Selected quad for the lemma: heart_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heart_n	action_n	evil_a	sin_n	2,104	5	4.9172	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36308	XXVI sermons. The third volume preached by that learned and reverend divine John Donne ...	Donne, John, 1572-1631.	1661 (1661)	Wing D1873; ESTC R32773	439,670	425

then contract them in thy self and consider Gods speedy execution upon thy soul and upon thy body and upon thy soul and body together Was not Gods judgement executed speedily enough upon thy soul when in the same instant that it was created and conceiv'd and infus'd it was put to a necessity of contracting Original sin and so submitted to the penalty of Adam's disobedience the first minute Was not Gods judgement speedily enough executed upon thy body if before it had any temporal life it had a spiritual death a sinful conception before any inanimation If hereditary diseases from thy parents Gouts and Epilepsies were in thee before the diseases of thine own purchase the effects of thy licentiousness and thy riot and that from the first minute that thou beganst to live thou beganst to die too Are not the judgements of God speedily enough executed upon thy soul and body together every day when as soon as thou commitst a sin thou art presently left to thine Impenitence to thine Insensibleness and Obduration Nay the judgement is more speedy then so for that very sin it self was a punishment of thy former sins But though God may begin speedily yet he intermits again he slacks his pace and therefore the execution is not speedy As it is said of Pharaoh often Because the plagues ceased though they had been laid upon him Ingratum est cor Pharaonis Pharaoh's heart was hardned But first we see by that punishment which is laid upon Heli That with God it is all one to begin and to consummate his judgement When I begin I will make an end 1 Sam. 3.12 And when Herod took a delight in that flattery and acclamation of the people It is the voice of God and not of man Acts 12.22 the angel of the Lord smote him immediately the worms took possession of him though if we take Josephus relation for truth he died not in five days after Howsoever if we consider the judgements of God in his purpose and decree there they are eternal And for the execution thereof though the wicked sinner dissemble his sense of his torments and as Tertullian says of a persecutor Herminianus who being tormented at his death in his violent sickness cryed out Nemo sciat ne gaudeant Christiani Let no man know of my misery lest the Christians rejoyce thereat so these sinners suppress these judgements of God from our knowledge because they would not have that God that inflicts them glorified therein by us Yet they know their damnation hath never slept nor let them sleep quietly and in Gods purpose the judgement hath been eternal and they have been damned as long as the devil and that 's an execution speedy enough But because this appears not so evidently but that they may disguise it to the world and with much ado to their own Consciences Therefore their hearts are fully set in them to do evil And so we pass to our third Part. Part III. This is that perversness which the Heathen Philosopher Epictetus apprehends and reprehends That whereas every thing is presented to us Cum duabus sausis with two handles we take it still by the wrong handle This is tortuositas serpentis The wryness the knottiness the entangling of the Serpent This is that which the Apostle takes such direct knowledge of Rom. 2.4 Despisest thou the riches of Gods bountifulness and long-suffering not knowing that it leads thee to repentance St. Chrysostome's comparison of such a sinner to a Vulture that delights onely in dead carcases that is in company dead in their sins holds best as himself notes in this particular that the Vulture perhorrescit fragrantiam unguenti He loaths and is ill affected with any sweet savour for so doth this sinner finde death in that soveraign Balm of the patience of God and he dies of Gods mercy Et quid infelicius illis qui bono odore moriuntur says S. Augustine In what worse state can any man be then to take harm of a good air But as the same Father addes Numquid quia mori voluisti malum fecisti odorem This indisposition in that particular man does not make this air an ill air and yet this abuse of the patience of God comes to be an infectious poyson and such a poyson as strikes the heart and so general as to strike the heart of the children of men and so strongly as that their hearts should be fully set in them to do evil First then what is this setting of the heart upon evil and then what is this fulness that leaves no room for a Cure When a man receives figures and images of sin into his Fancie and Imagination and leads them on to his Understanding and Discourse to his Will to his Consent to his Heart by a delightful dwelling upon the meditation of that sin yet this is not a setting of the heart upon doing evil To be surpris'd by a Tentation to be overthrown by it to be held down by it for a time is not it It is not when the devil looks in at the window to the heart by presenting occasions of tentations to the eye nor when he comes in at the door to our heart at the ear either in lascivious discourses or Satyrical and Libellous defamations of other men It is not when the devil is put to his Circuit to seek whom he may devour and how he may corrupt the King by his Council that is The Soul by the Senses But it is when by a habitual custom in sin the sin arises meerly and immediately from my self It is when the heart hath usurp'd upon the devil and upon the world too and is able and apt to sin of it self if there were no devil and if there were no outward objects of tentation when our own heart is become spontanea insania voluntarius daemon Such a wilful Madness Chrysost and such a voluntary and natural Devil to it self as that we should be ambitious though we were in an Hospital and licentious though we were in a wilderness and voluptuous though in a famine so that such a mans heart is as a land of such Gyants where the Children are born as great as the Men of other nations grow to be for those sins which in other men have their birth and their growth after their birth they begin at a Concupiscence and proceed to a Consent and grow up to Actions and swell up to Habits In this man sin begins at a stature and proportion above all this he begins at a delight in the sin and comes instantly to a defence of it and to an obduration and impenitibleness in it This is the evil of the heart by the mis-use of Gods grace to devest and lose all tenderness and remorse in sin Now for the Incurableness of this heart it consists first in this that there is a fulness It is fully set to do evil such a full heart hath no room for a

my Manners but occasionally and upon Emergencies this is a sickly complexion of the soul a dangerous impotencie and a shrewd and ill-presaging Crisis If Joshua had suspended his assent of serving the Lord till all his Neighbours and their Families all the Kings and Kingdoms about him had declar'd theirs the same way when would Joshua have come to that protestation I and my house will serve the Lord If Esther had forborn to press for an audience to the King in the behalf and for the life of her Nation till nothing could have been said against it when would Esther have come to that protestation I will go and if I perish I perish If one Milstone fell from the North-Pole and another from the South they would meet and they would rest in the Centre Nature would con-centre them Not to be able to con-centre those doubts which arise in my self in a resolution at last whether in Moral or in Religious Actions is rather a vertiginous giddiness then a wise circumspection or wariness When God prepar'd great Armies 1 Sam. 11.7 it is expressed always so Tanquam unus vir Israel went out as one man When God established his beloved David to be King 1 Chro. 12.38 it is expressed so Uno Corde He sent them out with one heart to make David king When God accelerated the propagation of his Church Act. 4.32 it is expressed so Una Anima The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one soul Since God makes Nations and Armies and Churches One heart let not us make one heart two in our selves a divided a distracted a perplexed an irresolved heart but in all cases let us be able to say to our selves This we should do God asks the heart a single heart an intire heart for whilst it is so God may have some hope of it But when it is a heart and a heart a heart for God and a Heart for Mammon howsoever it may seem to be even the odds will be on Mammons side against God because he presents Possessions and God but Reversions he the present and possessory things of this world God but the future and speratory things of the next So then the Cor nullum no heart Thoughtlesness Incogitancie Inconsideration and the Cor duplex the perplexed and irresolved and inconclusive heart do equally oppose this firmness and fixation of the heart which God loves and which we consider in this stem and stalk of Pythagoras his Symbolical Letter And so does that which we propos'd for the Third The Cor Vagum The Wandering the Wayfaring the Inconstant Heart Many times in our private Actions Cor Vagum and in the cribration and sifting of our Consciences for that 's the Sphere I move in and no higher we do overcome the first difficulty Inconsideration we consider seriously and sometimes the second Irresolution we resolve confidently but never the third Inconstancie if so far as to bring holy Resolutions into Actions yet never so far as to bring holy Actions into Habits That word which we read Deceitful The heart is deceitful above all things who can know it Jer. 17.9 is in the Original Gnacob and that is not onely Fraudulentum but Versipelle deceitful because it varies it self into divers forms so that it does not onely deceive others others finde not our heart the same towards them to day that it was yesterday but it deceives our selves we know not what nor where our heart will be hereafter Upon those words of Isaiah Redite prevaricatores ad Cor Return O sinner to thy heart Longe eos mittit says S. Gregory 46.8 God knows whither that sinner is sent that is sent to his own heart for Where is thy heart Thou mayst remember where it was yesterday at such an Office at such a Chamber But yesterdays affections are chang'd to day as to days will be to morrow They have despised my judgements so God complaines in Ezekiel 20.16 that is They are not mov'd with my punishments they call all natural accidents and then it follows They have polluted my sabbaths they are come to a more faint and dilute and indifferent way in their Religion Now what hath occasion'd this neglecting of Gods judgements and this diluteness and indifferency in the ways of Religion That that follows there Their hearts went after their Idols Went Whither Every whither for Hierom. Quot vitia tot recentes deos so many habitual Sins so many Idols And so every man hath some Idol some such Sin and then that Idol sends him to a further Idol that Sin to another for every Sin needs the assistance and countenance of another sin for disguise and palliation We are not constant in our Sins much less in our more holy Purposes We complain and justly of the Church of Rome that she would not have us receive in utraque in both kinds But alas who amongst us does receive in utraque so as that when he receives Bread and Wine he receives with a true sorrow for former and a true resolution against future sins Except the Lord of heaven create new hearts in us of our selves we have Cor nullum no heart all vanishes into Incogitancy Except the Lord of heaven con-centre our affections of our selves we have Cor Cor a cloven a divided heart a heart of Irresolution Except the Lord of heaven fix our Resolutions of our selves we have Cor vagum a various a wandering heart all smoaks into Inconstancie And all these three are Enemies to that firmness and fixation of the heart which God loves and we seek after But yet how variously soever the heart do wander and how little a while soever it stay upon one Object yet that that thy heart does stay upon Christ in this place calls thy Treasure for the words admit well that inversion Where your Treasure is there will your heart be also implies this Where your Heart is that is your Treasure And so we pass from this stem and stalk of Pythagoras his Symbolical Letter The firmness and fixation of the Heart to the Horns and Beams thereof A broader but on the left hand and in that the corruptible treasures of this world and a narrower but on the right hand and in that the everlasting Treasures of the next On both sides that that you fix your Heart upon is your Treasure For where your Heart is there is your Treasure also Thesaurus Literally primarily radically Thesaurus Treasure is no more but Depositum in Crastinum Provision for to morrow to shew how little a proportion a regulated minde and a contented heart may make a Treasure But we have enlarged the signification of these words Provision and To morrow for Provision must signifie all that can any way be compass'd and To morrow must signifie as long as there shall be a to morrow till time shall be no more But waving these infinite Extensions and Perpetuities is there any

thing of that nature as taking the word Treasure in the narrowest signification to be but Provision for to morrow we are sure shall last till to morrow Sits any man here in an assurance that he shall be the same to morrow that he is now You have your Honours your Offices your Possessions perchance under Seal a Seal of Wax Wax that hath a tenacity an adhering a cleaving nature to shew the Royal Constancie of His Heart that gives them and would have them continue with you and stick to you But then Wax if it be heat hath a melting a fluid a running nature too so have these Honours and Offices and Possessions to them that grow too hot too confident in them or too imperious by them For these Honours and Offices and Possessions you have a Seal a fair and just evidence of assurance but have they any Seal upon you any assurance of you till to morrow Did our blessed Saviour give day or any hope of a to morrow to that man to whom he said Fool this night they fetch away thy soul Or is there any of us that can say Christ said not that to him But yet a Treasure every man hath An evil man Thesaurus malorum Luk. 6.45 out of the evil Treasure of his Heart bringeth forth that which is evil says our Saviour Every man hath some sin upon which his heart is set and Where your Heart is there is your Treasure also The treasures of wickedness profit nothing says Job 'T is true But yet 10.2 Treasures of wickedness there are Mic. 6.10 Are there not yet Treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked consider the force of that word yet yet though you have the power of a vigilant Prince executed by just Magistrates yet though you have the Piety of a Religious Prince seconded by the assiduity of a laborious Clergy yet though you have many helps which your Fathers did and your Neighbours do want and have by Gods grace some fruits of those many helps yet for all this Are there not yet Treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked No Are there not scant measures which are an abomination to God says the Prophet there which are not onely false measures of Merchandize but false measures of Men for when God sayes that he intends all this Is there not yet supplantation in Court and mis-representations of men When Solomon who understood subdordination of places which flowed from him as well as the highest which himself possest says and says experimentally for his own and prophetically for future times If a Ruler a man in great place hearken to lyes Prov. 29.22 all his servants are wicked Are there not yet mis-representations of men in Courts Is there not yet Oppression in the Country A starving of men and pampering of dogs A swallowing of the needy Amos 8.5 A buying of the poor for a pair of shooes and a selling to the hungry refuse corn Is there not yet Oppression in the Country Is there not yet Extortion in Westminster A justifying of the wicked for a reward Isa 5.23 and a taking away of the righteousness of the righteous from him Is there not yet Extortion in Westminster Is there not yet Collusion and Circumvention in the City Would they not seem richer then they are when they deal in private Bargains with one another And would they not seem poorer then they are when they are call'd to contribute for the Publique Ezek. 28.5 Have they not increased their riches by Trade and lifted up their hearts upon the encrease of their riches Have they not slackened their trade Amos 2.8 and layn down upon clothes laid to pledge and ennobled themselves by an ignoble and lazie way of gain Is there not yet Collusion and Circumvention in the City Is there not yet Hypocrisie in the Church In all parts thereof Half preachings and half hearings Hearings and preachings without practise Have we not national sins of our own and yet exercise the nature of Islanders in importing the Sins of forreign Parts And though we better no forreign Commodity nor Manufacture that we bring in we improve the sins of other Nations and as a weaker Grape growing upon the Rhene contracts a stronger nature in the Canaries so do the sins of other Nations transplanted amongst us Have we not secular sins sins of our own age our own time and yet sin by precedent of former as well as create precedents for future And not onely Silver and Gold Josh 6.19 but Vessels of Iron and Brass were brought into the Treasury of the Lord not onely the glorious sins of high places and National sins and secular sins But the wretchedest Begger in the street contributes to this Treasure the Treasure of sin and to this mischievous use to encrease this Treasure the Treasure of sin is a Subsidy man He begs in Jesus Name and for Gods sake and in the same Name curses him that does not give He counterfeits a lameness or he loves his lameness and would not be cur'd for his lameness is his Stock it is his Demean it is as they call their Occupations in the City his Mystery Are there not yet Treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked when even they who have no Houses but lie in the Streets have these Treasures Thesaurus Dei hic There are And then as the nature of Treasure is to multiply so does this Treasure this Treasure of sin It produces another Treasure Thesaurizamus iram We treasure up unto our selves wrath against the day of wrath Rom. 2.5 for it is of the sins of the people that God speaks Deut. 32.34 when he says Is not this laid up in store with me and sealed up amongst my treasures He treasures up the sins of the disobedient But where In the Treasury of his judgements And then that Treasury he opens against us in this world his Treasures of Snow Job 38.22 and Treasures of Hail that is Unseasonableness of Weather Psal 135.7 Barrenness and Famine and he bringeth his winds out of his Treasury contrary winds or storms and tempests to disappoint our purposes Isa 45.3 and as he saies to Cyrus I will give thee even thee Cyrus though God car'd not for Cyrus otherwise then as he had made Cyrus his scourge I will give thee the Treasures of darkness and the hidden Treasures of secret places God will enable Enemies though he loves not those Enemies to afflict that people that love not him And these War and Dearth and Sickness are the Weapons of Gods displeasure and these he pours out of his Treasury Thesaurus Dei in futuro in this world But then for the world to come He shall open his treasury for whatsoever mov'd our Translators to render that word Armory and not Treasury in that place yet evidently it is Treasury Jer. 50.25 and in that very word Otzar which they

then lastly The illusion upon this what a fearful state this shuts them up in That therefore their hearts are fully set in them to do evil And these three The perversness of colouring sins with Reasons and the impotency of making Gods mercy the Reason and the danger of obduration thereby will be the three parts in which we shall determine this Exercise Part I. First then in handling the perversness of assigning Reasons for sins we forbid no man the use of Reason in matters of Religion As S. August says Contra Scriptura nemo Christianus No man can pretend to be a Christian if he refuse to be tryed by the Scriptures And as he adds Contra Ecclesiam nemo pacificus No man can pretend to love order and Peace if he refuse to be tryed by the Church so he adds also Contra Rationem nemo sobrius No man can pretend to be in his wits if he refuse to be tryed by Reason He that believes any thing because the Church presents it he hath Reason to assure him that this Authority of the Church is founded in the Scriptures He that believeth the Scriptures hath Reasons that govern and assure him that those Scriptures are the Word of God Mysteries of Religion are not the less believ'd and embrac'd by Faith because they are presented and induc'd and apprehended by Reason But this must not enthrone this must not exalt any mans Reason so far as that there should lie an Appeal from Gods Judgements to any mans reason that if he see no reason why God should proceed so and so he will not believe that to be Gods Judgement or not believe that Judgement of God to be just For of the secret purposes of God Mat. 11.26 we have an Example what to say given us by Christ himself Ita est quia complacuit It is so O Father because thy good pleasure was such All was in his own breast and bosome in his own good will and pleasure before he Decreed it And as his Decree it self so the wayes and Executions of his Decrees are often unsearchable for the purpose and for the reason thereof though for the matter of fact they may be manifest They that think themselves sharp-sighted and wise enough to search into those unreveal'd Decrees they who being but worms will look into Heaven and being the last of Creatures who were made will needs enquire what was done by God before God did any thing for creating the World In ultimam dementiam reverant says S. Chrysost They are fallen into a mischievous madness Et ferrum ignitum quod forcipe deberent digitus accipiunt They will needs take up red hot Irons with their bare fingers without tongs That which is in the Center which should rest and lie still in this peace That it is so because it is the will of God that it should be so they think to toss and tumble that up to the Circumference to the Light and Evidence of their Reason by their wrangling Disputations If then it be a presumpteous thing and a contempt against God to submit his Decrees to the Examination of humane reason it must be a high treason against the Majesty of God to find out a reason in him which should justifie our sins To conclude out of any thing which he does or leaves undone that either he doth not hate or cannot punish sinners For this destroys even the Nature of God and that which the Apostle lays for the foundation of all To believe that God is Heb. 11.6 and that he is a just Rewarder Adam's quia Mulier The woman whom thou gavest me gave me the Apple And Eve's quia Serpens Because the Serpent deceiv'd me and all such are poor and unallowable pleas which God would not admit For there is no Quia no Reason why any man at any time should do any sin God never permits any perplexity to fall upon us so as that we cannot avoyd one sin but by doing another or that we should think our self excusable by saying Quia inde minus malum There is less harm in a Concubine then in another wife Or Quia inde aliquod bonum That my incontinence hath produc'd a profitable man to the State or to the Church though a bastard much less to say Quia obdormivit Deus Tush God sees it not or cares not for it though he see it If thou ask then why thou should'st be bound to believe the Creation we say Quia unus Deus Because there can be but one God and if the World be eternal and so no Creature the World is God If thou ask why thou should'st be bound to believe Providence we say Quia Deus remunerator Because God is to give every man according to his merits If thou ask why thou should'st be bound to believe that when thou seest he doth not give every man according to his merits we say Quia inscrutabilia judicia ejus O how unsearchable are his Jugdements and his ways past finding out For thou art yet got no farther in measuring God but by thine own measure and thou hast found no other reason to lead thee to think that God doth not govern well but because he doth not govern so to thine understanding as thou shouldst if thou wert God So that thou dost not onely make thy weakness but thy wickedness that is thy hasty disposition to come to a present Revenge when any thing offends thee the Measure and the Model by which the frame of Gods Government should be erected and so thou comest to the worst distemper of all insanire cum ratione to go out of thy wits by having too much and to be mad with too much knowledge not to sin out of infirmity or tentation or heat of blood but to sin in cold blood and upon just reason and mature considerations and so deliberately and advisedly to continue to sin Part II. Now the particular reason which the perversness of these men produceth here in this Text is Because God is patient and long-suffering So he is so he will be still Their perversness shall not pervert his Nature his goodness As God bade the Prophet Osea do 1.2 he hath done himself Go says he and take to thee a wife of fornication and children of fornication so hath he taken us guilty of spiritual fornication But as in the fleshly fornications of an adulterous wife the husband is for the most part the last that hears of them so for our spiritual fornications such is the loathness the patience the longanimity of our good and gracious God that though he do know our sins as soon as they speak as soon as they are acted for that 's peccatum cum voco says S. Gregory A speaking sin when any sinful thought is produc'd into act yea before they speak as soon as they are conceiv'd yet he will not hear of our sins he takes no knowledge of them by punishing them till our brethren have

Cure as a full stomack hath no room for Physick The Mathematician could have removed the whole world with his Engine if there had been any place to have set his Engine in Any man might be cur'd of any sin if his heart were not full of it and fully set upon it which setting is indeed in a great part an unsetledness when the heart is in a perpetual motion and in a miserable indifferencie to all sins it may be fully set upon sin though it be not vehemently affected to any one sin The reason which is assign'd why the heart of man if it receive a wound is incurable is the palpitation and the continual motion of the heart for if the heart could lie still so that fit things might be applyed to it and work upon it all wounds in all parts of the heart were not necessarily mortal So if our hearts were not distracted in so many forms and so divers ways of sin it might the better be cur'd of any one St. Augustine had this apprehension when he said Audeo dicere utile esse cadere in aliquod manifestum peccatum ut sibi displiceant It is well for him that is indifferent to all sins if he fall into some such misery by some one sin as brings him to a sense of that and of the rest St. Augustine when he says this says he speaks boldly in saying so Audeo dicere but we may be so much more bold as to say further That that man had been damn'd if he had not sinn'd that sin For the heart of the indifferent sinner bayts at all that ever rises at all forms and images of sin when he sees a thief he runs with him Psal 50. and with the adulterer he hath his portion and as soon as it contracts any spiritual disease any sin it is presently not onely in morbo acuto but in morbo complicato in a sharp disease and in a manifold disease a disease multiplied in it self Therefore it is as St. Gregory notes that the Prophet proposes it as the hardest thing of all for a sinner to return to his own heart and to finde out that after it is strayed and scattered upon so several sins Redite prevaricatores ad cor says the Prophet Esa 46. and says that Father Longe eis mittit cum ad cor redire compellit God knows whither he sends them when he sends them to their own heart for since it is true which the same Father said Vix sancti inveniunt cor suum The holyest man cannot at all times finde his own heart his heart may be bent upon Religion and yet he cannot tell in which Religion and upon Preaching and yet he cannot tell which Preacher and upon Prayer and yet he shall finde strayings and deviations in his Prayer much more hardly is the various and vagabond heart of such an indifferent sinner to be found by any search If he enquire for his heart at that Chamber where he remembers it was yesterday in lascivious and lustful purposes he shall hear that it went from thence to some riotous Feasting from thence to some Blasphemous Gaming after to some Malicious Consultation of entangling one and supplanting another and he shall never trace it so close as to drive it home that is to the consideration of it self and that God that made it nay scarce to make it consist in any one particular sin That which St. Bernard fear'd in Eugenius when he came to be Pope and so to a distraction of many worldly businesses may much more be fear'd in a distraction of many sins Cave ne te trahant quo non vis Take heed lest these sins carry thee farther then thou intendest thou intendest but Pleasure or Profit but the sin will carry thee farther Quaeris quo says that Father Dost thou ask whither Ad cor durum To a senslesness a remorslesness a hardness of heart nec pergas quaerere says he quid illud sit Never ask what that hardness of heart is for if thou know it not thou hast it This then is the fulness and so the Incurableness of the heart by that reason of perpetual motion because it is in perpetual progress from sin to sin he never considers his state But there is another fulness intended here That he is come to a full point to a consideration of his sin and to a station and setledness in it out of a foundation of Reason as though it were not onely an excusable but a wise proceeding Because Gods judgements are not executed But when man becomes to be thus fully set God shall set him faster Job 14.17 Iniquitas tua in sacculo signata His transgression shall be sealed up in a bag and God shall sow up his iniquity And Quid cor hominis nisi sacculus Dei Gregor What is this bag of God but the heart of that sinner There as a bag of a wretched Misers money which shall never be opened never told till his death lies this bag of sin this frozen heart of an impenitent sinner and his sins shall never be opened never told to his own Conscience till it be done to his final condemnation God shall suffer him to settle where he hath chosen to settle himself in an unsensibleness an Inintelligibleness to use Tertullian's word of his own condition And Aug. Quid miserior misero non miserante seipsum Who can be more miserable then that man who does not commiserate his own misery How far gone is he into a pitiful estate that neither desires to be pitied by others nor pities himself nor discerns that his state needs pity Invaluerat ira tua super me nesciebam says blessed St. Augustine Thy hand lay heavie upon me and I found it not to be thy hand because the Maledictions of God are honeyed and candied over with a little crust or sweetness of worldly ease or reprieve we do not apprehend them in their true taste and right nature Obsurdueram stridore catenarum mearum says the same Father The jingling and ratling of our Chains and Fetters makes us deaf The weight of the judgement takes away the sense of the judgement This is the full setting of the heart to do evil when a man fills himself with the liberty of passing into any sin in an indifferencie and then findes no reason why he should leave that way either by the love or by the fear of God If he prosper by his sin then he findes no reason if he do not prosper by it yet he findes a wrong reason If unseasonable flouds drown his Harvest and frustrate all his labours and his hopes he never findes that his oppressing and grinding of the Poor was any cause of those waters but he looks onely how the Winde sate and how the ground lay and he concludes that if Noah and Job Ezek. 14.14 and Daniel had been there their labour must have perished and been drown'd as well as his If

a vehement Fever take hold of him he remembers where he sweat and when he took cold where he walked too fast where his Casement stood open and where he was too bold upon Fruit or meat of hard digestion but he never remembers the sinful and naked Wantonnesses the profuse and wastful Dilapidations of his own body that have made him thus obnoxious and open to all dangerous Distempers Thunder from heaven burns his Barns and he says What luck was this if it had fallen but ten foot short or over my barns had been safe whereas his former blasphemings of the Name of God drew down that Thunder upon that house as it was his and that Lightning could no more fall short or over then the Angel which was sent to Sodom could have burnt another Citie and have spar'd that or then the Plagues of Moses and of Aaron could have fallen upon Goshen and have spar'd Egypt His Gomers abound with Manna he overflows with all for necessities and with all delicacies in this life and yet he findes worms in his Manna a putrefaction and a mouldring away of this abundant state but he sees not that that is because his Manna was gathered upon the Sabbath that there were profanations of the Name and Ordinances of God mingled in his means of growing rich To end all This is the true Use that we are to make of the long-suffering and patience of God That when his patience ends ours may begin That if he forbear others rather then us 21.7 we do not expostulate as in Job Wherefore do the wicked live and become old and grow mighty in power but rather if he chastise us rather then others Psal 44.18 say with David Our heart is not turned back neither have our steps declined from thy ways though thou hast sore broken us in the place of dragons and covered us with the shadow of death And that if sentence be executed upon us we may make use of his judgement and if not we may continue and enlarge his mercies towards us AMEN A SERMON Preached at WHITE-HALL Serm. 7. Novemb. 2. 1617. SERMON VII PSAL. 55.19 Because they have no changes therefore they fear not God IN a Prison where men wither'd in a close and perpetual imprisonment In a Galley where men were chain'd to a laborious and perpetual slavery In places where any change that could come would put them in a better state then they were before this might seem a fitter Text then in a Court where every man having set his foot or plac'd his hopes upon the present happy state and blessed Government every man is rather to be presum'd to love God because there are no changes then to take occasion of murmuring at the constancie of Gods goodness towards us But because the first murmuring at their present condition the first Innovation that ever was was in Heaven The Angels kept not their first Estate Though as Princes are Gods so their well-govern'd Courts are Copies and representations of Heaven yet the Copy cannot be better then the Original And therefore as Heaven it self had so all Courts will ever have some persons that are under the Increpation of this Text That Because they have no changes therefore they fear not God At least if I shall meet with no conscience that finds in himself a guiltiness of this sin if I shall give him no occasion of repentance yet I shall give him occasion of praysing and magnifying that gracious God which hath preserv'd him from such sins as other men have fallen into though he have not For I shall let him see first The dangerous slipperiness the concurrence Divisio the co-incidence of sins that a habit and custom of sin slips easily into that dangerous degree of Obduration that men come to sin upon Reason they find a Quia a Cause a Reason why they should sin and then in a second place he shall see what perverse and frivolous reasons they assign for their sins when they are come to that even that which should avert them they make the cause of them Because they have no changes And then lastly by this perverse mistaking they come to that infatuation that dementation as that they loose the principles of all knowledge and all wisedom The fear of God is the beginning of wisedom and Because they have no changes they fear not God Part I. First then We enter into our first Part The slipperiness of habitual sin with that note of S. Gregorie Peccatum cum voce est culpa cum actione peccatum cum clamore est culpa cum libertate Sinful thougths produc'd into actions are speaking sins sinful actions continued into habits are crying sins There is a sin before these a speechless sin a whispering sin which no body hears but our own conscience which is when a sinful thought or purpose is born in our hearts first we rock it by tossing and tumbling it in our fancies and imaginations and by entertaining it with delight and consent with remembring with how much pleasure we did the like sin before and how much we should have if we could bring this to pass And as we rock it so we swathe it we cover it with some pretences some excuses some hopes of coveraling it and this is that which we call Morosam delectationem a delight to stand in the air and prospect of a sin and a loathness to let it go out of our sight Of this sin S. Gregory sayes nothing in this place but onely of actual sins which he calls speaking and of habitual which he calls crying sins And this is as far as the Schools or the Casuists do ordinarily trace sin To find out peccata Infantia speechless sins in the heart peccata vocatia speaking sins in our actions And peccata clamantia crying and importunate sins which will not suffer God to take his rest no nor to fulfil his own Oath and protestation He hath said As I live I would not the death of a sinner and they extort a death from him But besides these Here is a farther degree beyond speaking sins and crying sins beyond actual sins and habitual sins here are peccata cum ratione and cum disputatione we will reason we will debate we will dispute it out with God and we will conclude against all his Arguments that there is a Quia a Reason why we should proceed and go forward in our sin Et pudet non esse impudentes as S. Augustine heightens this sinful disposition Men grow asham'd of all holy shamefac'dness and tenderness toward sin they grow asham'd to be put off or frighted from their sinful pleasure with the ordinary terror of Gods imaginary judgements asham'd to be no wiser then S. Paul would have them to be mov'd or taken hold of by the foolishness of preaching or to be no stronger of themselves then so 1 Cor. 1.21 that we should trust to anothers taking of our infirmities Matth.

be King it is expressed so Uno corde 1 Cor. 12.3 8. He sent them out with one heart to make David King when God accelerated the propagation of his Church it is expressed so Una anima The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one soul Act. 4.32 Since God makes Nations and Armies and Churches one heart let not us make one heart two in our selves a divided a distracted a perplexed an irresolved heart but in all cases let us be able to say to our selves this we should doe God asks the heart a single heart an intire heart for whilst it is so God may have some hope of it but when it is a heart and a heart a heart for God and a heart for Mammon howsoever it may seem to be even the odds will seem to be on Mammons side against God because he presents possessions and God but reversions he the present and possessory things of this world God but the future and speratory things of the next so then the Cornullum no heart thoughtlesness incogitancy inconsideration and the Cor duplex the perplexed and irresolv'd and inconclusive heart do equally oppose this firmness and fixation of the heart which God loves which we consider in this stem stalk of Pithagoras his Symbolical letter and so doth that which we proposed for the third the Cor vagum the wandring the way faring the inconstant heart Many times in our private actions Cor vagum and in the cribration and sifting of our Consciences for thas's the Sphere I move in and no higher we doe overcome the first difficulty in consideration wee consider seriously And somtimes the second irresolution we resolve confidently But never the Third In constancy if so far as to bring holy resolutions into actions yet never so far as to bring holy actions into Habits Jer. 17.9 That word which we read Deceitfull The heart is deceitfull above all things who can know it is in the Originall Gnacob and that is not only fraudulentum but versipelle deceitfull because it varies it selfe into divers forms so that it does not only deceive others others finde not our heart the same towards them to day that it was yesterday but it deceives our selves we know not what nor where our heart will be hereafter Upon those words of Esai Redite praevaricatores ad Cor 46.8 Return O sinner to thy heart Longe eos mittit sayes Saint Gregory God knowes whether that sinner is sent that is sent to his own heart for where is thy heart Thou maist remember where it was yesterday at such an office at such a Chamber but yesterdaies affections are chang'd to day as to daies will be to morrow They have despised my Judgements so God complains in Ezechiel 20.16 that is They are not mov'd with my punishments they call all naturall accidents And then it followeth They have polluted my Sabaths they are come to a more faint and dilute and indifferent way in their Religion now what hath occasioned this neglecting of God's Judgements and this diluteness and indifferency in the wayes of Religion That that followes there Their hearts went after their Idols Went Whether every whither for Quot vitia tot recentes Deos Hier. so many habituall sinnes so many Idols and so every man hath some Idoll some such sinne and then that Idoll sends him to a further Idoll that sinne to another for every sinne needs the assistance and countenance of another sinne for disguise and palliation We are not constant in our sinnes much lesse in our more holy purposes we complain and justly of the Church of Rome that she would not have us receive in utraque in both kinds but alas who amongst us doth receive in utraque so as that when he receives bread wine he receives with a tru sorrow for former a tru resolution against future sins Except the Lord of heaven create new hearts in us of our selves we have Cor nullum no heart all vanishes into incogitancies except the Lord of heaven can center our affections of our selves we have Cor Cor a cloven a divided heart a heart of irresolution except the Lord of heaven fix our Resolutions of our selves we have Cor vagum a various a wandring heart all smoaks into inconstancy and all these three are enemies to that firmness and fixation of the heart which God loves and wee seeke after but yet how variously soever the heart doth wander and how little a while soever it stay upon one object yet that that thy heart doth stay upon Christ in this place calls thy Treasure for the words admit well that inversion Where your Treasure is there will your heart be also implies this where your heart is that is your Treasure And so we passe from this Stem and Stalke of Pythagoras his Symbolicall letter the firmness and fixation of the heart to the hornes and beames thereof a broader but on the left hand and in that the corruptible Treasures of this world and a narrower but on the right hand and in that the everlasting Treasures of the next On both sides that that you fix your heart upon is your Treasure for where your heart is there is your Treasure also Literally primarily radically Thesaurus treasure is no more Thesaurus but Depositum in Crastinum provision for to morrow to show how little a proportion a regulated minde and a contented heart may make a Treasure but we have enlarged the signification of these words Provision and to Morrow for provision must signifie all that can any way be compassed and to morrow must signifie as long as there shall be a to morrow till Time shall be no more but waiving these infinite extensions and perpetuities is there any thing of that nature as taking the word Treasure in the narrowest signification to be but provision for to morrow we are sure shall last till to morrow Sits any man here in an assurance that he shall be the same to morrow that he is now you have your Honors your Offices your Possessions perchance under Seal a Seal of Wax Wax that hath a tenacity an adhering a cleaving nature to shew the royall constancy of his heart that gives them and would have them continue with you and stick to you but then Wax if it be heat hath a melting a fluid a running nature to so have these Honors and Offices and Possessions to them that grow too hot too confident in them or too imperious by them for these Honors and Offices and Possessions you have a Seal a fair and just evidence of assurance but have they any Seal upon you any assurance of you till to morrow Did our blessed Saviour give day or any hope of a to morrow to that man to whom he said Fool this night they fetch away thy soul or is there any of us that can say Christ said not that to him But yet a Treasure every

man hath Thesaurus malorum Luc. 6. An evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evill sayes our Saviour every man hath some sin upon which his heart is set and where your heart is there is your treasure also The Treasures of wickednesse profit nothing sayes Job 't is true but yet treasures of wickedness there are 10.2 Mich. 6.10 Are there not yet Treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked consider the force of that word yet yet though you have the power of a vigilant Prince executed by just Magistrates yet though you have the piety of a religious Prince seconded by the assiduity of a laborious Clergy yet though you have many helps which your Fathers did and your neighbors doe want and have by Gods grace some fruits of those many helps yet for all this Are there not yet Treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked No Are there not scant measures which are an abomination to God sayes the Prophet there which are not only false measures of merchantdize but false measures of men for when God sayes that he intends all this Is there not yet supplantation in Court and misre-presentations of men When Salomon who understood subordination of places which flowed from him as well as the highest which himself possest sayes and sayes experimentally for his own and prophetically for future times If a Ruler a man in great place hearken to lies all his servants are wicked Are there not yet misrepresentations of men in Courts Is there not yet oppression in the Countrey Prov. 29.12 Amos 8.5 a starving of men and pampering of dogs A swallowing of the needy a buying of the poor for a pair of shoes and a selling to the hungry refuse corn Esai 5.23 Is there not yet oppression in the Country Is there not yet extortion in Westminster A justifying of the wicked for a reward and a taking away of the righteousness of the righteous from him Is there not yet extortion in Westminster Is there not yet Collusion and Circumvention in the City would they not seem richer than they are when they deal in private bargains with one another and would they not seem poorer than they are when they are called to contribute for the Publique Exech 28.5 have they not encreased their riches by Trade and lifted up their hearts upon the encrease of their riches Amos 2 8. have they not slackned their Trade and lyen down upon clothes laid to pledge and ennobled themselves by an ignoble and lazie way of gain Is there not yet collusion and circumvention in the City Is there not yet Hypocrisie in the Church In all parts thereof half-preachings and half-hearings hearings and preachings without practise have we not national sins of our own and yet exercise the nature of Islanders in importing the sins of foraign parts And though we better no foragin commodity nor manufactures that we bring in we improve the sins of other Nations And as a weaker grape growing upon the Rhene contracts a stronger nature in the Canaries so doe the sins of other Nations transplanted amongst us Have we not secular sins sins of our own age our own time and yet sin by precedent of former as well as create precedents for future Jos 6.19 and not only Silver and gold but vessels of iron and brasse were brought into the Treasury of the Lord not only the glorious sins of high places and nationall sins and secular sins but the wretchedest begger in the street contributes to this Treasure the Treasure of sin and to this mischievous use to encrease this Treasure The Treasure of sin is a subsidieman he begs in Jesus name and for Gods sake and in the same name curses him that does not give he counterfeits a lameness or he loves his lameness and would not be cur'd for his lameness is his stock it is his demean it is as they call their occupations in the City his mystery Are there not yet Treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked when even they who have no houses but lie in the streets have these Treasures Thesaurus Dei hic There are and then as the nature of treasure is to multiply so does this treasure this treasure of sin it produces another treasure Thesaurizamus iram Ro. 2.5 We treasure up unto our selves wrath against the day of wrath Deut. 32.34 For it is of the sins of the people that God speaks when he saies Is not this laid up in store with me and sealed up amongst my treasures He treasures up the sins of the disobedient but where In the treasury of his Judgments And then that treasury he opens against us in this world his treasure of snow and treasures of hail that is unseasonableness of weather barrenness and famine and he bringeth his winds out of his treasury contrary winds or storms and tempests to disappoint our purposes Job 38.22 And as he saies to Cyrus I will give thee even thee Cyrus though God car'd not for Cyrus Psal 135.7 otherwise then as he had made Cyrus his scourge I will give thee the treasures of darkness Esa 45.3 and the hidden treasures of secret places God will enable enemies though he loves not those enemies to afflict that people that love not him And these war and dearth and sickness are the weapons of Gods displeasure and these he poures out of his treasury in this world Thesaur Dei in ●●tu●o But then for the world to come he shall open our treasury for whatsoever moved our translators to render that word Armory and not Treasury in that place yet evidently it is Treasury and in that very word Otzar which they translate Treasury Jer. 50.25 in all those places of Job and David and Esai which we mentioned before and in all other places he shall open that treasury saies that Prophet and bring forth the weapons not as before of displeasure but in a far heavier word the weapons of his indignation And in the bowels and treasure of his mercy let me beseech you not to call the denouncing of Gods indignation a Satyr of a Poet or an invective of an Orator as Salomon saies there is a time for all things there is a time for consternation of presumptuous hearts as well as for redintegration of broken hearts and the time for that is this time of mortification which we enter into now Now therefore let me have leave to say that the indignation of God is such a thing as a man would be afraid to think he can express it afraid to think he does know it for the knowledg of the indignation of God imples the sense feeling thereof all knowledg of that is experimental and that 's a woful way and a miserable acquisition and purchase of knowledg To recollect treasure is provision for the future no worldly thing is so there is no certain

fixt the Almighty and immoveable God if it can be content to inquire after it self and take knowledge where it is and in what way it will finde the means of cleansing And so this second consideration The placing of this pureness in the heart enlarges it self also into the third branch of this part which is De Modo by what means this pureness is fix'd in the heart in which is involved the Affection with which it must be embrac'd Love He that loveth pureness of heart Both these then are setled Our heart is naturally foul Modus And our heart may be cleansed But how is our present disquisition Who can bring a clean thing out of filthiness There is not one Job 14.4 Adam foul'd my heart and all yours nor can we make it clean our selves Who can say I have made clean my heart There is but one way Prov. 20.9 a poor beggarly way but easie and sure to ask it of God And even to God himself it seems a hard work to cleanse this heart and therefore our prayer must be with David Cor mundum crea Create Psal 51.12 O Lord a pure heart in me And then comes Gods part not that Gods part begun but then for it was his doing that thou madest this prayer but because it is a work that God does especially delight in to build upon his own foundations when he hath disposed thee to pray and upon that prayer created a new heart in thee then God works upon that new heart and By faith purifyes it Act. 15.9 enables it to preserve the pureness as Saint Peter speaks He had kindled some sparks of this faith in thee before thou askedst that new heart else the prayer had not been of faith but now finding thee obsequious to his beginnings he fuels this fire and purifies thee as Gold and Silver in all his furnaces through Believing and Doing and suffering through faith and works and tribulation we come to this pureness of heart And truely he that lacks but the last but Tribulation as fain as we would be without it lacks one concoction one refining of this heart But in this great work the first act is a Renovation a new heart Co● Nov●m and the other That we keep clean that heart by a continual diligence and vigilancy over all our particular actions In these two consists the whole work of purifying the heart first an Annihilating of the former heart which was all sin And then a holy superintendency over that new heart which God vouchsafes to create in us to keep it as he gives it clean pure It is in a word a Detestation of former sins and a prevention of future And for the first Chromakus Anno 390. Mundi corde sunt qui deposuere cor peccati That 's the new heart that hath disseised expelled the heart of sin There is in us a heart of sin which must be cast up for whilst the heart is under the habits of sin we are not onely sinful but we are all sin as it is truly said that land overflow'd with sea is all sea And when sin hath got a heart in us it will quickly come to be that whole Body of Death Rom. 7.24 which Saint Paul complains of who shall deliver me from the Body of this Death when it is a heart it will get a Braine a Brain that shall minister all Sense and Delight in sin That 's the office of the Brain A Brain which shall send for the sinews and ligaments to tye sins together and pith and marrow to give a succulencie and nourishment even to the bones to the strength and obduration of sin and so it shall do all those services and offices for sin that the brain does to the natural body So also if sin get to be a heart it will get a liver to carry blood and life through all the body of our sinful actions That 's the office of the liver And whilst we dispute whether the throne and seat of the soul be in the Heart or Brain or Liver this tyrant sin will praeoccupate all and become all so as that we shall finde nothing in us without sin nothing in us but sin if our heart be possest inhabited by it And if it be true in our natural bodies that the heart is that part that lives first and dyes last it is much truer of this Cor peccati this heart of sin for this hearty sinner that hath given his heart to his sin doth no more foresee a Death of that sin in himself then he remembers the Birth of it and because he remembers not or understands not how his soul contracted sin by coming into his body he leaves her to the same ignorance how she shall discharge her self of sin when she goes out of that body But as his sin is elder then himself for Adams sin is his sin so is it longer liv'd then his body for it shall cleave everlastingly to his soul too God asks no more of thee but fili da mihi cor Prov. 23.26 My son give me thy heart Because when God gave it thee it was but one heart But since thou hast made it Cor cor as the Prophet speaks a Heart and a Heart a double Heart give both thy Hearts to God thy natural weakness and disposition to sin The inclinations of thy heart And thy habitual practise of sin The obduration of thy heart cor peccans and Cor peccati and he shall create a new heart in thee which is the first way of attaining this pureness of heart to become once in a good state to have as it were paid all thy former debts and so to be the better able to look about thee for the future for prevention of subsequent sins which is the other way that we proposed for attaining this pureness detestation of former habits watchfulness upon particular actions Till this be done till this Cor peccati Peccata Minutiora this hearty habitualness in sin be devested there is no room no footing to stand and sweep it a heart so filled with foulness will admit no counsel no reproof The great Engineir would have undertaken to have removed the World with his Engine if there had been any place to fix his Engine upon out of the World I would undertake by Gods blessing upon his Ordinance to cleanse the foulest heart that is if that Engine which God hath put into my hands might enter into his heart if there were room for the renouncing Gods Judgements and for the application of Gods mercies in the merits of Christ Jesus in his heart they would infallibly work upon him But he hath petrified his heart in sin and then he hath immur'd it wall'd it with a delight in sin and fortified it with a justifying of his sin and adds daily more and more out-works by more and more daily sins so that the denouncing of Judgement the application of Mercies

the soul it is the only means to recover thee But yet wert thou not better to make this grace thy diet then thy physick Wert thou not better to nourish thy soul with this grace all the way then to hope to purge thy soul with it at last This as a Diet the Apostle prescribes thee Whether you eat or drink do all to the glory of God He intends it farther there Whatsoever you do and farther then that in another place Whatsoever ye do in deed 1 Cor. 10.31 Col. 3.17 or in word do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Since there is no action so little but God may be glorified in it there is no action so little but the Devil may have his end in it too and may overthrow thee by a tentation which thou thinkest thy self strong enough to leap over And therefore if you have not given over all love of true weights and true measures weigh and measure your particular and indifferent actions before you do them and you shall see at least grains of iniquity in them and then this advantage will you have by this preconsideration and weighing your actions before hand that when you know there is sin in that action and know that nothing can counterpoise nor weigh down sin but onely the Blood of Christ Jesus you may know too that the Blood of Christ Jesus cannot be had before hand God gives no such non-obstantes no such priviledges no leave to sin no pardon for sin before it be committed And therefore if this premeditation of this action bring thee to see that there is sin in it it must necessarily put a tenderness a horror an aversion in thee from doing that to which being thus done with this preconsideration and presumption the Blood of thy Saviour doth not appertain To all your other Wares the baser and courser they are the greater weight and measure you are content to give to the basest of all to sin you give the lightest weight and scantest measure and you supply all with the excuses of the custom of the time that the necessity of your trade forces you to it else you should be poor and poorly thought of Beloved God never puts his children to a perplexity to a necessity of doing any sin how little soever though for the avoiding of a sin as manifold as Adams It is not a little request to you to beware of little sins It is not a little request and therefore I make it in the words of the greatest to the greatest for they are all one Head and Body of Christ to his Church Cant. 2.15 Capite vulpeculas Take us the little Foxes for they devour the Vines It is not a cropping not a pilling nor a retarding of the growth of the Vines but Demoliuntur as little as those Foxes are they devour the Vines they root them out Thy Soul is not so easily devoured by that Lion 1 Pet. 5.8 Apoc. 5.5 that seeks whom he may devour for still he is put to seek and does not always finde And thou shalt hear his roaring that is thou shalt discern a great sin and the Lion of the Tribe of Judah will come in to thy succor as soon as thou callest But take heed that thy Soul be not eaten up with vermin by those little sins which thou thinkst thou canst forbear and give over when thou wilt God punished the Egyptians most by little things Hailstones and Frogs and Grashoppers and Pharaohs Sorcerers Exod. 8.16 which did greater failed in the least in Lice It is true there is Physick for this Christ Jesus that receives thy greatest sins into his Blood can receive these Vermin too into his Bowels even at last but yet still make his Grace rather thy Diet by a daily consideration before hand then thy Physick at last It is ill to take two Physicks at once bodily and ghostly Physick too upon thy Death-bed The Apothecary and the Physician do well together the Apothecary and the Priest not so well Consult with him before at least consult with thine own Conscience in those little actions which either their own nature or the custom of the time or thy course of life thy calling and the example of others in thy calling made thee think indifferent For though it may seem a degree of flattery to preach against little sins in such a City as this where greater sins do abound yet because these be the materials and elements of greater sins and it is impossible to say where a Bowl will lie that is let fall down a Hill though it be let never so gently out of the hand and there is no pureness of heart till even these Cobwebs and Crums be swept away He that affects that pureness will consider well that of St. Augustine Psal 24.4 Interest inter rectum corde mundum corde a right heart and a clean heart is not all one He may have a right heart that keeps in the right way in the profession of the right Religion but he onely keeps his heart pure that watches all his steps even in that right way St. Augustine considers that question of David Psal 24.3 Quis ascendet and quis stabit Who shall ascend into the Hill of the Lord and who shall stand in his holy place And he applies the answer Innocens manibus mundo corde He that hath clean hands and a pure heart Thus That he that hath clean hands clean from blood clean from bribery and oppression clean from fornication and such notorious sins Ascendet in montem He shall ascend into the Hill of the Lord he shall be admitted to all the benefits that the Christian Church can give him but onely he that hath a pure heart a care to glorifie God in a holy watchfulness upon all his particular actions to the exclusion of lesser sins stabit shall stand safe confident unshaken in his holy place even in the judgment of God clean hands justifie him to men a pure heart to God And therefore this pureness of heart is here wrapped up in the richest mantle in the noblest affection that the nature of man hath that is love For this is not onely a contentment an acquiescence a satisfaction a delight in this pureness of heart but love is a holy impatience in being without it or being in a jealousie that we are without it and it is a holy fervor and vehemency in the pursuit of it and a preferring it before any other thing that can be compared to it That 's love and therefore it deserves to be insisted upon now when in our order proposed at first from the thing it self that is required pureness and the seat and center of that pureness the heart and the way of this fixation of this pureness in the heart detestation of former habits of sins and prevention of future sins in a watchful consideration of all our actions before we do them We are come to that affection

else this is their Attrition and this is their enough for salvation A sigh of the penitent a word of the Priest makes all clean and induces an absolute pureness Thus some of the Ancients went too far They would pardon no sin after Baptism These new Men go not far enough They pardon all too easily Old Physicians thought all hurts in the heart presently mortal These new Physitians can pare off some of the heart and give it to Idolatry for so they say that the worship due to God may be given to a creature so it be not Tanquam Deo as that the Creature is thereby professed to be God and yet they confess that that worship which they give to the creature is idolatry but not that Idolatry say they which is forbidden in the commandment which is that that Creature so worshipped with the worship due to God be also believed to be God and so truely I believe it will be hard to finde any Idolatry in the world That they that worship any thing in representation of God do believe advisedly that representation to be very God But the true reason why no hurt received in the heart can be healed is quia palpitat because it is in perpetual motion If the heart lay still as other parts do so that medicinal helps might be applied to it and admitted by it there were more hope Therefore when we lay such a weight upon the heart as may settle it fix it give it a reposedness and acquiescence though it do receive some wounds though it be touched with some tentations it may be cured But is there any such weight as should so settle the heart the soul of Man This love of Pureness is that weight August Amor est pondus animae sicut gravitas Corporis As the weight of my body makes that steady so this love of Pureness is the weight and the ballast of my soul and this weight stays the palpitation the variation the deviation of the heart upon other objects which variation frustrates all endeavors to cure it The love of this pureness is both the ballast and the frait to carry thee steadily and richly too through all storms and tempests spiritual and temporal in this life to the everlasting Jerusalem If you be come to this love this love of pureness of heart never to lock up your door till you have carried out your dust never to shut your eyes at night till you have swept your conscience and cast your foulness into that infinite sea of the blood of Christ Jesus which can contract no foulness by it never to open your eyes in the morning but that you look out to glorifie God in the rising of the Sun and in his other creatures and in the peace and safety of your house and family and the health of your children and servants But especially to look inward and consider whether you have not that night mingled poyson with Gods Physick whether you have not mingled sloth and laziness in that which God gave you for rest and refreshing whether you have not mingled licentiousness in that which God gave you for a remedy against fornication And then when you shall have found that sin hath been awake in you even when your bodies were asleep be sure you cast not the Spirit of God into a sleep in you when your bodies are awake but that you proceed vigilantly in your several wayes with a fore-knowledge that there is every where coluber in via A Snake in the way in every way that you can take in every course of life in every calling there is some of the seed of the old Serpent presents it self And then if by Gods infallible word explicated in his Church Psal 119.104 which is Lucerna pedibus vestris The word is the light but the Church is the Lanthorne 2 Sam. 22.29 it presents and preserves that light unto you and though it be said Lucerna Dominus Apoc. 21.23 Thou O Lord art my light God himself And Lucerna Agnus The Lamb Christ himself is your light And lucerna mandatum Prov. 6.23 John 5.35 The commandments of God are your light yet it is also said of Iohn Baptist Lucerna ardens he was a burning and a shining light The Ministry of the Gospel in the Church is your light If by the benefit of this light you consider every step you make weigh every action you undertake this is that love of Pureness that Pondus animae the setling of the heart that keeps it from evaporating upon transitory things and settles it so as that it becomes capable of that cure which God in his Church in the Absolution of sins and seals of Reconciliation exhibits to it To recollect and contract that which hath been said This pureness is not a purifying pureness to correct and reform those things that appertain not to us nor it is not such a purified pureness as makes us Canonize our selves and think others Reprobates for all this is no pureness at all neither is it the true pureness if it be not in the heart for outward good works not done to good ends are impure nor is this pureness of heart acquired by any other means then by discharging the heart in a detestation of former habits and a sedulous watchfulness in preventing future attempts nor can this pureness of heart though by these means attain'd to be preserved but by this noble and incorruptible affection of Love that puts a true value upon it and therefore prefers it above all other things And this was the first of the two marks which we found to be upon that person that should be capable of the Kings friendship He that loveth pureness of heart And the other is that he have by honest industry fitted himself in some way to be of use to the publike delivered in that phrase Grace of lips He that loveth pureness of heart There 's his honesty for the Grace of his lips There 's his sufficiency The King shall be his friend There 's his reward his preferment Gratia labiorum Ordinarily in Scriptures where this word lips is not taken naturally literally narrowly for that part of the body but transferred to a figurative and larger sense either it signifies speaking onely as in Solomon As righteous lips are the delight of Kings and the King loveth him that speaketh right things That is Him in whose Counsels Prov. 16.13 and in whose relations he may confide and rely or else it is enlarged to all manner of expressing a mans ability to do service to that State in which God hath made his station and by lips and fruits of lips is well understood the fruit of all his good labors and endeavors And so may those words be well interpreted With the fruit of a mans mouth shall his belly be satisfied and with the encrease of his lips shall he be filled 18.20 That is his honest labors in a lawful calling shall

of darkness so he hath shin'd in our hearts First He made light There was none before so first He shines in our hearts by his preventing Grace there was no light before not of Nature by which any man could see any means of salvation not of foreseen Merits that God should light his light at our Candle give us Grace therefore because he saw that we would use that Grace well He made light he infus'd Grace And then He made light first of all Creatures Ut innotescerent says St. Ambr. that by that light all his other Creatures might be seen which is also the use of this other light that shines in our hearts that by that light the love of the Truth and the glory of Christ Jesus all our actions may be manifested to the world and abide that tryal that we look for no other approbation of them then as they are justifiable by that light as they conduce to the maintenance of his Religion and the advancement of his glory not to consider actions as they are wisely done valiantly done learnedly done but onely as they are religiously done and ut abdicemus occulta dedecoris v. 2. as the Apostle speaks That we may renounce the hidden things of dishonesty and not walk in craftiness that is not sin therefore because we see our sins may be hid from the world For says St. Ambrose speaking of Gyges Ring a Ring by which he that wore it became invisible Da sapienti says that Father Give a wise man a man religiously wise that Ring and though he might sin invisibly before men he would not because God sees Nay Seneca even the moral man goes further then that in that point Though I knew says he hominem ignoraturum Deum ignosciturum that man should never know it and that God would forgive it I would not sin for the very soulness that is naturally in sin As God commanded light for the Manifestation of his creatures so he hath shin'd in our hearts that our actions might appear by that light How then made he that light Dixit he said it by his Word In which we note first the means Verbo he did it by his Word and by his Word the preaching of his Word doth he shine in our hearts And we consider also the dispatch how soon he made light Chrysost with a word Dixit id est summa cum celeritate fecit his work cost him but a word Tertul. and then Cogitasse jussisse est his word cost him but a thought So if we consider the dispatch of Christ Jesus in all his Miracles there went but a Tolle Take up thy bed and walk to the lame man but an Ephptata Be opened to the deaf man but a Quid vides What seest thou to the blind man If we consider his dispatch upon the thief on the cross how soon he brought him from reviling to glorifying and if any in this Auditory feel that dispatch of the Holy Ghost in his heart that whereas he came hither but to see he hath heard or if he came to hear the man he hath heard God in the man and is better at this Glass then he was at the first better now then when he came and will go away better then he is yet he that feels this must confess that as God commanded light out of darkness so he hath shin'd in his heart So that is by the same means by his Word and so that is with the same speed and dispatch Again Deus vidit lucem God saw the light he looked upon it he considered it This second light even Religion it self must be looked upon considered not taken implicitely nor occasionally not advantageously but seriously and deliberately and then assuredly and constantly And then vidit quod bona God saw that this light was good God did not see nor say that darkness was good that ignorance how near of kin soever they make it to Devotion was good nor that the waters were good that a flui'd a moving a variable an uncertain irresolution in matter of Religion is good nor that that Abyssus that depth which was before light was good that it is good to surround and enwrap our selves in deep and perplexing School-points but he saw that light evident and fundamental Articles of Religion were good good to clear thee in all scruples good to sustain thee in all tentations God knew that this light would be good before he made it but he did not say so till he saw it God knew every good work that thou shouldest doe every good thought that thou shouldest think to thy end before thy beginning for he of his own goodness imprinted this degree of goodness in thee but yet assure thy self that he loves thee in another manner and another measure then when thou comest really to doe those good works then before or when thou didst only conceive a purpose of doing them he calls them good when he sees them And when he saw this light this good light he separated all darkness from it When thou hast found this light to have shin'd in thy heart God manifested in his way his true Religion separate all darkness the dark inventions and traditions of men and the works of darkness sin and since thou hast light be night not thy self again with relapsing to either The comparison of these two lights created and infus'd light would run in infinitum I shut it up with this that as at the first production of light till light was made there was a general an universal darkness darkness over all but after light was once made there was never any universal darkness because there is no body bigg enough to shadow the whole Sun from the Earth so till this light shine in our hearts we are wholly darkness but when it hath truly and effectually shin'd in us and manifested to us the evidence of our Election in Gods eternal Decree howsoever there may be some Clouds some Eclipses yet there is no total darkness no total no final falling away of Gods Saints And in all these respects the comparison holds As God commanded light out of darkness so he hath shin'd in our hearts and so we have done with all the branches of our second part which implies our Vocation here and we pass to the last Our Glorification hereafter As in our first part we consider'd by occasion of the first Creature light the whole Creation and so the Creation of man Part III. and in our second part by occasion of this shining in our hearts the whole work of our Vocation and proceeding in this world so in this third part by occasion of this glorious manifestation of God in the face of Christ Jesus which is intended principally by this Apostle of the manifestation of God in the Christian Church we shall also as far as that dazling glory will give us leave consider the perfect state of glory in the Kingdom of Heaven So

that our Deeds are the true seals of that love which was also love Ambrose when it was in words But Ne quod luxuriat in flore attenuetur hebetetur in fructu lest that tree that blew early and plentifully blast before it knit second your good words with actions too It is the Husbandry and the Harvest of the righteous man as it gather'd in David The Mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom Psal 37.30 so we read it there it is in the Tongue in words onely The Vulgar hath it Meditatur He Meditates it so the heart is got in But the Original Hagah is noted to signifie fructificavit He brings forth fruits thereof and so the Hand is got in too And when that which is well spoken was well meant and hath been well expressed in Action that 's the Husbandry of the righteous Man then his Harvest is all in It is the way of God himself Philo Judaeus notes Exod. 20.18 that the people are said to have seen the noise and the voice of God because whatsoever God says it determines in Action If we may hear God we may see him what he says he does too Therefore from that example of God himself S. Gregory directs us We must says he shew our Love Et veneratione sermonis Ministerio largitatis what a fair respect in words and what a reall supply in Deeds Nay when we look upon our pattern that is God Tertullian notes well That God prevented his own speaking by Doing Benedicebat quae benefaciebat first he made all things Good and then he Blessed them that they might be better first he wrought and then he spoke And so Christs way and proceeding is presented to us too so far from not Doing when he speaks as that he Does before he speaks Acts 1.1 Luke ult 19. Christ began to Do and to Teach says S. Luke but first to Do. And He was mighty in Deeds and in words but first in Deeds We cannot write so well as our Copy to begin alwayes at Deeds as God and his Christ But yet let us labor to write so fair after it as first to afford comfortable words and though our Deeds come after yet to have them from the beginning in our intention and that we do them not because we promised but promise because we love to do good and love to lay upon our selves the obligation of a promise The instrument and Organ of Nature was the eye The Natural Man finds God in that he sees in the Creature The Organ of the Law which exalted and rectified Nature was the Hand Fac hoc vives perform the law and thou shalt live So also the Organ of the Gospel is the Ear for faith comes by hearing But then the Organ of faith it self is the Hand too A Hand that lays hold upon the Merits of Christ for my self and a Hand that delivers me over to the Church of God in a holy life and exemplary Actions for the edification of others So that All All from nature to Grace determines in Action in Doing good Sic facite Deo so do good to God in reall assisting his cause Sic facite Diis so do good to them whom God hath called Gods in reall secondings their religious purposes Sic facite Imaginibus Dei so do good to the Images of God in reall relieving his distressed Members as that you do all this upon that which is made the Reason of all in the second part of this text Because you are to be judged by the law of liberty Timor futuri judicii hujus vitae praedagogus Part. II. Basil Our School-Master to teach us to stand upright in the last judgement Judicium is the Meditation and the fear of that judgement in this life It is our School-master and School-master enough I said unto the fool Psal 75.5 thus and thus says David And I said unto the wicked thus and thus says he for says he God is the Judge He thought it enough to enlighten the understanding of the fool enough to rectifie the perverseness of the wicked if he could set God before them in that Notion as a Judge for this is one great benefit from the present contemplation of the future judgement that whosoever does truly and advisedly believe that ever he shall come to that judgement is at it now He that believes that God will judge him is Gods Commissioner Gods Delegate and in his name judges himself now Therefore it is a useful mistaking which the Romane Translation is fallen into in this Text in reading it thus Sicut incipientes judicari So speak ye and so Do as they upon whom the judgement were already begun For Qui timet ante Christi Tribunal praesentari Aug. He that is afraid to be brought to the last judgement hath but one Refuge but one Sanctuary Ascendat Tribunal Mentis suae constituat se ante seipsum Let him cite himself before himself give evidence himself against himself and so guilty as he is found here so innocent he shall stand there Let him proceed upon himself as Job did 9.28 and he is safe I am afraid of all my sorrow says he Afraid that I have not said enough against my self nor repented enough Afraid that my sorrows have not been sincere but mingled with circumstances of loss of health or honour or fortune occasioned by my sins and not onely not principally for the sin it self I am afraid of all my sorrowes sayes he but how much more then of my mirths and pleasures To judge our selves by the judgement of flatterers that depend upon us to judge our selves by the event and success of things I am enriched I am preferred by this course and therefore all 's well to judge our selves by example of others others do thus and why not I All these proceedings are Coram non Judice all these are literally Praemunire cases for they are appellations into forraigne Jurisdictions and forraigne Judicatures Onely our own conscience rectified is a competent judge And they that have passed the triall of that judgement do not so much rise to judgement at last as stand and continue in judgement their judgement that is their triall is passed here and there they shall onely receive sentence and that sentence shall be Euge bone serve Well done good and faithfull servant since thou didst enter into Judgement in the other world enter into thy Masters Joy in this But howso ever we be prepar'd for that judgement well or not well and howsoever the Judge be disposed towards us well or not well there is this comfort given us here that that judgement shall be per legem by a Law we shall be judged by a law of Liberty which is our second branch in this second part Per Legem The Jews that prosecuted the Judgement against Christ durst not do that without pretending a Law Habemus legem say they we have a law

upon me and there is a law of sin and a law in my flesh which after the water of Baptism taken and the water of penitent teares given after the blood of Jesus Christ taken and mine own blood given that is a holy readiness at that time when I am made partaker of Christs death to die for Christ throwes me back by relapses into those repented sins This put the Apostle to that passionate exclamation O wretched man that I am And yet he found a deliverance even from the body of this death through Jesus Christ his Lord that is a free an open recourse and access to him in all oppressions of heart in all dejections of spirit Now when this Chyrographum this bond of Adams hand Original sin is cancell'd upon the Cross of Christ And this Pactum this band of mine hand actual sins washed away in the blood of Christ and this Lex in membris this disposition to relapse into repented sins which as a tide that does certainly come every day does come every day in one form or other is beaten back as a tide by a bank by a continual opposing the merits and the example of Christ Jesus and the practise of his fasting and such other medicinall disciplines as I find to prevaile against such relapses when by this blessed means the whole Law against which I am a trespasser is evacuated will God condemn me for all this and not by a Law When I have pleaded Christ and Christ and Christ Baptism and Blood and Teares will God condemn me an oblique way when he cannot by a direct way by a secret purpose when he hath no law to condemn me by Sad and disconsolate distorted and distracted soul if it be well said in the School Absurdum est disputare ex manuscriptis it is an unjust thing in Controversies and Disputations to press arguments out of Manuscripts that cannot be seen by every man it were ill said in thy conscience that God will proceed against thee ex manuscripto or condemn thee upon any thing which thou never saw'st any unrevealed purpose of his Suspicious soul ill-presaging soul Is there something else besides the day of Judgement that the Son of Man does not know Disquiet soul Does he not know the proceeding of that Judgement wherein himself is to be the Judge But that when he hath died for thy sins and so fulfilled the Law in thy behalfe thou maist be condemned without respect of that Law and upon something that shall have had no consideration no relation to any such breach of any such Law in thee Intricated intangled conscience Christ tells thee of a Judgement because thou didst not do the works of Mercy not feed not cloath the poor for those were enjoyned thee by a Law But he never tells thee of any Judgement therefore because thy name was written in a dark book of Death never unclasped never opened unto thee in thy life He sayes unto thee lovingly and indulgently Fear not for it is Gods good pleasure to give you the Kingdome But he never sayes to the wickedest in the world Live in fear dye in anxiety in suspition and suspension for his displeasure a displeasure conceived against you before you were sinners before you were men hath thrown you out of that Kingdome into utter darkness There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus the reason is added because the Law of the Spirit of Life hath made them free from the Law of Sin and of Death All upon all sides is still referred to Law And where there is no law against thee as there is not to him that is in Christ and he is in Christ who hath endeavoured the keeping or repented the breaking of the Law God will never proceed to execution by any secret purpose never notified never manifested Suspicious jealous scattered soule recollect thy self and give thy self that redintegration that acquiescence which the Spirit of God in the means of the Church offers thee study the Mystery of godlinesse which is without all controversie that is endeavour to keep repent the not keeping of the Law and thou art safe for that that you shall be judged by is a Law But then this Law is called here a Law of Liberty and whether that denotation that it is called a Law of Liberty import an ease to us or a heavier weight upon us is our last disquisition and conclusion of all So speak ye and so do as they that shall be judged by the Law of Liberty Lex libertatis That the Apostle here by the Law of Liberty meanes the Gospel 1.25 was never doubted He had called the Gospel so before this place Whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein shall be blessed in his deed that is blessed in doing so blessed in conforming himself to the Gospel But why does he call it so a Law of Liberty Not because men naturally affecting liberty might be drawn to an affection of the Gospel by proposing it in that specious name of Liberty though it were not so The Holy Ghost calls the Gospel a Pearle and a Treasure and a Kingdom and Joy and Glory not to allure men with false names but because men love these and the Gospel is truly all these a Pearle and a Treasure and a Kingdome and Joy and Glory And it is truly a Law of Liberty But of what kind and in what respect Not such a Liberty as they have established in the Roman Church where Ecclesiastical Liberty must exempt Ecclesiastical persons from participating all burdens of the State and from being Traitors though they commit treason because they are Subjects to no secular Prince nor the liberty of the Anabaptists that overthrowes Magistracy and consequently all subjection both Ecclesiastical and Laick for when upon those words Be ye not servants of men 1 Cor. 7.23 S. Chrysostome sayes this is Christian liberty Nec aliis nec sibi servire neither to be subjects to others nor to our selves that 's spoken with modification with relation to our first Allegeance our Allegeance to God not to be so subject to others or to our selves as that either for their sakes or our owne we depart from any necessary declaration of our service to God Deo First then the Gospel is a Law of Liberty in respect of the Author of the Gospel of God himself because it leaves God at his liberty Not at liberty to judge against his Gospel where he hath manifested it for a Law for he hath laid a holy necessity upon himself to judge according to that Law where he hath published that law But at liberty so as that it consists onely in his good pleasure to what Nation he will publish the Gospel or in what Nation he will continue the Gospel or upon what persons he will make this Gospel effectuall So Oecumenius who is no single witness nor speaks not alone but compiles the former Fathers places this

liberty in God that God is at liberty to give this Gospel when he will and at liberty so as that he hath exempted no man how well soever he love him nor put on such fetters or manacles upon himself but that he can and will punish those that transgress this law So it is a Law of liberty to God nothing determined upon any man nothing concluded in himself lies so in Gods way as to hinder him from proceeding in his last judgement according to the keeping or breaking of this law still God is at his liberty And it is a Law of liberty in respect of us of us who are Christians and considered so Nobis either with a respect to the naturall man or with a respect to the Jew For if we compare the Christian with the naturall man the law of Nature layes the same obligation upon the naturall man as the Gospel does upon the Christian for the morall part thereof The Christian is no more bound to love God nor his neighbour then the naturall man is therein the naturall man hath no more liberty then the Christian so far their law is equal And then all the law which the Christian hath and the natural man hath not is a law of liberty to the Christian that is a law that gives him an ease and a readier way to perform those duties which way the natural man hath not and yet is bound to the same duties The natural man if he transgress that law which he finds in his own heart findes a condemnation in himself as well as the Christian therein he is no freer then the Christian But he finds no Sanctuary no Altar no Sacrifice no Church no such Liberties as the Christian does in the Gospel So the Gospel is a law of Liberty to us in respect of the natural man that it sets us at liberty restores us to liberty after we are falne into prison for debt into Gods displeasure for sin by affording us means of reconciliation to God again It is so also in respect of the Law given by God to the Jewes Judaei The Jewes had liberties that is refuge and help of sacrifices for sin which the natural man had not for if the natural man were driven and followed from his own heart that he saw no comfort of an innocency there he had no other liberties to flie to no comfort in any other thing no law no promise annexed to any other action not to Sacrifice as the Jewes or to Sacrament as the Christians but must irremediably sink under the condemnation of his own heart The Jew had this liberty a Law and a Law that involv'd the Gospel but then the Gospel was to the Jew but as a letter seal'd and the Jew was but as a servant who was trusted to carry the letter as it was seal'd to another to carry it to the Christian Now the Christian hath received this letter at the Jews hand and he opens it he sees the Jewes Prophesie made History to him the Jewes hope and reversion made possession and inheritance to him he sees the Jewes faith made matter of fact he sees all that was promised and represented in the Law performed and recorded in the Gospel and applied in the Church John 15.15 There Christ sayes Henceforth call I you not servants but friends Wherein consists this enfranchisement In this The servant knoweth not what his master doth the Jewes knew not that but I have called you friends sayes Christ for all things that I heard of my Father Hebr. 7.19 I have made known unto you The Law made nothing perfect sayes the Apostle Where was the defect he tells us that the old Covenant that is Galat 4.24 the Law gendreth to bondage What bondage he tells us that too when he says The Law was a Schoolmaster The Jews were as School-boys always spelling and putting together Types and Figure which things typified and figured how this Lamb should signifie Christ how this fire should signifie a holy Ghost The Christian is come to the University from Grammar to Logick to him that is Logos it self the Word to apprehend apply Christ himself and so is at more liberty then when he had onely a dark law without any comment with the natural man or onely a dark comment that is the Law with a dimme light ill eys as the Jews had for though the Jew had the liberty of a Law yet they had not the law of Liberty So the Gospel is a law of Liberty to God who is still at his liberty to give and take and to condemn according to that law and a law of liberty to us as we are compared to the natural man or to the Jew But when we confine our selves in our selves positively without comparison it is not such a law of liberty to us as some men have come too near saying That the sins of Gods children do them no harm that God sees not the sins of his children that God was no further out with David in his Adultery then in his Repentance But as to be born within the Covenant that is of Christian Parents does not make us Christians Aug. for Non nascitur sed renascitur Christianus the Covenant gives us a title to the Sacrament of Baptisme and that Sacrament makes us Christians so this law of liberty gives us not a liberty to sin but a liberty from sin Noli libertate abuti ad libere peccandum sayes the same Father It is not a liberty 2 Cor. 3.17 but an impotency a slavery to sin Voluntas libera quae pia sayes he onely a holy soul is a free soul Where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty Leo. sayes the Apostle And Splendidissimum in se quisque habet speculum Every man hath a glasse a chrystal into which though he cannot call up this spirit for the Spirit of God breathes where it pleases him yet he can see this spirit if he be there in that glasse every man hath a glasse in himselfe where he may see himselfe and the Image of God sayes that Father and see how like he is to that To dare to reflect upon my selfe and to search all the corners of mine owne conscience whether I have rightly used this law of liberty and neither been bold before a sinne upon presumption of an easie nor diffident after upon suspicion of an impossible reconciliation to my God this is Evangelical liberty So then to end all though it be a law of Liberty because it gives us better meanes of prevention before and of restitution after then the natural man or the Jew had yet we consider that it is this law of Liberty this law that hath afforded us these good helps by which we shall be judged and so though our case be better then theirs because we have this law of Liberty which they wanted yet our case growes heavier then theirs if we use it not aright

to actuate which is the proper operation of the soul but to evaporate not to work in the body but to breathe and smoak through the body We have seen Estates of private men wasted by Inconsideration as well as by Riot and a soul may perish by a thoughtlesness as well as by ill thoughts God takes it as ill to be slighted as to be injur'd and God is as much slighted in Corde nullo in our thoughtlesness and inconsideration as he is oppos'd and provok'd in Corde maligno in a rebellious Heart There is a good nullification of the heart a good bringing of the heart to nothing For the fire of Gods Spirit may take hold of me and as the Disciples that went with Christ to Emmaus Luk. 24. were affected my heart may burn within me when the Scriptures are opened that is when Gods Judgements are denounced against my Sin and this heat may overcome my former frigidity and coldness and overcome my succeeding tepidity and lukewarmness and may bring my heart to a mollification 23.16 to a tenderness as Job found it The Almighty hath troubled me and made my heart soft for there are hearts of clay as well as hearts of wax hearts whom these fires of God his Corrections harden But if these fires of his these denunciations of his judgements have overcome first my coldness and then my lukewarmness and made my heart soft for better impressions the work is well advanc'd but it is not all done for Metal may be soft and yet not fusil Iron may be red hot and yet not apt to run into another mold Therefore there is a liquefaction a melting a pouring out of the heart such as Rahab speaks of 2.11 5.1 to Joshua's Spies As soon as we heard how miraculously God had proceeded in your behalf in drying up Jordan all our hearts melted within us and no man had any spirit left in him And when upon the consideration of Gods miraculous Judgements or Mercies I come to such a melting and pouring out of my heart that there be no spirit that is none of mine own spirit left in me when I have so exhausted so evacuated my self that is all confidence in my self that I come into the hands of my God as pliably as ductily as that first clod of earth of which he made me in Adam was in his hands in which clod of earth there was no kinde of reluctation against Gods purpose this is a blessed nullification of the heart When I say to my self as the Apostle professed of himself I am nothing and then say to God Lord though I be nothing 2 Cor. 12.11 yet behold I present thee as much as thou hadst to make the whole world of O Thou that mad'st the whole world of nothing make me that am nothing in mine own eyes a new Creature in Christ Jesus This is a blessed nullification a glorious annihilation of the heart So is there also a blessed nullification thereof in the contrition of heart in the sense of my sins when as a sharp winde may have worn out a Marble Statue or a continual spout worn out a Marble Pavement so my holy tears made holy in his Blood that gives them a tincture and my holy sighs made holy in that Spirit that breathes them in me have worn out my Marble Heart that is the Marbleness of my heart and emptied the room of that former heart and so given God a Vacuity a new place to create a new heart in But when God hath thus created a new heart that is re-enabled me by his Ordinance to some holy function then to put this heart to nothing to think nothing to consider nothing not to know our age but by the Church-Book and not by any action done in the course of our lives for our God for our Prince for our Country for our Neighbor for our Selves our selves are our souls not to know the seasons of the year but by the fruits which we eat and not by observation of the Publick and National Blessings which he hath successively given us not to know Religion but by the Conveniency and the Preferments to be had in this or in the other side to sit here and not to know if we be ask'd upon a surprize whether it were a Prayer or a Sermon or an Anthem that we heard last this is such a nullification of the heart such an annihilation such an exinanition thereof as reflects upon God himself for Respuit datorem Tertul. qui datum deserit He that makes no use of a Benefit despises the Benefactor And therefore A rod for his back qui indiget Corde Prov. 10.13 that is without a heart without consideration what he should do nay what he does For this is the first Enemy of this firmness and fixation of the heart without which we have no treasure And we have done with that Cor nullum and pass to the second Cor Cor Cor duplex the double the divided the distracted heart which is not Inconsideration but Irresolution This Irresolution Cor Duplex this Perplexity is intended in that Commination from God The Lord shall give them a trembling heart Deut. 28.65 this is not that Cor nullum that melted heart in which There was no spirit left in them as in Joshua's time but Cor pavidum a heart that should not know where to settle nor what to wish but as it follows there In the morning he shall say Would God it were evening and in the evening Would God it were morning And this is that which Solomon may have intended in his Prayer Give thy servant an understanding heart 1 Reg. 3.9 Cor Docile so S. Hierom reads it A heart able to conceive counsel for that 's a good disposition but it is not all for the Original is Leb shemmeany that is Cor audiens A heart willing to hearken to Counsel But all that is not all that is ask'd Solomon asks there a heart to discern between good and evil so that it is a Prayer for the spirit of Discretion of Conclusion of Resolution that God would give him a heart willing to receive Counsel and a heart capable to conceive and digest Counsel and a heart able to discern between Counsel and Counsel and to Resolve Conclude Determine It were a strange ambitious patience in any man to be content to be racked every day in hope to be an inch or two taller at last so is it for me to think to be a dram or two wiser by hearkning to all jealousies and doubts and distractions and perplexities that arise in my Bosom or in my Family which is the rack and torture of the soul A spirit of Contradiction may be of use in the greatest Counsels because thereby matters may be brought into farther debatement But a spirit of contradiction in mine own Bosome to be able to conclude nothing resolve nothing determine nothing not in my Religion not in

translate Treasury in all those places of Job and David and Isaiah which we mentioned before and in all other places He shall open that Treasury says that Prophet and bring forth the weapons not as before of Displeasure but in a far heavier word the weapons of his Indignation And in the Bowels and Treasury of his Mercy let me beseech you not to call the denouncing of Gods Indignation a Satyr of a Poet or an Invective of an Orator As Solomon says There is a time for all things there is a time for Consternation of Presumptuous Hearts as well as for Redintegration of Broken Hearts and the time for that is this time of Mortification which we enter into now Now therefore let me have leave to say That the Indignation of God is such a thing as a man would be affraid to think he can express it affraid to think he does know it for the knowledge of the Indignation of God implies the sense and feeling thereof all knowledge of that is experimental and that 's a woful way and a miserable acquisition and purchase of knowledge To re-collect Treasure is Provision for the future No worldly thing is so there is no certain future for the things of this world pass from us we pass from them the world it self passes away to nothing Yet a way we have found to make a treasure a treasure of sin and we teach God thrift and providence for when we arm God arms too when we make a treasure God makes a treasure too a treasure furnished with Weapons of Displeasure for this World and Weapons of Indignation for the World to come But then As an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil so says our Saviour the good man out of the good treasure of his heart Luk. 6.45 bringeth forth that which is good Which is the last stroke that makes up Pythagoras his Symbolical Letter that Horn that Beam thereof which lies on the right hand a narrower way but to a better Land thorow Straights 't is true but to the Pacifique Sea The consideration of the treasure of the Godly Man in this VVorld and Gods treasure towards him both in this and the next Things dedicated to God are call'd often The treasures of God Thesaurus Bonorum 1 Chro. 28.12 Thesauri Dei and Thesauri sanctorum Dei the treasures of God and the treasures of the servants of God are in the Scriptures the same thing and so a man may rob Gods treasury in robbing an Hospital Now though to give a Talent or to give a Jewel or to give a considerable proportion of Plate be an addition to a treasury yet to give a treasury to a treasury is a more precious and a more acceptable present as to give a Library to a Library is more then to give the works of any one Author A godly man is a Library in himself a treasury in himself and therefore fittest to be dedicated and appropriated to God Invest thy self therefore with this treasure of Godliness VVhat is Godliness Take it in the whole compass thereof and Godliness is nothing but the fear of God for he that says in his first Chapter Prov. 1.7 Initium sapientiae The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom says also in the 22. Finis Modestiae The fear of God is the end of modesty 22.4 the end of humility No man is bound to direct himself to any lower humiliation then to the fear of God When God promised good Ezekias all those Blessings Isa 33.6 Wisdome and Knowledge and Stability and Strength of Salvation that that was to defray him and carry him through all was this The fear of the Lord shall be his treasure 1 Tim. 6.19 And therefore Thesaurizate vobis fundamentum Lay up in store for your selves a good foundation against the time to come Do all in the fear of God In all warlike preparations remember the Lord of Hosts and fear him In all Treaties of Peace remember the Prince of Peace and fear him In all Consultations remember the Angel of the great Council and fear him fear God as much at Noon as at Midnight as much in the Glory and Splendour of his Sun-shine as in his darkest Eclipses fear God as much in thy Prosperity as in thine Adversity as much in thy Preferment as in thy Disgrace Lay up a thousand pound to day in comforting that oppressed soul that sues and lay up ten thousand pound to morrow in paring his Nails that oppresses Lay up a million one day in taking Gods Cause to heart and lay up ten millions next day in taking Gods Cause in hand Let every soul lay up a peny now in resisting a small temptation and a shilling anon in resisting a greater and it will grow to be a treasure a treasure of Talents of so many Talents as that the poorest soul in the Congregation would not change treasure with any Plate-Fleet nor Terra-firma Fleet nor with those three thousand millions which though it be perchance a greater sum then is upon the face of Europe at this day after a hundred years embowelling of the earth for treasure David is said to have left for the treasure of the Temple Villalp Tom. 2. par 2. li. 5. Dip. 3. cap. 43. fol. 503. Phil. 3.20 Apoc. 21.2 onely to be laid up in the Treasury thereof when it was built for the charge of the building thereof was otherwise defray'd Let your Conversation be in heaven Cannot you get thither You may see as S. John did Heaven come down to you Heaven is here here in Gods Church in his Word in his Sacraments in his Ordinances set thy heart upon them The Promises of the Gospel The Seals of Reconciliation and thou hast that treasure which is thy Viaticum for thy Transmigration out of this VVorld and thy Bill of Exchange for the VVorld thou goest to For as the wicked make themselves a treasure of sin and vanity and then God opens upon them a treasure of his Displeasure here and his Indignation hereafter So the Godly make themselves a treasure of the fear of God and he opens unto them a treasure of Grace and Peace here and a treasure of Joy and Glory hereafter And when of each of these treasures Here and Hereafter I shall have said one word I have done Thesaurus Dei erga Bonos hîc 2 Cor. 4.7 We have treasure though in earthen Vessels says the Apostle We have that is We have already the treasure of Grace and Peace and Faith and Justification and Sanctification But yet in earthen Vessels in Vessels that may be broken Peace that may be interrupted Grace that may be resisted Faith that may be enfeebled Justification that may be suspected and Sanctification that may be blemished But we look for more for Joy and Glory for such a Justification and such a Sanctification as shall be seal'd and riveted in a

been scandaliz'd and led into tentation by them till his law have been evacuated that that use of the law which is to shew sin to our consciences be annihilated in us till such a Cry come up to him by our often and professed sinning that it concerns him in his Honour which he will give to none and in his Care of his Churches which he hath promis'd to be till the end of all to take knowledge of them Yea though this Cry be come up to his Ears though it be a lowd Cry either by the nature of the sin as heavie things make a great noise in the moving or by reason of the number of the sins and the often doing thereof for as many children will make as great a noise as a loud Cryer so will the custome of small sins Cry as loud as those which are called peccata clamantia Crying sins Though this cry be encreased by this liberty and professed sinning that as the Prophet sayes Esa 3.9 They declare their sins and hide them not as Sodom did Though the cry of the sin be increased by the cry of them that suffer oppression by that sin as well as by the sin it self as the voice of Abel's bloud cryed from earth to heaven yea Gen. 4.10 though this cry ring about Gods ears in his own bed-chamber under the Altar it self in that Usquequo Domine when the Martyrs cry out with a loud voice How long Lord holy and true Revel 6.10 dost thou not judge and avenge our bloud yet God would fain forbear his Revenge he would fain have those Martyrs rest for a little space till their fellow servants and their brethren were fulfilled God would try what Cain would say to that Interrogatory Where is thy brother Abel And though the cry of Sodom were great and their sin exceeding grievous yet says God I will go down and see whether they have done altogether according unto that cry and if not I may know God would have been glad to have found Errour in their Inditement and when he could not yet if Fifty Fourty five Thirty Twenty Ten had been found righteous he had pardoned all Adeo malum Gregory quasi cum difficultate credidit cum audivit so loth is God to believe ill of man when he doth hear it This then is his patience Sententia But why is his patience made a reason of their continuance in sins Is it because there is no sentence denounced against sin These busie and subtile Extractors of Reasons that can distil and draw Poyson out of Manna Occasions of sin out of Gods Patience will not say so That there is no sentence denounced The word that is here used Pithgam is not truly an Hebrew word And though in the Book of Job and in some other parts of the Hebrew Scriptures we finde sometimes some forreign and out-landish word deriv'd from other Nations yet in Solomons writing very rarely neither doth Solomon himself nor any other Author of any part of the Hebrew Bible use this word in any other place then this one The word is a Chaldee word and hath amongst them the same signification and largeness as Dabar in Hebrew and that includes all A verbo ad legem from a word suddenly and slightly spoken to words digested and consolidated into a Law So that though the Septuagint translate this place Quia non est facta contradictio as though the reason of this sinners obduration might have been That God had not forbidden sin and though the Chaldee Paraphrast express this place thus Quia non est factum verbum ultionis As though this sinner made himself believe that God had never spoken word of revenge against sinners yet this sinner makes not that his reason That there is no Law no Judgement no Sentence given for every Book of the Bible every Chapter every Verse almost is a particular Deuteronomy a particular renewing of the Law from Gods mouth Morte Morieris Thou shalt die the death and of that Sentence from Moses mouth Pereundo peribitis You shall surely perish and of that Judgement from the Prophets mouth Non est Pax impiis There is no peace to the wicked And if this obdurate sinner could be such a Goth and Vandal as to destroy all Records all written Laws if he could evacuate and exterminate the whole Bible yet he would finde this Law in his own heart this Sentence pronounced by his own Conscience Stipendium peccati Mors est Treason is Death and sin is Treason His reason is not That there is no Law he sees it nor that he knows no Law his heart tells it him nor that he hath kept that Law his Conscience gives judgement against him nor that he hath a Pardon for breaking that Law for he never ask'd it and besides those Pardons have in them that clause Ita quod se bene gerat Every Pardon bindes a man to the good behaviour and by Relapses into sin we forfeit our Pardons for former sins All their Reason all their Comfort is onely a Reprieve and a Respite of Execution August Distulit Securim attulit Securitatem God hath taken the Ax from their necks and they have taken Security into their hearts Sentence is not executed Executed Execution is the life of the Law but then it is the death of the Man And therefore whosoever makes quarrels against God or arguments of Obduration out of this respite of Execution would he be better pleased with God if God came to a speedy Execution But let that be true Where there is no Execution there is no reverence to the Law there is truly and in effect no Law The Law is no more a Law without Execution then a Carcase is a Man And so much certainly the word which is here rendred sententia facta doth properly signifie A Judgement perfected executed Gen. 25.25 When Esau was born hairy and so in the likeness of a grown and perfect man he was call'd by the word of this text Gnesau Esau factus perfectus And so when God had perfected all his works Gen. 1. ult that is said then that he saw that all was good that he had made where there is the same word That he had perfected So that if the judgements of God had been still without execution if all those Curses Deut. 28.15 Cursed shalt thou be in the town and cursed in the field cursed in the fruit of thy body and in the fruit of thy land and in the fruit of thy cattel cursed when thou comest in and when thou goest out The Lord shall send thee cursings and trouble and shame in all thou setst thy hand to The Lord shall make a pestilence cleave to thee and a consumption and a fever The Lord shall make the heavens above as brass and the earth under thee as iron with all those Curses and Maledictions which he flings and slings and stings the soul of

their allegiance is complicated with their Religion then it is proper by such Laws to compel them to remain and continue in that Religion for in the Apostacy and Defection of such men the State hath a detriment as well as the Church and therefore the temporal sword may be drawn as well as the spiritual which is the case between those of the Romish perswasion and us their Laws work directly upon our Religion they draw blood meerly for that ours work directly upon their allegiance and punish only where pretence of Religion colours a Defection in allegiance But Christs end being meerly spiritual to constitute a Church Non venit Occurrere as he came not to meet man man was not so forward so he came not to compel man to deal upon any that was so backward for Venit vocare He came to call Now this calling implies a voice as well as a Word Veni vocare it is by the Word but nor by the Word read at home though that be a pious exercise nor by the word submitted to private interpretation but by the Word preached according to his Ordinance and under the Great Seal of his blessing upon his Ordinance So that preaching is this calling and therefore as if Christ do appear to any man in the power of a miracle or in a private inspiration yet he appears but in weakness as in an infancy till he speak till he bring a man to the hearing of his voice in a setled Church and in the Ordinance of preaching so how long soever Christ have dwelt in any State or any Church if he grow speechless he is departing if there be a discontinuing or slackning of preaching there is a danger of loosing Christ Adam was not made in Paradise but brought thither call'd thither the sons of Adam are not born in the Church but call'd thither by Baptism Non Nascimur sed re-nascimur Christiani August No man is born a Christian but call'd into that state by regeneration And therefore as the Consummation of our happiness is in that that we shall be call'd at last into the Kingdom of Glory in the Venite Benedicti Come ye blessed and enter into your Masters joy so is it a blessed Inchoation of that happiness that we are called into the Kingdom of Grace and made partakers of his Word and Sacraments and other Ordinances by the way And so you have his Action and Errand He came and came to call The next is the persons upon whom he works whom he calls Non Justos where we have first the Negative the Exclusive Non Justos Not the righteous In which Grego Nyssene is so tender G. Nyssen so compassionate so loath that this Negative should fall upon any man that any man should be excluded from possibility of salvation as that he carries it wholly upon Angels Christ took not the nature of Angels Christ came not to call Angels But this Exclusion falls upon men What men upon the righteous Who are they We have two Expositions both of Jesuites both good I mean the Expositions not the Jesuites they differ somewhat for though the Jesuites agree well enough too well in State-business in Courts how Kings shall be depos'd and how massacred how Kingdoms shall be deluded with Dispensations and how invaded with Forces they agree well enough yet in Schools and in Expositions Maldonat Mat. 18.12 they differ as well as others The first Maldonat he says That as in that parable where Christ says that the good shepherd left the ninety nine sheep that had kept their pastures and went to seek that one which was strayed he did not mean that there is but one sheep of a hundred that does go astray but that if that were the case he would go to seek that one so when Christ says here he came not to call the righteous he does not mean that there were any righteous but if the world were full of righteous men so that he might make up the number of his Elect and fill up the rooms of the fallen Angels out of them yet he would come to call sinners too Barradas The other Jesuite Barradas not altogether Barrabas he says Christ said Non Justos Not the righteous because if there had been any righteous he needed not to have come according to that of S. Aug. Si homo non periisset August filius hominis non venisset If Man had not fallen and lain irrecoverably under that fall the Son of God had not come to suffer the shame and the pain of the Cross so that they differ but in this If there had been any righteous Christ needed not to have come and though there had been righteous men yet he would have come but in this they and all agree Rom. 8.30 that there were none righteous None Why whom he predestinated those he called and were not they whom he predestinated and elected to salvation righteous Even the Elect themselves have not a constant righteousness in this world such a righteousness as does always denominate them so as that they can always say to their own conscience or so as the Church can always say of them This is a righteous man No nor so as that God who looks upon a sinner with the eyes of the Church and considers a sinner with the heart and sense of the Church and speaks of him with the tongue of the Church can say of him then when he is under unrepented sin This man is righteous howsoever if he look upon him in that Decree which lies in his bosom and by which he hath infallibly ordain'd him to salvation he may say so No man here though Elect hath an equal and constant righteousness nay no man hath any such righteousness of his own as can save him for howsoever it be made his by that Application or Imputation yet the righteousness that saves him is the very righteousness of Christ himself Hilarie S. Hilaries Question then hath a full Answer Erant quibus non erat necesse ut ventret Were there any that needed not Christs coming No there were none who then are these righteous we answer with S. Chrysost and S. Hiero. and S. Ambrose and all the stream of the Fathers They are Justi sua Justitia those who thought themselves righteous those who relyed upon their own righteousness those who mistook their righteousness as the Laodiceans did their riches they said They were rich and had need of nothing Apoc. 3.17 and they were wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked So these men being ignorant of Gods righteousness Rom. 10.3 and going about to establish a righteousness of their own have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God that is depend wholly upon the righteousness of Christ He calls it Suam their righteousness because they thought they had a righteousness of their own either in the faculties of Nature or in the exaltation of

wrapped up in a decree of his coming And therefore we are not carried upon the consideration of any decree or if any means of salvation higher or precedent to the comming of Christ for that were to antidate eternity it self So then this coming in the Text is the execution of that coming in the decree which is involv'd in St. Johns In principio and it is the performance of it coming which was enwrapped in the promise in Moses In principio 10.24 it is his actual coming in our flesh that coming of which Christ said in St. Luke many Prophets and Kings 13.17 and in St. Matth. many Prophets and righteous men desired to see these things which you see and have not seen them the prophets who in their very name were videntes seen saw not this comining thus Joh. 8.56 your Father Abraham rejoyced to see my day saith Christ and he saw it and was glad All times and all Generations before time was were Christs day but yet he cals this coming in the flesh especially his day because this day was a holy Equinoctial and made the day of the Jews and the day of the Gentiles equal and Testamenta copulat saies St. Chrisostome it binds up the two Testaments into one Bible for if the Partriarks had not desired to see this day and had not seen it in the strength of faith they and we had not been of one communion We have a most sure word of the Prophet 2 Pet. 1.19 saies the Apostle and to that we do well that we take heed but how far As unto a light that shineth in a dark place until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts But now since this coming 1 Joh. 1.2 This light hath appeared and we have seen it and bear witness and shew it unto you Simon had an assurance in the Prophets and more immediatly then so in the vision but herein was his assurance and his peace established Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace Luk. 2.19 for mine eyes have seen thy salvation The kingdom of Heaven was but a reversion to them and it is no more to us but to them it was a reversion as after a Grandfather and father two lives two comings of Christ before they would come to their state Christ must come first in the flesh and he must come again to Judgment To us and in our case one of these lives is spent Christ is come in the flesh and therefore as the earth is warmer an hour after the sun sets then it was an hour before the sun rose so let our faith and zeal be warmer now after Christ departing out of this world then theirs was before his coming into it and let us so rejoyce at this Ecce venit Rex tuus that our King our Missias is already come as that we may cherefully say veni Domine Jesu come Lord Jesu come quickly and be glad if at the going out of these dores we might meet him coming in the clouds In Mundum Thus far then he hath proceeded already venit He came and venit in mundum He came into the world it is not in mundam into so clean a woman as had no sin at all none contracted from her Parents no original sin for so Christ had placed his favours and his honors ill if he had favoured her most who had no need of him to dye for all the world and not for his mother or to dye for her when she needed not that hell is a strange imagination she was not without sin for then why should she have died for even a natural death in all that come by natural generation is of sin But certainly as she was a vessel reserved to receive Christ Jesus so she was preserved according to the best capacity of that nature from great and infections sins Mary Magdalen was a holy vessel after Christ had thrown the Divel out of her the Virgin Mary was much more so into whom no reigning power of the Devil ever entred in such an acceptation then Christ came per mundam in mundum by a clean woman into an unclean world And he came in a purpose as we do piously believe to manifest himself in the Christian Religion to all the nations of the world and therefore laetentur Insulae saies David The Lord reigneth let the Island rejoyce the Island who by reason of their situation provision and trading have most means of conveying Christ Jesus over the world He hath ca●ried us up to heaven set us at the right hand of God shal not we endeavour to carry him to those nations who have not yet heard of his name shall we still brag that we have brought our clothes and our hatchets and our knives and bread to this and this value and estimation amongst those poor ignorant Souls and shall we never glory that we have brought the name and Religion of Christ Jesus in estimation amongst them shall we stay till other nations have planted a fals Christ among them and then either continue in our sloth or take more pains in rooting out a false Christ then would have planted the true Christ is come into the world we will do little if we will not ferry him over and propagate his name as well as our own to other Nations At least be sure that he is so far come into the world as that he become into thee Thou art but a little world a world but of a few spanns in length 〈◊〉 and yet Christ was sooner carried from east to west from Jerusalem to these parts then thou canst carry him over the faculties of thy Soul and Body He hath been in a pilgrimage towards thee long coming towards thee perchance 50 perchance 60 years and how far is he got into thee yet Is he yet come to thine eye Have they made Jobs Covenant that they will not look upon a Maid yet he is not come into thine ear still thou hast an itching ear delighting in the libellous defamation of other men Is he come to thine ear Art thou rectified in that sense yet voluptousness in thy tast or inordinateness in thy other senses keep him out in those He is come into thy mouth to thy tongue but he is come thither as a diseased person is taken into a spittle to have his blood drawn to have his flesh cauterized to have his bones sawd Christ Jesus is in thy mouth but in such exrecations in such blasphemies as would he Earthquaks to us if we were earth but we are all stones and rock obdurate in a senselesnes of those wounds which are inflicted upon our God He may be come to the skirts to the borders to an outward show in thine actions and yet not be come into the land into thy heart He entred into thee at baptism He hath crept farther and farther into thee in catechisms and other infusions of his doctrine into thee He

and lose a mans own soul Our text therefore stands as that proverbial that Hieroglifical letter Pithagoras his y that hath first a stalk a stem to fix it self and then spreads into two beams The stem the stalk of this letter this y is in the first word of the text that particle of argumentation for take heed where you place your treasure for it concernes you much where your heart be placed and where your treasure is there your heart will be also and then opens this Symbolical this Catechistical letter this y into two hornes two beams two branches One broader but on the left hand denoting the treasures of this world the other narrower but on the right hand treasure laid up for the world co come be sure ye turn the right way for where your treasure is there will your heart be also First we bind our selves to the stake to the stalk to the staffe Cor fixum the stem of this Simbolical letter consider in it that firmness fixation of the heart which God requires God requires no unatural thing at mans hand whatsoever God requires of man man may find imprinted in his own nature written in his own heart This firmness then this fixation of the heart is natural to man every man does set his heart upon something and Christ in this place does not so much call upon him that he would do so set his heart upon something as to be sure he set it upon the right object and yet truly even this first work to recollect our selves to recapitulate our selves to assemble and muster our selves and to bend our hearts intirely and intensly directly earnestly emphatically energetically upon something is by reason of the various fluctuation of our corrupt nature and the infinite multiplicity of objects such a work as man needs to be called upon and excited to do it therefore is there no words in the Scripture so often added to the heart as that of Intireness Toto corde omni corde pleno corde do this withal thy heart with a whole heart with a full heart for whatsoever is indivisible is immoveable a Point because it cannot be denied cannot be moved the Center the Poles God himself because he is indivisible is therfore immoveable and when the heart of man is knit up in such an intirenes upon one object as that it does not flatter nor subdivide it self then and then only is it fixed And that 's the happiness in which David fixes himself not in his Cor paratim my heart is preparad O God my heart is prepared Psal 57 7. for so it may be prepared even by God himself and yet scattered and subdivided by us But in his Cor fixum My heart is fixed O God my heart is fixed awake my glory awake my Psaltery and Harp I my self will awake early Psal 108 1. and praise thee O Lord among the people A triumph that David returned to more then once for he repeats the same words with the same pathetical earnestness again so that his glory his victory his triumph his peace his acquiescence his al-sufficiency in himself consisted in this that his heart was fixed for this fixation of the heart argued and testified an intireness in it when God saies sili da mihi Cor my Son give me thy heart God means the whole man 1 Cor. 12.17 though the Apostle saith The eye is not the man nor the ear is not the man he does not say the heart is not the man the heart is the man the heart is all And as Moses was not satisfied with that Commission that Pharaoh offered him Exod. 10 8. that all the men might go to offer Sacrifice but Moses would have all their young and all their old all their Sons and all their Daughters all their flocks and all their heards he would have all so when God saies Fili da mihi cor my Son give me thy heart God will not be satisfied with the eye if I contemplate him in his works for that 's but the godliness of the natural man nor satisfied with the ear with hearing many Sermons for that 's but a new invention a new way of making beads as if the Papist think all done if he have said so many Aves I think all done If I have heard so many Sermons But God requires the heart the whole man all the faculties of that man for only that that is entire and indivisible is immoveable and that that God cals for and we seek for in this stem of Pithagoras his Symbolical letter is this immoveableness this fixation of the heart and yet even against this though it be natural there are many impediments we shall reduce them to a few to three these three First there is Cor nullum a meer heartlesness no heart at all incogitancy inconsideration and then there is Cor cor Cor duplex a double heart a doubtful a distracted heart which is not incogitancy nor inconsideration but purplexity and irresolution and lastly Cor vagum a wandring a wayfaring a weary heart which is neither inconsideration nor irresolution but inconstancy and this is a trinity against our unity three enemies to that fixation and intireness of the heart which God loves inconsideration when we do not debate irresolution when we do not determine inconstancy when we do not persevere and upon each of these Cor nullum be pleased to stop your devotion a few minuts This first is Cor nullum no heart at all incogitancy thoughtlesness An idle body is a disease in a state an idle soul is a monster in a man That body that will not work must not eat 2 Thes 3.10 but starve that soul that does not think nor consider cannot be said to Actuate which is the proper operation of the Soul but to Evaporate not to work in the body but to breath and smoak through the body We have seen estates of private men wasted by inconsideration as well as by riot and a soul may perish by a thoughtlesness as well as by ill thoughts God takes it as ill to be slighted as to be injur'd and God is as much slighted in Corde nullo in our thoughtlesness and inconsideration as he is opposed and provoked in Corde maligno in a rebellious heart There is a good nullification of the heart a good bringing of the heart to nothing for the fire of Gods spirit may take hold of me and as the Disciples that went with Christ to Emaus Luk. 24. were affected my heart may burn within me when the Scriptures are opened that is when Gods Judgments are denounced against my sin and this heat may overcome my former frigidity and coldness and overcome my succeeding tepidity and lukewarmness and may bring my heart to a mollification to a tenderness as Job found it The Almighty hath troubled me and made my heart soft for there are hearts of clay as well as hearts of wax hearts whom

these fires of God 23.16 his corrections harden but if these fires of his these denuntiations of his Judgments have overcome first my coldness and then my lukewarmness and made my heart soft for better impressions the work is well advanced but it is not all done for mettle may be soft and yet not fusil iron may be red hot and yet not apt to run into an other mold Therefore there is a liquefaction a melting a powering out of the heart such as Rahab speaks of Joshuahs spies 2.11 5.1 as soon as we heard how miraculously God had proceeded in your behalf in drying up Jurdan all our hearts melted within us and no man had any spirit left in him and when upon the consideration of Gods miraculous Judgments or mercies I come to such a melting and pouring out of my heart that there be no spirit that is none of my one spirit left in me when I have so exhausted so evacuated my self that is all confidence in my self that I come into the hands of my God as pliably as ductily as that first clod of earth of which he made me in Adam was in his hands in which clod of earth there was a kind of reluctation against Gods purpose this is a blessed nullification of the heart When I said to my self as the Apostle professed of himself I am nothing and then say to God 2 Cor. 12.11 Lord though I be nothing yet behold I present thee as much as thou hadst to make the whole world of O thou that madst the whole world of nothing make me that am nothing in my own eyes a new creature in Christ Jesus this is a blessed nullification a glorious annihillation of the heart So is there also a blessed nullification thereof in the contrition of the heart in the sense of my sins when as a sharp wind may have worn out a marble Statue or a continual spout worne out a marble Pavement so my holy tears made holy in his blood that gives them a tincture and my holy sighs made holy in that spirit that breaths them in me have worn out my marble heart that is the marbleness of my heart and emptied the room of that former heart and so given God a vacuity a new place to create a new heart in but when God hath thus created a new heart that is re-enabled me by his ordinance to some holy function then to put this heart to nothing to think nothing to consider nothing not to know our age but by the Church-book and not by any action done in the course of our lives for our God for our Prince for our Country for our Neighbour for our selves our selves are our Souls not to know the seasons of the year but by the fruits which we eat and not by observation of the publick and national blessings which he hath successively given us not to know religion but by the conveniency and the preferments to he had in this or in the other side to sit here and not to know if we be ask'd upon a surprize whether it were a prayer or a Sermon or an Antheme that we heard last this is such a nullification of the heart such an annihillation such an exinanition thereof as reflects upon God himself for Respuit datorem Turtullian qui datum deserit he that makes no use of a benefit despises the benefactor Pro. 10.13 and therefore a rod for his back Qui indiget corde that is without a heart without consideration what he should do nay what he does for this is the first enemy of this firmness and fixation of the heart without which we have no treasure and we have done with that Cor nullum and pass to the second Cor cor Cor duplex Cor duplex the double the divided the distracted heart which is not inconsideration but irresolution This irresolution this perplexity is intended in that comination from God The Lord shall give them a trembling heart Deut. 28.65 this is not that Cor nullum that melted heart in which there was no spirit left in them as in Joshuahs time but Cor pavidum a heart that should not know where to settle nor what to wish but as it follows there in the morning he shall say would God it were evening and in the evening would God it were morning and this is that which Salomon may have intended in his prayer 1 Reg. 3.9 Give thy servant an understanding heart Cor docile So St. Hierome reads it a heart able to conceive counsel for that 's a good disposition but it is not all for the original is lcb. shemeany that is Cor audiens a heart willing to hearken to counsel but all that is not all that is asked Solomon askes there a heart to discern between good and evil so that it is a prayer for the spirit of discretion of conclusion of resolution that God would give him a heart willing to receive counsel and a heart capable to conceive and digest counsel and a heart able to discern between counsel and counsel and to resolve conclude determine It were a strange ambitious patience in any man to be content to be rack'd every day in hope to be an inch or two taller at last so is it for me to think to be a dram or two wiser by harkning to all jealousies and doubts and distractions and perplexities that arise in my bosome or in my family which is the rack and torture of the soul A spirit of contradiction may be of use in the greatest Councellers because thereby matter may be brought into further debatement but a spirit of contradiction in mine own bosome to be able to conclude nothing resolve nothing determine nothing not in my religion not in my manners but occasionally and upon emergencies this is a sickly complexion of the Soul a dangerous impotency and a shrewd and ill presaging Crisis If Josuah had suspended his assent of serving the Lord till all his neighbours and their families all the Kings and Kingdomes about him had declared theirs the same way when would Josuah have come to that protestation I and my house will serve the Lord If Esther had forborn to presse for an audience to the King in the behalf and for the life of her Nation till nothing could have been said against it when would Esther have come to that protestation I will goe and if I perish I perish If one Milstone fell from the North-pole and another from the South they would meet and they would rest in the Center nature would con-center them not to be able to con-center those doubts which arise in my self in a resolution at last whether in morall or in religious actions is rather a vertiginous giddiness than a wise circumspection or wariness when God prepared great Armies it is expressed alwayes so Tanquam unus vir Israel went out as one man 1 Sam. 11.7 when God established his beloved David to

future for the things of this world pass from us we pass from them the world it self passes away to nothing Yet a way wee have found to make a treasure a treasure of sin and we teach God thrift and providence for when we arme God arms too a treasure furnished with weapons of displeasure for this world and weapons of indignation for the world to come But then Luc. 6.45 as an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil so saies our Saviour the good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good which is the last stroke that makes up Pithagoras his Symbolical letter that horn that beam thereof which lies on the right hand a narrow way but to a better land through straights T is true but to the Pacifique sea the consideration of the treasure of the godly man in this world and Gods treasure towards him both in this and the next Things dedicated to God are called often the treasure of God Thesauri Dei and Thesauri sanctorum Dei Thesaur bonorum The treasure of God and the treasures of the servants of God are in the Scriptures the same things and so a man may rob Gods treasury in robbing an Hospital 1 Cor. 28.12 Now though to give a Talent or to give a Jewel or to give a considerable proportion of plate be an addition to a treasury yet to give a treasury to a treasury is a more pretious and a more acceptable present as to give a library to a library is more then to give the work of any one Author A godly man is a library in himself a treasury in himself and therefore fittest to be dedicated and appropriated to God Invest thy self therefore with this treasure of godliness what is godliness take it in the whole compass thereof and godliness is nothing but the fear of God Pro. 1.7 for he that saies in his first Chapter Initium sapientiae The fear of God is the beginning of wisdome 22.4 saies also in the 22th Finis modestiae The fear of God is the end of modesty the end of humility no man is bound to deject himself to any lower humiliation then to the fear of God When God promised good Ezekiah all those blessings Esay 33.6 wisdome and knowledg and stability and strength of salvation that that was to defray him and carry him through all 1 Tim. 6.19 was this The fear of the Lord shall be his treasure And therefore Thesaurizate vobis fundamentum Lay up in store for your selves a good foundation against the time to come do all in the fear of God in all warlike preparations remember the Lord of Hosts and fear him in all treaties of peace remember the Prince of peace and fear him in all consultations remember the Angel of the great counsel and fear him fear God as much at noon as at midnight as much in the glory and splendor of his Sun-shine as in his darkest Eclipses fear God as much in thy prosperity as in thine adversity as much in thy preferment as in thy disgrace Lay up a thousand pound to day in comforting that oppressed soul that sues and lay up ten thousand pound to morrow in pairing his nails that oppresses lay up a million one day in taking Gods cause to heart and lay up ten millions next day in taking Gods cause in hand Let every soul lay up a penny now in resisting a small tentation and a shilling anon in resisting a greater and it will grow to be a treasure a treasure of talents of so many talents as that the poorest soul in the congregation will not change treasure with any Place-Fleets nor Terra firma fleet nor with those three thousand millions which though it be perchance a greater sum then is upon the face of Europe at this day after a hundred years embowelling of the earth for treasure David is said to have left for the treasure of the Temple Villalp To. 2. par li. 5. Disp 3. cap. 43. so 503. Phil. 3.20 Apoc. 21.2 only to be laid up in the treasury thereof when it was built for the charge of the building thereof was otherwise defraid Let your conversation be in heaven cannot you get thither you may see as St. John did heaven come down to you heaven is here here in Gods Church in his word in his Sacraments in his Ordinances set thy heart upon them the promises of the Gospel the seals of reconciliation and thou hast that treasure which is thy viaticum for thy transmigration out of this world and the bill of exchange for the world thou goest to for as the wicked make themselves a treasure of sin and vanity and then God opens upon them a treasure of his displeasure here and his indignation hereafter so the godly make themselves a treasure of the fear of God and he opens unto them a treasure of grace and peace here and a treasure of joy and glory hereafter And when of each of these treasures here and hereafter I shall have said one word I have done We have treasure though in earthen vessels saies the Apostle Thesaurus Dei Erga bonos hic 2 Cor 4.7 we have that is we have already the treasure of grace and peace and faith and justification and sanctification but yet in earthen vessels in vessels that may be broken peace that may be interrupted grace that may be resisted faith that may be enfeebled justification that may be suspected and sanctification that may be blemished but we look for more for joy and glory for such a justification and such a sanctification as shall be seald and riveted in a glorification Manna putrified if it were kept by any man but a day but in the Ark it never putrified That treasure which is as Manna from heaven grace and peace yet here hath a brackish taste when grace and peace shall become joy and glory in heaven there it will be sincere Sordescit quod inferiori miscetur nature August si in suo genere non sordidetur though in the nature thereof that with which a purer mettle is mixt be not base yet it abases the purer mettle he puts his example in silver and gold though silver be a pretious mettle yet it abases gold grace and peace and faith are pretious parts of our treasure here yet if we mingle them that is compare them with the joyes and glory of heaven if we come to think that our grace and peace and faith here can no more be lost then our joy and glory there we abase and we over-allay those joys and that glory The Kingdome of heaven is like to a treasure saies our Saviour Mar. 13.44 but is it all is any treasure like unto it none for to end where we begun treasure is depositum in crastinum provision for to morrow the treasure of the worldly man is not so he

then this pactum this contract of mine own hand actual and habitual sin for of these one is wash'd out in water and the other in blood Ro. 7.20 in the two Sacraments But then there is Lex in membris saith the Apostle I find a law that when I would do good evil is present with me Sin assisted by me is now become a Tyrant over me and hath establish'd a government upon me and therefore is a law of sin and a law in my flesh which after the water of baptism taken and the water of penitent tears given after the blood of Christ Jesus taken and mine one blood given that is a holy readiness at that time when I am made partaker of Christs death to die for Christ throws me back by relapses into those repented sins This put the Apostle to that passionate exclamation O wretched man that I am and yet he found a deliverance even from the body of his death through Jesus Christ his Lord that is a free and open recourse and access to him in all oppressions of heart in all dejections of spirit Now when this Chirographum this band of Adams hand Original sin is cancell'd upon the Cross of Christ and this pactum this band of mine own hand actual sins wash'd away in the blood of Christ and this Lex in membris this disposition to relapse into repented sins which as a tide that does certainly come every day does come every day in one form or other is beaten back as a tide by a bank by a continual opposing the merits and the example of Christ Jesus and the practice of his fasting such other medicinal disciplines as I find to prevail against such relapses when by this blessed means the whole law against which I am a trespasser is evacuated will God condemn me for all this and not by a law when I have pleaded Christ Christ and Christ baptism and blood and tears will God condemn mean oblique way when he cannot by a direct way by a secret purpose when he hath no law to condemn me by Sad and discomposed distorted and distracted soul if it be well said in the School absurdum est disputare ex manuscriptis it is an unjust thing in controversies and disputations to press arguments out of manuscripts that cannot be seen by every man it were ill said in thy conscience that God will proceed against thee ex manuscriptis or condemn thee upon any thing which thou never sawst any unreveal'd purpose of his Suspicious soul ill-presaging soul is there something else besides the day of Judgment that the Son of man does not know disquiet soul does he not know the proceeding of that Judgment wherin himself is to be Judg but that when he hath died for thy sins and so fulfill'd the law in thy behalf thou maist be condemn'd without respect of that law and upon something that shall have had no consideration no relation to any such breach of any such law in thee Intricated entangled conscience Christ tels thee of a Judgment because thou didst not do the works of mercy not feed not cloth the poor for these were enjoyn'd thee by a law but he never tels thee of any Judgment therefore because thy name was written in a dark book of death never unclaps'd never opened unto thee in thy life He saies to the lovingly indulgently fear not for it is Gods good pleasure to give you the Kingdom but he never saies to the wickedest in the world live in fear dy in anxiety in suspition and suspension for his displeasure a displeasure conceiv'd against you before you were sinners before you were men hath thrown you out of that kingdom into utter darkness There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus The reason is added because the law of the Spirit of life hath made them free from the law of sin and of death All upon all sides is still refer'd to a law And where there is no law against thee as there is not to him that is in Christ and he is in Christ who hath endeavoured the keeping or repented the breaking of the law God wil never proceed to execution by any secret purpose ever notified never manifested Suspicious jealous scattered soul recollect thy self and give thy self that redintegration that acquiescence which the spirit of God in the means of the Church offers thee study the mysterie of godliness which is without all controversie that is endeavour to keep repent the not keeping of the law and thou art safe for that you shall be judged by is a law But then this law is called here a law of liberty and whether that denotation that it is called a law of liberty import an ease to us or heavier weight upon us is our last disquisition and conclusion of all So speak ye and so do as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty Lex libertatis That the Apostle here by the law of liberty means the Gospel was never doubted he had call'd the Gospel so before this place whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty 1.25 and continueth therein shal be blessed in his deed that is blessed in doing so blessed in conforming himself to the Gospel but why does he call it so A law of liberty not because men naturally affecting liberty might be drawn to an affection of the Gospel by proposing it in that specious name of liberty though it were not so The holy Ghost calls the Gospel a pearl and a treasure and a kingdome and joy and glory Not to allure men with false names but because men love these and the Gospel is truly all these a pearl and a treasure and a kingdome and joy and glory And it is truly a law of liberty but of what kind and in what respect not such a liberty as they have established in the Roman Church where Ecclesiastical liberty must exempt Ecclesiastical persons from participating all burdens of the State and from being traitors though they commit treason because they are Subjects to no secular Prince nor the liberty of the Anabaptist that overthrows Magistracy and consequently all subjection both Ecclesiastical Laick for when upon those words 1 Cor. 7.23 Be ye not servants of men St. Chrysostome sayes This is Christian liberty Nec aliis nec sibi servire neither to be subjects to others nor to our selves that 's spoken with modification an allegiance with relation to our first allegiance to God not to be so subject to others or to our selves as that either for their sakes or our own we depart from any necessary declaration of our service to God Deo First then the Gospel is a Law of Liberty in respect of the author of the Gospel of God himself because it leaves God at his liberty Not at liberty to judg against his Gospel where he hath manifested it for a law for he hath laid a holy necessity upon himself

to judg according to that law where he hath published that law But at liberty so as that it consists only in his good pleasure to what nation he will publish the gospel or in what nation he will continue the gospel or upon what persons he wil make this gospel effectual So Oecumenius who is no single witness nor speaks not alone but compiles the former Fathers places this liberty in God That God is at liberty to give this gospel where he will and at liberty so as that he hath exempted no man how well soever he love him nor put any such fetters or manicles upon himself but that he can and will punish those that transgresse this law So it is a law of liberty to God nothing determined upon any man nothing concluded in himself lies so in Gods way as to hinder him from proceeding in his last judgment according to the keeping or breaking of this law still God is at liberty And it is a law of liberty in respect of us Of us Nobis who are Christians and considered so either with a respect to the natural man or with a respect to the Jew for if we compare the Christian with the natural man the law of nature layes the same obligation upon the natural man as the gospel does upon the Christian for the moral part thereof The christian is no more bound to love God nor his neighbor than the natural man is therein the natural man hath no more liberty than the christian So far their law is equal And then all the law which the christian hath and the natural man hath not is a law of liberty to the christian that is a law that gives him an ease and a readier way to perform those duties which way the naturall man hath not and yet is bound to the same duties The natural man if he trangress that law which he finds in his own heart finds a condemnation in himself as well as the christian therein he is no freer than the christian But he finds no Sanctuary no Altar no Sacrifice no Church no such liberty as the Christian does in the Gospel So the Gospel is a law of liberty to us in respect of the natural man that it sets us at liberty restores us to liberty after we are fallen into prison for debt into Gods displeasure for sin by affording us means of reconciliation to God again It is so also in respect of the law given by God to the Jews Judaei The Jews had liberties that is refuge and help of sacrifices for sin which the natural man had not For if the natural man were driven and followed from his own heart that he saw no comfort of an innocency there he had no other liberties to fly to no comfort in any other thing no law no promise annexed to any other action not to Sacrifice as the Jew or to Sacrament as the Christian but must irremediably sink under the condemnation of his own heart The Jew had this liberty a law and a law that involv'd the Gospel But then the gospel was to the Jew but as a letter seal'd and the Jew was but as a servant who was trusted to carry the letter as it was seal'd to another to carry it to the Christian Now the Christian hath receiv'd this letter at the Jews hand and he opens it he sees the Jews prophecy made history to him The Jews hope and reversion made possession and inheritance to him he sees the Jews faith made matter of fact he sees all that was promised and represented in the law performed and recorded in the Gospel and applied in the Church there Christ sayes Jo. 15.15 Hence forth call I not you servants but friends wherein consists this enfranchisement In this The servant knoweth not what his master doth The Jews knew not that But I have called you friends sayes Christ For all things that I heard of my father I have made known unto you Heb. 7.17 The law made nothing perfect saies the Apostle Gal. 4.24 Where was the defect He tels us that The old covenant that is the law gendreth to bondage what bondage he tels us that too 3.23 when he sayes The law was a schoolmaster The Jews were as school-boys alwayes spelling and putting together types and figures with things typified and figured How this Lamb should signifie Christ how this fire should signifie a holy Ghost The Christian is come from school to the University from grammer to logick to him that is Logos it self the word to apprehend and apply Christ himself and so is at more liberty than when he had only a dark law without any comment with the natural man or only a dark comment that is the law with a dim light and ill eys as the Jews had for though the Jew had the liberty of alaw yet they had not the law of liberty So the gospel is a law of liberty to God who is still at his liberty to give and take and to condemn according to that law and a law of liberty to us as we are compared to the natural man or to the Jew But when we confine our selves in our selves positively without comparison it is not such a law of liberty to us as some men have come to a neer saying That the sins of Gods children do them no harm That God sees not the sins of his children that God was no farther out with David in his adultery than in his repentance but as to be born within the covenant that is of christian parents does not make us christians Aug. for Non nascitur sed renascitur Christianus The covenant gives us a title to the Sacrament of Baptism and that sacrament makes us christians so this law of liberty gives us not a liberty to sin but a liberty from sin Noli libertate abuti ad libere peccandum sayes the same Father It is not a liberty but an impotency a slavery to sin Voluntas libera quae pia sayes he only a holy soul 2 Cor. 3.17 is a free soul Where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty sayes the Apostle Leo. And Splendidissimum in se quisque habet speculum Every man hath a glass a crystal into which though he cannot cal up this spirit for the spirit of God breaths where it pleases him yet he can see this spirit if he be there in that glass Every man hath a glass in himself where he may see himself and the Image of God sayes that Father and see how like he is to that To dare to reflect upon my self and to search all the corners of mine own conscience whether I have rightly used this law of liberty and neither been bold before a sin upon presumption of an easie nor diffident after upon suspicion of an impossible reconciliation to my God this is Evangelical liberty So then to end all Though it be a law of liberty because it gives me

though all these be testimonies of Gods love to us yet all these bring but a winters day a short day and a cold day and a dark day for except we love too God doth not love with an everlasting love God will not suffer his love to be idle and since it profits him nothing if it profits us nothing neither Ambrose he will withdraw it Amor Dei ut lumen ignis ut splendor solis ut odor lucis non praebenti proficit sed utenti The sun hath no benefit by his own light nor the fire by his own heat nor a perfume by the sweetness thereof but only they who make their use and enjoy this heat and fragrancy And this brings us to our other part to pass from loving to enjoying 2 Part. Tulerunt Dominum meum They have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have laid him this was one strain of Mary Magdalens lamentation when she found not her Saviour in the monument It is a lamentable case to be fain to cry so Tulerunt They have taken other men have taken away Christ by a dark and corrupt education which was the state of our Fathers to the Roman captivity But when the abjecerunt Dominum which is so often complained of by God in the Prophets is pronounced against thee when thou hast had Christ offered to thee by the motions of his grace and seal'd to thee by his Sacraments and yet wilt cast him so far from thee that thou knowest not where to find him when thou hast poured him out at thine eyes in prophane and counterfeit tears which should be thy souls rebaptization for thy sins when thou hast blown him away in corrupt and ill intended sighs which should be gemitus columbae the voice of the Turtle to sound thy peace and reconciliation with thy God yea when thou hast spit him out of thy mouth in execrable and blaphemous oathes when thou hast not only cast him so far as that thou knowest not where to find him but hast made so ordinary and so indifferent a thing of sin as thou knowest not when thou didst lose him no nor dost not remember that ever thou hadst him no nor dost not know that there is any such man as Dominus tuus a Jesus that is thy Lord. The Tulerunt is dangerous when others hide Christ from thee but the abjecerunt is desperate when thou thy self doest cast him away To lose Christ may befall the most righteous man that is but then he knows where he left him he knows at what sin he lost his way and where to seek it again even Christs imagin'd Father and his true mother Joseph and Mary lost him and lost him in the holy City at Jerusalem they lost him and knew it not they lost him and went a dayes journy without him and thought him to be in the company but as soon as they deprehended their error they sought and they found him when as his mother told him his father and she had sought with a heavy heart Alas we may lose him at Jerusalem even in his own house even at this present whilst we pretend to doe him service we may lose him by suffering our though ●s to look back with pleasure upon the sins which we have committed or to look forward with greedines upon some sin that is now in our purpose prosecution we may lose him at Jerusalem how much more if our dwelling be a Rome of Superstition and Idolatry or if it be a Babylon in confusion and mingling God and the world together or if it be a Sodome a wanton and intemperate misuse of Gods benefits to us we may think him in the company when he is not we may mistake his house we may take a Conventicle for a Church we may mistake his apparrel that is the outward form of his worship we may mistake the person that is associate our selves to such as are no members of his body But if we doe not return to our diligence to seek him and seek him and seek him with a heavy heart though we begun with a Tulerunt other men other tentations took him away yet we end in an abjecerunt we our selves cast him away since we have been told where to find him and have not sought him And let no man be afraid to seek or find him for fear of the loss of good company Religion is no sullen thing it is not a melancholly there is not so sociable a thing as the love of Christ Jesus It was the first word which he who first found Christ of all the Apostles Saint Andrew is noted to have said Invenimus Messiam we have found the Messias and it is the first act that he is noted to have done after he had found him to seek his brother Peter Jo. 1.34 duxit ad Jesum so communicable a thing is the love of Jesus when we have found him But when are we likeliest to find him It is said by Moses Deut. 30.11 of the words and precepts of God They are not hid from thee neither are far off Not in heaven that thou shouldst say Who shall goe up to heaven for us to bring them down nor beyond the Seas that thou shouldst go over the Sea for them but the word is very neer thee even in thy mouth and in thy heart and so neer thee is Christ Jesus or thou shalt never find him Thou must not so think him in heaven as that thou canst not have immediate accesse to him without intercession of others nor so beyond Sea as to seek him in a forrein Church either where the Church is but an Antiquaries Cabinet full of rags and fragments of antiquity but nothing fit for that use for which it was first made or where it is so new a built house with bare walls that it is yet unfurnished of such Ceremonies as should make it comly and reverend Christ is at home with thee he is at home within thee and there is the neerest way to find him It is true that Christ in the beginning of this chapter shadow'd under the name of wisdom when he discovers where he may be found speaks in the person of humane wisdom as well as divine Doth not wisdome cry and understanding utter her voice wher those two words Wisdom and Understanding signifie Sapientiam and Prudentiam That wisdom whose object is God and that which concerns our conversation in this world for Christ hath not taken so narrow a dwelling as that he may be found but one way or in one profession for in all professions in all Nations in all vocations when all our actions in our severall courses are directed principally upon his glory Christ is eminent and may easily be found To that purpose in that place Christ in the person of wisdom offers himselfe to be found in the tops of high places and in the gates of Cities to shew that this Christ and this wisdom

given man means and faculties to conceive and understand he hath limited our eyes with a firmament beset with stars our eyes can see no farther he hath limited our understanding in matters of religion with a starry firmament too that is with the knowledg of those things quae ubique quae semper which those stars which he hath kindled in his Church the Fathers and Doctors have ever from the beginning proposed as things necessary to be explicitely believ'd for the salvation of our souls for the eternal decrees of God and his unreveal'd mysteries and the inextricable perplexities of the School they are waters above the firmament here Paul plants and here Apollo waters here God raises up men to convey to us the dew of his grace by waters under the firmament by visible sacraments and by the word so preach'd and so interpreted as it hath been constantly and unanimously from the beginning of the Church And therefore this second day is perfited in the third in the congregentur aquae let the waters be gathered together God hath gathered all the waters all the waters of life in one place that is all the doctrine necessary for the life to come into his Church And then producet terra here in this world are produced to us all herbs and fruits all that is necessary for the soul to feed upon And in this third daies work God repeats here that testimony videt quod bonum he saw that it was good good that here should be a gathering of waters in one place that is no doctrine receiv'd that had not been taught in the Church and videt quod bonum he saw it was good that all herbs and trees should be produced that bore seed all doctrines that were to be proseminated and propagated and to be continued to the end should be taught in the Church but for doctrines which were but to vent the passion of vehement men or to serve the turns of great men for a time which were not seminal doctrines doctrines that bore seed and were to last from the beginning to the end for these interlineary doctrines and marginal which were no part of the first text here 's no testimony that God sees that they are good And In diebus istis if in these two daies the day when God makes thee a firmament shewes thee what thou art to limit thine understanding thy faith upon and the day where God makes thee a sea a collection of the waters showes thee where these necessary things must be taught in the Church if in those daies thou wilt not remember thy Creator it is an irrecoverable Lethargy In the fourth daies work let the making of the Sun to rule the day be the testimony of Gods love to thee in the sun-shine of temporal prosperity and the making of the Moon to shine by night be the refreshing of his comfortable promises in the darkness of adversity then remember that he can make thy sun to set at noon he can blow out thy taper of prosperity when it burns brightest Amos. and he can turn the Moon into blood Act. 2.20 he can make all the promises of the Gospel which should comfort thee in adversity turn into despair and obduration Let the first daies work which was the creation Omnium reptibilium and omnium volatilium of all creeping things and of all flying things produc'd out of water signifie and denote to thee either thy humble devotion in which thou saist of thy self to God vermis ege et non homo I am a worm and no man or let it be the raising of thy soul in that pennas columbae dedisti that God hath given thee the wings of a dove to fly to the wilderness in a retiring from or a resisting of tentations of this world remember still that God can suffer even thy humility to stray and degenerate into an uncomly dejection and stupidity and senselesness of the true dignity and true liberty of a Christian and he can suffer this retiring thy self from the world to degenerate into a contempt and despising of others and an overvaluing of thine own perfections Let the last day in which both man and beasts were made out of the earth but yet a living soul breath'd into man remember thee that this earth which treads upon thee must return to that earth which thou treadst upon thy body that loads thee and oppresses thee to the grave and thy spirit to him that gave it And when the Sabbath day hath also remembred thee that God hath given thee a temporal Sabbath plac'd thee in a land of peace and an ecclesiastical Sabbath plac'd in a Church of peace perfect all in a spirituall Sabbath a conscience of peace by remembring now thy Creator at least in one of these daies of the week of thy regeneration either as thou hast light created in thee in the first day that is thy knowledg of Christ or as thou hast a firmament created in thee the second day that is thy knowledg what to seek concerning Christ things appertaining to faith and salvation or as thou hast a sea created in thee the third day that is a Church where all the knowledg is reserv'd and presented to thee or as thou hast a sun and moon in the fourth day thankfulness in prosperity comfort in adversity or as thou hast reptilem humilitatē or volatilem fiduciam a humiliation in thy self or an exaltation in Christ in thy fift day or as thou hast a contemplation of thy mortality and immortality in the sixth day or a desire of a spiritual Sabbath in the seaventh In those daies remember thou thy Creator Juventutis Now all these daies are contracted into less room in this text In diebus Bechurotheica is either in the daies of thy youth or electionem tuarum in the daies of thy hearts desire when thou enjoyest all that thou couldest wish First therefore if thou wouldest be heard in Davids prayer Delicta juventutis O Lord remember not the sins of my youth remember to come to this prayer In diebus juventutis Ps 25.7 29.4 in the dayes of thy youth Job remembers with much sorrow how he was in the dayes of his youth when Gods providence was upon his Tabernacle and it is a late but a sad consideration to remember with what tenderness of conscience what scruples what remorces we entred into sins in our youth how much we were afraid of all degrees and circumstances of sin for a little while and how indifferent things they are grown to us and how obdurate we are grown in them now This was Jobs sorrow and this was Tobias comfort 1.4 when I was but young all my Tribes fell away but I alone went after to Jerusalem Though he lacked the counsail and the example of his Elders yet he served God for it is good for a man Thren 3.27 that he bear his yoke in his youth For even when God had delivered over

his people purposely to be afflicted yet himself complains in their behalf That the persecutor laid the very heaviest yoke upon the ancient Esa 47.6 It is a lamentable thing to fall under a necessity of suffering in our age Basil Labore fracta instrumenta ad Deum ducis quorum nullus usus wouldest thou consecrate a Chalice to God that is broken no man would present a lame horse a disordered clock a torn book to the King Caro jumentum thy body is thy beast Aug. and wilt thou present that to God when it is lam'd and tir'd with excesse of wantonness when thy clock the whole course of thy time is disordered with passions and perturbations when thy book the history of thy life is torn 1000. sins of thine own torn out of thy memory wilt thou then present thy self thus defac'd and mangled to almighty God Basil Temperantia non est temperantia in senectute sed impotentia incontinentiae chastity is not chastity in an old man but a desability to be unchast and therefore thou dost not give God that which thou pretendest to give for thou hast no chastity to give him Senex bis puer but it is not bis juvenis an old man comes to the infirmities of childhood again but he comes not to the strength of youth again Do this then In diebus juventutis in thy best strength Electionum and when thy natural facuties are best able to concur with grace but do it In diebus electionum in the dayes when thou hast thy hearts desire for if thou have worn out this word in one sense that it be too late now to remember him in the dayes of youth that 's spent forgetfully yet as long as thou art able to make a new choise to chuse a new sin that when thy heats of youth are not overcome but burnt out then thy middle age chooses ambition and thy old age chooses covetousness as long as thou art able to make thy choice thou art able to make a better than this God testifies that power that he hath given thee I call heaven and earth to record this day Deut. 30.19 that I have set before you life and death choose life If this choice like you not Jos 24.15 If it seem evil unto you to serve the the Lord saith Josuah then choose ye this day whom ye will serve Here 's the election day bring that which ye would have Serm. 18. into comparison with that which ye should have that is all that this world keeps from you with that which God offers to you and what will ye choose to prefer before him for honor and favor and health and riches perchance you cannot have them though you choose them but can you have more of them than they have had to whom those very things have been occasions of ruin The Market is open till the bell ring till thy last bell ring the Church is open grace is to be had there but trust not upon that rule that men buy cheapest at the end of the market that heaven may be had for a breath at last when they that hear it cannot tel whether it be a sigh or a gasp a religious breathing and anhelation after the next life or natural breathing out and exhalation of this but find a spiritual good husbandry in that other rule that the prime of the market is to be had at first for howsoever in thine age there may be by Gods strong working Dies juventutis A day of youth in making thee then a new creature for as God is antiquissimus dierum so in his school no man is super-annated yet when age hath made a man impotent to sin this is not Dies electionum it is not a day of choice but remember God now when thou hast a choice that is a power to advance thy self or to oppress others by evil means now in die electionum in those thy happy and sun-shine dayes remember him Creatorem This is then the faculty that is excited the memory and this is the time now now whilest we have power of election The object is the Creator Remember the Creator First because the memory can go no farther then the creation and therefore we have no means to conceive or apprehend any thing of God before that When men therefore speak of decrees of reprobation decrees of condemnation before decrees of creation this is beyond the counsail of the holy Ghost here Memento creatoris Remember the Creator for this is to remember God a condemner before he was a creator This is to put a preface to Moses his Genesis not to be content with his in principio to know that in the beginning God created heaven and earth but we must remember what he did ante principium before any such beginning was Moses his in principio that beginning the creation we can remember but St. Johns in principio that beginning eternity we cannot we can remember Gods fiat in Moses but not Gods erat in St. John what God hath done for us is the object of our memory not what he did before we were and thou hast a good and perfect memory if it remember all that the holy Ghost proposes in the Bible and it determines in the memento Creatoris There begins the Bible and there begins the Creed I believe in God the Father maker of Heaven and Earth J● 7.39 for when it is said The holy Ghost was not given because Jesus was not glorified it is not truly Non erat datus but non erat for non erat nobis antequam operaretur It is not said there the holy Ghost was not given but it is the holy Ghost was not for he is not that is he hath no being to us ward till he works in us which was first in the creation Remember the Creator then Serm. 19. because thou canst remember nothing backward beyond him and remember him so too that thou maist stick upon nothing on this side of him That so neither height Ro. 8. ult nor depth nor any other creature may separate thee from God not only not separate thee finally but not separate so as to stop upon the creature but to make the best of them thy way to the Creator We see ships in the river but all their use is gone if they go not to sea we see men fraighted with honor and riches but all their use is gone if their respect be not upon the honor and glory of the Creator and therefore sayes the Apostle Let them that suffer 1 Pe● 4. ult commit their souls to God as to a faithful Creator that is He made them and therefore will have care of them This is the true contracting and the true extending of the memory to Remember the Creator and stay there because there is no prospect farther and to Remember the Creator and get thither because there is no safe footing upon the

Prayers Sermons Sacraments which are the Engines and Ammunition which God hath put into our hands though they have a blessed and a powerful operation and produce heavenly effects where they may have entrance in this habitual sinners can have none Some things therefore some great things every man must depart with before he can come to the God of pure eyes Abac. 1.13 When the heart is emptied of infidelity and of those habits of sin that filled it when it is come to a discontinuance and a detestation of those sins then we can better look into every corner and endeavor to keep it clean clean in that measure that the God of pure eyes will vouchsafe to look upon it and the light of his countenance will perfect the work The diligence required on our part is a serious watchfulness and consideration of our particular actions how small soever In the Law whatsoever was unclean to eat made a man unclean to touch it when it was dead Though the body of sin have so far received a deadly wound in thee as that thou hast discontinued some habitual sin some long time yet if thou touch upon the memory of that dead sin with delight thou begettest a new childe of sin 65.20 And as Esai speaks of a childe and of a sinner of an hundred years old so every sin into which we relapse is born an hundred years old it hath all the age of that sin which we had repented and discontinued before upon it it is born an Adam in full strength the first minute born a Giant born a Devil and possesses us in an instant Every man may observe that a sin of relapse is sooner upon him then the same sin was at the first attempting him at first he had more bashfulness more tenderness more colluctation against the sin then upon a relapse And therefore in this survey of sin thy first care must be to take heed of returning top diligently to a remembrance of those delightful sins which are past for that will endanger new And in many cases it is safer to do as God himself is said to do to tie up our sins in a bundle and cast them into the sea so for us to present our sins in general to God and to cast them into the bottomless sea of the infinite mercies of God in the infinite merits of Christ Jesus then by an over-diligent enumeration of sins of some kindes or by too busie a contemplation of those circumstances which encreased our sinful delignt then when we committed those sins to commit them over again by a fresh delight in their memory When thou hast truly repented them and God hath forgotten them do thou forget them too The pureness and cleanness of heart which we must love was evidently represented in the old Law and in the practise of the Jews who took knowledge of so many uncleannesses they reckon almost fifty sorts of uncleannesses to which there belonged particular expiations of which some were hardly to be avoided in ordinary conversation As to enter into the Courts of Justice for the Jews that led Christ into the common Hall would not enter lest they should be defiled Jo. 18.28 Yea some things defiled them which it had been unnatural to have left undone as for the son to assist at his fathers Funeral and yet even these required an expiation For these though they had not the nature of sin but might be expiated without any inward sorrow or repentance by outward ablutions by ceremonial washings within a certain time prescribed by the Law yet if that time were negligently and inconsiderately overslipt then they became sins and then they could not be expiated but by a more solemn and a more costly way by sacrifice And even before they came to that whilst they were but uncleannesses and not sins yet even then they made them incapable of eating the Paschal Lamb. So careful was God in the Law and the Jews in their practise for these outward things to preserve this pureness this cleanness even in things which were not fully sins So also must he that affects this pureness of heart and studies the preserving of it sweep down every cobweb that hangs about it Scurrile and obscene language yea mis-interpretable words such as may bear an ill sense pleasureable conversation and all such little entanglings which though he think too weak to hold him yet they foul him And let him that is subject to these smaller sins remember that as a spider builds always where he knows there is most access and haunt of flies so the Devil that hath cast these light cobwebs into thy heart knows that that heart is made of vanities and levities and he that gathers into his treasure whatsoever thou wast'st out of thine how negligent soever thou be he keeps thy reckoning exactly and will produce against thee at last as many lascivious glaunces as shall make up an Adultery as many covetous wishes as shall make up a Robery as many angry words as shall make up a Murder and thou shalt have dropt and crumbled away thy soul with as much irrecoverableness as if thou hadst poured it out all at once and thy merry sins thy laughing sins shall grow to be crying sins even in the ears of God and though thou drown thy soul here drop after drop it shall not burn spark after spark but have all the fire and all at once and all eternally in one intire and intense torment For as God for our capacity is content to be described as one of us and to take our passions upon him and be called angry and sorry and the like so is he in this also like us that he takes it worse to be slighted to be neglected to be left out then to be actually injur'd Our inconsideration our not thinking of God in our actions offends him more then our sins We know that in Nature and in Art the strongest bodies are compact of the least particles because they shut best and lie closest together so be the strongest habits of sin compact of sins which in themselves are least because they are least perceived they grow upon us insensibly and they cleave unto us inseparably And I should make no doubt of recovering him sooner that had sinned long against his conscience though in a great sin then him that had sinned less sins without any sense or conscience of those sins for I should sooner bring the other to a detestation of his sin then bring this man to a knowledge that that that he did was sin But if thou could'st consider that every sin is a Crucifying of Christ and every sin is a precipitation of thy self from a Pinacle were it a convenient phrase to say in every little sin that thou would'st Crucifie Christ a little or break thy neck a little Beloved there is a power in grace upon thy repentance to wash away thy greatest sins that 's the true the proper Physick of

scandal as we see in that vehement expostulation and unlikelihood of an ill love between him and Paula Nulla alia me Romae edomare potuit Was Rome so barren so weak so ill furnished with instruments of tentation that nothing in Rome it self could shake my constancy or retard my austerity Nisi lugens jejuna squallida fletibus caecata but a sad fasting ill drest woman blinde with weeping Et quam manducantem nunquam vidi A woman whom as familiar and domestick as I was in her house I could never see eat bit of meat But all this would not quench the fire the scandal grew he found it even amongst his brethren Homines Christiani dicunt he could not say that onely the enemies of the faith or his enemies but they that loved Religion well and him well talked dangerously and suspiciously of it and yet St. Jerome could not dispose himself to forbear that conversation He overcame the sense of it with a par pari refertur I says he am even with them Invicem insanire videmur they think me mad and I think them mad But this is not always a safe nor a charitable way when he might so easily have cured both madnesses But he perseveres in it with that resolution Saluta Paulam velit nolit mundus in Christo meam Remember me to my Paula let the world say what it will in Christ my Paula Thus he proceeds if excusably in his own behalf that is the best certainly not exemplarily not to be followed by others in cases of so great scandal For there goes not onely a great deal of innocency which we acknowledge doubtlesly to have been between that blessed couple but there must go a great deal of necessity too that is That Paula could not have been reduced by any other means to the service of God or continued in it but by following St. Jerome to Jerusalem to justifie such a conversation as became so scandalous And howsoever in some cases excuses might be found what good Mariner would anchor under a Rock and lie in danger of beating upon that What Fish would chuse his food upon a Hook What Mouse at a Trap What man would mingle Sugar and Rats-bane together and then trust his cunning to sever them again Why should any man chuse such company such conversation as may minister tentation to him or scandal to others Augustine St. Augustine apprehended this danger tenderly when he gave his reason why he would not have his Mother in the house with him Because says he though there be no danger of scandal in the person of my Mother all those women that serve my Mother and that accompany my Mother and that visit my Mother all they are not Mothers to me and a lawful conversation may come to an unlawful love quickly We see how this love wrought when it was scattered upon many women and therefore could not be so dangerously vehement upon any one in Solomon whose wife turned away his heart 1 King 11.4 Augustine so that his heart was not perfect with God Nec errore putavit Idolis serviendum Solomon never came to think deliberately that Idolatry was lawful sed blanditiis foemineis ad illa sacrificia compulsus his appliableness to women brought him to that sacriledge Thus it wrought even when it was scattered upon many in Solomon and we see how it wrought when it was collected and contracted upon one object in Samson Judg. 16.6 Because she was importunate upon him says the Text and vexed him with her words continually his soul was pained unto the death Yea if we go as high as is possible to Adam himself we see both St. Augustine and St. Jerome express his case thus Adam non tanquam verum loquenti credidit Adam did not believe Eve nor was not overcome by her reasons when she provoked him to eat the Apple Sed sociali necessitudini paruit he was affected with that near interest which was between them And ne contristaretur delicias suas lest by refusing he should put her whom he delighted in to a desperate sadness and sense of her sin he eat for company And as the first and the middle times did so without doubt our own times too if we search but our selves at home do minister examples of this in a proportion which neither St. Jerome nor Solomon nor Samson nor Adam avoided that an over-tender indulgence towards such women that for other respects they were bound to love inclined them to do such things as otherwise they would not have done Natural and civil obligations induced conversation and conversation tentation or if not that really yet scandal That that we drive to in all this is this that if we may not exceed in this love which is natural and commanded much less in any other So that there is nothing in this world left for this noble and operative affection Love to work upon but this pureness of heart Love it therefore that thou mayst seek it love it that thou mayest have it love it that thou mayest love it for as we said before it is a part of this pureness to love it Some of the ancient Fathers out of their love to it have put so high a price and estimation upon it that they hardly afforded any grace any pardon to those that sinned after they had once received this pureness in Baptism So that with them the heart could never be clean again after it was once foul'd a second time Our new Romane Chymists Mald●n on the other side they that can transubstantiate bread into God they can change any foulness into cleaness easily They require no more after sin but quendam tenuem dolorem internum A little slight inward sorrow and that 's enough For they have provided an easier way then Contrition for that which they have induc'd and call Attrition is not an affection qui habet pro sine Deum That hath proposed God for the mark that it is directed too Nec qui indiget divina gratia but it is such an affection as may be had without any concurrence or assistance of grace and is onely Dolor naturalis Zambran ex timore servili a natural sorrow proceeding onely out of a servile fear of torment And yet a Confession made with this Attrition and no more is enough for salvation say they and he that hath made a confession with such a disposition as this This that hath no reference to God This that hath no strength from his grace This that hath no motive from the fear of God shall never need to repent any farther for his sins Displiceri de peccato Caj●tan sed non super omni displicibili This is Attrition to be displeased with our sins but not more with our sins then with any thing else Intendere vitare peccatum sed non super omne vitabile To have a purpose to leave a sin but not the sin rather then any thing

because they thought all penalties of the Law evil They came lower to call that God which created the Upper Region of man the Brain and the Heart the presence and privy Chamber of Reason and consequently of Religion too a good God because good things are enacted there and that God that created the Lower Region of man the seat and scene of Carnal Desires and inordinate Affections an ill God because ill actions are perpetrated there But Idem Deus the same God that commanded light out of darkness hath shin'd in our hearts The God of the Law and the God of the Gospel too The God of the Brain and the God of the Belly too The God of Mercy and the God of Justice too is all one God In all the Scriptures you shall scarce find such a Demonstration of Gods Indignation such a severe Execution as that upon the Syrians when after the slaughter of one hundred thousand foot in the field in one day the walls of the City into which they fled fell and slew twenty seven thousand more The Armies of the Israelites were that day but as little flocks of kids says the Text there and yet those few slew one hundred thousand The Walls of Aphak promised succour and yet they fell and slew twenty seven thousand Now from whence proceeded Gods vehement anger in this defeat The Prophet tells the King the cause Because the Syrians have said The Lord is God of the hills but he is not God of the vallies The Israelites had beaten them upon the Hills and they could not attribute this to their Forces for they were very small they must necessarily ascribe it to their God but they thought they might find a way to be too hard for their God and therefore since he was a God of the mountains they would fight with him in the vallies But the God of Israel is Idem Deus one and the same God He is Jugatinus and Vallonia both as St. Aug. speaks out of the Roman Authors he is God of the mountains he can exalt and he is God of the Vallies he can throw down Our Age hath produced such Syrians too Men who after God hath declared himself against them many ways have yet thought they might get an advantage upon him some other way They begun in Rebellions animated persons of great blood and great place to rebels their Rebellions God frustrated Then they came to say to say in actions Their God is God of Rebellions a God that resists Rebellions but he is no God of Excommunications then they excommunicated us But our God cast those thunder-bolts those Bruta fulmina into the Sea no man took fire at them Then they said He is a God of Excommunications he will not suffer an Excommunication stollen out in his Name against his Children to do any harm but he is no God of Invasion let 's try him there Then they procured Invasion and there the God of Israel shew'd himself the Lord of Hosts and scattered them there Then they said he is the God of Invasions annihilates them but he is not the God of Supplantations surely their God will not pry into a Cellar he will not peep into a vault he is the God of water but he is not the God of fire let 's try him in that Element and in that Element they saw one another justly eviscorated and their bowels burnt All this they have said so as we have heard them for they have said it in loud Actions and still they say something in corners which we do not hear Either he is not a God of Equivocations and therefore let us be lying spirits in the mouthes of some of his Prophets draw some men that are in great Opinion of Learning to our side or at least draw the people into an Opinion that we have drawn them or else he is not the God of jealousie and suspition and therefore let us supple and slumber him with security and pretences and disguises But he is Idem Deus that God who hath begun and proceeded will persevere in mercy towards us Our God is not out of breath because he hath blown one tempest and swallowed a Navy Our God hath not burnt out his eyes because he hath looked upon a Train of Powder In the the light of Heaven and in the darkness of hell he sees alike he sees not onely all Machinations of hands when things come to action but all Imaginations of hearts when they are in their first Consultations past and present and future distinguish not his Quando all is one time to him Mountains and Vallies Sea and Land distinguish not his Ubi all is one place to him When I begin says God to Eli I will make an end not onely that all Gods purposes shall have their certain end but that even then when he begins he makes an end from the very beginning imprints an infallible assurance that whom he loves he loves to the end as a Circle is printed all at once so his beginning and ending is all one Make thou also the same interpretation of this Idem Deus in all the Vicissitudes and Changes of this World Hath God brought thee from an Exposititious Child laid out in the streets of uncertain name of unknown Parents to become the first foundation-stone of a great family and to enoble a posterity Hath God brought thee from a Carriers Pack upon which thou camest up to thy change of Foot-Cloathes and Coaches Hath God brought thee from one of these Blew-Coats to one of those Scarlet Gowns Attribute not this to thine own Industry nor to thine own Frugality for Industry is but Fortunes right hand and Frugality her left but come to Davids Acclamation Dominus Fecit It is the Lords doing That takes away the impossibility Psal 118.22 If the Lord will do it it may be it must be done but yet even that takes not away the wonder for as it follows there Domiminus fecit est Mirabile though the Lord have done it it is wonderful in our eyes to see whom and from whence and whither and how God does raise and exalt some men And then if God be pleas'd to make thee a Roll written on both sides a History of Adversity as well as of Prosperity if when he hath fill'd his Tables with the story of Mardoche a man strangely raised he takes his Spunge and wipes out all that and writes down in thee the story of Job a man strangely ruin'd all this is Idem Deus still the same God and the same purpose in that God still to bring thee nearer to him though by a lower way If then thou abound Luk. 12.19 come not to say with the over-secure man Soul thou hast much goods laid up for many years take thine ease eat drink and be merry and if thou want come not to that impatience of that Prophet Satis est Lord this is enough now take away my life Nay though the Lord lead thee

VVord of Life hath pour'd in this water into that great and Royal Vessel the Understanding and the love of his truth into the large and religious heart of our Soveraign and he pours it out in 100 in 1000 spouts in a more plentiful preaching thereof then ever your Fathers had it in both the ways of plenty plentiful in the frequency plentiful in the learned manner of preaching Illuxit he hath shin'd upon you before you were born in the Covenant in making you the Children of the seed of Abraham of Christian Parents Illuxit he hath shin'd upon you ever since you could hear and see had any exercise of natural and supernatural faculties and Illuxit by his grace who sends treasure in earthen vessels he hath shin'd upon some of you since you came hither now Consider onely now after all this shining that a Candle is as soon blown out at an open door or an open window as in the open street If you open a door to a Supplanter an Underminer a Whisperer against your Religion if there be a broken window a woman loaden with sin as the Apostle speaks and thereby dejected into an inordinate melancholy for such a melancholy as make Witches makes Papists too if she be thereby as apt to change Religions now as Loves before and as weary of this God as of that man if there be such a door such a window a wife a child a friend a sojourner bending that way this light that hath shin'd upon thee may as absolutely go out in thy house and in thy heart as if it were put out in the whole Kingdom Leave the publick to him whose care the publick is and who no doubt prepares a good account to him to whom onely he is accountable Look then to thine own heart and thine own house for that 's thy charge And so we have done with the action shining evidence and with the time Illuxit there is enough done already and we come to the place in Corde if God shine he shines in the heart Fecit Deus Coelum terram Non lego quod requieverit In Cordibus St. Ambros says that Father God made heaven and earth but I do not read that he tested when he had done that Fecit Solem Lunam as he pursues that Meditation He made the Sun and Moon and all the host of heaven but yet he rested not Fecit hominem Requievit When God had made man then he rested for when God had made man he had made his bed the heart of man to rest in God asks nothing of man but his heart and nothing but man can give the heart to God Gen. 8.21 And therefore in that sacrifice of Noah after the flood and often in the Scriptures elsewhere sacrifice is called Odor quietis God smelt a savour of rest in that which proceeds from a religious heart God rests himself and is well pleased Loqui ad Cor Jerusalem to speak to the heart of Jerusalem is ever the Scripture phrase from God to man to speak comfortably and loqui●e Corde to speak from the heart is an Emphatical phrase from man to God too He that speaks from his own heart speaks to Gods heart Did not our hearts burn within us while he opened the Scriptures say those two Disciples that went with Christ to Emaus And if your hearts do not so all this while you hear but me Luc. 24.32 and alas who or what am I you hear not God But let this light the love of the ordinary means of your salvation enter into your hearts and shine there and then as the fire in your Chymney grows pale and faints and out of countenance when the Sun shines upon it so whatsoever fires of lust of anger of ambition possessed that heart before it will yeild to this and evaporate But why do I speak all this to others Is it so clear a case that the hearts in this Text are the hearts of others of them that hear and not of our selves that speak That we are to see now for that 's the next and last Branch in this part who be the persons in Cordibus nostris in our hearts Nostris Certainly this word Nostris primarily most literally most directly concerns us Us the Ministers of Gods Word and Sacraments If we take Gods Word into our mouths and pretend a Commission a Calling for the calling of others we must be sure that God hath shin'd in our hearts There is vocatio intentionalis an intentional Calling when Parents in their intention and purpose dedicates their children to this service of God the Ministry even in their Cradle And this is a good and holy intention because though it bind not in the nature of a Vow yet it makes them all the way more careful to give them such an Education as may fit them for that profession And then there is Vocatio Virtualis when having assented to that purpose of my Parents I receive that publick Seal the Imposition of hands in the Church of God but it is Vocatio radicalis the calling that is the root and foundation of all that we have this light shining in our hearts the testimony of Gods Spirit to our spirit that we have this calling from above First then it must be a light not a calling taken out of the darkness of melancholy or darkness of discontent or darkness of want and poverty or darkness of a retir'd life to avoid the mutual duties and offices of society it must be a light and a light that shines it is not enough to have knowledge and learning it must shine out and appear in preaching and it must shine in our hearts in the private testimony of the Spirit there but when it hath so shin'd there it must not go out there but shine still as a Candle in a Candlestick or the Sun in his sphere shine so as it give light to others so that this light doth not shine in our hearts except it appear in the tongue and in the hand too First in the tounge to preach opportune and importune in season and out of season 2 Tim. 4.2 August that is opportune Volentibus importune Nolentibus preaching is in season to them who are willing to hear but though they be not though they had rather the Laws would permit them to be absent or that preaching were given over yet I must preach And in that sense I may use the words of the Apostle As much as in me is I am ready to preach the Gospel to them also that are at Rome at Rome in their hearts at Rome that is of Rome Rom. 1.15 reconciled to Rome I would preach to them if they would have me if they would hear me and that were opportune in season But though we preach importune out of season to their ends and their purposes yet we must preach though they would not have it done for we are debters to all because all are

wherewith this inestimable pureness is to be embraced love He that loveth pureness of heart Love in Divinity is such an attribute or such a notion as designs to us one person in the Trinity and that person who communicates and applies to us Amor. the other two persons that is The Holy Ghost So that as there is no power but with relation to the Father nor wisdom but with relation to the Son so there should be no love but in the Holy Ghost from whom comes this pureness of heart and consequently the love of it necessarily For the love of this pureness is part of this pureness it self and no man hath it except he love it All love which is placed upon lower things admits satiety but this love of this pureness always grows always proceeds It does not onely file off the rust of our hearts in purging us of old habits but proceeds to a daily polishing of the heart in an exact watchfulness and brings us to that brightness Augustine Ut ipse videas faciem in corde alii videant cor in facie That thou maist see thy face in thy heart and the world may see thy heart in thy face indeed that to both both heart and face may be all one Thou shalt be a Looking-glass to thy self and to others too Mulieres The highest degree of other love is the love of woman Which love when it is rightly placed upon one woman it is dignified by the Apostle with the highest comparison Ephes 5.25 Husbands love your wives as Christ loved his Church And God himself forbad not that this love should be great enough to change natural affection Gen. 2.24 Relinquet patrem for this a man shall leave his Father yea to change nature it self caro una two shall be one Accordingly David expresses himself so in commemoration of Jonathan 2 Sam. 1.26 Thy love to me was wonderful passing the love of women A love above that love is wonderful Now this love between man and woman doth so much confess a satiety as that if a woman think to hold a man long she provides her self some other capacity some other title then meerly as she is a woman Her wit and her conversation must continue this love and she must be a wife a helper else meerly as a woman this love must necessarily have intermissions And therefore St. Jerome notes a custom of his time Jerome perchance prophetically enough of our times too that to uphold an unlawful love and make it continue they used to call one another Friend and Sister and Cousen Ut etiam peccatis induant nomina caritatis that they might apparel ill affections in good names and those names of natural and civil love might carry on and continue a work which otherwise would sooner have withered In Parables and in Mythology and in the application of Fables this affection of love for the often change of subjects is described to have wings whereas the true nature of a good love such as the love of this Text is a constant union But our love of earthly things is not so good as to be volatilis apt to fly for it is always groveling upon the earth and earthly objects As in spiritual fornications the Idols are said to have ears and hear not and eyes and see not so in this idolatrous love of the Creature love hath wings and flies not it flies not upward it never ascends to the contemplation of the Creator in the Creature The Poets afford us but one Man that in his love flew so high as the Moon Endymion loved the Moon The sphear of our loves is sublunary upon things naturally inferior to our selves Let none of this be so mistaken as though women were thought improper for divine or for civil conversation For they have the same soul and of their good using the faculties of that soul the Ecclesiastick story and the Martyrologies give us abundant examples of great things done and suffered by women for the advancement of Gods glory But yet as when the woman was taken out of man God caused a heavy sleep to fall upon man Gen. 2.22 and he slept so doth the Devil cast a heavy sleep upon him too When the woman is so received into man again as that she possesses him fills him transports him I know the Fathers are frequent in comparing and paralleling Eve the Mother of Man and Mary the Mother of God But God forbid any should say That the Virgin Mary concurred to our good so as Eve did to our ruine It is said truly That as by one man sin entred and death Rom. 5.12 so by one man entred life It may be said That by one woman sin entred and death and that rather then by the man for 1 Tim. 2.14 Adam was not deceived but the woman being deceived was in the transgression But it cannot be said in that sense or that manner that by one woman innocence entred and life The Virgin Mary had not the same interest in our salvation as Eve had in our destruction nothing that she did entred into that treasure that ransom that redeemed us She more then any other woman and many other blessed women since have done many things for the advancing of the glory of God and imitation of others so that they are not unfit for spiritual conversation nor for the civil offices of friendship neither where both tentation at home and scandal abroad may truly be avoided I know St. Jerome in that case despised all scandal and all malicious mis-interpretations of his purpose therein rather then give over perswading the Lady Paula to come from Rome to him and live at Jerusalem But I know not so well that he did well in so doing A familiar and assiduous conversation with women will hardly be without tentation and scandal St. Jerome himself apprehended that scandal tenderly and expresses it passionately Sceleratum me putant omnibus peccatis obrutum The world takes me for a vicious man more sceleratum for a wicked a facinorous man for this and obrutum surrounded overflowed with all sins Versipellem lubricum mendacem satanae arte decipientem They take me to be a slippery fellow a turn-coat from my professed austerity a Lyar an Impostor a Deceiver yet though he discerned this scandal and this inconvenience in it he makes shift to ease himself in this Nihil aliud mihi objicitur nisi sexus meus They charge me with nothing but my sex that I am a man Et hoc nunquam objicitur nisi cum Hierosolymam Paula proficiscitur nor that neither but because this Lady follows me to Jerusalem He proceeds farther That till he came acquainted in Paulas house at Rome Omnium penè judicio summo sacerdotio dignus decernebar every man thought me fit to be Pope every man thought reverently of him till he used her house St. Jerome would fain have corrected their mis-interpretations and slackned the