onely in this sense said to have an end when indeed it is in its 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and perfection when there will be no enemy stirring to subdue no use of Laws when the Subjects are now made perfect when this Lord shall make his subjects Kings and Crowne them with Glory and Honor for ever Here 's no weaknesse no Infirmity no abjuration no resignation of the Crowne and Power but all things are at an end his enemies in Chaines and his subjects free free from the feare of Hell or Temptations of the Devill the World or the flesh and though there be an end yet he reignes still though he be subject yet he is as high as ever he was Though he hath delivered up his Kingdome yet he hath not lost it but remaines a Lord and King for Evermore And now you have seen this Lord that is to come you have seen him sitting at the right hand of God His right and Power of Government his Laws just and Holy and wise the virtue and Power the largeness and the duration of his Government a sight fit for those to look on who love and look for the comming of this Lord for they that long to meet him in the Clouds cannot but delight to behold him at the right Hand of God Look upon him then sitting in Majesty and Power and think you now saw him moving towards you and were now descending with a shout for his very sitting there should be to us as his comming it being but the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the preparation to that great Day Look upon him and think not that he there sits Idle but beholds the Children of men those that wait for him and those that Think not of him and he will come down with a shout not fall as a Timber-logge for every Frogg every wanton sinner to leap upon and croake about but come as a Lord with a Reward in one hand and a Vengeance in the other Oh 't is farre better to fall down and worship him now then not to know him to be a Lord till that time that in his wrath he shall manifest his Power and fall upon us and break us in pieces Look then upon this Lord and look upon his Lawes and write them in your hearts for the Philosopher will tell us that the strength and perfection of Law consists not onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the wise and discreet framing of them but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the right and due performance of them for obedience is the best seal and Ratification of a Law He is Lord from all eternity and cannot be divested of his royal office yet he counts his kingdom most compleat when we are subject and obedient unto him when he hath taken possession of our hearts where he may walk not as he did in Paradise terrible to Adam who had forfeited his allegiance but as in a garden of pleasures to delight himself with the sons of men Behold he commands threatens beseeches calls upon us again and again and the beseechings of Lords are commands preces armatae armed prayers backt with power and therefore next consider the vertue and power of his dominion and bow before him do what he commands with fear and trembling let this power walk along with thee in all thy wayes when thou art giving an almes let it strike the trumpet out of thy hand when thou fastest let it be in capite jejunii let it begin and end it when thou art strugling with a tentation let it drive thee on that thou faint not and fall back and do the work of the Lord negligently Jer. 48.10 when thou art adding vertue to vertue let it be before they eyes that thou mayest double thy diligence and make it up compleat in every circumstance and when thou thinkest of evil let it joyn with that thought that thou mayest hate the very appearance of it and chace it away why should dust ashes more awe thee then Omnipotency why should thy eye be stronger then thy faith not onely the frown but the look of thy Superior composeth and models thee puts thee into any fashion or form thou wilt go or run or sit down thou wilt venture thy body would that were all nay thou wilt venture thy soul do any thing be any thing what his beck doth but intimate but thy faith is fearlesse as bold as blind and will venture on on the point of the sword fears what man not what this Lord can do to him fears him more that sits on the bench than him that sits at the right hand of God If we did beleeve as we professe we could not but more lay it to our hearts even lay it so as to break them for who can stand up when he is angry let us next view the largenesse and compasse of his Dominion which takes in all that will come and reacheth those who refuse to come and is not contracted in its compasse if none should come and why shouldest thou turn a Saviour into a destroyer why should'st thou die in thy Physitians armes with thy cordials about thee why shouldest thou behold him as a Lord 'till he be angry he caleth all inviteth all that come why should Publicans and sinners enter and thy disobedience shut thee out Lastly consider the duration of his Dominion which shall not end but with the world nor end then when it doth end for the vertue of it shall reach to all eternity and then think that under this Lord thou must either be eternally happy or eternally miserable and let not a flattering but a fading world thy rebellious and traiterous flesh let not the father of lies a gilded temptation an apparition a vain shadow thrust thee on his left hand for both at his right and left there is power which works to all eternity The second his Advent or coming Venit he will come And now we have walkt about this Sion and told the towers thereof shewed you Christs territories and Dominion the nature of his laws the vertue and power the largenesse and compasse the duration of his kingdom we must in the next place consider his Advent his coming consider him as now coming for we cannot imagine as was said before that he sat there idle like Epicurus his God nec sibi facessens negotium nec alteri not regarding what is done below but like true Prometheus governing and disposing the state of times and actions of men M. Sen. Contr. Divinum numen etiam qua non apparet rebus humanis intervenit his power insinuates it self and even works there where it doth not appear Though he be in heaven yet he can work at this distance for he fills the heaven and the earth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he beholdeth all things he heareth all things he speaks to thee and he speaks in thee he hears thee when thou speakest and he hears thee when thou speakest not in his book are
within a span and when immortality is offer'd affect no other life but that which is a vapour Let us not rayse that swarme of thoughts which must perish Colos 3.3 but build up those works upon our everliving Saviour which may follow us follow us through the huge and unconceivable tract of eternity Doth our Saviour live for evermore and shall we have no spirit in us but that which delights to walk about the earth and is content to vanish with it Eternity is a powerfull motive to those who never have such pensive thoughts as when they remember their frailty and are sick even of health it self and in a manner dead with life when they consider it as that blessing which shall have an end Eternity is in our desire though it be beyond our apprehension what he said of time is truer of eternity if you doe not ask what it is we know but if you ask we are not able to answer and resolve you or tell you what it is when we call it an infinite duration we doe but give it another name two words for one a short Paraphrase but we doe not define what it is And indeed our first conceptions of it are the fairest for when they are doubled and redoubled they are lost in themselves and the further they extend themselves the more weary they are and at greater losse in every proffer and must end and rest at last in this poore unsatisfying thought that we cannot think what it is Yet there is in us a wild presage an unhandsome acknowledgment of it for we fancy it in those objects which vanish out of sight whilst we look upon them we set it up in every desire for our desires never have an end Every purpose of ours every action we doe is Aeternitati sacrum and we doe it to eternity we look upon riches as if they had no wings and think our habitations shall endure for ever we look upon honour as if it were not Aire but some Angel confirm'd a thing bound up in eternity we look upon beauty and it is our heaven and we are fixt and dwell on it as if it would never shrivel nor be gathered together as a scroule and so in a manner make mortality it self eternall And therefore since our desires doe so far enlarge themselves and our thoughts doe so multiply that they never have an end since we look after that which we cannot see and reach after that which we cannot graspe God hath set up that for an object to look on which is eternall indeed in the highest Heavens and as he hath made us in his own image so in Christ who came to renew it in us he hath shewed us a more excellent way unto it taught us to work out eternity even in this world in this common shop of change to work it out of that in which it is not which is neer to nothing which shall be nothing to work it out of riches by not trusting them out of honour by contemning it out of the pleasures of this world by loathing them out of the flesh by crucifying it out of the world by overcoming it and out of the Divell himself by treading him under our feet For this is to be in Christ and to be in Christ is to be for evermore Christ is the eternall Sonne of God and he was dead and lives and lives for evermore that we may dye and live for evermore and not onely attaine to the Resurrection of the dead but to eternity Last of all let us look upon the keys in his hand and knock hard that he may open to us and deliver our soule from hell and make our grave not a prison but a Bed to rise from to eternall life or if we be still shut in we our selves have turn'd the key against our selves for Christ is ready with his keyes to open to us and we have our keys too our key of knowledge to discerne between Life and Death and our key of Repentance and when we use these Christ is ready to put his even into our hands and will derive a power unto us mortalls unto us sinners over hell and death And then in the last place we shall be able to set on the Seal the Amen be confirmed in the certainty of his Resurrection and power by which we may raise those thoughts and promote those actions which may look beyond our threescore yeares and ten through all successive generations to immortality and that glory which shall never have an end This is to shew and publish our faith by our works as S. James speaks this is from the heart to believe it as S. Paul for he that thus believes it from the heart cannot but be obedient to the Gospel unless we can imagine there could be any man that should so hate himself as thus deliberately to cast himself into and to run from happinesse when it appeares in so much glory He cannot say Amen to life who kills himself for that which leaves as soul in the grave is not faith but fancy when we are told that honour cometh towards us that some golden shower is ready to fall into our laps that content and pleasure will ever be neer and wait upon us how loud and hearty is our Amen how do we set up an Assurance-office to our selves and yet that which seemes to make its approch towards us is as uncertain as uncertainty it self and when we have it passeth from us and as the ruder people say of the Devil leaves a noysome and unsavoury scent behind it and we look after it and can see it no more but when we are told that Christ liveth for evermore and is coming is certainly coming with reward and punishment vox fancibus haeret we can scarce say Amen so be it To the world and pomp thereof we can say Amen but to Heaven and Hell to eternity we cannot say Amen or if we do we do but say it For conclusion then The best way is to draw the Ecce and the Amen the Behold and our assurance together so to study the death and life the eternall life and the power of our Saviour that we may be such proficients as to be able with S. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to meet the Resurrection Phil. 3.11 to look for and hasten the coming of the Lord when his Life and Eternity and Power shall shine gloriously to the terrour of those who persecute his Church and to the comfort of those who suffer for Righteousnesse sake when that Head which was a forge of mischief and cruelty that Hand which touched the Lords Anointed and did his Prophets harm shall burn in hell for ever when that Eye which would not look on vanity shall be filled with glory that Eare which hearkned to his voice shall heare nothing but Hallebujahs and the musick of Angels and that Head which was ready to be laid down for this living everliving
pleasing but deceitfull contemplation of faith he speaks no other language but do this and exalts charity to the higher place that their vain boasting of faith might not be heard for faith saith he hath no tongue nay no life without her and thus in appearance he takes from the one to establish the other and sets up a throne for charity not without some shew and semblance of prejudice to faith For last of all to give you one reason more Faith indeed is naturally productive of good works For what madnesse is it to see the way to eternity of blisse and not to walk in it Each article of our Creed points out as with â—e finger to some vertue to be wrought out in the minde and publisht in the outward man If I beleeve that Christ is God it will follow I must worship him If he died for sinne the consequence is plain enough we must die to it If he so loved vs the Apostle concludes we must love one another charity is the proper effect of faith and upon faith and charity we build up our hope if we beleeve the promises and perform the condition if we beleeve him that loved us and love him and keep his commandments we are in heaven already But yet we may observe that the corruption of our hearts findes somthing in faith it self to abate and weaken her force and power and to take off her activity and so makes the very object of faith an encouragement to evil and which is a sad speculation the mercy of God a kinde of temptation to sinne Mercy is a pretious oyntment and mercy breaks our head mercy blots out sin and mercy revives it mercy is our hope and mercy is made our confusion we should sin no more but we sin more and more because his mercy endureth for ever we turn the grace of God into wantonness and make this Queen of his glorious attributes to wait on our lust of a Covering a purging a Healing a saving I tremble to speak it we make it a damning mercy for had we not abused it had we not relied upon it too much had we not laid upon it all our uncleannesse our impenitency and wilfull obstinacy in sinne it would have upheld us and lifted us up as high as Heaven but our bold presumption layes hold of it and it flings us off and we fall from it into the bottomlesse pit This then we may take for a sufficient reason why our Apostle puts not faith into his description of Pure Religion and in the next place as he doth not mention faith so he passeth by in silence rather then forgets those other excellent duties of prayer and hearing the word For these two whatsoever high esteem we put upon them howsoever we magnifie them till they are nothing till our selves are worse than nothing worse than the beasts that perish yet are they not the end and their end is perdition who make them so and think that to aske a blessing is to have it when they put it from them or to hear of God is to love him to hear of that happinesse which he hath laid up is to be in Paradise The perfection of the creature saith the Philosopher is ad naturae suae sinem pervenire to attain to the end for which he was made and the end of the Christian is to be like unto Christ that where he is He may be also that is his end that is his perfection Now to draw this home these two to Hear and to Pray do not make us like unto him but are sufficient means to renew the image of God in us that so we may resemble him they are not the haven to which we are bound but are as prosperous and advantagious windes to carry us to it Quod per se bonum est semper est bonum that which is good in it self and for it self is alwayes good as true piety true Religion but those duties which tend to it have their reward or punishment as they reach or misse of that end what is hearing if it beget not obedience what are prayers if they be but the calves of our lips Oh 't is a sad question to be ask't when we shall see Christians full of malice and deceit Have they not heard they have heard that malice shall destroy the wicked that deceit is an abomination that oppression shall eat them up yet will be such monsters as if they never heard oh 't is a sad expostulation to the wicked Have they not heard and as sad a return may be made to our prayers we may stretch out our hands and God may hide his eyes from us we may make many prayers and he not hear we may lift up our hands and vocie unto Heaven and our minde stay below wallowing in the mire of foul pollutions mixt and ingendering with the vanities of the world for as we may fast to strife and debate so we may pray to strife and debate as there may be a politick Fast so our prayer may have more in it of craft than devotion we may make it a trade a craft an occupation and so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 stoutly labor and holdout not to take the kingdom of Heaven but to devour widows houses make this Key of the Gates of Heaven a picklock to open Chests and so debase it to these vile offices which is a sin cujus non audeo dicere nomen for which I have no name bad enough to give it and what is Prayer then what are the means if we rest in them as in the end what are they if we draw and force them to a bad end what are they if we make no use of them at all or make this sad and fatall use of them if our Prayers bring down a curse our hearing flatter us in our disobedience if we Hear and Pray and Perish These two and what else of this nature have their worth and efficacy from Religion from charity to our selves others which are as the two wings on which our prayers ascend and mount to the presence of God to bring down a blessing from thence These sanctifie our fasts these open the ears of the deaf that hearing they may hear and understand These consecrate our Pulpets and are the best panegyricks on our Sermons and make them indeed the word of God powerfull in operation and without these our prayers are but babling and the Sermons which we hear but so many libels against us or as so many knells and sad indications that they that hear them are condemned and dead already For again to visit the fatherlesse and widows in affliction that is to be full of good works and to renounce and abstain from the pleasures of the world for those pleasures we dote on those riches we sweat for are those that bespot us is a far harder task then to say a hundred pater no sters or to continue our prayers as Saint Paul did his preaching
and power from him from his promises and from his precepts from his life and from his passion and death from what he did and from what he suffered as there did to the woman which touched the hem of his garment that healed her bloody issue a power by which he sweetly and secretly and powerfully characterizeth our hearts and writes his minde in our minds and so takes possession of them and draws them into him self in the eighth to the Rom. 11. v. the Apostle tells us he dwelleth in us by his spirit and that we are led by the spirit in the whole course of our life in the second to the Ephes the last v. we are said to be the habitation of God through the spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his tabernacle his temple which he consecrates and sets apart to his own use and service there is no doubt a power comes from him but I am almost afraid to say it there having been such ill use made of it For though it become already for the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation yet is it still expected expected indeed rather then hoped for for when it doth come we shut the door and set up our will against it and then look faintly after it and perswade our selves it will come at last once for all There is power in his preceâ—ts for our reason subscribes and signes them for true there is power in his promises they shine in glory Rom. 1.16 these are the power of Christ to every one that beleeveth and how can we be Christians if we beleeve not but this is his ordinary power which like the Sun in commune profertur is shewn on all at once There yet goes a more immediate power and virtue from him John 3. â— we denie it not which like the winde works wonderful effects but we see not whence it cometh nor whither it goes neither the beginning nor the end of it which is in another World For the operations of the spirit by reason they are of another condition then any other thought or working in us whatsoever are very difficult and obscure as Scotus observes upon the prologue to the sentences for the manner not to be perceived no not by that soul wherein they are wrought profuisse deprehendas quomodo prefuerunt non deprehendes as Seneca in another case that they have wrought you shall find but the secret and retired passages by which they wrought are impossible to be brought to demonstration But though we cannot discerne the maner of his working yet we may observe that in his actions and operations on the soul of man he holds the course even of natural agents in this respect that they strive to bring in their similitude and likenesse into those things on which they work by a kinde of force driving out one contrary with another to make way for their own form so Abraham begat Isaac and Isaac Jacob and every creature according to its own kinde as Plato said of Sacrates wise sayings that they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the children of his minde so resembling him that you might see all Socrates in them So it is with Christ where he dwells he worketh by his spirit something like unto himself he alters the whole frame of the heart 2 Cor. 10. drives out all that is contrary to him all imaginations which axalt themselves against him never leaves purging and fashioning us Cal. 4. till a new creature like himself till Christ be fully formed in us So it is with every one in whom Christ dwelleth And this he doth by the power of his spirit 1. By quickning our knowledge by shewing us the riches of his Gospel his Beauty and Majesty the glory and order of his house and that with that convincing evidence that we are forced to fall down and worship by filling our soul with the glory of it as God filled the tabernacle with his Exod. 40. that all the powers and saculties of the soul are ravisnt with the sight and come willingly as the Psalmist speaks fall down willingly before him by moving our soul as our soul doth our body that when he sayes go we go and when he sayes do this we do it and so it is in every one in whom Christ dwelleth Secondly he dwells in us by quickning and enlivening our faith so dwells in our hearts by faith Eph. 3.17 that we are rooted and grounded in love for we read of a dead faith Jâ—m 2.20 which moves no more in the wayes of righteousnesse then a dead man sealed up in his grave and if the Son of man should come he would finde enough of this faith in the World For from hence from this that our faith is not enlivened that the Gospel is not throughly beleeved but faintly received cam formidine contrarit with fear or rather a hope that the contrary is true from hence proceed all the errours of our lives from hence ariseth that irregularity those contradictions those inconsequences in the lives of men even from hence that we have faith but so as we should have the World we have it as if we had it not and so use it as if we used it not or which is worse abuse it not beleeve and be saved but beleeve and be damned and we are vain men saith Saint James if we think otherwise if we think that a dead faith can work any thing or any thing but death but when it is quickned and made a working faith when Christ dwells in our hearts by faith then it works wonders Heb. 11.33 2 Cor. 2,11 for we read of its valour that it subdues kingdoms and stoppeth the mouthes of Lions we read of its policy that it discovers the devils enterprises or devices of its medicinal vertue that it purifieth the heart and we read too furta fidei the thefts and pious depredations of faith stealing virtue from Christ and taking Heaven by violence and such a wonderful power it hath in that soul in which Christ dwelleth it worketh out our corruption and stampeth his image upon us it worketh obedience in us which is called the obedience of faith that is that obedience Rom. 1.5 which is due to faith and to which faith naturally tendeth and would bring us to it if we did not dull and dead and hinder it And 1. he worketh in us a universal and equal obedience for if he dwell in us every room is his For there are saith Parisiensis particulares voluntates particular wills or rather particular inclinations and dispositions to this virtue and not to another to be liberal and not temperate sober but not chasT to fast and hear and pray but not to do acts of mercy which are virtues but in appearance and proceed from rotten unsound principles from a false spring but not from Christ and so make up a spiritual Hermaphrodite a good speaker and a bad live a Jew and a Christian Deus in
be who have subscribed to the venturus est that the Lord will come who have little reason to hope for his coming How many beleeve hee will come and bring his reward with him and yet strike off their own Charriot wheels and drive but heavily towards it how many beleeve there is a Judge to come and wish there were none Faith Saving Faith Hope Hope that will not make ashamed cannot dwell in the heart till Charity hath taken up a roome but when she is diffusa in cordibus shed and spread abroad in our Hearts then they are in Conjunction and meet together and kisse each other Faith is a Foundation and on it our love raiseth it self as high as heaven in all the severall branches and parts of it Because I beleeve I love and when my love is reall and perfect my hope springs up and blooms and flourishes my Faith sees the object my Love imbraceth it and the means unto it and my Hope layes hold of it and even takes possession of it And therefore this venturus est This coming of the Lord is a Threat and not a promise if they meet not If Faith work not by Love and both together raise not a Hope venturus est he will come is a Thunder-bolt And thus as it lookes upon Faith and Hope so it calls for our Charity For whether we will or no whether we beleeve or no whether we hope or no veniet he will certainly come but when we love him then we love also his appearance and his coming and our Love is a subscription to his Promise 2 Tim. 4.8 by which we truly Testify our consent and sympathize with him and say Amen to his Promise That he will come we eccho it back againe unto him Even so come Lord Jesus For that of Faith may be in a manner forc'd That of Hope may be groundless but this of Love is a free and voluntary subscription Though I I know he will come yet I shall be unwilling he should come upon me as an Enemy that he should come to me when I sit in the Chair of the Scornfull or lie in the bed of Lust or am wallowing in the mire or weltring in my own blood or washing my feet in the blood of my Brethren for can any condemned person hope for the day of Execution But when I love him and bow before him when I have improv'd his Talent and brought my self to that Temper and Constitution that I am of the same mind with this Lord and partaker of his divine Nature then Faith openeth and displayeth her self and Hope towreth up as high as the right Hand of God and would bring him down never at rest never at an end but panting after him till he doe come crying out with the soules under the Altar How long Lord How long How long is the very breathing and language of Hope Then Substantia mea apud te Psal 62.5 as the vulgar reads that of the Psalmist my expectation my substance my being is with the Lord and I doe not onely subscribe to the veniet to his coming because he hath Decreed and resolved upon it but because I can make an hearty Acknowledgement that the will of the Lord is just and good and I assent not of Necessity but of a willing mind and I am not onely willing but long for it and as he Testifies these Things and confirmes this Article of his coming with this last word etiam venio surely I come so shall I be able truely to Answer Even so come Lord Jesus come quickly The End of his Coming And now venturus est the Lord will come and you may see the Necessity of his coming in the End of his coming for qualis Dominus talis adventus as his Dominion is such is his Coming his Kingdome spirituall and his coming to punish sinne and reward Obedience to make us either Prisoners in Darkness or Kings and Priests to reigne with him and offer up spirituall Sacrifices for evermore He comes not to answer the Disciples question to restore the Kingdom to Israel for his Kingdome is not such a one as they dreamt of nor to place the Mother of Zebedees Children the one at his right Hand and the other at his left nor to bring the Lawyer to his Table to eat bread with him in his Kingdome These carnall conceits might suite well with the Synagogue which lookt upon nothing but the Basket and yet to bring in this Error the Jews as they killed the Prophets so must they also abolish their Prophecies which speak plainely of a King of no shape or beauty Esai 53.2 Zech. 9.9 Isa 9.6 of his first coming in lowlinesse and poverty of a Prince of Peace and not of warr of the Increase of whose Government there shall be no end Nor doth he come to lead the Chiliast the Dreamer of a Thousand yeares of Temporall Happiness on Earth into a Mahometicall Paradise of all Corporall Contentments That after the Resurrection the Elect and even a Reprobate may think or callhim self so may reigne with Christ a thousand years in all state and Pomp and in the Affluence of all those Pleasures which this Lord hath taught them to renounce A conceit which ill becomes Christians who must look for a better and more enduring substance who are strangers and Pilgrims Heb. 10.34 Heb. 11.13 and not Kings on earth whose Conversation is in heaven and whose whole life must be a going out of the World why should we be commanded and that upon paine of eternall separation from this our Lord to weane our selves from the World and every thing in the World if the same Lord Think these flatteries of our worser part these pleasures which we must loath a fitt and proportionable reward for the labour of our Faith and Charity which is done in the Inward man can he forbid us to touch and Tast these Things and then glut us with them because we did not Touch them and can it now change its Nature and be made a Recompence of those Virtues which were as the wings on which we did fly away and so kept our selves untoucht unspotted of this Evill But they urge Scripture for it and so they soon may for it is soon misunderstood soon misapplyed It is written they say in the 20. of the Revel at the 6. v. that the Saints shall reign with Christ a thousand yeers shall reign with Christ is evidence faire enough to raise those spirits which are too high or rather too low already 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 no sooner is the word read but the crown is on To let passe the divers interpretations of that place some making the number to be definite some to be indefinite some beginning the thousand yeers with the persecution of Christ and ending it in Antichrist others beginning it with the reign of Constantine when Christianity did most flourish and ending it at the first rising of the
the true cause in the bosome of the Father nay in the bowels of his Son and there see the cause why he was delivered for us written in his Heart it was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Tit. 3.4 the love of God to mankind and what was in mankind but enmity and hostility sinne and deformity which are no proper motives to draw on his love and yet he loved us and hated sinne and made haste to deliver us from it Dilexisti me domine plusquam te quando mori voluisti pro me saith Aust Lord when thou dyedst for me thou madest it manifest that my soule was dearer to thee then thy self such a high esteeme did he set upon a Soule which we scarce honour with a thought but so live as if we had none For us men then and For us Sinners was he delivered the Prophet Esay speaks it and he could not speake it so properly of any but him He was wounded for our transgressions and broken for our Iniquities So that he was delivered up not onely to the crosse E◠53. and shame but to our sinnes which nayled him to the crosse which crucified him not onely in his Humility but in his glory now he sits at the right hand of God and puts him to shame to the end of the world Falsò de Judaeis querimur why complain we of the Jewes malice or Judas's treason of Pilates injustice we we alone are they who crucifyed the Lord of life Our Treachery was the Judas which betrayed him Our malice the Jew which accused him our perjury the false witnesse against him our Injustice the Pilate that condemned him our pride scorned him our envy grinned at him our luxury spet upon him our covetousnesse sold him our corrupt bloud was drawn out of his wounds our swellings prickt with his Thornes our sores launced with his speare and the whole Body of sinne stretched out and crucified with the Lord of life Tradidit pro nobis he delivered him up for us sinners no sinne there is which his bloud will not wash away but finall impenitency which is not so much a sinne as the sealing up of the body of sinne when the measure is full pro nobis for us sinners for us for us the progeny of an arch-traytor and as great traytors as he take us at our worst if we repent he was delivered for us and if we do not repent yet he may be said to be delivered for us for he was delivered for us to that end that we might repent Pro nobis Pro nobis omnibus so us all for us men and for us sinners he was deliver'd pro infirmis for us when we were without strength pro impiis for us when we were ungodly pro peccatoribus for sinners Rom. 5.6,7 for so we were consider'd in this great work of our Redemption and thus high are we gone on this scale and ladder of love There is one step more pro nobis omnibus he was deliver'd for us all all not consider'd as elect or reprobate but as men as smners for that name will take in all for all have sinned And here we are taught to make a stand and not to touch too hastily and yet the way is plaine and easie pro omnibus for all this some will not touch and yet they doe touch and presse it with that violence that they presse it almost into nothing make the world not the world and whosoever not whosoever but some certaine men and turne all into a few deduct whom they please out of all people Nations and Languages and out of Christendome it self and leave some few with Christ upon the Crosse whose persons he beares whom they call the elect and meane themselves sic Deus dilexit mundum so God loved the world that is the Elect say they John 3.16 they are the world where t is hard to find them for they are called out of it and the best light we have which is of Scripture discovers them not unto us in that place and if the Elect be this world which God so loved then they are such Elect which may not believe and such elect as may perish and whom God will have perish if they doe not believe T is true none have benefit of Christs death but the Elect but from hence it doth not follow that no other might have had theirs is the kingdome of heaven but are not they shut out now who might have made it theirs God saith Saint Peter would not that any should perish 2 Pet. 3.8 and God is the Saviour of all men saith Saint Paul but especially of those that believe 1 Tim. 4.10 all if they believe and repent and those who are obedient to the Gospel because they doe the bloud of Christ is powred forth on the Believer and with it he sprinkles his heart and is saved the wicked trample it under their foot and perish That the bloud of Christ is sufficient to wash away the sinnes of the world nay of a thousand worlds that Christ paid down a ransome of so infinite a value that it might redeeme all that are or possibly might be under that Captivity that none are actually redeemed but they who make him their Captaine and doe as he commands that is believe and repent or to speak in their own language none are saved but the elect In this all agree in this they are Brethren and why should they fall out when both hold up the priviledge of the believer and leave the rod of the stubborne Impenitent to fall upon him The death of Christ is not applyed to all say some It is not for all say others the virtue of Christs meritorious passion is not made use of by all say some it was never intended that it should say others and the event is the same for if it be not made use of and applyed it is as if it were not as if it had never been obtain'd onely the unbeliever is left under the greater condemnation who turned away from Christ who spake unto him not onely from heaven but from his crosse and refused that grace which was offer'd him which could not befall him if there had never been any such overture made for how can he refuse that which never concern'd him how can he forfeit that pardon which was never seal'd how can he despise that spirit of grace which never breathed towards him They who are so tender and jealous of Christs bloud that no drop must fall but where they direct it doe but veritatem veritate concutere undermine and shake one truth with another set up the particular love of God to believers to overthrow his generall love to Mankind confound the virtue of Christs passion with the effect and draw them together within the same narrow compasse bring it under a Decree that it can save no more then it doth because it hath its bounds set hitherto it shall go and no further and was ordained to quicken
and Attire Clothed he was with a garment down to the foot which was the Garment of the High Priest and his was an unchangeable Priesthood Heb. 7.24 and he had a golden Girdle or Belt as a King v. 13. for he is a King for ever and of his kingdome there shall be no end Righteousnesse shall be the girdle of his loynes and Faithfulnesse he girdle of his reines Es 11.5 His head and his haires were white as wooll v. 14. and as white as snow his Judgement pure and uncorrupt not byassed by outward respects not tainted or corrupted by any turbulent affection but smooth even as waters are when no wind troubles them His eys as a flame of fire piercing the inward man searching the secrets of the heart nor is there any action word or thought which is not manifest in his sight His feet like unto fine brasse sincere and constant like unto himself in all his proceedings in every part of his Oeconomy his voyce as many waters v. 15. declaring his fathers will with power and authority sounding out the Gospel of peace to all the world and last of all out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword v. 16. not onely dividing asunder the soul and the spirit but discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart and taking vengeance on those who persecute his Church His Majesty dazled every mortall eye his Countenance was as the Sun shining in his strength and now of him who walks in the midst of his Church whose Mercy is a large Robe reaching down to the feet who is girt with Power who is clothed with Justice whose Wisdom pierceth even into darknesse it self whose Word is heard from one end of the world to the other whose Majesty displayes its beams through every corner of it we cannot but confesse with Peter This is Christ the Sonne of the living God And can the Saviour of the world the desire of the Nations the glory of his Father can Beauty it self appeare in such a shape of Terrour shall we draw out a mercifull Redeemer with a warriours Belt with eyes of Fire with feet of Brasse with a voyce of Terrour with a sharp two-edged Sword in his mouth Yes such a High Priest became us who is not onely mercifull but just not onely meek but powerfull not onely fair but terrible not onely clothed with the darknesse of Humility but with the shining robes of Majesty who can dye and can live again and live for evermore who suffered himself to be judged and condemned and shall judge and condemne the world it self S. John indeed was troubled at this sight and fell down as dead but Christ rouzeth him up and bids him shake off this feare for he is terrible to none but those who make him so to Hereticks and Hypocrites and Persecutors of his Church to those who would have him neither wise nor just nor powerfull non accepimus iratum sed fecimus he is not angry till we force him 't is rather our sins that turn back again upon us as furies than his wrath that makes him clothe himself with vengeance and draw his sword To S. John to those that bow before him he is all Sweetnesse all Grace all Salvation and upon these as upon St. John he layes his right hand quickens and rouzeth them up Feare not neither my girdle of Justice nor my eyes of fire nor my feet of brasse nor my mighty voice nor my two-edged sword for my Wisdom shall guide you my power shall defend you my Majesty shall uphold you and my Mercy shall crown you Fear not I am the first and the last more humble than any more powerfull than any scorned whipped crucified and now highly exalted and Lord of all the world I am he that liveth and was dead and behold I live for evermore c. Which words I may call as Tertullian doth the Lords Prayer breviarium Evangelii the breviary or summe of the whole Gospel or with Austin symbolnm abbreviatum the Epitome and abridgement of our Creed and such a short Creed we find in Tertullian which he calls Regulam veram immobilem irreformabilem the sole immutable unalterable rule of Faith and then The articles or parts will be these 1. The Death of Christ I was dead 2. The Resurrection of Christ with the effect and power of it I am he that liveth 3. The duration and continuance of his life which is to all eternity I live for evermore 4. Power of Christ which he purchased by his death the power of the keyes I have the keyes of Hell and of Death And these 1. Are ushered in with an Ecce Behold that we may consider it 2. Sealed ratified with an Amen that we may believe it That there be not in any of us as the Apostle speaks an unbelieving heart to depart from the living God I am he that liveth and was dead And of the death of Christ we spake the last day Par 1. we shall onely now look upon it in reference to the Resurrection consider it as past for it is fui mortuus I was dead and in this we may see the method and proceeding of our Saviour which he drew out in his blood which must sprinkle those who are to be saved and make them nigh unto him to follow in the same method à morte ad vitam Luke 24.25 Heb. 2.20 from suffering to glory from death to life Tota ecclesia cum Christo computatur ut una persona Christ and his Church are in computations but one person he ought to suffer and we ought to suffer they suffer in him and he in hem to the end of the world nor is any other method either answerable to his infinite Wisdome and Justice which hath set it down in indelible characters nor to our mortall and frail condition which must be bruised before it can be healed must be levelled with the ground before it can be raised up quicquid Deo convenit Tetuil homini prodest that which is convenient for Christ is profitable for us that which becometh him we must wear as an ornament of grace unto our head there is an oportet set upon both he ought and we ought first to suffer and then to enter into glory to die first that we may rise again And first it cannot consist with the wisdome of God that Christ should suffer and die and we live as we please and the reign with him and so pass à deliciis in delicias from one paradise to another that he should overcome the Divel for those who will be his vassals that he should foile him in his proud temptations for those who will not be humble beat off his sullen temptation for those who will distrust and murmure that he should make his victorious death commeatum delinquendi a licence and charter for all generations to fling away their weapons and not strike a stroke If he should have done this
of the Pharisees believe in him we might ask Did any of his Disciples believe in him Christ himself calls them Fools and slow of heart to believe what the Prophets had foretold their Feare had sullied the evidence that they could not see it the Text sayes they forsook him and fled And the reason of this is plain For though faith be an act of the understanding yet it depends upon the will and men are incredulous not for want of those meanes which may raise a faith but for want of will to follow that light which leads unto it do not believe because they will not and so bear themselves strongly upon opinion preconceived beyond the strength of all evidence whatsoever when our affections and lusts are high and stand out against it the evidence is put by and forgot and the object which calls for our eye and faith begins to disappear and vanish and at last is nothing quot voluntates tot fides so many wills Hilary so many Creeds for there is no man that believes more than he will To make this good we may appeale to men of the slendrest observation least experience we may appeale to our very eye which cannot but see those uncertain and uneven motions in which men are carried on in the course of their life For what else is that that turnes us about like the hand of a Diall from one point to another from one perswasion to a contrary How comes it to pass that I now embrace what anon I tremble at what is the reason that our Belief shifts so many Scenes and presents it self in so many severall shapes now in the indifferency of a Laodicaean anon in the violence of a Zelot now in the gaudiness of Superstition anon in the proud scornful slovenry of factious Profaneness that they make so painfull a peregrination through so many modes and forms of Religion and at last end in Atheist what reason is there there can be none but this the prevalency and victory of our sensitive part over our reason and the mutability yea and stubbornesse of our will which cleaves to that which it will soon forsake but is strongly set against the truth which brings with it the fairest evidence but not so pleasing to the sense This is it which makes so many impressions in the mind Self-love and the love of the world these frame our Creeds these plant and build these root and pull down build up a Faith and then beat it to the ground and then set up another in its place A double-minded man saith S. James is unstable in all his wayes Remember 2 Tim. 2.8 saith S. Paul that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised up from the dead according to my Gospel that is a sure foundation for our faith to build on and there we have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fair and certain pledges of it which are as a Commentary upon ego vivo I live or as so many beams of light to make it open and manifest to every eye which give up so fair an evidence that the malice of the Jew cannot avoid it Let them say his Disciples stole him away whilest their stout watchmen slept what stole him away and whilest they slept it is a dream and yet it is not a dream it is a studied lye and doth so little shake that it confirmes our faith so transparent that through it we may behold more clearly the face of truth which never shines brighter than when a lye is drawn before it to vaile and shadow it He is not here he is risen if an Angel had not spoken it yet the Earthquake the Clothes the clothes so diligently wrapt up the Grave it self did speak it and where such strange impossibilities are brought in to colour and promote a lye they help to confute it id negant quod ostendunt they deny what they affirm and malice it self is made an argument for the truth For it we have a better verdict given by Cephas and the twelve 1 Cor. 12.15 We have a cloud of witnesses five hundred brethren at once who would not make themselves the Fathers of a lye to propagate that Gospel which either makes our yea yea and nay nay or damnes us nor did they publish it to raise themselves in wealth and honour for that teacheth them to contemn them and makes poverty a beatitude and shewes them a sword and persecution which they were sure to meet with and did afterwards in the prosecution of their office and publication of that faith nor could they take any delight in such a lye which would gather so many clouds over their heads and would at last dissolve in that bitternesse which would make life it self a punishment and at last take it away and how could they hope that men would ever believe that which themselves knew to be a lie These witnesses then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are many and beyond exception We have the blood too the testimony of the Martyrs who took their death on 't and when they could not live to publish it laid down their life and sealed it with their blood And therefore we on whom the ends of the world are come have no reason to complain of distance or that we are removed so many ages from the time wherein it was done for now Christ risen is become a more obvious object than before the diversity of mediums have increased multiplied it we see him in his word we see him through the blood of Martyrs we see him with the eye of faith Christ is risen alive secundum scripturas saith S. Paul and he repeats it twice in the same chapter Offenderunt Judaei in Christum lapidem it is S. Austins let it passe for his sake when the Jew stumbled at him he presented but the bignesse of a stone but our infidelity will find no excuse if we see him not now when he appears as visible as a mountain Vivo Vivo that is vivifico I give life saith Christ I am alive there is more in this vivo than a bare rising to life 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he liveth is as much as he giveth life there is virtue and power in his Resurrection a power to abolish Death 2 Tim. 1.10 and to bring life and immortality to light a power to raise our vile bodies and a power to raise our viler souls shall raise them nay he hath done it already conresuscitati we are risen together with him and we live with him for we cannot think that he that made such haste out of his own Grave can be willing to see us rotting in ours From this vivo it is that though we dye yet we shall live again Christs living breathes life into us and in his Resurrection he cast the modell of ours Idea est eorum quae fiunt exemplar aeternum saith Seneca and this is such a one an eternall pattern for ours Plato's Idea or common
way and through all the surges of this present world brings us to the presence of God who is truth is self a truth which leads us to our Originall to the Rock out of which we were hewen and brings us back to our God who made us not for the vanities of this world but for himself an Art to cast down all Babells all towring and lofty imaginations which present unto us falshoods for truths appearances for realities plagues for peace which scatter and divide our soules powre them out upon variety of unlawfull objects which deceive us in the very nature and end of things For as this spirit brought life and immortality to light 2 Time 1.10 for whatsoever the prophets and great Rabbies had spoken of immortality was but darknesse in comparison of this great light so it also discovered the errors and horror of those follies which we lookt upon with love and admiration as upon heaven it self What a price doth luxury place on wealth and riches what horror on nakednesse and poverty How doth a jewell glitter in my eyes and what a slurr is there upon virtue what Glory doth the pomp of the world present and what a sad and sullen aspect hath righteousnesse How is God thrust out and every Idol every vanity made a God but the truth here which the spirit teacheth discovers all pulls off the vayle shewes us the true countenance and face of things that we may not be deceived shewes us vanity in riches folly in honour death and destruction in the pomp of this world makes poverty a blessing and misery happinesse and death it self a passage to eternity placeth God in his Throne and man where he should be at his footstoole bowing before him which is the readiest way to be lifted up unto him and to be with him for evermore In a word a truth of power to unite us to our God that brings with it the knowledge of Christ the wisdome of God which presents those precepts and doctrines which lead to happinesse a truth that goes along with us in all our wayes waits on us on our bed of sicknesse leaves us not at our death but followes us and will rise again with us unto judgement and there either acquit or condemn us either be our Judge or Advocate For if we make it our friend here it shall then look lovely on us and speak good things for us but if we despise it and put it under our basest desires and vile affections it will then fight against us and triumph over us and tread us down into the lowest pit Christ is not more gracious then this truth to them that love it but to those who will not learne shall be Tribulation and anguish the Sun turn'd into Bloud the world on fire the voyce of the Archangel the Trump of God the severe countenance of the Judge will not be more terrible then this truth to them that have despised it For Christ Jesus shall judge the secrets of the heart acquit the just condemn the impenitent according to this truth which the spirit teacheth according saith Saint Paul to my Gospel Rom. 2.16 The large extent of this lesson This is the lesson The spirit teacheth truth let us now see the extent of it which is large and universall for the spirit doth not teach us by halves doth not teach some truths and conceal others but teacheth all truth makes his disciples and followers free from all errors that are dangerous and full of saving knowledge For saving knowledge is all indeed that truth which brings me to my end is all and there is nothing more to be known I desired to know nothing but Christ and him crucified saith S. Paul 1 Cor. 2.2 here his desire hath a Non ultra this truth is all this joyns heaven and earth together God and man mortality and immortality misery and happiness in one drawes us neer unto God and makes us one with him This is the Spirits lesson Commentum Divinitatis the invention of the divine Spirit as faith is called the gift of God not onely because it is given to every believer and too many are too willing to stay till it be given but because this spirit first found out the way to save us by so weak a means as Faith And as he first found it out so he teacheth it and leaves out nothing not a tittle not an Iota which may serve to compleat perfect this Divine Science In the book of God are all our members written All the members yea and all the faculties of our soul and in his Gospel his Spirit hath framed rules and precepts to order and regulate them all in every act in every motion and inclination which if the Eye offend pluck it out if the Hand cut it off which limit the understanding to the knowledg of God which bind the will to obedience and moderate confine our Affections level our hope fix our joy stint our sorrow which frame our speech compose our gesture fashion our Apparel set and methodize our outward behaviour Instances in Scripture in every particular are many and obvious and what should I more say for the time would faile me to mention them all In a word then this truth which the spirit teacheth is fitted to the whole man fitted to every member of the body to every faculty of the soule fitted to us in every condition in every relation it will reign with thee it will serve with thee it will manage thy riches it will comfort thy poverty ascend the throne with thee and sit down with thee on the dunghill it will pray with thee it will fast with thee it will labour with thee it will rest and keep a Sabbath with thee it will govern a Church it will order thy Family it will raise a kingdome within thee it will be thy Angel to carry thee into Abrahams bosome and set a crown of glory upon thy head And is there yet any more or what need more than that which is necessary There can be but one God one Heaven one Religion one way to blessednesse and there is but one Truth and that is it which the Spirit teacheth and this runs the whole compass of it directs us not onely ad ultimum sed usque ad ultimum not onely to that which is the end but to the means to every step and passage and approch to every help and advantage towards it and so unites us to this one God gives us right to this one Heaven and brings us home to that one end for which we were made And is there yet any more Yes particular cases may be so many and various that they cannot all come within the compass of this truth which the spirit hath plainly taught 't is true but then for the most part they are cases of our own making cases which we need not make cases sometimes raised by weakness sometimes by wilfulness sometimes even by sin it self which
untill midnight or to hear a Sermon every day Bid the wanton leave the lips of the harlot Acts 20. bid the ambitious make himself equall to them of low degree bid the mammonist be rich in good works and if he do not openly profess it yet the conjecture will be easy and probable that the wanton would chuse rather to fast twice in the week with the Pharisee than to make himself an Eunuch for the Kingdom of Heaven the ambitious and covetous rather say their prayers for such can but say them then to stay themselves in the eager pursuit of their ends but so long as to give an almes the ambitious will pray and hear and do any thing rather than fall lower and the Miser chain his ears to the Pulpit rather than to open them to the complaint of the poor S. Basil observed it long since 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Grat. ad Ditescentes and tels us that he knew many who without any great pains might be brought to fast and pray and to perform all parts of Religion which were not chargeable but could not be wonne with the most powerfull eloquence or strongest reason to any part of it which did cost them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but one half-peny 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a cheap Religion is as easy as cheap but Go sell all that you have and give to the poor is a better pill which we hardly let down and with a sowre countenance and should we prescribe it now to men of this Iron age would they not as S. Paul speaks in another case say that we were out of our wits And therefore in the last place These two if they be truly in us are never can never be alone but suppose faith which is sigillum bonorum operum Serm. 23. as Chrysologus speaks the seal to every good work to make it currant and authentick and he that is perfect in these cannot be to seek in the rest He that can govern a ship in a storm when the Sea rages and is unquiet may easily mannage a cockboat in a calm he that can empty himself to his brother that thinks the bellies of the poor the best granaries for his corn and the surest treasury for his money that can give unto God the things that are Gods and return them back by the hands of his Ambassadours the poor who beseech us in his Name he that is an exile at home and hath banisht himself from the world he lives in so uses it as if he used it not he that hates sin as an infectious plague and in a holy pride will keep his distance from it though it bow towards him in the person of his dearest friend that can detest sacriledge though his father were intricht by it and passed it over to him as an inheritance He that can thus keep himself unspotted of the world will lift up pure hands and beat down his body and be ready to hearken what the Lord God will say he that sends up so many sacrifices to God he that thus makes himself a sacrifice will offer up also the incense of his prayers he that can abstain from sinne may fast from meat he that hath broke his heart will open his car In a word he that approves himself in these two cannot but be active and exact in the rest And now having shewed you what is but shadowed in this picture and description of Religion let us look upon the picture it self so look upon it that we may draw it out and expresse it in our selves in every limb and part of it that they that behold us may say God is in us of a truth and glorifie him at the sight of such religious men And first we see Charity stretching forth her hand and casting her bread upon the waters the bitter waters of Affliction going about to the widow and fatherlesse and doing good doing all those things which Jesus began to teach walking in love as Christ loved us Ciem 2. strom 404. And this we may well call a part of Religion and a fair representation of it for by this the image of the likenes of God is repaired in us saith Bern is made manifest in us and as it were visible to the eye For in every Act of charity he that dwels on High comes down in the likeness of men speaks by the tongue gives by the hand of a mortal man moves in him moves with him to perfect this work This makes us as God in stead of God one to another for Homint homo quid praestat one man is not superiour to another as he is a man for in the Heraldry of Nature all are of the same degree all are equal for all aremen but when charity filleth his Heart and stretcheth forth his Hand he takes the higher place the place of God is his Embassadour and Steward not of the same Essence with God but bearing about with him his Image saith Clem. Al. Put you on saith S. Paul bowels of mercy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the elect of God when we have put them on we then are indeed the elect of God endowed with his spirit carrying about with us the mercies of God sent as it were from his mercy seat with comfort and relief to those who are minished and brought low by oppression affliction sorrow we may flatter our selves and talk what we please of Election and if we please intail it on a Faction but most sure it is without charity our election is not sure and without bowels we can be no more Elect then Judas the traytor was Elect that is by interpretation the sons of perdition It is doing good alone that makes us a Royall priesthood and this Honour have all his Saints the kings of the Gentiles saith our Saviour exercise authority upon them and they that exercise authority over them are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 benefactors or gratious Lords are called what they should be not what they are for if they were gratious Benefactors then were they kings indeed annointed with the oil of mercy which is sent down from Heaven being from the Heaven Heavenly that day when this distilled not from him on others Titus the Emperour did count as lost Diem perdidi so it is in Sueton but Zonaras hath it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I have not reigned to day this day I was not Gods vicegerent we read in the book of the Kings that God gave Solomon a large Heart and Pineda glosses it liberalem fecit He made him liberall and mercifull we read that David was a man after Gods own heart and Procopius upon that place gives this as the probable reason of this denomination that he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a lover of the poor mercifull as he is merciful 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Imitation gives us a kinde of neernesse and familiarity with God that in which we represent him Synes Epist
in that letter to be found no where but in our books we fight for it and it is drowned in the blood that is spilt and Saint James his that is Christs Religion is little thought of but trampled under foot in the quarrel For if this should take place amongst the sons of men we should have more religion and less noyse for haec est this is it which alone is able to slumber this noise to still the raging of the Sea and the tumults of the people This would stay the hand of the scribe to write less and to more purpose This would break the Bow and cut the Spears and burn the Charriots with fire Could this Religion Could the Gospel of Christ prevail Could we deny our selves and take up the Cross and keep our selves unspotted from the world there would be then no wars nor rumurs of wars Let us not deceive our selves it is the neglect and want of this that hath been the main cause of all these hot contentions and digladiations which have been and as yet are in the Church of Christ I mean amongst those who call one another Christians whose mark and badge it is to love one another but they lie one to another and love the world and in a base but fierce emulation justle one another out of it and so lose the thing and retain nothing but the name which is less then a shadow rejoyce together at the news of a Saviour and neglecting this Religion in the Text are all lost are disciples of Christ but such disciples as shall be punished with more stripes then they that never heard of his name This this is it that condemns the world that makes it an Aceldama a field of blood as Hell it self full of confusion for if men had been careful to walk by the same rule which was as plain and manifest as if it had been written with the Sun-beams and kept themselves in a joynt obedience to this Religion to those truths wherein they could not but agree and not sought out many inventions the seed-plots and nurseries of contention and debate for from hence they spring and here they will grow and grow thick and multiply if our Religion had been pure and undefiled it had saved many a poor carkas from the fire and I may be bold to say many a soul from Hell and though mens opinions in other matters had been as different as their shape and complexion yet their agreement in the known duties of Religion would have been a Fence and Bulwark strong enough to have kept contention from breaking in with fire and sword But when Ambition and Covetousness and other low and vile respects had taken possession of the hearts of men then matter of Religion became matter of Faction and the fuel of that fire which consumed many but troubled all then began men to rack the Scriptures to make them speak what they would have them even that which might dilate their phylacteries and stretch forth the Curtains of their Habitation and feed that noxious humour in them which was most predominant and like those Souldiers in Tacitus malle victoriam quam pacem to desire not peace but victory though most times which side soever prevailed it was not so much against an adverse party as the truth it self This hath been a great nay the greatest evil under the Sun and hath brought in so many Religions into the world that many men are not as yet well resolved which to chuse the Divels subtilest engine to bring in at last an opinion that there is none at all By this you may see of what soveraign use my Text is even as a pretious balm which can so easily allay the swelling and raging controversies with which the Church is so much troubled as some Philosophers have told us that oyle powred into the sea when 't is most tempestuous doth presently calme it Mare oleo tranquillatur Plin Nat. Phil. l. 2. c. 103. many have wished that there were a Judge of controversies which might appease these broyles with which Christendome is distracted and some have thought it necessary and therefore have set one up and built a chair with this priviledge that he that fits in it though he be an Heretick can never erre Behold here is a Judge of controversies teaching every man to judge and give sentence of life or death in himself if this be his Religion he is alive and shall live for evermore but if he case this behinde him and shut charity out of doors he is condemned already this is our Judge of controversies and I think we need no more The Jews say that when Elias shall come he shall resolve all their doubts Lo Elias is come already and in these words of my Text hath sufficiently resolved all controversies in Divinity so far forth as is necessary for our information Thou canst not now aske what lack I yet for here are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all that Jesus did teach and if we can interpret this Text that is express and manifest it in our lives and conversation then have we 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 confidence with God and the Father To conclude Let us therefore as many as be perfect be thus minded let us cleave to this and make it our guide and Angel in our way and if you be otherwise minded if in other things less necessary you erre as men God shall reveal even the same unto you as far as his wisdome sees it necessary it is that excellent counsel of S. Paul Phil. 3.15 Let us be thus minded and let us have this picture of Religion drawn out by S. James ever hanging before our eyes let us look upon it let us walk with it let us go to bed with it let us carry it about with us whithersoever we goe I was about to say let us fall down and worship it you need not fear superstition for this is the worship of God himself Oh let it be as an ornament to our heads let us hang it up in our best room our hearts but so as to shew it to the widow and the fatherless Plin. Neg. l. 38.8 let us make it as Polycletus called his most excellent peece Canona a rule and pattern by which we may draw and express it and make it visible in our life and conversation that men may see it and glorifie God even the Father which is in Heaven that Angels may see it and applaud it that God himself may see it and fix an Euge upon it well done for it is done before me and according to the pattern which I set up and this shall keep us at peace within our selves this shall make our enemies at peace with us this shall be to us Righteousness and peace and glory and peace shall be upon us as many as walke according to this rule and mercy and upon the Israel of God Which God Grant c. THE SECOND SERMON 1 SAM 3.18 And
this Great Deep and will not cry out he that knows what he is and will be what he is knows he is miserable and desires not a change is neere to the condition of the Damned spirits who howle for the want of that light which they have lost and detest and Blaspheme that most which they cannot have who because they can never be Happy can never desire it But to this condition we cannot be brought till we are brought under the same punishment which neverthelesse is represented to us in this life in the sad thoughts of our Heart in the Horror of sinne and in a Troubled Conscience that so we may avoid it The Type we see now and to this end that we may never see the Thing it self and the sight of this if we remove not our eye at the call and enticement of the next approaching vanity which may please at first but in the end will place before us as foule an Object as that which we now look upon will worke in us a Desire to have that removed which is now as a Thorn in our eyes a desire to have Gods Hand taken off from us and that those sinnes too may be taken away which made his Hand so heavy a desire to be freed from the guilt and a desire to be freed from the Dominion of sinne a Desire that reacheth at Liberty and at Heaven it self Eruditi vivere est cogitare saith Tully Tusc q. l. 5. Meditation is the life of a Schollar for if the minde leave off to move and work and be in agitation the man indeed may live but the Philosopher is dead and vita Christiani sanctum Desiderium saith Hierom the life of a Christian is nothing else but a holy desire drawne out and spent in Prayers Deprecations Wishes Obtestations in Pantings and longings held up and continued by the heat and vigor and the endlesse unsatisfyednesse of desire which if it slack or fayl or end in an indifferency or Luke-warmness leaves nothing behind it but a lump a masse of Corruption for with it the life is gone the Christian is departed 5. Endeavour 5. But in the last place This is not enough nor will it draw us neere enough unto a Turne there is required as a true witnesse of this our convincement and sorrow of the Heartinesse of our confession and the Truth of our desire a serious endavour an eager contention with our selves an assiduous violence against those sinnes which have brought us so low to the dust of Death and the House of the Grave and endeavour to order our steps to walk contrary to our selves to make a Covenant with our eye to purge our eare to cut off our hand and to keep our Feet to forbeare every Act which carries with it but the appearance of evill to cut off every occasion which may prompt us to it an Endeavour to work in the Vineyard to exercise our selves in the workes of Piety to love the faire opportunities of doing good and lay hold on them to be ambitious and Inquisitive after all those Helps and advantages which may promote this endeavour and bring it with more ease and certainty unto the end And this is as the heaving and strugling of a man under a Burden as the striving in a Snare as the Throwes of a Woman in Travail who longs to be delivered this is as our knocking at the Gates of Heaven as our flight from the wrath to come Thus doe we strive and fight with all those defects which either nature began or custome hath confirmed in us thus do we by degrees work that happy change that we are not the same but other men Val. Max. l. 8. c. 7. as the Historian speaks of Demosthenes whose studiousnesse and Industry overcame the malignity of Nature and unloos'd his tongue alterum Demosthenem mater alterum industria enixa est The mother brought forth one Demosthenes and Industry another so by this our serious and unfeigned Endeavour eluctamur per obstantia we force our selves out of those obstacles and encumberances which detain'd us so long in evill waies we make our way through the Clouds and darknesse of this world and are compassed about with raies of light Nature made us men evill Custome made us like the Beasts that perish and grace and Repentance make us Christians and consecrates us to Eternity The Turne it selfe Or True Repentance All these are in our Turne in our Repentance but all these doe not compleat and perfect it For I am not Turn'd from my evill wayes till I walk in good I have not shaken off one Habit till I have gain'd the contrary I am not truely Turn'd from one point till I have recovered the other have not forsaken Babylon till I dwell in Jerusalem for Turne ye from your evill Wayes in the holy language is Turne unto me with all your heart worke out one Habit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Arist 2. Ethic. c. 1. with another let your Actions now controll and demolish those which you built up so fast that which set them up will pull them downe perseverance and assiduity in Action The liberall Hand casts away our Almes and our Covetousness together The often putting our knife to our throat destroyes our Intemperance The often disciplining our Flesh crucifies our Lusts our acts of mercy proscribe Cruelty our making our selves Eunuchs for the Kingdome of Heaven stones the Adulterer our walking in the light is our Turne from Darknesse our going about and doing good is our voluntary Exile and Flight out of the World and the Pollutions thereof Then wee are Spirituall when we walke after the Spirit and when wee thus walke wee are Turn'd I know Repentance in the Writings of Divines is drawne out and commended to us under more notions and considerations then one It is taken for those preparatory Acts which fitt and qualify us for the Kingdome and Gospel of Christ Repent for the Kingdome of Heaven is at hand Matth. 3.2 it is taken for that change in which we are sorry for our sinne and desire and purpose to leave it which serves to usher in Faith and Obedience but I take it in its most generall and largest acception for the leaving one state and Condition and a constant cleaving to the contrary for the getting our selves of every evill Habit and investing our selves with those which are good or to speak with our Prophet for Turning away from wickednesse Ezek. 18.27 and doing that which is Lawfull and right for casting away all our Transgressions and making us new Hearts and new Spirits I am sure this one Syllable Turne will take in and comprehend it all for what is all our preparation if when we come neere to Christ we stand back what are the beginnings of obedience if we revolt what is the bend or Turne of our Initiation if we Turn aside like a deceitfull Bow what 's out sorrow if it do but bow the head
fall into a cold sweat and faint at another mans labour Now therefore Now let us close with it whilst it appear's in Beauty whilst it is amiable in our eyes whilst our will begins to bend and our heart inclines to it for if we let this so faire an opportunity to passe within a while Vanity it self will appeare in Glory and that Holinesse which should make us like unto God will be taken for a monster There will be Honey on the Harlots lips and gall on Chastity a Lordship shall be more desireable then Paradise and three lives in that then eternity in Heaven now God is God and if we doe not Now fall down and worship him the next Now Baal will be God The world will be our God and the True God which but now we acknowledged will not be in all our wayes The first now the first opportunity is the best the next is most uncertaine the next may be Never But now Turne now Sole puro in Times of Peace if we will stand to distinguish times by the events as by their severall faces the divers complexions they receive either from Peace or Trouble either from Prosperity or Adversity Then certainly the best Time to Turne to him is when he turns his face to us Cum candidi fulgent soles when he shines brightly upon our Tabernacles when God speaks to us not out of the Whir winde but in a still voice when Plenty crownes the Commonwealth and Peace shadows it when God appeares to us not as Jupiter to Semele in Thunder but as to Danae in a showre of Gold whilst he stands as it were at the Doore and intreats entrance and not stay till he knock with the hammer till he breake in upon us with his sword because to Turne to him now in this Brightnesse will rather be an Act of our love then our feare and so make our Repentance a Free-will Offering a Sacrifice of a Sweet smelling Savour unto God and make it evident that we understand the Voice of his calling the language of his Benefits the miracle which he works which is to cure our inward blindness with this Clay with these outward Things that we may see to Turne from our evill wayes unto the Lord. This is truely to prayse the Lord for all his Benefits this is truely to Honor him to beare our selves with that Fear and Reverence that wee leave off to offend this God of Blessings Negat beneficium qui non Honorat he denies he despiseth a Blessing that doth not thus Honor it Ingratitude is contumelious to God is the bane of merit the defacer of goodness The Sepulchre the Hell of all Blessings for by it they are turned into a Curse Ingratitude loaths the light loaths the Land of Canaan and looks for Milke and honey in Egypt And this is it which the Prophets every where complaine of that the People did enjoy the light of Gods Countenance but by it walkt on in their evill wayes and made no other use of it then this That they did per tantorum honorum detrimenta Deum contemnere as Hierome speaks lose the Favour of God in their contempt and were made worse by that which should have Turn'd them from being Evill that being his pleasant plant they brought forth nothing but wilde Grapes And to apply this to our selves Dare we now look back to the former times what face can turne that way and not gather blackness God gave us light and we shut our eyes against it God made us the envie and we were ambitious to make our selves the scorne of all Nations he gave us milk and honey and we turn'd it into Gall and Bitternesse God gave us Plenty and Peace and the one we loath'd as the Jews did their Manna the other we abused our Peace brought forth a Warre as Nicippus sheep in Aelian did yean a Lion God spake to us by Peace and we were in Trouble till we were in Trouble till we were in a Posture of Warre God spake to us by Plenty and we answered him by luxury God spake to us by love and we answered him by Oppression He made our faces to shine and we grinded the poore He spake to us in a still voice and we defyed the Holy One of Israel Every benefit of his cryed Give me my price and lo in stead of Turning from our evill wayes delighting in them in stead of leaving them defending them In stead of calling upon his Name calling it down to countenance all the Imaginations of our Heart which have been evill continually This was the Goodly price that he and all his Blessings were prized at and then when this light was thus abused our Sun did set our day was shut in That Now That Then had its end The next call was in Thunder and he gave us Haile for raine and flaâ—… fire in our Land But such a then such an opportunity we had and we may say with shame and sorrow enough that we have lost it but since we have let slip this time of peace this acceptable time yet at least let us turn now in the storm that he may make a calm turn to him in our trouble that he may bring us out of our distress turn now when our Sun is darkned and our Moon turned into blood when the knowledge of his Law of true Piety begins to wax dim and the true face and beauty of Religion to wither When the stars are fallen from Heaven the teachers of truth from the Profession of truth and set that up for truth which sets them up in high-places when the powers of Heaven are shaken when the pillars of the Church sink and break asunder into so many Sects and divisions which is as musick to Rome but makes all walk as mourners about the streets of Jerusalem when Religion which should be the bond of love is made the title and pretense of war the somentor of that malice and bitternesse which desiles it and puts it to shame and treads it under foot Now when the Sea and the waves thereof roar when we hear the noise and tumult of the people which is as the raging of the Sea but ebbing and flowing with more uncertainty and from a cause lesse known Now in this draught and resemblance of the end of the World when he thus speaks to us in the whirl-winde when he thus knocks with his hammer when he calls thus loud unto us turn ye turn ye now let us bow down our heads and in all humility answer him Ecce accedimus Behold we come unto thee For thou art our Lord and God For as our Saviour speaks of offences so may we of these Judgements and Terrours which he sends to fright us to him Necesse est ut veniant It must needs be that they come not only necessitate consequentiae by a necessity of consequence supposing the condition of our nature and the changes and chances of a sinful world or rather supposing
People Crassum reddito cor populi hujus Make the heart of this people fatt and their eares Heavy lest they see with their Eyes and heare with their Eares and be converted Now to make their heart fatt and their eares heavy and to shut up their eyes is more then a bare permission is in a manner to destine and appoint them to Death most true if it can be proved out of this place that God did either But it is one thing to Prophesy a Thing shall be done and another to doe it Hector in Homer foretells Achilles Death and Herod the fall of Mezentius in Virgil and our Saviour the Destruction of Hierusalem but neither was Hectors Prophesy the cause of Achilles Death nor Herods of Mezentius nor our Saviour of the Destruction of Hierusalem vade dic Goe and tell them makes it a plame prediction what manner of men they would be to whom Christ was to speake stubborn and refractory and such as would harden their faces against the Truth If you will not take this Interpretation our Saviour is an Interpreter one of a Thousand nay one for all the world and tells the multitude that in them was fulfilled the Prophesy of Esay which saith By hearing you shall heare and not understand Matth. 13.14 for this Peoples heart is waxen fat and their eyes have they closed that they might not see And here if their eyes were shut it were fit one would Think they should be open'd True saith Chrysostome if they had been borne blinde or if this had been the immediate Act of God but because they wilfully shut their eyes he doth not say simply they do not see but seeing they do not see to shew what was the cause of their blindnesse even a perverse and froward heart they saw his Miracles they said he did them by Beelzebub He tells them that he is come to shew them the will of God they are peremptory and resolute that he is not of God and bring corrupt Judges against their own sight and understanding they were justly punisht with the losse of both For it is just that he should be blind that puts out his own eyes Yet was not this incrassation or blinding through any malevolent influence from God but this action is therefore attributed to God because whatsoever light he had afforded them whatsoever means he had offered them whatsoever he did for them was through their own fault and stubbornness of no more use to them then colours to a blinde man or as the Wise-man speaks a messe of Pottage on a Dead-mans Grave We might here Sylvam ingentem commovere meet with many other places of Scripture like to this but we will touch but one more and it is that which is so common in mens mouthes and at the first hearing conveighs to our understanding a shew and appearance of some positive act in God which is more then a bare permission For God tells Moses in plain termes Indurabo cor Pharaonis I will harden Pharaohs heart Exod. 7.3 And here I will not say with Garson aliud est litera aliud est literalis sensus that the letter is one thing and the litteral sense another Hil de Trin. l. 8. but rather with Hilary Optimus est lector qui dictorum in telligentiam ex dictis potius expectet quam imponat retulerit magis quam attulerit he is the best reader of Scripture who doth rather wait and expect what sense the words will beare then on the sudden rashly fasten what sense he please and carry away the meaning not bring one nor cry this must be the sense of the Scripture which his presumption formerly had set down Sure I am none of the Fathers which I have seen make this induration and hardning of Pharaohs heart a positive act of God not Saint Augustine himself who was more likely to look this way then any of the rest although he interprets this place of Scripture in divers places Augustin Feriâ 4 post 3. Dominic in Quadrages Pharaoh non potentiae sed patientiâ Dei indurabatur id Ser. 88. I will but mention one and it is in one of his Lent Sermons Quoties auditur cor Pharaonis Dominum obdurasse c. As often as it is read in the Church that God did harden Pharaohs heart some scruple presently ariseth not onely in the mindes of the ignorant Laity but of the Learned Clergy and for these very words the Manichees most Sacrilegiously condemned the old Testament and Marcion rather then he would yeeld that good and evil proceeded from the same God did run upon a grosser impiety and made another two principles one of good and another of evil But we may lay this saith he as a sure ground and an infallible Axiome Deus non deserit nisi prius deserentem God never forsakes any man till he first forsake God When we continue in sin when the multitude of our sins beget despair and despair obduration when we adde sin to sin and to make up the weight that sinks us when we are the worse for Gods mercy and the worse for his Judgements when his mercy hardens us and his light blindes us God then may be said to harden our hearts as a Father by way of upbrayding may tell his prodigal and Thristlesse son ego talem te feci t is my love and goodnesse hath occasioned this I have made thee so by sparing thee when I might have struck thee Dead I have nourished this thy pertinacy although all the Fathers love and indulgency was grounded upon a just hope and expectation of some change and alteration in his son Look upon every circumstance in the story of Pharaoh and we cannot finde one which was not as a Hammer to malleat and soften his stony heart nor do we read of any upon whom God did bestow so much paines His ten plagues were as ten Commandements to let the people go and had he relented at the first saith Chrysostom he had never felt a second so that it will plainly appear that the induration and hardning Pharaohs heart was not the cause but the effect of his malice and rebellion Magnam mansuetudinem contemptae gratiae major sequi solet ira vindictae for the contempt of Gods mercy and there is mercy even in his Judgements doth alwayes make way for that induration which calls down the wrath of God to revenge it We do not read that God decreed to harden Pharaohs heart but when Pharaoh was unwilling to bow when he was deaf to Gods Thunder and despised his Judgements and scorn'd his Miracles God determined to leave him to himself to set him up as an ensample of his wrath to work his Glory out of him to leave him to himself and his own lusts which he foresaw would lead him to ruine and destruction But if we will tie our selves to the letter we may finde these several expressions in several Texts 1. Pharaoh hardned his heart 2.
Pharaohs heart was hardned 3. God hardned Pharaohs heart and now let us Judge whether it be safer to interpret Gods induration by Pharaohs or Pharaohs by Gods for if God did actually and immediately harden Pharaohs heart then Pharaoh was a meer patient nor was it in his power to let the people go and so God sent Moses to bid him do that which he could not and which he could not because God had hardned him but if Pharaoh did actually harden his own heart as 't is plain enough he did then Gods Induration can be no more then a just permission and suffering him to be hardned which in his wisdom and the course he ordinarily takes he would not and therefore could not hinder sufficit unus Huic operi one is enough for this work of induration and we need not take in God for to keep to the letter in the former hakes a main principle of truth that God is in no degree Author of sin but to keep to the letter in the latter cleeres all doubts prevents all objections and opens a wide and effectual door to let as in to a cleer sight of the meaning of the former For that man doth harden his owne heart is undeniably true But that God doth harden the heart is denied by most is spoken darkly and doubtfully by some nor is it possible that any Christian should speak it plainly or present it in this hideous monstrous shape but must be forced to stick and dresse it up with some far fetcht and impertinent limitation or distinction For lastly I cannot see how God can positively be said to do that which is done already to his hand For induration is the proper and natural effect of sin and to bring in God alone is to leave nothing for the devil or man to do but to make Satan of a Serpent a very flie indeed and the soul of man nothing else but a forge and shop to work those sins in which may burn and consume it everlastingly God and nature speak the same thing many times Aristot l. 7. Eth. c. 1. though the phrase be different that wihch the Philosopher calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a ferity and brutishnesse of nature that in Scripture is called hardnesse of heart for every man is shaped and formed and configured saith Basil to the actions of his life whither they be good or evil one sin draws on another and a second a third and at last we are carried 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of our own accord and as it were by the force of a natural inclination till we are brought to that extremity of sin which the Philosopher calls Ferity a shaking of all that is man about us and the holy Ghost 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a reprobate minde And such a minde had Pharaoh 1 Rom. 2.8 who was more and more enraged by every sin which he had committed as the Wolf is most fierce and cruel when he hath drawn and tasted blood For it is impossible that any should accustome themselves to sin and not fall into this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this hardesse of heart and indisposition to all goodnesse and therefore we cannot conceive that God hath any hand in our death if we die and that dereliction Incrassation excaecation hardnesse of heart are not from God further then that he hath placed things in that order that when we accustome our selves to sin and contemn his grace blindnesse and hardnesse of heart will necessarily follow but have no relation to any will of his but that of permission and then this expostulation is real and serious Quare moriemini Why will ye die And now to conclude I have not been so particular as the point in Hand may seem to require nor could I be in this measure of Time but onely in Generall stood up in defence of the Goodness and Justice of God for shall not the Judge of all the Earth doe right shall he necessitate men to be evill and then bind them by a Law to be good shall he exhort beseech them to live when they are dead already shall his Absolute Dominion be set up so high from thence to ruine his Justice This indeed some have made their Helena but 't is an ugly and ill-favoured one for this they fight unto Death even for the Book of life till they have blotted out their names with the Blood of their Brethren This is Drest out unto them as savoury meat set for their palate who had rather be carried up to heaven in Elias fiery Charriot then to pace it thither with Trouble and paine That GOD hath absolutely Decreed the salvation of some particular men and passed sentence of Death upon others is as Musick to some eares like Davids Harpe to refresh them and drive away the Evill Spirit Et qui amant sibi somnia fingunt mens desires doe easily raise a belief and when they are told of such a Decree they dreame themselves to Heaven for if we observe it they still chuse the better part and place themselves with the sheep at the right Hand and when the Controverly of the Inheritance of Heaven is on foot to whom it belongs they do as the Romanes did who when two Cities contending about a piece of Ground made them their Judge to determine whose it was fairly gave sentence on their own behalf and took it to themselves because they read of Election elect themselves which is more indeed then any man can deny and more I am sure then themselves can prove And now Oh Death where is thy sting The sting of Death is sin but it cannot reach them and the strength of sinne is the Law but it cannot bind them for sinne it self shall Turne to the good of these Elect and Chosen Vessels and we have some reason to suspect that in the strength of this Doctrine and a groundless conceit that they are these particular men they walk on all the daies of their life in fraud and malice in Hypocrisy and disobedience in all that uncleannes and pollution of sinne which is enough to wipe out any name out of the Book of Life Hoc saxum defendit Manlius Sen. Controv. hic excidit For this they rowse up all their Forces this is their rock their fundamentall Doctrine their very Capitol and from this we may feare many thousands of soules have been Tumbled down into the pit of Destruction at this rock many such Elect Vessells have been cast away Again others miscarry as fatally on the other hand for when we speak of an absolute Decree upon particulars unto the vulgar sort who have not Cor in Corde as Austin speaks who have their Judgement not in their Heart but in their sense they soon conceive a fatall necessity and one there is that called it so Fatum Christianum the Christian mans Destiny they think themselves in chaines and shackles that they cannot Turne when they cannot be predestinate not to Turne but
hairy scalp of wilful offenders who loath the means despise prophecy quench the spirit and so hinder it in its operation of men who are as stubborn against Grace as they are loud in its commendations as active to resist as to extol it For this is to cast it away and nullifie it this is to make it nothing by making it greater nay to turn it into wantonnesse But it may be said that when we are fallen from God we are not able to rise again of our selves we willingly grant it that we have therefore need of new strength and new power to be given us which may raise us up we denie it not and then Thirdly that not onely the power but the very act of our recovery is from God ingratitude it self cannot denie it and then that man can no more withstand the power of that grace which God is ready to supply us with then an infant can his birth or the dead their Resurrection that we are turned whether we will or no is a conclusion which these premises will not yeeld This flint will yeeld no such fire though you strike never so oft we are indeed sometimes said to sleep and sometimes to be Dead in sin but it is ill building conclusions upon no better Basis then a figure or because we are said to be dead in sin infer a necessity of rising when we are called nor is our obedience to Gods inward call of the same nature with the obedience of the Creature to the voice and command of the Creator for the Creature hath neither reason nor will as man hath nor doth his power work after the same manner in the one as in the other How many Fiats of God have been frustrate in this kinde how often he hath he smote our stony and rocky hearts and no water flowed out how often hath he said Fiat lux let there be light when we remained in darknesse for we are free agents and he made us so when he made us men and our actions when his power is mighty in us are not necessary but voluntary not doth his power work according to the working of our Fancy nor lies within the level of our carnal Imaginations to do what they appoint but is accompanied and directed by that wisdom which he is and he doth nothing can do nothing but what is agreeable to it As it was said of Caesar in Lucan though in another sense Velle putant quodcunque potest We think that God can do whatsoever he can but we must know that as he is powerful and can do all things so he is wise and sweetly disposeth all things as he will and he will not save us against our will for to necessitate us to goodnesse were not to try our obedience but to force it quod necessitas praestat depretiat ipsa Necessity takes of the price and value of that it works and makes it of no worth at all And then God doth not voluntarily take his grace from any but if the power of it defend us not from sin and death it is because we abuse and neglect it and will not work with it which is ready to work with us For Grace is not blinde as Fortune nec cultores praeterit nec haeret contemptoribus she will neither passe by them who will receive her nor dwell with those persons which contemn her nor save those who will destroy themselves To conclude this He is most unworthy to receive Grace who in the least degree detracts from the power of it and he is as unworthy who magnifies and rejects it and makes his lise an argument against his Doctrine sayes he cannot be resisted and resists it every day he that denies the power of it is a scarse a Christian and he is the worst of Christians who will not gird up his loins and work out his salvation but loiters and stands idle all the day long shadows and pleaseth himself under the expectation of what he will do and so Turns it into wantonnesse Let us not abuse the Grace of God and then we cannot magnifie it enough but he that will not set his hand to work upon a fancy that he wants Grace he that will not hearken after Grace though she knock and knock again as Fortune was said to have done at Galbas gate till she be weary hath already despised the Grace of God and cannot plead the want of that for any excuse which he might have had but put it off nay which he had but so used it as if it had been no grace at all They that have grace offered and repell it they that have Antidotes against death and will not use them can never answer the expostlation Why will ye die The third pretence And certainly he that is so liberal of his grace hath given us knowledge enough to see the danger of those wayes which lead to death and therefore in the next place ignorance of our wayes doth not minuere voluntarium doth not make our sin lesse wilfull but rather aggrandize it For first we may know if we will know every duty that tends to life and every sin that bringeth forth death we may know the Devils enterprises saith saint Paul 2 Cor. 2.11 and the ignorance of this findes no excuse when we have power and faculty light and understanding when the Gospel shines brightly upon us to dispel those mists which may be placed between the truth and us Sub silentiae faâ—ultate nesâ—ire repudiatae magis quà m non com pertae veritatis est reatus Hil. in Psal 1.8 then if we walk in darknesse and in the shadow of death we shall be found guilty and not so much of not finding out the truth as of refusing it as Hilary speaks of a strange contempt in not attaining that which is so easily atchieved and which is so necessary for our preservation I know every man hath not the same quicknesse of apprehension nor can every man make a Divine and it were to be wisht every man would know it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is not for him that thresheth out the corn to resolve controversies or State-questions but Saint Peter requires that every man should be able to give an answer 1 Pet. 3.15 a reason of his faith and if he can do that he that knows the will of God is well armed and prepared against death and may cope with him and destroy him if he will And this is no perplext nor intricate study but fitted and proportioned to the meanest capacity he that cannot be a Seraphical Divine may be a Christian he that cannot be a Rabbi may be an honest man and if men were as diligent in the pursuit of the truth as they are in managing their own temporal affaires if men would try as many conclusions for knowledge as they do for wealth and were as ambitious to be good as they are to be rich and great if they were as much
voluntate with an imperfect with an half will we know not how There may be indeed a kind of velleity and inclination to that which is good when the will hath embraced that which is evil there may be a probo meliora a liking of the better when I have chosen the worser part which is not a willing but an approbation an allowing that which is just which ariseth from that light of our minde and Law of our understanding from that natural Judgement by which we discern that which is evil from that which is good and is an Act of our reason and not of our will and thus I may will a thing and yet dislike it I may embrace and condemn it I may commend Chastity and be a wanton Hospitality and be a Nabal Clemency and be a Nero Christianity and be worse then a Jew I may subscribe to the Law that it is just and break it I may take the cup of Fornication and drink deep of it for some pleasant taste it hath when I know it will be my poyson And therefore in the second place this renitency and resistancie of Conscience is so far from Apologizing for us as for such as sin not with a full consent that most times it doth adde weight to it and much aggravate our sin and doth plainly demonstrate a most violent and eager consent of the will which would not be restrained but passed as it were this Rampier and Bulwark which was raised against it to the forbidden object which neither the Law nor the voice and check of Conscience which to us in the place of God could stop or restrain and that we play the wantons and dally with sin as the wanton doth with his strumpet that we do opponere ostium non claudere put the door gently to Senec. N Q. l. 4.2 but not shut and lock it out which is welcom to us when it knocks but more welcome when it breaks in upon us and so frown and admit chide embrace bid it farwel when we are ready and long to joyn with it make a shew of running from it when we open our selves to receive and lodge it in our heart For again if the pravity and obliquity of an act is to be measured and judged by the vehement and earnest consent of the will then the sin which is committed with so much reluctancy will prove yet more sinful and of a higher nature then those we fall into when we heard no voice behinde us to call us back For here the will of the sinner is stubborn and perverse and makes hast to the forbidden object against all opposition whatsoever against the voice of the Law which is now loud against him against the motions of the spirit which he strives to repell against the clamors of Conscience which he heares and will not hear even against all the Artillery of Heaven it doth not yeeld to the tentation when no voice is heard but of the tempter nothing discover'd but the beauty and allurement of the object nor upon strategeme or surprisals but it yeelds against the thunder of the Law and dictate of Conscience admits sin not in its Beauty and glory when it is drest up with advantage and comes toward us smiling to flatter and wooe us but it joyns with it when it is clothed with death when it is revealed by conscience and hung round about with all the curses of the Law Swallows down sin not when it is as sweet as honey but when it hath a mixture and full taste of the bitternesse of Gall and so though our sin be against our conscience yet it is not against our will and therefore is the more voluntary Besides in the last place this is a thing which almost befalls every man that is not delivered over to a reprobate sense whose eye of reason is not quite put out who is not unman'd and hath any feeling or sense of that which is evil and that which is good nay it was in Cain it was in Judas it is in every despairing sinner or else he could not despair These pauses and deliberations these doubtings and disputes and divided thoughts are common to the righteous and to wicked persons Duplici in diversum scindimur Hamo Hunccine an hunc sequemur Most men are more or lesse thus divided in themselves and as Plautus observes it is the humour of some men when they are at a feast to dislike the dishes but no whit the more abstain Culpant sed comedunt tamen they finde fault with their meat and did eat it up so it is with us we too oft disrelish sin and swallow it down we cannot but condemn sin and we are as ready to commit it and with him in the Comedy Ask Quid igitur Faciam When shall we now do when we are knocking at the harlots door and are ready to break forth into Action And therefore this Conceit that a regenerate man doth not sin with a full consent in that his conscience calls after him to retire in the very adventure is very dangerous and may be mortal to the heart that fosters it for when this conceit hath filled and pleased us we shall be ready with Pilate to wash our hands when they are full of blood and cry out we are Innocent when we have released Barrabas let loose our Sense Appetite and Affections to run riot and delivered Jesus the just one to be scourged and crucified deliver'd up our reason to be a slave and ministerial to all those evils which the flesh or devil can suggest and delivered up our affections to be torn and scattered as so many straws upon a wrought sea and never at rest in a word contemnere peccata quià minora putamus to slight and passe by our sinnes in silence because we will not behold them in their just shape and proportion in that horror that Terror and deformity which might fright us from it And this conceit is a greater Tentation then that which hath first taken us for it brings on and ushers in the Tentation Takes from it all its displacency that it may enter with ease and when it hath prevail'd shuts out Repentance which should make way for that mercy and forgivenesse which alone must make our Peace Every man favours himself and is very open to entertaine any Doctrine which may cherish and uphold this humour and make him lesse wicked or more righteous then he is and though at first we find no reason which commends it to us and craves admittance for it yet because it speaks so friendly to our Infirmities and helps to raise up that which we desire to see in its height we take it upon Trust and beleeve it to be true indeed and stand up and contend for it as a part of that Faith which was once delivered to the Saitns and having this mark of the Righteous That we sinne but check our selves in it we take our selves to be so righteous
not in itself which is so terrible but in causis as the Schools speak in its causes in those sins in which it is bound up and from which it cannot be fevered for sin carries it in its womb and if we sin we are condemned and dead already we may see it smile upon us in some alluring pleasure we may see it glitter in a piece of Gold or wooe us in the rayes of Beauty but every smile every resplendency every raie is a dart and strikes us through Why will ye die why the holy Ghost is high and full in the expressing it Amamus mortem we love death Prov. 8. and the last v. and love saith the Father is vehemens voluntas a vehement and an Active will it is said to have wings and to flie to its object but it needs them not for it is ever with it the covetous is kneaded in with the world they are but one lump It is his God one in him and he in it The wanton calls his strumpet his soul and when she departeth from him he is dead the ambitious feeds on honour as 't is said Camelions do on air a disgrace kill him amamus mortem we love death which implies a kind of union and connaturality and complacency in death Again exultamus rebus pessimis Prov. 2.14 we rejoyce and delight in evil Ecstasim patimur so some render it we are transported beyond our selves we talk of it we dream of it we sweat for it we fight for it we travel for it we triumph in it we have a kind of traunce and transformation we have a Jubile in sin and we are carried delicately and with triumph to our death Nay further yet 1 Kings 22.4 we are said to make a covenant with Death Isai 29.15 we joyn with it and help it to destroy our selves as Iehoshaphat said to Ahab I am as thou art and my people as thy people we have the same friends and the same enemies we love that that upholds its dominion and we fight against that that would destroy it we strengthen and harden our selves against the light of Nature and the light of grace against Gods whispers and against his loud calls against his exhortations and obtestations and expostulations which are strength enough to discern death and pull him from his pale horse and all these will make it a volumus at least not a velleity as to good but an absolute vehement will after we have weighed the circumstances pondered the danger considered and consulted we give sentence on deaths side and though we are unwilling to think so yet we are willing to die to love death to rejoyce in death to make a Covenant with death will make the volumus full to the question why will ye die no other answer can be given but we will For if we should ask further yea but why will ye here we are at a stand horror and amazement and confusion shuts up our mouth in silence as in the 22 of Matth. when the Guest was questioned quomodo huc how he came thither the Text saies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 capistratus est he was muzled he was silent he could not speak a word For conclusion then Let us as the Wise-man counsels keep our heart Prov. 4.23 our will with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life and out of it are the issues of death let us take it from death and consine and binde it to its proper object binde it with those bonds which were made to binde Kings and Nobles the most stout and stubborn and imperious heart binde it with the fear of death with the fear of that God which here doth ask the question and not seek to ease our selves by an indiscreet and ill applied consideration of our natural weaknesse For how many make themselves wicked because they were made weak how many never make any assay to go upon this thought that they were born lame Original weaknesse is an Article of our Creed and it is our Apologie but 't is the Apologie of the worst of the covetous of the ambitious of the wanton when 't is the lust of the eyes that buries the covetous in the earth the lusts of the flesh that sets the wanton on fire the pride of life that makes the Ambitious climb so high prima haec elementa these are the first Elements these are their Alphabet they learn from their Parents they learn from their friends they learn from servants to raise a bank to enoble their name to delight themselves in the things of this world these they are taught and they have their method drawn to their hands by these evil words which are the proper Language and Dialect of the world their manners are corrupted and for this our father Adam is brought to the bar when 't is Mammon Venus and the world that have bruised us more then his fall could do And secondly pretend not the want of Grace for a Christian cannot commit a greater soloecisme then to pretend the want of that which hath been so often offered which he might have had if he would or to conceive that God should be unwilling he should do his will unwilling he should repent and turn unto him This is a charge as well as a pretense even a charge against God for bidding us rise up and walk when we were lame and not affording us a staff or working a miracle Grace is of that nature that we may want it though it be not denied we may want it when we have it and indeed we want Grace as the covetous man wants money we want it because we will not use it and so we are starved to death with bread in our hands for if we will not eat our daily bread we must die And in the next place let us not shut up our selves in our own darknesse nor plead ignorance of that which we were bound to know which we do know and will not which is written with the Sun-beams which we cannot say we see not when we may run and read it For what mountainous evils do men run upon what grosse what visible what palpable sins do they foster quae se suâ corpulentiâ produnt sins which betray themselves to be so by their bulk and corpulency Sacriledge is no sin and I cannot see how it now should for there is scarce any thing left for its gripe Lying is no sin it is our Language and we speak as many lies almost as words perjury is no sin for how many be there that reverence an oath jura perjura it is an Axiome in our morality Iusjurandum rei servandae non perdendae conditum est Plaut Rud. Act 5 sc 3. mantile quo quotidianae noxae extergentur Laber. and policie and secures our estates and intailes them on our posterity Deceit is no sin for it is our trade nay Adultery is no sin you would think with the Heathen with those who never
and that compasse wherein God hath bound and circumscribed us the 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all unactivenesse and supine negligence in our own place and station And the 3. and last makes it a necessary study and brings it under a command sicut praecepimus vobis you must do it as I have commanded you Or because to be quiet is here proposed as matter of study we will consider 1. the object or thing it self in which our study must be seen and it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a quiet and peaceable behaviour 2. the act which requires the intention of our mind thoughtfulnesse and a diligent luctation and contention with our selves we must make it our study 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be ambitious of it Thirdly the method we must use we must meddle with our own businesse and work with our hands And last of all the warrant of this method I have commanded it and of these we shall speak in their order Ut operam detis that you study to be quiet c. And first to be quiet is nothing else but to be peaceable to keep our selves in an even and constant temper to settle and compose our affections that they carry us not in a violent and unwarranted motion against those with whom we live though they speak what we are unwilling to hear and do what we would not behold though their thoughts be not as our thoughts nor their wayes as our wayes though they be contrary to us That there be as S. Paul speaks no schisme in the body 1 Cor. 11.25 but that the members may have the same care one of another That we doe not start out of the Orb wherein we are fixt and then set it on fire because we think it moves disorderly but that we look on all with a charitable and Evangelicall eye not pale because others are rich not sick for our neighbours vineyard not sullen because others are cheerfull not angry because others are weak not clouded with envy and malice because others in some respects out-shine us but as S. Paul speaks leading a quiet and peaceable life in all Godlinesse and Honesty 1 Tim. 2.2 for the Gospel of Christ hath left us no other eye but that of charity to look abroad with that this peace of Christ may rule in our hearts 3 Coloss 15. to the which also we are called in one body may rule in our hearts 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sit as judge there for so the word signifies being in its native propriety spoken of the Judge in the Olympick games Let peace rule in your hearts let it have this office let it be the onely judge to set an end to all Controversies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to stand in the midst between two contrary sides and draw them together and make them one to be a Mediator between the offence that is given and the smart that is felt to command our patience against rhe injury to awake the one to conquer and annihilate the other and so bury it in oblivion for ever And that we may better understand it we must sever it from that which is like it for likenesse is the mother of error from whence it is that there be so many lovers of peace and so little of it in the world that when ambition and covertousnesse harrass the earth when there be warrs and rumours of warrs when the kings of the earth rise up when the people are as mad as the Sea when it rageth when the world is on fire yet there is not one that will be convinced or perswade himself that he ever raised one spark to kindle it It was a just and grave complaint of Saint Hierom non reddimus unicuique rei suum vocabulum we are guilty of a dangerous misnomer and do not give every thing its proper name and think we study quietnesse when we are most bent to war and ready to beat up the drumme Alii Dominationem pacem appellant some call tyranny peace and nothing else and think there is no peace unlesse every man understand and obey their beck unlesse all hands subscribe to their unwarrantable demands quiet they are and peaceable men when like a tempest they drive down all before them to him that tyrannizeth in the common-wealth he is rebell that is not a parasite and to him that Lords it in the Church he that bows not to every decree of his as if God himself had made it is an heretick a schismatick an Anathema then this peace and not till then when every look and word when every lye of theirs is a law Others call even disobedience it self peace and are never quiet but with their quod volumus sanctum est but when they are let loose to do what they please are filii pacis the the children of peace when they digg her bowells out as the Donatists in Saint Aust who were the greatest peace-breakers in the world yet had nothing so much in their mouths as the sweet name of peace and how is she wounded by those who stand up in her defence we call that peace which hath nothing of it but the name and that too but of our own giving and esteeme our selves as quiet and peaceable men when we are rather asleep then settled rather senselesse and dead then delighting our selves in those actions which are proper to us in that motion which tends to rest rather still and silent then quiet bound up as it were with a frost till the next thaw the next faire weather and opportunity as faire and then we spread abroad and run out beyond our limit and bounds nor can we be conteined or kept in them Again others there be such as Tacitus speaks of who are solâ socordiâ innocentes who are very quiet and still and do little hurt by reason of a dull and heavy disposition and therefore saith Tully do removere se à publicis negotiis step aside and remove themselves out of the publick wayes withdraw themselves out of the company and almost out of the number of men who do no harme because they will do nothing whose greatest happinesse is nihil agere nihil esse Honestum pacis nomen segni otio imposuit Tacit. de Turpiliano Annali 14. to do nothing and to be nothing whose soules are as heavy and unactive as those lumps of flesh their bodyes and so raise no thoughts but such which lye levell with their present condition and reach not so high as to take in the publick interest who know not what to think and so care not how unevenly or disorderly the course of things is carried along so it be not long of them being as much afraid of action as others are weary and sick of rest as unwilling to put forth a hand to support a shaking and falling commonwealth as others are active and nimble to pull it down Nay some there are of so tender and soft disposition ut non possint in
beggerly Elements hath in the fulnesse of time found admittance and harbour in the breasts of Christians uneer that perfect Law of Liberty in which the grace of God hath appeared unto all men I am unwilling to make the parallel it carries with it some probability that some of them had that grosse conceit of God that he fed on the flesh of bulls and drunk the blood of goates for God himself stands up and denies it in the fiftieth Psalme will I eat the flesh of bulls and drink the blood of goates If I be hungry I will not tell thee if there were not such conceit why doth God thus expostulate And is there no symptome no indication of this disease in us do we not believe that God delights in these pageants and formalities That he better likes the devotion of the ear then of the heart do we not measure out our devotion rather by the many Sermons which we have heard then the many almes we have given or which is better the many evill thoughts which we have stifled the many unruly desires we have supprest the many passions we have subdued the many temptations which we have conquered Hath not this been our Arithmetick to cast uup our accounts not by the many good deeds we have done which may stand for figures or numbers but by the many reproches we have given to the times the many bitter Censures we have past upon men better then our selves the many Sermons we have heard which many times God knowes are no better then Cyphers and by themselves signifie no more Do we not please our selves with these thoughts and lift our selves up into the third heaven Do we not think that God is well pleased with these thoughts Do we not believe they are sacrifices of a sweet-smelling favour unto him And what is this lesse then to think that God will eat the flesh of bulls and drink the blood of goates nay may it not seeme far worse to think that God is fed and delighted with our formalities which are but lyes and that he is in love with our hypocrisie I may be bold to say as grosse an error and as opposite to the wisdome of God as the other It is truely said multa non illicita vitiat animus That the mind and intention of man may draw an obliquity on those actions which in themselves are lawfull nay multa mandata vitiat It may make that unlawfull which is commanded O! 't is a fearefull thing to fall into the hands of the living God but how fearefull is it to have his hand fall upon us when we stan dat his Altar to see him frown and hear him thunder when we worship him in anger to question us when we are doing our duty What a dart would it be to pierce our soules through and through if God should now send a Prophet to us to tell us That our frequenting the Church and comming to his Table are distastfull to him That our fasts are not such as he hath chosen and that he hates them as much as he doth our oppression and cruelty to which they may be as the prologue that he will have none of the one because he will have none of the other and yet if we terminate Religion in these outward formalities or make them waite upon our lusts to bring them with more smoothnesse with more state and pomp and applause to their end to that which they look so earnestly upon if we thus appear before him he that shall tell us as much of our hearing and fasting and frequenting the Church shall be as a true Prophet as Micah the Morasthite was And now to conclude If you ask me wherewith shall you come before the Lord and bowe your selves before the most High Look further into the Text and there you have a full and compleat directory Do Justly Love Mercy and walk humbly with your God with these you may approach his Courts and appeare at his Altar In aram dei Justitia imponitur saith Lactantius Justice and mercy and sincerity are the best and fittest sacrifices for the Altar of God Lactanâ— de vere cultu l 6. c. 24. which is the heart of man an Altar that must not be polluted with blood Hoc qui exhibet toties sacrificat quoties bonum aliquid aut pium facit The man that is just and mercifull doth sacrifice as oft as he doth any just and mercifull act Come then and appeare before him and offer up these nor need you feare that ridiculous and ungodly imputation which presents you to the world under the name of meere morall men Beare it as your Crown of Rejoycing It is stigma Jesus Christi a mark of Christ Jesus and none will lay it upon you as a defect but they who are not patient of any losse but of their honesty who have learnt an art to joyne together in one the Saint and the deceiver who can draw down heave to them with a thought and yet supplant and overreath their brother as cunningly as the devil doth them Bonus vir Caius Seius Tertull. Apolog. Caius Seius is a good man his onely fault is that he is a Christian would the heathen say He is a good morall man but he is not of the Elect that is one of our Faction saith one Christian of another I much wonder how long a good morall man hath been such a monster What is the decalogue but an abridgement of morality what is Christs Sermon on the mount but an improvement of that and shall civil and honest conversation be the marke of a reprobate Shall nature bring forth a Regulus a Cato a Fabricius Just and Honest men and shall Grace and the Gospel of Christ bring forth nothing but zanies but plaiers and actors of Religion but Pharisees and hypocrites or was the new creature the Christian raised up to thrust the morall man out of the world Must all be election and regeneration Must all Religion be carried along in phrases and words and noise and must Justice and Mercy be exposed as monsters and flung out into a land of oblivion Or how can they be elect and regenerate who are not just and mercifull No the morall man that keeps the commandments is not far from the kingdome of God and he that is a Christian and builds up his morality Justice and Mercy upon his faith in Christ he that keeps a good conscience and doth to others what he would that others should do unto him shall enter in and have a mansion there when these speculative and Seraphick Hypocrites who decree for God and preordain there a place for themselves shall be shut out of doores Come then and appeare before him with these with Innocence and Integrity and Mercifulnesse Wash your hands in Innocency and compasse his Altar For Christ hath made us Priests unto his Father Rev. 1.6 there is our Ordination To offer up spirituall sacrifice 1 Pet. 2.5 there is our
it to name it is not to embrace it for all these may be in a man who hath the price in his hand but hath no heart to buy it and as the Philosopher said of those who were punisht after death in their carcasses Relicto cadavere abijt reus the body was left behind but the guilty person the Parricide was departed and gone So here is a lump of flesh but the man is gone nay dead and buried covered over with outward formalities with words and fancy This is not the man in the text and then no marvell if he cannot see this great sight The 3. is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Improbity of manners a mind immerst and drowned in all the filth and pollution of the world evil affected Acts 14.2 Corrupt Arislotle Eth. 6.5 Mâ—gnis sceleribus inâ—a naturae intereunt Sen. Cont. 2 Tim. 3.8 for wickednesse is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Philosopher and doth corrupt the very principles of nature and make that Candle as Solomon calls it which God hath lighted up in our hearts burn but dimly and as we read when the earth was without forme and void darknesse was upon the face of the deep so when the perturbations of our mind interpose themselves as the earth there is straight a darknesse over the soul An Evil eye cannot behold that which is good An eye full of Adulteries cannot discover the beauty of chastity A lustfull eye cannot see justice a Lofty eye can neither look upon mercy nor humility The love of honor makes the judgment follow it to that pitch and height which it hath set and markt out The love of money will glosse that blessing which our Saviour hath annext to poverty of spirit My factious humor will strike at the very life and heart of religion in the name of religion and God himself and destroy Christianity for the love of Christ Resist not the power In one age 't is glossed bound in with limitations and exceptions or rather let loose to run along with men of turbulent spirits against it self in another when the wind is turned 't is a plain text and needs no interpreter Bid the angry gallant bowe to his enemy he will count you a fool Bid the covetous sell all that he hath he will think you none of the wisest and pitty or scorn you Bid the wanton forsake that strumpet which he calls his mistresse and he will send you a challenge and for attempting to help him out of that deep ditch Prov. 23.27 will send you to your grave We may talk what we please of Marcion and Manes of hereticks and the devil as interpolators and corrupters of Scripture but it is the wickednesse of mens hearts that have cut and mangled it and made it what we please made it joyn and comply with that which it forbids and severely threatens Now to conclude this in the midst of so many passions and perturbations in the throng of so many vices and ill humors in this Chaos and confusion where is the man There is a body left behind inutile pondus an unweildly and unprofitable outside of a man the garment the picture or rather the shadow of a man and we may say of him as Jacob did when he saw Josephs coat It is my sonnes cout but evil beasts have devoured him Gen. 37.33 Here is the shape the garment the outside of a man but the man without doubt is rent in pieces distracted and torn asunder by the perturbations of his mind corrupted annihilated unmanned by his vices and there is nothing left but his coat his body his carcasse and the name of a man This is not the man and then no marvell if he do not see this great sight In his day whilest he was a man his reason not clouded his understanding not darkned in this his day it was shewed to him and it was faire and radiant but now all is night about him and 't is hid from his eye for if it be hid it is hid to them that perish to them that will perish 2 Cor. 4.3 He hath shewed thee O man The Good invites the man and the man cannot but look upon that which is Good Draw then thy soul out of prison take the man out of his grave draw him out of these clouds of sloth of passion of Prejudice and this good here Piety and Religion will be as the sunne when it shineth in its strength For conclusion then let us cleave fast to this good and uphold it in its native and proper purity against all externall rites Conclusion and empty formalities and in the next place against all the pomp of the world against that which we call good when it makes us evil I am almost ashamed to name this or make the comparison For what is wealth to righteousnesse what is policy to religion what is earth to heaven but I know not how men have been so vain as to attempt to draw them together and to shut up the world in this good or rather this good in the world to call down God from heaven not onely to partake of our flesh but our infirmities and sinnes and draw down that which is truely good and make it an assistant and auxiliary to that which is truely evil For how do mens countenance nay how doth their religion alter as they see or heare how the world doth go Now they are of this faction and then of that and anon of a third Now Protestants anon Brownists anon Papists anon but I cannot number the many religions and the no-religions but wheresoever they fasten they see it and say it is Good so that as it was observed of the Romans that before the corruption and decay of manners they would not entertain a servant or officer but of a perfect and goodly shape but afterwards when luxury and riot had prevailed and was in credit with them they diligently sought out and counted it a kind of elegancy and state to take into their retinue dwarfs and monsters and men of a prodigious appearance ludibria naturae those errors and mockeries of nature So hath it allso fallen out with Religion at the first â—ise and dawning of it men did lay hold on that faith alone which was once delivered to the saints and went about doing good but when this light had passed more degrees men began to play the wantons in it and to seek out divers inventions and this Good the doctrine of faith was made to give way to those sick and loathsome humors which did pollute and defile it and instead of following that which was shewed they set up something of their own to follow and countenance them in whatsoever they should undertake and then did look upon it alone and please and delight themselves in it although it was as different from the true pattern which was first shewed as a monster is from a man of perfect shape as Quintilian speaks of some professors of his art
illa quaecunque deflexa tanquam exquisitiora mirabantur and that was cryed up with admiration which had nothing in it marvellous or to be wondred at but its deformity We have a proverb that It is ill going in procession where the devil sayes masse but most certain it is there be too many who never move nor walk but where he is the leader If the Prince of the ayre if the God of this world go before we follow nay we fly after If any child or slave of his hold out his scepter we bowe and kisse it The world the world is the mint where most mens religion is coyned and if you well mark the stamp and superscription you may see the Prince of the ayre on one side and the world on the other the devil on the side like an Angel of light and the world on the other with its pomp and glories And then when we have brought our desires home to their ends when we have raised our state and name how good how religious are we when the purse is full the conscience is quiet when we are laden with earthly blessings we take them as a faire pledge of eternall we say to our selves as Michah did Judges 17.13 Now I know that the Lord will do me good because I have a Priest said he because we have great possessions say we as great Idolaters as Micah for what are our shekels of silver but as his graven and molten image and thus we walk on securely all the dayes of our life not as the children of this world but as the children of light and out of our great abundance sometimes drop a penny we wast away and sicken and make our will and seale it and doubt not but the spirit will do his office and seale our redemtion at last the rich man dyes and is buried and some hireling will tell you The Angels have carried his soul into heaven A strange conceit and if true would be of force to pluck Lazarus out of Abrahams bosome and to bring back Dives through the gulph and place him in his roome But if this be not true may it never be true onely let us not deceive our selves but search and try our hearts and root out all such vain such groundlesse such pernicious imaginations which may be raised up in time of prosperity and multiply like flyes in the Sun Let us not seek our peace in those false fictitious spurious deceitfull Goods but in the true and full and filling Good the Good here in the Text and because God hath fitted and proportioned it to us let us fit and apply our selves unto it and since he hath built us up after his own Image let us adorn and beautifie it with Justice and Mercy and Humility and not blur and deface it with the craft of a Fox the lust of a Goat and the rage of a Lion for what should the mark of the Beast doe upon the Image of God Again being fitted to us and to all sorts and conditions of men Let young men and maids old men and children Scribes and Idiots Noble and ignoble Priest and people cleave and adhere to it and so praise and magnifie the Name of the Lord sic laudant Angeli for so the Angels and Arch-angels praise him And thirdly being lovely and amiable let us make it our choice and espouse our wills to it love and embrace it not kisse and wound it approve and condemne it worship it in our hearts and persecute it in our brethren And since it is a filling and satisfying good here let us let down our pitchers and draw waters out of this well of salvation even those waters which will sweeten our miseries and give a pleasant taste to bitternesse it self To conclude behold here is the object that which is Good faire and beautifull to the eye Jer. 5.1 Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem and see of you can find a MAN and he is the spectator and cannot but see it But what went you out into the wildernesse to see saith our Saviour why the eye is never satisfyed and all would go out to see some would see soft raiment and that you may see on every back some gaze upon beauty and that 's a burning-glasse to set the soul on fire Others love to see the rednesse of the wine look not on it saith Solomon It is a mocker Some would behold a shew of pomp and glory and we see though justice can never faile but hath the best even when she is worsted yet injustice hath had more triumphs then she When Julius Caesar triumpht over his country and Pompey rid in with the spoiles of Asia the ceremony the pomp the glory was the same But the eye with which we behold these spectacles is not fit for this object we have another eye a spirituall eye we call it the eye of our reason and we call it the eye of our faith which many times is but as an eye of glasse for shew but no use at all and serves to hide a deformity but not to see with but if it be a quick and living eye then here is a fit object for it worth the looking on in which we may see all other things in a fairer dresse in a celestiall forme in the Beauty of Holinesse being made usefull and subservient to it like that Speculum Trinitatis that feigned Glasse in which they tell us he that looks sees all things If we see it not then are we blind 2 Pet. 1.9 or if not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 purblind not seeing afar off those things which are laid up in heaven for those who look upon this Good and love it and then I am unwilling to say what we are but certainly we are but infidels And indeed there is something of infidelity in all our aversions and turning away from this good for what 's the reason that covetous men make riches an Idol and sacrifice to their own net but want of faith and their distrust in God for when God doth not answer their desires they run with Saul to the devil at Endor Tâ—rtull adv Judaens c. 1. pâ—aeâ—sset eis bubalum capul c. or with the Israelites in a pet chuse to themselves Bubulum caput as Tertullian expresseth it a calves head to be their leader I say there is a degree of infidelity in all these aversions from this good all that can be said is but what many say within themselves after they have consulted with flesh and blood that this good is not shewn so clearly nor made so plain as it is said to be which is indeed to remove their own prop and pillar to demolish their own Idol and to drive faith quite out of the world believe they do in God yet will not trust him and they are perswaded of the truth of things not seen yet will leave the pursuit of them to follow vanity because they are not seen He hath
nor any other spring of spirituall motion but the will of his Lord. And therefore as he is the Lord over all so are his Laws over all Laws as to him every knee must bowe so to his Laws all the Laws of men must yield and give place which are no further Laws or can lay any tye or obligation but as they are drawn from his and wait upon them and are subservient to them common reason will tell us and to that the Apostles Peter and John appeal when the rulers of the Jews commanded them to speak no more in the name of Christ Act. 4.18,19 whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more then to God judge you for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard and we cannot but be obedient for the Lord requires it When Creon the Tyrant in Euripides ask'd Antigone how she dared to bury her brother Polynices when he had enacted a Law to the contrary her answer was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. that this was not Jupiters Law and that she buried her brother in obedience to a Law more ancient then that of the Tyrants even to the Law of nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for this Law was not of yesterday but eternall and I ought not for feare of any man to break the Law of God and nature And what better answer can a Christian make to all unlawfull commands either of those we love or of those we feare 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. God hath not enacted these I see more of the claw of the devil then finger of God in these these are Novellae institutionis but of yesterday the breathings and dictates it may be of Lust and Covetousnesse of Pride and Ambition and I must not consider what man what this man this Lord or this Potentate but what the Lord of Lords and King of Kings requires at my hands when his Laws are publisht all others must be silent or as little hearkened to as if they were as when the Sun appeares the starrs are not seen nor seen at any time but with that light which they borrow from it For again as he is Lord Paramount and hath an absolute will so his will is attended with Power with that Power which made thee and he did not make thee a man that thou shouldest make thy self a beast of burden to couch under every load which the hand of a Pharisee will be ready to lay upon thee He did not make thee capable of a Law that thou shouldest keep the Laws of the flesh or of men he did not publish his will that upon this or that pretence thou shouldest resist it that the feare of a frown and the love of the world should be stronger and prevaile with thee more then his will For if thou wilt not do what he requires he will not do what thou expectest but leave thee to thy choice to those new Lords and Masters under the same wrath and curse to walk delicately along with them to that vengeance which will fall upon the heads of those who will not hearken to this Lord. For thirdly by the same power he preserves and protects thee which all power that is over us doth not for then the theef may be said to protect him he robs the strong man may be said to protect him he binds the oppressor him whom he hath eaten up and Cain to have protected Abel when he knockt out his brains But the Power of God is a saving and preserving power and under the shadow of his wing we shall be safe and to this end he spreads his wing over us he guides and holds us up that we may walk before him in all obedience in the land of the living who bowing to his will against our lust anon against our Ambition against all those machinations and temptations which presse upon us to break his will even whilst we are under his wing What should a wanton what should an oppressor a man of Belial do under his wing And yet we see many times they play and revell it in the shadow when they that do his will are beaten with the tempest and yet are safer there then they are in their Paradise are the miracles of his Providence to be manifested at last to all the world 'T is true The wicked are in some sort under his wing for he upholds and continues them prolongs their daies and if an eye of flesh may judge they are the greatest favourites of this Lord and if the world were heaven they were the onely Saints But the spirituall man judgeth all things and to his eye they are but a sad and ruefull spectacle as condemned men led with musick to execution for he preserves and protects them no otherwise then he doth serpents and vipers and beasts of prey he upholds them no otherwise then he doth the earth and the devils and hell it self which he preserves for them as he reserves them for it as Saint Jude speaks in his Epistle v. 5. and then as Abraham said to the rich man Son Remember thou in thy life time receivedst thy good things so shall this Lord to these to a Cain to a Nimrod an Ahab an Pharisee a Hypocrite Remember you were under my wing under my protection and remember what you did there how you beat your fellow-servants how you stripped one dispossessed another killed a third how even then when you were under my wing when I upheld and preserved you you said in your hearts there was no God This is a fearefull and hideous change like the fall of Lucifer onely he fell from heaven indeed these from an Imaginary one a heaven built up with a thought but both fall into the same place O then since he made us since in him we live and move and have our being let us live unto this Lord let our motion be regular and let us be what he would have us be let it be our wisdome to follow him in those waies which his infinite wisdome hath drawn out for us let our love be the echo of his love this wisdom is from above and this love is kindled from the coal of a cherubin is a fire from heaven kindled in our hearts and it will lick up all fluid and unbounded desires in us Let us remember that he hath endowed us with faculty and ability to do what he requires that he hath committed and entrusted this unto us for this end that he doth now as it were Manu suâ tenere debitores that he hath us in his power obliged and bound fast unto him by this his gift as by an instrument or bond 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the Apostles word Rom. 3.3 and it is the very word which the Civilians use he hath committed an entrusted his commandments and requires something of us and as he that entrusts his money doth not lost the propriety of it no more doth God of
other names for them Chalcidem homines Cymindim Dii vocant and he speaks of a certain bird so when we call that ours which our net hath taken in our wit and industry hath brought in unto us we speak after the manner of men we speak the language of the world in the Dialect of Mammon but when we call them ours and make them ours for the use and benefit of others we do à Christo discere disciplinam as Tertullian speaks we speak in the language of our Saviour in that phrase and sense which God and the Holy Saints do ever take them Did I say It was the language of men It is the language of the two daughters of the Horse-leach of Covetousnesse and Ambition Prov. 36.14,16 Sanguis Daemonis pabulum Tertull. Apol. c. 22. Give Give alwaies taking in never emptying themselves It is the Dialect of that generation whose Teeth are swords and their Jaw-teeth as knives to devoure the poore of the earth It is the voice of Luxury and riot which must be fed as devils are with the blood of others who like that Behemoth can drink up rivers of blood It is the language of the Devil himself who is no helper but a destroyer The language of Nature is more mild and gentle Tull. l. 1. Oss misericordiâ nihil est naturae hominis accommodatius saith Tully There is nothing more suitable with the nature of man then mercy and a desire to do good to others for when thou seest a man thou beholdest thy self as in a glasse in him thou beholdest thy self now cheerfull and anon drooping now standing and anon sinking now in purple and anon naked now full and anon hungry thou seest thy self in the weaknesse in the mutability in the mortality of thy condition and his present necessities are but a lesson an argument which plainly demonstrate and to thy very eye what thou or any other man may be and withall a silent and powerfull appeale to thy mercy a secret beseeching thee I might say a Legal requiring thee to do unto him as thou wouldst be done to in the like case which thou art as liable to as he to be of the same mind which thou wilt be certainly when with this Lazar thou lyest at the gates of another But if this light of Nature be not bright enough Errat olim isâ—a â—…ntentiâ— vâ—mo 〈◊〉 nasâ—iâ—ur moriturus sihi Tert. de pall c. 5. yet by the light of Scripture by the light of the Gospel we may easily discerne the truth of this parallel For the Servant of God the true Christian is born again not for himself alone but for all those who are parts of the same building and members of the same body If one member suffer all the members suffer with it Rom. 12.20 And this makes not onely all the riches but withall all the miseries all the necessities all the afflictions of our brethren Ours And what a Celestiall Harmony doth mercy make which puts those who are at liberty in bonds with the prisoners which makes the rich lye down with the poore the strong sympathize with the weak what a Harmony is that which riseth out of such discords when the joyfull heart weeps with them that weep and the sorrowful Spirit rejoyceth with them that rejoyce when all men are of the same mind one with another the rich naked with the poore and the poore abounding with the rich the whole Church imprisoned in one man and every man comforting his bondage with the peace and prosperity of the whole This is an Harmony indeed but I fear I may say it is like the Harmony of the spheres which was never heard or at least we have more reason then we would to believe that there is scarce any such musick in our dayes But thus it should be and this musick Mercy doth make I know the waies of God are past finding out and the reasons of his judgements saith Basil are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are as Jewels fit to be hid and reserved in the Treasuries of God alone and are understood onely by that Wisdome which sends them abroad yet if you ask why one is born a servant and another free why one grinds at the mill and another sits on the throne why one lyes at the gates whilest another feasts in his Palace I may with confidence give you this for one This God doth to exercise the patience and humility of the one and to stir up and awake the mercy of the other The rich and poore meet together the Lord is the maker of them both saith Solomon Prov. 22.2 not that his immediate hand made them rich and poore poured down with his left hand riches into the bosome of the one and withdrew it from the other and so left him naked For this is not manifest For God forbid that we should have such a conceit of God that he should fill the usurers bags or enlarge the territories of the wicked nor can we say that every poore man was predestinated to beggery nor make it good that he hath thus discerned and distinguished them for we know Luxury and Idlenesse clothes many with rags and Industry gathers much and Craft and Power more but he was the maker of them both They were both the work of his hands and from his hands they were the same though now the fashion of the world hath brought in a disparity between them and God saith the Father did make both poore and rich ut in pauperibus divitum misericordiam probaret that he might make the want of the poore as a touchstone to try the mercy of the rich For no doubt he could send the Ravens to feed them he could send Angels to feed them he could let down all manner of flesh in a sheet as he did to Peter his providence is never at a stand but can find out waies which we cannot think of but Christ hath so ordered it That though we cannot have him yet the poore and miserable we shall alwaies have with us ut locupletem aliena inopia ditaret that what all the world cannot anothers poverty may do that is enrich and blesseâ—s tu neminem praetereas ne is quem praeteris Christus sit and let thy mercy saith Austin passe by none lest it passe by Christ himself This he put into the Covenant which he made with us when he was on the earth and sealed it with his blood and now he looks that we should make it good and to that end presents and offers himself unto us in these and even bowes before us to the end of the world And certainly it is strange that we should thus stand out with him and deny him that which is his by Covenant that we should lock up all from him who opened his heart and let out his blood for us but so it is the vice we delight in makes that virtue which is contrary to it a punishment and when we love
within him In a word to love Mercy is to be in Heaven every man according as he purposeth in his heart let him give not grudgingly or of necessity for God loveth a cheerfull giver such a mercy is Gods Almoner here on earth and he loves and blesseth it follows it with his providence and his infinite Mercy shall crown it That gift which the Love of Mercy offereth up is onely fit to be laid up in the Treasury of the Almighty And now I have set before you Mercy in its full beauty in all its glory Conclusion you have seen her spreading her raies I might shew you her building of Hospitalls visiting the sick giving eyes to the blind raising of Temples pittying the stones breathing forth Oracles making the ignorant wise the sorrowfull merry leading the wandring man into his way I might have shewed you her sealing of Pardons but we could not shew you all these are the miracles of Mercy and they are wrought by the power of Christ in us and by us but by his power the fairest spectacle in the world Let us then look upon it and love it what is mercy when you need it is it not as the opening of the heavens unto you and shall it then bea punishment and hell unto you when your afflicted brethren call for it Is it so glorious abroad and shall it be of so foul an aspect as not to be thought worthy of entertainment at home shall it be a Jewel in every Cabinet but your own hearts Behold and lift up your eyes and you shall see objects enough for your Mercy to shine on If ever one depth called upon another the depth of calamity for the depth of our compassion if ever our bowells should move and sound now now is the time I remember that Chrysologus observes that God did on purpose lay Lazarus at the rich mans Gate quasi pietatis conflatorium as a forge to melt his stony heart Lazarus had as many mouthes to speak and move him to compassion as he had ulcers and wounds and how many such forges hath God set before us how many mouthes to beseech us how many wounds wide open which speak loud for our pity how many fires to melt us shall I shew you an ulcerous Lazar They are obvious to our eye we shall have them alwaies with us saith our Saviour and we have them almost in every place Shall I shew you men Stript and wounded and left half dead that may be seen in our lives as well as in the high waies between Jericho and Jerusalem Shall I shew you the teares drilling down the cheeks of the orphans and widdows shall I call you to heare the cry of the hire kept back by fraud or violence for that cryes to you for compassion as oppression doth to God for vengeance and it is a kind of oppression to deny it them Have you no compassion all ye that passe by and every day behold such sad spectacles as these shall I shew you Christ put again to open shame whipt and scorned and crucified and that which cannot be done to him in his person laid upon his Church shall I shew you him now upon the crosse and have you no regard all you that passe by shall I shew you the Church miserably torn in pieces shall I shew you Religion I would I could shew you such a sight for scarce so much as her forme is left what can I shew or what can move us when neither our own misery nor the common misery nor sinne nor death nor hell it self will move us If we were either good Men or good Citizens or good Christians our hearts would melt and gush forth at our eyes in Rivers of water If we were truly affected with peace we should be troubled at war If we did love the City we should mourn over it if we did delight in the prosperity of Israel her affliction would wound us if Religion were our care her decay would be our sorrow for that which we love and delight in must needs leave a mournfull heart behind it when it withdraws it self But private interest makes us regardlesse of the common and we do not pity Religion because we do not pitty our own soules but drink deep of the pleasures of this world enlarge our Territories fill our barnes make haste to be rich when our soul is ready to be taken from us and nothing but a rotten mouldring wall a body of flesh which will soon fall to the ground between us and hell I may well take off your eye from these sad and wofull spectacles it had been enough but to have shewn you Mercy for she is a cloud of witnesses a cloud of Arguments for her self and if we would but look upon her as we should there need no other Orator I beseech you look into your Lease look into your Covenant that Conveyance by which blisse and immortality are made over to you and you shall find that you hold all by this you hold it from the King of Kings and your quit-rent your acknowledgement for his great Mercy is your Mercy to others pay it down or you have made a forfeiture of all if you be Mercilesse all that labour as 't is called of charity is lost your loud profession your forced gravity your burning zeal your faith also is vain and you are yet in your sinnes For what are all these without Mercy but words and names and there is no name by which we can be saved but the name of Jesus Christ and all these Devotion Confession Abstinence Zeal Severity of life are as it were the letters of his name and I am sure Mercy is one and of a faire character and if we expunge and blot it out it is not his name Why boast we of our zeal without mercy it is a consuming fire 'T is true he that is not zealous doth not love but if my love be counterfeit what a false fire is my zeal and one mark of true zeal is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Naz. or 14. if it be kept within its bounds and mercy is the best watch we can set over it to confine and keep it in The Church of Christ is not placed under the Torrid Zone that these cooler and more temperate vertues may not dwell there if you will have your zeal burn kindly Ignis zeli ardere debet oleo misericordiae Aquâ—… de Eruditione princip l. 1. c. 15 16. it must not be set on fire by any earthy matter but from Heaven where is the Mercy-seat and which is the seat of Mercy if you will be burning lamps you must poure in oleum misericordiae the oyl of mercy as Bernard speaks if this oyl faile you will rather be Beacons then Lamps to put all round about you in Arms as we have seen in Germany and other places Men and Brethren I may speak to you of the Patriarch David who is dead and buried and though we
have not his Sepulchre yet we have the memory of his mercifulness remaining with us to this day and I ask Had not he zeal Yes and so hot and intensive that it did consume him Psal 119.139 and yet but three verses before Rivers of water ran down his eyes and this heat and this moisture had one and the same cause because they kept not thy law in the one because they forgat thy word in the other which is the very same We much mistake if we doe not think there may be a weeping as well as a burning zeal And indeed zeal is never more amiable never moves with more Decorum nay with more advantage both to our selves and others then when Mercy sends it running down the cheeks We cannot better conclude then with that usefull advice of GBernard Bern. 46. S. in Cant. Zelus absque misericordia minùs utilis plerumque etiam perniciosus c. Zeal without mercy is alwaies unprofitable and most commonly dangerous and therefore we must pour in this oyl of mercy quae zelum supprimat spiritum temperet which may moderate our zeal and becalm and temper ourspirit which may otherwise hurry us away to the trouble of others and ruine of our selves which it cannot doe if Mercy be our Assessor To conclude Let us therefore cast off every weight let us empty our selves fling out all worldly lusts out of our hearts and make roome for mercy Let us receive it naturalize it consubstantiate it as the Greek Fathers speak with our selves that we may think nothing breathe nothing doe nothing but mercy That mercy may be as an Intelligence to keep us in a constant and perpetuall motion of doing good That it may be true and sincere and sweeter to us then the honey or honey-comb and so be our Heaven upon Earth whilst we are here that peace may be upon us and mercy even upon all those who love mercy who are indeed the true Israel of God The last branch is our humble walking with God and that we shall lay hold on in our next HONI â—…T QVI MAL Y PENSE The Six and Twentieth SERMON PART VI. MICAH 6.8 He hath shewed thee O man what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee but to doe justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God WE have already gathered fruit from two of the Branches of this Tree of Life This Good which God by his Prophet hath shewed us in the Text we have seen Justice run down as waters and righteousnesse as a mighty streame as the Prophet speaks we have seen Mercy dropping as the dew on the tender herbs and rain upon the grasse We have beheld Justice filling the hand and Mercy opening it Justice fitting and preparing the hand to give and Mercy stretching it forth to clothe the naked and fill the hungry with good things Justice gathering and Mercy scattering Justice bringing in the seed and Mercy sowing it in a word Justice making it ours and Mercy alienating it and making it his whosoever he be that wants it We must now lay hold on the third which shadows both the rest from those blasts which may wither them Those stormes and temptations which may shake and bruise them from Covetousnesse Ambition Pride Self-love Self-deceit Hypocrisy which turne Justice into gall and worme-wood and eat out the very bowells of Mercy For our reverent and humble deportment with God is the mother of all good counsel the guard and defence of all holy duties and the mistris of innocency By this the Just and Mercifull man lives and moves and hath his being his whole life is an humble deportment with God every motion of his is humility I may say his very essence is humility for he gathers not he scatters not but as in his eye and sight When he fills his garners and when he empties them he doth it as under that all-seeing eye which sees not onely what he doth but what he thinks In this the Christian moves walks with or before his God not opening his eyes but to see the wonders of his Laws not opening his mouth but in Hallelujahs not opening his eares but to his voice not opening his hand but in his name not giving his Almes but as in the presence of his Father which seeth in secret and so doing what he requires with feare and trembling This spreads and diffuseth it self through every veine and branch through every part and duty of his life When he sits in judgement humility gives the sentence when he trafficks humility makes the bargain when he casts his bread upon the waters his hand is guided by humility when he bowes and falls down before his God humility conceives the prayer when he fasts humility is in Capite Iejunii and begins the fast when he exhorts humility breaths it forth when he instructs humility dictates when he corrects humility makes the rod whatsoever he doth he does as before or under or with the Lord humility is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all in all In a word Singularum virtutum proprii actus say the Schooles virtues both morall and Theologicall like the celestiall Orbs have their peculiar motion proceeding from their distinct Habits and Formes but humility is the intelligence which keeps and perpetuates that motion as those orbs are said to have their motion held up and regulated by some assistent forme without And now being here required to walk humbly with our God It will not be impertinent to give you the picture of humility in little to shew you 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 summarily and in brief what it is and so we may better see in what this our walking humbly consists And indeed we look upon humility as we do upon a picture mirantur omnes divinam formam sed ut simulachrum fabre politum mirantur omnes as Apuleius speaks of his Psyche Every man doth much admire it as a beautifull piece but it is as men admire a well-wrought statue or picture every man likes it but which was the lot of his Psyche no man loves it no man wooes it no man desires to take her to his wife Yet it will not be amisse to give you a short view of her And the Orator will tell us Virtutis laus omnis in actione consistit Every vertue is commended by its proper act and operation and is then actually when it works Temperance doth bind the appetite liberality open the hand modesty compose the countenance valour guard the heart and work out its contrary out of the mind and Humility every thing that riseth up every swelling and tumour of the soule which are called by the Apostle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2 Cor. 12.20 puffings up for riches or learning or beauty or strength or eloquence or virtue or any thing which we admire our selves for elations and lifting up of the mind above it self the stretching of it beyond its measure 2 Cor. 10.14 setting it up against
A body hast thou prepared me God sees thy Body as well as thy Soul and will have the knee the tongue the eye the countenance Auditur Philosophus dum videtur the Philosopher and so the Christian is heard when he is seen Thou art to walk with him or before him Come saith David Let us worship and fall down and kneel before the Lord our Maker Then you may best take Humilitie's picture when the Body is on the ground you may mark her how she bowes it down watch her in a teare take hold of her in a look follow her in all her postures till she faint and droop and lye down in dust and ashes Oh beloved the time was when men did so walk as if God had been visible and before them The time was when Humility was thought a vertue when Humility came forth in this dresse multo deformata pulvere with ashes sprinkled on her head her garments rent like a Penitentiary You might have beheld her kissing the chains of imprison'd Martyrs washing the feet of Lazars wallowing at the Temple doores begging the prayers of the Saints you might have seen her rent and torn stript and naked the haire neglected the eye hollow the body withered the feet bare and the knees of horn as Nazianzen describes it in his 12. Oration Then we humility not sunk into the soul but written and engraven in the body in Capitall letters that you might have run and read it But I know not how the Face of Christendome is much altered and humility grown stately hath bracelets on her Armes and rich Diamonds on her Head we have fed her daintily and set her upon her feet Walk humbly that we can without hat or knee with a merry and lofty countenance with a face set by our Ambition and even speaking our Pride and Scorn and we appeare in the service of God as in a thing below us and which we Honour with our Presence Humility with an Humble look a bowed knee a Bare Head a Composed Countenance away with it It is Idolatry and Superstition But let us not deceive our selves God hates the visor of humility but not her face If she borrow from art and the pencill she is deformed but appearing in her own likenesse in that dresse which God himself hath put her in she is lovely and shines upon those duties in which we are imployed and makes them so delightfull to behold 'T is true the thought may knock at heaven when the body is on the ground and when that 's shut up between two walls may measure out a Kingdome and the whole world may be too narrow for an Anchoret but it is as true That humility never seized on the mind but it draws the body after it If I lose my friend my look will tell you he is gone If a robber spoil all that I have there is a kind of devastation of the countenance but a wounded spirit who can beare If thy soul be truly humble thy bones will consume and thy marrow waste as David speaks Thy eye wax old and thou wilt forget to eat thy bread thou wilt goe heavily all the day long Think what we will pretend what we can flatter our selves as we please I shall assoone believe him chast whose eyes are full of Adulteries or who will sell a copyhold to buy Aretines pictures I shall as soon think him modest whose mouth is an open sepulchre him charitable who will sooner eat up twenty poore men then feed one as that man devote and humble in his heart who is so bold and irreverent in his outward gesture I cannot but look upon it as upon an impossibility to draw these two together a neglectfull deportment and humility for I cannot imagine nor can any man give me a reason why every Passion nay why every vice should shew it self in the outward man totâ corpulentiâ as the Father speaks in its full proportion and dimensions That Anger should shake the lips and set the teeth and dye the face sometimes with white sometimes with red that sorrow should make men put on sackcloth rend their garments beat their heads against the walls as Augustus did for the defeat and losse of Varus that even dissimulation it self should betray it self by the winking of the eye Prov. 10.10 That every vice and virtue should one way or other open it self and even speak to the eye onely Devotion and Humility should sink in and withdraw it self lurke and lye hid in the inward man as if it were ashamed to shew its head that we should be afraid to kneel afraid to be reverent that it should be a sinne to kneel a sin to be humble that to come and fall down or bow though it be in the house of God is to worship Dagon Reason and Religion help us and destroy every Altar and break down every image and burn it with fire and chase and banish all superstition from the face of the earth And let all the people say Amen But God forbid that reverence and those motions and expressions of humility which are the works and language of the heart should be swept out together with the rubbish that the wind which drives out superstition should leave an open way for Profanenesse and Atheisme to enter in And let all the people say Amen to that too For if we do not present our bodies as well as our soules a living sacrifice glorifying God in every motion of it as as we do in every conception of our mind Rom. 12.1 Our service cannot be a reasonable service of him and the same tempest may drive down before it religion and reason both S. Paul hath joyned them both together as in the purchase so also in the obligation 1 Cor. 6.20 Ye are bought with a price This is the Antecedent and then it follows necessarily therefore glorifie God in your bodies and your spirits which are Gods But this may seem too generall yet if we know what humility is we shall the better see how to walk humbly with our God but we will draw it neerer and be more particular And indeed to walk humbly with our God and to walk before him Gen. 17.1 to walk in his statutes Psal 119.1 to walk in the light of the Lord Is 2.5 to walk as in his sight differ not in signification nor present unto our understandings diverse things For all speake but this to walk as in his presence to walk as if he were a neer spectator as if he were visible before us not to shroud and mantle our selves not to run into the thicket as if there he could not see us but so to behave our selves as if he were a stander by an eye-witnesse of all our Actions to curb our fancy keep our tongue be afraid of every Action upon this certain perswasion That God is at hand For as God is Emanuel God with us when he blesseth us and doth us good so do we walk with God when we