bituminous matter and the Spirit of God knew right well the worst expression was not bad enough 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so our blessed Saviour calls it the outer darknesse that is not onely an abjection from the beatifick regions where God and his Angels and his Saints dwell for ever but then there is a positive state of misery expressed by darknesses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as two Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Jude call it The blacknesse of darknesse for ever In which although it is certain that God whose Justice there rules will inflict but just so much as our sins deserve and not superadde degrees of undeserved misery as he does to the Saints of glory for God gives to blessed souls in heaven more infinitely more then all their good works could possibly deserve and therefore their glory is infinitely bigger glory then the pains of hell are great pains yet because Gods Justice in hell rules alone without the allayes and sweeter abatements of mercy they shall have pure and unmingled misery no pleasant thought to refresh their wearinesse no comfort in an other accident to alleviate their pressures no waters to cool their flames but because when there is a great calamity upon a man every such man thinks himself the most miserable and though there are great degrees of pain in hell yet there are none perceived by him that thinks he suffers the greatest It follows that every man that loses his soul in this darknesse is miserable beyond all those expressions which the tortures of this world could furnish to the Writers of holy Scripture But I shall choose to represent this consideration in that expression of our blessed Saviour Mark the 9. the 44. verse which himself took out of the Prophet Esay the 66. verse the 24. Where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched this is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 spoken of by Daniel the Prophet for although this expression was a prediction of that horrid calamity and abscision of the Jewish Nation when God poured out a full vial of his wrath upon the crucifiers of his Son and that this which was the greatest calamity which ever did or ever shall happen to a Nation Christ with great reason took to describe the calamity of accursed souls as being the greatest instance to signifie the greatest torment yet we must observe that the difference of each state makes the same words in the several cases to be of infinite distinction The worm stuck close to the Jewish Nation and the fire of Gods wrath flamed out till they were consumed with a great and unheard of destruction till many millions did die accursedly and the small remnant became vagabonds and were reserved like broken pieces after a storm to shew the greatnesse of the storm and misery of the shipwrack but then this being translated to signifie the state of accursed souls whose dying is a continual perishing who cannot cease to be it must mean an eternity of duration in proper and naturall significations And that we may understand it fully observe the places In the 34. Esa. 8. The Prophet prophecies of the great destruction of Jerusalem for all her great iniquities It is the day of the Lords vengeance and the yeer of recompences for the controversie of Sion and the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch and the dust thereof into brimstone and the land thereof shall become burning pitch It shall not be quenched night nor day the smoak thereof shall go up for ever from generation to generation It shall lie wast none shall passe thorow it for ever and ever This is the final destruction of the Nation but this destruction shall have an end because the Nation shall end and the anger also shall end in its own period even then when God shall call the Jews into the common inheritance with the Gentiles and all the sons of God And this also was the period of their worme as it is of their fire The fire of the Divine vengeance upon the Nation which was not to be extinguished till they were destroyed as we see it come to passe And thus also in Saint Jude the Angels who kept not their first state are said to be reserved by God in everlasting chains under darknesse which word everlasting signifies not absolutely to eternity but to the utmost end of that period for so it follows unto the judgement of the great day that everlasting lasts no longer and in verse the seventh the word eternal is just so used The men of Sodom and Gomorrha are set forth for an example suffering the vengeance of eternal fire that is of a fire which burned till they were quite destroyed and the cities and the countrey with an irreparable ruine never to be rebuilt and reinhabited as long as this world continues The effect of which observations is this That these words for ever everlasting eternal the never-dying worme the fire unquenchable being words borrowed by our blessed Saviour and his Apostles from the stile of the old Testament must have a signification just proportionable to the state in which they signifie so that as this worme when it signifies a temporal infliction meanes a worme that never ceases giving torment till the body is consumed So when it is translated to an immortall state it must signifie as much in that proportion that eternal that everlasting hath no end at all because the soul cannot be killed in the natural sense but is made miserable and perishing for ever that is the worme shall not die so long as the soul shall be unconsumed the fire shall not be quenched till the period of an immortall nature comes and that this shall be absolutely for ever without any restriction appears unanswerably in this because the same for ever that is for the blessed souls the same for ever is for the accursed souls but the blessed souls that die in the Lord henceforth shall die no more death hath no power over them for death is destroyed it is swallowed up in victory saith Saint Paul and there shall be no more death saith Saint John Revel 21. 4. So that because for ever hath no end till the thing or the duration it self have end in the same sense in which the Saints and Angels give glory to God for ever in the same sense the lost souls shall suffer the evils of their sad inheritance and since after this death of nature which is a separation of soul and body there remains no more death but this second death this eternal perishing of miserable accursed souls whose duration must be eternall It follows that the worm of conscience and the unquenchable fire of hell have no period at all but shall last as long as God lasts or the measures of a proper eternity that they who provoke God to wrath by their base unreasonable and sottish practises may know what their portion shall be in the everlasting habitations and yet suppose that Origens
Give glory to the Lord your God before he cause darknesse and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains and while ye look for light or lest while ye look for light he shall turn it into the shadow of death and make it grosse darknesse Sermon 7. 8. The deceitfulnesse of the heart fol. 80. 92. Jerem. 17. 9. The heart is deceitfull above all things and desperately wicked who can know it Sermon 9. 10. 11. The faith and patience of the Saints Or the righteous cause oppressed fol. 104. 119. 133. 1 Pet. 4. 17. For the time is come that judgement must begin at the house of God and if it first begin at us what shall the end be of them that obey not the Gospel of God 18. And if the righteous scarcely be saved where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear Sermon 12. 13. The mercy of the Divine judgements or Gods method in curing sinners fol. 146. 159. Romans 2. 4. Despisest thou the riches of his goodnesse and forbearance and long-suffering not knowing that the goodnesse of God leadeth thee to repentance Sermon 14. 15. Of groweth in grace with its proper instruments and signes fol. 172. 183. 2 Pet. 3. 18. But grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ to whom be glory both now and for ever Amen Sermon 16. 17. Of groweth in sin or the severall states and degrees of sinners with the manner how they are to be treated fol. 197. 210. Jude Epist ver 22 23. And of some have compassion making a difference * And others save with fear pulling them out of the fire Sermon 18. 19. The foolish exchange sol 224. 237. Matth. 16. ver 26. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul Sermon 20 21. 22. The Serpent and the Dove or a discourse of Christian Prudence fol. 251. 263. 274. Matth. 10. latter part of ver 16. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmlesse as doves Sermon 23. 24. Of Christian simplicity 289. 301. Matth. 10. latter part of ver 16. And harmlesse as doves Sermon 25. 26. 27. The miracles of the Divine Mercy fol. 313. 327. 340. Psal. 86. 5. For thou Lord art good and ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy to all them that call upon thee A Funerall Sermon preached at the Obsequies of the Right Honourable the Countesse of Carbery fol. 357. 2 Sam. 14. 14. For we must needs die and are as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up again neither doth God respect any person yet doth he devise means that his banished be not expelled from him A Discourse of the Divine Institution necessity sacrednesse and separation of the Office Ministeriall Sermon I. VVHITSVNDAY OF THE SPIRIT OF GRACE 8. Romans v. 9. 10. But ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his And if Christ be in you the body is dead because of sin but the Spirit is life because of righteousnesse THe day in which the Church commemorates the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles was the first beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This was the first day that the Religion was professed now the Apostles first open'd their commission and read it to all the people The Lord gave his Spirit or the Lord gave his word and great was the company of the Preachers For so I make bold to render that prophesie of David Christ was the word of God verbum aeternum but the Spirit was the word of God verbum Patefactum Christ was the word manifested in the flesh the Spirit was the word manifested to flesh and set in dominion over and in hostility against the flesh The Gospel and the Spirit are the same thing not in substance but the manifestation of the Spirit is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and because he was this day manifested the Gospel was this day first preached and it became a law to us called the law of the Spirit of life that is a law taught us by the Spirit leading us to life eternal But the Gospel is called the Spirit 1. Because it contains in it such glorious mysteries which were revealed by the immediate inspirations of the Spirit not onely in the matter it self but also in the manner and powers to apprehend them For what power of humane understanding could have found out the incarnation of a God that two natures a finite and an infinite could have been concentred into one hypostasis or person that a virgin should be a Mother that dead men should live again that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the ashes of dissolved bones should become bright as the Sun blessed as Angels swift in motion as thought clear as the purest Noone that God should so love us as to be willing to be reconcil'd to us and yet that himself must dye that he might pardon us that Gods most Holy Son should give us his body to eat and his bloud to crown our chalices and his Spirit to sanctifie our souls to turn our bodies into temperance our souls into mindes our mindes into Spirit our Spirit into glory that he who can give us all things who is Lord of Men and Angels and King of all the Creatures should pray to God for us without intermission that he who reigns over all the world should at the day of judgement give up the Kingdom to God the Father and yet after this resignation himself and we with him should for ever reign the more gloriously that we should be justified by Faith in Christ and that charity should be a part of faith and that both should work as acts of duty and as acts of relation that God should Crown the imperfect endeavours of his Saints with glory and that a humane act should be rewarded with an eternal inheritance that the wicked for the transient pleasure of a few minutes should be tormented with an absolute eternity of pains that the waters of baptisme when they are hallowed by the Spirit shall purge the soul from sin and that the Spirit of a man shall be nourished with the consecrated and mysterious elements and that any such nourishment should bring a man up to heaven and after all this that all Christian People all that will be saved must be partakers of the Divine nature of the Nature the infinite nature of God and must dwell in Christ and Christ must dwell in them and they must be in the Spirit and the Spirit must be for ever in them these are articles of so mysterious a Philosophy that we could have inferred them from no premises discours'd them upon the stock of no naturall or scientificall principles nothing but God and Gods spirit could have taught them to us and therefore the Gospel is Spiritus
any known sin if I should descend to particulars I might lay a snare to scrupulous and nice consciences This onely every confirmed habitual sinner does manifest the divine justice in punishing the sins of a short life with a never dying worm and a never quenched flame because we have an affection to sin that no time will diminish but such as would increase to eternal ages and accordingly as any man hath a degree of love so he hath lodged in his soul a spark which unless it be speedily effectively quenched will break forth into unquenchable fire Sermon XVIII THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE Matthew 16. Ver. 26. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul WHen the eternal mercy of God had decreed to rescue mankinde from misery and infelicity and so triumphed over his own justice the excellent wisdom of God resolved to do it in wayes contradictory to the appetites and designes of man that it also might triumph over our weaknesses and imperfect conceptions So God decreeing to glorifie his mercy by curing our sins and to exalt his wisdome by the reproof of our ignorance and the representing upon what weak and false principals we had built our hopes and expectations of felicity Pleasure and profit victory over our enemies riches and pompous honours power and revenge desires according to sensual appetites and prosecutions violent and passionate of those appetites health and long life free from trouble without poverty or persecution Hac sunt jucundissime Martialis vitam quae faciunt beatiorem These are the measures of good and evil the object of our hopes and fears the securing our content and the portion of this world and for the other let it be as it may But the Blessed Jesus having made revelations of an immortal duration of another world and of a strange restitution to it even by the resurrection of the body and a new investiture of the soul with the same upper garment clarified and made pure so as no Fuller on earth can whiten it hath also preached a new Philosophy hath cancelled all the old principles reduced the appetites of sence to the discourses of reason and heightned reason to the sublimities of the spirit teaching us abstractions and immaterial conceptions giving us new eyes and new objects and new proportions For now sensual pleasures are not delightful riches are drosse honours are nothing but the appendages of vertue and in relation to it are to receive their account but now if you would enjoy life you must die if you would be at ease you must take up Christs crosse and conform to his sufferings if you would save your life you must lose it and if you would be rich you must abound in good works you must be poor in spirit and despise the world and be rich unto God for whatsoever is contrary to the purchases and affections of this world is an endearment of our hopes in the world to come and therefore he having stated the question so that either we must quit this world or the other our affections I mean and adherencies to this or our interest and hopes of the other the choice is rendered very easie by the words of my text because the distance is not lesse then infinite and the comparison hath terms of a vast difference heaven and hell eternity and a moment vanity and real felicity life and death eternal all that can be hoped for and all that can be feared these are the terms of our choice and if a man have his wits about him and be not drunk with sensuality and senslessenesse he need not much to dispute before he passe the sentence For nothing can be given to us to recompence the losse of heaven and if our souls be lost there is nothing remaining to us whereby we can be happy What shall it profit a man or what shall a man give is there any exchange for a mans soul the question is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the negative Nothing can be given for an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a price to satisfie for its losse The blood of the son of God was given to recover it or as an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to God and when our souls were forfeit to him nothing lesse then the life and passion of God and man could pay the price Isay to God who yet was not concerned in the losse save onely that such was his goodnesse that it pitied him to see his creature lost But to us what shall be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what can make us recompence when we have lost our own souls and are lost in a miserable eternity what can then recompence us not all the world not ten thousand worlds and of this that miserable man whose soul is lost is the best judge For the qustion is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and hath a potential signification and means 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is suppose a man ready to die condemned to the sentence of a horrid death heightned with all the circumstances of trembling and amazement what would he give to save his life eye for eye tooth for tooth and all that a man hath will he give for his life and this turned to a proverb among the Jews for so the last words of the text are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which proverb being usually meant concerning a temporal death and was intended to represent the sadnesses of a condemned person our blessed Saviour fits to his own purpose and translates to the signification of death eternal which he first revealed clearly to the world and because no interest of the world can make a man recompence for his life because to lose that makes him incapable of enjoying the exchange and he were a strange fool who having no designe upon immortality or vertue should be willing to be hanged for a thousand pound per annum this argument increases infinitely in the purpose of our Blessed Saviour and to gain the world and to lose our souls in the Christian sence is infinitely more madnesse and a worse exchange then when our souls signifie nothing but a temporal life and because possibly the indefinite hopes of Elysium or an honorable name might tempt some hardy persons to leave this world hoping for a better condition even among the heathens yet no excuse will acquit a Christian from madnesse If for the purchase of this world he lose his eternitie Here then first we will consider the propositions of the exchange the world and a mans soul by way of supposition supposing all that is propounded were obtained the whole world Secondly we will consider what is likely to be obtained really and indeed of the world and what are really the miseries of a lost soul For it is propounded in the text by way of supposition If a man should gain the world which no man ever did nor ever can and he
God for vengeance scarce two are noted by the publick eye and chastis'd by the hand of Justice it must follow from hence that it is but reasonable for the interest of vertue and the necessities of the world that the private should be judg'd and vertue should be tyed upon the spirit and the poor should be relieved and the oppressed should appeal and the noise of Widows should be heard and the Saints should stand upright and the Cause that was ill judged should be judged over again and Tyrants should be call'd to account and our thoughts should be examined and our secret actions view'd on all sides and the infinite number of sins which escape here should not escape finally and therefore God hath so ordained it that there shall be a day of doom wherein all that are let alone by men shall be question'd by God and every word and every action shall receive its just recompence of reward For we must all appear before the Judgement seat of Christ that every one may receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done whether it be good or bad 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so it is in the best copies not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The things done in the body so we commonly read it the things proper or due to the body so the expression is more apt and proper for not only what is done 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the body but even the acts of abstracted understanding and volition the acts of reflexion and choice acts of self-love and admiration and what ever else can be supposed the proper and peculiar act of the soul or of the spirit is to be accounted for at the day of Judgement and even these may be called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because these are the acts of the man in the state of conjunction with the body The words have in them no other difficulty or variety but contain a great truth of the biggest interest and one of the most materiall constitutive Articles of the whole Religion and the greatest endearment of our duty in the whole world Things are so ordered by the great Lord of all the creatures that whatsoever we do or suffer shall be call'd to account and this account shall be exact and the sentence shall be just and the reward shall be great all the evils of the world shall be amended and the injustices shall be repaid and the divine Providence shall be vindicated and Vertue and Vice shall for ever be remark'd by their separate dwellings and rewards This is that which the Apostle in the next verse cals the terror of the Lord it is his terror because himself shall appear in his dresse of Majesty and robes of Justice and it is his terror because it is of all the things in the World the most formidable in it self and it is most fearfull to us where shall be acted the interest and finall sentence of eternity and because it is so intended I shall all the way represent it as the Lords terror that we may be afraid of sin for the destruction of which this terror is intended 1. Therefore we will consider the persons that are to be judged with the circumstances of our advantages or our sorrowes We must all appear 2. The Judge and his Judgement seat before the Judgment seat of Christ. 3. The sentence that they are to receive the things due to the body good or bad according as we now please but then cannot alter Every one of these are dressed with circumstances of affliction and afrightment to those to whom such terrors shall appertain as a portion of their inheritance 1. The persons who are to be judged even you and I and all the world Kings and Priests Nobles and Learned the Crafty and the Easie the Wise and the Foolish the Rich and the Poor the prevailing Tyrant and the oppressed Party shall all appear to receive ther Symbol and this is so farre from abating any thing of its terror and our dear concernment that it much increases it for although concerning Precepts and Discourses we are apt to neglect in particular what is recommended in generall and in incidencies of Mortality and sad events the singularity of the chance heightens the apprehension of the evill yet it is so by accident and only in regard of our imperfection it being an effect of self-love or some little creeping envie which adheres too often to the infortunate and miserable or else because the sorrow is apt to increase by being apprehended to be a rare case and a singular unworthinesse in him who is afflicted otherwise then is common to the sons of men companions of his sin and brethren of his nature and partners of his usuall accidents yet in finall and extreme events the multitude of sufferers does not lessen but increase the sufferings and when the first day of Judgement happen'd that I mean of the universall deluge of waters upon the old World the calamity swell'd like the floud and every man saw his friend perish and the neighbours of his dwelling and the relatives of his house and the sharers of his joyes and yesterdaies bride and the new born heir the Priest of the Family and the honour of the Kindred all dying or dead drench'd in water and the divine vengeance and then they had no place to flee unto no man cared for their souls they had none to goe unto for counsell no sanctuary high enough to keep them from the vengeance that rain'd down from heaven and so it shall be at the day of Judgement when that world and this and all that shall be born hereafter shall passe through the same Red sea and be all baptized with the same fire and be involv'd in the same cloud in which shall be thundrings and terrors infinite every Mans fear shall be increased by his neighbours shriekes and the amazement that all the world shall be in shall unite as the sparks of a raging furnace into a globe of fire and roul upon its own principle and increase by direct appearances and intolerable reflexions He that stands in a Church-yard in the time of a great plague and hears the Passing-bell perpetually telling the sad stories of death and sees crowds of infected bodies pressing to their Graves and others sick and tremulous and Death dress'd up in all the images of sorrow round about him is not supported in his spirit by the variety of his sorrow and at Dooms-day when the terrors are universall besides that it is in it self so much greater because it can affright the whole world it is also made greater by communication and a sorrowfull influence Grief being then strongly infectious when there is no variety of state but an intire Kingdome of fear and amazement is the King of all our passions and all the world its subjects and that shricke must needs be terrible when millions of Men and Women at the same instant shall fearfully cry
Judge that which I shal now remark is that indeed which hath terror in it and that is the severity of our Lord. For then is the day of vengeance and recompenses and no mercy at all shall be shewed but to them that are the sons of mercy for the other their portion is such as can be expected from these premises 1. If we remember the instances of Gods severity in this life in the daies of mercy and repentance in those dayes when Judgement waits upon Mercy and receives lawes by the rules and measures of pardon and that for all the rare streams of loving kindnesse issuing out of Paradise and refreshing all our fields with a moisture more fruitfull then the flouds of Nilus still there are mingled some stormes and violences some fearfull instances of the Divine Justice we may more readily expect it will be worse infinitely worse at that day when Judgement shall ride in triumph and Mercy shall be the accuser of the wicked But so we read and are commanded to remember because they are written for our example that God destroyed at once five cities of the plain and all the country and Sodome and her sisters are set forth for an example suffering the vengeance of eternall fire Fearfull it was when God destroyed at once 23000 for fornication and an exterminating Angell in one night killed 185000 of the Assyrians and the first born of all the families of Egypt and for the sin of David in numbring the people threescore and ten thousand of the people dyed and God sent ten tribes into captivity and eternall oblivion and indistinction from a common people for their idolatry Did not God strike Corah and his company with fire from Heaven and the earth open'd and swallowed up the congregation of Abiram And is not evill come upon all the world for one sin of Adam Did not the anger of God break the nation of the Jewes all in pieces with judgements so great that no nation ever suffered the like because none ever sin'd so And at once it was done that God in anger destroyed all the world and eight persons only escaped the angry Baptisme of water and yet this world is the time of mercy God hath open'd here his Magazines and sent his holy Son as the great channell and fountain of it too here he delights in mercy and in judgement loves to remember it and it triumphs over all his works and God contrives instruments and accidents chances and designs occasions and opportunities for mercy if therefore now the anger of God makes such terrible eruptions upon the wicked people that delight in sin how great may we suppose that anger to be how severe that Judgement how terrible that vengeance how intolerable those inflictions which God reserves for the full effusion of indignation on the great day of vengeance 2. We may also guesse at it by this if God upon all single instances and in the midst of our sins before they are come to the full and sometimes in the beginning of an evill habit be so fierce in his anger what can we imagine it to be in that day when the wicked are to drink the dregs of that horrid potion and count over all the particulars of their whole treasure of wrath This is the day of wrath and God shall reveal or bring forth his righteous Judgements The expression is taken from Deut. 32. 34. Is not this laid up in store with me and sealed up among my treasures 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I will restore it in the day of vengeance for the Lord shall judge his people and repent himself for his servants For so did the Lybian Lion that was brought up under discipline and taught to endure blowes and eat the meat of order and regular provision and to suffer gentle usages and the familiarities of societies but once he brake out into his own wildnesse Dedidicit pacem subitò feritate reversâ and kil'd two Roman boyes but those that forrage in the Lybian mountains tread down and devour all that they meet or master and when they have fasted two dayes lay up an anger great as is their appetite and bring certain death to all that can be overcome God is pleased to compare himself to a Lion and though in this life he hath confin'd himself with promises and gracious emanations of an infinite goodnesse and limits himself by conditions and covenants and suffers himself to be overcome by prayers and himself hath invented wayes of atonement and expiation yet when he is provoked by our unhandsome and unworthy actions he makes sudden breaches and tears some of us in pieces and of others he breaks their bones or affrights their hopes and secular gayeties and fils their house with mourning and Cypresse and groans and death But when this Lion of the tribe of Judah shall appear upon his own mountain the mountain of the Lord in his naturall dresse of Majesty and that Justice shall have her chain and golden fetters taken off then Justice shall strike and Mercy shall not hold her hands she shall strike sore strokes and pity shall not break the blow and God shall account with us by minutes and for words and for thoughts and then he shall be severe to mark what is done amisse and that Justice may reign intirely God shall open the wicked mans treasure and tell the sums and weigh grains and scruples 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Philo upon the place of Deuteronomy before quoted As there are treasures of good things and God hath Crowns and Scepters in store for his Saints and servants and Coronets for Martyrs and Rosaries for Virgins and Phials full of Prayers and bottles full of tears and a register of sighs and penitentiall groans so God hath a treasure of wrath and fury of scourges and scorpions and then shall be produced the shame of lust and the malice of envie and the groans of the oppressed and the persecutions of the Saints and the cares of covetousnesse and the troubles of ambition and the insolencies of traitors and the violences of rebels and the rage of anger and the uneasinesse of impatience and the restlesnesse of unlawfull desires and by this time the monsters and diseases will be numerous and intolerable when Gods heavie hand shall presse the sanies and the intolerablenesse the obliquity and the unreasonablenesse the amazement and the disorder the smart and the sorrow the guilt and the punishment out from all our sins and pour them into one chalice and mingle them with an infinite wrath and make the wicked drink off all the vengeance and force it down their unwilling throats with the violence of Devils and accursed Spirits 3. We may guesse at the severity of the Judge by the lesser strokes of that Judgement which he is pleased to send upon sinners in this world to make them afraid of the horrible pains of Dooms-day I mean the torments of an unquiet conscience the amazement and
and our own consciences dear and be reconciled to the Judge by the severities of an early repentance and then we need to fear no accusers SERMON III. Part III. 3. IT remaines that we consider the Sentence it self We must receive according to what we have done in the body whether it be good or bad Judicaturo Domino lugubre mundus immugiet tribus ad tribum pectora ferient Potentissimi quondam reges nudo latere palpitabunt so St. Hierom meditates concerning the terror of this consideration The whole world shall groan when the Judge comes to give his Sentence tribe and tribe shall knock their sides together and through the naked breasts of the most mighty Kings you shall see their hearts beat with fearfull tremblings Tunc Aristotelis argumenta parum proderunt cum venerit filius pauperculae quaestuariae judicare orbem terra Nothing shall then be worth owning or the means of obtaining mercy but a holy conscience all the humane craft and trifling subtilties shall be uselesse when the Son of a poor Maid shall sit Judge over all the world When the Prophet Joel was describing the formidable accidents in the day of the Lords Judgement and the fearfull Sentence of an angry Judge he was not able to expresse it but flammered like a Childe or an amazed imperfect person A. A. A. diei quia propè est Dies Domini it is not sense at first he was so amazed he knew not what to say and the Spirit of God was pleased to let that signe remain like Agamemnon's sorrow for the death of Iphigenia nothing could describe it but a vail it must be hidden and supposed and the stammering tongue that is full of fear can best speak that terror which will make all the world to cry and shriek and speak fearfull accents and significations of an infinite sorrow and amazement But so it is there are two great days in which the fate of all the world is transacted This life is mans day in which man does what he please and God holds his peace Man destroys his Brother and destroyes himselfe and confounds Governments and raises Armies and tempts to sin and delights in it and drinks drunk and forgets his sorrow and heaps up great estates and raises a family and a name in the Annals and makes others fear him and introduces new Religions and confounds the old and changeth Articles as his interest requires and all this while God is silent save that he is loud and clamorous with his holy precepts and over-rules the event but leaves the desires of men to their owne choice and their course of life such as they generally choose But then God shall have his day too the day of the Lord shall come in which he shall speak and no man shall answer he shall speak in the voyce of thunder and fearfull noyses and man shall doe no more as he please but must suffer as he hath deserved When Zedekiah reigned in Jerusalem and persecuted the Prophets and destroyed the interests of Religion and put Jeremy into the Dungeon God held his peace save onely that he warned him of the danger and told him of the disorder but it was Zedekiah's day and he was permitted to his pleasure But when he was led in chains to Babylon and his eyes were put out with burning Basons and horrible circles of reflected fires then was Gods day and his voyce was the accent of a fearfull anger that broke him all in pieces It will be all our caâ—es unlesse we hear God speak now and doe his work and serve his interest and bear our selves in our just proportions that is as such the very end of whose being and all our faculties is to serve God and doe justice and charities to our Brother For if we doe the work of God in our own day wee shall receive an infinite mercy in the day of the Lord. But what that is is now to be inquired What wee have done in the body But certainly this is the greatest terror of all The thunders and the fires the earthquakes and the trumpets the brightnesse of holy Angels and the horror of accursed Spirits the voyce of the Archangel who is the Prince of the heavenly host and the Majesty of the Judge in whose service all that Army stands girt with holinesse and obedience all those strange circumstances which have been already reckoned and all those others which wee cannot understand are but little praeparatories and umbrages of this fearfull circumstance All this amazing Majesty and formidable praeparatories are for the passing of an eternall Sentence upon us according to what we have done in the body Woe and alas and God help us all All mankind is an enemy to God his nature is accursed and his manners are depraved It is with the nature of man and with all his manners as Philemon said of the nature of foxes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Every fox is crafty and mischievous and if you gather a whole herd of them there is not a good natur'd beast amongst them all so it is with man by nature he is the child of wrath and by his manners he is the child of the Devill wee call Christian and wee dishonour our Lord and we are Brethren but we oppresse and murther one another it is a great degree of sanctity now a-days not to be so wicked as the worst of men and wee live at the rate as if the best of men did design to themselves an easier condemnation and as if the generality of men consider'd not concerning the degrees of death but did beleeve that in hell no man shall perceive any ease or refreshment in being tormented with a slower fire For consider what we doe in the body 12 or 14 years passe before we choose good or bad and of that which remaines above halfe is spent in sleep and the needs of Nature for the other halfe it is divided as the Stag was when the beasts went a hunting the Lyon hath five parts of sixe The businesse of the world takes so much of our remaining portion that Religion and the service of God have not much time left that can be spar'd and of that which can if we consider how much is allowed to crafty arts of cousenage to oppression and ambition to greedy desires and avaritious prosecutions to the vanities of our youth and the proper sins of every age to the meer idlenesse of man and doing nothing to his fantastick imaginations of greatnesse and pleasures of great and little devices of impertinent law-suites and uncharitable treatings of our Brother it will be intolerable when we consider that we are to stand or fall eternally according to what we have done in the body Gather it all together and set it before thy eyes Almes and Prayers are the summe of all thy good Were thy prayers made in feare and holinesse with passion and
the Augures gave an alarum to the City but if lightning struck the spire of the Capitoll they thought the summe of affairs and the Commonwealth it self was indanger'd And this Heathen folly hath stuck so close to the Christian that all the Sermons of the Church for 1600 years have not cured them all But the practises of weaker people and the artifice of ruling Priests have superinduced many new ones When Pope Eugenius sang Masse at Rhemes and some few drops from the Chalice were spilt upon the pavement it was thought to foretell mischief warres and bloud to all Christendome though it was nothing but carelesnesse and mischance of the Priest and because Thomas Becket Archbishop of Canterbury sang the Masse of Requiem upon the day he was reconcil'd to his Prince it was thought to foretell his own death by that religious office and if men can listen to such whispers and have not reason and observation enough to confute such trifles they shall still be afrighted with the noise of birds and every night-raven shall foretell evill as Micaiah to the King of Israel and every old woman shall be a Prophetesse and the events of humane affairs which should be managed by the conduct of counsell of reason and religion shall succeed by chance by the flight of birds and the meeting with an evill eye by the falling of the salt or the decay of reason of wisdome and the just religion of a man To this may be reduc'd the observation of dreams and fears commenced from the fancies of the night For the superstitious man does not rest even when he sleeps neither is he safe because dreams usually are false but he is afflicted for fear they should tell true Living and waking men have one world in common they use the same air and fire and discourse by the same principles of Logick and reason but men that are asleep have every one a world to himself and strange perceptions and the superstitious hath none at all his reason sleeps and his fears are waking and all his rest and his very securities to the fearfull man turn into afrights and insecure expectation of evils that never shall happen they make their rest uneasie and chargeable and they still vex their weary soul not considering there is no other sleep for sleep to rest in and therefore if the sleep be troublesome the mans cares be without remedy till they be quite destroyed Dreams follow the temper of the body and commonly proceed from trouble or disease businesse or care an active head and a restlesse minde from fear or hope from wine or passion from fulnesse or emptinesse from phantastick remembrances or from som Daemon good or bad they are without rule and without reason they are as contingent as if a man should study to make a Prophesie and by saying 10000 things may hit upon one true which was therefore not foreknown though it was forespoken and they have no certainty because they have no naturall causality nor proportion to those effects which many times they are said to foresignifie The dream of the yolk of an egge importeth gold saith Artemidorus and they that use to remember such phantastick idols are afraid to lose a friend when they dream their teeth shake when naturally it will rather signifie a scurvy for a naturall indisposition and an imperfect sense of the beginning of a disease may vex the fancy into a symbolicall representation for so the man that dreamt he swam against a stream of bloud had a Plurisie beginning in his side and he that dreamt he dipt his foot in water and that it was turn'd to a Marble was intic'd into the fancie by a beginning dropsie and if the events do answer in one instance we become credulous in twenty for want of reason we discourse our selves into folly and weak observation and give the Devill power over us in those circumstances in which we can least resist him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A theef is confident in the twilight if you suffer impressions to be made upon you by dreams the Devill hath the reins in his own hands and can tempt you by that which will abuse you when you can make no resistance Dominica the wife of Valens the Emperor dreamt that God threatned to take away her only son for her despitefull usage of St. Basil the fear proceeding from this instance was safe and fortunate but if she had dreamt in the behalf of a Heretick she might have been cousened into a false proposition upon a ground weaker then the discourse of a waking childe Let the grounds of our actions be noble beginning upon reason proceeding with prudence measured by the common lines of men and confident upon the expectation of an usuall providence Let us proceed from causes to effects from naturall means to ordinary events and believe felicity not to be a chance but a choice and evill to be the daughter of sin and the Divine anger not of fortune and fancy let us fear God when we have made him angry and not be afraid of him when we heartily and laboriously do our duty our fears are to be measured by open revelation and certain experience by the threatnings of God and the sayings of wise men and their limit is reverence and godlinesse is their end and then fear shall be a duty and a rare instrument of many in all other cases it is superstition or folly it is sin or punishment the Ivy of Religion and the misery of an honest and a weak heart and is to be cured only by reason and good company a wise guide and a plain rule a cheerfull spirit and a contented minde by joy in God according to the commandements that is a rejoycing evermore 2. But besides this superstitious fear there is another fear directly criminall and it is cald worldly fear of which the Spirit of God hath said But the fearfull and incredulous shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death that is such fears which make men to fall in the time of persecution those that dare not own their faith in the face of a Tyrant or in despite of an accursed Law For though it be lawfull to be afraid in a storm yet it is not lawfull to leap into the sea though we may be more carefull for our fears yet we must be faithfull too and we may flie from the persecution till it overtakes us but when it does we must not change our Religion for our safety or leave the robe of Baptisme in the hand of the tempter and run away by all means St. Athanasius for 46 years did run and fight he disputed with the Arrians and fled from their Officers and that flies may be a man worth preserving if he bears his faith along with him and leaves nothing of his duty behinde but when duty and life cannot stand together he that then flies a persecution by delivering
discourse of a girle and the dreams of the night In every action of Religion God expects such a warmth and a holy fire to goe along that it may be able to enkindle the wood upon the altar and consume the sacrifice but God hates an indifferent spirit Earnestnesse and vivacity quicknesse and delight perfect choyce of the service and a delight in the prosecution is all that the spirit of a man can yeeld towards his Religion the outward work is the effect of the body but if a man does it heartily and with all his mind then religion hath wings and moves upon wheels of fire and therefore when our blessed Saviour made those capitulars and canons of Religion to love God and to love our neighbors besides that the materiall part of the duty love is founded in the spirit as its naturall seat he also gives three words to involve the spirit in the action and but one for the body Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soule and with all thy mind and lastly with all thy strength this brings in the body too because it hath some strengths and some significations of its own but heart and soule and mind mean all the same thing in a stronger and more earnest expression that is that we doe it hugely as much as we can with a cleer choice with a resolute understanding with strong affections with great diligence Enerves animos odisse virtus solet Vertue hates weak and ineffective minds and tame easie prosecutions Loripedes people whose arme is all flesh whose foot is all leather and an unsupporting skin they creep like snakes and pursue the noblest mysteries of Religion as Naaman did the mysteries of Rimmon onely in a complement or for secular regards but without the mind and therefore without Zeal I would thou wert either hot or cold said the Spirit of God to the Angell or Bishop of Laodicea In feasts or sacrifices the Ancients did use apponere frigidam or calidam sometimes they drank hot drink sometimes they poured cold upon their graves or in their wines but no services of Tables or Altars were ever with lukewarm God hates it worse then stark cold which expression is the more considerable because in naturall and superinduc'd progressions from extreme to extreme we must necessarily passe through the midst and therefore it is certain a lukewarm Religion is better then none at all as being the doing some parts of the work designed and neerer to perfection then the utmost distance could be and yet that God hates it more must mean that there is some appendant evill in this state which is not in the other and that accidentally it is much worse and so it is if we rightly understand it that is if we consider it not as a being in or passing through the middle way but as a state and a period of Religion If it be in motion a lukewarm Religion is pleasing to God for God hates it not for its imperfection and its naturall measures of proceeding but if it stands still and rests there it is a state against the designes and against the perfection of God and it hath in it these evills 1. It is a state of the greatest imprudence in the world for it makes a man to spend his labour for that which profits not and to deny his appetite for an unsatisfying interest he puts his moneys in a napkin and he that does so puts them into a broken bag he loses the principall for not encreasing the interest He that dwells in a state of life that is unacceptable loses the money of his almes and the rewards of his charity his hours of prayer and his parts of justice he confesses his sins and is not pardoned he is patient but hath no hope and he that is gone so far towards his countrey and stands in the middle way hath gone so far out of his way he had better have stay'd under a dry roof in the house of banishment then to have left his Gyarus the Island of his sorrow and to dwell upon the Adriatick So is he that begins a state of Religion and does not finish it he abides in the high-way and though he be neerer the place yet is as far from the rest of his countrey as ever and therefore all that beginning of labour was in the prejudice of his rest but nothing to the advantages of his hopes He that hath never begun hath lost no labour Jactura praeteritorum the losse of all that he hath done is the first evill of the negligent and luke-warm Christian according to the saying of Solomon He that is remisse or idle in his labour is the brother of him that scattereth his goods 2. The second appendant evill is that lukewarmnesse is the occasion of greater evill because the remisse easie Christian shuts the gate against the heavenly breathings of Gods holy Spirit he thinks every breath that is fan'd by the wings of the holy Dove is not intended to encourage his fires which burn and smoke and peep through the cloud already it tempts him to security and if an evill life be a certain inlet to a second death despaire on one side and security on the other are the bars and locks to that dore he can never passe forth again while that state remains who ever slips in his spirituall walking does not presently fall but if that slip does not awaken his diligence and his caution then his ruine begins vel pravae institutionis deceptus exordio aut per longam mentis incuriam virtute animi decidente as St. Austin observes either upon the pursuit of his first error or by a carelesse spirit or a decaying slackned resolution all which are the direct effects of lukewarmnesse But so have I seen a fair structure begun with art and care and raised to halfe its stature and then it stood still by the misfortune or negligence of the owner and the rain descended and dwelt in its joynts and supplanted the contexture of its pillars and having stood a while like the antiquated Temple of a deceased Oracle it fell into a hasty age and sunk upon its owne knees and so descended into ruine So is the imperfect unfinished spirit of a man it layes the foundation of a holy resolution and strengthens it with vows and arts of prosecution it raises up the Sacraments and Prayers Reading and holy Ordinances and holy actions begin with a slow motion and the building stays and the spirit is weary and the soul is naked and exposed to temptation and in the days of storm take in every thing that can doe it mischief and it is faint and sick listlesse and tired and it stands till its owne weight wearies the foundation and then declines to death and sad disorder being so much the worse because it hath not onely returned to its first follies but hath superadded unthankfulnesse and carelesnesse a positive neglect and
a despite of holy things a setting a low price to the things of God lazinesse and wretchlesnesse all which are evills superadded to the first state of coldnesse whither he is with all these loads and circumstances of death easily revolv'd 3. A state of lukewarmnesse is more incorrigible then a state of coldnesse while men flatter themselves that their state is good that they are rich and need nothing that their lamps are dressed and full of ornament There are many that think they are in their countrey as soon as ever they are weary and measure not the end of their hopes by the possession of them but by their precedent labour which they overvalue because they have easie and effeminate souls S. Bernard complains of some that say Sufficit nobis nolumus esse meliores quà m Patres nostri It is enough for us to be as our forefathers who were honest and usefull in their generations but be not over-righteous These men are such as think they have knowledge enough to need no teacher devotion enough to need no new fires perfection enough to need no new progresse justice enough to need no repentance and then because the spirit of a man and all the things of this world are in perpetuall variety and change these men decline when they have gone their period they stand still and then revert like a stone returning from the bosome of a cloud where it rested as long as the thought of a childe and fell to its naturall bed of earth and dwelt below for ever He that says he will take care he be no worse and that he desires to be no better stops his journey into heaven but cannot be secure against his descending into hell and Cassian spake a hard saying Frequentèr vidimus de frigidis carnalibus ad spiritualem venisse fervorem de tepidis animalibus omninò non vidimus Many persons from vicâ—â—us and dead and cold have passed into life and an excellent grace and a spirituall warmth and holy fires but from lukewarm and indifferent never any body came to an excellent condition and state of holynesse rarissimè S. Bernard sayes very extremely seldome and our blessed Saviour said something of this The Publicans and the Harlots goe before you into the Kingdome of heaven they are moved by shame and punished by disgrace and remarked by punishments and frighted by the circumstances and notices of all the world and separated from sober persons by laws and an intolerable character and the sense of honour and the care of their persons and their love of civill societie and every thing in the world can invite them towards vertues But the man that is accounted honest and does justice and some things of Religion unlesse he finds himselfe but upon his way and feels his wants and groans under the sense of his infirmities and sighs under his imperfections and accounts himself not to have comprehended but still presses towards the mark of his calling unlesse I say he still increases in his appetites of Religion as he does in his progression he will think he needs no counsellor and the spirit of God whispers to an ear that is already fill'd with noyses and cannot attend to the heavenly calling The stomach that is already full is next to loathing and that 's the prologue to sicknesse and a rejecting the first wholesome nutriment which was entertained to relieve the first naturall necessities Qui non proficit vult deficere said S. Bernard He that goes not forward in the love of God and of Religion does not stand still but goes for all that but whither such a motion will lead him himself without a timely care shall feel by an intolerable experiment In this sense and for these reasons it is that although a lukewarm Christian hath gone forward some steps towards a state of holynesse and is advanced beyond him that is cold and dead and unconcerned and therefore speaking absolutely and naturally is neerer the Kingdome of God then he that is not yet set out yet accidentally and by reason of these ill appendages he is worse in greater danger in a state equally unacceptable and therefore must either goe forward and still doe the work of God carefully and diligently with a Fervent spirit and an Active hand with a willing heart and a chearefull eye or it had been better he had never begun 2. It concerns us next to enquire concerning the duty in its proper instances that we may perceive to what parts and degrees of duty it amounts we shall find it especially in the duties of faith of prayer and of charity 1. Our faith must be strong vigorous active confident and patient reasonable and unalterable without doubting and feare and partiality For the faith of very many men seems a duty so weak and indifferent is so often untwisted by violence or ravel'd and intangled in weak discourses or so false and fallacious by its mixture of interest that though men usually put most confidences in the pretences of faith yet no pretences are more unreasonable 1. Our faith and perswasions in Religion is most commonly imprinted in us by our country and we are Christians at the same rate as we are English or Spaniards or of such a family our reason is first stained and spotted with the dye of our kindred and country and our education puts it in grain and whatsoever is against this we are taught to call a temptaiton in the mean time we call these accidentall and artificiall perswasions by the name of faith which is onely the aire of the countrey or an heireloome of the family or the daughter of a present interest Whatever it was that brought us in we are to take care that when we are in our faith be noble and stand upon its most proper and most reasonable foundation it concerns us better to understand that Religion which we call Faith and that faith whereby we hope to be saved 2. The faith and the whole Religion of many men is the production of fear Men are threatned into their perswasions and the iron rod of a Tyrant converts whole nations to his principles when the wise discourses of the Religion seems dull as sleep and unprevailing as the talk of childhood That 's but a deceitfull faith which our timorousnesse begot and our weaknesse nurses and brings up The Religion of a Christian is immortall and certaine and perswasive and infallible and unalterable and therefore needs not be received by humane and weake convoyes like worldly and mortall Religions that faith is lukewarm and easie and trifling which is onely a beleef of that which a man wants courage to disbeleeve 3. The faith of many men is such that they dare not trust it they will talk of it and serve vanity or their lust or their company or their interest by it but when the matter comes to a pinch they dare not trust it When Antisthenes was initiated into the mysteries of Orpheus the
Priest told him that all that were of that Religion immediately after death should be perfectly happy the Philosopher asked him why he did not dye if he beleeved what he said such a faith as that was fine to talk of at table or eating the sacrifices of the Religion when the mystick man was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 full of wine and flesh of confidence and religion but to dye is a more material consideration and to be chosen upon no grounds but such a faith which really comes from God and can secure our reason and our choyce and perfect our interest and designes And it hath been long observed concerning those bold people that use their reason against God that gave it they have one perswasion in their health and another in their sicknesse and fears when they are well they blaspheme when they die they are superstitious It was Bias his case when he was poyson'd by the Atheismes of Theodorus no man died more like a coward and a fool as if the gods were to come and goe as Bias pleased to think and talk so one said of his folly If God be to be feared when we die he is also to be feared in all our life for he can for ever make us die he that will doe it once and that when he please can alwayes And therefore all those perswasions against God and against Religion are onely the production of vicious passions of drink or fancy of confidence and ignorance of boldnesse or vile appetites of vanity or fiercenesse of pride or flatteries and Atheisine is a proportion so unnaturall and monstrous that it can never dwell in a mans heart as faith does in health and sicknesse in peace and warre in company and alone at the beginning and at the end of a designe but comes from weake principles and leaves shallow and superficiall impressions but when men endevour to strengthen and confirme it they onely strive to make themselves worse then they can Naturally a man cannot be an Atheist for he that is so must have something within him that is worse either then man or devill 4. Some measure their faith by shews and apparencies by ceremonies and names by professions and little institutions Diogenes was angry at the silly Priest that thought he should be immortall because he was a Priest and would not promise so concerning Agesilaus and Epaminondas two noble Greeks that had preserved their country and lived vertuously The faith of a Christian hath no signification at all but obedience and charity if men be just and charitable and good and live according to their faith then onely they are Christians whatsoever else is pretended is but a shadow and the image of a grace for since in all the sects and institutions of the world the professors did in some reasonable sort conform to the rules of the profession as appears in all the Schooles of Philosophers and Religions of the world and the practises of the Jews and the usages and the countrey customes of the Turks it is a strange dishonour to Christianity that in it alone men should pretend to the faith of it and doe nothing of what it perswades and commands upon the account of those promises which it makes us to beleeve * He that means to please God by his faith must have his faith begotten in him by the Spirit of God and proper arguments of Religion he must professe it without feare he must dare to die for it and resolve to live according to its institution he must grow more confident and more holy have fewer doubtings and more vertues he must be resolute and constant far from indifferency and above secular regards he must by it regulate his life and value it above his life he must contend earnestly for the faith by the most prevailing arguments by the arguments of holy living and ready dying by zeale and patience by conformity and humility by reducing words to actions fair discourses to perfect perswasions by loving the article and encreasing in the knowledge and love of God and his Son Jesus Christ and then his faith is not negligent deceitfull artificiall and improper but true and holy and reasonable and usefull zealous and sufficient and therefore can never be reproved 2. Our prayers and devotions must be fervent and zealous not cold patient easie and soon rejected but supported by a patient spirit set forwards by importunity continued by perseverance waited on by attention and a present mind carryed along with holy but strong desires and ballasted with resignation and conformity to the divine will and then it is as God likes it and does the work to Gods glory and our interest effectively He that asks with a doubting mind and a lazy desire begs for nothing but to be denyed we must in our prayers be earnest and fervent or else we shall have but a cold answer for God gives his grace according as we can receive it and whatsoever evill returnes we meet in our prayers when we ask for good things is wholly by reason of our wandring spirits and cold desires we have reason to complain that our minds wander in our prayers and our diversions are more prevailing then all our arts of application and detention and we wander sometimes even when we pray against wandring and it is in some degrees naturall and unevitable but although the evill is not wholly to be cured yet the symptomes are to be eased and if our desires were strong and fervent our minds would in the same proportion be present we see it by a certain and regular experience what we love passionately we perpetually think on and it returnes upon us whether we will or no and in a great fear the apprehension cannot be shaken off and therefore if our desires of holy things were strong and earnest we should most certainly attend our prayers it is a more violent affection to other things that carries us off from this and therefore if we lov'd passionately what we aske for daily we should aske with hearty desires and an earnest appetite and a present spirit and however it be very easie to have our thoughts wander yet it is our indifferency and luke warmnesse that makes it so naturall and you may observe it that so long as the light shines bright and the fires of devotion and desires flame out so long the mind of a man stands close to the altar and waits upon the sacrifice but as the fires die and desires decay so the mind steals away and walks abroad to see the little images of beauty and pleasure which it beholds in the falling stars and little glow-wormes of the world The river that runs slow and creeps by the banks and begs leave of every turfe to let it passe is drawn into little hollownesses and spends it selfe in smaller portions and dies with diversion but when it runs with vigorousnesse and a ful stream and breaks down every obstacle making it even as its
high Priest they kept Damascus with a Garrison they sent parties of souldiers to silence and to imprison the Preachers and thought they did God service when they put the Apostles to death and they swore neither to eat nor to drink till they had killed Paul It was an old trick of the Jewish zeal Non monstrare vias eadem nisi sacra colenti Quaesitum ad fontem solos deducere verpos They would not shew the way to a Samaritan nor give a cup of cold water but to a circumcised brother That was their Zeal But the zeal of the Apostles was this they preached publickly and privately they prayed for all men they wept to God for the hardnesse of mens hearts they became all things to all men that they might gain some they travel'd through deeps and deserts they indured the heat of the Syrian Starre and the violence of Euroclydon winds and tempests seas and prisons mockings and scourgings fastings and poverty labour and watching they endured every man and wronged no man they would do any good thing and suffer any evill if they had but hopes to prevail upon a soul they perswaded men meekly they intreated them humbly they convinced them powerfully the watched for their good but medled not with their interest and this is the Christian Zeal the Zeal of meeknesse the Zeal of charity the Zeal of patience 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in these it is good to be zealous for you can never goe farre enough 2. The next measure of zeal is prudence For as charity is the matter of Zeal so is discretion the manner It must alwaies be for good to our neighbour and there needs no rules for the conducting of that provided the end be consonant to the design that is that charity be intended and charity done But there is a Zeal also of Religion or worshipping and this hath more need of measures and proper cautions For Religion can turn into a snare it may be abused into superstition it may become wearinesse in the spirit and tempt to tediousnesse to hatred and despair and many persons through their indiscreet conduct and furious marches and great loads taken upon tender shoulders and unexperienced have come to be perfect haters of their joy and despisers of all their hopes being like dark Lanthorns in which a candle burnes bright but the body is incompassed with a crust and a dark cloud of iron and these men keep the fires and light of holy propositions within them but the darknesse of hell the hardnesse of a vexed he art hath shaded all the light and makes it neither apt to warm nor to enlighten others but it turnes to fire within a feaver and a distemper dwels there and Religion is become their torment 1. Therefore our Zeal must never carry us beyond that which is profitable There are many institutions customes and usages introduced into Religion upon very fair motives and apted to great necessities but to imitate those things when they are disrobed of their proper ends is an importune zeal and signifies nothing but a forward minde and an easie heart and an imprudent head unlesse these actions can be invested with other ends and usefull purposes The primitive Church were strangely inspired with a zeal of virginity in order to the necessities of preaching and travelling and easing the troubles and temptations of persecution but when the necessity went on and drove the holy men into deserts that made Colleges of Religious and their manner of life was such so united so poor so dressed that they must live more non saculari after the manner of men divorc'd from the usuall entercourses of the world still their desire of single life increased because the old necessity lasted and a new one did supervene Afterwards the case was altered and then the single life was not to be chosen for it self nor yet in imitation of the first precedents for it could not be taken out from their circumstances and be used alone He therefore that thinks he is a more holy person for being a virgin or a widower or that he is bound to be so because they were so or that he cannot be a religious person because he is not so hath zeal indeed but not according to knowledge But now if the single state can be taken out and put to new appendages and fitted to the end of another grace or essentiall duty of Religion it will well become a Christian zeal to choose it so long as it can serve the end with advantage and security Thus also a zealous person is to chuse his fastings while they are necessary to him and are acts of proper mortification while he is tempted or while he is under discipline while he repents or while he obeys but some persons fast in zeal but for nothing else fast when they have no need when there is need they should not but call it religion to be miserable or sick here their zeal is folly for it is neither an act of Religion nor of prudence to fast when fasting probably serves no end of the spirit and therefore in the fasting dayes of the Church although it is warrant enough to us to fast if we had no end to serve in it but the meer obedience yet it is necessary that the superiors should not think the Law obeyed unlesse the end of the first institution be observed a fasting day is a day of humiliation and prayer and fasting being nothing it self but wholly the handmaid of a further grace ought not to be devested of its holinesse and sanctification and left like the wals of a ruinous Church where there is no duty performed to God but there remains something of that which us'd to minister to Religion The want of this consideration hath caus'd so much scandall and dispute so many snares and schismes concerning Ecclesiasticall fasts For when it was undressed and stripp'd of all the ornaments and usefull appendages when from a solemn day it grew to be common from thence to be lesse devout by being lesse seldome and lesse usefull and then it passed from a day of Religion to be a day of order and from fasting till night to fasting till evening-song and evening-song to be sung about twelve a clock and from fasting it was changed to a choice of food from eating nothing to eating fish and that the letter began to be stood upon and no usefulnesse remain'd but what every of his own piety should put into it but nothing was enjoyn'd by the Law nothing of that exacted by the superiours then the Law fell into disgrace and the design became suspected and men were first insnared and then scandalized and then began to complain without remedy and at last took remedy themselves without authority the whole affair fell into a disorder and a mischief and zeal was busie on both sides and on both sides was mistaken because they fell not upon the proper remedy which was to reduce the Law to the
is done then art and sophistry and adulterate dishes invite him to taste and die 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 well may a sober man wonder that men should be so much in love with earth and corruption the parent of rottennesse and a disease that even then when by all laws witches and inchanters murderers and manstealers are chastised and restrain'd with the iron hands of death yet that men should at great charges give pensions to an order of men whose trade it is to rob them of their temperance and wittily to destroy their health 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Greek Fathers call such persons curvae in terris animae coelestium inanes people bowed downe to the earth lovers of pleasures more then lovers of God Aretinas mentes so Antidamus calls them men framed in the furnaces of Etruria Aretine spirits beginning and ending in flesh and filthynesse dirt and clay all over But goe to the Crib thou glutton and there it will be found that when the charger is clean yet natures rules were not prevaricated the beast eats up all his provisions because they are naturall and simple or if he leaves any it is because he desires no more then till his needs be served and neither can a man unlesse he be diseased in body or in spirit in affection or in habit eat more of naturall and simple food then to the satisfactions of his naturall necessities He that drinks a draught or two of water and cooles his thirst drinks no more till his thirst returnes but he that drinks wine drinks it again longer then it is needfull even so long as it is pleasant Nature best provides for her self when she spreads her own Table but when men have gotten superinduced habits and new necessities art that brought them in must maintain them but wantonnesse and folly wait at the table and sickness and death take away 2. Reason is the second measure or rather the rule whereby we judge of intemperance For whatsoever loads of meat or drink make the reason uselesse or troubled are effects of this deformity not that reason is the adequate measure for a man may be intemperate upon other causes though he doe not force his understanding and trouble his head Some are strong to drink and can eat like a wolfe and love to doe so as fire to destroy the stubble such were those Harlots in the Comedy Quae cum amatore suo cum coenant liguriunt These persons are to take their accounts from the measures of Religion and the Spirit though they can talk still or transact the affaires of the world yet if they be not fitted for the things of the Spirit they are too full of flesh or wine and cannot or care not to attend to the things of God But reason is the limit beyond which temperance never wanders and in every degree in which our discourse is troubled and our soul is lifted from its wheels in the same degree the sin prevails Dum sumus in quâdam delinquendi libidine nebulis quibusdam insipientiae mens obducitur saith St. Ambrose when the flesh-pots reek and the uncovered dishes send forth a nidor and hungry smels that cloud hides the face and puts out the eye of reason and then tell them mors in ollâ that death is in the pot and folly in the chalice that those smels are fumes of brimstone and vapours of Egypt that they will make their heart easie and their head sottish and their colour pale and their hands trembling and their feet tormented Mullorum leporúmque suminis exitus hic est Sulphureúsque color carnificésque pedes For that is the end of delicacies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Dio Chrysostom palenesse and effeminacy and lazinesse and folly yet under the dominion of the pleasures of sensuality men are so stript of the use of reason that they are not onely uselesse in wise counsels and assistances but they have not reason enough to avoid the evils of their own throat and belly when once their reason fails we must know that their temperance and their religion went before 3. Though reason be so strictly to be preserved at our tables as well as at our prayers and we can never have leave to doe any violence to it yet the measures of Nature may be enlarged beyond the bounds of prime and common necessity For besides hunger and thirst there are some labours of the body and others of the mind and there are sorrows and loads upon the spirit by its communications with the indispositions of the body and as the labouring man may be supplyed with bigger quantities so the student and contemplative man with more delicious and spritefull nutriment for as the tender and more delicate easily-digested meats will not help to carry burthers upon the neck and hold the plough in society and yokes of the laborious oxen so neither will the pulse and the leeks Lavinian sausages and the Cisalpine tucets or gobbets of condited buls â—esh minister such delicate spirits to the thinking man but his notion will be flat as the noyse of the Arcadian porter and thick as the first juice of his countrey lard unlesse he makes his body a fit servant to the soul and both fitted for the imployment But in these cases necessity and prndence and experience are to make the measures and the rule and so long as the just end is fairly designed and aptly ministred to there ought to be no scruple concerning the quantity or quality of the provision and he that would stint a Swain by the commons of a Student and give Philot as the Candian the leavings of Pluto does but ill serve the ends of temperance but worse of prudence and necessity 4. Sorrow and a wounded spirit may as well be provided for in the quantity and quality of meat and drink as any other disease and this disease by this remedy as well as by any other For great sorrow and importune melancholy may be as great a sin as a great anger and if it be a sin in its nature it is more malignant and dangerous in its quality as naturally tending to murmur and despair wear inesse of Religion and hatred of God timorousnesse and jealousies fantastick images of things and superstition and therefore as it is necessary to restrain the feavers of anger so also to warm the freezings and dulnesse of melancholy by prudent and temperate but proper and apportion'd diets and if some meats and drinks make men lustfull or sleepy or dull or lazy or spritely or merry so far as meats and drinks can minister to the passion and the passion minister to vertue so far by this means they may be provided for Give strong drink to him that is ready to perish and wine to those that be of heavy hearts let him drink and forget his poverty and remember his misery no more said King Lemuel's Mother But this is not intended to be an habituall cure but
we are but beginners But it is not likely that God will trie us concerning degrees hereafter in such things of which in this world he was sparing to give us opportunities 3. Be carefull to observe that these rules are not all to be understood negatively but positively and affirmatively that is that a man may conclude that he is grown in grace if he observes these characters in himself which I have here discoursed of but he must not conclude negatively that he is not grown in grace if he cannot observe such signall testimonies for sometimes God covers the graces of his servants and hides the beauty of his tabernacle with goats hair and the skins of beasts that he may rather suffer them to want present comfort then the grace of humility for it is not necessary to preserve the gayeties and their spirituall pleasures but if their humility fails which may easily do under the sunshine of conspicuous and illustrious graces their vertues and themselves perish in a sad declension But sometimes men have not skill to make a judgement and all this discourse seems too artificiall to be tried by in the hearty purposes of religion Sometimes they let passe much of their life even of their better dayes without observance of particulars sometimes their cases of conscience are intricate or allayed with unavoydable infirmities sometimes they are so uninstructed in the more secret parts of religion and there are so many illusions and accidentall miseariages that if we shall conclude negatively in the present Question we may produce scruples infinite but understand nothing more of our estate and do much lesse of our duty 4. In considering concerning our growth in grace let us take more care to consider matters that concern justice and charity then that concern the vertue of religion because in this there may be much in the other there cannot easily be any illusion and cosenage That is a good religion that beleeves and trusts and hopes in God through Jesus Christ and for his sake does all justice and all charity that he can and our Blessed Lord gives no other deseription of love to God but obedience and keeping his commandements Justice and charity are like the matter religion is the form of Christianity but although the form be more noble and the principle of life yet it is lesse discernable lesse materiall and lesse sensible and we judge concerning the form by the matter and by materiall accidents and by actions and so we must of our religion that is of our love to God and of the efficacy of our prayers and the usefulnesse of our fastings we must make our judgements by the more materiall parts of our duty that is by sobriety and by justice and by charity I am much prevented in my intention for the perfecting of this so very materiall consideration I shall therefore onely tell you that to these parts and actions of good life or of our growth in grace some have added some accidentall considerations which are rather signes then parts of it Such are 1. To praise all good things and to study to imitate what we praise 2. To be impatient that any man should excell us not out of envy to the person but of noble emulation to the excellency For so Themistocles could not sleep after the great victory at Marathon purchased by Miltiades till he had made himself illustrious by equall services to his countrey 3. The bearing of sicknesse patiently and ever with improvement and the addition of some excellent principle and the firm pursuing it 4. Great devotion and much delight in our prayers 5. Frequent inspirations and often whispers of the Spirit of God prompting us to devotion and obedience especially if we adde to this a constant and ready obedience to all those holy invitations 6. Offering peace to them that have injured me and the abating of the circumstances of honour or of right when either justice or charity is concerned in it 7. Love to the brethren 8. To behold our companions or our inferiours full of honour and fortune and if we sit still at home and murmur not or if we can rejoyce both in their honour and our own quiet that 's a fair work of a good man And now 9. After all this I will not trouble you with reckoning a freedom from being tempted not onely from being overcome but from being tried for though that be a rare felicity and hath in it much safety yet it hath lesse honour and fewer instances of vertue unlesse it proceed from a confirmed and heroicall grace which is indeed a little image of heaven and of a celestiall charity and never happens signally to any but to old and very eminent persons 10. But some also adde an excellent habit of body and materiall passions such as are chast and vertuous dreams and suppose that as a disease abuses the fancy and a vice does prejudice it so may an excellent vertue of the soul smooth and Calcine the body and make it serve perfectly and without rebellious indispositions 11. Others are in love with Mary Magdalens tears and fancy the hard knees of Saint James and the sore eyes of Saint Peter and the very recreations of Saint John Proh quam virtute praeditos omnia decent thinking all things becomes a good man even his gestures and little incuriosities And though this may proceed from a great love of vertue yet because some men do thus much and no more and this is to be attributed to the lustre of vertue which shines a little thorow a mans eye-lids though he perversely winks against the light yet as the former of these two is too Metaphysicall so as the later too Phantasticall he that by the fore-going materiall parts and proper significations of a growing grace does not understand his own condition must be content to work on still super totam materiam without considerations of Particulars he must pray earnestly and watch diligently and consult with prudent Guides and ask of God great measures of his Spirit and hunger and thirst after righteousnesse for he that does so shall certainly be satisfied and if he understands not his present good condition yet if he be not wanting in the down right endeavours of piety and in hearty purposes he shall then finde that he is grown in grace when he springs up in the resurrection of the just and shall be ingrafted upon a tree of Paradise which beareth fruit for ever Glory to God rejoycing to Saints and Angels and eternall felicity to his own pious though undiscerning soul. Prima sequentem honestum est in secundis aut tertijs consistere Cicero Sermon XVI Of Growth in Sinne OR The severall states and degrees of Sinners WITH The manner how they are to be treated Jude Epist. Ver. 22 23. And of some have compassion making a difference * And others save with fear pulling them out of the fire MAn hath but one entrance into the world but a thousand wayes
that gave his birth-right for it but he that exchanges his soul for it knowes not the vanity of his purchase nor the value of his losse He that gains the purchase and spoil of a kingdom hath got that which to all that are placed in heaven or to a man that were seated in the paths of the Sun seem but like a spot in an eye or a Mathematical point so without vastnesse that it seems to be without dimensions But he whose purchase is but his neighbours field or a few unjust acres hath got that which is inconsiderable below the notice and description of the Map for by such Hieroglyphicall representments Socrates chid the vanity of a proud Athenian 3. Although these premises may suffice to shew that the supposed purchase is but vain and that all which men use really to obtain is lesse then trifles yet even the possession of it whatsoever it be is not meer and unmixt but allaid with sorrow and uneasinesse the gain hath but enlarged our appetite and like a draught to an hydropick person hath enraged his thirst and still that which he hath not is infinitely bigger then what he hath since the first enlargement of his purchase was not to satisfie necessity but his passion his lust or his avarice his pride or his revenge these things cease not by their fewell but their flames grow bigger and the capacities are stretched and they want more then they did at first For who wants most he that wants five pound or he that wants five thousand And supposing a man naturally supported and provided for in the dispensations of nature there is no difference but that the poor hath enough to fill his belly and the rich man can never have enough to fill his eye The poor mans wants are no greater then what may be supplied by charity and the rich mans wants are so big that none but Princes can relieve them and they are left to all the temptations of great vices and huge cares to make their reparations Dives eget gemmis Cereali munere pauper Sed cum egeant ambo pauper egens minus est If the greatnesse of the worlds possessions produce such fruits vexation and care and want the ambitious requiring of great estates is but like the selling of a fountain to buy a fever a parting with content to buy necessity and the purchase of an unhandsome condition at the price of infelicity 4. He that enjoyes a great portion of this world hath most commonly the allay of some great crosse which although sometimes God designes in mercy to wean his affections from the world and for the abstracting them from sordid adherencies and cohabitation to make his eyes like stars to fix them in the orbs of heaven and the regions of felicity yet they were an inseparable appendant and condition of humanity Solomon observed the vanity of some persons that heaped up great riches for their heits and yet knew not whether a wise man or a fool should possesse them this is a great evil under the Sun And if we observe the great crosses many times God permits in great families as discontent in marriages artificiall or naturall bastardies a society of man and wife like the conjunction of two politicks full of state and ceremony and designe but empty of those sweet caresses and naturall hearty complications and endearments usuall in meaner and innocent persons the perpetuall sicknesse fulnesse of diet fear of dying the abuse of flatterers the trouble and noise of company the tedious officiousnesse of impertinent and ceremonious visits the declension of estate the sadnesse of spirit the notoriousnesse of those dishonours which the meannesse of lower persons conceals but their eminency makes us visible as the spots in the moons face we shall finde him to be most happy that hath most of wisdom and least of the world because he onely hath the least danger and the most security 5. And lastly his soul so gets nothing that wins all this world if he loses his soul that it is ten to one but he that gets the one therefore shall lose the other For to a great and opulent fortune sin is so adherent and insinuating that it comes to him in the nature of civility It is a sad sight to see a great personage undertake an action passionately and upon great interest and let him manage it as indiscreetly let the whole designe be unjust let it be acted with all the malice and impotency in the world he shall have enough to tell him that he proceeds wisely enough to be servants of his interest and promoters of his sin instruments of his malice and actors of revenge But which of all his relatives shall dare to tell him of his indiscretion of his rage and of his folly he had need be a bold man and a severe person that shall tell him of his danger and that he is in a direct progresse towards hell and indeed such personages have been so long nourished up in softnes flattery and effeminancy that too often themselves are impatient of a monitor and think the charity and duty of a modest reprehension to be a rudenesse and incivility that Prince is a wise man that loves to have it otherwise and certainly it is a strange civility and dutifulnesse in friends and relatives to suffer him to go to hell uncontrolled rather then to seem unmannerly towards a great sinner But certainly this is none of the least infelicities of them who are Lords of the world and masters of great possessions I omit to speak of the habitual intemperance which is too commonly annexed to Festival and delicious tables where there is no other measure or restraint upon the appetite but its fulnesse and satiety and when it cannot or dare not eat more Oftentimes it happens that the intemperance of a poor table is more temperate and hath lesse of luxury in it then the temperance of a rich To this are consequent all the evil accidents and effects of fulnesse pride lust wantonnesse softnesses of disposition and dissolution of manners huge talking imperiousnesse despite and contempt of poor persons and at the best it is a great temptation for a man to have in his power whatsoever he can have in his sensual desires who then shall check his voracity or calm his revenge or allay his pride or mortify his lust or humble his spirit it is like as when a lustful young and tempted person lives perpetually with his amorous and delicious mistris if he scapes burning that is inflamed from within and set on fire from without it is a greater miracle then the escaping from the flames of the furnace by the three children of the captivity And just such a thing is the possession of the world it furnishes us with abilities to sin and opportunities of ruine and it makes us to dwell with poisons and dangers and enemies And although the grace of God is sufficient to great personages and masters
walked upon the pavements of heaven whose feet were clothed with stars whose eyes were brighter then the Sun whose voice is louder then thunder whose understanding is larger then that infinite space which we imagine in the uncircumscribed distance beyond the first orbe of heaven a person to whom felicity was as essential as life to God this was the onely person that was designed in the eternal decrees of the divine predestination to pay the price of a soul to ransom us from death lesse then this person could not do it for although a soul in its essence is finite yet there were many infinites which were incident and annexed to the condition of lost souls For all which because provision was to be made nothing lesse then an infinite excellence could satisfie for a soul who was lost to infinite and eternal ages who was to be afflicted with insupportable and indetermined that is next to infinite paines who was to bear the load of an infinite anger from the provocation of an eternal God and yet if it be possible that infinite can receive degrees this is but one half of the abysse and I think the lesser for that this person who was God eternal should be lessened in all his appearances to a span to the little dimensions of a man and that he should really become very contemptibly little although at the same time he was infinitely and unalterably great that is essential natural and necessary felicity should turn into an intolerable violent and immense calamity to his person that this great God should not be admitted to pay the price of our redemption unlesse he would suffer that horrid misery which that lost soul should suffer as it represents the glories of his goodnesse who used such rare and admirable instruments in actuating the designes of his mercy so it shewes our condition to have been very desperate and our losse invaluable A soul in Gods account is valued at the price of the blood and shame and tortures of the Son of God and yet we throw it a way for the exchange of sins that a man naturally is ashamed to own we lose it for the pleasure the sottish beastly pleasure of a night I need not say we lose our soul to save our lives for though that was our blessed Saviours instance of the great unreasonablenesse of men who by saving their lives lose them that is in the great account of Dooms-day though this I say be extreamly unreasonable yet there is something to be pretended in the bargain nothing to excuse him with God but something in the accounts of timerous men but to lose our souls with swearing that unprofitable dishonourable and unpleasant vice to lose our souls with disobedience or rebellion a vice that brings a curse and danger all the way in this life To lose our souls with drunkennesse a vice which is painfull and sickly in the very acting it which hastens our damnation by shortning our lives are instances fit to be put in the stories of fools and mad-men and all vice is a degree of the same unreasonablenesse the most splendid temptation being nothing but a prety well weaved fallacy a meer trick a sophisme and a cheating and abusing the understanding but that which I consider here is that it is an affront and contradiction to the wisdom of God that we should so slight and undervalue a soul in which our interest is so concerned a soul which he who made it and who delighted not to see it lost did account a fit purchase to be made by the exchange of his Son the eternal Son of God To which also I adde this additionall account that a soul is so greatly valued by God that we are not to venture the losse of it to save all the world For therefore whosoever should commit a sin to save kingdoms from perishing or if the case could be put that all the good men and good causes and good things in this world were to be destroyed by Tyranny and it were in our power by perjury to save all these that doing this sin would be so farre from hallowing the crime that it were to offer to God a sacrifice of what he most hates and to serve him with swines blood and the rescuing all these from a Tyrant or a hangman could not be pleasing to God upon those termes because a soul is lost by it which is in it self a greater losse and misery then all the evils in the world put together can out-ballance and a losse of that thing for which Christ gave his blood a price Persecutions and temporal death in holy men and in a just cause are but seeming evils and therefore not to be bought off with the losse of a soul which is a real but an intolerable calamity And if God for his own sake would not have all the world saved by sin that is by the hazarding of a soul we should do well for our own sakes not to lose a soul for trifles for things that make us here to be miserable and even here also to be ashamed 3. But it may be some natures or some understandings care not for all this therefore I proceed to the third and most material consideration as to us and I consider what it is to lose a soul which Hierocles thus explicates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 An immortall substance can die not by ceasing to be but by losing all being well by becomming miserable And it is remarkable when our blessed Saviour gave us caution that we should not fear them that can kill the body onely but fear him he sayes not that can kill the soul But 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 him that is able to destroy the body and soul in hell which word signifieth not death but tortures For some have chosen death for sanctuary and fled to it to avoid intolerable shame to give a period to the sence of a sharp grief or to cure the earthquakes of fear and the damned perishing souls shall wish for death with a desire impatient as their calamity But this shall be denied them because death were a deliverance a mercy and a pleasure of which these miserable persons must despair of for ever I shall not need to represent to your considerations those expressions of Scripture which the Holy Ghost hath set down to represent to our capacities the greatnesse of this perishing choosing such circumstances of character as were then usuall in the world and which are dreadful to our understanding as any thing Hell fire is the common expression for the Eastern nations accounted burnings the greatest of their miserable punishments and burning malefactours was frequent brimstone and fire to Saint John Revel 14. 10. calls the state of punishment prepared for the Devil and all his servants he adding the circumstance of brimstone for by this time the Devil had taught the world more ingenious pains and himself was new escaped out of boiling oil and brimstone and such
world Christians should not be such fighting people and Clergy men should not command Armies and Kings should not be drunk and subjects should not strike Princes for justice and an old man should not be youthfull in talk or in his habit and women should not swear and great men should not lie and a poor man should not oppresse for besides the sin of some of them there is an undecency in all of them and by being contrary to the end of an office or the reputation of a state or the sobrieties of a graver or sublimed person they asperse the religion as insufficient to keepe the persons within the bounds of fame and common reputation But above all things those sects of Christians whose professed doctrine brings destruction and diminution to government give the most intolerable scandal and dishonour to the institution and it had been impossible that Christianity should have prevailed over the wisdom and power of the Greeks and Romans if it had not been humble to superiours patient of injuries charitable to the needy a great exactour of obedience to Kings even to heathens that they might be won and convinced and to persecutours that they might be sweetned in their anger or upbraided for their cruel injustice for so doth the humble vine creep at the foot of an oak and leans upon its lowest base and begs shade and protection and leave to grow under its branches and to give and take mutuall refreshment and pay a friendly influence for a mighty patronage and they grow and dwell together and are the most remarkable of friends and married pairs of all the leavie nation Religion of it self is soft easie and defenselesse and God hath made it grow up with empire and to leane upon the arms of Kings and it cannot well grow alone and if it shall like the Ivy suck the heart of the oak upon whose body it grew and was supported it will be pulled down from its usurped eminency and fire and shame shall be its portion We cannot complain if Princes arm against those Christians who if they are suffered to preach will disarm the Princes and it will be hard to perswade that Kings are bound to protect and nourish those that will prove ministers of their own exauctoration And no Prince can have justci reason to forbid nor any man have greater reason to deny communion to a family then if they go about to destroy the power of the one or corrupt the duty of the other The particulars of this rule are very many I shall onely instance in one more because it is of great concernment to the publike interest of Christendome There are some persons whose religion is hugely disgraced because they change their propositions according as their temporall necessities or advantages do return They that in their weaknesse and beginning cry out against all violence as against persecution and from being suffered swell up till they be prosperous and from thence to power and at last to Tyranny and then suffer none but themselves and trip up those feet which they humbly kissed that themselves should not be trampled upon these men tell all the world that at first they were pusillanimous or at last outragious that their doctrine at first served their fear and at last served their rage and that they did not at all intend to serve God and then who shall believe them in any thing else Thus some men declaim against the faults of Governours that themselves may governe and when the power was in their hands what was a fault in others is in them necessity as if a sin could be hallowed for comming into their hands Some Greeks at Florence subscribed the Article of Purgatory and condemned it in their own Diocesses And the Kings supremacy in causes Ecclesiastical was earnestly defended against the pretences of the Bishop of Rome and yet when he was thrust out some men were and are violent to submit the King to their Consistories as if he were Supreme in defiance of the Pope and yet not Supreme over his own Clergy These Articles are mannaged too suspitiously Omnia si perdas famam servare memento You lose all the advantages to your cause if you lose your reputation 5 It is a duty also of Christian prudence that the teachers of others by authority or reprovers of their vices by charity should also make their persons apt to do it without objection Lori pedem rectus derideat Aethiopemalbus No man can endure the Gracchi preaching against sedition nor Uerres prating against theevery or Milo against homicide and if Herod had made an oration of humility or Antiochus of mercy men would have thought it had been a designe to evil purposes He that means to gain a soul must not make his Sermon an ostentation of his Eloquence but the law of his own life If a Gramarian should speak solaecismes or a Musician sing like a bittern he becomes ridiculous for offending in the faculty he professes So it is in them who minister to the conversion of souls If they fail in their own life when they professe to instruct another they are defective in their proper part and are unskilfull to all their purposes and the Cardinal of Crema did with ill successe tempt the English priests to quit their chaste marriages when himself was deprehended in unchaste embraces For good counsel seems to be unhallowed when it is reached forth by an impure hand and he can ill be beleeved by another whose life so confutes his rules that it is plain he does not beleeve himself Those Churches that are zealous for souls must send into their ministeries men so innocent that evil persons may have no excuse to be any longer vitious When Gorgias went about to perswade the Greeks to be at peace he had eloquence enough to do advantage to his cause and reason enough to presse it But Melanthius was glad to put him off by telling him that he was not fit to perswade peace who could not agree at home with his wife nor make his wife agree with her maid and he that could not make peace between three single persons was unapt to prevail for the reuniting fourteen or fifteen Common-wealths And this thing Saint Paul remarks by enjoyning that a Bishop should be chosen such a one as knew well to rule his own house or else he is not fit to rule the Church of God And when thou perswadest thy brother to be chaste let not him deride thee for thy intemperance and it will ill become thee to be severe against an idle servant if thou thy self beest uselesse to the publike and every notorious vice is infinitely against the spirit of government and depresses the man to an evennesse with common persons Facinus quos inquinat aequat to reprove belongs to a Superiour and as innocence gives a man advantage over his brother giving him an artificiall and adventitious authority so the follies and scandals of a publike and Governing
walk softly and timorously and crafty men like the close aire such that which is open and devour its portion and destroy its liberty and it is the guise of devils and the dishonour of the soul and the canker of society and the enemy of justice and truth and peace of wealth and honour of courage and merchandise He is a good man with whom a blind man may safely converse dignus quicum in tenebris mices to whom in respect of his fair treatings the darknesse and light are both alike But he that bears light upon the face and a dark heart is like him that transforms himself into an Angel of light when he means to do most mischief Remember this onely that false colours laid upon the face besmear the skin and durty it but they neither make a beauty nor mend it Apocal 22. 15. For without shall be dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and Murderers and idolaters and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie Sermon XXV THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY Psalm 86. 5. For thou Lord art good and ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy to all them that call upon thee MAN having destroyed that which God delighted in that is the beauty of his soul fell into an evil portion and being seized upon by the divine justice grew miserable and condemned to an incurable sorrow Poor Adam being banished and undone went and lived a sad life in the mountains of India and turned his face and his prayers towards Paradise thither he sent his sighes to that place he directed his devotions there was his heart now and his felicity sometimes had been but he knew not how to return thither for God was his enemy and by many of his attributes opposed himself against him Gods power was armed against him and poor man whom a fly or a fish could kill was assaulted and beaten with a sword of fire in the hand of a Cherubim Gods eye watched him his omniscience was mans accuser his severity was the Judge his justice the executioner It was a mighty calamity that man was to undergo when he that made him armed himself against his creature which would have died or turned to nothing if he had but withdrawn the miracles and the Almightinesse of his power If God had taken his arm from under him man had perished but it was therefore a greater evil when God laid his arm upon him and against him and seemed to support him that he might be longer killing him In the midst of these sadnesses God remembered his own creature and pitied it and by his mercy rescued him from the hand of his power and the sword of his justice and the guilt of his punishment and the disorder of his sin and placed him in that order of good things where he ought to have stood It was mercy that preserved the noblest of Gods creatures here below he who stood condemned and undone under all the other attributes of God was onely saved and rescued by his mercy that it may be evident that Gods mercy is above all his works and above all ours greater then the creation and greater then our sins as is his Majesty so is his mercy that is without measures and without rules sitting in heaven and filling all the world calling for a duty that he may give a blessing making man that he may save him punishing him that he may preserve him and Gods justice bowed down to his mercy and all his power passed into mercy and his omniscience converted into care and watchfulnesse into providence and observation for mans avail and Heaven gave its influence for man and rained showers for our food and drink and the Attributes and Acts of God sat at the foot of mercy and all that mercy descended upon the head of man For so the light of the world in the morning of the creation was spread abroad like a curtain and dwelt no where but filled the expansum with a dissemination great as the unfoldings of the airs looser garment or the wilder fringes of the fire without knots or order or combination but God gathered the beams in his hand and united them into a globe of fire and all the light of the world became the body of the Sun and he lent some to his weaker sister that walks in the night and guides a traveller and teaches him to distinguish a house from a river or a rock from a plain field so is the mercy of God a vast expansum and a huge Ocean from eternall ages it dwelt round about the throne of God and it filled all that infinite distance and space that hath no measures but the will of God untill God desiring to communicate that excellency and make it relative created Angels that he might have persons capable of huge gifts and man who he knew would need forgivenesse for so the Angels our elder Brothers dwelt for ever in the house of their Father and never brake his commandements but we the younger like prodigals forsook our fathers house and went into a strange countrey and followed stranger courses and spent the portion of our nature and forfeited all our title to the family and came to need another portion for ever since the fall of Adam who like an unfortunate man spent all that a wretched man could need or a happy man could have our life is repentance and forgivenesse is all our portion and though Angels were objects of Gods bounty yet man onely is in proper speaking the object of his mercy And the mercy which dwelt in an infinite circle became confin'd to a little ring and dwelt here below and here shall dwell below till it hath carried all Gods portion up to heaven where it shall reigne and glory upon our crowned heads for ever and ever But for him that considers Gods mercies and dwels a while in that depth it is hard not to talk wildly and without art and order of discoursings Saint Peter talked he knew not what when he entered into a cloud with Jesus upon mount Tabor though it passed over him like the little curtains that ride upon the North-winde and passe between the Sun and us And when we converse with a light greater then the Sun and tast a sweetnesse more delicious then the dew of heaven and in our thoughts entertain the ravishments and harmony of that atonement which reconciles God to man and man to felicity it will be more easily pardoned if we should be like persons that admire much and say but little and indeed we can best confesse the glories of the Lord by dazeled eyes and a stammering tongue and a heart overcharged with the miracles of this infinity For so those little drops that run over though they be not much in themselves yet they tell that the vessell was full and could expresse the greatnesse of the shower no otherwise but by spilling and inartificiall expressions and runnings over But because I have undertaken to tell the drops of the
the body such as contemplation of God and conversing with spirits and receiving those influences and rare immissions which coming from the Holy and mysterious Trinity make up the crown of glory it follows that the necessity of the bodies ministery is but during the state of this life and as long as it converses with fire and water and lives with corn and flesh and is fed by the satisfaction of material appetits which necessity and manner of conversation when it ceases it can be no longer necessary for the soul to be served by phantasmes and material representations 5. And therefore when the body shall be re-united it shall be so ordered that then the body shall confesse it gives not any thing but receives all its being and operation its manner and abode from the soul and that then it comes not to serve a necessity but to partake a glory For as the operations of the soul in this life begin in the body and by it the object is transmitted to the soul so then they shall begin in the soul and pass to the body and as the operations of the soul by reason of its dependence on the body are animal natural and material so in the resurrection the body shall be spiritual by reason of the preeminence influence and prime operation of the soul. Now between these two states stands the state of separation in which the operations of the soul are of a middle nature that is not so spirituall as in the resurrection and not so animal and natural as in the state of conjunction To all which I adde this consideration That our souls have the same condition that Christs soul had in the state of separation because he took on him all our nature and all our condition and it is certain Christs soul in the three dayes of his separation did exercise acts of life of joy and triumph and did not sleep but visited the souls of the Fathers trampled upon the pride of Devils and satisfied those longing souls which were Prisoners of hope and from all this we may conclude that the souls of all the servants of Christ are alive and therfore do the actions of life and proper to their state and therefore it is highly probable that the soul works clearer and understands brighter and discourses wiser and rejoyces louder and loves noblier and desires purer and hopes stronger then it can do here But if these arguments should fail yet the felicity of Gods Saints cannot fail For suppose the body to be a necessary instrument but out of tune and discomposed by sin and anger by accident and chance by defect and imperfections yet that it is better then none at all and that if the soul works imperfectly with an imperfect body that then she works not at all when she hath none and suppose also that the soul should be as much without sense or perception in death as it is in a deep sleep which is the image and shadow of death yet then God devises other means that his banished be not expelled from him For 2. God will restore the soul to the body and raise the body to such a perfection that it shall be an Organ fitt to praise him upon it shall be made spiritual to minister to the soul when the soul is turned into a Spirit then the soul shall be brought forth by Angels from her incomparable and easie bed from her rest in Christs Holy Bosome and be made perfect in her being and in all her operations And this shall first appear by that perfection which the soul shall receive as instrumental to the last judgement for then she shall see clearly all the Records of this world all the Register of her own memory For all that we did in this life is laid up in our memories and though dust and forgetfulnesse be drawn upon them yet when God shall lift us from our dust then shall appear clearly all that we have done written in the Tables of our conscience which is the souls memory We see many times and in many instances that a great memory is hindered and put out and we thirty years after come to think of something that lay so long under a curtain we think of it suddenly and without a line of deduction or proper consequence And all those famous memories of Simonides and Theodectes of Hortensius and Seneca of Sceptius Metrodorus and Carneades of Cyneas the Embassadour of Pyrrhus are onely the Records better kept and lesse disturbed by accident and desease For even the memory of Herods son of Athens of Bathyllus and the dullest person now alive is so great and by God made so sure a record of all that ever he did that assoon as ever God shall but tune our instrument and draw the curtains and but light up the candle of immortality there we shal finde it all there we shall see all and all the world shall see all then we shall be made fit to converse with God after the manner of Spirits we shall be like to Angels In the mean time although upon the perswasion of the former discourse it be highly probable that the souls of Gods servants do live in a state of present blessednesse and in the exceeding joyes of a certain expectation of the revelation of the day of the Lord and the coming of Jesus yet it will concern us onely to secure our state by holy living and leave the event to God that as S. Paul said whether present or absent whether sleeping or waking whether perceiving or perceiving not we may be accepted of him that when we are banished this world and from the light of the sun we may not be expelled from God and from the light of his countenance but that from our beds of sorrows our souls may passe into the bosome of Christ and from thence to his right hand in the day of sentence For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ then if we have done wel in the body we shal never be expelled from the beatifical presence of God but be domesticks of his family and heires of his Kingdom and partakers of his glory Amen I Have now done with my Text but yet am to make you another Sermon I have told you the necessity and the state of death it may be too largely for such a sad story I shal therefore now with a better compendium teach you how to live by telling you a plain narrative of a life which if you imitate and write after the copy it will make that death shall not be an evil but a thing to be desired and to be reckoned amongst the purchases and advantages of your fortune When Martha and Mary went to weep over the grave of their brother Christ met them there and preached a Funeral Sermon discoursing of the resurrection and applying to the purposes of faith and confession of Christ and glorification of God We have no other we can have no better precedent
opinion had been true and that accursed souls should have ease and a period to their tortures after a thousand years I pray let it be considered whether it be not a great madnesse to choose the pleasures or the wealth of a few years here with trouble with danger with uncertainty with labour with intervalls of sicknesse and for this to endure the flames of hell for a thousand yeers together The pleasures of the world no man can have for a hundred yeers and no man hath pleasure a hundred dayes together but he hath some trouble intervening or at least a wearinesse and a loathing of the pleasure and therefore to endure insufferable calamities suppose it be for a hundred yeers without any interruption without so much comfort as the light of a small candle or a drop of water amounts to in a fever is a bargain to be made by no man that loves himself or is not in love with infinite affliction If a man were condemned but to lie still or to lie a bed in one posture without turning for seven yeers together would he not buy it off with the losse of all his estate If a man were to be put upon the rack for every day three moneths together suppose him able to live so long what would he do to be quit of his torture Wouldany man curse the King to his face if he were sure to have both his hands burnt off and to be tormented with torments three yeers together Would any man in his wits accept of a hundred pound a yeer for fourty yeers if he were sure to be tormented in the fire for the next hundred yeers together without intermission Think then what a thousand yeers signifie Ten ages the age of two Empires but this account I must tell you is infinitely short though I thus discourse to you how great fools wicked men are though this opinion should be true A goodly comfort surely that for two or three yeers sottish pleasure a man shall be infinitely tormented but for a thousand yeers But then when we cast up the minutes and yeers and ages of eternity the consideration it self is a great hell to those persons who by their evil lives are consigned to such sad and miserable portions A thousand yeers is a long while to be in torment we finde a fever of 21. dayes to be like an age in length but when the duration of an intolerable misery is for ever in the height and for ever beginning and ten thousand yeers hath spent no part of its terme but it makes a perpetual efflux and is like the centre of a circle which ever transmits lines to the circumference this is a consideration so sad that the horrour of it and the reflexion upon its abode and duration make a great part of the hell for hell could not be hell without the despair of accursed souls for any hope were a refreshment and a drop of water which would help to allay those flames which as they burn intolerably so they must burn for ever And I desire you to consider that although the Scripture uses the word fire to expresse the torments of accursed souls yet fire can no more equal the pangs of hell then it can torment a material substance the pains of perishing souls being as much more afflictive then the smart of fire as the smart of fire is troublesome beyond the softnesse of Persian carpets or the sensuality of the Asian Luxury for the pains of hell and the perishing or losing of the soul is to suffer the wrath of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our God is a consuming fire that is the fire of hell when God takes away all comfort from us nothing to support our spirit is left us when sorrow is our food and tears our drink when it is eternal night without Sun or star or lamp or sleep when we burn with fire without light that is are loaden with sadnesse without remedy or hope or ease and that this wrath is to be expressed and to fall upon us in spiritual immateriall but most accursed most pungent and dolorous emanations then we feel what it is to lose a soul. We may guesse at it by the terrours of a guilty conscience those verbera laeniatus those secret lashings and whips of the exterminating Angel those thorns in the soul when a man is haunted by an evil spirit those butcheries which the soul of a Tyrant or a violent or a vitious person when he falls in to fear or any calamity does feel are the infinite arguments that Hell which is the consummation of the torment of conscience just as man-hood is the consummation of infancy or as glory is the perfection of grace is an affliction greater then the bulk of heaven and earth for there it is that God powrs out the treasures of his wrath and empties the whole magazin of thunder bolts and all the armory of God is imployed not in the chastising but in the tormenting of a perishing soul. Lucian brings in Radamanthus telling the poor wandring souls upon the banks of Elysium 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for every wickednesse that any man commits in his life when he comes to hell he hath stamped upon his soul an invisible brand and mark of torment and this begins here and is not cancelled by death but there is enlarged by the greatnesse of infinite and the aboads of eternity How great these tormens of conscience are here let any man imagine that can but understand what despair means despair upon just reason let it be what it will no misery can be greater then despaire and because I hope none here have felt those horrors of an evil conscience which are consignations to eternity you may please to learn it by your own reason or els by the sad instances of story It is reported of Petrus Ilosuanus A Polonian School-master that having read some ill managed discourses of absolute decrees and divine reprobation began to be Phantastick and melancholy and apprehensive that he might be one of those many whom God had decreed for hell from all eternity from possible to probable from probable to certain the temptation soon carried him and when he once began to believe himself to be a person inevitably perishing it is not possible to understand perfectly what infinite fears and agonies and despairs what tremblings what horrors what confusion and amazement the poor man felt within him to consider that he was to be tormented extremely without remedy even to eternal ages This in a short continuance grew insufferable and prevailed upon him so far that he hanged himself and left this account of it or to this purpose in writing in his study I am gone from hence to the flames of hell have forced my way thither being impatient to try what those great torments are which here I have heard with an insupportable amazement this instance may suffice to show what it is to lose a soul. But I will take