they say by a councell which the Apostles held at the same city at Antioch there passed an expresse Canon of the Church that they should be called so Christians And before they had this name at Antioch first by common usage after by a determinate Canon to be called Christians from Christ at Alexandria they were called most likely from the name of Jesus Iesseans And so Philo Iudaeus in that book which he writes De Iessenis intends by his Iessenis Christians and in divers parts of the world into which Christians travell now they find some elements some fragments some reliques of the Christian Religion in the practice of some religious Men whom those Countreys call Iesseans doubtlesly derived and continued from the name of Jesus So that the Christians took many names to themselves for distinction Brethren Disciples faithfull And they had many names put upon them in scorne Nazarites Galilaeans Iews Chrestians and yet they were never never by Custome amongst themselves never by commandement from the Church never in contempt from others called Trinitarians the profession of the Trinity being their specifique forme and distinctive Character why so Beloved the name of Christ involv'd all not onely because it is a name that hath a dignity in it more then the rest for Christ is an anointed person a King a Messiah and so the profession of that Name conferrs an Unction a regall and a holy Unction upon us for we are thereby a royall Priesthood but because in the profession of Christ the whole Trinity is professed How often doth the Sonne say that the Father sent him And how often that the Father will and that he will send the Holy Ghost This is life eternall says he to know thee the onely true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent And sent with all power in heaven and in earth This must be professed Father and Sonne And then no man can professe this no man can call Jesus the Lord but by the holy Ghost So that as in the persecutions in the primitive Church the Martyrs which were hurried to tumultuary executions and could not be heard for noise in excusing themselves of Treason and sedition and crimes imputed to them to make their cause odious did use in the sight of the people who might see a gesture though they could not heare a protestation to signe themselves with the signe of the Crosse to let them know for what profession they died so that the signe of the Crosse in that use thereof in that time was an abridgement and a Catechisme of the whole Christian Religion so is the professing of the name of Christ the professing of the whole Trinity As he that confesses one God is got beyond the meer naturall man And he that confesses a Sonne of God beyond him So is neither got to the full truth till he confesse the holy Ghost too The foole sayes in his heart there is no God The foole says David The emphaticall foole in the highest degree of folly But though he get beyond that folly he is a foole still if he say there is no Christ For Christ is the wisdome of the Father And a foole still if he deny the holy Ghost for who shall apply Christ to him but the holy Ghost Etiam Christiani Nomen superficies est
is excellently said by Tertullian the name and profession of a Christian is but a superficiall outside sprinckled upon my face in Baptisme or upon mine outward profession in actions if I have not in my heart a sense of the holy Ghost that he applies the mercies of the Father and the merits of the Sonne to my soule As Saint Paul said Whilest you are without Christ you are without God It is an Atheisme with Saint Paul to be no Christian. So whilest you are without the holy Ghost you are without Christ. It is Antichristian to deny or not to confesse the holy Ghost For as Christ is the manifestation of the Father so the holy Ghost is the application of the Sonne Therein onely are we Christians that in the profession of that name of Christ we professe all the three Persons In Christ is the whole Trinity because as the Father sent him so he sent the holy Ghost And that 's our specifique forme that 's our distinctive Character from Iew and Gentile the Trinity But then is this specifique forme this distinctive Character the notion of the Trinity conveied to us exhibited imprinted upon us in our Creation in this word this plurall word in the mouth of our one God Faciamus Let us us It is here and here first This is an intimation and the first intimation of the Trinity from the mouth of God in all the Bible It is true that though the same faith which is necessary to salvation now were always necessary and so in the old Testament they were bound to beleeve in Christ as well as in the new and consequently in the whole Trinity yet not so explicitly nor so particularly as now Christ calling upon God in the name of Father says I have manifested thy name unto the men thou gavest me out of the world They were men appropriated to God men exempt out of the world yet they had not a cleer manifestation of Father and Sonne the doctrine of the Trinity till Christ manifested it to them I have manifested thy name thy name of Father And therefore the Jewish Rabbins say that the Septuagint the first translators of the Bible did disguise some places of the Scriptures in their translation lest Ptolomee for whom they translated it should be scandalized w h those places that this textwasone of those places which say they though it be otherwise in the Copies of the Septuagint which we have now they translated Faciam and not Faciamus that God said here I will make in the singular and not Let us make man in the plurall lest that plurall word might have misled King Ptâ—lomee to thinke that the Iews had a plurall Religion and worshipped divers Gods So good an evidence doe they confesse this text to be for some kinde of plurality in the Godhead Here then God notified the Trinity and here first for though we accept an intimation of the Trinity in the first line of the Bible where Moses joynes a plurall name Elohim with a singular Verbe Bara and so in construction it is Creavit Dii Gods created heaven and earth yet besides that that is rather a mysterious collection then an evident conclusion of a plurality of Persons though we read that in that first verse before this in the twenty sixth yet Moses writ that which is in the beginning of this chapter more then two thousand years after God spake this that is in our text So long was Gods plurall before Moses his plurall Gods Faciamus before Moses Bara Elohim So that in this text beginnes our Catechisme Here we have and here first the saving knowledge of the Trinity For when God spake here to whom could God speake but to God Non cum rebus Creandis nox cum re nihili says Athanasius speaking of Gods first speaking when he said of the first creature Let there be light God spake not then to future things to things that were not When God spake first there was no creature at all to speake to When God spake of the making of man there were creatures But were there any creatures able to create or able to assist him in the creation of man Who Angels Some had thought so in Saint Basils time and to them Saint Basil says Súntne Illi God says let us make man to our Image And could he say so to Angels Are Angels and God all one Or is that that is like an Angell therefore like God It was Sua Ratio Suum verbum Sua sapientia says that Father God spake to his own word and wisdome to his own purpose and goodnesse And the Sonne is the word and wisdome of God and the holy Ghost is the goodnesse and the purpose of God that is the administration the dispensation of his purposes 'T is true that when God speakes this over againe in his Church as he does every day now this minute then God speakes it to Angels to the Angels of the Church to his Ministers he says Faciamus Let us us both together you and we make a man join mine Ordinance your preaching with my Spirit says God to us and so make man Preach the oppressor and preach the wanton and preach the calumniator into another nature Make the ravening Wolfe a Man that licentious Goate a man that insinuating Serpent a man by thy preaching To day if you will heare his voice heare us For here he calls upon us to joine with him for the making of man But for his first Faciamus which is in our text it is excellently said Dictum in senatu soliloquio It was spoken in a Senat and yet in a solitarinesse spoken in private and yet publiquely spoken spoken where there were divers and yet but one one God and three Persons If there were no more intended in this plurall expression us but as some have conceived that God spake here in the person of a Prince and Soveraigne Lord and therefore spake as Princes doe in the plurall We command and We forbid yet Saint Gregories caution would justly fall upon it Reverenter pensandum est it requires a reverend consideration if it be but so For God speakes so like a King in the plurall but seldome but five times in my account in all the Scriptures and in all five in cases of important consequence In this text first where God creates man whom he constitutes his Viceroy in the World here he speakes in his royall plurall And then in the next Chapter where he extends mans terme in his Vicegerency to the end of the world in providing man meanes of succession Faciamus Let us us make him a helper There he speakes in his royall plurall And then also in the third Chapter in declaring the hainousnesse of mans fault and arraigning him and all us in him God says Sicut unus ex nobis Man is become as one of us not content to be our Viceroy but our selves There 's his royall
plurall too And againe in that declaration of his Justice in the confusion of the builders of Babel Descendamus confundamus Let us doe it And then lastly in that great worke of mingling mercy with justice which if we may so speake is Gods master-peece when he says Quis ex nobis who will goe for us and publish this In these places and these onely and not all these neither if we take it exactly according to the originall for in the Second the making of Eve though the Vulgat have it in the plurall it is indeed but singular in the Hebrew God speakes as a King in his royall plurall still And when it is but so Reverenter pensandum est says that Father it behoves us to hearken reverently to him for Kings are Images of God such Images of God as have eares and can heare and hands and can strike But I would aske no more premeditation at your hands when you come to speake to God in this place then if you sued to speake with the King no more fear of God here then if you went to the King under the conscience of a guiltinesse towards him and a knowledge that he knew it And that 's your case here Sinners and manifest sinners For even midnight is noone in the sight of God and when your candles are put out his Sunne shines still Nec quid absconditum à calcre ejus says David there is nothing hid from the heate thereof not onely no sinne hid from the light thereof from the sight of God but not from the heate therof not from the wrath indignation of God If God speak plurally onely in the Majesty of a soveraign Prince still Reverenter pensandum that calls for reverence What reverence There are nationall differences in outward worships and reverences Some worship Princes and Parents and Masters in one some in another fashion Children kneele to aske blessing of Parents in England but where else Servants attend not with the same reverence upon Masters in other nations as with us Accesses to their Princes are not with the same difficulty nor the same solemnity in France as in Turkey But this rule goes thorough all nations that in that disposition and posture and action of the body which in that place is esteemed most humble and reverend God is to be worshipped Doe so then here God is your Father aske blessing upon your knees pray in that posture God is your King worship him with that worship which is highest in our use and estimation We have no Grandees that stand covered to the King where there are such though they stand covered in the Kings presence they doe not speake to him for matters of Grace they doe not sue to him so ancient Canons make differences of Persons in the presence of God where and how these and these shall dispose of themselves in the Church dignity and age and infirmity will induce differences But for prayer there is no difference one humiliation is required of all As when the King comes in here howsoever they sate diversly before all returne to one manner of expressing their acknowledgement of his presence So at the Oremus Let us pray let us all fall down and worship and kneel before the Lord our maker So he speakes in our text not onely as the Lord our King intimating his providence and administration but as the Lord our maker and then a maker so as that he made us in a councell Faciamus Let us and that that he speakes as in councell is another argument for reverence For what interest or freedome soever I have by his favour with any Counseller of State yet I should surely use another manner of behaviour towards him at the Councell Table then at his owne Table So does there belong another manner of consideration to this plurality in God to this meeting in Councell to this intimation of a Trinity then to those other actions in which God is presented to us singly as one God for so he is presented to the naturall man as well as to us And here enters the necessity of this knowledge Oportet denuo nasci without a second birth no salvation And no second birth without Baptisme no Baptisme but in the name of Father Sonne and holy Ghost It was the entertainment of God himselfe his delight his contemplation for those infinite millions of generations when he was without a world without Creatures to joy in one another in the Trinity as Gregory Nazianz a Poet as well as a Father as most of the Fathers were expresses it ille suae splendorem cernere formae Gaudebat It was the Fathers delight to looke upon himselfe in the Sonne Numenque suum triplicique parique Luce nitens and to see the whole Godhead in a threefold and an equall glory It was Gods owne delight and it must be the delight of every Christian upon particular occasions to carry his thoughts upon the severall persons of the Trinity If I have a bar of Iron that bar in that forme will not naile a doore If a Sow of Lead that Lead in that forme will not stop a leake If a wedge of Gold that wedge will not buy my bread The generall notion of a mighty God may lesse fit my particular purposes But I coine my gold into currant money when I apprehend God in the severall notions of the Trinity That if I have been a prodigall Sonne I have a Father in heaven and can goe to him and say Father I have sinned and be received by him That if I be a decayed Father and need the sustentation of mine own children there is a Sonne in heaven that will doe more for me then mine own of what good meanes or what good nature so ever they be can or will doe If I be dejected in spirit there is a holy Spirit in heaven which shall beare witnesse to my spirit that I am the child of God And if the ghosts of those sinners whom I made sinners haunt me after their deaths in returning to my memory and reproaching to my conscience the heavy judgements that I have brought upon them If after the death of mine own sinne when my appetite is dead to some particular sinne the memory and sinfull delight of passed sinnes the ghosts of those sinnes haunt me againe yet there is a holy Ghost in heaven that shall exorcise these and shall overshadow me the God of all Comfort and Consolation God is the God of the whole world in the generall notion as he is so God but he is my God most especially and most applyably as he receives me in the severall notions of Father Sonne and holy Ghost This is our East here we see God God in all the persons consulting concurring to the making of us But then my West presents it selfe that is an occasion to humble me in the next words He makes but Man A man that is but Adam but Earth
of the Persons of the Trinity are Power to the Father Wisedome to the Sonne and Goodnesse to the holy Ghost And the three faculties of the Soule have the Images of these three The Understanding is the Image of the Father that is Power For no man can exercise power no man can governe well without understanding the natures and dispositions of them whom he governes And therefore in this consists the power which man hath over the creature that man understands the nature of every creature For so Adam did when he named every creature according to the nature thereof And by this advantage of our understanding them and comprehending them we master them and so obliviscuntur quod nata sunt says Saint Ambrose the Lion the Beare the Elephant have forgot what they were borne to Induuntur quod jubentur they invest and put on such a disposition and such a nature as we enjoine them and appoint to them Serviunt ut famuli as that Father pursues it elegantly and verberantur ut timidi they waite upon us as servants who if they understood us as well as we understand them might be our Masters and they receive correction from us as though they were afraid of us when if they understood us they would know that we were not able to stand in the teeth of the Lion in the horne of the Bull in the heels of the Horse And adjuvantur ut infirmi they counterfeit a weakenesse that they might be beholden to us for help and they are content to thanke us if we afford them any rest or any food who if they understood us as well as we doe them might teare our meate out of our throates nay teare out our throats for their meat So then in this first naturall faculty of the soule the Understanding stands the Image of the first Person the Father Power and in the second faculty which is the Will is the Image the Attribute of the second Person the Sonne which is Wisdome for wisdome is not so much in knowing in understanding as in electing in choosing in assenting No man needs goe out of himselfe nor beyond his owne legend and the history of his owne actions for examples of that that many times we know better and choose ill wayes Wisdome is in choosing in Assenting And then in the third faculty of the soule the Memory is the Image of the third person the holy Ghost that is Goodnesse For to remember to recollect our former understanding and our former assenting so far as to doe them to Crowne them with action that 's true goodnesse The office that Christ assignes to the holy Ghost and the goodnesse which he promises in his behalfe is this that he shall bring former things to our remembrance The wiseman places all goodnesse in this faculty the memory properly nothing can fall into the memory but that which is past and yet he says Whatsoever thou takest in hand remember the end and thou shalt never doe amisse The end cannot be yet come and yet we are bid to remember that Visus per omnes sensus recurrit says Saint Augustine As all senses are called fight in the Scriptures for there is Gustate Dominum and Audite and Palpate Taste the Lord and heare the Lord and feele the Lord and still the Videte is added taste and see the Lord so all goodnesse is in remembring all goodnesse which is the Image of the holy Ghost is in bringing our understanding and our assenting into action Certainly beloved if a man were like the King but in countenance and in proportion he himselfe would thinke somewhat better of himselfe and others would be the lesse apt to put scornes or injuries upon him then if he had a Vulgar and course aspect With those who have the Image of the Kings power the Magistrate the Image of his Wisdome the Counsell the Image of his Goodnesse the Clergy it should be so too There is a respect due to the Image of the King in all that have it Now in all these respects man the meer naturall man hath the Image of the King of Kings And therefore respect that Image in thy selfe and exalt thy naturall faculties Aemulate those men and be ashamed to be outgone by those men who had no light but nature Make thine understanding and thy will and thy memory though but naturall faculties serviceable to thy God and auxiliary and subsidiary for thy salvation For though they be not naturally instruments of grace yet naturally they are susceptible of grace and have so much in their nature as that by grace they may be made instruments of grace which no faculty in any creature but man can be And doe not thinke that because a naturall man cannot doe all therefore he hath nothing to doe for himselfe This then is the Image of God in man the first way in nature and most literally this is the intention of the text Man was this Image thus and the roome furnished with this Image was Paradise But there is a better roome then that Paradise for the second Image the Image of God in man by grace that is the Christian Church For though for the most part this text be understood De naturalibus of our naturall faculties yet Origen and not onely such Allegoricall Expositors but Saint Basill and Nyssen and Ambrose and others who are literall enough assigne this Image of God to consist in the gifts of Gods grace exhibited to us here in the Church A Christian then in that second capacity as a Christian and not onely as a man hath this Image of God of God first considered intirely And those expressions of this impression those representations of this Image of God in a Christian by grace which the Apostles have exhibited to us that we are the sonnes of God the feed of God the off-spring of God and partakers of the divine nature which are high and glorious exaltations are enlarged and exalted by Damascen to a farther height when he says Sicut Deus homo it a ego Deus As God is man so I am God says Damascen I taken in the whole mankinde for so Damascen takes it out of Nazianzen and he says Sicut verbum caro ita caro verbum as God was made man man may become God but especially I I as I am wrought upon by grace in Christ Jesus So a Christian is made the Image of God intirely To which expression Saint Cyrill also comes neare when he calls a Christian Deiformem hominem man in the forme of God which is a mysterious and a blessed metamorphosis and transfiguration that whereas it was the greatest trespasse of the greatest trespasser in the world the Devill to say Similis ero Altissimo I will be like the Highest it would be as great a trespasle in me not to be like the Highest not to conforme my selfe to God by the use of his grace in the Christian Church
many and very good grammarians amongst the Hebrews have thought and said that that name by which God notifies himself to the world in the very beginning of Genesis which is Elohim as it is a plurall word there so it hath no singular they say we cannot name God but plurally so sociable so communicable so extensive so derivative of himself is God and so manifold are the beames and the emanations that flow out from him It is a garden worthy of your walking in it Come into it but by the gate of nature The naturall man had much to do to conceive God a God that should be but one God and therefore scattered his thoughts upon a multiplicity of Gods and he found it as he thought reasonable to think that there should be a God of Iustice a God of Wisedome a God of Power and so made the severall Attributes of God severall Gods and thought that one God might have enough to do with the matters of Iustice another with the causes that belonged to power and so also with the courts of Wisedome the naturall man as he cannot conceive a vacuity that any thing should be empty so he cannot conceive that any one thing though that be a God should fill all things and therefore strays upon a pluralty of Gods upon many Gods though in truth as Athanasius expresses it ex multitudine numinum nullitas numinum he that constitutes many Gods destroys all God for no God can be God if he be not all-sufficient yet naturally I mean in such nature as our nature is a man does not easily conceive God to be alone to be but one he thinks there should be company in the Godhead Bring it farther then so A man that lies in the dregs of obscured and vitiated nature does not easily discern unicum Deum a God that should be alone a God that should be but one God Reason rectified rectified by the word of God can discern this this one God But when by that means of the Scripture he does apprehend Deum unicum one God does he finde that God alone are there not three Persons though there be but one God 'T is true the RomaÌ„s mis-took infinitely in making 300 Iupiters Varro mis-took infinitely in making Deos terrestres and Deos câ—lesâ—es sub-lunary and super-lunary heavenly and earthly Gods and Deus marinos and fluviatiles Sea Gods and River Gods salt and fresh-water Gods and Deos mares and faeminas he Gods and she Gods and that he might be sure to take in all Deos certos incertos Gods which they were sure were Gods Gods w ch might be Gods for any thing they knew to the contrary There is but one God but yet was that one God ever alone There were more generations infinitely infinite before the world was made then there have been minutes since it was made all that while there were no creasures but yet was God alone any one minute of al this was there not alwais a Father and a Son a holy Ghost And had not they always an acquiescence in one another an exercise of Affection as we may so say a love a delight and a complacency towards one another So as that the Father could not be without the Son and the holy Ghost so as neither Sonne nor holy Ghost could be without the Father nor without one another God was from all eternity collected into one God yet from all eternity he derived himselfe into three persons God could not be so alone but that there have been three persons as long as there hath been one God Had God company enough of himselfe was he satisfied in the three Persons We see he proceeded further he came to a Creation And as soon as he had made light which was his first Creature he took a pleasure in it he said it was good he was glad of it glad of the Sea glad of the Earth glad of the Sunne and Moone and Starres and he said of every one It is good But when he had made All peopled the whole world brought all creatures together then he was very glad and then he said not onely that it was good but that it was very good God was so far from being alone as that he found not the fulnesse of being well till all was made till all Creatures met together in an Host as Moses calls it then the good was extended into very good Did God satisfie himselfe with this visible and discernible world with all on earth and all between that and him were those foure Monarchies the foure Elements and all the subjects of those foure Monarchies if all the foure Elements have Creatures company enough for God was that Heptarchie the seven kingdomes of the seven Planets conversation enough for him Let every Starre in the firmament be so some take them to be a severall world was all this enough we see God drew persons nearer to him then Sunne or Moon or Starres or any thing which is visible and discernible to us he created Angels How many how great Arithmetique lacks numbers to to expresse them proportion lacks Dimensions to figure them so far was God from being alone And yet God had not shed himselfe far enough he had the Leviathan the Whale in the Sea and Behemoth and the Elephant upon the land and all these great heavenly bodies in the way and Angels in their infinite numbers and manifold offices in heaven But because Angels could not propagate nor make more Angels he enlarged his love in making man that so he might enjoy all natures at once and have the nature of Angels and the nature of earthly Creatures in one Person God would not be without man nor he would not come single not alone to the making of man but it is Faciamas hominem Let us us make man God in his whole counsail in his whole Colledge in his whole society in the whole Trinity makes man in whom the whole nature of all the world should meet And still our large and our Communicable God affected this association so as that having three Persons in himselfe and having Creatures of divers natures and having collected all natures in man who consisted of a spirituall nature as well as a bodily he would have one liker himselfe then man was And therefore he made Christ God and Man in one person Creature and Creator together One greater then the Seraphim and yet lesse then a worme Soveraigne to all nature and yet subject to naturall infirmities Lord of life life it selfe and yet prisoner to Death Before and beyond all measures of Time Born at so many moneths yet Circumcised at so many days Crucified at so many years Rose againe at so many Houres How sure did God make himselfe of a companion in Christ who united himselfe in his godhead so inseparably to him as that that godhead left not that body then when it lay dead in the grave but
conscience and pinching the bowells by denouncing of Gods Judgements these beare witnesse of the light when otherwise men would sleep it out and so propter non intelligentes for those that lye in the suddes of nature and cannot or of negligence and will not come to heare sol lucernas this light requires testimony These testimonies Gods ordinances may have wakened a man yet he may winke and covet darknesse and grow weary of instruction and angry at increpation And as the eye of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight so the eare of this fastidious and impatient man longeth for the end of the Sermon or the end of that point in the Sermon which is a thorne to his conscience But as if a man wink in a cleare day he shall for all that discerne light thorough his eylids but not light enough to keep him from stumbling so the most perverse man that is either in faith or manners that winkes against the light of nature or light of the law or light of grace exhibited in the Christian Church the most determined Atheist that is discernes through all his stubbornnesse though not light enough to rectifie him to save him yet enough to condemne him though not enough to enable him to reade his owne name in the book of life yet so much as makes him afraid to read his own story by and to make up his owne Audit and account with God And doth not this light to this man need testimony That as he does see it is a light so he might see that there is warmth and nourishment in this light and so as well see the way to God by that light as to see by it that there is a God and this he may if he doe not sleep nor winke that is not forbeare comming hither nor resist the grace of God always offred here when he is here Propter incredulos for their sakes who though they doe heare heare not to beleeve sol lucernas this light requires testimony and it does so too propter infirmos for their sakes who though they doe heare and beleeue yet doe not Practise If he neither sleep nor wink neither forbeare nor resist yet how often may you surprise and deprehend a man whom you thinke directly to look upon such an object yet if you aske him the quality or colour of it he will tell you he saw it not That man sees as little with staring as the other with winking His eye hath seen but it hath returned nothing to the common sense We may pore upon books stare upon preachers yet if we reflect nothing nothing upon our conversation we shall still remaine under the increpation and malediction of Saint Paul out of Esay Seeing yee shall see and shall not perceive seeing and hearing shall but aggravate our condemnation and it shall be easier at the day of Judgement for the deaf and the blinde that never saw Sacrament never heard Sermon then for us who have frequented both propter infirmos for their sakes whose strength though it serve to bring them hither and to beleeve here doth not serve them to proceed to practise sol lucernas this light requires testimony Yet if we be neither dead nor asleep nor winke nor looke negligently but doe come to some degrees of holinesse in practise for a time yet if at any time we put our selves in such a position and distance from this light as that we suffer dark thick bodies to interpose and eclipse it that is sadnesse and dejection of spirit for worldly losses nay if we admit inordinate sadnesse for sinne it selfe to eclipse this light of comfort from us or if we suffer such other lights as by the corrupt estimation of the world have a greater splendour to come in As the light of Knowledge and Learning the light of Honour and Glory of popular Applause and Acclamation so that this light which we speake of the light of former Grace be darkned by the accesse of other lights worldly lights then also you shall finde that you need more and more Testimony of this light God is light in the Creature in nature yet the naturall Man stumbles and falls and lies in that ignorance Christ bears witnesse of this light in establishing a Chrishian Church yet many Christians fall into Idolatry and Superstition and lie and die in it The Holy Ghost hath born further witnesse of this light and if we may take so low a Metaphore in so high a Mystery hath snuffed this candle mended this light in the Reformation of Religion and yet there is a damp or a cloud of uncharitablenesse of neglecting of defaming one another we deprave even the fiery the claven tongues of the Holy Ghost Our tongues are fiery onely to the consuming of another and they are cloven onely in speaking things contrary to one another So that still there need more witnesses more testimonies of this light God the Father is Pater Luminum the Father of all Lights God the Sonne is Lumen de lumine Light of light of the Father God the Holy Ghost is Lumen de luminibus Light of lights proceeding both from the Father and the Sonne and this light the Holy Ghost kindles more lights in the Church and drops a coale from the Altar upon every lamp he lets fall beams of his Spirit upon every man that comes in the name of God into this place and he sends you one man to day which beareth witnesse of this light ad ignaros that bends his preaching to the convincing of the naturall man the ignorant soul and works upon him And another another day that bears witnesse ad incredulos that fixeth the promises of the Gospell and the merits of Christ Jesus upon that startling and timorous soul upon that jealous and suspicious soul that cannot beleeve that those promises or those merits appertain to him and so bends all the power of his Sermon to the binding up of such broken hearts and faint beleevers He sendeth another to bear witnesse ad infirmos to them who though they have shaked off their sicknesse yet are too weake to walke to them who though they doe beleeve are intercepted by tentations from preaching and his Sermon reduces them from their ill manners who thinke it enough to come to hear to beleeve And then he sendeth another ad Relapsos to bear witnesse of this light to them who have relapsed into former sinnes that the merits of Christ are inexhaustible and the mercies of God in him indefatigable As God cannot be deceived with a false repentance so he cannot resist a true nor be weary of multiplying his mercies in that case And therefore thinke not that thou hast heard witnesses enow of this light Sermons enow if thou have heard all the points preached upon which concerne thy salvation But because new Clouds of Ignorance of Incredulitie of Infirmitie of Relapsing rise every day and call this light in question
by a generall forbearance on all sides rather then victory by wrangling and uncharitablenesse And let our right hand forget her cunning let us never set pen to paper to write Let our tongue cleave to the roofe of our mouth let us never open our mouth to speake of those things in which Silence was an Act of Discretion and Charity before but now is also an Act of Obedience and of Allegiance and Loyaltie But that which David said to the Lord Psalme 65. 1. Let us also accommodate to the Lords anointed Tibi laus silentium our best sacrifice to both is to be silent in those things So then this is Concisio corporis that Concision of the body which you are to beware in Doctrinall things first non solvere Iesum not to dissolve not to break Jesus in pieces not to depart in any respect with any fundamentall Article of faith for that is a skin that covers the whole body an obligation that lies upon the whole Church and then for that particular Church in which you have your station first to conform your self to all that in which she had evidently declared herself and then not to impute to her not to call such articles hers as she never avowd And our next consideration is Concisio vestis the tearing of the garment matter of discipline and government To a Circumcision of the garment that is to a paâ—ing and taking away such Ceremonies as were superstitious or superfluous of an ill use or of no use our Church came in the beginning of the Reformation To a CircuÌ„cision we came but those Churches that came to a Concision of the garment to an absolute taking away of all ceremonies neither provided so safely for the Church it self in the substance thereof nor for the exaltation of Devotion in the Church Divide the law of the Iews into 2 halfs and the Ceremoniall will be the greater we cannot cal the Morall law the Iews law that was ours as wel as their peculiar to none but of that law w ch is peculiar to the Jews judicial Ceremonial the Ceremonial is far the greater part So great a care had God of those thing which though they be not of the revenue of Religion yet are of the subsidy of Religion and though they be not the soule of the Church yet are they those Spirits that unite soule and body together H's man did but shave the beards of Davids servants he did not cut off their heads He did not cut their clothes so as that he stripped them naked Yet for that that he did says that story he stanke in Davids sight which is a phrase of high indignation in that language and so much as that it cost him forty thousand of his horsemen in one battell And therefore as this Apostle enters this Caveat in another place If yee bite one another cavete take heed yee be not consumed of one another so cavete take heed of this concision of the garment lest if the garment be torne off the body wither and perish A shadow is nothing yet if the rising or falling Sunne shine out and there be no shadow I will pronounce there is no body in that place neither Ceremonies are nothing but where there are no Ceremonies order and uniformity and obedience and at last and quickely Religion it selfe will vanish And therefore videte concisionem beware of tearing the body or of tearing the garment which will induce the other and both will induce the third concisionem spiritus the tearing of thine owne spirit from that rest which it should receive in God for when thou hast lost thy hold of all those handles which God reaches out to thee in the Ministery of his Church and that thou hast no means to apply the promises of God in Christ to thy soule which are onely applied by Gods Ordinances in his Church when anything falls upon thee that overcomes thy morall constancy which morall constancy God knowes is soon spent if we have lost our recourse to God thou wilt soon sinke into an irrecoverable desperation which is the fearfullest concision of all and videte beware of this concision When God hath made himselfe one body with me by his assuming this nature and made me one spirit with himselfe and that by so high a way as making me partaker of the divine nature so that now in Christ Iesus he and I are one this were solutio Iesus a tearing in peeces a dissolving of Jesus in the worst kinde that could be imagined if I should teare my selfe from Jesus or by any jealousie or suspicion of his mercy or any horror in my own sinnes come to thinke my selfe to be none of his none of him Who ever comes into a Church to denounce an excommunication against himselfe And shall any sad soule come hither to gather arguments from our preaching to excommunicate it selfe or to pronounce an impossibility upon her owne salvation God did a new thing Says Moses a strange thing a thing never done before when the earth opened her mouth and Dathan and Abiram went downe quicke into the pit Wilt thou doe a stranger thing then that To teare open the jawes of Earth and Hell and cast thy self actually and really into it out of mis-imagination that God hath cast thee into it before Wilt thou force God to second thy irreligious melancholy and to condemne thee at last because thou hadst precondemned thy selfe and renounced his mercy Wilt thou say with Cain My sinne is greater then can be pardoned This is Concisio potestatis a cutting off the power of God and Treason against the Father whose Attribute is Power Wilt thou say God never meant to save me this is Concisio Sapientiae a cutting off the Wisdome of God to thinke that God intended himselfe glory in a kingdome and would not have that kingdome peopled and this is Treason against the Son whose Attribute is wisdoms Wilt thou say I shall never finde comfort in Praying in Preaching in Receiving This is Concisio consolationis the cutting off consolation and treason against the holy Ghost whose office is comfort No man violates the Power of the Father the Wisedome of the Sonne the Goodnesse of the holy Ghost so much as he who thinkes himselfe out of their reach or the latitude of their working Rachel wept for her children and would not be comforted but why Because they were not If her children had been but gone for a time from her or but sicke with her Rachel would have been comforted but they were not Is that thy case Is not thy soule a soule still It may have gone from thee in sins of inconsideration it may be sicke within thee in sins of habit and custome but is not thy soul a soul still And hath God made any species larger then himself is there more soul then there is God more sin then mercy Truly Origen was more excusable more pardonable if he
properly Protestant And though the Injunctions of our Church declare the sense of those times concerning Images yet they are wisely and godly conceived for the second is That they shall not extoll Images which is not that they shall not set them up but as it followeth They shall declare the abuse thereof And when in the 23 Injunction it is said That they shall utterly extinct and destroy amongst other things pictures yet it is limited to such things and such pictures as are monuments of feigned miracles and that Injuction reaches as well to pictures in private houses as in Churches and forbids nothing in the Church that might be retained in the house For those pernicious Errors which the Romane Church hath multiplied in this point not onely to make Images of men which never were but to make those Images of men very men to make their Images speak and move and weep and bleed to make Images of God who was never seen and to make those Images of God very gods to make their Images doe daily miracles to transferre the honour due to God to the Image and then to encumber themselves with such ridiculous riddles and scornfull distinctions as they doe for justifying unjustifiable unexcusable uncolourable enormities Va Idololatris woe to such advancers of Images as would throw down Christ rather then his Image But Vae Iconeclastis too woe to such peremptory abhorrers of Pictures and to such uncharitable condemners of all those who admit any use of them as had rather throw down a Church then let a Picture stand Laying hold upon S. Hieromes exposition that fals within the Vae the Commination of this Text to be without those Sacrifices those Ephods those Images as they are outward helps of devotion And laying hold not upon S. Hierome but upon Christ himselfe who is the God of love and peace and unity yet fals under a heavy and insupportable Vae to violate the peace of the Church for things which concern it not fundamentally Problematicall things are our silver but fundamentall our gold problematicall out sweat but fundamentall our blood If our Adversaries would be bought in with our silver with our sweat we should not be difficult in meeting them halfe way in things in their nature indifferent But if we must pay our Gold our Blood our fundamentall points of Religion for their friendship A Fortune a Liberty a Wife a Childe a Father a Friend a Master a Neighbour a Benefactor a Kingdome a Church a World is not worth a dramme of this Gold a drop of this Blood Neither will that man who is truly rooted in this foundation redeeme an Empoverishing an Emprisoning a Dis-inheriting a Confining an Excommunicating a Deposing with a dramme of this Gold with a drop of this Blood the fundamentall Articles of our Religion Blessed be that God who as he is without change or colour of change hath kept us without change or colour of change in all our foundations And he in his time bring our Adversaries to such a moderation as becomes them who doe truly desire that the Church may bee truly Catholique one stock in one fold under one Shepherd though not all of one colour of one practise in all outward and disciplinarian points Amen SERMON XLII A Sermon Preached in Saint Pauls in the Evening November 23. 1628. PROV 14. 31. He that oppresseth the poore reprocheth his Maker but he that honoureth him hath mercy on the poore Part of the first Lesson for that Evening Prayer THese are such words as if we were to consider the words onely might make a Grammar Lecture and a Logick Lecture and a Rhetorick and Ethick a Philosophy Lecture too And of these foure Elements might a better Sermon then you are like to heare now be well made Indeed they are words of a large of an extensive comprehension And because all the words of the Word of God are in a great measure so that invites me to stop a little as upon a short first part before the rest or as upon a long entrie into the rest to consider not onely the powerfulnesse of the matter but the sweetnesse and elegancy of the words of the Word of God in generall before I descend to the particular words of this Text He that oppresseth the poore c. We may justly accommodate those words of Moses to God the Father What God is there in Heaven or in Earth that can doe according to thy workes And those words of Ieremie to God the Sonne Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow And those to the Holy Ghost which are in Esay Loquimini ad Cor speake to the heart speake comfortably to my People And those of Saint Iohn too A voyce of Thunder and after A voyce of seaven Thunders talking with me for who can doe like the Father who can suffer like the Sonne who can speake like the Holy Ghost Eloquia Domini eloquia casta saith David The words of the Lord are chaste words sincere pure words no drosse no profanenesse no such allay mingled with them for as it followeth there They are as silver tried and purified seaven times in the fire They are as that silver that is so tried and they are as that fire that trieth it It is Castum a Pure Word in it self and then it is powerfull upon the Hearer too Ignitum Eloquium tuum vehementer saith he Thy word hath the vehement operation of fire and therefore thy servant loveth it well as it followeth there Therefore because it pierces But therefore especially because it carrieth a sweetnesse with it For the sting of the Serpent pierces and the toothe of the Viper pierces but they carry venenosam salivam a venimous and mischievous liquour with them But Dulcia faucibus super Mel Thy words are sweeter to my mouth then Hony then Hony it selfe For verba composita saith Solomon chosen words studied premeditated words pleasing words so we translate it are as a Hony-combe Now in the Hony combe the Hony is collected and gathered and dispensed and distributed from the Hony-combe And of this Hony-combe is wax wax apt for sealing derived too The distribution of this Hony to the Congregation The sealing of this Hony to the Conscience is in the outward Ordinance of God and in the labour of the Minister and his conscionable fitting of himselfe for so great a service But the Hony-Combe is not the Hony The gifts of the man is not the Holy Ghost Iacob laid this blessing upon his sonne Naphtali Dabit Eloquia pulchritudinis That he should be a well-spoken and a perswasive man For of a defect in this kinde Moses complained and so did Esay and Ieremie did so too when they were to be imployed in Gods service Moses that he was of uncircumcised Esay that he was of unclean lips and Ieremie that he was a Childe and could not speak and therefore this was a Blessing upon
dead without children as Tertullian expresses it in his particular elegancy Illiberis that is content to be his brother in that sense in that capacity to claime no children no spirituall children of his own begetting not to attribute to himself that holy generation of the Saints of God as though his learning or his wit or his labour had saved them but to content himselfe to have been the foster father and to have nursed those children whom the Spirit of God by over-shadowing the Church hath begot upon her for though it be with the word of truth in our preaching yet of his own will begot he us though by the word says the Apostle Saint Paul might say to the Corinthians Though you have tenne thousand instructors in Christ yet have yee not many fathers for in Christ Iesus I have begotten you through the Gospel And hee might say of his spirituall sonne Onesimus That he begot him in his bonds Those to whom he first of any presented the Gospel That had not heard of a Christ nor a holy Ghost before They into whom he infused a new religion new to them might well enough bee called his children and hee their father But we have no new doctrine to present no new opinion to infuse or miracles to amaze as in the Romane Church they are full of all these wee have no children to beget of our own Paul was not crucified for you nor were you baptized in the name of Paul sayes Paul himself as he sayes again who is Paul but a Minister by whom ye beleeved and that also not by him but as the Lord gave to every man Not as Paul preached to every man for he preached alike to every man but as the Lord gave to every man I have planted says he it is true but he that planteth is nothing says he also Only they that proceed as they proceed in the Romane Church Ex opere operato to tye the grace of God to the action of the man will venter to call Gods children their children in that sense My prayer shal be against that commination That God will not give us a miscarrying womb nor dry breasts that you may always suck pure milk from us and then not cast it up but digest it to your spirituall growth And I shall call upon God with a holy passion as vehement as Rachels to Iacob Da mihi liberos give me children or I die That God would give me children but his children that he by his Spirit may give you an inward regeneration as I by his ordinance shall present to you the outward means that so being begot by himselfe the father of life and of light you may be nursed and brought up in his service by me That so not attributing the work to any man but to Gods Ordinances you doe not tye the power of God nor the breath of life to any one mans lips as though there were no regeneration no begetting but by him but acknowledging the other to be but an instrument and the weakest to be that you may remember also That though a man can cut deeper with an Axe then with a knife with a heavy then with a lighter instrument yet God can pierce as far into a conscience by a plain as by an exquisite speaker Now this widow being thus maried This Church thus undertaken He must perform the duty of a husbands brother First it is a personall office he must doe it himself When Christ shall say at the Judgement I was naked and ye cloathed me not sick and ye visited me not it shall be no excuse to say When saw we thee naked when saw we thee sick for wee might have seen it wee should have seen it When we shall come to our accompt and see them whose salvation was committed to us perish because they were uninstructed and ignorant dare we say then we never saw them show their ignorance wee never heard of it That is the greatest part of our fault the heaviest weight upon our condemnation that we saw so little heard so little conversed so little amongst them because we were made watchmen and bound to see and bound to hear and bound to be heard not by others but by our selves My sheep may be saved by others but I save them not that are save so nor shall I my self be saved by their labour where mine was necessarily required The office is personall I must doe it and it is perpetuall I must perform it sayes the text goe through with it Lots wife looked backe and God never gave her leave to look forward again That man who hath put his hand to the plow and looks back Christ disables him for the kingdome of God The Galatians who had begun in the spirit and then relapsed before whose eyes Christ Iesus had been evidently set forth as the Apostle speaks fall under that reproach of the Apostle to bee called and called againe fooles and men bewitched If I beginne to preach amongst you and proceed not I shall fall under that heavy increpation from my God you beganne that you might for your owne glory shew that you were in some measure able to serve the Church and when you had done enough for your own glory you gave over my glory and the salvation of their souls to whom I sent you God hath set our eyes in our foreheads to look forward not backward not to be proud of that which we have done but diligent in that which we are to doe In the Creation if God had given over his worke the third or fift day where had man been If I give over my prayers due to the Church of God as long as God enables me to doe it service I lose my thanks nay I lose the testimony of mine own conscience for all My office is personall and it is perpetuall and then it is a duty He must perform the duty of a husbands brother unto her It is not of curtesie that we preach but it is a duty it is not a bounty given but it is a debt paid for though I preach the Gospel I have nothing to glory of for a necessity is laid upon me sayes Saint Paul himself It is true that as there is Vae si non Wo be unto mee if I doe not preach the Gospel so there is an Euge bone serve Well done good and faithfull servant to them that doe But the Vae is of Iustice the Euge is of Mercy If doe it not I deserve condemnation from God but if I doe it I deserve not thanks from him Nay it is a debt not onely to God but to Gods people to you and indeed there is more due to you then you can claime or can take knowledge of For the people can claime but according to the laws of that State and the Canons of that Church in which God hath placed them such preaching as those Laws and
Fifty SERMONS PREACHED BY THAT LEARNED AND REVEREND DIVINE JOHN DONNE D r IN DIVINITY Late Deane of the Cathedrall Church of S. PAULS London The Second Volume LONDON Printed by Ia. Flesher for M. F. I. Marriot and R. Royston MDCXLIX TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE BASIL EARLE OF DENBY My very good Lord and Patron My Lord IN a season so tempestuous it is a great encouragement to see your Lordship called to the Helme who in your publique negociations having spent so many yeares in that so famed Common-wealth of Venice must of necessity have brought home such excellent Principles of Government that if our Fate doe not withstand your Directions we may reasonably at last expect to see our new Brittish Lady excell that ancient Adriatique Queene Neither can I offend much against the State in begging your Patronage and perusall of this Book knowing that your Lordship first mastered all the Learning of Padoa before you did adventure upon that wise Senate who amongst all her other greatnesses has ever had a principall care that Learning might not be diminished When these Sermons were preached they were terminated within the compasse of an houre but your acceptance may make them outlive the very Churches that they were preached in and give them such a perpetuity that Nec Jovis Ira nec Amor edacior multò poterit abolere For though a fiery zeale in succeeding ages hath often both ruined the Temples and casheired the gods that were worshipped in them Yet such sacrifices as these have beemy laies kept unburnt and we are suffered to know those religions that we are not allowed to practice Nor can I expect any greater advantage for the paines I have taken in publishing this Book then that posterity may know I did it when I had the favor and protection of your Lordship and was allowed to stile my selfe Your Lordships most humble Servant JO. DONNE FOR THE RIGHT HONOURABLE BOLSTRED WHITLOCK RICHARD KEEBLE 〈◊〉 JOHN LEILE Lords Commissioners of the Great Seale THe reward that many yeares since was proposed for the publishing these Sermons having been lately conferred upon me under the authority of the Great Seale I thought my selfe in gratitude bound to deliver them to the world under your Lordships protection both to show how carefull you are in dispensing that part of the Churches treasure that is committed to your disposing and to encourage all men to proceed in their industry when they are sure to find so just and equall Patrons whose fame and memory must certainely last longer then Bookes can find so noble Readers and whose present favors doe not onely keep the Living alive but the Dead from dying Your Lordships most humble Servant JO. DONNE A Table directing to the severall Texts of SCRIPTURE handled in this Book Sermons preached at Mariages Sermon I. Preached at the Earl of Bridgwaters house in London on MATTH 22. 30. For in the Resurrection they neither mary nor are given in Mariage but are as the Angels of God in heaven p. 1. Serm ' II. GEN. 2. 18. And the Lord God said It is not good that the man should be alone I will make him a Help meet for him p. 9. Serm. III. HOSEA 2. 19. And I will mary thee unto me for ever p. 15 Sermons preached at Christnings Serm. IV. REVEL 7. 17. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the Throne shall governe them and shall leade them unto the lively fountaines of waters and God shall wipe away all teares from their eyes p. 23 Serm. V. EPHES. 5. 25 26 27. Husbands love your wives even at Christ loved the Church and gave himselfe for it that he might sanctifie it and cleanse it by the washing of water through the Word That he might make it unto himselfe a glorious Church not having spot or wrinckle or any such thing but that it should be holy and without blame p. 31 Serm. VI. 1 JOH 5. 7 8. For there are three which beare record in Heaven the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which beare record in the Earth The Spirit and the water and the blood and these three agree in one p. 39 Serm. VII GAL. 3. 27. For all yee that are baptized into Christ have put on Christ. p. 50. Sermons preached at Churchings Serm. VIII CANT 5. 3. I have washed my feet how shall I defile them p. 59. Serm. IX MICAH 2. 10. Arise and depart for this is not your rest p. 67. Serm. X. A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 74. Sermons preached at Lincolns-Inne Serm. XI GEN. 28. 16 17. Then Iacob awoke out of his sleep and said Surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware And he was afraid and said How fearefull is this place This is none other but the House of God and this is the gate of Heaven p. 83 Serm. XII JOH 5. 22. The Father judgeth no man but hath committed all judgement to the Sonne p. 94. Serm. XIII JOH 8. 15. I judge no man p. 101. Serm. XIIII JOB 19. 26. And though after my skin wormes destroy this body yet in my flesh shall I see God p. 106. Serm. XV. 1 COR. 15. 50. Now this I say Brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God p. 118. Serm. XVI COLOS. 1. 24. Who now rejoyce in my sufferings for you and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his bodies sake which is the Church p. 128. Serm. XVII MAT. 18. 7. Wo unto the world because of offences p. 136. Serm. XVIII A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 142 Serm. XIX PSAL. 38. 2. For thine arrowes stick fast in me and thy hand presseth me sore p. 158. Serm. XX. PSA 38. 3. There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sinne p. 162. Serm. XXI PSAL. 38. 4. For mine iniquities are gone over my head as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me p. 174. Serm. XXII A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 186. Serm. XXIII A third Serm. on the same Text. p. 192. Sermons preached at White-Hall Serm. XXIV EZEK 34. 19. And as for my flocke they eate that which ye have trodden with your feet and they drink that which yee have fouled with your feet 199. Serm. XXV A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 208. Serm. XXVI ESAI 65. 20. For the childe shall die a hundred yeers old but the sinner being a hundred yeers old shall be accursed p. 218 Serm. XXVII MARK 4. 24. Take heed what you hear p. 228 Serm. XXVIII GEN. 1. 26. And God said Let us make man in our own Image after our likenesse p. 239. Serm. XXIX A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 250 Sermons preached to the Nobility Serm. XXX JOB 13. 15. Loe though he slay me yet will I trust in him p. 262. Serm. XXXI JOB 36.
25. Every man may see it man may behold it afar off p. 271. Serm. XXXII APOC. 7 9. After this I beheld and loe a great multitude which no man could number of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues stood before the throne and before the Lambe clothed with white robes and Palmes in their hands p. 279. Serm. XXXIII CANT 3. 11. Go forth ye daughters of Sion and behold King Solomon with the Crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the day of the gladnesse of his heart p. 288. Serm. XXXIIII LUKE 23. 34. Father forgive them for they know not what they doe p. 304. Serm. XXXV MAT. 21. 44. Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken but on whosoever it shall fall it will grinde him to powder p. 311. Sermons preached at S. Pauls Sermon XXXVI JOH 1. 8. He was not that Light but was sent to beare witnesse of that Light p. 320. Serm. XXXVII A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 334. Serm. XXXVIII A third Ser. on the the same Text. p. 343. Serm. XXXIX PHIL. 3. 2. Beware of the Concision p. 356. Serm. XL. 2 COR. 5. 20. We pray yee in Christs stead Be ye reconciled to God p. 364. XLI HOSEA 3. 4. For the Children of Israel shall abide many dayes without a King and without a Prince and without a Sacrifice and without an Image and without an Ephod and without Teraphim p. 375. Serm. XLII PROV 14. 31. He that oppresseth the poor reprocheth his Maker but he that honoureth him hath mercy on the 〈◊〉 p. 385. Serm. XLIII LAMENT 4. 20. The breath of our nostrils the Anointed of the Lord was taken in their pits p. 396. Serm. XLIV MAT. 11. 6. And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me p. 411. Sermons preached at S. Dunstans Serm. XLV DEUT. 25. 5. If brethren dwell together and one of them dye and have no childe the Wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger her husbands brother shall goe in unto her and take her to him to wife and performe the duty of an husbands brother unto her p. 422. Serm. XLVI PSAL. 34. 11. Come ye children Hearken unto me I will teach you the feare of the Lord. p. 430. Ser. XLVII GEN. 3. 24. And dust shalt thou eate all the dayes of thy life p. 439. Ser. XLVIII LAMENT 3. 1. I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath p. 445. Serm. XLIX GEN. 7. 24. Abraham himself was ninety nine yeeres old when the foreskin of his flesh was Circumcised p. 456. Serm. L. 1 THES 5. 16. Rejoyce evermore p. 466. A SERMON PREACHED At the Earl of Bridgewaters house in London at the mariage of his daughter the Lady Mary to the eldest sonne of the L. Herbert of Castle-iland Novemb. 19. 1627. The Prayer before the Sermon O Eternall and most gracious God who hast promised to hearken to the prayers of thy people when they pray towards thy house though they be absent from it worke more effectually upon us who are personally met in this thy house in this place consecrated to thy worship Enable us O Lord so to see thee in all thy Glasses in all thy representations of thy selfe to us here as that hereafter we may see thee face to face and as thou art in thy self in thy kingdome of glory Of which Glasses wherein we may see thee Thee in thine Unity as thou art One God Thee in thy Plurality as thou art More Persons we receive this thy Institution of Mariage to be one In thy first work the Creation the last seale of thy whole work was a Mariage In thy Sonnes great work the Redemption the first seale of that whole work was a miracle at a Mariage In the work of thy blessed Spirit our Sanctification he refreshes to us that promise in one Prophet That thou wilt mary thy selfe to us for ever and more in another That thou hast maryed thy selfe unto us from the beginning Thou hast maryed Mercy and Iustice in thy selfe maryed God and Man in thy Sonne maryed Increpation and Consolation in the Holy Ghost mary in us also O Lord a Love and a Fear of thee And as thou hast maryed in us two natures mortall and immortall mary in us also the knowledge and the practise of all duties belonging to both conditions that so this world may be our Gallery to the next And mary in us the Spirit of Thankfulnesse for all thy benefits already bestowed upon us and the Spirit of prayer for the continuance and enlargement of them Continue and enlarge them O'God upon thine universall Church c. SERM. I. MATTH 22. 30. For in the Resurrection they neither mary nor are given in Mariage but are as the Angels of God in heaven OF all Commentaries upon the Scriptures Good Examples are the best and the livelyest and of all Examples those that are nearest and most present and most familiar unto us and our most familiar Examples are those of our owne families and in families the Masters of families the fathers of families are most conspicuous most appliable most considerable Now in exercises upon such occasions as this ordinarily the instruction is to bee directed especially upon those persons who especially give the occasion of the exercise that is upon the persons to bee united in holy wedlock for as that 's a difference betweene Sermons and Lectures that a Sermon intends Exhortation principally and Edification and a holy stirring of religious affections and then matters of Doctrine and points of Divinity occasionally secondarily as the words of the text may invite them But Lectures intend principally Doctrinall points and matter of Divinity and matter of Exhortation but occasionally and as in a second place so that 's a difference between Christening sermons and Mariage sermons that the first at Christnings are especially directed upon the Congregation and not upon the persons who are to be christened and these at mariages especially upon the parties that are to be united and upon the congregation but by reflexion When therefore to these persons of noble extraction I am to say something of the Duties and something of the Blessing of Mariage what God Commands and what God promises in that state in his Scriptures I lay open to them the best exposition the best Commentaries upon those Scriptures that is Example and the neerest example that is example in their own family when with the Prophet Esay I direct them To look upon the Rock from whence they are hewen to propose to themselves their own parents and to consider there the performance of the duties of mariage imposed by God in S. Paul and the blessings proposed by God in David Thy Wife shall be a fruitfull Vine by the sides of thy House The children like olive plants round about the table For to this purpose of edifying children by example such as are truly religious fathers
word that is without understanding or considering the institution vertue of baptisime expressed in Gods word and so receive baptisme onely for temporall and naturall respects they are not led to the waters but they fall into them and so as a Man may be drowned in a wholsome bath so such a Man may perish eternally in baptisme if he take it for satisfaction of the State or any other by respect to which that Sacrament is not ordained in the word of God He shall lead Men of years by Instruction and he shall lead young children in good company and with a strong guard he shall lead them by the faith of his Church by the faith of their Parents by the faith of their sureties and undertakers He shall lead them and then when he hath taken them into his government for first it is Reget he shall govern them and then Deducet that is he shall lead them in his Church and therefore they that are led to baptisme any other way then by the Church they are misled nay they are miscarried misdriven Spiritu vertiginis with the spirit of giddinesse They that joyne any in commission with the Trinity though but as an asstsant for so they say in the Church of Rome baptisme may be administred in the name of the Father Sonne and holy Ghost and the virgin Mary they follow not as Christ led in his Church Non fuit sic ab initio it was not so from the beginning for quod extra hos tres est totum Conservum est though much dignity belong to the memory of the Saints of God yet whosoever is none of the three Persons Conservus est he is our fellow-servant though his service lie above staires and ours below his in the triumphant ours in the militant Church Conservus est yet he or she is in that respect but our fellow-servant and not Christs fellow-redeemer So also if we be led to Marah to the waters of bitternesse that we bring a bitter taste of those institutions of the Church for the decency and signification in Sacramentall things things belonging to Baptisme if we bring a misinterpretation of them an indisposition to them an aversnesse from them and so nourish a bitternes and uncharitablenesse towards one another for these Ceremonies if we had rather crosse one another and crosse the Church then crosse the child as God shewed Moses a tree which made those waters in the wildernesse sweet when it was cast in so remember that there is the tree of life the crosse of Christ Iesus and his Merits in this water of baptisme when we all agree in that that all the vertue proceeds from the crosse of Christ the God of unity and peace and concord let us admit any representation of Christs crosse rather then admit the true crosse of the devill which is a bitter and schismaticall crossing of Christ in his Church for it is there in his Church that he leads us to these waters Well then they to whom these waters belong have Christ in his Church to lead them and therefore they need not stay till they can come alone till they be of age and years of discretion as the Anabaptists say for it is Deducet and Deducet cos generally universally all that are of this government all that are appointed for the Seal all the one hundred and forty foure thousand all the Innumerable multitudes of all Nations Christ leads them all Be Baptized every one of you in the name of Iesus Christ for the remission of sinnes for the promise is made unto you and your children Now all promises of God are sealed in the holy Ghost To whom soever any promise of God belongs he hath the holy Ghost and therefore Nunquid aquam quis prohibere potest Can any Man forbid water that these should not be baptized which havereceived the holy Ghost as well as we says S. Peter And therfore the Children of the Covenant which have the promise have the holy Ghost all they are in this Regiment Deducet cos Christ shall lead them all But whither unto the lively says our first edition unto the living says our last edition fountaines of waters In the originall unto the fountaines of the water of life now in the Scriptures nothing is more ordianry then by the name of waters to designe and meane tribulations so amongst many other God says of the City of Tyre that he would make it a desolate City and bring the deep upon it and great waters should cover it But then there is some such addition as leads to that sense either they are called Aqua multae great waters or Profunda aquarum deep waters or Absorbebit aqua whirlepooles of waters or Tempestas aquae tempestuous waters or Aqua Fellis bitter water God bath mingled gall in our water but we shall never read fontes aquarum fountaines of waters but it hath a gratious sense and presents Gods benefits So they have forsaken me the fountaine of living waters So the water that I shall give shall be in him a well of water springing up unto everlasting life and so every where else when we are brought to the fountaines to this water in the fountaine in the institution howsover we puddle it with impertinent questions in disputation however we soule it with our finnes and all conversation the fountaine is pure Baptisme presents and offers grace and remission of sinnes to all Nay not onely this fountaine of water but the greatest water of all the flood it selfe Saint Basil understands and applies to Baptisme as the Apostle himselfe does Baptisme was a figure of the flood and the Arke for upon that place The Lord sitseth upon the flood and the Lord doth remaine King for ever he says Baptismi gratiam Diluvium nominat nam deles purgat David calls Baptisme the flood because it destroyes all that was sinfull in us and so also he referrs to Baptisme those words when David had confessed his sinnes I thought I would confesse against my selfe my wickednesse unto the Lord and when it is added Surely in the flood of great waters they shall not come near him peccato non appropinquabunt says he originall sinne shall not come neare him that is truly baptized nay all the actuall sinnes in his future life shall be drowned in this baptisme as often as he doth religiously and repentantly consider that in Baptisme when the merit of Christ was communicated to him he received an Antidote against all poyson against all sinne if he applied them together sinne and the merit of Christ for so also he says of that place God will subdue all our iniquities and cast our sinnes into the bottome of the Sea Hoc est in mare Baptismi says Basil into the Sea of Baptisme There was a Brasen Sea in the Temple and there is a golden Sea in the Church of
joyned to the element or to the Action then there is a true Sacrament are ill understood by two sorts of Menâ— first by them that say that it is not verbum Deprecatorium nor verbum Conciâ—natâ—riuâ— not the word of Prayer nor the word of preaching but verbum Consecratorium and verbum Sacramentale that very phrase and forme of words by which the water is sanctified and enabled of it selfe to cleanse our Soules and secondly these words are ill understood by them who had rather their children dyed unbaptized then have them baptized without a Sermon whereas the use of preaching at baptisme is to raise the whole Congregation to a consideration what they promised by others in their baptisme and to raise the Father and the Sureties to a consideration what they undertake for the childe whom they present then to be baptized for therefore says Saint Augustine Acoedaâ— verbum there is a necessity of the word Non quâ—a dicitur sed quia creditur not because the word is prâ—ached but because it is beleeved and That Beleese faith belongs not at all to the incapacity of the child but to the disposition of the rest A Sermon is usefull for the congregation not necessary for the child and the accomplishment of the Sacrament From hence then arises a convenience little lesse then necessary in a kind that this administration of the Sacrament be accompanied with preaching but yet they that would evict an absolute necessity of it out of these words force them too much for here the direct meaning of the Apostle is That the Church is cleansed by water through the word when the promises of God expressed in his word are sealed to us by this Sacrament of Baptisme for so Saint Augustine answers himselfe in that objection which he makes to himselfe Cum per Baptisâ—â—â— fundati sint quare sermoni tribuit radicem He answers In Sermone intelligendus Baptismusâ— Quia sine Sermone non perficitur It is rooted it is grounded in the word and therefore true Baptisme though it be administred without the word that is without the word preached yet it is never without the word because the whole Sacrament and the power thereof is rooted in the word in the Gospell And therefore since this Sacrament belongs to the Church as it is said here that Christ doth cleanse his Church by Baptisme as it is argued with a strong probability That because the Apostles did baptize whole families therefore they did baptize some children so we argue with an invincible certainty that because this Sacrament belongs generally to the Church as the initiatory Sacrament it belongs to children who are a part and for the most part the most innocent part of the Church To conclude As all those Virgins which were beautifull were brought into Susan Ad domum mulierum to be anointed and persumed and prepared there for Assuerus delight and pleasure though Assuerus tooke not delight and pleasure in them all so we admit all those children which are within the Covenant made by God to the elect and their seed In domum Sanctorum into the houshold of the faithfull into the communion of Saints whom he chooseth for his Mariage day that is for that Church which he will settle upon himselfe in heaven we know not but we know that he hath not promised to take any into that glory but those upon whom he hath first shed these fainter beames of glory and sanctification exhibited in this Sacrament Neither hath he threatned to exclude any but for sinne after And therefore when this blessed child derived from faithfull parents and presented by sureties within the obedience of the Church shall have been so cleansed by the washing of water through the word it is presently sealed to the possession of that part of Christs purchase for which he gave himselfe which are the meanes of preparing his Church in this life with a faithfull assurance I may say of it and to it Iam mundus es Now you are cleanâ— through the word which Christ hath spoken unto you The Seale of the promises of his Gospell hath sanctified and cleansed you but yet Mandatus mundandus says Saint Augustine upon that place It is so sanctified by the Sacrament here that it may be farther sanctified by the growth of his graces and be at last a member of that glorious Church which he shall settle upon himselfe without spot or wrinkle which was the principall and final purpose of that great love of his whereby he gave himselfe for us and made that love first a patterne of Mens loves to their wives here and then a meanes to bring Man and wife and child to the kingdome of heaven Amen SERMON VI. Preached at a Christning 1 JOHN 5. 7 8. For there are three which beare record in heaven The Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which beare record in the Earth The Spirit and the water and the bloud and these three agree in one IN great and enormous offences we find that the law in a well governed State expressed the punishment upon such a delinquent in that form in that curse Igni aqua interdicitor let him have no use of fire and water that is no use of any thing necessary for the sustentation of life Beloved such is the miserable condition of wretched Man as that we come all into the world under the burden of that curse Aqua igni interdicimâ—r we have nothing to doe naturally with the spirituall water of life with the fiery beames of the holy Ghost till he that hath wrought our restitution from this banishment restore us to this water by powring out his owne bloud and to this lively fire by laying himselfe a cold and bloudlesse carcasse in the bowels of the Earth till he who haptized none with waâ—er direct his Church to doe that office towards us and he without whom none was baptized with fire perfect that Ministeriall worke of his Church with the effectuall seales of his grace for this is his testimony the witnesse of his love Yea that law in cases of such great offences expressed it selfe in another Malediction upon such offenders appliable also to us Intestabiles sunte let them be Intestable Now this was a sentence a Condemnation so pregnant so full of so many heavy afflictions as that he who by the law was made intestable was all these ways intestable First he was able to make no Testament of his owne he had lost all his interest in his owne estate and in his owne will Secondly he could receive no profit by any testament of any other Man he had lost all the effects of the love and good disposition of other Men to him Thirdly he was Intestable so as that he could not testifie he should not be beleeved in the behalfe of another and lastly the testimony of another could doe him no good no Man could be admitted to
was come and gone for so much as belonged to the accomplishing of the types of the old law then Christ came againe to us by water and bloud in that wound which he received upon his side from which there flowed out miraculously true water true bloud This wound Saint Augustine calls Ianuam utriusque Sacramenti the doore of both sacraments where we see he acknowledges but two and both presented in this water and bloud and so certainely doe most of the fathers make this wound if not the foundation yet at least a sacrament of both the sacraments And to this water and bloud doth the Apostle here without doubt aime principally which he onely of all the Evangelists hath recorded and with so great asseveration and assurednesse in the recording thereof He that saw it bare record and his record is true and he knoweth that he saith truth that yee might beleeve it Here then is the matter which these six witnesses must be beleeved in here is Integritas Iesu quae non solvenda the intirenesse of Christ Jesus which must not be broken That a Saviour which is Iesus appointed to that office that is Christ figured in the law by ablutions of water and sacrifices of bloud is come and hath perfected all those figures in water and bloud too and then that he remaines still with us in water and bloud by meanes instituted in his Church to wash away our uncleannesses and to purge away our iniquities and to apply his worke unto our Soules this is Integritas Iesu Iesus the sonne of God in heaven Jesus the Redeemer of man upon earth Jesus the head of a Church to apply that to the end this is Integritas Iesu all that is to be beleeved of him Take thus much more that when thou comest to hearken what these witnesses shall say to this purpose thou must finde something in their testimony to prove him to be come not onely into the world but into thee He is a mighty prince and hath a great traine millions of ministring spirits attend him and the whole army of Martyrs follow the Lambe wheresoever he goes Though the whole world be his Court thy soule is his bedchamber there thou maist contract him there thou maist lodge and entertaine Integrum Iesum thy whole Saviour And never trouble thy selfe how another shall have him if thou have him all leave him and his Church to that make thou sure thine owne salvation When he comes to thee he comes by water and by bloud If thy heart and bowels have not yet melted in compassion of his passion for thy soule if thine eyes have not yet melted in tears of repentancâ— and contrition he is not yet come by water into thee If thou have suffered nothing for sinne nor found in thy selfe a chearfull disposition to suffer if thou have found no wresting in thy selfe no resistance of Concupiscences he that comes not to set peace but to kindle this war is not yet come into thee by bloud Christ can come by land by purchases by Revenues by temporall blessings for so he did still convey himselfe to the Jewes by the blessing of the land of promise but here he comes by water by his owne passion by his sacraments by thy tears Christ can come in a mariage and in Musique for so he delivers himselfe to the spouse in the Canticles but here he comes in bloud which comming in water and bloud that is in meanes for the salvation of our soules here in the militant Church is the comming that he stands upon and which includes all the Christian Religion and therefore he proves that comming to them by these three great witnesses in heaven and three in earth For there are three which beare record in heaven The Father the word and the holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which bear record in the earth The spirit and the water and the bloud and these three agree in one By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be confirmed says Christ out of the law That 's as much as can be required in any Civill or Criminall businesse and yet Christ gives more testimony of himselfe for here he produces not Duos testes but Duas Classes two rankes of witnesses and the fullest number of each not two but three in heaven and three in earth And such witnesses upon earth as are omni exceptione majores without all exception It is not the testimony of earthly men for when Saint Paul produces them in abundance The Patriarch the Iudges the Prophets the elders of the old times of whom he exhibits an exact Catalogue yet he calls all them but Nubes testium cloudes of witnesses for though they be cloudes in Saint Chrysostomes sense that they invest us and enwrap us and so defend us from all diffidence in God we have their witnesse what God did for them why should we doubt of the like though they be cloudes in Athanasius sense they being in heaven showre downe by their prayers the dew of Gods grace upon the Church Though they be cloudes they are but cloudes some darkenesse mingled in them some controversies arising from them but his witnesses here are Lux inaccessibilis that light that no eye can attaine to and Pater Luminum the father of lights from whom all these testimonies are derived When God imployed a man to be the witnesse of Christ because men might doubt of his testimony God was content to assigne him his Compurgators when Iohn Baptist must preach that the kingdome of God was at hand God fortifies the testimony of his witnesse then Hic enim est for this is he of whom that is spoken by the prophet Esay and lest one were not enough he multiplies them as it is written in the prophets Iohn Baptist might be thought to testifie as a man and therefore men must testifie for him but these witnesses are of a higher nature these of heaven are the Trinity and those of earth are the sacraments and seales of the Church The prophets were full of favor with God Abraham full of faith Stephen full of the Holy Ghost many full of grace and Iohn Baptist a prophet and more then a prophet yet never any prophet never any man how much soever interessed in the favor of Almighty God was such an instrument of grace as a sacrament or as Gods seales and institutions in his Church and the least of these six witnesses is of that nature and therefore might be beleeved without more witnesses To speake then first of the three first the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost it was but a poore plot of the devill to goe about to rob us of their testimony for as long as we have the three last the spirit the water and bloud we have testimony enough of Christ because God is involved in his ordinance and though he be not tyed to the worke of the
of his word or in scantler measure not to be always a Christian but then when thou hast use of being one or in a different fashion to be singular and Schisâ—aticall in thy opinion for this is one but an ill manner of putting on of Christ as a garment The second and the good way is to put on his righteousnesse and his innocency by imitation and conforming our selves to him Now when we goe about earnestly to make our selves Temples and Altars and to dedicate our selves to God we must change our clothes As when God bad Iacob to goe up to Bethel to make an Altar he commanded all his family to change their clothes In which work we have two things to doe first we must put off those clothes which we had and appeare naked before God without presenting any thing of our owne for when the Spirit of God came upon Saul and that he prophecyed his first act was to strip himselfe naked And then sâ—condly we come to our transfiguration and to have those garments of Christ communicated to us which were as white as the light and we shall be admitted into that little number of which it is said Thou hast a few Namees in Sardis which have not defiled their garments and they shall walke with â—e in white And from this which is Induere vestem from this putting on Christ as a garment we shall grow up to that perfection as that we shall Inâ—â—ere personam put on hiâ— his person That is we shall so appeare before the Father as that he shall take us for his owne Christ we shall beare his name and person and we shall every one be so accepted as if every one of us were all Mankind yea as if we were he himselfe He shall find in all our bodies his woundes in all our mindes his 〈◊〉 in all our hearts and actions his obedience And as he shall doe this by impâ—tation so really in all our Agonies he shall send his Angels to minister unto us as he did to Eliâ—s In all our tentations he shall furnish us with his Scriptures to confoâ—â—d the Tempter as be in person did in his tentation and in our heaviest tribulation which may exâ—â—â—â— from us the voice of diffidence My God My God why hast 〈◊〉 forsaken me He shall give us the assurance to say In manus tuas câ— Into thy â—ands O Lord have I coâ—â—â—â—nded my spirit and there I am safe He shall use us in all things as his sonne and we shall find restored in us the Image of the whole Trinity imprinted at our creation for by this Regeneration we are adopted by the Father in the bloud of the Sonne by the sanctification of the holy Ghost Now this putting on of Christ whereby we stand in his place at Gods Tribunall implies as I said both our Election and our sanctification both the eternall purpose of God upon us and his execution of that purpose in us And because by the first by our Election we are members of Christ in Gods purpose before baptisme and the second which is sanctification is expressed after baptisme in our lives and conversation therefore Baptisme intervenes and comes between both as a seale of the first of Election and as an instrument and conduit of the second Sanctification Now Abscendita Dominâ— Dea nostro quae manifesta suâ—s nobis let no Man be too curiously busie to search what God does in his hedchamber we have all enough to answer for that which we have done in our bedchamber For Gods eternall decree himselfe is master of those Rolls but out of those Rolls he doth exemplifie those decrees in the Sacrament of baptisme by which Copy and exemplification of his invisible and unsearchable decree we plead to the Church that we are Gods children we plead to our owne consciences that we have the Spirit of adoption and we plead to God himselfe the obligation of his own promise that we have a right to this garment Christ Iesus and to those graces which must sanctifie us for from thence comes the reason of this text for all yeâ— that are baptized into Christ have put on Christ. As we cannot see the Essence of God but must see him in his glasses in his Images in his Creatures so we cannot see the decrees of God but must see them in their duplicats in their exemplification in the sacraments As it would doe him no good that were condemned of treason that a Bedchamber man should come to the Judge and swear he saw the king signe the prisoners pardon except he had it to pleade so what assurance soever what priâ—y marke soever those men which pretend to be so well acquainted and so familiar with the decrees of God to give thee to know that thou art elect to eternall salvation yea if an Angel from heaven comedowne and tell thee that he saw thy name in the booke of life if thou have not this Exemplification of the decree this seale this Sacrament if thou beest not baptized never delude thy selfe with those imaginary assurances This Baptisme then is so necessary that first as Baptisme in a large acceptation signifies our dying and buriall with Christ and all the acts of our regeneration so in that large sense our whole life is a baptisme But the very sacrament of Baptismeâ— the actuall administration and receiving thereof was held so necessary that even for legall and Civill uses as in the law that child that dyed without circumcision had no interest in the family no participation of the honor nor name thereof So that we see in the reckning of the Genealogy and pedegree of David that first sonne of his which he had by Bathshebae which dyed without circumcision is never mentioned nor toucht upon So also since the time of Mâ—ses law in the Imperiall law by which law a posthume child borne after the fathers death is equall with the rest in division of the state yet if that child dye before he be baptized no person which should derive a right from him as the mother might if he dyed can have any title by him because he is not considered to have been at all if he dye unbaptized And if the State will not beleeve him to be a full Man shall the Church beleeve him to be a full Christian before baptisme Yea the apprehension of the necessity of this Sacrament was so common and so generall even in the beginning of the Christian Church that out of an excessive advancing of that trnth they came also to a falshoodâ— to an error That even they that dyed without baptisme might have the benefit of baptisme if another were baptized in their name after their deathâ— And so out of a mistaking of those words Else what shall they doe Qui baptizantur pro mortuis which is that are ready to dye when they are baptized the Marcionites induc'd a custome to lay one under the dead bodyes
bed that he in the name of the dead man might answer to all the questions usually asked in administring of Baptisme But this was a corrupt effect of pure and sincere doctrine which doctrine is That Baptisme is so necessary as that God hath placed no other ordinary scale nor conveyance of his graces in his Church to them that have not received that then buptisme And they who doe not provide duly for the Baptisme of their children if their children die have a heavier accompt to make to God for that child then if they had not provided a Nurse and suffered the child to starve God can preserve the child without Milke and he can save the child without a sacrament but as that mother that throwes out and forsakes her child in the field or wood is guilty before God of the Temporall murder of that child though the child die not so are those parents of a spirituall murder if their children by their fault die unbaptized though God preserve that child out of his abundant and miraculous mercy from spirituall destruction When the custome of the Christian Church was to baptize but twice in the year at Easter and Whiâ—sontide for the greater solemnity of that action yea when that ill custome was grown as it was even in the Primitive Church that upon an opinion that all sins were absolutely forgiven in Baptisme Men did defer their Baptisme till their death-bed as we see the Ecclesiasticall histories full of such examples even in some of the Christian Emperors and according to this ill custome we see Tertullian chides away young children for comming so soon to Baptisme quid festinat innocens aetas ad remâ—ssionem peccatorum why should this child that as yet hath done no sinne make such hast to be washed from sinnce which opinion had got so much strength that Saint Basil was faine to oppose it in the Easterne Church and both the Gregories Nazianzen and Nissen and Saint Ambrose in the Western yet in the height of both their customes of seldome baptizing and of late baptizing the case of insants that might be in danger of dying without baptisme was ever excepted So that none of those old customes though some of them were extreamly ill went ever so farre as to an opinion that it were all one whether the child were baptized or no. I speake not this as though the state of children that died without baptisme were desperate God forbid for who shall shorten the Arme of the Lord God is able to raine downe Manna and Quailes into the soules of these children though negligent parents turne them out into the wildernesse and put God to that extraordinary work They may have Manna and Quailes but they have not the Milke and Hony of the Land of promise They may have salvation from God but they have not those graces so sealed and so testified to them as God hath promised they should be in his Sacraments When God in spirituall offences makes Inquisition of bloud he proceeds not as Man proceeds for we till there appear a Man to be dead never inquire who killed him but in the spirituall Murder of an unbaptized child though there be no child spiritually dead though Gods mercy have preserved the child from that yet God imputes this as such a murder to them who endangered the child as farre as they could by neglecting his ordinance of baptisme This is then the necessity of this Sacrament not absolutely necessary but necessary by Gods ordinary institution and as it is always necessary so is it always certaine whosoever is baptized according to Christs institution receives the Sacrament of baptisme and the truth is always infallibly annexed with the signe Nec fieri potest visio hominis ut non sit Sacramentum quod figurat Though the wicked may feele no working by the Sacrament yet the Sacrament doth offer and present grace as well to the unworthy as to the worthy Receiver Nec fallaciter promittit The wicked may be a cause that the Sacrament shall doe them no good but that the Sacrament become no Sacrament or that God should be false in his promises and offer no grace where he pretends to offer it this the wicked cannot doe baptisme doth truly and without collusion offer grace to all and nothing but baptisme by an ordinary institution and as an ordinary meanes doth so for when baptisme is called a figure yet both that figure is said there to save us The figure that now saveth us baptisme and it is a figure of the Arke it hath relation to it to that Arke which did save the world when it is called a figure So it may be a figure but if we speake of reall salvation by it baptisme is more then a figure Now as our putting on of Christ was double by faith and by sanctification so by this Sacrament also we are baptized in Nomen Christi into the Name of Christ and in mortem Christi into the death of Christ we are not therefore baptized into his Name because names are imposed upon us in our baptisme for that was not always permanently accustomed in the Christian Church to give a name at baptisme To men who were of years and well known in the world already by their nameâ— if they were converted to the Christian faith the Church did not use to give new names at their baptisme neither to Children alwayes but sometimes as an indifferent thing they left them to the custome of that country or of that family from which they were derived When Saint Augustine sayes that he came to Milan to S. Ambrose at that time quâ— dari nomina oportuit when Names were to be given it is true that he speaks of a time when Baptisme was to be administred but that phrase of Giving of Names was not a receiving of Names at Baptisme for neither Ambrose nor Augustine received any new name at their Baptisme but it was a giving up of their Names a Registring a Matriculating of their Names in the book of the profession of the Christian Religion and a publique declaration of that profession To be baptized therefore into the name of Christ is to be translated into his Family by this spirituall adoption in which adoption when it was legall as they that were adopted had also the name of the family into which they were adopted as of octavius Octavianus and the rest so are we so baptized into his name that we are of Christus Christiani and therefore to become truly Christians to live Christianly this is truly to be baptized into his name No other name is given under heaven whereby we can be saved nor must any other name accompany the name of God in our Baptisme When therefore they teach in the Romane Church that it is a good Baptisme which is administred in this forme I baptize thee in the name of the Father and Sonne and holy Ghost and the virgin Mary if he which baptizes so
the Sacrament and that hath this effect ut sensum minuat in minimis toliat consensum in magnis peccatis That grace that God gives in the Sacrament makes us lesse sensible of small tentations they move us not and it makes us resist and not yeild to the greatest tentations since I am in this state Quomodo inquinubo How shall I defile them The difference will be of whom thou askest this question If thou aske the world the world will tell thee well enough Quomodo How It will tell thee that it is a Melancholy thing to sit thinking upon thy sinnes That it is an unsociable thing to seeke him who cannot be seen an invisible God That it is poore company to passe thy time with a Priest Thou maiest defile thy selfe againe by forgetting thy sinnes and so doing them over againe And thou maist defile thy selfe againe by remembring thy sins and so sinne over thy sinnes againe in a sinfull delight of thy passed sinnes and a desire that thou couldst commit them againe There are answers enough to this Quomodo How how should I defile them if thou aske the world but aske thy Saviour and he shall tell thee That whosoever hath this water shall never thirst more but that water shall be in him an everlasting spring that is he shall find meanes to keep himselfe in that cleannesse to which he is come and neither things present nor things to come shall separate him from the love of God Thus the voice of this religious indignation Quomodo is how is it possible but it is also Quomodo how that is why should I The first is how should I be so base the other how should I be so bold Though I have my pardon written in the bloud of my Saviour sealed to me in his Sacrament brought home to me in the testimony of the holy Ghost pleaded for me at the tribunall of the Father yet as Princes pardons have so Gods pardons have too this clause It a quod se bene gerat He that is pardoned must continue of good behaviour for whensoever he breakes the peace he forfeits his pardon When I returne to my repented sinnes againe I am under the burden of all my former sinnes and my very repentance contracts the nature of a sinne and therefore Quomodo how should I that is why should I defile them To restore you to your liberty and to send you away with the meditation which concernes you most consider what an astonishment this would be that when Christ Jesus shall lay open the great volumes of all your sinnes to your sight who had forgot them and to their sight from whom you had disguised them at the last judgement when you shall heare all the wantonnesses of your youth all the Ambitions of your middle years all the covetous desires of your age published in that presence and thinke then this is the worst that can be said or laid to my charge this is the last indictment and the last evidence there shall follow your very repentances in the list of your sinnes and it shall be told you and all the world then Here and here you deluded that God that forbore to inflict his Judgements upon new vowes new contracts new promises between you and him even your repentances shall bind up that booke and tye your old sinnes and new relapses into one body And let this meditation bring you ad vocem gratulantis to rejoyce once againe in this Lavi pedes that you have now washed your feet in a present sorrow and ad vocem indignantis to a stronger indignation and faster resolution then heretofore you have had never to defile them againe SERMON IX Preached at a Churching MICAH 2. 10. Arise and depart for this is not your Rest. ALL that God asks of us is that we love him with all our heart All that he promises us is that he will give us rest round about us Judah sought the Lord with a whole desire and he gave her rest round about her Now a Man might think himselfe well disposed for Rest when he lies down I will lay me down and sleep in peace sayes David but it is otherwise here Arise and depart for here that is in lying and sleeping is not your Rest sayes this Prophet These words have a three-fold acceptation and admit a three-fold exposition for first they are a Commination the Prophet threatens the Jewes Secondly they are a Commonition the Prophet instructs all future ages Thirdly they areâ—a Consolation which hath reference to the Consummation of all to the rising at the generall Judgement First he foretels the Jewes of their imminent captivity Howsoever you build upon the pactum salis the Covenant of salt the everlasting Covenant that God will be your God and this land your land yet since that confidence sears you up in your sins Arise and depart for this is not your rest your Ierusalem must be chang'd into Babylon there 's the Commination Secondly he warns us who are bedded and bedrid in our sins howsoever you say to your selves Soule take thy rest enjoy the honors the pleasures the abundances of this world Tush the Lord sees it not The Master will not come we may ly still safely and rest in the fruition of this Happinesse yet this Rest will betray you this rest will deliver you over to eternall disquiet And therefore arise and depart for this is not your Rest and that 's the Commonition And in the third acceptation of the words as they may have relation to the Resurrection they may well admit a little inversion Howsoever you feel a Resurrection by grace from the works of death and darknesse in this life yet in this life there is no assurednesse that he that is risen and thinks he stands shall not fall here you arise and depart that is rise from your sins and depart from your sinfull purposes but you arise and depart so too that you fall and depart again into your sinfull purposes after you have risen and therefore Depart and arise for here is not your rest till you depart altogether out of this world and rise to Judgement you can have no such rest as can admit no disquiet no perturbation but then you shall and that 's the Consolation First then as the words concern the Iewes Here is first an increpation a rebuke that they are fallen from their station and their dignity implied in the first word Arise for then they were fallen Secondly here is a demonstration in the same word That though they lik'd that state into which they were fallen which was a security and stubbornnesse in their sins yet they should not enjoy even that security and that stubbornnesse that fall of theirs but they should lose that though it were but a false contentment yet they should be rouâ—'d out of that Arise first arise because you are fallen and then arise though you think your selves at easeâ— by that fall And
nor Land is our surety but our surety is one who is already crown'd with that Resurrection Num in hominibus terrae legeneraâ— quae omnia regenerat sayes Saint Ambrose will the earth that gives a new life to all Creatures faile in us and hold us in an everlasting winter without a spring and a Resurrection Certainly no but if we be content so to depart into the wombe of the Earth our grave as that we know that to be but the Entry into glory as we depart contentedly so we shall arise gloriously to that place where our eternall Rest shall be though here there be not our Rest for he that shoots an arrow at a mark yet means to put that arrow into his Quiver again and God that glorifies himselfe in laying down our bodies in the grave means also to glorifie them in reaffirming them to himselfe at the last day SERMON XI Preached at Lincolns Inne preparing them to build their Chappell Gâ—N 28. 16 17. Then Iacob awâ—ke out of his sleep and said Surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware And he was afraid and said Now fearfull us this place This is none other but the House of God and this is the gate of Heaven IN these verses Iacob is a Surveyor he considers a fit place for the house of God and in the very next verse he is a Builder he erects Bethel the house of God it selfe All was but a drowsinesse but a sleep till he came to this Consideration as soon as he awoke he took knowledge of a fit place as soon as he found the place he went about the work But to that we shall not come yet But this Text being a preparation for the building of a house to God though such a house as Iacob built then require no contribution yet because such Churches as we build now doe we shall first say a little of that great vertue of Charity and then somewhat of that vertue as it is exercis'd by advancing the house of God and his outward worship And thirdly we shall consider Iacob's steps and proceedings in this action of his This vertue then Charity is it that conducts its in this life and accompanies us in the next In heaven where we shall know God there may be no use of faith In heaven where we shall see God there may be no use of hope but in heaven where God the Father and the Son love one another in the Holy Ghost the bond of charity shall everlastingly unite us together But Charitas in patria and Charitas in via differ m this That there we shall love one another because we shall not need one another for we shall all be fullâ— Here the exercise of our charity is because we doe stand in need of one another Dives pauper duo sunt sibi contraria sed iterum duo sunt sibi necessaria Rich and poor are contrary to one another but yet both necessary to one another They are both necessary to one another but the poor man is the more necessary because though one man might be rich though no man were poor yet he could have no exercise of his charity he could send none of his riches to heaven to help him there except there were some poor here He that is too fat would fain devest some of that though he could give that to no other man that lack'd it And shall not he that is wantonly pampered nay who is heavily laden and encombred with temporall abundances be content to discharge himself of some of that wherewith he is over-straighted upon those poor souls whom God hath not made poor for any sin of theirs or of their fathers but onely to present rich men exercise of their charity and occasions of testifying their love to Christ who having given himselfe to convey salvation upon thee if that conveyance may be sealed to thee by giving a little of thine own is it not an easie purchase When a poore wretch beggs of thee and thou givest thou dost but justice it is his But when he begs of God for thee and God gives thee this is mercy this was none of thine When we shall come to our Redde rationem villicationis to give an accompt of our Stewardship when we shall not measure our inheritance by Acres but all heaven shall be ours and we shall follow the Lamb wheresoever he goes when our estate and term shall not be limited by years and lives but as we shall be in the presence of the Ancient of dayes so our dayes shall be so far equall to his as that they shall be without end Then will our great Merchants great practisers great purchasers great Contracters find another language another style then they have been accustom'd to here There no man shall be call'd a prodigall but onely the Covetous man Onely he that hath been too diligent a keeper shall appear to have been an unthrift and to have wasted his best treasure the price of the bloud of Christ Iesue his own soule There no man shall be call'd good security but he that hath made sure his salvation No man shall be call'd a Subsidy man but he that hath relieved Christ Jesus in his sick and hungry Members No man shall be call'd a wise Steward but he that hath made friends of the wicked Mammon Nor provident Merchant but he that sold all to buy the pearle Nor a great officer but he that desires to be a dore-keeper in the kingdome of Heaven Now every man hath a key to this dore of heaven Every man hath some means to open it every man hath an oyle to anoint this key and make it turn easily he may goe with more case to Heaven then he doth to Hell Every man hath some means to pour this oile of gladnesse and comfort into anothers heart No man can say Quid retribuam tibi Domine Lord what have I to give thee for every man hath something to give God Money or labor or counsail or prayers Every man can give and he gives to God who gives to them that need it for his sake Come not to that expostulation When did we see thee hungry or sick or imprisoned and did not minister Nor to that Quid retribuam What can I give that lack my selfe lest God come also to that silence and wearinesse of asking at thy hands to say as he sayes in the Psalme If I be hungry I will not tell thee That though he have given thee abundance though he lack himselfe in his children yet he will not tell thee he will not ask at thy hands he will not enlighten thine understanding he will not awaken thy charity he will not give thee any occasion of doing good with that which he hath given thee But God hath given thee a key yea as he sayes to the Church of Philadelphia Behold I set before thee an open dore and no man can shut it Thou hast a
will confesse many fleshly infirmities and then it is the sounder for that though not for the infirmity yet for the confession of the infirmity Neither let that hand that reaches out to this body in a guiltinesse of pollution and uncleannesse or in a guiltinesse of extortion or undeserved see ever hope to signe a conveyance that shall fasten his inheritance upon his children to the third generation ever hope to assigne a will that shall be observed after his death ever hope to lift up it selfe for mercy to God at his death but his case shall be like the case of Iudas if the devill have put in his heart to betray Christ to make the body and bloud of Christ Jesus false witnesses to the congregation of his hypocriticall sanctity Satan shall enter into him with this sop and seale his condemnation Beloved in the bowels of that Jesus who is coming into you even in spirituall riches it is an unthrifty thing to anticipate your monies to receive your rents before they are due and this treasure of the soule the body and bloud of your Saviour is not due to you yet if you have not yet passed a mature and a severe examination of your conscience It were better that your particular friends or that the congregation should observe in you an abstinence and forbearing to day and make what interpretation they would of that forbearing then that the holy Ghost should deprehend you in an unworthy receiving lest as the Master of the feast said to him that came without his wedding garment then when he was set Amice quomodo intrâsti friend how came you in so Christ should say to thee then when thou art upon thy knees and hast taken him into thy hands Amice quomodo intrabo friend how can I enter into thee who hast not swept thy house who hast made no preparation for me But to those that have he knocks and he enters and he â—ups with them and he is a supper to them And so this consideration of making Churches of our houses and of our hearts leads us to a third part the particular circumstances in Iacobs action In which there is such a change such a dependence whether we consider the Metall or the fashion the severall doctrines or the sweetnesse and easinesse of raising them as scarce in any other place a fuller harmony The first linke is the Tunc Iacob then Iacob which is a Tunc consequentiae rather then a Tunc temporis It is not so much at what time Iacob did or said this as upon what occasion The second linke is Quid operatum what this wrought upon Iacob It awaked him out of his sleep A third is Quid ille what he did and that was Et dixit he came to an open profession of that which he conceived he said and a fourth is Quid dixit what this profession was And in that which is a branch with much fruit a pregnant part a part containing many parts thus much is considerable that he presently acknowledged and assented to their light which was given him the Lord is in this place And he acknowledged his owne darknesse till that light came upon him Et ego nesciebam I knew it not And then upon this light received he admitted no scruple no hesitation but came presently to a confident assurance Verè Dominus surely of a certainty the Lord is in this place And then another doctrine is Et timuit he was afraid for all his confidence he had a reverentiall feare not a distrust but a reverent respect to that great Majesty and upon this feare there is a second Et dixit he spoke againe this feare did not stupifie him he recovers againe and discerned the manifestation of God in that particular place Quam terribilis how fearfull is this place And then the last linke of this chaine is Quid inde what was the effect of all this and that is that he might erect a Monument and marke for the worship of God in this place Quia non nisi domus because this is none other then the house of God and the gate of heaven Now I have no purpose to make you afraid of enlarging all these points I shall onely passe through some of them paraphrastically and trust them with the rest for they insinuate one another and trust your christianly meditation with them all The first linke then is the Tunc Iacob the occasion then Iocob did this which was that God had revealed to Iocob that vision of the ladder whose foot stood upon earth and whose top reached to heaven upon which ladder God stood and Angels went up and down Now this ladder is for the most part understood to be Christ himselfe whose foot that touched the earth is his humanity and his top that reached to heaven his Divinity The ladder is Christ and upon him the Angels his Ministers labour for the edifying of the Church And in this labour upon this ladder God stands above it governing and ordering all things according to his providence in his Church Now when this was revealed to Iacob now when this is revealed to you that God hath let fall a ladder a bridge between heaven and earth that Christ whose divinity departed not from heaven came downe to us into this world that God the father stands upon this ladder as the Originall hath it Nitzab that he leanes upon this ladder as the vulgar hath it Innixus scalae that he rests upon it as the holy Ghost did upon the â—ame ladder that is upon Christ in his baptisme that upon this ladder which stretches so farre and is provided so well the Angels labour the Ministers of God doe their offices when this was when this is manifested then it became Iacob and now it becomes every Christian to doe something for the advancing of the outward glory and worship of God in his Church when Christ is content to be this ladder when God is content to govern this ladder when the Angels are content to labour upon this ladder which ladder is Christ and the Christian Church shall any Christian Man forbeare his help to the necessary building and to the sober and modest adorning of the materiall Church of God God studies the good of the Church Angels labour for it and shall Man who is to receive all the profit of this doe nothing This is the Tunc Iacob when there is a free preaching of the Gospell there should be a free and liberall disposition to advance his house Well to make haste the second linke is Quid operatum what this wrought upon Iacob and it is Iacob awoke out of his sleep Now in this place the holy Ghost imputes no sinfull sleep to Iacob but it is a naturall sleep of lassitude and wearinesse after his travell there is an ill sleep an indifferent and a good sleep which is that heavenly sleep that tranquillity which that soul which is at peace with
he be put to give judgement upon a particular man that stands before him at the bar according to that Law That that man that stands there that day must that day be no man that that breath breathed in by God to glorify him must be suffocated and strangled with a halter or evaporated with an Axe he must be hanged or beheaded that those limbs which make up a Cabinet for that precious Jewell the image of God to be kept in must be cut into quarters or torne with horses that that body which is a consecrated Temple of the Holy Ghost must be chained to a stake and burnt to ashes hee that is not affected in giving such a judgment upon such a man hath no part in the bowels of Christ Jesus that melt in cōpassion when our sinnes draw and extort his Judgements upon us in the mouth of those Prophets those men whom God sends it is so and it is so in the mouth of God himself that sends them Heu vindicabor says God Alas I will revenge mee of mine enemies Alas I will is Alas I must his glory compels him to doe it the good of his Church and the sustentation of his Saints compell him to it and yet he comes to it with a condolency with a compassion Heu vindicabor Alas I will revenge mee of mine enemies so also in another Prophet Heu abominationes Alas for all the evill abominations of the house of Israel for as it is added there they shall fall that is they will fall by the sword by famine by pestilence and as it follows I will accomplish my fury upon them Though it were come to that height fury and accomplishment consummation of fury yet it comes with a condolency and compassion Heu abominationes Alas for all the evill abominations of the house of Israel I would they were not so ill that I might be better to them Men sent by God do so so does God that sends those men he that is both God and man Christ Jesus does so too We have but two clear records in the Scriptures of Christs weeping and both in compassion for others when Mary wept for her dead brother Lazarus and the Jews that were with her wept too Iesus also wept and he groan'd in the spirit and was troubled This was but for the discomfort of one family it was not a mortality over the whole Country It was but for one person in that family it was not a contagion that had swept or did threaten the whole house it was but for such a person in that family as he meant forthwith to restore to life again and yet Iesus wept groaned in the Spirits was trobled he would not lose that opportunity of shewing his tendernesse and compassion in the behalf of others How vehement how passionate then must we beleeve his other weeping to have been when hee had his glorious and beloved City Jerusalem in his sight and wept over that City and with that stream of tears powred out that Sea that tempestuous Sea those heavy judgements which though he wept in doing it he denounced upon that City that glorious that beloved City which City though Christ charge to have stoned them that were sent to her and to bee guilty of all the righteous blood shed upon the earth the holy Ghost cals the holy City for all that not onely at the beginning of Christs appearance The Devill took him up into the holy City for at that time she was not the unholyer for any thing that shee had done upon the person of Christ but when they had exercised all their cruelty even to death the death of the Crosse upon Christ himselfe the Holy Ghost calls still the holy City Many bodies of Saints which slept arose and went into the holy City When the Fathers take into their contemplation and discourse that passionate exclamation of our Saviour upon the Crosse My God my God why hast thou forsaken me those blessed Fathers that never thought of any such sense of that place that Christ was at that time actually in the reall torments of hell assign no fitter sense of those words then that the foresight of those insupportable and inevitable and imminent judgements upon his City and his people occasioned that passionate exclamation My God my God why hast thou forsaken me That as after he was ascended into heaven he said to Saul Cur me persequeris He called Sauls persecuting of his Church a persecuting of him so when hee considered that God had forsaken his people his Citie his Jerusalem he cryed out that God had forsaken him God that sent the Prophets the Prophets that were sent Christ who was both the person sent and the sender came to the inflicting and denouncing of judgements with this Vae dolentis a heart and voice of condoling and lamentation Grieve not then the holy Spirit of God says the Apostle extort not from him those Judgements which he cannot in justice forbear and yet is grieved to inflict How often doe we use that motive to divert young men from some ill actions and ill courses How will this trouble your friends how will this grieve your Mother this will kill your Father The Angels of heaven who are of a friendship and family with us as they rejoyce at our conversion so are they sorry and troubled at our aversion from God Our sins have grieved our Mother that is made the Church ashamed and blush that he hath washed us and clothed us in the whitenesse and innocency of Christ Jesus in our baptisme and given us his bloud to drinke in the other Sacrament Our sins have made our mother the Church ashamed in her selfe we have scandalized and offended the Congregation and our sinnes have defamed and dishonoured our mother abroad that is imprinted an opinion in others that that cannot be a good Church in which we live so dissolutely so falsely to our first faith and contract and stipulation with God in Baptisme Wee have grieved our brethren the Angels our mother the Church and we have killed our Father God is the father of us all and we have killed him for God hath purchased a Church with his bloud says Saint Paul And oh how much more is God grieved now that we will make no benefit of that bloud which is shed for us then he was for the very shedding of that bloud We take it not so ill pardon solow a comparison in so high a mystery for since our blessed Saviour was pleased to assume that metaphor and to call his passion a Cup and his death a drinking we may be admitted to that Comparison of drinking too we take it not so ill that a man go down into our Cellar and draw and drinke his fill as that he goe in and pierce the vessells and let them runne out in a wastfull wantonneste To satisfie the thirst of our soules there was a
those sins upon other persons But all Israel stones thee arrows flie from every corner and thy measure is not to thank God that thou art not as the Publican as some other man but thy measure is to be pure and holy as thy father in heaven is pure and holy and to conform thy self in some measure to thy pattern Christ Jesus Against him it is noted that the Jews took up stones twice to stone him Once wheÌ„ they did it He went away and hid himself Our way to scape these arrows these tentations is to goe out of the way to abandon all occasions and conversation that may lead into tentation In the other place Christ stands to it and disputes it out with them and puts them from it by the scriptum est and that 's our safe shield since we must necessarily live in the way of tentations for coluber in via there is a snake in every path tentation in every calling still to receive all these arrowes upon the shield of faith still to oppose the scriptum est the faithfull promises of God that he will give us the issue with the tentation when we cannot avoid the tentation it self Otherwise these arrows are so many as would tire and wear out all the diligence and all the constancy of the best morall man Wee finde many mentions in the Scriptures of filling of quivers and emptying of quivers and arrows and arrows still in the plurall many arrows But in all the Bible I think we finde not this word as it signifies tentation or tribulation in the singular one arrow any where but once where David cals it The arrow that flies by day And is seen that is known by every man for for that the Fathers and Ancients runne upon that Exposition that that one arrow common to all that day-arrow visible to all is the naturall death so the Chalde paraphrase calls it there expresly Sagitta mâ—rtis The arrow of death which every man knows to belong to every man for as clearly as he sees the Sunne set he sees his death before his eyes Therefore it is such an arrow as the Prophet does not say Thou shalt not feel but Thou shalt not feare the arrow that flies by day The arrow the singular arrow that flies by day is that arrow that fals upon every man death But every where in the Scriptures but this one place they are plurall many so many as that we know not whence nor what they are Nor ever does any man receive one arrow alone any one tentation but that he receives another tentation to hide that though with another and another sin And the use of arrows in the war was not so much to kill as to rout and disorder a battail and upon that routing followed execution Every tentation every tribulation is not deadly But their multiplicity disorders us discomposes us unseâ—â—les us and so hazards us Not onely every periodicall variation of our years youth and age but every day hath a divers arrow every houre of the day a divers tentation An old man wonders then how an arrow from an eye could wound him when he was young and how love could make him doe those things which hee did then And an arrow from the tongue of inferiour people that which we make shift to call honour wounds him deeper now and ambition makes him doe as strange things now as love did then A fair day shoots arrows of visits and comedies and conversation and so wee goe abroad and a foul day shoots arrows of gaming or chambering and wantonnesse and so we stay at home Nay the same sin shoots arrows of presumption in God before it be committed and of distrust and diffidence in God after we doe not fear before and we cannot hope after And this is that misery from this plurality and multiplacity of these arrows these manifold tentations which David intends here and as often as he speaks in the same phrase of plurality vituli multi many buls canes multi many dogs and bellantes multi many warlike enemies and aquaeâ— multae many deep waters compasse me For as it is said of the spirit of wisdome that it is unicus multiplex manifoldly one plurally singular so the spirit of tentation in every soul is unicus multiplex singularly plurall rooted in some one beloved sin but derived into infinite branches of tentation And then these arrows stick in us the raine fals but that cold sweat hangs not upon us Hail beats us but it leaves no pock-holes in our skin These arrows doe not so fall about us as that they misse us nor so hit us as they rebound back without hurting us But we complain with Ieremy The sons of his quiver are entred into our reins The Roman Translation reads that filias The daughters of his quiver If it were but so daughters we might limit these arrows in the signification of tentations by the many occasions of tentation arising from that sex But the Originall hath it filios the sons of his quiver and therefore we consider these arrows in a stronger signification tribulations as well as tentations They stick in us Consider it but in one kinde diseases sicknesses They stick to us so as that we are not sure that any old diseases mentioned in Physicians books are worn out but that every year produces new of which they have no mention we are sure We can scarce expresse the number scarce sound the names of the diseases of mans body 6000 year hath scarce taught us what they are how they affect us how they shall be cur'd in us nothing on this side the Resurrection can teach us They stick to us so as that they passe by inheritance and last more generations in families then the inheritance it self does and when no land no Manor when no title no honour descends upon the heir the stone or the gout descends upon him And as though our bodies had not naturally diseases and infirmities enow we contract more inflict more and that out of necessity too in mortifications and macerations and Disciplines of this rebellious flesh I must have this body with me to heaven or else salvation it self is not perfect And yet I cannot have this body thither except as S. Paul did his I beat down this body attenuate this body by mortification Wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death I have not body enough for my body and I have too much body for my soul not body enough not bloud enough not strength enough to sustain my self in health and yet body enough to destroy my soul and frustrate the grace of God in that miserable perplexed riddling condition of man sin makes the body of man miserable and the remedy of sin mortification makes it miserable too If we enjoy the good things of this world Duriorem carcerem praeparamus wee doe but carry an other wall about our
him let us finde and lament all these numbers and all these weights of sin Here we are all born to a patrimony to an inheritance an inheritance a patrimony of sin and we are all good husbands and thrive too fast upon that stock upon the encrease of sin even to the treasuring up of sin and the wrath of God for sin How naked soever we came out of our mothers wombe otherwise thus we came all apparell'd apparell'd and invested in sin And we multiply this wardrobe with new habits habits of customary sins every day Every man hath an answer to that question of the Apostle What hast thou that thou hast not received from God Every man must say I have pride in my heart wantonnesse in mine eyes oppression in my hands and that I never receiv'd from God Our sins are our own and we have a covetousnesse of more a way to make other mens sins ours too by drawing them to a fellowship in our sins I must be beholden to the loyalty and honesty of my wife whether my children be mine own or no for he whose eye waiteth for the evening the adulterer may rob me of that propriety I must be beholden to the protection of the Law whether my goods shall be mine or no A potent adversary a corrupt Judge may rob me of that propriety I must be beholden to my Physician whether my health and strength shal be mine or no A garment negligently left off a disorderly meal may rob me of that propriâ—ty But without asking any man leave my sins will be mine own When the presumptuous men say Our lips are our own and our tongues are our own the Lord threatens to cut off those lips and those tongues But except we doe come to say Our sins are our own God will never cut up that root in us God will never blot out the memory in himself of those sins Nothing can make them none of ours but the avowing of them the confessing of them to be ours Onely in this way I am a holy lier and in this the God of truth will reward my lie for if I say my sins are mine own they are none of mine but by that confessing and appropriating of those sins to my selfe they are made the sins of him who hath suffered enough for all my blessed Lord and Saviour Christ Iesâ—s Therefore that servant of God S. August confesses those sins which he never did to be his sins and to have been forgiven him Peccata mihi dimissa a fateâ—r quae med sponte feci quae te duce non feci Those sins which I have done and those which but for thy grace I should have done are all my sins Alas I may die here and die under an everlasting condemnation of fornication with that woman that lives and dies a Virgin and be damn'd for a murderer of that man that out-lives me and for a robbery and oppression where no man is damnified nor any penny lost The sin that I have done the sin that I would have done is my sin We must not therefore transfer our sins upon any other Wee must not think to discharge our selves upon a Peccata Patris To come to say My father thriv'd well in this course why should not I proceed in it My father was of this Religion why should not I continue in it How often is it said in the Scriptures of evill Kings he did evill in the sight of the Lord and walk'd in via Patris in the way of his father father in the singular It is never said plurally In via Patrum in the way of his fathers Gods blessings in this world are express'd so in the plurall thou gavest this land patribus to their fathers says Solomon in the dedication of the Temple And thou brought'st Patres our Fathers out of Egypt And again Be with us Lord as thou wast with our Fathers So in Ezekiel where your Fathers dwelt you their children shall dwell too and your children and their childrens children for ever His blessings upon his Saints his holy ones in this world are expressed so plurally and so is the transmigration of his Saints out of this world also Thou shalt sleep cum patribus with thy fathers says God to Moses And David slept cum patribus with his fathers And Iacob had that care of himselfe as of that in which consisted or in which was testified the blessing of God I will lie cum patribus with my fathers and be buried in their burying place says Iacob to his son Ioseph Good ways and good ends are in the plurall and have many examples else they are not good but sins are in the singular He walk'd in the way of his father is in an ill way But carry our manners or carry our Religion high enough and we shall finde a good rule in our fathers Stand in the way says God in Ieremy and ask for the old way which is the good way We must put off veterem hominem but not antiqâ—â—m Wee may put off that Religion which we think old because it is a little elder then our selves and not rely upon that it was the Religion of my Father But Antiquissimum dieâ—um Him whose name is He that is and was and is for ever and so involves and enwraps in himself all the Fathers him we must put on Be that our issue with our adversaries at Rome By the Fathers the Fathers in the plurall when those fathers unanimely deliver any thing dogmatically for matter of faith we are content to be tried by the Fathers the Fathers in that plurall But by that 〈◊〉 Father who begers his children not upon the true mother the Church but upon the Court and so produces articles of faith according as State businesses and civill occasions invite him by that father we must refuse to be tried for to limit it in particular to my father we must say with Nehemiah Ege domus patris mei If I make my fathers house my Church my father my Bishop I and my fathers house have sinned says he and with Mordecai to Esther Thou and thy fathers house shall be destroyed They are not 〈◊〉 a patris I cannot excuse my sins upon the example of my father nor are they 〈◊〉 Tempâ—ris I cannot discharge my sins upon the Times and upon the present ill disposition that reigns in men now and doe ill because every body else does so To say there is a rot and therefore the sheep must perish Corruptions in Religion are crept in and work in every cornet and therefore Gods sheep simple souls must be content to admit the infection of this rot That there is a murrain and therefore cattell must die superstition practis'd in many places and therefore the strong servants of God must come to sacrifice their obedience to it or their bloud for it Then no such rot no such murrain no such corruption of times
to descend from heaven yet it did first ascend from the earth and retains still some such earthly parts as sheep cannot digest So howsoever these Revelations and Inspirations seem to fall upon us from heaven they arise from the earth from our selves from our own melancholy and pride or our too much homelinesse and familiarity in our accesses and conversation with God or a facility in beleeving or an often dreaming the same thing And with these Dews of Apparitions and Revelations did the Romane Church make our fathers drunk and giddy And against these does S. Augustine devoutly pray and praise God that he had delivered him from the curiosity of sipping these dews of hearkning after these apparitions and revelations But so ordinary were these apparitions then as that any son or nephew or friend could discern his fathers or uncles or companions soul ascending out of Purgatory into heaven and know them as distinctly as if they kept the same haire and beard and bodily lineaments as they had upon earth And as a ship which hath struck Sail will yet goe on with the winde it had before for a while so now when themselves are come to acknowledge That it was the unanime opinion of the Fathers that the souls of the dead did not appeare after death but that it was still the Devil howsoever sometimes that that he proposed were holy religious yet we see a great Author of theirs attribute so much to these apparitions and revelations that when he pretends to prove all controversies by the Fathers of the Church he every where intermingles that reverend Book of Brigids Revelations that they might also have some Mothers of the Church too which is not disproportionall in that Church if they have had a woman Pope to have Mothers of the Church too I speak not this as though God might not or did not manifest his will by women The great mystery of the Resurrection of Christ was revealed to women before men and to the sinfullest woman of company first But I speak of that bold injury done to the mysteries of the Christian Religion by pouring out that dew upon the grasse the Revelations of S. Brigid upon the controversies of Religion A book of so much blasphemy and impertinency and incredibility that if a Heathen were to be converted he would sooner be brought to beleeve Ovids Metamorphoses then Brigids Revelations to conduce to Religion And this is also another conformity between the two Babylons the Chaldean and the Italian Babylon that we could not receive our grasse pure but infected and dewed with these frivolous nay pernicious apparitions and Revelations But press we a little closer to the very steps metaphor of the holy Ghost who here lays the corrupting of the sheeps grasse in this That the shepheards had troden it down And this treading down will be pertinently considered two ways Tertullian in his Book De habitu muliebri notes two excesses in womens dressing One he cals Ornatum the other cultum One mundum muliebrem the other according to the liberty that he takes in making words Immundum muliebrem the first is a superfluous diligence in their dressing but the other an unnaturall addition to their complexion the first he pronounces to be always ad ambitionem for pride but the other ad prostitutionem for a worse for the worst purpose These two sorts of Excesses doe note these two kindes of treading down the grasse which we intend of which one is the mingling of too much humane ornament and secular learning in preaching in presenting the word of God which word is our grasse The other is of mingling humane Traditions as of things of equall value and obligation with the Commandements of God For the first humane ornament if in those pastures which are ordain'd for sheep you either plant rare and curious flowers delightfull onely to the eye or fragrant and odoriferous hearbs delightfull onely to the smell nay be they medicinall hearbs usefull and behovefull for the preservation and restitution of the health of man yet if these specious and glorious flowers and fragrant and medicinall hearbs be not proper nourishment for sheep this is a treading down of the grasse a pestering and a suppressing of that which appertained to them So if in your spirituall food our preaching of the Word you exact of us more secular ornament then may serve as Saint Augustine says Ad ancillationem to convey and usher the true word of life into your understandings and affections for both those must necessarily be wrought upon more then may serve ad vehiculum for a chariot for the word of God to enter and triumph in you this is a treading down of the grasse a filling of that ground which was ordained for sheep with things improper and impertinent to them If you furnish a Gallery with stuffe proper for a Gallery with Hangings and Chairs and Couches and Pictures it gives you all the conveniencies of a Gallery walks and prospect and ease but if you pester it with improper and impertinent furniture with Beds and Tables you lose the use and the name of a Gallery and you have made it a Wardrobe so if your curiosity extort more then convenient ornament in delivery of the word of God you may have a good Oration a good Panegyrique a good Encomiastique but not so good a Sermon It is true that Saint Paul applies sentences of secular Authors even in matters of greatest importance but then it is to persons that were accustomed to those authors and affected with them and not conversant not acquainted at all with the phrase and language of Scripture amongst us now almost every man God be blessed for it is so accustomed to the text of Scripture as that he is more affected with the name of David or Saint Paul then with any Seneca or Plutarch I am far from forbidding secular ornament in divine exercises especially in some Auditories acquainted with such learnings I have heard men preach against witty preaching and doe it with as much wit as they have and against learned preaching with as much learning as they could compasse If you should place that beast which makes the Bezoar stone in a pasture of pure but onely grasse it is likely that out of his naturall faculty he would petrifie the juyce of that grasse and make it a stone but not such a medicinall stone as he makes out of those herbes which he feeds upon Let all things concur in the name of God to the advancing of his purpose in his ordinance which is to make his will acceptable to you by his word onely avoid excesse in the manner of doing it Saint Augustines is an excellent rule when after in his book De Doctrina Christiana he had taught a use of all Arts in Divinity he allows them onely thus far ut cum ingenia his reddantur exercitatiora cavendum ne reddantur maligniora that when a man by
And then lastly by way of condoling and of instructing we shall make it appear to our weak brethren that our departing from Rome can be no example no justification of their departing from us Our branches then from whence we are to gather our fruit being thus many it is time to lay hold upon the first which is Manebant Though these sheep were thus ill fed yet they did stay Optimis ovibus pedes breves The best sheep have-shortest leggs Their commendation is not to make hast in straying away He that hasteth with his feet sinneth that is from the station in which God hath placed him Si innumera bona fecerimus If we have abounded in good works and done God never so good service Non minores Poenas dabimus quà m qui Christi corpus proscindebant si integritatem Ecclesiarum discerpserimus we are as guilty in the eies of God as they that crucifyed the Lord of life himselfe if we violate his spouse or rent the intirenesse of his Church Vir quidam sanctus dixit says the same father of another Chrysostome of Cyprian A certaine holy man hath ventured to say Quod audaciùs sapere videtur attamen dixit That which perchance may seem bodily sayd but yet he sayd it what was it This peccatum istud nec martyrio deleri That this sin of schisme of renting the unity of the Church cannot be expiated no not by Martyrdome it self When God had made but a hedge about Iob yet that hedge was such a â—ence as the Devill could not break in when God hath carryed Murum aeneum a wall of brasse nay Murum igneum a wall of fire about his Church wilt thou break out through that wall that brasse that fire Paradise was not walled nor hedged and there were serpents in Paradise too yet Adam offered not to goe out of Paradise till God drove him out and God saw that he would have come in againe if the Cherubims and the flaming sword had not been placed by God to hinder him Charme the Charmer never so wisely as David speaks he cannot utter a sweeter nor a more powerfull charme â—hen that Ego te baptizo I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the Sonne and of the Holy Ghost And Nos admittimus we receive this child into the congregation of Christs slock There is a sweet and a powerfull charm in the Ego te absolvo I absolve thee from all thy sins But this blessed charm I may heare from another if I stray into another Church But the Ego te baptizo I can heare but once and to depart from that Church in which I have received my baptism and in which I have made my Contracts and my stipulations with God and pledged and engaged my sureties there deserve a mature consideration for I may mistake the reasons upon which I goe and I may finde after that there are more true errours in the Church I goe to then there were imaginary in that that I left Truly I have been sorry to see some persons converted from the Roman Church to ours because I have known that onely temporall respects have moved them and they have lived after rather in a nullity or indifferency to either religion then in a true and established zeale Of which kinde I cannot forbeare to report to you so much of the story of a French gentleman who though he were of good parts and learned yet were not worthy to be mentioned in this place but that he soar'd so high as to write against the learnedst King that any age hath produc'd our incomparable King Iames. This man who was turned from the Reformed to the Roman religion being asked halfe in jest Sir which is the best religion you must needs know that have been of both answered Certainely the religion I left the reformed religion must needs be the best religion for when I changed I had this religion the Romans religion for it and three hundred Crowns a year to boot which was a pension given him upon his conversion Neither truely doth any thing more loosen a mans footing nor slacken his hold upon that Church in which he was baptized nor open him more to an undervaluation of all Churches then when he gives himselfe leave to thinke irreverently slightly negligently of the Sacraments as of things at best indifferent and many times impertinent I should thinke I had no bowels if they had not earn'd and melted when I heard a Lady whose child of five or sixe daies being ready to die every minute she being mov'd often that the child might be christened answered That if it were Gods will that the child should live to the Sabbath that it might be baptized in the Congregation she should be content otherwise Gods will be done upon it for God needs no Sacrament With what sorrow with what holy indignation did I heare the Sonne of my friend who brought me to that place to minister the Sacrament to him then upon his death-bed and almost at his last gaspe when my service was offered him in that kinde answer his Father Father I thanke God I have not lived so in the sight of my God as that I need a Sacrament I name a few of these because our times abound with such persons as undervalue not onely all rituall and ceremoniall assistances of devotion which the wisdome and the piety of the Church hath induced but even the Sacraments themselves of Christs owne immediate institution and are alwaies open to solicitations to passe to another Church upon their own surmises of errours in their own Whereas there belongs much consideration and a well grounded assurance of fundamentall errours in one Church and that those errours are repayred and no other as great as those admitted in the other Church before upon any collaterall pretences we abandon that Church in which God hath sealed us to himselfe in Baptisme Our Fathers stayd in Rome Manebant They stayd and Edebant they eat that grasse and they drunke that water which was troden and troubled Alasse what should they have eaten what should they have drunke should a man strangle himselse rather then take in an ill ayre Or forbear a good table because his stomach cannot digest every dish We doe not call money base money till the Allay exceed the pure metall and if it doe so yet it may be currant and serve to many offices Those that are skilfull in that art know how to sever the base from the pure the good parts of the religion from the bad and those that are not will not cast it away for all the corrupt mixture It is true they had been better to have stayd at home and served God in private then to have communicated in a superstitious service Domum vestram Christi Ecclesian deputamus I shall never doubt to call your House the Church of Christ. But this was not permitted to our Fathers to
the sound of Horns not of Trumpets A homely sound yet it did the worke so neither is the weaknesse no nor the corruptnesse of the instruments always to be considered in the Church of God Our Fathers knew there had passed a contract between God and man A Church there should be Ad consummationem to the end of the world therefore they might safely make their recourse thither and Porta Inferi the gates of hell should not prevaile against it therefore they might confidently dwell there They knew there was a Dic Ecclesiae a bill to be exhibited to the Church upon any disorder and a Si noluerit an excommunication upon disobedience If he neglect to heare the Church let him be unto thee as a heathen man and as a Publican This Church they saw and Gods contract upon them sealed in Baptism they knew God had revealed no other Church nor contract to them And therefore though they did not eat their troden grasse with that ridiculous tentation as the Fryar is boasted to have eaten a Toad which was set upon the Table because he had read whatsoever is set before you eat Nor as their Dorotheus who when his man had reachd him rats-bane in stead of honey which he called for refused it not because sayd he If Gods will had been that I should have had honey he would have directed thy hand to the honey but being under an invi ciblenignorance and indevestible scruples and having this contract and this Church to give them some satisfaction and acquiescence they were partakers of that blessing That though Serpents and Scorpions lurked in their grasse they had power to tread on scorpions and on serpents and nothing could hurt them and That if they drinke any deadly thing it shall doe them no harme And so our Fathers with a good conscience Manebant stayd there and Edebant they eat troden grasse and drunke troubled water and yet Manebantoves they continued sheep still Sheep that is without Barking or biting Some faint and humble bleatings there were alwaies in the daies of our Fathers In every age there arose some men who did modestly and devoutly but yet couragiously and confidently appear and complaine against those treadings and those troublings Every age every nation had some such bleatings some men who by writing or preaching against those abuses interrupted the tyrannicall prescriptions of that Church and made their continuall claime to their Christian liberty But still they continued sheep without denying either their fleece or their throats to those Pastors We read in Naturall story of divers pastures and divers waters which will change the colour of cattell or sheep but none that changes the forme and makes them no such cattell or no sheep Some waters change sheep of any colour to white And these troubled waters temporall or spirituall afflictions may bring Gods children to a faint and leane and languishing palenesse If it doe as Daniel and his fellows appeared fairer and fatter in flesh with their pults and water which they desired rather then the Kings polluted delicates then others that sed voluptuously so the hearts of Gods children shall be filled as with marrow and with fatnesse when others shall have all their hearts desire but leannesse in their soules There are waters that change all coloured sheep to black So may these troubled waters afflictions effect that upon Gods children The enemy shall come and before him all faces shall gather blacknesse as Jerusalem complains That their faces were blacker then coals If it doe yet as long as they stay and continue sheep members of the body as long as they partake of the body they shall partake of the complexion of the Church who saies of her selfe I am black O daughters of Ierusalem but comely acceptable in the sight of my Christ and that shall be verifyed in them which Salomon says By the sadnesse of the countenance the heart is made better that is by the occasion of the sadnesse Gods correction But the strangest change is that some waters change sheep into red the most unlikely most extraordinary most unproper colour for sheep of any other Yet there is one rednesse naturall to our sheep in the Text the rednesse of blushing and modesty and selfe-accusing And there is another rednesse which is not improper the rednesse of zeale and godly anger The worst rednesse that can befall them is the rednesse of sinne and yet lest that should deject them God proceeds familiarly with them Come now and let us reason together Though your sinnes be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow though they be red like Crimson they shall be as wooll Yea to shew that where sinne abounds grace also may abound to shew that that whitenesse of Gods mercy doth pursue and overtake this rednesse of sinne it pleases the Holy Ghost to use such a phrase as expresses a rednesse in whitenesse it self He says that the religious men of the Jewes before that time were whiter then milke and redder then pearle Mippeninim is the originall word which the Rabbins translate pearle And the Vulgate Edition hath it Rubicundiores ebore antiquo redder then the oldest yvory which is the whitest thing that can be presented Perchance to intimate thus much that there is neither in the holiest actions of the holiest man any such degree of whitenesse but that it is always accompanied with some rednes some tincture some aspersion of sin nor any such deep rednesse in sin any sin so often and deeply died in grain but that it is capable of whitenesse in the application of the candor and purenesse and innocency of Christ Jesus Therefore may the Holy Ghost have wrapped up this whitenesse in rednesse redder then Pearl Our Fathers were not discouraged when they were discolored what palenesse what blacknesse what rednesse soever these troubled waters induced upon them still they were sheep They become not Foxes to delude the State with equivocations nor Wolves to join with the State to the oppression of the rest nor Horses to suffer themselves to be ridden by others and so made instruments of their passions no nor Vnicorns to think to purge and purifie the waters for all the forest to think to reforme all abuses in State and Church at once but they continued sheep opened not their mouthes in biting nor barking in murmuring or reproaching the present government So our Fathers staid Manebant so they eat that grasse so they continued sheep and as it followes next Oves Dei Gods sheep my sheep have eaten my sheep have drunken Gods sheep for nature hath her sheep some men by naturall constitution are lazy drowsie frivolous unactive sheepish men And States have their sheep timorous men following men speechlesse men men who because they abound in a plentifull State are loth to stire Nay the Devill hath his sheep too Men whom he possesses so entirely that as the Law
1000 The infection grew hotter and hotter in Rome their may came to a must those things which were done before de facto came at last to be articles of Faith and de jure must be beleeved and practised upon salvation They chide us for going away and they drove us away If we abstained from communicating with their poysons being now growen to that height they excommunicated us They gave us no room amongst them but the fire and they were so forward to burne Heretiques that they called it heresie not to stay to be burnt Yet we went not upon their driving but upon Gods calling As the whole prophecy of the deliverance of Israel from Babylon belongs to the Christian Church both to the Primitive Church at first and to the Reformed since so doth that voice spoken to them reach unto us Egredimini de Babylone Goe ye out of Babylon with a voice of singing declare show to the ends of the earth that the Lord hath redeemed his servant Iacob For that Rome is not Babylon they have but that one half-comfort that one of their own authors hath ministred that Romae regulariter male agitur that Babylon is Confusion disorder but at Rome all sinnes are committed in order by the book and they know the price and therefore Rome is not Babylon And since that many of their authors confesse that Rome was Babylon in the time of the persecuting Emperours and that Rome shall be Babylon againe in the time of Antichrist how they will hedge in a Ierusalem a holy City between these two Babylons is a cunning peece of Architecture From this Babylon then were our Fathers called by God not onely by that whispering sibilation of the holy Ghost sibilabâ— populum I will hisse for my people and so gather them for I have redeemed them and they shall increase not onely by private inspirations but by generall acclamations every where principall writers and preachers and Princes too as much as could stand with their safety crying out against them before Luther howsoever they will needs doe him that honour to have been the first mover in this blessed revolution They reproach to us our going from them when they drove us and God drew us and they discharge themselves for all by this one evasion That all that we complain of is the fault of the Court of Rome and not of the Church of the extortion in the practise of their Officers not of error in the doctrine of their Teachers Let that be true as in a great part it is for almost all their errors proceed from their covetousness and love of money this is that that we complain most of and in this especially lies the conformity of the Iewish Priests in the Chaldean Babylon and these Prelates in the Roman Babylon that the Court and the Church joined in the oppression But since the Court of Rome and the Church of Rome are united in one head I see no use of this distinction Court and Church If the Church of Rome be above the Court the Church is able to amend these corruptions in the Court If the Court be got above the Church the Church hath lost or sold away her supremacy To oppresse us and ease themselves now when we are gone from them they require Miracles at out hands when indeed it was miracle enough how we got from them But magnum charitatis argumentum credere absque pignoribus miraculorum He loves God but a little that will not beleeve him without a miracle Miracles are for the establishing of new religions All the miracles of and from Christ and his Apostles are ours because their Religion is ours Indeed it behooves our adversaries to provide new miracles every day because they make new articles of Faith every day As Esop therefore answered in the Market when he that sold him was asked what he could do that he could do nothing because his fellow had said that he could do all so we say we can do no miracles because they do all all ordinary cures of Agues and tooth-ach being done by miracle amongst them We confesse that we have no such tye upon the Triumphant Church to make the Saints there do those anniversary miracles which they do by their reliques here upon their own holy days ten days sooner every year then they did before the new computation We pretend not to raise the dead but to cure the sick and that but by the ordinary Physique the Word and Sacraments and therefore need no miracles And we remember them of their own authors who do not onely say that themselves do no miracles in these latter times but assigne diligently strong reasons why it is that they doe none If all this will not serve we must tell them that we have a greater miracle then any that they produce that is that in so few years they that forsook Rome were become equall even in number to them that adhered to her We say with Saint Augustine That if we had no other miracle hoc unum stupendum potentissimum miraculum esse that this alone were the most powerfull and most a mazing miracle ad hanc religionem totius orbis amplitudinem sine miraculis subjugatam that so great a part of the Christian world should become Protestants of Papists without any miracles They pursue us still being departed from them and they aske us How can ye pretend to have left Babylon confusion Dissention when you have such dissentions confusions amongst your selves But neither are our differences in so fundamental points as theirs are for a principall author of their own who was employed by Clement the eight to reconcile the differences between the Iesuits and the Dominicans about the concurrence of the grace of God and the free will of man confesses that the principall articles and foundations of faith were shaken between them between the Iesuits and Dominicans neither shall we finde such heat and animosity and passion between any persons amongst us as between the greatest amongst them The succeeding Pope mangling the body of his predecessor casting them into the river for buriall disannulling all their decrees and ordinations their Ordinations so that no man could be sure who was a Priest nor whether he had truely received any Sacrament or no. Howsoever as in the narrowest way there is most justling the Roman Church going that broad way to beleeve as the Church beleeves may scape some particular differences which we that goe the narrower way to try every thing by the exact word of God may fall into Saint Augustine tells us of a City in Mauritania Caesarea in which they had a custome that in one day in the year not onely Citizens of other parishes but even neighbours yea brethren yea Fathers did fling stones dangerously and furiously at one another in the streets and this they so solemnized as a custome received from their
but look to that which is neare thee not so much to those Decrees which have no conditions as to be able to plead conditions performed or at least a holy sorrow that thou hast not performed them Videte Cavete see that you doe heare God else every rumor will scatter you But take heed what you heare else you may come to call conditionall things absolute And lastly since Satan will be speaking too Videte be sure you doe heare him be sure you discerne it to be his voice and know what leads you into tentation For you may hear a voice that shall say youth must have pleasures and greatnesse must have State and charge must have support And this voice may bring a young man to transfer all his wantonesse upon his years when it is the effect of high dyet or licentious discourse or wanton Images admitted and cherished in his fancy and this voice may bring great officers to transfer their inaccessiblenesse upon necessary State when it is an effect of their own lazinesse or indulgence to their pleasures and this voice may bring rich landlords to transfer all their oppression of tenants to the necessity of supporting the charge of wives and children when it is an effect of their profusenesse and prodigality Nay you may heare a voice that may call you to this place and yet be his voice which is that which Saint Augustine confesses and laments that even to these places persons come to look upon one another that can meet no where else Videte see you doe heare that you doe discerne the voice for that is never Gods voice that puts upon any man a necessity of sinning out of his years and constitution out of his calling and profession out of his place and station out of the age and times that he lives in out of the pleasure of them that he lives upon or out of the charge of them that live upon him But then Cavete take heed what you heare from him too especially then when he speakes to thee upon thy death-bed at thy last transmigration then when thine eares shall be deafe with the cryes of a distressed and a distracted family and with the found and the change of the found of thy last bell then when thou shalt heare a hollow voice in thy selfe upbraiding thee that thou hast violated all thy Makers laws worn out all thy Saviours merits frustrated all the endeavours of his blessed Spirit upon thee evacuated all thine own Repentances with relapses then when thou shalt see or seem to see his hand turning the streame of thy Saviours bloud into another channell and telling thee here 's enough for Iew and Turke but not a drop for thee then when in that multiplying glasse of Despaire which he shall present every sinfull thought shall have the proportion of an Act and every Act of a Habite when every Circumstance of every sin shall enter into the nature of the sin it selfe and vary the sinne and constitute a particular sinne and every particular sinne shall be a sinne against the holy Ghost Take heed what you heare and be but able to say to Satan then as Christ said to Peter in his name Vade retro Satan come after me Satan come after me tomorrow come a minute after my soule is departed from this body come to me where I shall be then and when thou seest me washed in the bloud of my Saviour clothed in the righteousnesse of my Saviour lodged in the bosome of my Saviour crowned with the merits of my Saviour confesse that upon my death-bed thou wast a lyer and wouldest have been a murderer and the Lord shall and I in him shall rebuke thee See that yee refuse not him that speaketh says the Apostle not any that speakes in his name but especially not him whom he names there that speakes better things then the bloud of Abel for the bloud of Abel speakes but by way of example and imitation the bloud of Christ Jesus by way of Ransome and satisfaction Heare what that bloud says for you in the eares of the Father and then no singing of the flatterer no lisping of the tempter no roaring of the accuser no thunder of the destroyer shall shake thy holy constancy Take heed what you heare remember what you have heard and the God of heaven for his Sonne Christ Jesus sake by the working of his blessed Spirit prosper and emprove both endeavours in you Amen SERMON XXVIII Preached to the King at the Court in April 1629. GEN. 1. 26. And God said Let us make man in our Image after our likenesse NEver such a frame so soon set up as this in this Chapter For for the thing it selfe there is no other thing to compare it with For it is All it is the whole world And for the time there was no other time to compare it with for this was the beginning of time In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth That Earth which in some thousands of years men could not look over nor discern what form it had for neither Lactantius almost three hundred years after Christ nor Saint Augustine more then one hundred years after him would beleeve the earth to be round that earth which no man in his person is ever said to have compassed till our age That earth which is too much for man yet for as yet a very great part of the earth is unpeopled that earth which if we will cast it all but into a Mappe costs many Months labour to grave it nay if we will cast but a peece of an acre of it into a garden costs many years labour to fashion and furnish it All that earth and then that heaven which spreads so farre as that subtile men have with some appearance of probability imagined that in that heaven in those manifold Sphears of the Planets and the Starres there are many earths many worlds as big as this which we inhabite That earth and that heaven which spent God himselfe Almighty God six days in furnishing Moses sets up in a few syllables in one line In principio in the beginning God created heaven and earth If a Livy or a Guicciardine or such extensive and voluminous authors had had this story in hand God must have made another world to have made them a Library to hold their Books of the making of this world Into what Wire would they have drawn out this earth Into what leafe-gold would they have beate out these heavens It may assist our conjecture herein to consider that amongst those men who proceed with a sober modesty and limitation in their writing and make a conscience not to clogge the world with unnecessary books yet the volumes which are written by them upon this beginning of Genesis are scarce lesse then infinite God did no more but say let this and this be done And Moses does no more but say that upon Gods saying it was done God required not nature to help him to do
better to prevent the losse let us consider the having of this Image in what respect in what operation this Image is in our soule For whether this Image bee in those faculties which we have in Nature or in those qualifications which we may have in Grace or in those super-illustrations which the blessed shall have in Glory hath exercised the contemplation of many Properly this Image is in Nature in the naturall reason and other faculties of the immortall Soule of man For thereupon does Saint Bernard say Imago Dei uri potest in Gehenna non exuri Till the soule be burnt to ashes to nothing which cannot be done no not in hell the Image of God cannot be burnt out of that soule For it is radically primarily in the very soule it selfe And whether that soule be infused into the Elect or into the Reprobate that Image is in that soule and as far as he hath a soule by nature he hath the Image of God by Nature in it But then the seale is deeper cut or harder pressed or better preserved in some then in others and in some other considerations then meerly naturall Therefore we may consider Man who was made here to the Image of God and of God in three Persons to have been made so in Gods intendment three ways Man had this Image in Nature and does deface it he hath it also in Grace here and so does refresh it and he shall have it in Glory hereafter and that shall fix it establish it And in every of these three in this Trinity in man Nature Grace and Glory man hath not onely the Image of God but the Image of all the Persons of the Trinity in every of the three capacities He hath the Image of the Father the Image of the Sonne the Image of the holy Ghost in Nature and all these also in Grace and all in Glory too How all these are in all I cannot hope to handle particularly not though I were upon the first graine of our sand upon the first dram of your patience upon the first flash of my strength But a cleare repeating of these many branches that these things are thus that all the Persons of the heavenly Trinity are in their Image in every branch of this humane Trinity in man may at least must suffice In Nature then man that is the soule of man hath this Image of God of God considered in his Unity intirely altogether in this that this soule is made of nothing proceeds of nothing All other creatures are made of that pre-existent matter which God had made before so were our bodies too But our soules of nothing Now not to be made at all is to be God himselfe Onely God himselfe was never made But to be made of nothing to have no other parent but God no other element but the breath of God no other instrument but the purpose of of God this is to be the Image of God For this is nearest to God himselfe who was never made at all to be made of nothing And then man considered in nature is otherwise the nearest representation of God too For the steppes which we consider are four First Esse Beeing for some things have onely a beeing and no life as stones Secondly Vivere Living for some things have life and no sense as Plants and then thirdly Sentire Sense for some things have sense and no understanding Which understanding and reason man hath with his Beeing and Life and Sense and so is in a nearer station to God then any other creature and a livelier Image of him who is the root of Beeing then all they because man onely hath all the declarations of Beeings Nay if we consider Gods eternity the soule of man hath such an Image of that as that though man had a beginning which the originall the eternall God himselfe had not yet man shall no more have an end then the originall the eternall God himselfe shall have And this Image of eternity this past Meridian this after-noone eternity that is this Perpetuity and after everlastingnesse is in man meerly as a Naturall man without any consideration of grace For the Reprobate can no more die that is come to nothing then the Elect. It is but of the naturall man that Theodoret says a King built a City and erected his statue in the midst of the City that is God made man and imprinted his Image in his soule How will this King take it says that Father to have his statue thrown down Every man does so if he doe not exalt his naturall faculties If he doe not hearken to the law written in his heart if he doe not as much as Plato or as Socrates in the wayes of vertuous actions he throwes down the Statue of this King he defaces the Image of God How would this King take it says he if any other Statue especially the Statue of his enemy should be set up in this place Every man does so too that embraces false opinions in matter of doctrine or false appearances of happinesse in matter of conversation For these a naturall man may avoid in many cases without that addition of grace which is offered to us as Christians That comparison of other creatures to man which is intimated in Ieb is intended but of the naturall man There speaking of Behemoth that is of the greatest of Creatures he says in our translation that he is the chiefe of the ways of God Saint Hierome hath it Principium and others before him Initium viarum Dei That when God went that progresse over all the world in the Creation thereof he did but beginne he did but set out at Behemoth at the best of all such Creatures he all they were but Initium viarum the beginning of the wayes of God But Finis viarum the end of his journey and the Eve the Vespers of his Sabbath was the making of man even of the naturall man Behemoth and the other creatures were Vestigia says the Schoole in them we may see where God hath gone for all beeing is from God and so every thing that hath a beeing hath filiationem vestigii a testimony of Gods having passed that way and called in there But man hath filiationem Imaginis an expression of his Image and does the office of an Image or Picture to bring him whom it represēts the more lively to our memory Gods abridgement of the whole world was man Reabridge man into his least volume in pura naturalia as he is but meer man so he hath the Image of God in his soul. He hath it as God is considered in his Unity for as God is so the soule of man is indivisibly impartibly one intire and he hath it also as God is notified to us in a Trinity For as there are three Persons in the Essence of God so there are three faculties in the Soule of man The Attributes and some kind of specification
And whereas the humiliation of my Saviour is in all things to be imitated by me yet herein I am bound to depart from his humiliation that whereas he being in the forme of God tooke the forme of a servant I being in the forme of a servant may nay must take upon me the forme of God in being Deiformis homo a man made in Christ the Image of God So have I the Image of God intirely in his unity because I professe that faith which is but one faith and under the seale of the Baptisme which is but one Baptisme And then as of this one God so I have also the Image of the severall persons of the Trinity in this capacity as I am a Christian more then in my naturall faculties The Attributes of the first Person the Father is Power and none but a Christian hath power over those great Tyrants of the world Sinne Satan Death and Hell For thus my Power accrues and growes unto me First Possum Iudicare I have a Power to Judge a judiciary a discretive power a power to discerne between a naturall accident and a Judgement of God and will never call a Judgement an accident and between an ordinary occasion of conversation and atentation of Satan Possum judicare and then Possum resistere which is another act of power When I finde it to be a tentation I am able to resist it and Possum stare which is another I am able not onley to withstand but to stand out this battell of tentations to the end And then Possum capere that which Christ proposes for a tryall of his Disciples Let him that is able to receive it receive it I shall have power to receive the gift of continency against all tentations of that kinde Bring it to the highest act of power that with which Christ tryed his strongest Apostles Possum bibere calicem I shall be able to drinke of Christs Cup even to drinke his bloud and be the more innocent for that and to powre out my bloud and be the stronger for that In Christo omnia possum there 's the fulnesse of Power in Christ I can doe all things I can want or I can abound I can live or I can die And yet there is an extension of Power beyond all this in this Non possum peccare being borne of God in Christ I cannot sinne This that seemes to have a name of impotence Non possum I cannot is the fullest omnipotence of all I cannot sinne not sinne to death not sinne with a desire to sinne not sinne with a delight in sinne but that tentation that overthrowes another I can resist or that sinne which being done casts another into desperation I can repent And so I have the Image of the first Person the Father in Power The Image of the second Person whose Attribute is Wisdome I have in this that Wisdome being the knowledge of this world and the next I embrace nothing in this world but as it leads me to the next For thus my wisdome my knowledge growes First Scio cui credidi I know whom I have beleeved in I have not mislaid my foundation my foundation is Christ and then Scio non moriturum my foundation cannot sinke I know that Christ being raised from the dead dies no more againe Scio quod desideret Spiritus I know what my spirit enlightned by the Spirit of God desires I I am not transported with illusions and singularities of private spirits And as in the Attribute of Power we found an omnipotence in a Christian so in this there is an omniscience Scimus quia omnem Scientiam habemus there 's all together we know that we have all knowledge for all Saint Pauls universall knowledge was but this Iesum Crucifixum I determine not to know any thing save Jesus Christ and him Crucified and then the way by which he would proceed and take degrees in this Wisdome was Sultitia praedicandi the way that God had ordained when the world by Wisedome knew not God it pleased God by the foolishnesse of preaching to save them that beleeve These then are the steps of Christian Wisedome my foundation is Christ of Christ I enquire no more but fundamentall doctrines him Crucified and this I apply to my selfe by his ordinace of Preaching And in this wisdome I have the Image of the second Person And then of the third also in this that his Attribute beeing Goodnesse I as a true Christian call nothing good that conduces not to the glory of God in Christ Jesus nor any thing ill that drawes me not from him Thus I have an expresse Image of his Goodnesse that Omnia cooperantur in bonum all things worke together for my good if I love God I shall thanke my fever blesse my poverty praise my oppressor nay thanke and blesse and praise even some sinne of mine which by the consequences of that sinne which may be shame or losse or weaknesse may bring me to a happy sense of all my former sinnes and shall finde it to have been a good fever a good poverty a good oppression yea a good sinne Vertit in bonum says Ioseph to his brethren you thought evill but God meant it unto good and I shall have the benefit of my sinne according to his transmutation that is though I meant ill in that sinne I shall have the good that God meant in it There is no evill in the City but the Lord does it But if the Lord doe it it cannot be evill to me I beleeve that I shall see Bona Dei the goodnesse of the Lord in the land of the living that 's in heaven but David speakes also of Signum in bonum shew me a token of good and God will shew me a present token of future good an inward infallibility that this very calamity shall be beneficiall and advantageous unto me And so as in Nature I have the Image of God in my whole soule and of all the three Persons in the three faculties thereof the Understanding the Will and the Memory so in Grace in the Christian Church I have the same Images of the Power of the Father of the Wisedome of the Sonne of the Goodnesse of the holy Ghost in my Christian profession And all this we shall have in a better place then Paradise where we considered it in nature and a better place then the Church as it is Militant where we considered it in grace that is in the kingdome of heaven where we consider this Image in glory which is our last word There we shall have this Image of God in perfection for if Origen could lodge such a conceit that in heaven at last all things should ebbe backe into God as all things flowed from him at first and so there should be no other Essence but God all should be God even the Devill himselfe
how much more may we conceive an unexpressible association that 's too far off an assimilation that 's not neare enough an identification the Schoole would venture to say so with God in that state of glory Where as the Sunne by shining upon the Moone makes the Moone a Planet a Star as well as it selfe which otherwise would be but the thickest and darkest part of that Spheare so those beames of Glory which shall issue from my God and fall upon me shall make me otherwise a clod of earth and worse a darke Soule a Spirit of darkenesse an Angell of Light a Star of Glory a something that I cannot name now not imagine now nor to morrow nor next yeare but even in that particular I shall be like God that as he that asked a day to give a definition of God the next day asked a week and then a moneth and then a yeare so undeterminable would my imaginations be if I should goe about to thinke now what I shall be there I shall be so like God as that the Devill himselfe shall not know me from God so far as to finde any more place to fasten a tentation upon me then upon God nor to conceive any more hope of my falling from that kingdome then of Gods being driven out of it for though I shal not be immortall as God yet I shall be as immortall as God And there 's my Image of God of God considered altogether and in his unity in the state of Glory I shall have also then the Image of all the three Persons of the Trinity Power is the Fathers and a greater Power then he exercises here I shall have there here he overcomes enemies but yet here he hath enemies there there are none here they cannot prevaile there they shall not be So Wisedome is the Image of the Sonne And there I shall have better Wisdome then spirituall Wisdome it selfe is here for here our best Wisedome is but to goe towards our end there it is rest in our end here it is to seek to bee Glorified by God there it is that God may be everlastingly glorified by mee The Image of the holy Ghost is Goodnesse here our goodnesse is mixt with some ill faith mixt with scruples and good workes mixt with a love of praise and hope of better mixt with feare of worse There I shall have sincere goodnesse goodnesse impermixt intemerate and indeterminate goodnesse so good a place as no ill accident shall annoy it so good company as no impertinent no importune person shall disorder it so full a goodnesse as no evill of sinne no evill of punishment for former sinnes can enter so good a God as shall no more keep us in fear of his anger nor in need of his mercy but shall fill us first and establish us in that fulnesse in the same instant and give us a satiety that we can with no more and an infallibility that we can lose none of that and both at once Where as the Cabalists expresse our nearenesse to God in that state in that note that the name of man and the name of God Adam and Iehovah in their numerall letters are alike and equall so I would have leave to expresse that inexpressible state so far as to say that if there can be other world imagined besides this that is under our Moone and if there could be other Gods imagined of those worlds besides this God to whose Image we are thus made in Nature in Grace in Glory I had rather be one of these Saints in this heaven then of those Gods in those other worlds I shall be like the Angels in a glorified Soul and the Angels shall not be like me in a glorified body The holy noblenesse and the religious ambition that I would imprint in you for attaining of this Glory makes me medismiss you with this note for the feare of missing that Glory that as we have taken just occasion to magnifie the goodnesse of God towards us in that he speakes plurally Faciamus Let us All us do this and so powers out the blessings of the whole Trinity upon us in this Image of himselfe in every Person of the three and in all these wayes which we have considered so when the anger of God is justly kindled against us God collects himselfe summons himself assembles himselfe musters himselfe and threatens plurally too for of those foure places in Scripture in which onely as we noted before God speakes of himselfe in a Royall plurall God speakes in anger and in a preparation to destruction in one of those foure intirely as intirely he speakes of mercy but in one of them in this text here he says meerly out of mercy Faciamus Let us us all us make man and in the same plurality the same universality he says after Descendamus confundamus Let us us all us goe downe to them and confound them as meerly out of indignation and anger as here out of mercy And in the other two places where God speakes plurally he speakes not meerly in mercy nor meerly in justice in neither but in both he mingles both So that God carries himselfe so equally herein as that no Soul no Church no State may any more promise it selfe patience in God if it provoke him then suspect anger in God if we conforme our selves to him For from them that set themselves against him God shall withdraw his Image in all the Persons and all the Attributes the Father shall withdraw his Power and we shall be enfeebled in our forces the Sonne his Wisdome and we shall be infatuated in our counsailes the holy Ghost his Goodnesse and we shall be corrupted in our manners and corrupted in our Religion and be a prey to temporall and spirituall enemies and change the Image of God into the Image of the Beast and as God loves nothing more then the Image of himselfe in his Sonne and then the Image of his Sonne Christ Jesus in us so he hates nothing more then the Image of Antichrist in them in whom he had imprinted his Sonnes Image that is declinations towards Antichrist or concurrencies with Antichrist in them who were borne and baptized and catechised and blessed in that profession of his truth That God who hath hitherto delivered us from all cause or colour of jealousies or suspitions thereof in them whom he hath placed over us to conforme us to his Image in a holy life that sinnes continued and multiplyed by us against him doe not so provoke him against us that those two great helps the assiduity of Preaching and the personall and exemplary piety and constancy in our Princes be not by our sinnes made unprofitable to us For that 's the heighth of Gods malediction upon a Nation when the assiduity of preaching and the example of a Religious Prince does them no good but aggravates their fault SERMON XXX Preached to the Countesse of Bedford then at Harrington house
And at the judgement you shall stand but stand at the barre But when you stand before the Throne you stand as it is also added in this place before the Lamb who having not opened his mouth to save his owne fleece when he was in the shearers hand nor to save his own life when he was in the slaughterers hand will much lesse open his mouth to any repentant sinners condemnation or upbrayd you with your former crucifyings of him in this world after he hath nailed those sinnes to that crosse to which those sinnes nayled him You shall stand amicti stolis for so it follows covered with Robes that is covered all over not with Adams fragmentary raggs of fig-leafes nor with the halfe-garments of Davids servants Though you have often offered God halfe-confessions and halfe-repentances yet if you come at last to stand before the Lambe his fleece covers all hee shall not cover the sinnes of your youth and leave the sinnes of your age open to his justice nor cover your sinfull actions and leave your sinfull words and thoughts open to justice nor cover your own personall sinnes and leave the sinnes of your Fathers before you or the sinnes of others whose sins your tentations produced and begot open to justice but as he hath enwrapped the whole world in one garment the firmament so cloathed that part of the earth which is under our feet as gloriously as this which we live and build upon so those sinnes which we have hidden from the world and from our own consciences and utterly forgotten either his grace shall enable us to recollect and to repent in particular or we having used that holy diligence to examine our consciences so he shall wrap up even those sinnes which we have forgot and cover all with that garment of his own righteousnesse which leaves no foulnesse no nakednesse open You shall be covered with Robes All over and with white Robes That as the Angels wondred at Christ coming into heaven in his Ascension Wherefore art thou red in thine Apparell and thy garments like him that treadeth the wine fat They wondred how innocence it selfe should become red so shall those Angels wonder at thy coming thither and say Wherefore art thou white in thine apparell they shall wonder how sinne it selfe shall be clothed in innocence And in thy hand shall be a palm which is the last of the endowments specifyed here After the waters of bitternesse they came to seventy to innumerable palmes even the bitter waters were sweetned with another wood cast in The wood of the Crosse of Christ Jesus refreshes all teares and sweetnes all bitternesse even in this life but after these bitter waters which God shall wipe from all our eies we come to the seventy to the seventy thousand palms infinite seales infinite testimonies infinite extensions infinite durations of infinite glory Go in beloved and raise your own contemplations to a height worthy of this glory and chide me for so lame an expressing of so perfect a state and when the abundant spirit of God hath given you some measure of conceiving that glory here Almighty God give you and me and all a reall expressing of it by making us actuall possessors of that Kingdome which his Sonne our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood Amen SERMON XXXIII Preached at Denmark house some few days before the body of King Iames was removed from thence to his buriall Apr. 26. 1625. CANT 3. 11. Goe forth ye Daughters of Sion and behold King Solomon with the Crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the day of the gladnesse of his heart IN the Creation of man in that one word Faciamus let Vs make man God gave such an intimation of the Trinity as that we may well enlarge and spread and paraphrase that one word so farre as to heare therein a councell of all the three Persons agreeing in this gracious designe upon Man faciamus let us make him make and him mend him and make him sure I the Father will make him by my power if he should fall Thou the Sonne shalt repayr him re-edify him redeem him if he should distrust that this Redemption belonged not to him Thou the Holy Ghost shalt apply to his particular soule and conscience this mercy of mine and this merit of the Sonnes and so let us make him In our Text there is an intimation of another Trinity The words are spoken but by one but the persons in the text are Three For first The speaker the Director of all is the Church the spouse of Christ she says Goe forth ye daughters of Sion And then the persons that are called up are as you see The Daughters of Sion the obedient children of the Church that hearken to her voice And then lastly the persons upon whom they are directed is Solomon crowned That is Christ invested with the royall dignity of being Head of the Church And in this especially is this applyable to the occasion of our present meeting All our meetings now are to confesse to the glory of God and the rectifying of our own consciences and manners the uncertainty of the prosperity and the assurednesse of the adversity of this world That this Crown of Solomons in the text will appear to be Christs crown of Thornes his Humiliation his Passion and so these words will dismisse us in this blessed consolation That then we are nearest to our crown of Glory when we are in tribulation in this world and then enter into full possession of it when we come to our dissolution and transmigration out of this world And these three persons The Church that calls The children that hearken and Christ in his Humiliation to whom they are sent will be the three parts in which we shall determine this Exercise First then the person that directs us is The Church no man hath seen God and lives but no man lives till he have heard God for God spake to him in his Baptisme and called him by his name then Now as it were a contempt in the Kings house for any servant to refuse any thing except he might heare the King in person command it when the King hath already so established the government of his house as that his commandements are to be signifyed by his great Officers so neither are we to look that God should speak to us mouth to mouth spirit to spirit by Inspiration by Revelation for it is a large mercy that he hath constituted an Office and established a Church in which we should heare him When Christ was baptized by Iohn it is sayd by all those three Evangelists that report that story in particular circumstances that there was a voice heard from heaven saying This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased and it is not added in any of those three
wardrobe not to make an Inventory of it but to finde in it something fit for thy wearing Iohn Baptist was not the light he was not Christ but he bore witnesse of him The light of faith in the highest exaltation that can be had in the Elect here is not that very beatificall vision which we shall have in heaven but it beares witnesse of that light The light of nature in the highest exaltation is not faith but it beares witnesse of it The lights of faith and of nature are subordinate Iohn Baptists faith beares me witnesse that I have Christ and the light of nature that is the exalting of my naturall faculties towards religious uses beares me witnesse that I have faith Onely that man whose conscience testifies to himself and whose actions testifie to the world that he does what he can can beleeve himself or be beleeved by others that he hath the true light of faith And therefore as the Apostle saith Quench not the Spirit I say too Quench not the light of Nature suffer not that light to goe out study your naturall faculties husband and improve them and love the outward acts of Religion though an Hypocrite and though a naturall man may doe them Certainly he that loves not the Militant Church hath but a faint faith in his interest in the Triumphant He that cares not though the materiall Church fall I am afraid is falling from the spirituall For can a man be sure to have his money or his plate if his house be burnt or to preserve his faith if the outward exercises of Religion faile He that undervalues outward things in the religious service of God though he begin at ceremoniall and rituall things will come quickly to call Sacraments but outward things and Sermons and publique prayers but outward things in contempt As some Platonique Philosophers did so over-refine Religion and devotion as to say that nothing but the first thoughts and ebullitions of a devout heart were fit to serve God in If it came to any outward action of the body kneeling or lifting up of hands if it came to be but invested in our words and so made a Prayer nay if it passed but a revolving a turning in our inward thoughts and thereby were mingled with our affections though pious affections yet say they it is not pure enough for a service to God nothing but the first motions of the heart is for him Beloved outward things apparell God and since God was content to take a body let not us leave him naked nor ragged but as you will bestow not onely some cost but some thoughts some study how you will clothe your children and how you will clothe your servants so bestow both cost and thoughts thinke seriously execute cheerfully in outward declarations that which becomes the dignity of him who evacuated himselfe for you The zeale of his house needs not eat you up no nor eat you out of house and home God asks not that at your hands But if you eat one dish the lesse at your feasts for his house sake if you spare somewhat for his reliefe and his glory you will not be the leaner nor the weaker for that abstinence Iohn Baptist bore witnesse of the light outward things beare witnesse of your faith the exalting of our naturall faculties beare witnesse of the supernaturall We do not compare the master and the servant and yet we thank that servant that brings us to his master We make a great difference between the treasure in the chest and the key that opens it yet we are glad to have that key in our hands The bell that cals me to Church does not catechise me nor preach to me yet I observe the sound of that bell because it brings me to him that does those offices to me The light of nature is far from being enough but as a candle may kindle a torch so into the faculties of nature well imployed God infuses faith And this is our second couple of lights the subordination of the light of nature and the light of faith And a third payre of lights of attestation that beare witnesse to the light of our Text is Lux aeternorum Corporum that light which the Sunne and Moone and those glorious bodies give from heaven and lux incensionum that light which those things that are naturally combustible and apt to take fire doe give upon earth both these beare witnesse of this light that is admit an application to it For in the first of these the glorious lights of heaven we must take nothing for stars that are not stars nor make Astrological and fixed conclusions out of meteors that are but transitory they may be Comets and blazing starres and so portend much mischiefe but they are none of those aeterna corpora they are not fixed stars not stars of heaven So is it also in the Christian Church which is the proper spheare in which the light of our text That light the essentiall light Christ Jesus moves by that supernaturall light of faith and grace which is truly the Intelligence of that spheare the Christian Chruch As in the heavens the stars were created at once with one Fiat and then being so made stars doe not beget new stars so the Christian doctrine necessary to salvation was delivered at once that is intirely in one spheare in the body of the Scriptures And then as stars doe not beget stars Articles of faith doe not beget Articles of faith so as that the Councell of Trent should be brought to bed of a new Creed not conceived before by the holy Ghost in the Scriptures and which is a monstrous birth the child greater then the Father as soon as it is borne the new Creed of the Councell of Trent to containe more Articles then the old Creed of the Apostles did Saint Iude writing of the common salvation as he calls it for Saint Iude it seems knew no such particular salvation as that it was impossible for any man to have salvation is common salvation exhorts them to contend earnestly for that faith which was once delivered unto the Saints Semel once that is at once semel simul once altogether For this is also Tertullians note that the rule of faith is that it be una immobilis irreformabilis it must not be deformed it cannot be Reformed it must not be mard it cannot be mended whatsoever needs mending and reformation cannot be the rule of faith says Tertullian Other foundation can no man lay then Christ not onely no better but no other what other things soever are added by men enter not into the nature and condition of a foundation The additions and traditions and superedifications of the Roman Church they are not lux aeternorum corporum they are not fixed bodies they are not stars to direct us they may be meteors and so exercise our discourse and Argumentation they may raise controversies And they may be Comets and so
calling by being personally here at these exercises of Religion thou art some kinde of witnesse of this light For in how many places of the world hath Christ yet never opened such doors for his ordinary service in all these 1600. yeers And in how many places hath he shut up these doors of his true worship within these three or foure yeers Quod citaris huc That thou art brought hither within distance of his voyce within reach of his food intra sphaeram Activitatis within the spheare and latitude of his ordinary working that is into his house into his Church this is a citation a calling answerable to Iohn Baptists first calling from his fathers dead loins and his mothers barren wombe and his second citation was before he was borne in his mothers wombe When Mary came to visit Elizabeth the childe sprang in her belly as soone as Maries voice sounded in her eares And though naturally upon excesse of joy in the mother the childe may spring in her yet the Evangelist meanes to tell an extraordinary and supernaturall thing and whether it were an anticipation of reason in the childe some of the Fathers think so though St. Augustine do not that the childe understood what he did or that this were a fulfilling of that prophecy That he should be filled with the holy Ghost from his mothers wombe all agree that this was an exciting of him to this attestation of his Saviours presence whether he had any sense of it or no. Exultatio significat sayes St. Augustine This springing declared that his mother whose forerunner that childe should be was come And so both Origen and St. Cyrill refer that commendation which our Saviour gives him Inter natos Mulierum Among those that were born of women there was not a greater Prophet that is none that prophecyed before he was borne but he And such a citation beloved thou mayest have in this place and at this time A man may upon the hearing of something that strikes him that affects him feel this springing this exultation this melting and colliquation of the inwardest bowels of his soule a new affection a new passion beyond the joy ordinarily conceived upon earthly happinesses which though no naturall Philosopher can call it by a name no Anatomist assigne the place where it lyes yet I doubt not through Christ jesus but that many of you who are here now feele it and understand it this minute Citaris huc thou wast cited to come hither whether by a collaterall and oblique and occasionall motion or otherwise hither God hath brought thee and Citaris hîc here thou art cited to come neerer to him Now both these citations were before Iohn Baptist was borne both these affections to come to this place and to be affected with a delight here may be before thy regeneration which is thy spirituall birth a man is not borne not borne againe because he is at Church nor because he likes the Sermon Iohn Baptist had and thou must have a third citation which was in him from the desert into the publique into the world from contemplation to practice This was that mission that citation which most properly belongs to this Text when the word came to the voyce The word of God came to Iohn in the wildernesse and he came into all the Countrey preaching the Baptisme of repentance To that we must come to practise For in this respect an Vniversity is but a wildernesse though we gather our learning there our private meditation is but a wildernesse though we contemplate God there nay our being here is but a wildernesse though we serve God here if our service end so if we do not proceed to action and glorifie God in the publique And therefore Citaris huc thou art cited hither here thou must be and Citaris hîc thou art cited here to lay hold upon that grace which God offers in his Ordinance and Citaris hinc thou art cited from hence to embrace a calling in the world He that undertakes no course no vocation he is no part no member no limbe of the body of this world no eye to give light to others no eare to receive profit by others If he think it enough to be excrementall nayles to scratch and gripe others by his lazy usury and extortion or excrementall hayre made onely for ornament or delight of others by his wit or mirth or delightfull conversation these men have not yet felt this third citation by which they are called to glorifie God and so to witnesse for him in such publique actions as Gods cause for the present requires and comports with their calling And then Iohn Baptist had a fourth citation to bear witnesse for Christ by laying down his life for the Truth and this was that that made him a witnesse in the highest sense a Martyr God hath not served this citation upon us nor doth he threaten us with any approches towards it in the feare of persecution for religion But remember that Iohn Baptists Martyrdome was not for the fundamentall rock the body of the Christian religion but for a morall truth for matter of manners A man may be bound to suffer much for a lesse matter then the utter overthrow of the whole frame and body of religion But leaving this consideration for what causes a man is bound to lay downe his life consider we now but this that a man lays downe his life for Christ and beares witnesse of him even in death when he prefers Christ before this world when he desires to be dissolved and be with him and obeyes cheerefully that citation by the hand of death whensoever it comes and that citation must certainly be served upon you all whether this night in your beds or this houre at the doore no man knowes You who were cited hither to heare and cited here to consider and cited hence to worke in a calling in the world must be cited from thence too from the face to the bosome of the earth from treading upon other mens to a lying downe in your owne graves And yet that is not your last citation there is fifth In the grave Iohn Baptist does and we must attend a fifth citation from the grave to a Iudgement The first citation hither to Church was served by Example of other men you saw them come and came The second citation here in the Church was served by the Preacher you heard him and beleeved The third from hence is served by the law and by the Magistrate they binde you to embrace a profession and a calling and you do so The fourth which is from thence from this to the next world is served by nature in death he touches you and you sinke This fifth to Iudgement shall be by an Angell by an Archangell by the Lord himself The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout with the voyce of the Archangell and with
and may make thee doubt whether thou have it or no every day that is as often as thou canst heare more and more witnesses of this light and bless that God who for thy sake would submit himselfe to these Testimonia ab homine these Testimonies from men and being all light himselfe and having so many other Testimonies would yet require the Testimony of Man of Iohn which is our other branch of this first part Christ who is still the light of our Text That light the essentiall light had testimony enough without Iohn First he bore witness of himselfe And though he say of himself If I beare witnesse of my self my witnesse is not true yet that he might say either out of a legall and proverbiall opinion of theirs that ordinarily they thought That a witness testifying for himself was not to be beleeved whatsoever he said Or as Man which they then took him to be he might speake it of himselfe out of his own opinion that in Iudicature it is a good rule that a man should not be beleeved in his own case But after this and after he had done enough to make them see that he was more then man by multiplying of miracles then he said though I beare witnesse of my selfe my witnesse is true So the onely infallibility and unreproachable evidence of our election is in the inward word of God when his Spirit beares witnesse with our Spirit that we are the Sonnes of God for if the Spirit the Spirit of truth say he is in us he is in us But yet the Spirit of God is content to submit himselfe to an ordinary triall to be tried by God and the Countrey he allowes us to doubt and to be afraid of our regeneration except we have the testimony of sanctification Christ bound them not to his own testimony till it had the seale of workes of miracles nor must we build upon any testimony in our selves till other men that see our life testifie for us to the world He had also the testimony of his Father the Father himselfe which hath sent me beareth witnesse of me But where should they see the Father or heare the Father speak That was all which Philip asked at his hands Lord show us the Father and it sufficeth us He had the testimony of an Angel who came to the shepheards so as no where in all the Scriptures there is such an Apparition expressed the Angel of the Lord came upon them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them but where might a man talke with this Angel and know more of him As Saint Augustine says of Moses Scripsit abiit he hath written a little of the Creation and he is gone Si hîc esset tenerem rogarem if Moses were here says he I would hold him fast till I had got him to give me an exposition of that which he writ For beloved we must have such witnesses as we may consult farther with I can see no more by an Angel then by lightning A star testified of him at his birth But what was that star was it any of those stars that remaine yet Gregory Nissen thinkes it was and that it onely then changed the naturall course and motion for that service But almost all the other Fathers thinke that it was a light but then created and that it had onely the forme of a star and no more and some few that it was the holy Ghost in that forme And if it were one of the fixed stars and remaine yet yet it is not now in that office it testifies nothing of Christ now The wise men of the East testified of him too But what were they or who or how many or from whence were they for all these circumstances have put Antiquity it selfe into more distractions and more earnest disputations then circumstances should doe Simeon testified of him who had a revelation from the holy Ghost that he should not see death till he had seen Christ. And so did the Prophetess Anna who served God with fasting and prayer day and night Omnis sexus aetas both sexes and all ages testified of him and he gives examples of all as it was easie for him to doe Now after all these testimonies from himselfe from the Father from the Angel from the star from the wise men from Simeon from Anna from all what needed the testimony of Iohn All those witnesses had been thirty years before Iohn was cited for a witnesse to come from the wildernesse and preach And in thirty years by reason of his obscure and retired life in his father Iosephs house all those personall testimonies of Christ might be forgotten and for the most part those witnesses onely testified that he was borne that he was come into the world but for all their testimony he might have been gone out of the world long Before this he might have perished in the generall flood in that flood of innocent blood in which Herod drowned all the young children of that Countrey When therefore Christ came forth to preach when he came to call Apostles when he came to settle a Church to establish meanes for our ordinary salvation by which he is the light of our text the Essentiall light shining out in his Church by the supernaturall light of faith and grace then he admitted then he required Testimonium ab homine testimony from man And so for our conformity to him in using and applying those meanes which convay this light to us in the Church we must doe so too we must have the seale of faith and of the Spirit but this must be in the testimony of men still there must be that done by us which must make men testifie for us Every Christian is a state a common-wealth to himselfe and in him the Scripture is his law and the conscience is his Iudge And though the Scripture be inspired from God and the conscience be illumined and rectified by the holy Ghost immediately yet both the Scriptures and the Conscience admit humane arguments First the Scriptures doe in all these three respects first that there are certaine Scriptures that are the revealed will of God Secondly that these books which we call Canonicall are those Scriptures And lastly that this and this is the true sense and meaning of such and such a place of Scripture First that there is a manifestation of the will of God in certain Scriptures if we who have not power to infuse Faith into men for that is the work of the Holy Ghost onely but must deal upon the reason of men and satisfie that if we might not proceed per testimonia ab homine by humane Arguments and argue and infer thus That if God will save man for worshipping him and damne him for not worshipping him so as he will be worshipped certainly God hath revealed to man how he will be worshipped and
burden of the day there had been much more cause of complaint because there had passed a contract between them So hath there passed a contract between God and us Beleeve and thou shalt live Do this and thou shalt live And in this especially hath God expressed his love to us and his lothenesse to lose us that he hath passed such a contract with us and manifested to us a way to come to him We say every day in his owne prayer Fiat voluntas tua thy will be done that is done by us as well as done upon us But this petition presumes another the Fiat suposes a Patefiat voluntas if it must be done it must be known If man were put into this world under an obligation of doing the will of God upon damnation and had no meanes to know that will which he was bound to doe of all creatures he were the most miserable That which we read Lord what is man that thou takest knowledge of him the Vulgat edition and the Fathers following the Septuagint read thus Quia innotuisti ei Lord what is man that he should have any knowledge of thee that thou shouldest make thy selfe known to him This is the heighth of the mercy of God this innotescence this manifestation of himselfe to us Now what is this innotescence this manifestation of God to us It is say our old Expositors the law That 's that which is so often called the face of God and the light of his Countenance for facies Dei est qua nobis innotescit that 's Gods face by which God is known to us and that 's his law the declaration of his will to me and my way to him When Christ reproaches those hard-hearted men that had not fed him when he was hungry nor clothed him when he was naked and that they say Lord when did we see thee naked or see thee hungry inconsiderate men or men loth to give the penurious and narrow soule shall not see an occasion of charity when it is presented which is a heavy blindnesse and obcaecation not to see occasions of doing good yet those men doe not say when did we see thee at all as though they had never seen him The blindest man that is hath the face of God so turned towards him as that he may be seen by him even the naturall man hath so for therefore does the Apostle make him inexcusable if in the visible worke he doe not see the invisible God But all sight of God is by the benefit of a law the naturall man sees him by a law written in his heart the Iew by a law given by Moses the Christian in a clearer glasse for his law is the Gospell But there is more mercy that is more manifestation in this text then all this For besides the naturall mans seeing God in a law in the faculties of his owne nature which we consider to be the work of the whole Trinity in that Faciamus hominē Let us make man in our own Image let us shine out in him so as that he may be a glasse in which he may see us in himselfe and besides the Iews seeing of God in the law written in the stone tables which we consider to be the worke of the Father And besides the Christians seeing of God in the law written in bloud in which we consider especially the Sonne there is in this text an operation a manifestation of God proper to the holy Ghost and wrought by his holy suggestions and inspirations That God does not onely speake to us but call upon us not onely give us a Law but Proclamations upon that law that he refreshes to our memories generall duties by such particular warnings and excitations and commonefactions as in this text Videte Beware which is the last branch of this part though it be the first word of our text Videte Beware Nothing exalts Gods goodnesse towards us more then this that he multiplies the meanes of his mercy to us so as that no man can say once I remember I might have been saved once God called unto mee once hee opened mee a doore a passage into heaven but I neglected that went not in then and God never came more No doubt God hath come often to that doore since and knocked and staid at that doore And if I knew who it were that said this I should not doubt to make that suspitious soule see that God is at that doore now God hath spoken once and twice have I heard him for the foundation of all God hath spoken but once in his Scriptures Therefore doth Saint Iude call that fidem semel traditam the faith once delivered to the Saints once that is at once not at once so all at one time or in one mans age the Scriptures were not delivered so for God spoke by the mouth of the Prophets that have been since the world beganne But at once that is by one way by writing by Scriptures so as that after that was done after God had declared his whole will in the Law and the Prophets and the Gospell there was no more to bee added God hath spoken once in his Scriptures and wee have heard him twice at home in our owne readings and againe and againe here in his Ordinances This is the heighth of Gods goodnesse that he gives us his Law and a Comment upon that Law Proclamations declarations upon that Law For without these subsequent helpes even the law it selfe might be mistaken as you see it was when Christ was put to rectifie them with his Audiistis and Audiistis this you have heard and this hath been told you Ego autem dico but this I say ab initio from the beginning it was not so the foundations were not thus laid and upon the foundations laid by God in the Scriptures and not upon the superedifications of men in traditionall additions must wee build In stormes and tempests at sea men come sometimes to cut down Galleries and teare up Cabins and cast them over-board to ease the ship and sometimes to hew downe the Mast it selfe though without that Mast the ship can make no way but no soule weather can make them teare out the keele of the ship upon which the ship is built In cases of necessity the Church may forbeare her Galleries and Cabinets meanes of ease and conveniency yea and her Mast too meanes of her growth and propagation and enlarging of her selfe and be content to hull it out and consist in her present or a worse state during the storme But to the keele of the ship to the fundamentall articles of Religion may no violence in any case be offered God multiplies his mercies to us in his divers ways of speaking to us Caeli enarrant says David The heavens declare the glory of God and not onely by showing but by saying there is a language in the heavens for it is enarrant a verball
all the spirituall parts of the Indulgence be performed by the poore sinner yet if he give not that money though he be not worth that money though that Merchant of those Indulgencies doe out of his charity give him one of those Indulgencies yet all this doth that man no good in these cases they are indeed Rei suae Legati Ambassadours to serve their own turns and do their owne businesse When that Bishop sends out his Legatos à latere Ambassadours from his own chair and bosome into forain Nations to exhaust their treasures to alien their Subjects to infect their Religion these are Rei suae Legati Ambassadours that have businesses depending in those places and therefore come upon their own errand Nor can that Church excuse it self though it use to do so upon the mis-behaviour of those officers when they are imployed for they are imployed to that purpose And Tibi imputae quicquid pateris ab eo qui sine te nihil potest facere Since he might mend the fault it is his fault that it is done he cannot excuse himself if they be guilty and with his privity for as the same devout man saith to Eugenius then Pope Ne te dixeris sanum dolentem latera If thy sides ake if thy Legats à latere be corrupt call not thy self well nec bonum malis innitentem nor call thy self good if thou rely upon the counsell of those that are ill They those Legats à latere are as they use to expresse it incorporated in the Pope and therefore they are Rei sui Legati Ambassadours that ly to doe their own businesse But when we seek to raise no other warre in you but to arme the spirit against the flesh when we present to you no other holy water but the teares of Christ Jesus no other reliques but the commemoration of his Passion in the Sacrament no other Indulgencies and acquittances but the application of his Merits to your souls when we offer all this without silver and without gold when we offer you that Seal which he hath committed to us in Absolution without extortion or fees wherein are we Rei nostrae Legati Ambassadours in our own behalfs or advancers of our owne ends And as we are not so so neither are we in the second danger to come sine Principali Mandato without Commission from our Master Christ himselfe would not come of himselfe but acknowledged and testified his Mission The Father which sent me he gave me commandment what I should say and what I should speake Those whom he imployed produced their Commissions Neither received I it of man neither was I taught it but by the revelation of Iesus Christ. How should they preach except they be sent is a question which Saint Paul intended for a conclusive question that none could answer till in the Romane Church they excepted Cardinals Quibus sine literis creditur propter personarum solennitatem who for the dignity inherent in their persons must be received though they have no Commission When our adversaries do so violently so impetuously cry out that we have no Church no Sacrament no Priesthood because none are sent that is none have a right calling for Internall calling who are called by the Spirit of God they can be no Judges and for Externall calling we admit them for Judges and are content to be tried by their own Canons and their own evidences for our Mission and vocation or sending and our calling to the Ministery If they require a necessity of lawfull Ministers to the constitution of a Church we require it with as much earnestnesse as they Ecclesia non est quae now habet sacerdotem we professe with Saint Hierome It is no Church that hath no Priest If they require that this spirituall power be received from them who have the same power in themselves we professe it too Nemo dat quod non habet no man can confer other power upon another then he hath himself If they require Imposition of hands in conferring Orders we joyn hands with them If they will have it a Sacrament men may be content to let us be as liberall of that name of Sacrament as Calvin is and he says of it Institut l. 4. c. 14. § 20. Non invitus patior vocari Sacramentum it a inter ordinaria Sacramenta non numero I am not loth it should be called a Sacrament so it be not made an ordinary that is a generall Sacrament and how ill hath this been taken at some of our mens hands to speak of more such Sacraments when indeed they have learnt this manner of speech and difference of Sacraments not onely from the ancient Fathers but from Calvin himself who always spoke with a holy warinesse and discretion Whatsoever their own authors their own Schools their own Canons doe require to be essentially and necessarily requisite in this Mission in this function we for our parts and as much as concerns our Church of England admit it too and professe to have it And whatsoever they can say for their Church that from their first Conversion they have had an orderly derivation of power from one to another we can as justly and truly say of our Church that ever since her first being of such a Church to this day she hath conserved the same order and ever hath had and hath now those Ambassadours sent with the same Commission and by the same means that they pretend to have in their Church And being herein convinced by the evidence of undeniable Record which have been therefore shewed to some of their Priests not being able to deny that such a Succession and Ordination we have had from the hands of such as were made Bishops according to their Canons now they pursue their common beaten way That as in our Doctrine they confesse we affirm no Heresie but that we deny some Truths so in our Ordination and sending and Calling when they cannot deny but that from such a person who is by their own Canons able to confer Orders we in taking our Orders after their own manner receive the Holy Ghost and the power of binding and loosing yet say they we receive not the full power of Priests for we receive onely a power in Corpus mysticum upon the mysticall body of Christ that is the persons that constitute the visible Church but we should receive it in Corpus verum a power upon the very naturall body a power of Consecration by way of Transubstantiation They may be pleased to pardon this rather Modesty then Defect in us who so we may work fruitfully and effectually upon the mysticall body of Christ can be content that his reall and true body work upon us Not that we have no interest to work upon the reall body of Christ since he hath made us Dispensers even of that to the faithfull in the Sacrament but for such a power as exceeds the Holy Ghost who in the incarnation
had something to work upon But God in the Creation had nothing at all He called us when we were not as though we had been Now here is this world we make our selves that is we make one another Kings make Iudges and Iudges make Officers Bishops make Parsons and Parsons make Curats But when wee consider our Creation It is he that hath made us and not we our selves we did not onely not doe any thing but we could not doe so much as wish any thing to be done towards our Creation till wee were created In the Application of that great worke The Redemption of mankinde that is in the conversion of a sinner and the first act of that conversion though the grace of God work all yet there is a faculty in man a will in man which is in no creature but man for that grace of God to worke upon But in the Creation there was nothing at all I honour my Physician upon the reasons that the Wise man assignes because he assists my health and my well-beeing But I honour not my Physician with the same honour as my Father who gave me my very Beeing I honour my God in all those notions in which he hath vouchsafed to manifest himselfe to me Every particular blessing of his is a Remembrancer but my Creation is a holy wonder and a mysterious amazement And therefore as David the Father wraps up all stubborn ignorance of God in that The fool hath said in his heart there is no God so Solomon the Son wraps up all knowledge of God in that Remember thy Creator still contemplate God in that notion as he made thee of nothing for upon that all his other additions depend And when thou comest to any post-Creations any after-makings in this world to be made rich made wise made great Praise thou the Lord blesse him and magnifie him for ever for those Additions and blesse him for having made thee capable of those Additions by something conferred upon thee before That he gave thee a patrimony from thy parents and thine industry working upon that made thee rich That he raised thee to Riches and the Eye of the State looking upon that made thee Honourable But still return to thy first making thy Creation as thou wast made of nothing nothing so low as that not sin it self not sin against the holy Ghost himselfe can cast thee so low again nothing can make thee nothing nothing that thou canst doe here nothing that thou canst suffer hereafter can reduce thee to nothing And in this notion this supreme and Majesticall notion does this oppressor of the poor reproach God He reproaches the Maker But then whose Maker for that is also another branch another Disquisition Here we accept willingly and entertain usefully their doubt that will not resolve whether our Gnoshehu in the Text be Factorē Ejus or Factorē Suum whether this oppressor of the poor be said here to reproach his Maker that is made poor or his own Maker Let them enjoy their doubt Be it either Be it both First let it be the poor Mans Maker And then does this oppressor consider that it is God that hath made that poor man or that hath made that man poor and will he oppresse him then If a man of those times had heard a song of Nero's making had been told that it was his as that Emperour delighted in compositions of that kind he would not he durst not have said that it was a harsh an untunable song If a man saw a Clock or a Picture of his Princes making as some Princes have delighted themselves with such manufactures hee would not he durst not say it was a disorderly Clock or a disproportioned picture Wise Fathers have foolish children and beautifull deformed yet we doe not oppresse nor despise those children if we loved their parents nor will we any poor man if we truly love that God that made him poor And if his poverty be not of Gods making but of the Devils induced by his riot and wastfulnesse howsoever the poverty may be the Devils still the Man is of Gods making Probris afficit factorem ejus He reproaches Him that made that man poore and Probris afficit factorem suum Hee reproaches that God who made him rich his owne Maker Now doth he consider that the Devill hath super-induced a half-lycantropy upon him The Devill hath made him half a wolfe so much a wolfe as that he would tear all that fall into his power And half a spider so much a spider as that hee would entangle all that come near him And half a Viper so much a Viper as that he would envenome all that any way provoke him Does hee consider that the Devill hath made him half a wolfe halfe a spider half a viper and doth hee not consider that that God that is his Maker could have made him a whole Wolfe a whole Spider a whole Viper and left him in that rank of ignoble and contemptible and mischievous creatures Does he not consider that that God that made him richer then others can make him a prey to others raise up enemies that shall bring him to confusion though he had no other crimes Therefore because he is so rich God can make his very riches the occasion of his ruine here and the occasion of his everlasting ruine hereafter by making those riches snares and occasions of sin God who hath made him could have left him unmade or made him what he would and he reproaches God as though God could have done nothing lesse for him then he hath done nor could not undone him now But before we depart from this branch consider we wherein this offender this oppressor sins so very hainously as to deserve so high an increpation as to be said to Reproach and to Reproach God and God in that supream Notion A Maker His Maker and his own Maker If his fault be but neglecting or oppressing a poor man why should it deserve all this In all these respects First The poor are immediately in Gods protection Rich and poore are in Gods administration in his government in his providence But the poor are immediately in his protection Tibi derelictus est pauper says David The poor commits himself unto thee They are Orphans Wards delivered over to his tuition to his protection Princes have a care of all their Allies but a more especiall care of those that are in their protection And the poor are such And therefore God more sensible in their behalfe And so hee that oppresses the poor Reproaches God God in his Orphans Again rich and poor are Images Pictures of God but as Clement of Alexandria says wittily and strongly The poor is Nuda Imago a naked picture of God a picture without any drapery any clothes about it And it is much a harder thing there is much more art showed in making a naked picture then in
his eternall generation in the bosome of his Father had now cast a cloud of a temporary and earthly generation in the wombe of his mother that man who as he entred into the wombe of his first mother the blessed Virgin by a supernaturall way by the overshadowing of the holy Ghost so he vouchsafed to enter into the wombe of her whom he had accepted for his second mother the earth by an unnaturall way not by a naturall but by a violent and bitter death that man so torne and mangled wounded with thornes oppressed with scornes and contumelies Pilite presents and exhibits so Ecce homo Behold the man But in all this depression of his in all his exinanition and evacuation yet he had a Crown on yet he had a purple garment on the emblems the Characters of majesty were always upon him And these two considerations the miseries that exhaust and evacuate and annihilate man in this life and yet those sparkes and seeds of morality that lie in the bosome that still he is a man the affilictions that depresse and smother that suffocate and strangle their spirits in thier bosomes and yet that unsmotherable that unquenchable Spirit of Adoption by which we cry Abba Father that still he is a Christian these Thornes and yet these Crownes these contumelies and yet this Purple are the two parts of this text I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath For here is an Ecce behold Ieremy presents a map a manifestation of as great affliction as the rod of Gods wrath could infflict But yet it is Ecce homo Behold the man I am the man he is not demolished he is not incinerated so not so annihilated but that he is still a man God preserves his children from departing from the dignity of men and from the soveraigne dignity of Christian men in the deluge and inundation of all afflictions And these two things so considerable in that Ecce homo in the exhibiting of Christ that then when he was under those scornes and Crosses he had his Crownes his purples ensignes of majesty upon him may well be parts of this text for when we come to consider who is the person of whom Ieremy says I am the man we finde many of the ancient Expositors take these words prophetically of Christ himself and that Christ himselfe who says Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow says here also I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath But because there are some other passages in the Chapter that are not conveniently appliable to Christ it is not likely that Christ would say of himself That his Father shut out his prayer even then when he cryed and shouted not likely that Christ would say of himselfe That his Father was to him as a Beare in the way and as a Lion in secret places not likely that Christ would say of himselfe That his Father had removed his soul far from peace therfore this chapter and this person cannot be so well understood of Christ. Others therefore have understood if of Ierusalem it selfe but then it would not be expressed in that Sex it would not be said of Ierusalem I am the man Others understand if of any particular man that had his part in that calamity in that captivity that the affliction was so universall upon all of that nation of what condition soever that every man might justly say Ego vir I am the man that have seen affliction But then all this chapter must be figurative and still where we can it becomes it behooves us to maintain a literall sense and interpretation of all Scriptures And that we shall best do in this place if we understand these words literally of Iermy himselfe that the Minister of God the Preacher of God the Prophet of God Ieremy himself was the man the Preacher is the text Ego vir I am the man As the Ministers of God are most exposed to private contumelies so should they be most affected with publique calamities soonest come to say with the Apostle Quis infirmatur who is weake and I am not weake too who is offended and I am not affected with it when the people of God are distressed with sicknesse with dearth with any publique calamity the Minister is the first man that should be compassionate that should be compassionate and sensible of it In these words then I am the man c. these are our two parts first the Burden and then the Ease first the waight and then the Alleviation first the Discomfort and then the Refreshing the sea of afflictions that overflow and surround us all and then our emergency and lifting up our head above that sea In the first we shall consider first the Generality of afflictions and that first in their own nature And then secondly in that name of man upon whom they fall here Gheber Ego vir I am the man which is that name of man by which the strongest the powerfullest of men are denoted in the Scriptures They the strongest the mightiest they that thought themselves safest and sorrow-proofe are afflicted And lastly in the person upon whom these afflictions are fastned here Ieremy the Prophet of whom literally we understand this place The dearliest beloved of God and those of whose service God may have use in his Church they are subject to be retarded in their service by these afflictions Nothing makes a man so great amongst men nothing makes a man so necessary to God as that he can escape afflictions And when we shall have thus considered the generality thereof these three wayes In the nature of affliction it selfe In the signification of that name of exaltation Gheber And in the person of Ieremy we shall passe to the consideration of the vehemency and intensnesse thereof in those circumstances that are laid down in our Text First that these afflictions are Ejus His The Lords And then they are in virga in his rod And again In virga irae in the rod of his wrath And in these two branches the extent and the weight of afflictions and in these few circumstances that illustrate both we shall determine our first part the burden the discomfort When we shall come at last to our last part of comfort we shall finde that also to grow out into 2 branches for first Vidit he saw his affliction I am the Man that hath seen affliction Affliction did not blinde him not stupefie him affliction did not make him unsensible of affliction which is a frequent but a desperate condition vidit he saw it that is first And then Ego vir I am the man that saw it he maintained the dignity of his station still he played the man still he survived to glorifie God and to be an example to other men of patience under Gods corrections and of thankfulnesse in Gods deliverance In which last part