in families are therein truly learned fathers of the Church A good father at home is a S â—ugustin and a S. Ambrose in himself and such a Thomas may have governed a 〈◊〉 as shall by way of example teach children and childrens children more to this purpose then any Thomas Aquinas can Since therefore these noble persons have so good a glasse to dresse themselves in the usefull as the powerfull example of Parents I shall the lesse need to apply my selfe to them for their particular instructions but may have leave to extend my selfe upon considerations more general and such as may be applyable to all who have or shall embrace that honourable state or shall any way assist at the solemnizing thereof that they may all make this union of Mariage a Type or a remembrancer of their union with God in Heaven That as our Genesis is our Exodus our proceeding into the world is a step out of the world so every Gospell may be a Revelation unto us All good tydings which is the name of Gospel all that ministers any joy to us here may reveal and manifest to us an Interest in the joy and glory of heaven and that our admission to a Mariage here may be our invitation to the Mariage Supper of the Lamb there where in the Resurrection we shall neither mary nor be given in mariage but shall be as the Angels of God in heaven These words our blessed Saviour spake to the Sadduces who not believing the Resurrection of the Dead put him a Case that one woman hath had seven husbands and then whose wife of those seven should she be in the Resurrection they would needs suppose and prefume that there could be no Resurrection of the body but that there must be to all purposes a Bodily use of the Body too and then the question had been pertinent whose wife of the seven shall she be But Christ shews them their errour in the weaknesse of the foundation she shall be none of their wives for In the Resurrection they neither mary c. The words give us this latitude when Christ sayes In the Resurrection they mary not c. The words give us this latitude when Christ sayes In the Resurrection they mary not c. from thence flowes out this concession this proposition too Till the Resurrection they shall mary and be given in mariage no inhibition to be laid upon persons no imputation no aspersion upon the state of mariage And when Christ saies Then they are as the Angels of God in heaven from this flowes this concession this proposition also Till then we must not look for this Angelicall state but as in all other states and conditions of life so in all mariages there will be some encumbrances betwixt all maried persons there will arise some unkindnesses some mis-interpretations or some too quick interpretations may sometimes sprinkle a little sournesse and spread a little a thin a dilute and washy cloud upon them Then they mary not till then they may then their state shall be perfect as the Angels till then it shall not These are our branches and the fruits that grow upon them we shall pull in passing and present them as we gather them First then Christ establishes a Resurrection A Resurrection there shall be for that makes up Gods circle The Body of Man was the first point that the foot of Gods Compasse was upon First he created the body of Adam and then he carries his Compasse round and shuts up where he began he ends with the Body of man againe in the glorification thereof in the Resurrection God is Alpha and Omega first and last And his Alpha and Omega his first and last work is the Body of man too Of the Immortality of the soule there is not an expresse article of the Creed for that last article of The life everlasting is rather de proemio poena what the soule shall suffer or what the soule shall enjoy being presumed to be Immortall then that it is said to be Immortall in that article That article may and does presuppose an Immortality but it does not constitute an Immortality in our soule for there would be a life everlasting in heaven and we were bound to beleeve it as we were bound to beleeve a God in heaven though our soules were not immortall There are so many evidences of the immortality of the soule even to a naturall mans reason that it required not an Article of the Creed to fix this notion of the Immortality of the soule But the Resurrection of the Body is discernible by no other light but that of Faith nor could be fixed by any lesse assurance then an Article of the Creed Where be all the splinters of that Bone which a shot hath shivered and scattered in the Ayre Where be all the Atoms of that flesh which a Corrasive hath eat away or a Consumption hath breath'd and exhal'd away from our arms and other Limbs In what wrinkle in what furrow in what bowel of the earth ly all the graines of the ashes of a body burnt a thousand years since In what corner in what ventricle of the sea lies all the jelly of a Body drowned in the generall flood What cohaerence what sympathy what dependence maintaines any relation any correspondence between that arm that was lost in Europe and that legge that was lost in Afrique or Asia scores of yeers between One humour of our dead body produces worms and those worms suck and exhaust all other humour and then all dies and all dries and molders into dust and that dust is blowen into the River that puddled water tumbled into the sea and that ebs and flows in infinite revolutions and still still God knows in what Cabinet every seed-Pearle lies in what part of the world every graine of every mans dust lies and sibilat populum suum as his Prophet speaks in another case he whispers he hisses he beckens for the 〈◊〉 of his Saints and in the twinckling of an eye that body that was fcattered over all the elements is sate down at the right hand of God in a glorious resurrection A Dâ—opsie hath extended me to an enormous corpulency and unwieldinesse a Consumption hath attenuated me to a feeble macilency and leannesse and God raises me a body such as it should have been if these infirmities had not interven'd and deformed it David could goe no further in his book of Psalms but to that Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord ye saies he ye that have breath praise ye the Lord and that ends the book But that my Dead body should come to praise the Lord this is that New Song which I shall learne and sing in heaven when not onely my soule shall magnify the Lord and my Spirit rejoyce in God my Saviour but I shall have mine old eies and eares and tongue and knees and receive such glory in my body
may be equall as the Devill is a Spirit and a condemned soule a spirit yet that soule shall have a Body too to be tormented with it which the Devill shall not How little we know our selves which is the end of all knowledge But we hast to the next branch In the Resurrection we shall be like to the Angels of God in Heaven But in what lies this likenesse In how many other things soever this likenesse may ly yet in this Text and in our present purpose it lies onely in this Non nubent In the Resurrection they shall not mary But did Angels never mary or as good or at least as ill as mary How many of the ancients take those words That the sonnes of God saw the daughters of Men that they were faire and they tooke them wives of all which they chose to be intended of Angels They offer to tell us how many these maried Angels were Origen saies sixty or seventy They offer to tell us some of their names Aza was one of these maried Angels and Azael was another But then all those who doe understand these words The sonnes of God to be intended of Angels who being sent downe to protect Men fell in love with Women and maried them all I say agree that those Angels that did so never returned to God againe but fell with the first fallen under everlasting Condemnation So that still the Angels of God in Heaven those Angels to whom we shall be like in the Resurrection doe not mary not so much as in any such mistaking they doe not because they need not they need not because they need no second Eternity by the continuation of children for says S. Luke they cannot die Adams first immortality was but this Posse non mori that he needed not to have died he should not have died The Angels immortality and ours when we shall be like them in the Resurrection is Non posse mori that we cannot die for whosoever dies is Homicida sui sayes Tertullian he kills himselfe and sinne is his sword In heaven there shall no such sword be drawn we need not say that the Angels in heaven have that we when we shall be like them in the Resurrection shall so invest an immortality in our nature as that God could not inflict Death upon them or us there if we sinned But because no sinne shall enter there no Death shall enter there neither for Death is the wages of sinne Not that no sinne could enter there if we were left to our selves for in that place Angels did sinne And fatendum est Angelos natura mutabiles saies S. Augustine Howsoever Angels be changed in their Condition they retaine still the same nature and by nature they are mutable But that God hath added another prerogative by way of Confirmation to that state so as that that Grace which he gives us here which is that nothing shall put a necessity of sinning upon us or that we must needs sinne God multiplies upon us so there as that we can conceive no inclination to sinne Therein we shall be like the Angels that we cannot die And the nearer we come to that state in this life the liker we are to those Angels here Now beloved onely he that is Dead already cannot die He that in a holy mortification is Dead the Death of the righteous dead to sinne he lives shall we dare to say so yes we may he lives a blessed Death for such a Death is true life And by such a heavenly Death Death of the righteous Death to sinne he is in possession of a heavenly life here in an inchoation though the consummation and perfection be reserved for the next world which is our last circumstance and the Conclusion of all At the Resurrection we shall be like the Angels Till then we shall not and therefore must not looke for Angelicall perfections here but beare one anothers infirmities It is as yet but in Petition fiat voluntas Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven And as long as there is an Earth it will be but in Petition His will will not be done in Earth as it is in Heaven when all is Heaven to his Saints all will be well but not all till then In the meane time remember all especially you whose Sacramentall that is Mysterious and significative union now is a Type of your union with God in as neare and as fast a band as that of Angels for you shall be as the Angels of God in Heaven That the office of the Angels in this world is to Assist and to supply Defects You are both of noble extraction there 's no defect in that you need not supply one another with Honour you are both of religious Education there 's no defect in that you need not supply one another with fundamentall instructions Both have your parts in that testimony which S. Gregory gave of your Nation at Rome Angli Angeli you have a lovelinesse fit for one another But though I cannot Name no nor Thinke any thing wherein I should wish that Angelicall disposition of supporting or supplying defects yet when I consider that even he that said Ego pater unum sumus I and the Father are one yet had a time to say utquid dereliquisti My God my God why hast thou forsaken me I consider thereby that no two can be so made one in this world but that that unity may be though not Dissolved no nor Rent no nor Endangered yet shaked sometimes by domestique occasions by Matrimoniall encumbrances by perversnesse of servants by impertinencies of Children by private whisperings and calumnies of Strangers And therefore to speake not Prophetically that any such thing shall fall but Provisionally if any such thing should fall my love and my duty and my Text bids me tell you that perfect happinesse is to be staid for till you be as the Angels of God in heaven here it is a faire portion of that Angelicall happinesse if you be alwaies ready to support and supply one another in any such occasionall weaknesses The God of Heaven multiply the present joy of your parents by that way of making you joyfull parents also and recompense your obedience to parents by that way of giving you obedient Children too The God of heaven so joine you now as that you may be glad of one another all your life and when he who hath joined you shall separate you againe establish you with an assurance that he hath but borrowed one of you for a time to make both your joies the more perfect in the Resurrection The God of Heaven make you alwaies of one will and that will alwaies conformable to his conserve you in the sincere truth of his Religion feast you with the best feast Peace of conscience and carry you through the good opinion and love of his Saints in this world to the association of his Saints and Angels and one
but every poore soule in the Church may heare all these three witnesses testifying to him Integrum Iesum suum that all which Christ Jesus hath done and suffered appertaines to him but yet to bring it nearer him in visible and sensible things There are tres de terra three upon earth too The first of these three upon earth is the Spirit which Saint Augustine understands of the spirit the soule of Christ for when Christ commended his spirit into the hands of his Father this was a testimony that he was Verus hemo that he had a soule and in that he laid downe his spirit his soule for no Man could take it from him and tooke it againe at his pleasure in his resurrection this was a testimony that he was Verus Deus true God And so says Saint Augustine Spiritus The spirit that is anima Christi the soule of Christ did testifie De integritate Iesu all that belonged to Jesus as he was God and as he was Man But this makes the witnesses in heaven and the witnesses in earth all one for the personall testimony of Christs preaching and living and dying the testimony which was given by these three Persons of the Trinity was all involv'd in the first rank of witnesses Those three which are in heaven Other later Men understand by the Spirit here the Spirit of every Regenerate Man and that in the other heavenly witnesses the spirit is Spiritus sanctus the spirit that is holy in it selfe the holy Ghost and here it is Spiritus sanctificatus that spirit of Man which is made holy by the holy Ghost according to that The same spirit beareth witnesse with our spirit that we are the children of God But in this sense it is too particular a witnesse too singular to be intended here for that speakes but to one Man at once The spirit therefore here is Spiritus oris the word of God the Gospell and the preaching and ministration thereof We are made Ministers of the New testament of the spirit that giveth life And if the ministration of death were glorious how shall not the ministration of the spirit be more glorious It is not therefore the Gospell meerly but the preaching of the Gospell that is this spirit Spiritus sacerdotis vehioulum Spiritus Dei The spirit of the Minister is not so pure as the spirit of God but it is the chariot the meanes by which God will enter into you The Gospell is the Gospell at home at your house and there you doe well to read it and reverence it as the Gospell but yet it is not Spiritus it is not this Spirit this first witnesse upon earth but onely there where God hath blessed it with his institution and ordinance that is in the preaching thereof The stewardship and the dispensation of the graces of God the directing of his threatnings against refractary and wilfull sinners the directing of his promises to simple and supple and conâ—rite penitents the breaking of the bread the applying of the Gospell according to their particular indigences in the preaching thereof this is the first witnesse The second witnesse here is The water and I know there are some Men which will not have this to be understood of the water of Baptisme but onely of the naturall effect of water that as the abtutions of the old law by water did purge us so we have an inward testimony that Christ doth likewise wash us cleane so the water here must not be so much as water but a metaphoricall and figurative water These men will not allow water in this place to have any relation to the sacrament and Saint Ambrose was so far from doubting that water in this place belonged to the sacrament that he applies all these three witnesses to the Sacrament of Baptisme Spiritus mentem renovat All this is done in Baptisme says he The Spirit renewes and disposes the mind Aqua perficit ad Lavacrum The water is applied to cleanse the body Sanguis Spectat ad preâ—lium and the bloud intimates the price and ransome which gives force and virtue to this sacrament And so also says he in another place In sanguine mors in the bloud there is a representation of death in the water of our buriall and in the spirit of our owne life Some will have none of these witnesses on earth to belong to baptisme not the water and Ambrose will have all spirit and water and bloud to belong to it Now both Saint Ambrose who applies all the three witnesses to Baptisme and those later men which deny any of the witnesses to belong to baptisme doe both depart from the generall acceptation of these words that water here and onely that signifies the Sacrament of baptisme For as in the first creation the first thing that the spirit of God is noted to have moved upon was the waters so the first creature that is sanctified by Christs institution to our Salvation is this element of water The first thing that produced any living sensible creature was the water Primus liquor qnod viveret edidit ne mirum sit quod in Baptismo aquae aâ—nimare noverunt water brought forth the first creatures says Tertullian That we should not wonder that water should bring forth Christians The first of Gods afficting miracles in Egypt was the changing of water into bloud and the first miracle of grace in the new Testament was the changing of water into wine at the mariage So that water hath still been a subject and instrument of Gods conversation with man So then Aqua janua ecclesiae we cannot come into the Church but by water by baptisme for though the Church have taken knowledge of other Baptismes Baptisma sanguinis which is Martyrdome and Baptisma Flaminis which is a religious desire to be baptized when no meanes can be got yet there is no other sacrament of Baptisme but Baptisma Fluminis the Baptisme of water for the rest Conveniunt in causando sed non in significando says the Schoole that is God doth afford a plentifull retribution to the other baptismes Flaminis and Sanguinis but God hath not ordained them to be outward seales and significations of his grace and to be witnesses of Iesus his comming upon earth as this water is And therefore they that provide not duly to bring their children to this water of life not to speake of the essentiall necessity thereof they take from them one of the witnesses that Iesus is come into them and as much as they can they shut the Church dore against them they leave them out of the Arke and for want of this water cast them into that generall water which overflowes all the rest of the world which are not brought within the Covenant by this water of baptisme For though in the first Translation of the new Testament into Syriaque that be said in the sixth verse that Jesus is come per manus
will confesse many fleshly infirmities and then it is the sounder for that though not for the infirmity yet for the confession of the infirmity Neither let that hand that reaches out to this body in a guiltinesse of pollution and uncleannesse or in a guiltinesse of extortion or undeserved see ever hope to signe a conveyance that shall fasten his inheritance upon his children to the third generation ever hope to assigne a will that shall be observed after his death ever hope to lift up it selfe for mercy to God at his death but his case shall be like the case of Iudas if the devill have put in his heart to betray Christ to make the body and bloud of Christ Jesus false witnesses to the congregation of his hypocriticall sanctity Satan shall enter into him with this sop and seale his condemnation Beloved in the bowels of that Jesus who is coming into you even in spirituall riches it is an unthrifty thing to anticipate your monies to receive your rents before they are due and this treasure of the soule the body and bloud of your Saviour is not due to you yet if you have not yet passed a mature and a severe examination of your conscience It were better that your particular friends or that the congregation should observe in you an abstinence and forbearing to day and make what interpretation they would of that forbearing then that the holy Ghost should deprehend you in an unworthy receiving lest as the Master of the feast said to him that came without his wedding garment then when he was set Amice quomodo intrâsti friend how came you in so Christ should say to thee then when thou art upon thy knees and hast taken him into thy hands Amice quomodo intrabo friend how can I enter into thee who hast not swept thy house who hast made no preparation for me But to those that have he knocks and he enters and he â—ups with them and he is a supper to them And so this consideration of making Churches of our houses and of our hearts leads us to a third part the particular circumstances in Iacobs action In which there is such a change such a dependence whether we consider the Metall or the fashion the severall doctrines or the sweetnesse and easinesse of raising them as scarce in any other place a fuller harmony The first linke is the Tunc Iacob then Iacob which is a Tunc consequentiae rather then a Tunc temporis It is not so much at what time Iacob did or said this as upon what occasion The second linke is Quid operatum what this wrought upon Iacob It awaked him out of his sleep A third is Quid ille what he did and that was Et dixit he came to an open profession of that which he conceived he said and a fourth is Quid dixit what this profession was And in that which is a branch with much fruit a pregnant part a part containing many parts thus much is considerable that he presently acknowledged and assented to their light which was given him the Lord is in this place And he acknowledged his owne darknesse till that light came upon him Et ego nesciebam I knew it not And then upon this light received he admitted no scruple no hesitation but came presently to a confident assurance Verè Dominus surely of a certainty the Lord is in this place And then another doctrine is Et timuit he was afraid for all his confidence he had a reverentiall feare not a distrust but a reverent respect to that great Majesty and upon this feare there is a second Et dixit he spoke againe this feare did not stupifie him he recovers againe and discerned the manifestation of God in that particular place Quam terribilis how fearfull is this place And then the last linke of this chaine is Quid inde what was the effect of all this and that is that he might erect a Monument and marke for the worship of God in this place Quia non nisi domus because this is none other then the house of God and the gate of heaven Now I have no purpose to make you afraid of enlarging all these points I shall onely passe through some of them paraphrastically and trust them with the rest for they insinuate one another and trust your christianly meditation with them all The first linke then is the Tunc Iacob the occasion then Iocob did this which was that God had revealed to Iocob that vision of the ladder whose foot stood upon earth and whose top reached to heaven upon which ladder God stood and Angels went up and down Now this ladder is for the most part understood to be Christ himselfe whose foot that touched the earth is his humanity and his top that reached to heaven his Divinity The ladder is Christ and upon him the Angels his Ministers labour for the edifying of the Church And in this labour upon this ladder God stands above it governing and ordering all things according to his providence in his Church Now when this was revealed to Iacob now when this is revealed to you that God hath let fall a ladder a bridge between heaven and earth that Christ whose divinity departed not from heaven came downe to us into this world that God the father stands upon this ladder as the Originall hath it Nitzab that he leanes upon this ladder as the vulgar hath it Innixus scalae that he rests upon it as the holy Ghost did upon the â—ame ladder that is upon Christ in his baptisme that upon this ladder which stretches so farre and is provided so well the Angels labour the Ministers of God doe their offices when this was when this is manifested then it became Iacob and now it becomes every Christian to doe something for the advancing of the outward glory and worship of God in his Church when Christ is content to be this ladder when God is content to govern this ladder when the Angels are content to labour upon this ladder which ladder is Christ and the Christian Church shall any Christian Man forbeare his help to the necessary building and to the sober and modest adorning of the materiall Church of God God studies the good of the Church Angels labour for it and shall Man who is to receive all the profit of this doe nothing This is the Tunc Iacob when there is a free preaching of the Gospell there should be a free and liberall disposition to advance his house Well to make haste the second linke is Quid operatum what this wrought upon Iacob and it is Iacob awoke out of his sleep Now in this place the holy Ghost imputes no sinfull sleep to Iacob but it is a naturall sleep of lassitude and wearinesse after his travell there is an ill sleep an indifferent and a good sleep which is that heavenly sleep that tranquillity which that soul which is at peace with
well Articulus resurrectionis propria Ecclesiaevox It is the Christian Church that hath delivered to us the article of the resurrection Nature says it not Philosophy says it not it is the language and the Idiotisme of the Church of God that the resurrection is to be beleeved as an article of faith For though articles of faith be not facta Ecclesiae they are dicta Ecclesiae though the Church doe not make articles yet she declares them In the Creation the way was Dixit facta sunt God spake and so things were made In the Gospell the way is Fecit dicta sunt God makes articles of faith and the Church utters them presents them That 's manifestè verum evidently undeniably true that Nature and Philosophy say nothing of articles of faith But even in Nature and in Philosophy there is some preparation A priore and much illustration A posteriore of the Resurrection For first we know by naturall reason that it is no such thing as God cannot doe It implies no contradiction in it selfe as that new article of Transubstantiation does It implies no defectivenesse in God as that new article The necessity of a perpetuall Vicar upon earth does For things contradictory in themselves which necessarily imply a falshood things arguing a defectivenesse in God which implies necessarily a derogation to his nature to his naturall goodnesse to that which we may justly call even the God of God that which makes him God to us his mercy such things God himselfe cannot doe not things which make him an unmercifull a cruell a precondemning God But excepting onely such things God who is that Quod cum dicitur non potest dici whom if you name you cannot give him halfe his name for if you call him God he hath not his Christen name for he is Christ as well as God a Saviour as well as a Creator Quod cum astimatur non potest aestimari If you value God weigh God you cannot give him halfe his weight for you can put nothing into the balance to weight him withall but all this world and there is no single sand in the sea no single dust upon the earth no single atome in the ayre that is not likelyer to weigh down all the world then all the world is to coâ—â—â—pose pose God What is the whole world to a soule says Christ but what are all the soules of the world to God What is man that God should be mindefull of him that God should ever thinke of him and not forget that there is such a thing such a nothing Quod cum definitur ipsa definitione crescit says the same Father If you limit God with any definition hee growes larger by that definition for even by that definition you discerne presently that he is something else then that definition comprehends That God Quem omnia nesciunt metuendo sciunt whom no man knows perfectly yet every man knows so well as to stand in feare of him this incomprehensible God I say that works and who shall let it can raise our bodies again from the dead because to doe so implies no derogation to himselfe no contradiction to his word Our reason tells us he can doe it doth our reason tell us as much of his will that he will doe it Our reason tells us that he will doe whatsoever is most convenient for the Creature whom because he hath made him he loves and for his owne glory Now this dignity afforded to the dead body of man cannot be conceived but as a great addition to him Nor can it be such a diminution to God to take man into heaven as it was for God to descend and to take mans nature upon him upon Earth A King does not diminish himselfe so much by taking an inferior person into his bosome at Court as he should doe by going to live with that person in the Countrey or City and this God did in the incarnation of his Sonne It cannot be thought inconvenient it cannot be thought hard Our reason tells us that in all Gods works in all his materiall works still his latter works are easier then his former The Creation which was the first and was a meer production out of nothing was the hardest of all The specific ation of Creatures and the disposing of them into their severall kinds the making of that which was made something of nothing before a particular thing a beast afowle a fish a plant a man a Sun or Moon was not so hard as the first production out of nothing And then the conservation of all these in that order in which they are first created and then distinguished the Administration of these creatures by a constant working of second causes which naturally produce their effects is not so hard as that And so accordingly and in that proportion the last worke is easiest of all Distinction and specification easier then creation conservatioâ— and administration easier then that distinction and restitution by resurrection easiest of all Tertullian hath expressed it well Plus est fecisse quam refecisse dedisse quam reddidisse It is a harder work to make then to mend and to give thee that which was mine then to restore thee that which was thine Et institutio carnis quà m destitutio It is a lesse matter to recover a sicke man then to make a whole man Does this trouble thee says Iustin Martyr and Athenagor as proceeds in the same way of argumentation too in his Apology does this trouble thee Quòd homo à piscibus piscis ab homine comeditar that one man is devoured by a fish and then another man that eats the flesh of that fish eats and becomes the other man Id nec hominem resolvit in piscem nec piscem in hominem that first man did not become that fish that eate him nor that fish become that second man that eate it sed utriusque resolutio fit in elementa both that man and that fish are resolved into their owne elements of which they were made at first Howsoever it be if thine imagination could carry thee so low as to thinke not onely that thou wert become some other thing a fish or a dogge that had fed upon thee and so thou couldst not have thine owne body but therewithall must have his body too but that thou wert infinitely farther gone that thou wert anâ—â—ilated become nothing canst thou chuse but thinke God as perfect now at least as he was at first and can hee not as easily make thee up againe of nothing as he made thee of nothing at first Recogita quid fueris antequam esses Thinke over thy selfe what wast thou before thou wast any thing Meminisses utique si fuisses If thou hadst been any thing then surely thou wouldst remember it now Qui non eras factus es Cum iterum non eris fies Thou that wast once nothing wast made this
our sakes not onely sinfull but sin it self And as one cruell Emperour wished all mankinde in one man that hee might have beheaded mankinde at one blow so God gathered the whole nature of sinne into one Christ that by one action one passion sin all sin the whole nature of sinne might bee overcome It was sin that was upon Christ else God could not have been angry with him nor pleased with us It was sin and his own sin Mine iniquities says Christ in his Type and figure David and in his body the Church and we may be bold to adde in his very person Mine iniquities Many Heretiques denied his body to be his Body they said it was but an airy an imaginary an illusory Body and denied his Soul to be his Soul they said he had no humane soul but that his divine nature supplied that and wrought all the operations of the soul. But we that have learnt Christ better know that hee could not have redeemed man by that way that was contracted betweene him and his Father that is by way of satisfaction except he had taken the very body and the very soul of man And as verily as his humane nature his body and soul were his his sins were his too As my mortality and my hunger and thirst and wearinesse and all my naturall infirmities are his so my sins are his sins And now when my sins are by him thus made his sins no Hell-Devill not Satan no Earth-Devill no Calumniator can any more make those sins my sins then he can make his divinity mine As by the spirit of Adoption I am made the childe of God the seed of God the same Spirit with God but yet I am not made God so by Christs taking my sins I am made a servant of my God a Beads-man of my God a vassall a Tributary debtor to God but I am no sinner in the sight of God no sinner so as that man or the Devill can impute that sin unto me then when my Saviour hath made my sins his As a Soldier would not part with his scars Christ would not They were sins that lay upon him part with our sins And his sins and as it follows in his Type David sins in a plurality many sins I know nothing in the world so manifold so plurall so numerous as my sins And my Saviour had all those But if every other man have not so many sins as I he owes that to Gods grace and not to the Devils forbearance for the Devill saw no such parts nor no such power in me to advance or hinder his kingdome no such birth no such education no such place in the State or Church as that he should be gladder of me then of other men He ministers tentations to all and all are overcome by his tentations And all these sins in all men were upon Christ at once All twice over In the root and in the fruit too In the bullein and in the coin too In grosse and in retail In Originall and in Actuall sin And howsoever the sins of former ages the sins of all men for 4000 years before which were all upon him when he was upon the Crosse might possibly be numbred as things that are past may easilier fall within a possibility of such an imagination yet all those sinnes which were to come after he himself could not number for hee as the Sonne of man though hee know how long the world hath lasted knowes not how long this sinfull world shall last and when the day of Judgement shall be And all those future sins were his sins before they were committed They were his before they were theirs that doe them And lest this world should not afford him sins enow he took upon him the sins of heaven it self not their sins who were fallen from heaven and fallen into an absolute incapacity of reconciliation but their sins which remained in heaven Those sins which the Angels that stand would fall into if they had not received a confirmation given them in contemplation of the death and merits of Christ Christ took upon him for all things in Earth and Heaven too were reconciled to God by him for if there had been as many worlds as there are men in this which is a large multiplication or as many worlds as there are sins in this which is an infinite multiplication his merit had been sufficient to all They were sins his sins many sinnes the sinnes of the world and then as in his Type David Supergressae his sins these sins were got above him And not as Davids or ours by an insensible growth and swelling of a Tide in Course of time but this inundation of all the sins of all places and times and persons was upon him in an instant in a minute in such a point as admits and requires a subtile and a serious consideration for it is eternity which though it doe infinitely exceed all time yet is in this consideration lesse then any part of time that it is indivisible eternity is so and though it last for ever is all at once eternity is so And from this point this timelesse time time that is all time time that is no time from all eternity all the sins of the world were gone over him And in that consideration supergressae caput they were gone over his head Let his head bee his Divine nature yet they were gone over his head for though there bee nothing more voluntary then the love of God to man for he loves us not onely for his own sake or for his own glories sake but he loves us for his loves sake he loves us and loves his love of us and had rather want some of his glory then wee should not have nay then he should not have so much love towards us though this love of his be an act simply voluntary yet in that act of expressing this love in the sending a Saviour there was a kinde of necessity contracted on Christs part such a contract had passed between him and his Father that as himself says there was an oportuit pati a necessity that he should suffer all that he suffered and so enter into glory when he was come so there was an oportuit venire a necessity a necessity induced by that contract that he should come in that humiliation and smother and suppresse the glory of the divine nature under a cloud of humane of passible of inglorious flesh So be his divine nature this head his sins all our sins made his were gone above his head And over his head all those ways that we considered before in our selves Sicut tectum sicut fornix as a roof as an arch that had separated between God and him in that he prayed and was not heard when in that Transeat Calix Father if it be possible let this cup passe from me the Cup was not onely not taken out of his hands but filled up
prepared a Whale to transport Ionas before Ionas was cast into the Sea God prepared thee a holy Patience before he reduced thee to the exercise of that Patience If thou couldest apprehend nothing done for thy self yet all the mercies that God hath exhibited to others are former mercies to thee in the Pattern and in the Seal and in the Argument thereof They have had them therefore thou shalt All Gods Prophecies are thy Histories whatsoever he hath promised others he hath done in his purpose for thee And all Gods Histories are thy Prophesies all that he hath done for others he owes thee Hast thou a hardnesse of heart knowest thou not that Christ hath wept before to entender that hardnesse hast thou a palenesse of soul in the apparition of God in fire and in judgement knowest thou not that Christ hath bled before to give a vigour and a vegetation and a verdure to that palenesse is thy sinne Actuall sinne knowest thou not that there is a Lamb bleeding before upon the Altar to expiate that Is thy terrour from thy inherence and encombrance of Originall sinne knowest thou not that the effect of Baptism hath blunted the sting of that sinne before art thou full of sores putrid and ulcerous sores full of wounds through and through piercing wounds full of diseases namelesse and complicate diseases knowest thou not that there is a holy Charm a blessed Incantation by which thou art though not invulnerable yet invulnerable unto death wrapt up in the eternall Decree of thine Election that 's thy pillar the assurance of thine Election If thou shake that if thou cast down that Pillar if thou distrust thine Election with Samson who pulled down pillars in his blindnesse in thy blindnesse thou destroyest thy self Begin where thou wilt at any Act in thy self at any act in God yet there was mercy before that for his mercy is eternall eternall even towards thee I could easily think that that that past between God and Moses in their long conversation that that that past between Christ and Moses in his trans-figuration that that that past between Saint Paul and the Court of Heaven in his extasie was instruction and manifestation on one part and admiration and application on the other part of the mercy of God Earth cannot receive Heaven cannot give such another universall soul to all all persons all actions as Mercy And were I the childe of this Text that were to live a hundred years I would ask no other marrow to my bones no other wine to my heart no other light to mine eyes no other art to my understanding no other eloquence to my tongue then the power of apprehending for my self and the power of deriving and conveying upon others by my Ministery the Mercy the early Mercy the everlasting Mercy of yours and my God But we must passe to the consideration of this immense Light in that one Beam wherein it is exhibited here that is long life The childe shall die a hundred years old Long life is a blessing as it is an image of eternity as Kings are blessings because they are Images of God And as to speak properly a King that possest the whole earth hath no proportion at all to God he is not a dramme not a grain not an atome to God so neither if a thousand Methusalems were put in one life had that long life any proportion to eternity for Finite and Infinite have no proportion to one another But yet when we say so That the King is nothing to God we speak then between God and the King and we say that onely to assist the Kings Religious humiliation of himself in the presence of God But when we speak between the King and our selves his Subjects there we raise our selves to a just reverence of him by taking knowledge that he is the Image of God to us So though long life be nothing to eternity yet because we need such Glasses and such Images as God shews us himself in the King so he shewes us his eternitie in a long life In this that the Patriarchs complain every where of the shortnesse of life and neernesse of death Iacob at a hundred and thirtie yeares tells Pharaoh that his dayes were few In this that God threatens the shortnesse of life for a punishment to Eli God saies There shall not be an old man in thy house for ever In this that God brings it into Promise and enters it as into his Audite and his revenue With long life will I satisfie him and shew him my salvation That God would give him long life and make that long life a Type of Eternity In this that God continues that promise into performance and brings it to execution in some of his chosen servants at a hundred and twenty Moses his eyes were not dim nor his naturall force abated and Caleb saith of himself I am this day 85. yeares old and as my strength was at first for warre so is my strength now In all these and many others we receive so many testimonies that God brings long life out of his Treasurie as an immediate blessing of his And therefore as such his blessing let us pray for it where it is not come yet in that apprecation and acclamation of the antient generall Councells Multos annos Caesari Aeternâ—s annos Caesari Long life to our Cesar in this world everlasting life to our Cesar in the world to come and then let us reverence this blessing of long life where it is come in honouring those Ancient heads by whose name God hath been pleased to call himself Antiquuâ— dierum the ancient of dayes and let us not make this blessing of long life impossible to our selves by disappointing Gods purpose of long life upon us by our surfets our wantonnesse our quarrels which are all Goths and Vandals and Giants called in by our selves to fight with God against us But yet so receive we long life as a blessing as that we may also find a blessing in departing from this life For so manifold and so multiforn are his blessings as even death it self hath a place in this Sphear of blessings The childe shall live a hundred yeares but yet The childe shall die When Paradise should have extended as man should have multiplied and every holy family every religious Colony have constituted a new Paradise that as it was said of Egypt when it abounded with Hermitages in the Primitive persecutions That Egypt was a continuall City of Hermitages so all the world should have been a continuall Garden of Paradises when all affections should have been subjects and all creatures servants and all wives helpers then life was a sincere blessing But but a mixt blessing now when all these are so much vitiated onely a possible blessing a disputable a conditionable a circumstantiall blessing now If there were any other way to be saved and to get to Heaven then by being born
is excellently said by Tertullian the name and profession of a Christian is but a superficiall outside sprinckled upon my face in Baptisme or upon mine outward profession in actions if I have not in my heart a sense of the holy Ghost that he applies the mercies of the Father and the merits of the Sonne to my soule As Saint Paul said Whilest you are without Christ you are without God It is an Atheisme with Saint Paul to be no Christian. So whilest you are without the holy Ghost you are without Christ. It is Antichristian to deny or not to confesse the holy Ghost For as Christ is the manifestation of the Father so the holy Ghost is the application of the Sonne Therein onely are we Christians that in the profession of that name of Christ we professe all the three Persons In Christ is the whole Trinity because as the Father sent him so he sent the holy Ghost And that 's our specifique forme that 's our distinctive Character from Iew and Gentile the Trinity But then is this specifique forme this distinctive Character the notion of the Trinity conveied to us exhibited imprinted upon us in our Creation in this word this plurall word in the mouth of our one God Faciamus Let us us It is here and here first This is an intimation and the first intimation of the Trinity from the mouth of God in all the Bible It is true that though the same faith which is necessary to salvation now were always necessary and so in the old Testament they were bound to beleeve in Christ as well as in the new and consequently in the whole Trinity yet not so explicitly nor so particularly as now Christ calling upon God in the name of Father says I have manifested thy name unto the men thou gavest me out of the world They were men appropriated to God men exempt out of the world yet they had not a cleer manifestation of Father and Sonne the doctrine of the Trinity till Christ manifested it to them I have manifested thy name thy name of Father And therefore the Jewish Rabbins say that the Septuagint the first translators of the Bible did disguise some places of the Scriptures in their translation lest Ptolomee for whom they translated it should be scandalized w h those places that this textwasone of those places which say they though it be otherwise in the Copies of the Septuagint which we have now they translated Faciam and not Faciamus that God said here I will make in the singular and not Let us make man in the plurall lest that plurall word might have misled King Ptâ—lomee to thinke that the Iews had a plurall Religion and worshipped divers Gods So good an evidence doe they confesse this text to be for some kinde of plurality in the Godhead Here then God notified the Trinity and here first for though we accept an intimation of the Trinity in the first line of the Bible where Moses joynes a plurall name Elohim with a singular Verbe Bara and so in construction it is Creavit Dii Gods created heaven and earth yet besides that that is rather a mysterious collection then an evident conclusion of a plurality of Persons though we read that in that first verse before this in the twenty sixth yet Moses writ that which is in the beginning of this chapter more then two thousand years after God spake this that is in our text So long was Gods plurall before Moses his plurall Gods Faciamus before Moses Bara Elohim So that in this text beginnes our Catechisme Here we have and here first the saving knowledge of the Trinity For when God spake here to whom could God speake but to God Non cum rebus Creandis nox cum re nihili says Athanasius speaking of Gods first speaking when he said of the first creature Let there be light God spake not then to future things to things that were not When God spake first there was no creature at all to speake to When God spake of the making of man there were creatures But were there any creatures able to create or able to assist him in the creation of man Who Angels Some had thought so in Saint Basils time and to them Saint Basil says Súntne Illi God says let us make man to our Image And could he say so to Angels Are Angels and God all one Or is that that is like an Angell therefore like God It was Sua Ratio Suum verbum Sua sapientia says that Father God spake to his own word and wisdome to his own purpose and goodnesse And the Sonne is the word and wisdome of God and the holy Ghost is the goodnesse and the purpose of God that is the administration the dispensation of his purposes 'T is true that when God speakes this over againe in his Church as he does every day now this minute then God speakes it to Angels to the Angels of the Church to his Ministers he says Faciamus Let us us both together you and we make a man join mine Ordinance your preaching with my Spirit says God to us and so make man Preach the oppressor and preach the wanton and preach the calumniator into another nature Make the ravening Wolfe a Man that licentious Goate a man that insinuating Serpent a man by thy preaching To day if you will heare his voice heare us For here he calls upon us to joine with him for the making of man But for his first Faciamus which is in our text it is excellently said Dictum in senatu soliloquio It was spoken in a Senat and yet in a solitarinesse spoken in private and yet publiquely spoken spoken where there were divers and yet but one one God and three Persons If there were no more intended in this plurall expression us but as some have conceived that God spake here in the person of a Prince and Soveraigne Lord and therefore spake as Princes doe in the plurall We command and We forbid yet Saint Gregories caution would justly fall upon it Reverenter pensandum est it requires a reverend consideration if it be but so For God speakes so like a King in the plurall but seldome but five times in my account in all the Scriptures and in all five in cases of important consequence In this text first where God creates man whom he constitutes his Viceroy in the World here he speakes in his royall plurall And then in the next Chapter where he extends mans terme in his Vicegerency to the end of the world in providing man meanes of succession Faciamus Let us us make him a helper There he speakes in his royall plurall And then also in the third Chapter in declaring the hainousnesse of mans fault and arraigning him and all us in him God says Sicut unus ex nobis Man is become as one of us not content to be our Viceroy but our selves There 's his royall
is but a Conscience a guiltinesse of needing a continuall supply and succession of more and more grace And we are all red red so even from the beginning and in our best state Adam had the Angells had thus much of this infirmity that though they had a great measure of grace they needed more The prodigall child grew poore enough after he had received his portion and he may be wicked enough that trusts upon former or present grace and seeks not more This rednesse a blushing that is an acknowledgement that we could not subsist with any measure of faith except we pray for more faith nor of grace except we seek more grace we have from the hand of God And another rednesse from his hand too the bloud of his Sonne so that bloud was effused by Christ in the value of the ransome for All and accepted by God in the value thereof for All and this redness is in the nature thereof as extensive as the redness derived from Adam is Both reach to all So we were red earth in the hands of God as redness denotes our generall infirmities and as redness denotes the bloud of his Sonne our Saviour all have both But that redness which we have contracted from bloud shed by our selves the bloud of our own soules by sinne was not upon us when we were in the hands of God That redness is not his tincture not his complexion No decree of his is writ in any such red inke Our sinnes are our owne and our destruction is from ourselves We are not as accessaries and God as principall in this soule-murder God forbid we are not as executioners of Gods sentence and God the Malefactor in this soule-damnation God forbid Cain came not red in his brothers bloud out of Gods hands nor David red with Vriahs bloud nor Achitophel with his own nor Iudas with Christs or his owne That that Pilat did illusorily God can doe truely wash his hands from the bloud of any of these men It were a weake Plea to say I killed not that man but 't is true I commanded one who was under my command to kill him It is rather a prevarication then a justification of God to say God is not the author of sinne in any man but t is true God makes that man sinne that sinne God is Innocency and the beames that flow from him are of the same nature and colour Christ when he appeared in heaven was not red but white His head and haires were white as white wooll and as snow not head onely but haires too He and that that growes from him he and we as we come from his hands are white too His Angels that provoke us to the Imitation of that pattern are so in white Two men two Angels stood by the Apostles in white apparell The imitation is laid upon us by precept too At all times let thy garments be white Those actions in which thou appearest to the world innocent It is true that Christ is both My beloved is white and ruddy says the Spouse But the white was his owne his rednesse is from us That which Zipporah said to her husband Moses in anger the Church may say to Christ in thankfulnesse Verè sponsus Sanguinum thou art truly a bloudy husband to me Damim sanguinum of blouds blouds in the plurall for all our blouds are upon him This was a mercy to the Militant Church that even the Triumphant Church wondred at it They knew not Christ when he came up to heaven in red Who is this that commeth in red garments Wherefore is thy apparell red like him that treadeth in the winepresse They knew he went down in white in intire innocency and they wondred to see him returne in red But he satisfies them Calcavi you thinke I have troden the winepresse and you mistake it not I have troden the winepresse and Calcavi solus I have troden it alone all the redness all the bloud of the whole world is upon me And as he adds Non vir de gentibus of all people there was none with me with me so as to have any part in the Merit So of all people there was none without me without me so as to be excluded by me without their own fault from the benefit of my merit This redness he carried up to heaven for by the bloud of his Crosse came peace both to the things in earth and the things in heaven For that peccability that possibility of sinning which is in the Nature of the Angels of heaven would breake out into sinne but for that confirmation which those Angels have received in the bloud of Christ. This rednesse he carried to heaven and this rednesse he hath left upon earth that all we miserable clods of earth might be tempered with his bloud that in his bloud exhibited in his holy and blessed Sacrament our long robes might be made white in the bloud of the Lambe that though our sinnes be robes habits of sinne though long robes habits of long continuance in sinne yet through that rednesse which our sinnes have cast upon him we might come to participate of that whitenesse that righteousnesse which is his owne We that is all we for as to take us in who are of low condition and obscure station a cloud is made white by his sitting upon it He sate upon a great white cloud so to let the highest see that they have no whitenesse but from him he makes the Throne white by sitting upon it He sate upon a great white Throne It had not been great if it had not been white White is the colour of dilatation goodnesse onely enlarges the Throne It had not been white if he had not sate upon it That goodness onley which consists in glorifying God and God in Christ and Christ in the sincerity of his truth is true whitenesse God hath no rednesse in himselfe no anger towards us till he considers us as sinners God cast no rednesse upon us inflicts no necessity no constraint of sinning upon us We have dyed ourselves in sinnes as red as Scarlet we have drowned our selves in such a red Sea But as a garment that were washed in the red Sea would come out white so wonderfull works hath God done at the red Sea says David so doth his whitenesse worke through our red and makes this Adam this red earth Calculum candidum that white stone that receives a new name not Ish not Enosh not Gheber no name that tasts of misery or of vanity but that name renewed and manifested which was imprinted upon us in our elections the Sonnes of God the irremoveable the undisinheritable Sonnes of God Be pleased to receive this note at parting that there is Macula Alba a spot and yet white as well as a red spot a whitenesse that is an indication of a Leprosie as well as a rednesse Whole-pelagianisme to thinke nature alone sufficient
many and very good grammarians amongst the Hebrews have thought and said that that name by which God notifies himself to the world in the very beginning of Genesis which is Elohim as it is a plurall word there so it hath no singular they say we cannot name God but plurally so sociable so communicable so extensive so derivative of himself is God and so manifold are the beames and the emanations that flow out from him It is a garden worthy of your walking in it Come into it but by the gate of nature The naturall man had much to do to conceive God a God that should be but one God and therefore scattered his thoughts upon a multiplicity of Gods and he found it as he thought reasonable to think that there should be a God of Iustice a God of Wisedome a God of Power and so made the severall Attributes of God severall Gods and thought that one God might have enough to do with the matters of Iustice another with the causes that belonged to power and so also with the courts of Wisedome the naturall man as he cannot conceive a vacuity that any thing should be empty so he cannot conceive that any one thing though that be a God should fill all things and therefore strays upon a pluralty of Gods upon many Gods though in truth as Athanasius expresses it ex multitudine numinum nullitas numinum he that constitutes many Gods destroys all God for no God can be God if he be not all-sufficient yet naturally I mean in such nature as our nature is a man does not easily conceive God to be alone to be but one he thinks there should be company in the Godhead Bring it farther then so A man that lies in the dregs of obscured and vitiated nature does not easily discern unicum Deum a God that should be alone a God that should be but one God Reason rectified rectified by the word of God can discern this this one God But when by that means of the Scripture he does apprehend Deum unicum one God does he finde that God alone are there not three Persons though there be but one God 'T is true the RomaÌ„s mis-took infinitely in making 300 Iupiters Varro mis-took infinitely in making Deos terrestres and Deos câ—lesâ—es sub-lunary and super-lunary heavenly and earthly Gods and Deus marinos and fluviatiles Sea Gods and River Gods salt and fresh-water Gods and Deos mares and faeminas he Gods and she Gods and that he might be sure to take in all Deos certos incertos Gods which they were sure were Gods Gods w ch might be Gods for any thing they knew to the contrary There is but one God but yet was that one God ever alone There were more generations infinitely infinite before the world was made then there have been minutes since it was made all that while there were no creasures but yet was God alone any one minute of al this was there not alwais a Father and a Son a holy Ghost And had not they always an acquiescence in one another an exercise of Affection as we may so say a love a delight and a complacency towards one another So as that the Father could not be without the Son and the holy Ghost so as neither Sonne nor holy Ghost could be without the Father nor without one another God was from all eternity collected into one God yet from all eternity he derived himselfe into three persons God could not be so alone but that there have been three persons as long as there hath been one God Had God company enough of himselfe was he satisfied in the three Persons We see he proceeded further he came to a Creation And as soon as he had made light which was his first Creature he took a pleasure in it he said it was good he was glad of it glad of the Sea glad of the Earth glad of the Sunne and Moone and Starres and he said of every one It is good But when he had made All peopled the whole world brought all creatures together then he was very glad and then he said not onely that it was good but that it was very good God was so far from being alone as that he found not the fulnesse of being well till all was made till all Creatures met together in an Host as Moses calls it then the good was extended into very good Did God satisfie himselfe with this visible and discernible world with all on earth and all between that and him were those foure Monarchies the foure Elements and all the subjects of those foure Monarchies if all the foure Elements have Creatures company enough for God was that Heptarchie the seven kingdomes of the seven Planets conversation enough for him Let every Starre in the firmament be so some take them to be a severall world was all this enough we see God drew persons nearer to him then Sunne or Moon or Starres or any thing which is visible and discernible to us he created Angels How many how great Arithmetique lacks numbers to to expresse them proportion lacks Dimensions to figure them so far was God from being alone And yet God had not shed himselfe far enough he had the Leviathan the Whale in the Sea and Behemoth and the Elephant upon the land and all these great heavenly bodies in the way and Angels in their infinite numbers and manifold offices in heaven But because Angels could not propagate nor make more Angels he enlarged his love in making man that so he might enjoy all natures at once and have the nature of Angels and the nature of earthly Creatures in one Person God would not be without man nor he would not come single not alone to the making of man but it is Faciamas hominem Let us us make man God in his whole counsail in his whole Colledge in his whole society in the whole Trinity makes man in whom the whole nature of all the world should meet And still our large and our Communicable God affected this association so as that having three Persons in himselfe and having Creatures of divers natures and having collected all natures in man who consisted of a spirituall nature as well as a bodily he would have one liker himselfe then man was And therefore he made Christ God and Man in one person Creature and Creator together One greater then the Seraphim and yet lesse then a worme Soveraigne to all nature and yet subject to naturall infirmities Lord of life life it selfe and yet prisoner to Death Before and beyond all measures of Time Born at so many moneths yet Circumcised at so many days Crucified at so many years Rose againe at so many Houres How sure did God make himselfe of a companion in Christ who united himselfe in his godhead so inseparably to him as that that godhead left not that body then when it lay dead in the grave but
that this place of Saint Pauls to the Corinthians is one of these places of which Saint Peter saith Quaedam difficilia There are some things in Saint Paul hard to be understood Saint Augustines meaning is that the difficulty is in the next words how any man should build hay or stubble upon so good a foundation as Christ how any man that pretendeth to live in Christ should live ill for in the other there can be no difficulty how Christ Jesus to a Christian should be the onely foundation And therefore to place salvation or damnation in such an absolute Decree of God as should have no relation to the fall of man or reparation in a Redeemer this is to remove this stone out of the foundation for a Christian may be well content to beginne at Christ If any man therefore have laid any other foundation to his Faith or any other foundation to his Actions possession of great places alliance in great Families strong parties in Courts obligation upon dependants acclamations of people if he have laid any other foundations for pleasure and contentment care of health and complexion appliablenesse in conversation delightfulnesse in discourses cheerefulnesse in disportings interchanging of secrets and such other small wares of Courts and Cities as these are whosoever hath laid such foundations as these must proceed as that Generall did who when he received a besieged Towne to mercy upon condition that in signe of subjection they should suffer him to take off one row of stones from their walls he tooke away the lowest row the foundation and so ruined and demolished the whole walls of the Citie So must he that hath these false foundations that is these habits divest the habite roote out the lowest stone that is the generall and radicall inclination to these disorders For he shall never be able to watch and resist every particular temptation if he trust onely to his Morall Constancy No nor if he place Christ for the roofe to cover all his sinnes when he hath done them his mercy worketh by way of pardon after not by way of Non obstante and priviledge to doe a sinne before hand but before hand we must have the foundation in our eye when we undertake any particular Action in the beginning we must looke how that will suite with the foundation with Christ for there is his first place to be Lapis fundamentalis And then after we have considered him first in the foundation as we are all Christians he growes to be Lapis Angularis the Corner stone to unite those Christians which seem to be of divers ways divers aspects divers professions together as wee consider him in the foundation there he is the root of faith As we consider him in the Corner there hee is the root of charity In Esay hee is both together A sure foundation and a Corner stone as he was in the place of Esay Lapis probatus I will lay in Sion a tryed stone and in the Psalm Lapis reprobatus a stone that the builders refused In this consideration he is Lapis approbatus a stone approved by all sides that unites all things together Consider first what divers things he unites in his own person That he should be the sonne of a woman and yet no sonne of man That the sonne of a woman should be the sonne of God that mans sinfull nature and innocency should meet together a man that should not sinne that Gods nature and mortality should meet together a God that must die Briefly that he should doe and suffer so many things impossible as man impossible as God Thus hee was a Corner stone that brought together natures naturally incompatible Thus he was Lapis Angularis a Corner stone in his Person Consider him in his Offices as a Redeemer as a Mediatour and so hee hath united God to man yea rebellious man to jealous God Hee is such a Corner stone as hath united heaven and earth Jerusalem and Babylon together Thus in his Person and thus in his Offices Consider him in his power and hee is such a Corner stone as that hee is the God of Peace and Love and Union and Concord Such a Corner stone as is able to unite and reconcile as it did in Abrahams house a Wife and a Concubine in one bed a covetous Father and a wastfull Sonne in one family a severe Magistrate and a licentious people in one City an absolute Prince and a jealous People in one Kingdome Law and Conscience in one Government Scripture and tradition in one Church If we would but make Christ Jesus and his peace the life and soule of all our actions and all our purposes if we would mingle that sweetnesse and supplenesse which he loves and which he is in all our undertakings if in all controversies booke controversies and sword controversies we would fit them to him and see how neere they would meet in him that is how neere we might come to be friends and yet both sides be good Christians then wee placed this stone in his second right place who as hee is a Corner stone reconciling God and man in his owne Person and a Corner stone in reconciling God and mankinde in his Office so hee desires to bee a Corner stone in reconciling man and man and setling peace among our selves not for worldly ends but for this respect that wee might all meet in him to love one another not because wee made a stronger party by that love not because wee made a sweeter conversation by that love but because wee met closer in the bosome of Christ Jesus where wee must at last either rest altogether eternally or bee altogether eternally throwne out or bee eternally separated and divorced from one another Having then received Christ for the foundation stone wee beleeve aright and for the Corner stone we interpret charitably the opinions and actions of other men The next is that hee bee Lapis Iacob a stone of rest and security to our selves When Iacob was in his journey hee tooke a stone and that stone was his pillow upon that hee slept all night c. resting upon that stone hee saw the Ladder that reached from heaven to earth it is much to have this egresse and regresse to God to have a sense of being gone from him and a desire and meanes of returning to him when wee doe fall into particular sinnes it is well if wee can take hold of the first step of this Ladder with that hand of David Domine respice in Testamentum O Lord consider thy Covenant if wee can remember God of his Covenant to his people and to their seed it is well it is more if wee can clamber a step higher on this ladder to a Domine labia mea aperies if we come to open our lips in a true confession of our wretched condition and of those sinnes by which we have forfeited our interest in that Covenant it is more and
invested in the light of joy and my body in the light of glory How glorious is God as he looks down upon us through the Sunne How glorious in that glasse of his How glorious is God as he looks out amongst us through the king How glorious in that Image of his How glorious is God as he calls up our eyes to him in the beauty and splendor and service of the Church How glorious in that spoufe of his But how glorious shall I conceive this light to be cum sub loco viderim when I shall see it in his owne place In that Spheare which though a Spheare is a Center too In that place which though a place is all and every where I shall see it in the face of that God who is all face all manifestration all all Innotescence to me for facies Deiest qua Deus nobis innotescit that 's Gods face to us by which God manifests himselfe to us I shall see this light in his face who is all face and yet all hand all application and communication and delivery of all himselfe to all his Saints This is Beatitudo in Auge blessednesse in the Meridionall height blessednesse in the South point in a perpetuall Sommer solstice beyond which nothing can be proposed to see God so Then There And yet the farmers of heaven and hell the merchants of soules the Romane Church make this blessednesse but an under degree but a kinde of apprentiship after they have beatified declared a man to be blessed in the fruition of God in heaven if that man in that inferiour state doe good service to that Church that they see much profit will rise by the devotion and concurrence of men to the worship of that person then they will proceed to a Canonization and so he that in his Novitiat and years of probation was but blessed Ignatius and blessed Xavier is lately become Saint Xavier aud Saint Ignatius And so they pervert the right order and method which is first to come to Sanctification and then to Beatification first to holinesse and then to blessednesse And in this method our blessed God bee pleased to proceed with us by the operation of his holy Spirit to bring us to Sanctification here and by the merits and intercession of his glorious Sonne to Beatification hereafter That so not being offended in him but resting in those meanes and seales of reconciliation which thou hast instituted in thy Church wee may have life and life more abundantly life of grace here and life of glory there in that kingdome which thy Sonne our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible bloud Amen SERMON XLV Preached at Saint Dunstans Aprill 11. 1624. The first sermon in that Church as Vicar thereof DEUT. 25. 5. If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no Childe the Wife of the dead shall not mary without unto a stranger her husbands brother shall goe in unto her and take her to him to wife and performe the duty of an husbands brother unto her FRom the beginning God intimated a detestation a dislike of singularity of beeing Alone The first time that God himselfe is named in the Bible in the first verse of Genesis hee is named plurally Creavit Dit Gods Gods in the plurall Created Heaven and Earth God which is but one would not appeare nor bee presented so alone but that hee would also manifest more persons As the Creator was not Singular so neither were the creatures First he created heaven and earth both together which were to be the generall parents and out of which were to bee produced all other creatures and then he made all those other creatures plurally too Male and female created hee them And when he came to make him for whose sake next to his own glory he made the whole world Adam he left not Adam alone but joyned an Eve to him Now when they were maried we know but wee know not when they were divorced we heare when Eve was made but not when shee dyed The husbands death is recorded at last the wives is not at all So much detestation hath God himselfe and so little memory would hee have kept of any singularity of being alone The union of Christ to the whole Church is not expressed by any metaphore by any figure so oft in the Scripture as by this of Mariageâ— and there is in that union with Christ to the whole Church neither husband nor wife can ever die Christ is immortall as hee is himselfe and immortall as hee is the head of the Church the Husband of that wife for that wife the Church is immortall too for as a Prince is the same Prince when he fights a battaile and when hee triumphs after the victory so the militant and the triumphant Church is the same Church There can bee no widower There can bee no Dowager in that case Hee cannot shee cannot die But then this Metaphore this spirituall Mariage holds not onely betweene Christ and the whole Church in which case thee can be no Widow but in the union between Christs particular Ministers and particular Churches and there in that case the husband of that wife may die The present Minister may die and so that Church be a Widow And in that case and for provision of such Widows wee consider the accommodation of this Law If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no childe the wife of the dead shall not mary without unto a stranger c. This law was but a permissive law rather a dispensation then a law as the permitting of usury to bee taken of strangers and the permitting of divorces in so many cases were At most it was but a Iudiciall law and therefore layes no obligation upon any other nation then them to whom it was given the Iews And therefore wee enquire not the reasons of that law the reasons were determined in that people wee examine not the conveniences of the law the conveniences were determined in those times wee lay hold onely upon the Typique signification and appliablenesse of the law as that secular Mariage there spoken of may be appliable to this spirituall Mariage the Mariage of the Minister to the Church If brethren dwell together c. From these words then wee shall make our approaches and application to the present occasion by these steps First there is a mariage in the case The taking and leaving of a Church is not an indifferent an arbitrary thing It is a Mariage and Mariage implies Honour It is an honourable estate and that implies charge it is a burdensome state There is Honos and Onus Honour and labour in Mariage You must bee content to afford the honour wee must bee content to endure the labour And so in that point as our Incumbencie upon a Church is our Mariage to that Church wee shall as farre as the occasion admits see
nor over-mourne for that which as we have induced it upon our selves so God shall deliver us from at last that is both death and corruption after death and captivity in that comfortlesse state but for the resurection For so long we are to be dust and so long lasts the Serpents life Satans power over man dust must he eate all the days of his life In the meane time for our comfort in the way when this Serpent becomes a Lyon yet there is a Lyon of the Tribe of Iudah that is too strong for him so if he who is Serpens serpens humi the Serpent condemned to creep upon the ground doe transforme himselfe into a flying Serpent and attempt our nobler faculties there is Serpens exaltatus a Serpent lifted up in the wildernesse to recover all them that are stung and feel that they are stung with this Serpent this flying Serpent that is these high and continued sinnes The creeping Serpent the groveling Serpent is Craft the exalted Serpent the crucified Serpent is Wisdome All you worldly cares all your crafty bargaines all your subtill matches all your diggings into other means estates all your hedgings in of debts all your planting of children in great allyances all these diggings and hedgings and plantings savour of the earth and of the craft of that Serpent that creeps upon the earth But crucifie this craft of yours bring all your worldly subtilty under the Crosse of Christ Jesus husband your farmes so as you may give a good account to him presse your debts so as you would be pressed by him market and bargaine so as that you would give all to buy that field in which his treasure and his pearle is hid and then you have changed the Serpent from the Serpent of perdition creeping upon the earth to the Serpent of salvation exalted in the wildernesse Creeping wisedome that still looks downward is but craft Crucified wisedome that looks upward is truly wisedome Between you and that ground Serpent God hath kindled a war and the nearer you come to a peace with him the farther ye go from God and the more ye exaspetate the Lord of Hosts and you whet his sword against your own souls A truce with that Serpent is too near a peace to condition with your conscience for a time that you may continue in such a sin till you have paid for such a purchase married such a daughter bought such an annuity undermined and eaten out such an unthrift this truce though you mean to end it before you die is too near a peace with that Serpent between whom and you God hath kindled an everlasting war A cessation of Arms that is not to watch all his attempts and tentations not to examine all your particular actions A Treaty of Peace that is to dispute and debate in the behalf and favour of a sin to palliate to disguise to extenuate that sin this is too near a peace with this Serpent this creeping Serpent But in the other Serpent the crucified Serpent God hath reconciled to himself all things in heaven and earth and hell You have peace in the assistance of the Angels of heaven Peace in the contribution of the powerfull prayers and of the holy examples of the Saints upon earth peace in the victory and triumph over the power of hell peace from sins towards men peace of affections in your selves peace of conscience towards God From your childhood you have been called upon to hold your peace To be content is to hold your peace murmure not at God in any corrections of his and you doe hold this peace That creeping Serpent Satan is war and should be so The crucified Serpent Christ Jesus is peace and shall be so for ever The creeping Serpent eats our dust the strength of our bodies in sicknesses and our glory in the dust of the grave The crucified Serpent hath taken our flesh and our blood and given us his flesh and his blood for it And therefore as David when he was thought base for his holy freedome in dancing before the Ark said he would be more base so since we are all made of red earth let him that is red be more red Let him that is red with the blood of his own soul be red again in blushing for that rednesse and more red in the Communion of the blood of Christ Jesus whom we shall eat all the days of our life and be mystically and mysteriously and spiritually and Sacramentally united to him in this life and gloriously in the next In this state of dust and so in the territory of the Serpent the Tyrant of the dead lies this dead brother of ours and hath lien some years who occasions our meeting now and yearly upon this day and whose soul we doubt not is in the hands of God who is the God of the living And having gathered a good Gomer of Manna a good measure of temporall blessings in this life and derived a fair measure thereof upon them whom nature and law directed it upon and in whom we beseech God to blesse it hath also distributed something to the poor of this Parish yearly this day and something to a meeting for the conserving of neighbourly love and something for this exercise In which no doubt his intention was not so much to be yearly remembred himself as that his posterity and his neighbours might be yearly remembred to doe as he had done For this is truly to glorifie God in his Saints to sanctifie our selves in their examples To celebrate them is to imitate them For as it is probably conceived and agreeably to Gods Justice that they that write wanton books or make wanton pictures have additions of torment as often as other men are corrupted with their books or their pictures so may they who have left permanent examples of good works well be beleeved to receive additions of glory and joy when others are led by that to do the like And so they who are extracted and derived from him and they who dwelt about him may assist their own happiness and enlarge his by following his good example in good proportions Amen SERMON XLVIII Preached at St. Dunstans LAMENT 3. 1. I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath YOU remember in the history of the Passion of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus there was an Ecce homo a shewing an exhibiting of that man in whom we are all blessed Pilat presented him to the Jews so with that Ecce homo Behold the man That man upon whom the wormwood and the gall of all the ancient Prophecies and the venome and malignity of all the cruell instruments thereof was now poured out That man who was left as a tender plant and as a roote out of a dry ground without forme or beauty or comelinesse that wee should desire to see him as the Prophet Esay exhibits him That man who upon the brightnesse of
Fifty SERMONS PREACHED BY THAT LEARNED AND REVEREND DIVINE JOHN DONNE D r IN DIVINITY Late Deane of the Cathedrall Church of S. PAULS London The Second Volume LONDON Printed by Ia. Flesher for M. F. I. Marriot and R. Royston MDCXLIX TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE BASIL EARLE OF DENBY My very good Lord and Patron My Lord IN a season so tempestuous it is a great encouragement to see your Lordship called to the Helme who in your publique negociations having spent so many yeares in that so famed Common-wealth of Venice must of necessity have brought home such excellent Principles of Government that if our Fate doe not withstand your Directions we may reasonably at last expect to see our new Brittish Lady excell that ancient Adriatique Queene Neither can I offend much against the State in begging your Patronage and perusall of this Book knowing that your Lordship first mastered all the Learning of Padoa before you did adventure upon that wise Senate who amongst all her other greatnesses has ever had a principall care that Learning might not be diminished When these Sermons were preached they were terminated within the compasse of an houre but your acceptance may make them outlive the very Churches that they were preached in and give them such a perpetuity that Nec Jovis Ira nec Amor edacior multò poterit abolere For though a fiery zeale in succeeding ages hath often both ruined the Temples and casheired the gods that were worshipped in them Yet such sacrifices as these have beemy laies kept unburnt and we are suffered to know those religions that we are not allowed to practice Nor can I expect any greater advantage for the paines I have taken in publishing this Book then that posterity may know I did it when I had the favor and protection of your Lordship and was allowed to stile my selfe Your Lordships most humble Servant JO. DONNE FOR THE RIGHT HONOURABLE BOLSTRED WHITLOCK RICHARD KEEBLE 〈◊〉 JOHN LEILE Lords Commissioners of the Great Seale THe reward that many yeares since was proposed for the publishing these Sermons having been lately conferred upon me under the authority of the Great Seale I thought my selfe in gratitude bound to deliver them to the world under your Lordships protection both to show how carefull you are in dispensing that part of the Churches treasure that is committed to your disposing and to encourage all men to proceed in their industry when they are sure to find so just and equall Patrons whose fame and memory must certainely last longer then Bookes can find so noble Readers and whose present favors doe not onely keep the Living alive but the Dead from dying Your Lordships most humble Servant JO. DONNE A Table directing to the severall Texts of SCRIPTURE handled in this Book Sermons preached at Mariages Sermon I. Preached at the Earl of Bridgwaters house in London on MATTH 22. 30. For in the Resurrection they neither mary nor are given in Mariage but are as the Angels of God in heaven p. 1. Serm ' II. GEN. 2. 18. And the Lord God said It is not good that the man should be alone I will make him a Help meet for him p. 9. Serm. III. HOSEA 2. 19. And I will mary thee unto me for ever p. 15 Sermons preached at Christnings Serm. IV. REVEL 7. 17. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the Throne shall governe them and shall leade them unto the lively fountaines of waters and God shall wipe away all teares from their eyes p. 23 Serm. V. EPHES. 5. 25 26 27. Husbands love your wives even at Christ loved the Church and gave himselfe for it that he might sanctifie it and cleanse it by the washing of water through the Word That he might make it unto himselfe a glorious Church not having spot or wrinckle or any such thing but that it should be holy and without blame p. 31 Serm. VI. 1 JOH 5. 7 8. For there are three which beare record in Heaven the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which beare record in the Earth The Spirit and the water and the blood and these three agree in one p. 39 Serm. VII GAL. 3. 27. For all yee that are baptized into Christ have put on Christ. p. 50. Sermons preached at Churchings Serm. VIII CANT 5. 3. I have washed my feet how shall I defile them p. 59. Serm. IX MICAH 2. 10. Arise and depart for this is not your rest p. 67. Serm. X. A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 74. Sermons preached at Lincolns-Inne Serm. XI GEN. 28. 16 17. Then Iacob awoke out of his sleep and said Surely the Lord is in this place and I was not aware And he was afraid and said How fearefull is this place This is none other but the House of God and this is the gate of Heaven p. 83 Serm. XII JOH 5. 22. The Father judgeth no man but hath committed all judgement to the Sonne p. 94. Serm. XIII JOH 8. 15. I judge no man p. 101. Serm. XIIII JOB 19. 26. And though after my skin wormes destroy this body yet in my flesh shall I see God p. 106. Serm. XV. 1 COR. 15. 50. Now this I say Brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God p. 118. Serm. XVI COLOS. 1. 24. Who now rejoyce in my sufferings for you and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his bodies sake which is the Church p. 128. Serm. XVII MAT. 18. 7. Wo unto the world because of offences p. 136. Serm. XVIII A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 142 Serm. XIX PSAL. 38. 2. For thine arrowes stick fast in me and thy hand presseth me sore p. 158. Serm. XX. PSA 38. 3. There is no soundnesse in my flesh because of thine anger neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sinne p. 162. Serm. XXI PSAL. 38. 4. For mine iniquities are gone over my head as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me p. 174. Serm. XXII A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 186. Serm. XXIII A third Serm. on the same Text. p. 192. Sermons preached at White-Hall Serm. XXIV EZEK 34. 19. And as for my flocke they eate that which ye have trodden with your feet and they drink that which yee have fouled with your feet 199. Serm. XXV A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 208. Serm. XXVI ESAI 65. 20. For the childe shall die a hundred yeers old but the sinner being a hundred yeers old shall be accursed p. 218 Serm. XXVII MARK 4. 24. Take heed what you hear p. 228 Serm. XXVIII GEN. 1. 26. And God said Let us make man in our own Image after our likenesse p. 239. Serm. XXIX A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 250 Sermons preached to the Nobility Serm. XXX JOB 13. 15. Loe though he slay me yet will I trust in him p. 262. Serm. XXXI JOB 36.
25. Every man may see it man may behold it afar off p. 271. Serm. XXXII APOC. 7 9. After this I beheld and loe a great multitude which no man could number of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues stood before the throne and before the Lambe clothed with white robes and Palmes in their hands p. 279. Serm. XXXIII CANT 3. 11. Go forth ye daughters of Sion and behold King Solomon with the Crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the day of the gladnesse of his heart p. 288. Serm. XXXIIII LUKE 23. 34. Father forgive them for they know not what they doe p. 304. Serm. XXXV MAT. 21. 44. Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken but on whosoever it shall fall it will grinde him to powder p. 311. Sermons preached at S. Pauls Sermon XXXVI JOH 1. 8. He was not that Light but was sent to beare witnesse of that Light p. 320. Serm. XXXVII A second Serm. on the same Text. p. 334. Serm. XXXVIII A third Ser. on the the same Text. p. 343. Serm. XXXIX PHIL. 3. 2. Beware of the Concision p. 356. Serm. XL. 2 COR. 5. 20. We pray yee in Christs stead Be ye reconciled to God p. 364. XLI HOSEA 3. 4. For the Children of Israel shall abide many dayes without a King and without a Prince and without a Sacrifice and without an Image and without an Ephod and without Teraphim p. 375. Serm. XLII PROV 14. 31. He that oppresseth the poor reprocheth his Maker but he that honoureth him hath mercy on the 〈◊〉 p. 385. Serm. XLIII LAMENT 4. 20. The breath of our nostrils the Anointed of the Lord was taken in their pits p. 396. Serm. XLIV MAT. 11. 6. And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me p. 411. Sermons preached at S. Dunstans Serm. XLV DEUT. 25. 5. If brethren dwell together and one of them dye and have no childe the Wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger her husbands brother shall goe in unto her and take her to him to wife and performe the duty of an husbands brother unto her p. 422. Serm. XLVI PSAL. 34. 11. Come ye children Hearken unto me I will teach you the feare of the Lord. p. 430. Ser. XLVII GEN. 3. 24. And dust shalt thou eate all the dayes of thy life p. 439. Ser. XLVIII LAMENT 3. 1. I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath p. 445. Serm. XLIX GEN. 7. 24. Abraham himself was ninety nine yeeres old when the foreskin of his flesh was Circumcised p. 456. Serm. L. 1 THES 5. 16. Rejoyce evermore p. 466. A SERMON PREACHED At the Earl of Bridgewaters house in London at the mariage of his daughter the Lady Mary to the eldest sonne of the L. Herbert of Castle-iland Novemb. 19. 1627. The Prayer before the Sermon O Eternall and most gracious God who hast promised to hearken to the prayers of thy people when they pray towards thy house though they be absent from it worke more effectually upon us who are personally met in this thy house in this place consecrated to thy worship Enable us O Lord so to see thee in all thy Glasses in all thy representations of thy selfe to us here as that hereafter we may see thee face to face and as thou art in thy self in thy kingdome of glory Of which Glasses wherein we may see thee Thee in thine Unity as thou art One God Thee in thy Plurality as thou art More Persons we receive this thy Institution of Mariage to be one In thy first work the Creation the last seale of thy whole work was a Mariage In thy Sonnes great work the Redemption the first seale of that whole work was a miracle at a Mariage In the work of thy blessed Spirit our Sanctification he refreshes to us that promise in one Prophet That thou wilt mary thy selfe to us for ever and more in another That thou hast maryed thy selfe unto us from the beginning Thou hast maryed Mercy and Iustice in thy selfe maryed God and Man in thy Sonne maryed Increpation and Consolation in the Holy Ghost mary in us also O Lord a Love and a Fear of thee And as thou hast maryed in us two natures mortall and immortall mary in us also the knowledge and the practise of all duties belonging to both conditions that so this world may be our Gallery to the next And mary in us the Spirit of Thankfulnesse for all thy benefits already bestowed upon us and the Spirit of prayer for the continuance and enlargement of them Continue and enlarge them O'God upon thine universall Church c. SERM. I. MATTH 22. 30. For in the Resurrection they neither mary nor are given in Mariage but are as the Angels of God in heaven OF all Commentaries upon the Scriptures Good Examples are the best and the livelyest and of all Examples those that are nearest and most present and most familiar unto us and our most familiar Examples are those of our owne families and in families the Masters of families the fathers of families are most conspicuous most appliable most considerable Now in exercises upon such occasions as this ordinarily the instruction is to bee directed especially upon those persons who especially give the occasion of the exercise that is upon the persons to bee united in holy wedlock for as that 's a difference betweene Sermons and Lectures that a Sermon intends Exhortation principally and Edification and a holy stirring of religious affections and then matters of Doctrine and points of Divinity occasionally secondarily as the words of the text may invite them But Lectures intend principally Doctrinall points and matter of Divinity and matter of Exhortation but occasionally and as in a second place so that 's a difference between Christening sermons and Mariage sermons that the first at Christnings are especially directed upon the Congregation and not upon the persons who are to be christened and these at mariages especially upon the parties that are to be united and upon the congregation but by reflexion When therefore to these persons of noble extraction I am to say something of the Duties and something of the Blessing of Mariage what God Commands and what God promises in that state in his Scriptures I lay open to them the best exposition the best Commentaries upon those Scriptures that is Example and the neerest example that is example in their own family when with the Prophet Esay I direct them To look upon the Rock from whence they are hewen to propose to themselves their own parents and to consider there the performance of the duties of mariage imposed by God in S. Paul and the blessings proposed by God in David Thy Wife shall be a fruitfull Vine by the sides of thy House The children like olive plants round about the table For to this purpose of edifying children by example such as are truly religious fathers
a sense a mysterious signification of the union of the soule with Christ when both persons professe the Christian Religion in generall there arises some signification of that spirituall union But when they both professe Christ in one forme in one Church in one Religion and that the right then as by the Civill Contract there is an union of their estates and persons so as that they two are made one so by this Sacramentall this mysterious union these two thus made one between themselves are also made one with Christ himself by the Civill union common to all people they are made Eadem caro The same flesh with one another By this mysterious this Sacramentall this significative union they are made Idem Spiritus cum Domino The same Spirit with the Lord. And therefore though in the Resurrection they shall not mary because then all the severall uses of mariage cease yet till the Resurrection that is as long as this world lasts for the sustentation of the world which is one Body and Mariage the food and aliment thereof for the reparation of the world which is one Building and Mariage the supply thereof to maintaine a second eternity in the succession of children and to illustrate this union of our soules to Christ we may and in some Cases must marry We are come in our order proposed at first to our second Part Erimus sicut Angeli we shall be as the Angels of God in heaven where we consider first what we are compared to those Angels And then in what that Comparison lies wherein we shall be like those Angels And lastly the Proposition that flowes out of this proposition In the Resurrection we shall be like them Till the Resurrection we shall not and therefore in the meane time we must not looke for Angelicall perfections but beare with one anothers infirmities Now when we would tell you what those Angels of God in heaven to which we are compared are we can come no nearer telling you that then by telling you we cannot tell The Angels may be content with that Negative expressing since we can express God himselfe in no clearer termes nor in termes expressing more Dignity then in saying we cannot expresse him Onely the Angels themselves know one another and one good point in which we shall be like them then shall be that then we shall know what they are we know they are Spirits in Nature but what the nature of a spirit is we know not we know they are Angels in office appointed to execute Gods will upon us but How a spirit should execute those bodily actions that Angels doe in their owne motion and in the transportation of other things we know not we know they are Creatures but whether created with this world as all our later men incline to think or long before as all the Greeke and some of the Latin Fathers thought we know not we know that for their number ◠and for their faculties also there may be one Angel for every man but whether there be so or no because not onely amongst the Fathers but even in the Reformed Churches in both sub-divisions Lutheran and Calvinist great men deny it and as great affirme it we know not we know the Angels know they understand but whether by that way which we call in the Schoole Cognitionem Matutinam by seeing all in God or that which we call Verspertinam by a clearer manifestation of the species of things to them then to us we know not we know they are distinguished into Orders the Apostle tells us so but what or how many their Orders are since S. Gregory and S. Bernard differ from that Designe of their nine orders which S. Denis the Areopagite had given before in placing of those nine and Athanasius addes more to those nine we know not But we are content to say with S. Augustine Esse firmissimè credo quaenam sint nescio that there are distinct orders of Angels assuredly I beleeve but what they are I cannot tell Dicant qui possunt si tamen probare possunt quod dicunt saies that Father Let them tell you that can so they be able to prove that they tell you true They are Creatures that have not so much of a Body as flesh is as froth is as a vapor is as a sigh is and yet with a touch they shall molder a rocke into lesse Atomes then the sand that it stands upon and a milstone into smaller flower then it grinds They are Creatures made and yet not a minute elder now then when they were first made if they were made before all measure of time began nor if they were made in the beginning of Time and be now six thousand yeares old have they one wrinckle of Age in their face or one sobbe of wearinesse in their lungs They are primogeniti Dei Gods eldest sonnes They are super-elementary meteors they hang between the nature of God and the nature of man and are of middle Condition And if we may offencelessely expresse it so they are anigmata Divina The Riddles of Heaven and the perplexities of speculation But this is but till the Resurrection Then we shall be like them and know them by that assimilation We end this branch with this consideration If by being like the Angels we shall know the Angels we are more then like ourselves we are our selves why doe we not know our selves Why did not Adam know that he had a Body that might have been preserved in an immortality and yet submitted his body and mine and thine and theirs who by this union are to be made one and all that by Gods goodnesse shall be derived from them to certaine to inevitable Death Why doe not we know our owne Immortality that dwells in us still for all Adams fall and ours in him that immortality which we cannot devest but must live for ever whether we will or no To know this immortality is to make this immortality which otherwise is the heaviest part of our Curse a Blessing unto us by providing to live in Immortall happinesse whereas now we doe so little know our selves as that if my soule could aske one of those Wormes which my dead body shall produce Will you change with me that worme would say No for you are like to live eternally in torment for my part I can live no longer then the putrid moisture of your body will give me leave and therefore I will not change nay would the Devill himselfe change with a damned soule I cannot tell As we argue conveniently that the Devil is tormented more then man because the Devill fel from God without any other Tempter then himselfe but man had a Tempter so may it be not inconveniently argued too that man may be more tormented then he because man continued and relapsed in his rebellions to God after so many pardons offered and accepted which the Devill never had Howsoever otherwise their torments
which God made of all that he had made still he gives the testimony that he saw all was good excepting onely in his Second dayes worke and in his making of Man He forbore it in the making of the firmament because the firmament was to divide between waters and waters it was an embleme of division of disunion He forbore it also in the making of man because though man was to be an embleme of Gods union to his Church yet because this embleme and this representation could not be in man alone till the woman were made too God does not pronounce upon the making of man that the work was good but upon Gods contemplation that it was not good that man should be alone there arose a goodnesse in having a companion And from that time if we seeke bonum quia licitum if we will call that good which is lawfull mariage is that If thou takest a wife thou sinnest not sayes God by the Apostle If we seeke bonum quia bonus autor if we call that good whose author is good mariage is that Adduxit ad Adam God brought her to man If we seek such a goodnesse as hath good witness good testimony mariage is that Christ was present at a mariage and honoured it with his first miracle If we seek such a goodnesse as is a constant and not a temporary an occasionall goodnesse Christ hath put such a cement upon mariage What God hath joined let no man put as under If we seek such a goodnesse as no man that is no sort nor degree of men is the worse for having accepted we see the holiecst of all the High Priest in the old Testament is onely limited what woman he shall not mary but not that he shall not mary and the Bishop in the new Testament what kinde of husband he must have been but not that he must have been no husband To contract this as mariage in good in having the best author God the best witnesse Christ the logest terme Life the largest extent even to the highest persons Priests and Bishops as it is all these wayes Positively good so it is good in Comparison of that which justly seemes the best state that is Virginity in S. Augustines opinion Non impar meritum Iohannis Abrahae If we could consider merit in man the merit of Abraham the father of nations and the merit of Iohn who was no father at all is equall But that wherein we consider the goodnesse of it here is that God proposed this way to receive glory from the sonnes of men here upon earth and to give glory to the sonnes of men in heaven But what glory can God receive from man that he should be so carefull of his propagation what glory more from man then from the Sunne and Moon and Stars which have no propagation why this that S. Augustine observes Musca Soli praeferenda quia vivit A Fly is a nobler creature then the Sunne because a fly hath life and the Sunne hath not for the degrees of dignity in the creature are esse vivere and intelligere to have a beeing to have life and to have understanding and therefore man who hath all three is much more able to glorify God then any other creature is because he onely can chuse whether he will glorify God or no the glory that the others give they must give but man is able to offer to God a reasonable sacrifice When ye were Gentiles saies the Apostle ye were caryed away unto dumb Idols even as ye were led This is reasonable service out of Reason to understand and out of our willingnesse to doe God service Now when God had spent infinite millions of millions of generations from all un-imaginable eternity in contemplating one another in the Trinity and then to speake humanly of God which God in his Scriptures abhors not out of a satiety in that contemplation would create a world for his glory and when he had wrought the first day and created all the matter and substance of the future creatures and wrought foure dayes after and a great part of the sixth and yet nothing produced which could give him any glory for glory is rationabile obsequium reasonable service and nothing could give that but a creature that understood it and would give it at last as the knot of all created man then to perpetuate his glory he must perpetuate man and to that purpose non bonum it was not good for man to be alone as without man God could not have been glorified so without woman man could not have been propagated But as there is a place cited by S. Paul out of David which hath some perplexity in it we cannot tell whether Christ be said to have received gifts from men or for men or to have given gifts to men for so S. Paul hath it so it is not easse for us to discern whether God had a care to propagate man that he might receive glory from man or that he might give glory to man When God had taken it into his purpose to people heaven again depopulated in the fall of Angels by the substitution of man in their places when God had a purpose to spend as much time with man in heaven after as he had done with himself before for our perpetuity after the Resurrection shall no more have an end then his Eternity before the Creation had a beginning And when God to prevent that time of the Resurrection as it were to make sure of man before would send down his own Son to assume our nature here and as not sure enough so would take us up to him and set us in his Son at his own right hand whereas he never did nor shall say to any of the Angels Sit thou there That God might not be frustrated of this great and gracious and glorious purpose of his non bonum it was not good that man should be alone for without man God could not give this glory and without woman there could be no propagation of man And so though it might have been Bonum homini man might have done well enough alone and Bonum hunc hominem some men may doe better alone yet God who ever for our example prefers the publique before the private because it conduced not to his generall end of Having and of Giving glory saw and said Non bonum hominem it was not good that man should be alone And so we have done with the branches of our first part We are come now to our second generall part In which as we saw in the former that God studies man and all things necessary for man we shall also see that wherein soever man is defective his onely supply and reparation is from God Faciam I will doe it Saul wanted counsell he was in a perplexity and he sought to the Witch of Endor and not to God and what is the issue he Hears of his
of this life Call it Nuptias and that is derived à Nube a vaile a covering and that is an estranging a withdrawing her self from all such conversation as may violate his peace or her honour Call it Matrimonium and that is derived from a Mother and that implies a religious education of her children De latere sumpta nor-discedat à latere says Aâ—g Since she was taken out of his side let her not depart from his side but shew her self so much as she was made for Adjutorium a Helper But she must be no more If she think her self more then a Helper she is not so much He is a miserable creature whose Creator is his Wife God did not stay to joyn her in Commission with Adam so far as to give names to the creatures much lesse to give essence essence to the man essence to her husband When the wife thinks her husband owes her all his fortune all his discretion all his reputation God help that man himself for he hath given him no helper yet I know there are some glasses stronger then some earthen vessels and some earthen vessels stronger then some wooden dishes some of the weaker sexe stronger in fortune and in counsell too then they to whom God hath given them but yet let them not impute that in the eye nor eare of the world nor repeat it to their own hearts with such a dignifying of themselves as exceeds the quality of a Helper S. Hierome shall be her Remembrancer She was not taken out of the foâ—t to be troden upon nor out of the head to be an overseer of him but out of his side where she weakens him enough and therefore should do all she can to be a Helper To be so so much and no more she must be as God made Eve fimilis ei meet and fit for her husband She is fit for any if she have those vertues which always make the person that hath them good as chastity sobriety taciturnity verity and such for for such vertues as may be had and yet the possessor not the better for them as wit learning eloquence musick memory cunning and such these make her never the fitter There is a Harmony of dispositions and that requires particular consideration upon emergent occasions but the fitnesse that goes through all is a sober continency for without that Matrimonium jurata fornicatio Mariage is but a continuall fornication sealed with an oath And mariage was not instituted to prostitute the chastity of the woman to one man but to preserve her chastity from the tentations of more men Bathsheba was a little too fit for David when he had tried her so far before for there is no fitnesse where there is not continency To end all there is a Morall fitnesse consisting in those morall vertues of which we have spoke enough And there is a Civill fitnesse consisting in Discretion and accommodating her self to him And there is a Spirituall fitnesse in the unanimity of Religion that they be not of repugnant professions that way Of which since we are well assured in both these who are to be joyned now I am not sorry if either the houre or the present occasion call me from speaking any thing at all because it is a subject too mis-interpretable and unseasonable to admit an enlarging in at this time At this time therefore this be enough for the explication and application of these words SERMON III. Preached at a Mariage HOSEA 2. 19. And I will mary thee unto me for ever THE word which is the hinge upon which all this Text turns is Erash and Erash signifies not onely a betrothing as our later Translation hath it but a mariage And so it is used by David Deliver me my wife Michal whom I maried and so our former Translation had it and so we accept it and so shall handle it I will mary thee unto me for ever The first mariage that was made God made and he made it in Paradise And of that mariage I have had the like occasion as this to speak before in the presence of many honourable persons in this company The last mariage which shall be made God shall make too and in Paradise too in the Kingdome of heaven and at that mariage I hope in him that shall make it to meet not some but all this company The mariage in this Text hath relation to both those mariages It is it self the spirituall and mysticall mariage of Christ Jesus to the Church and to every mariageable soule in the Church And it hath a retrospect it looks back to the first mariage for to that the first word carries us because from thence God takes his metaphor and comparison sponsabo I will mary And then it hath a prospect to the last mariage for to that we are carried in the last word in aeternum I will mary thee unto me for ever Be pleased therefore to give me leave in this exercise to shift the scene thrice and to present to your religious considerations three objects three subjects first a secular mariage in Paradise secondly a spirituall mariage in the Church and thirdly an eternall mariage in heaven And in each of these three we shall present three circumstances first the Persons Me and Tibi I will mary thee And then the Action Sponsabo I will mary thee And lastly the Term In aeternam I will mary thee to mee for ever In the first acceptation then in the first the secular mariage in Paradise the persons were Adam and Eve Ever since they are he and she man and woman At first by reason of necessity without any such limitation as now And now without any other limitation then such as are expressed in the Law of God As the Apostles say in the first generall Councell We lay nothing upon you but things necessary so we call nothing necessary but that which is commanded by God If in heaven I may have the place of a man that hath performed the Commandements of God I will not change with him that thinks he hath done more then the Commandements of God enjoyned him The rule of marriage for degrees and distance in blood is the Law of God but for conditions of men there is no Rule given at all When God had made Adam and Eve in Paradise God did not place Adam in a Monastery on one side and Eve in a Nunnery on the other and so a River between them They that built wals and cloysters to frustrate Gods institution of mariage advance the Doctrine of Devils in forbidding mariage The Devil hath advantages enow against us in bringing men and women together It was a strange and super-devilish invention to give him a new advantage against us by keeping men and women asunder by forbidding mariage Between the heresie of the Nicolaitans that induced a community of women any might take any and the heresie of the Tatians that forbad all none might take any was
his Temple looks for first fruits from both that so on both sides mariage should have such a degree of eternity as to have had no beginning of mariage before mariage It should have this degree of eternity too this quality of a circle to have no interruption no breaking in the way by unjust suspitions and jealousies Where there is Spiritus immunditei as S. Paul calls it a spirit of uncleannesse there will necessarily be Spiritus zelotypiae as Moses cals it a spirit of jealousie But to raise the Devill in the power of the Devill to call up one spirit by another spirit by the spirit of jealousie and suspition to induce the spirit of uncleannesse where it was not if a man conjure up a Devill so God knows who shall conjure it down again As jealousie is a care and not a suspition God is not ashamed to protest of himself that he is a jealous God God commands that no idolatry be committed Thou shalt not bow down to a graven Image and before he accuses any man to have bowed down to a graven Image before any Idolatry was committed he tells them that he is a jealous God God is jealous before there is any harm done And God presents it as a curse when he says My jealousie shall depart from thee and I will be quiet and no more angry that is I will heave thee to thy self and take no more care of thee Jealousie that implies care and honour and counsell and tendernesse is rooted in God for God is a jealous God and his servants are jealous servants as S. Paul professes of himself I am jealous over you with a gedly jealousie But jealousie that implies diffidence and suspition and accusation is rooted in the Devil for he is the Accuser of the brethren So then this secular mariage should be in aeternum eternall for ever as to have no beginning before and so too as to have no jealous interruption by the way for it is so eternall as that it can have no end in this life Those whom God hath joyned no man no Devill can separate so as that it shall not remain a mariage so far as that if those separated persons will live together again yet they shall not be new maried so farre certainly the band of mariage continues still The Devil makes no mariages He may have a hand in drawing conveyances in the temporall conditios there may be practice but the mariage is made by God in heaven The Devil can break no mariages neither though he can by sin break off all the good uses and take away all the comforts of mariage I pronounce not now whether Adultery dissolves mariage or no It is S. Augustines wisdome to say Where the Scripture is silent let me be silent too And I may goe lower then he and say Where the Church is silent let me be silent too and our Church is so far silent in this as that it hath not said That Adultery dissolves mariage Perchance then it is not the death of mariage but surely it is a deadly wound We have Authors in the Romanc Church that think fornicationem non vagam that such an incontinent life as is limited to one certain person is no deadly sin But there is none even amongst them that diminish the crime of Adultery Habere quasi non haberes is Christs counsell To have a wife as though thou hadst none that is continency and temperance and forbearance and abstinency upon some occasions But non habere quasi haberes is not so not to have a wife and yet have her to have her that is anothers that is the Devils counsell That falutation of the Angle to the blessed Virgin Mary Blessed art thou amongst memen we may make even this interpretation not onely that she was blessed amongst women that is above women but that she was Benedicta blessed amongst women that all women blest her that no woman had occasion to curse her And this is the eternity of this secular mariage as far as this world admits any eternity that it should have no beginning before no interruption of jealousie in the way no such approach towards dissolution as that incontinency in all opinions and in all Churches is agreed to be And here also without any scruple of fear or of suspition of the contrary there is place for this benediction upon this couple Build ô Lord upon thine own foundations in these two and establish thy former graces with future that no person ever complain of either of them nor either of them of one another and so he and she are maried in aeternum for ever We are now come in our order proposed at first to our second Part for all is said that I intended of the secular mariage And of this second the spirituall mariage much needs not to be said There is another Priest that contracts that another Preacher that celebrates that the Spirit of God to our spirit And for the third mariage the eternall mariage it is a boldnesse to speak any thing of a thing so inexpressible as the joyes of heaven it is a diminution of them to goe about to heighten them it is a shadowing of them to goe about to lay any colours or light upon them But yet your patience may perchance last to a word of each of these three Circumstances The Persons the Action the Term both in this spirituall and in the eternall mariage First then as in the former Part the secular mariage for the persons there we considered first Adam and Eve and after every man and woman and this couple in particular so in this spirituall mariage we consider first Christ and his Church for the Persons and more particularly Christ and my soul. And can these persons meet in such a distance and in such a disparagement can these persons meet the Son of God and the son of man When I consider Christ to be Germen Iehovae the bud and blossome the fruit and off-spring of Jehovah Jehovah himself and my self before he took me in hand to be not a Potters vessell of earth but that earth of which the Potter might make a vessel if he would and break it if he would when he had made it When I consider Christ to have been from before all beginnings and to be still the Image of the Father the same stamp upon the same metall and my self a peece of rusty copper in which those lines of the Image of God which were imprinted in me in my Creation are defaced and worn and washed and burnt and ground away by my many and many and many fins When I consider Christ in his Circle in glory with his Father before he came into this world establishing a glorious Church when he was in this world and glorifying that Church with that glory which himself had before when he went out of this world and then consider my self in my circle I came into this world
Christ which is Baptistrisum the font the Sea into which God flings all their sinnes who rightly and effectually receive that Sacrament These fountaines of waters then in the text are the waters of baptisime and if we should take them also in that sense that waters signifie tribulations and afflictions it is true too that in baptisme that is in the profession of Christ we are delivered over to many tribulations The rule is generall Castigat omnes he chastiseth all The example the precedent is peremptory Opertuit pati Christ ought to suffer and so enter into glory but howsoever waters be affictions they are waters of life too says the text Though baptisme imprint a crosse upon us that we should not be ashamed of Christ crosse that we should not be afraid of our owne crosses yet by all these waters by all these Crosse ways we goe directly to the eternall life the kingdome of heaven for they are lively fountaines fountaines of life And this is intended and promised in the last words Absterget omnem Lachrymam God shall wipe all teares from our eyes God shall give us a joyfull apprehension of heaven here in his Church in this life But is this a way to wipe teares from the childes face to sprinkle water upon it Is this a wiping away to powre more on It is the powerfull and wonderfull way of his working for as his red bloud makes our red soules white that his rednesse gives our rednesse a candor so his water his baptisime and the powerfull effect thereof shall dry up and wipe away Omnem â—achrymam all teares from our Eyes howsoever occasioned This water shall dry them up Christ had many occassion of teares we have more some of our owne which he had not we must weep because we are not so good as we should be we cannot performe the law We must weepe because we are not so good as we could be our free will is lost but yet every Man findes he might be better if he would but the sharpest and saltest and smartest occasion of our teares is from this that we must not be so good as we would be that the prosanenesse of the Libertine the reproachfull slanders the contumelious scandalls the seornfull names that the wicked lay upon those who in their measure desire to expresse their zeale to Gods glory makes us afraid to professe our selves so religious as we could find in our hearts to be and could truly be if we might Christ went often in contemplation of others foreseeing the calamities of Ierualem he wept over the City comming to the grave of Lazarus he wept with them but in his owne Agony in the garden it is not said that he weps If we could stop the stood of teares in our afflictions yet there belongs an excessive griefe to this that the ungodly disposion of other Men is slacking of our godlinesse of our sanctification too Christ Jesus for the joy that was set before him endured the Crosse we for the joy of this promise that God will wipe all teares from our eyes must suffer all this whether they be teares of Compunction or teares of Compassion teares for our selves or teares for others whether they be Magdalens teares or Peters teares teares for sinnes of infirmity of the flesh or teares for weaknesse of our faith whether they be teares for thy parents because they are improvident towards thee or teares for thy children because they are disobedient to thee whether they be teares for Church because our Sermons or our Censures pinch you or teares for the State that penall laws pecuniary or bloudy lie heavy upon you Deus absterget omneni lachryman here 's your comfort that as he hath promised inestimable blessings to them that are sealed and washed in him so he hath given you security that these blessings belong to you for if you find that he hath govened you bred you in his visible Church and led you to his fountaine of the water of lifein baptisme you may be sure that he will in his due time wipe all teares from your eyes establish the kingdome of heaven upon you in this life in a holy and modest infallibility SERMON V. Preached at a Christning EPHES. 5. 25 26 27. Husbands love your wives even as Christ loved the Church and gave himselfe for it that he might sanctisie it and cleanse it by the washing of water through the Word That he might make it unto himselfe a glorious Church not having spot or wrinkle on any such thing but that it should be holy and without blame ALmighty God ever loved unity but he never loved singularity God was always alone in heaven there were no other Gods but he but he was never singular there was never any time when there were not three persons in heaven Pater ego unum summi The father and I are one says Christ one in Esseuct and one in Consent our substance is the same and our will is the same but yet Tecum fui ab initio says Christ in the person of Wisdome I was with thee disposing all things at the Creation As then God seemes to have been eternally delighted with this eternall generation with persons that had ever a relation to one another Father and Sonne so when he came to the Creation of this lower world he came presently to those three relations of which the whole frame of this world consists of which because the principall foundation and preservation of all States that are to continue is power the first relation was between Prince and Subject when God said to Man Subjecite dominamini subdue and govern all Creatures The second relation was between husband and wife when Adam said This now is house of my bone and flesh of my flesh And the third relation was between parents and children when Eve said that she had obtained a Man by the Lord that by the plentifull favour of God she had conceived and borne a sonne from that time to the dissolution of that frame from that beginning to the end of the world these three relations of Master and Servant Mans and Wife Father and Children have been and ever shall be the materialls and the elements of all society of families and of Cities and of Kingdomes And therefore it is a large and a subtill philosophy which S. Paul professes in this place to shew all the qualities and properties of these several Elements that is all the duties of these severall callings but in this text he handles onely the mutuall duties of the second couple Man and Wife and in that consideration shall we determine this exercise because a great part of that concernes the education of Children which especially occasions our meeting now The generall duty that goes through all these three relations is expressed Subditi estate invicevs Submit your selves to one another in the feare of God for God hath given no Master such imperiousnesse
all that belonged to our faithâ— All consists in this that he was Iesus capable in his nature to be a Saviour that he was Christus ordained and sent for that office and then Quod venit that be was come and come in aqus sanguine in water and bloud in sacraments which might apply him to us That he was Iesus a person capable his miracles testified aloud and frequently that he was Christ anointed and sent for that his reference of all his actions to his Father testified both these were enwrapped in that that he was the Sonne of God and that he professed himselfe upon the earth to be so for so it appeares plainely that he had plainely done We have a law say the Jews to Pilate and by our law he ought to die because he made himselfe the Sonne of God And for the last part that he came In aqua sanguine in water and bloud in such meanes as were to continue in the Church for our spirituall reparation and sustentation he testified that in preaching so piercing Sermons in instituting so powerfull Sacraments in assuring us that the love of God expressed to mankind in him extended to all persons and all times God so loved the world that he gave his onely begotten Sonne that whoseever beleeveth in him should not perish but have life everlasting And so the words beare record De Integritate of this Intirenesse of the whole worke of our Redemption and therefore Christ is not onely truely called a Martyr in that sense as Martyr signifies a witnesse but he is truly called a Martyr in that sense as we use the word ordinarily for he testified this truth and suffered for the testimony of it and therefore he is called Jesus Christ Martyr a faithfull witnesse And there is Martyrium a Martyrdome attributed to him where it is said Jesus Christ under Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession so he was a speaking and a doing and a suffering witnesse Now for the third witnesse in heaven which is the holy Ghost we may contract our selves in that for the whole work was his Before Ioseph and Mary came together she was found with Child of the holy Ghost which if we take it as Saint Basil and divers others of the Fathers doe that Ioseph found it by the holy Ghost that is the holy Ghost informed him of it then here the holy Ghost was a witnesse to Ioseph of this Conception but we rather take it as it is most ordinarily taken that the Angell intimated this to Ioseph That that which was conceived in her was of the holy Ghost and then the holy Ghost did so primarily testifie this decree of God to send a Iesus and a Christ for our Redemption that himselfe was a blessed and bountifull actor in that Conception he was conceived by him by his overshadowing So that the holy Ghost did not onely testifie his comming but he brought him And then for his comming in Aqua sanguine in water and bloud that is in Sacraments in meanes by which he might be able to make his comming usefull and appliable to us first the holy Ghost was a pregnant witnesse of that at his Baptisme for the holy Ghost had told Iohn Baptist before-hand That upon whomsoever he should descend and tarry still that should be he that should baptize with the holy Ghost and then according to those Markes he did descend and tarry still upon Christ Iesus in his baptisme And after this falling upon him and tarrying upon him which testified his power in all his life expressed in his doctrine and in his Sermons after his death and Resurrection and Ascension the holy Ghost gave a new testimony when he fell upon the Apostles in Cloventongues and made them spirituall channells in which this water and bloud the meanes of applying Christ to us should be convey'd to all Nations and thus also the third witnesse in heaven testified De integritate of this intirenesse of Iesus Of these three witnesses then which are of heaven we shall need to adde no more but that which the text addes that is That these three are one that is not onely one in Consent they all testifie of one point they all speake to one Intergatory Ad integritatem Christi to prove this intirenesse of Christ but they are Vnum Essentia The Father the Sonne and the holy Ghost are all one Godhead and so meant and intended to be in this place And therefore as Saint Hierome complained when some Copies were without this seventh verse that thereby we had lost a good argument for the unity of the three Persons because this verse said plainely that the three witnesses were all one so I am sorry when I see any of our later expositors deny that in this place there is any proofe of such an unity but that this Vnum sunt They are one is onely an unity of consent and not of essence It is an unthrifty prodigality howsoever we be abundantly provided with arguments from other places of Scriptures to prove this Vnity in Trinity to cast away so strong an argument against Iew and Turke as is in these words for that and for the consubstantiality of Christ which was the Tempest and the Earthquake of the Primitive Church raised by Arius and his followers then and God knowes not extinguished yet Thus much I adde of these three witnesses that though they be in heaven their testimony is upon the earth for they need not to testifie to one another this matter of Jesus The Father heares of it every day by the continuall intercession of Christ Jesus The Sonne feeles it every day in his new crucifying by our sinnes and in the perfecution of his Mysticall body here The holy Ghost hath a bitter sense of it in our sinnes against the holy Ghost and he hath a loving sense of it in those abundant seas of graces which flow continually from him upon us They need no witnesses in heaven but these three witnesses testifie all this to our Consciences And therefore the first author that is observed to have read and made use of this seventh verse which was one of the first Bishops of Rome he reads the words thus Tres in nobis there are three in us which beare witnesse in heaven they testifie for our sakes and to establish our assurance De Integritate Iesu that Jesus is come and come with meanes to save the world and to save us And therefore upon these words Saint Bernard collects thus much more that there are other witnesses in heaven which restifie this worke of our Redemption Angels and Saints all the Court all the Quire of heaven testifie it but catera nobis occults says he what all they doe we know not but according to the best dispositions here in this world we acquaint our selves and we choose to keep company with the best and so not onely the poore Church s the earth
of his word or in scantler measure not to be always a Christian but then when thou hast use of being one or in a different fashion to be singular and Schisâ—aticall in thy opinion for this is one but an ill manner of putting on of Christ as a garment The second and the good way is to put on his righteousnesse and his innocency by imitation and conforming our selves to him Now when we goe about earnestly to make our selves Temples and Altars and to dedicate our selves to God we must change our clothes As when God bad Iacob to goe up to Bethel to make an Altar he commanded all his family to change their clothes In which work we have two things to doe first we must put off those clothes which we had and appeare naked before God without presenting any thing of our owne for when the Spirit of God came upon Saul and that he prophecyed his first act was to strip himselfe naked And then sâ—condly we come to our transfiguration and to have those garments of Christ communicated to us which were as white as the light and we shall be admitted into that little number of which it is said Thou hast a few Namees in Sardis which have not defiled their garments and they shall walke with â—e in white And from this which is Induere vestem from this putting on Christ as a garment we shall grow up to that perfection as that we shall Inâ—â—ere personam put on hiâ— his person That is we shall so appeare before the Father as that he shall take us for his owne Christ we shall beare his name and person and we shall every one be so accepted as if every one of us were all Mankind yea as if we were he himselfe He shall find in all our bodies his woundes in all our mindes his 〈◊〉 in all our hearts and actions his obedience And as he shall doe this by impâ—tation so really in all our Agonies he shall send his Angels to minister unto us as he did to Eliâ—s In all our tentations he shall furnish us with his Scriptures to confoâ—â—d the Tempter as be in person did in his tentation and in our heaviest tribulation which may exâ—â—â—â— from us the voice of diffidence My God My God why hast 〈◊〉 forsaken me He shall give us the assurance to say In manus tuas câ— Into thy â—ands O Lord have I coâ—â—â—â—nded my spirit and there I am safe He shall use us in all things as his sonne and we shall find restored in us the Image of the whole Trinity imprinted at our creation for by this Regeneration we are adopted by the Father in the bloud of the Sonne by the sanctification of the holy Ghost Now this putting on of Christ whereby we stand in his place at Gods Tribunall implies as I said both our Election and our sanctification both the eternall purpose of God upon us and his execution of that purpose in us And because by the first by our Election we are members of Christ in Gods purpose before baptisme and the second which is sanctification is expressed after baptisme in our lives and conversation therefore Baptisme intervenes and comes between both as a seale of the first of Election and as an instrument and conduit of the second Sanctification Now Abscendita Dominâ— Dea nostro quae manifesta suâ—s nobis let no Man be too curiously busie to search what God does in his hedchamber we have all enough to answer for that which we have done in our bedchamber For Gods eternall decree himselfe is master of those Rolls but out of those Rolls he doth exemplifie those decrees in the Sacrament of baptisme by which Copy and exemplification of his invisible and unsearchable decree we plead to the Church that we are Gods children we plead to our owne consciences that we have the Spirit of adoption and we plead to God himselfe the obligation of his own promise that we have a right to this garment Christ Iesus and to those graces which must sanctifie us for from thence comes the reason of this text for all yeâ— that are baptized into Christ have put on Christ. As we cannot see the Essence of God but must see him in his glasses in his Images in his Creatures so we cannot see the decrees of God but must see them in their duplicats in their exemplification in the sacraments As it would doe him no good that were condemned of treason that a Bedchamber man should come to the Judge and swear he saw the king signe the prisoners pardon except he had it to pleade so what assurance soever what priâ—y marke soever those men which pretend to be so well acquainted and so familiar with the decrees of God to give thee to know that thou art elect to eternall salvation yea if an Angel from heaven comedowne and tell thee that he saw thy name in the booke of life if thou have not this Exemplification of the decree this seale this Sacrament if thou beest not baptized never delude thy selfe with those imaginary assurances This Baptisme then is so necessary that first as Baptisme in a large acceptation signifies our dying and buriall with Christ and all the acts of our regeneration so in that large sense our whole life is a baptisme But the very sacrament of Baptismeâ— the actuall administration and receiving thereof was held so necessary that even for legall and Civill uses as in the law that child that dyed without circumcision had no interest in the family no participation of the honor nor name thereof So that we see in the reckning of the Genealogy and pedegree of David that first sonne of his which he had by Bathshebae which dyed without circumcision is never mentioned nor toucht upon So also since the time of Mâ—ses law in the Imperiall law by which law a posthume child borne after the fathers death is equall with the rest in division of the state yet if that child dye before he be baptized no person which should derive a right from him as the mother might if he dyed can have any title by him because he is not considered to have been at all if he dye unbaptized And if the State will not beleeve him to be a full Man shall the Church beleeve him to be a full Christian before baptisme Yea the apprehension of the necessity of this Sacrament was so common and so generall even in the beginning of the Christian Church that out of an excessive advancing of that trnth they came also to a falshoodâ— to an error That even they that dyed without baptisme might have the benefit of baptisme if another were baptized in their name after their deathâ— And so out of a mistaking of those words Else what shall they doe Qui baptizantur pro mortuis which is that are ready to dye when they are baptized the Marcionites induc'd a custome to lay one under the dead bodyes
letting out that line he that hath fixed his harping Iron in the Whale endangers himselfe and his boate God hath made us fishers of Men and when we have struck a Whale touch'd the conscience of any person which thought himselfe above rebuke and increpation it struggles and strives and as much as it can endevours to draw fishers and boate the Man and his fortune into contempt and danger But if God tye a sicknesse or any other calamity to the end of the line that will winde up this Whale againe to the boate bring back this rebellious sinner better advised to the mouth of the Minister for more counsaile and to a better souplenesse and inclinablenesse to conforme himselfe to that which he shall after receive from him onely calamity makes way for a rebuke to enter There was such a tendernesse amongst the orators which were used to speake in the presence of the people to the Romane Emperors which was a way of Civill preaching that they durst not tell them then their duties nor instruct them what they should doe any other way then by saying that they had done so before They had no way to make the Prince wise and just and temperate but by a false praising him for his former acts of wisedome and justice and temperance which he had never done and that served to make the people beleeve that the Princes were so and it served to teach the Prince that he ought to be so And so though this were an expresse and a direct flattery yet it was a collaterall increpation too And on the other side our later times have seen another art another invention another workmanship that when a great person hath so abused the favour of his Prince that he hath growne subject to great and weighty increpations his owne friends have made Libells against him thereby to lay some light aspersions upon him that the Prince might thinke that this comming with the malice of a Libell was the worst that could be said of him and so as the first way to the Emperors though it were a direct flattery yet it was a collater all Increpation too so this way though it were a direct increpation yet it was a collater all flattery too If I should say of such a congregation as this with acclamations and showes of much joy Blessed company holy congregation in which there is no pride at all no vanity at all no prevarication at all I could be thought in that but to convey an increpation and a rebuke mannerly in a wish that it were so altogether If I should say of such a congregation as this with exclamations and show of much bitternesse that they were sometimes somewhat too worldly in their owne businesse sometimes somewhat too remisse in the businesses of the next world and adde no more to it this were but as a plot and a faint libelling a publishing of small sinnes to keep greater from being talk'd of slight increpations are but as whisperings and work no farther but to bring men to say Tush no body hears it no body heeds it we are never the worse nor never the worse thought of for all that he says And loud and bitter increpations are as a trumpet and work no otherwise but to bring them to say Since he hath published all to the world already since all the world knowes of it the shame is past and we may goe forward in our ways againe Is there then no way to convey an increpation profitably David could find no way Vidi praevaricatores tabescebam says he I saw the transgressors but I languished and consumed away with griefe because they would not keep the law he could not mend them and so impaired himselfe with his compassion but God hath provided a way here to convey to imprint this increpation this rebuke sweetly and succesfully that is by way of counsaile by bidding them arise he chides them them for falling by presenting the exaltation and exultation of a peacefull conscience he brings them to a foresight to what miserable distractions and distortions of the soule a habite of sinne will bring them to If you will take knowledge of Gods fearfull judgements no other way but by hearing his mercies preached his Mercie is new every morning and his dew falls every evening and morning and evening we will preach his mercies unto you If you will beleeve a hell no other way but by hearing the joyes of heaven presented to you you shall heare enough of that we will receive you in the morning and dismisse you in the evening in a religious assurance in a present inchoation of the joyes of heaven It is Gods way and we are willing to pursue it to shew you that you are Enemies to Christ we pray you in Christs stead that you would be reconciled to him to shew you that you are faln we pray you to arise and si audieritis if you hear us so if any way any means convey this rebuke this sense into you Si audieritis lucrati sumus fratrem If you hear we have gain'd a brother and that 's the richest gain that we can get if you may get salvation by us Gods rebukes and increpations then are sweet and gentle to the binding up not to the scattering of a Conscience And the particular Rebuke in this place conveyed by way of counsail is That they were faln and worse could not be said how mild and easie soever the word be The ruin of the Angels in heaven the ruin of Adam in Paradise is still call'd by that word it is but the fall of Angels and the fall of Adam and yet this fall of Adam cost the bloud of Christ and this bloud of Christ did not rectifie the Angels after their fall Inter objectos objectissimus peccator amongst them that are faln he fals lowest that continues in sin for sayes the same Father Man is a king in his Creation he hath that Commission Subjicite dominamini the world and himselfe which is a lesse world but a greater dominion are within his Jurisdiction and then servilly he submits himselfe and all to that Qua nihil magis barbarum then which nothing is more tyrannous more barbarous All persons have naturally all Nations ever had a detestation of falling into their hands who were more barbarous more uncivill then themselves peccato nihil magis barbarum sayes that Father sin doth not govern us by a rule by a Law but tyrannically impetuously and tempestuously It hath been said of Rome Romae regulariter malè agitur There a man may know the price of a sin before he doe it and he knowes what his dispensation will cost whether he be able to sin at that rate whether he have wherewithall that if not he may take a cheap sin Thou canst never say that of thy soule Intus regulariter malè agitur Thou canst never promise thy selfe to sin safely and so to elude the Law
reuniting of body and soule in a blessed Resurrection Ite Surgite depart so as you may desire to rise Depart with an In manus tuas and with a Veni Domiâ—e Iesu with a willing surrendring of your soules and a cheerfull meeting of the Lord Jesus For else all hope of profit and permanent Rest is lost for as Saint Hierome interprets these very words Here we are taught that there is no rest in this life Sed quasiâ—â—â— mortuis resurgentes ad sublime tendere ambulare post Daminum Iesum we depart when we depart from sin and we rise when we raise our selves to a conformity with Christ And not onely after his example but after his person that is to hasten thither whither he is gone to prepare us a Room For this Rest in the Text though it may be understood of the Land of Promise and of the Church and of the Arke and of the Sabbath for if we had time to pursue them we might make good use of all these acceptations yet we accept Chrysostâ—me's acceptation best Requies est ipse Christus our rest is Christ himselfe Not onely that rest that is in Christ peace of conscience in him but that Rest that Christ is in eternall rest in his kingdome There remaineth a Rest to the people of God besides that inchoation of Rest which the godly have here there remains a fuller Rest. Iesus is entred into his Rest sayes the Apostle there his Rest was not here in this world and Let us study to enter into thatâ— Rest sayes he for no other can accomplish our peace It is righteousnesse with God is recompence tribulation to them that trouble you and to you which are troubled Rest but when in this world no when the Lord Iesus shall sheâ— himselfe from heaven with his mighty Angels then comes your Rest for for the grave the body lies still but it is not a Rest because it is not sensible of that lying still In heaven the body shall rest rest in the sense of that glory This Rest then is not here Not onely not Here at this Here was taken in the first interpretation Here in the Earth but not Here in the second interpretation not in Repentance it selfe for all the Rest of this life even the spirituall Rest is rather a Truce then a peace rather a Cessation then an end of the war For when these words I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians Every one shall fight against his brother and every one against his neighbour City against City and Kingdome against Kingdome may be interpreted and are so interpreted of the time of the Gospell of Christ Jesus when Christ himselfe says Nolite putare quod venerim mittere pacem in terrâ Never think that I came to settle peace or Rest in this world Nay when Christ sayes None of them that were bidden shall come to his supper and that may be verified of any Congregation none of us that are call'd now shall come to that Rest a Man may be at a security in an opinion of Rest and be far from it A man may be neerer Rest in a troubled Conscience then in a secure Here we have often Resurrections that is purposes to depart from sin but they are such Resurrections as were at the time of Christs Resurrection when as the strongest opinion is Resurrexerunt iterum morituri Many of the dead rose but they died again we rise from our sins here but here we fall again Monumenta aperta sunt it is Saint Hierome's note The graves were opened presently upon Christs death but yet the bodies did not arise till Christs Resurrection The godly have an opening of their graves they see some light some of their weight some of their Earth is taken from them but a Resurrection to enter into the City to follow the Lamb to come into an established security that they have not till they be united to Christ in heaven Here we are still subject to relapses and to looking back Memento uxoris Lâ—t Ipsa in loco manet transeuntes monet Shee is fixed to a place that she might settle those that are not fix'd Vt quid in statuam salis conversa si non homines ut sapiant condiat to teach us the danger of looking back till we be fix'd she is fix'd When the Prophetâ— Eliahâ— was at the dore of Desperation an Angell touch'd him and said Vp and eat and there was bread and water provided and he did eat but he slept again and we have some of these excitations and we come and eat and drink even the body and bloud of Christ but we sleep again we doe not perfect the work Our Rest Here then is never without a fear of losing it This is our best state To fear leâ—t at any time by forsaking the promise of entring into his rest we should seem to be depriv'd The Apostle disputes not neither doe I whether we can be depriv'd or no but he assures us that we may fall back so far as that to the Church and to our own Consciences we may seem to be depriv'd and that 's argument enough that here is no Rest. To end all though there be no Rest in all this world no not in our sanctification here yet this being a Consolation there must be rest some where And it is In superna Civitate unde amicus non exit quâ inimicus non intrat In that City in that Hierusalem where there shall never enter any man whom we doe not love nor any goe from us whom we doe love Which though we have not yet yet we shall have for upon those words because I live ye shall live also Saint Augustine sayes that because his Resurrection was to follow so soon Christ takes the present word because I doe live But because their life was not to be had here he says Vivetis you shall live in heaven not Vivitis for here we doe not live So as in Adam we all die even so in Christ shall all be made alive says the Apostle All our deaths are here present now now we dy our quickning is reserv'd for heaven that 's future And therefore let us attend that Rest as patiently as we doe the things of this world and not doubt of it therefore because we see it not yet even in this world we consider invisible things more then visible Vidimus pelagus non autem mercedem The Merchant sees the tempestuous Sea when he does not see the commodities which he goes for Videmus terram non autem messem The Husbandman sees the Earth and his labour when he sees no harvest and for these hopes that there will be a gain to the Merchant and a harvest to the Labourer Naturae fidimus we rely upon Creatures for our Resurrection fide usâ—orem habemus Coranatum Not Nature not Sea
God and divided from the storms and distractions of this world enjoys in it selfe That peace which made the blessed Martyrs of Christ Jesus sleep upon the rack upon the burning coales upon the points of swords when the persecutors were more troubled to invent torments then the Christians to suffer That sleep from which ambition not danger no nor when their own house is on fire that is their own concupiscences cannot awaken them not so awaken them that it can put them out of their own constancy and peacefull confidence in God That sleep which is the sleep of the spouse Ego dormio sed cor meum vigilâ—t I sleep but my heart is awake It was no dead sleep when shee was able to speak advisedly in it and say she was asleep and what sleep it was It was no stupid sleep when her heart was awake This is the sleep of the Saints of God which Saint Gregory describes Sancti non tâ—rpore sed virtue sâ—piuntur It is not sluggishnesse but innocence and a good conscience that casts them asleep Laboriosiâ—s dormium they are busier in their sleep nay Vigitaâ—â—ius dorâ—â—iunt they are more awake in their sleep then the watchfull men of this world for when they close their eyes in meditation of God even their dreames are services to him Sâ—mniant se dicere Psalmos says Saint Ambrose they dream that they sing psalmes and they doe more then dream it they do sing But yet even from this holy and religious sleep which is a departing from the allurements of the world and a retiring to the onely contemplation of heaven and heavenly things Iacob may be conceived to have awaked and we must awake It is note enough to shut our selves in a cloister in a Monastery to sleep out the tentations of the world but since the ladder is placed the Church established since God and the Angels are awake in this businesse in advancing the Church we also must labour in our severall vocations and not content our selves with our own spirituall sleep the peace of conscience in our selves for we cannot have that long if we doe not some good to others When the storm had almost drown'd the ship Christ was at his ease in that storm asleep upon a pillow Now Christ was in no danger himself All the water of Noahs flood multiplyed over again by every drop could not have drown'd him All the swords of an Army could not have killed him till the houre was come when hee was pleased to lay down his soul. But though he were safe yet they awaked him and said Master car'st thou not though we perish So though a man may be in a good state in a good peace of conscience and sleep confidently in it yet other mens necessities must awaken him and though perchance he might passe more safely if he might live a retired life yet upon this ladder some Angels ascended some descended but none stood still but God himself Till we come to him to sleep an eternall Sabbath in heaven though this religious sleep of enjoying or retiring and contemplation of God be a heavenly thing yet we must awake even out of this sleep and contribute our paines to the building or furnishing or serving of God in his Church Out of a sleep conceive it what sleep soever Iacob awaked and then Quid ille what did he Dixit he spoke he entred presently into an open profession of his thoughts he smother'd nothing he disguised nothing God is light and loves cleernesse thunder and wind and tempests and chariots and roaring of Lyons and falling of waters are the ordinary emblems of his messages and his messengers in the Scriptures Christ who is Sapientia Dei the wisdome of God is Verbâ—â— Sermâ— Dei the word of God he is the wisdome and the uttering of the wisdome of God as Christ is express'd to be the word so a Christians duty is to speak dearly and professe his religion With how much scorn and reproach Saint Cyprian fastens the name of Libellatices upon them who in time of persecution durst not say they were Christians but under-hand compounded with the State that they might live unquestioned undiscovered for though they kept their religion in their heart yet Christ was defrauded of his honour And such a reproach and scorn belongs to them who for fear of losing wordly preferments and titles and dignities and rooms at great Tables dare not say of what religion they are Beloved it is not enough to awake out of an ill sleep of sinne or of ignorance or out of a good sleep out of a retirednesse and take some profession if you winke or hide your selves when you are awake you shall not see the Ladder not discern Christ nor the working of his Angels that is the Ministery of the Church and the comforts therein you shall not hear that Harmony of the quire of heaven if you will bear no part in it an inward acknowledgment of Christ is not enough if you forbear to professe him where your testimony might glorify him Si sufficeret fides cordis non creasset tibi Deus â—s If the heart were enough God would never have made a mouth And to that we may adde Si sufficeret os non creasset manus if the mouth were enough God would never have made hands for as the same Father says Omni tuba clarior est per opera 〈◊〉 no voice more audible none more credible then when thy hands speak as well as thy heart or thy tongue Thou art then perfectly awaked out of thy sleep when thy words and works declare and manifest it The next is Quid dixit be spake but what said he â— first he assented to that light which was given him The Lord is in his place He resisted not this light he went not about to blow it out by admitting reason or disputation against it He imputed it not to witchcraft to illusion of the Devill but Dominus est in loco isto The Lord is in this place O how many heavy sinnes how many condemnations might we avoid if wee would but take knowledge of this Dominus in loco isto That the Lord is present and sees us now and shall judge hereafter all that we doe or think It keeps a man sometimes from corrupting or solliciting a woman to say Peter Maritus in loco the Father or the Husband is present it keeps a man from an usurious contract to say Lex in loco the Law will take knowledge of it it keeps a man from slandering or calummating another to say Testis in loco here is a witnesse by but this is Catholica Medicina and Omni morbia an universall medicine for all to say Dominus in loco The Lord is in this place and sees and heaâ—es and therefore I will say and think and do as if I were now summon'd by the lastâ— Trumpet to give an account of my thoughts and words and
deeds to him But the Lord was there and Iacob knew it not As he takes knowledge by the first light of Gods presence so he acknowledges that he had none of this light of himself Ego nesciebam Iacob a Patriarch and dearly beloved of God knew not that God was so near him How much lesse shall a sinfull man that multiples sinnes like clouds between God and him know that God is near him As Saint Augustine said when hee came out of curiousty to hear Saint Ambrose preach at Milaâ— without any desire of profiting thereby Appropinquavi vesciebam I came 〈◊〉 God but knew it not So the customary and habituall sinners may say Eloâ—gavi nisciebam I have â—loyn'd my selfe I have gone farther and farther from my God and was never sensible of it It is a desperate Ignorance not to bee sensible of Gods absence but to acknowledge with Iacob that we cannot see light but by that light that we cannot know Gods presence but by his revealing of himself is a religious and a Christian humility To know it by Reason by Philosophy is a dimme and a faint knowledge but onely by the testimony of his own spirit and his own revealing we come to that confidence Verè Domine Surely the Lord is in this place Est apud 〈◊〉 sed deâ—â—â—â—lans God is with the wicked but he dissembles his beeing there that is conceals it he will not be known of it Et 〈◊〉 malâ—rum dissiâ—â—â—latio quodammodo Veritas non est when God winks at mens sinnes when he dissembles or disguises his knowledge we may almost say says Saint Bernard Veritas non est Here is not direct dealing here is not intire truth his presence is scarce a true presence And therefore as the same Father proceeds Si dicere licet if we may be bold to expresse it so Apud impios est sed in dissimulatione he is with the wicked but yet he dissembles he disguises his presence he is there to no purpose to no profit of theirs but Est apud justos in veritate with the righteous he is in truth and in clearnesse Est apud Angelâ—s in foelicitate with the Angels and Saints in heaven he is in an established happinesse Est apud inferos in feritate he is in Hell in his â—ury in an irrevocable and undeterminable execution of his severity God was surely and truly with Iacob and with all them who are sensible of his approaches and of his gracious manifestation of himself Verè non erat apud eos quibus dixit quid vocatiâ—â— me Dominum non facitis qua dixi vobis God is not truly with them whom he rebukes for saying Why call ye 〈◊〉 Lord and do not my Commandements but ubi in ejus nomive Angeli simul homines congregantur When Angels and men Priest and people the Preacher and the congregation labour together upon this Ladder study the advancing of his Church as by the working of Gods gratious Spirit we doe at this time 〈◊〉 verè est ibi verè Dominus est surely he is in this place and surely he is Lord in this place he possesses he fills us all he governs us all and as though we say to him Our Father which art in heaven yet we beleeve that he is within these walls so though we say Adveniat regnum tuum thy kingdome come we beleeve that his kingdome is come and is amongst us in grace now as it shall be in glory hereafter When he was now throughly awake when he was come to an open profession when he acknowledged himselfe to stand in the sight of God when he confessed his owne ignorance of Gods presence and when after all he was come to a setled confidence Verè Dominus surely the Lord is here yet it is added Et timuit and he was afraid No man may thinke himselfe to bee come to that familiar acquaintance with God as that it should take away that reverentiall feare which belongs to so high and supreme a Majesty When the Angell appeared to the wife of Manoah foretelling Samsons birth she says to her husband the fashion of him was like the fashion of the Angell of God what 's that Exceeding fearfull When God appears to thy soule even in mercy in the forgivenes of thy sins yet there belongs a fear even to this apprehension of mercy Not a fearfull diffidence not a distrust but a fearfull consideration of that height and depth what a high Majesty thou hast offended what a desperate depth thou wast falling into what a fearfull thing it had been to have fallen into the hands of the living God and what an irrecoverable wretch thou hadst been if God had not manifested himselfe to have been in that place with thee And therefore though he have appeared unto thee in mercy yet be afraid lest he goe away againe As Manoab prayed and said I beseech thee my Lord let the Man of God whom thou sentest come againe unto us and teach us what we shall doe with the child when he is born so when God hath once appeared to thy soul in mercy pray him to come again and tell thee what thou shouldest doe with that mercy how thou shouldest husband those first degrees of grace and of comfort to the farther benefit of thy soule and the farther glory of his name and be afraid that thy dead flyes may putrefie his ointment those reliques of sinne though the body of sinne be crucified in thee which are left in thee may overcome his graces for upon those words Pavor tenuit me tremor emniâ—â—ssa mea perterrita sunt feare came upon me and trembling which made all my bones to shake Saint Gregory says well Quid per â—ssa nisi fortia act a designantur our good deeds our strongest works and those which were done in the best strength of grace are meant by our bones and yet ossa perterrita our strongest works tremble at the presence and examination of God And therefore to the like purpose upon those words of the Psalme the same Father says Omnia ossa mea dicent Domine quis similis tibi all my bones say Lord who is like unto thee Carnes meae verba non habent my fleshly parts my carnall affections Infirma mea funditus silent my sinnes or my infirmities dare not speak at all not appear at all Sed ossa mea quae fortia credidi sua consideratione tremiscunt my very bones shake there is no degree no state neither of innocence nor of repentance nor of faith nor of sanctification above that fear of God and he is least acquainted with God who things that he is so familiar that he need not stand in feare of him But this fear hath no ill effect It brings him to a second profession Et dixit and he spoke againe He waked and then he spoke as soon as he came out of ignorance
found in all the Scriptures Tremellius hath mollifyed it in his translation there it is but Confodere to pierce And yet it is such a piercing such a sapping such an undermining such a demolishing of a fort of Castle as may justly remove us from any high valuation or any great confidence in that skinne and in that body upon which this Confoderint must fall But in the great Bible it is Contriverint Thy skinne and thy body shall be ground away trod away upon the ground Aske where that iron is that is ground off of a knife or axe Aske that marble that is worn off of the threshold in the Church-porch by continuall treading and with that iron and with that marble thou mayst finde thy Fathers skinne and body Contrita sunt The knife the marble the skinne the body are ground away trod away they are destroy'd who knows the revolutions of dust Dust upon the Kings high-way and dust upon the Kings grave are both or neither Dust Royall and may change places who knows the revolutions of dust Even in the dead body of Christ Jesus himself one dram of the decree of his Father one sheet one sentence of the prediction of the Prophets preserv'd his body from corruption and incineration more then all Iosephs new tombs and fine linnen and great proportion of spices could have done O who can expresse this inexpreffible mystery The foul of Christ Jesus which took no harm by him contracted no Originall sin in coming to him was guilty of no more sin when it went out then when it came from the breath and bosome of God yet this soul left this body in death And the Divinity the Godhead incomparably better then that soul which soul was incomparably better then all the Saints and Angels in heaven that Divinity that God-head did not forsake the body though it were dead If we might compare things infinite in themselves it was nothing so much that God did assume mans nature as that God did still cleave to that man then when he was no man in the separation of body and soul in the grave But full we from incomprehensible mysteries for there is mortification enough and mortification is vivification and aedification in this obvious consideration skinne and body beauty and substance must be destroy'd And Destroyed by wormes which is another descent in this humiliation and exâ—anition of man in death After my skinne wormes shall destroy this body I will not insist long upon this because it is not in the Originall In the Originall there is no mention of wormes But because in other places of Iob there is They shal lye down alike in the dust and the worms shall cover them The womb shal forget them and the worm shal feed sweetly on them because the word Destroying is presented in that form number Contriverint when they shall destroy they and no other persons no other creatures named both our later translations for indeed our first translation hath no mention of wormes and so very many others even Tremellâ—s that adheres most to the letter of the Hebrew have filled up this place with that addition Destroyed by worms It makes the destruction the more contemptible Thou that wouldest not admit the beames of the Sunne upon thy skinne and yet hast admitted the pollutions of sinne Thou that wouldst not admit the breath of the ayre upon thy skinne and yet hast admitted the spirit of lust and unchast solicitations to breath upon thee in execrable oathes and blasphemies to vicious purposes Thou whose body hath as farre as it can putrefyed and corrupted even the body of thy Saviour in an unworthy receiving thereof in this skinne in this body must be the food of worms the prey of destroying worms After a low birth thou mayst passe an honourable life after a sentence of an ignominious death thou mayst have an honourable end But in the grave canst thou make these worms silke worms They were bold and early worms that eat up Herod before he dyed They are bold and everlasting worms which after thy skinne and body is destroyed shall remain as long as God remains in an eternall gnawing of thy conscience long long after the destroying of skinne and body by bodily worms Thus farre then to the destroying of skinne and body by worms all men are equall Thus farre all 's Common law and no Prerogative so is it also in the next step too The Resurrection is common to all The prerogative lies not in the Rising but in the rising to the fruition of the sight of God in which consideration the first beam of comfort is the Postquam After all this destruction before by worms ruinous misery before but there is something else to be done upon me after God leaves no state without comfort God leaves some inhabitants of the earth under longer nights then others but none under an everlasting night and those whom he leaves under those long nights he recompenses with as long days after I were miserable if there were not an Antequam in my behalfe if before I had done well or ill actually in this world God had not wrapped me up in his good purpose upon me And I were miserable againe if there were not a Postquam in my behalfe If after my sinne had cast me into the grave there were not a lowd trumpet to call me up and a gracious countenance to looke upon me when I were risen Nay let my life have been as religious as the infirmities of this life can admit yet If in this life onely we have hope in Christ we are of all men most miserable For for the worldly things of this life first the children of God have them in the least proportions of any and besides that those children of God which have them in larger proportion do yet make the least use of them of any others because the children of the world are not so tender conscienced nor so much afraid lest those worldly things should become snares and occasions of tentation to them if they open themselves to a full enjoying thereof as the children of God are And therefore after my wanting of many worldly things after a penurious life and after my not daring to use those things that I have so freely as others doe after that holy and conscientious forbearing of those things that other men afford themselves after my leaving all these absolutely behind me here and my skin and body in destruction in the grace After all there remaines something else for me After but how long after That 's next When Christ was in the body of that flesh which we are in now sinne onely excepted he said in that state that he was in then Of that day and houre no man knoweth not the Angels not the Sonne Then in that state he excludes himselfe And when Christ was risen againe in an uncorruptible body he said even to his nearest followers Non est
kingdome here and there is a Communion in Armes as well as a communion in Triumph Leaving then that acceptation of flesh and bloud which many thinke to be intended in this text that is Animalis caro flesh and bloud that must be maintained by eating and drinking and preserved by propagation and generation that flesh and that bloud cannot inherit heaven where there is no marying nor giving in mariage but Erimus sicut Angeli we shall be as the Angels though such a heaven in part Mahomet hath proposed to his followers a heaven that should abound with worldly delights and such a heaven the Disciples of Origen and the Millenarians that look for one thousand years of all temporall felicity proposed to themselves And though amongst our latter men Cajetan doe thinke that the Apostle in this text bent himselfe upon that doctrine non caro non Animalis caro flesh and bloud that is no carnall no worldly delights are to be looked for in heaven leaving that sense as too narrow and too shallow for the holy Ghost in this place in which he hath a higher reach we shall determine our selves at this time in these too acceptations of this phrase of speech first non caro that is non caro corrupta flesh and bloud cannot sinfull flesh corrupt flesh flesh not discharged of sinfull corruption here by repentance and Sanctification and the operation of Gods spirit such flesh cannot inherit the kingdome of God here Secondly noncar◠is non car◠corruptibilis flesh and bloud cannot that is flesh that is yet subject to corruption and dissolution and naturall passions and impressions tending to defectivenesse flesh that is still subject to any punishment that God lays upon flesh for sinne such flesh cannot inherit the kingdome of God hereafter for our present possession of the kingdome of God here our corrupt flesh must be purged by Sanctification here for the future kingdome our naturall Corruptiblenesse must be purged by glorification there We will make the last part first as this flesh and this bloud by devesting the corruptiblenesse it suffers here by that glorification shall inherit that kingdome and not stay long upon it neither For of that we have spoken conveniently before of the resurrection it selfe Now we shall looke a little into the qualities of bodies in the resurrection and that not in the intricacies and subtilties of the Schoole but onely in that one patterne which hath been given us of that glory upon earth which is the Transfiguration of Christ for that Transfiguration of his was a representation of a glorified body in a glorified state And then in the second place we shall come to our first part what that flesh and bloud is that is denied to be capable of the inheritance of that kingdome here that is that earnest of heaven and that inchoation of heaven which may be had in this world and in that part we shall see what this inheritance what this title to heaven here and what this kingdome of God that heaven which is proposed to us here is First then for the first acceptation which is of the later resurrection no man denies that which Melancthon hath collected and established to be the summe of this text Statuit resurrectionem in corpore sed non quale jam corpus est The Apostle establishes a resurrection of the body but yet not such a body as this is It is the same body and yet not such a body which is a mysterious consideration that it is the same body and yet not such as it selfe nor like any other body of the same substance But what kind of body then We content ourselves with that Transfiguratio specimen appositissimum Resurrectionis the Transfiguration of Christ is the best glasse to see this resurrection and state of glory in But how was that transfiguration wrought We content our selves with Saint Hieromes expressing of it non pristinam amisit veritatem vel formam corporis Christ had still the same ture and reall body and he had the same forme and proportion and lineaments and dimensions of his body in it selfe Transfiguratio non faciem subtraxit sed splendorem ad didit sayes he It gave him not another face but it super-immitted such a light such an illustration upon him as by that irradiation that coruscation the beames of their eys were scattered and disgregated dissipated so as that they could not collect them as at other times nor constantly and confidently discerne him Moses had a measure a proportion of this but yet when Moses came down with his shining face though they were not able to looke long upon him they knew him to be Moses When Christ was transfigured in the presence of Peter Iames and Iohn yet they knew him to be Christ. Transfiguration did not so change him nor shall glorification so change us as that we shall not be known There is nothing to convince a man of error nothing in nature nothing in Scriptures if he beleeve that he shall know those persons in heaven whom he knew upon earth and if he conceive soberly that it were a lesse degree of blessednesse not to know them then to know them he is bound to beleeve that he shall know them for he is bound to beleeve that all that conduces to blessednes shall be given him The School resolves that at the Judgement all the sins of all shall be manifested to all even those secret sinfull thoughts that never came out of the heart And when any in the School differs or departs from this cōmon opinion they say onely that those sins which have been in particular repented shall not be manifested all others shall And therefore it is a deep uncharitablenes to reproach any man of sins formerly repented and a deep uncharitablenesse not to beleeve that he whom thou seest at the Communion hath repented his former sins Reproach no man after thou hast seen him receive with last years sins except thou have good evidence of his Hypocrisie then or of his Relapsing after For in those two cases a man remaines or becomes againe guilty of his former sinnes Now if in heaven they shall know the hearts of one another whose faces they never knew before there is lesse difficulty in knowing them whom we did know before From this transfiguration of Christ in which the mortall eye of the Apostles did see that representation of the glory of Christ the Schooles make a good argument that in heaven we shall doe it much more And though in this case of the Transfiguration in which the eyes of mortall men could have no proportion with that glory of heaven this may bee well said to have been done either Moderando lumen that God abated that light of glory or Confortando visum that God exalted their sense of seeing supernaturally no such distinctions or modifications will bee needfull in heaven because how highly soever the body of my
he be put to give judgement upon a particular man that stands before him at the bar according to that Law That that man that stands there that day must that day be no man that that breath breathed in by God to glorify him must be suffocated and strangled with a halter or evaporated with an Axe he must be hanged or beheaded that those limbs which make up a Cabinet for that precious Jewell the image of God to be kept in must be cut into quarters or torne with horses that that body which is a consecrated Temple of the Holy Ghost must be chained to a stake and burnt to ashes hee that is not affected in giving such a judgment upon such a man hath no part in the bowels of Christ Jesus that melt in cōpassion when our sinnes draw and extort his Judgements upon us in the mouth of those Prophets those men whom God sends it is so and it is so in the mouth of God himself that sends them Heu vindicabor says God Alas I will revenge mee of mine enemies Alas I will is Alas I must his glory compels him to doe it the good of his Church and the sustentation of his Saints compell him to it and yet he comes to it with a condolency with a compassion Heu vindicabor Alas I will revenge mee of mine enemies so also in another Prophet Heu abominationes Alas for all the evill abominations of the house of Israel for as it is added there they shall fall that is they will fall by the sword by famine by pestilence and as it follows I will accomplish my fury upon them Though it were come to that height fury and accomplishment consummation of fury yet it comes with a condolency and compassion Heu abominationes Alas for all the evill abominations of the house of Israel I would they were not so ill that I might be better to them Men sent by God do so so does God that sends those men he that is both God and man Christ Jesus does so too We have but two clear records in the Scriptures of Christs weeping and both in compassion for others when Mary wept for her dead brother Lazarus and the Jews that were with her wept too Iesus also wept and he groan'd in the spirit and was troubled This was but for the discomfort of one family it was not a mortality over the whole Country It was but for one person in that family it was not a contagion that had swept or did threaten the whole house it was but for such a person in that family as he meant forthwith to restore to life again and yet Iesus wept groaned in the Spirits was trobled he would not lose that opportunity of shewing his tendernesse and compassion in the behalf of others How vehement how passionate then must we beleeve his other weeping to have been when hee had his glorious and beloved City Jerusalem in his sight and wept over that City and with that stream of tears powred out that Sea that tempestuous Sea those heavy judgements which though he wept in doing it he denounced upon that City that glorious that beloved City which City though Christ charge to have stoned them that were sent to her and to bee guilty of all the righteous blood shed upon the earth the holy Ghost cals the holy City for all that not onely at the beginning of Christs appearance The Devill took him up into the holy City for at that time she was not the unholyer for any thing that shee had done upon the person of Christ but when they had exercised all their cruelty even to death the death of the Crosse upon Christ himselfe the Holy Ghost calls still the holy City Many bodies of Saints which slept arose and went into the holy City When the Fathers take into their contemplation and discourse that passionate exclamation of our Saviour upon the Crosse My God my God why hast thou forsaken me those blessed Fathers that never thought of any such sense of that place that Christ was at that time actually in the reall torments of hell assign no fitter sense of those words then that the foresight of those insupportable and inevitable and imminent judgements upon his City and his people occasioned that passionate exclamation My God my God why hast thou forsaken me That as after he was ascended into heaven he said to Saul Cur me persequeris He called Sauls persecuting of his Church a persecuting of him so when hee considered that God had forsaken his people his Citie his Jerusalem he cryed out that God had forsaken him God that sent the Prophets the Prophets that were sent Christ who was both the person sent and the sender came to the inflicting and denouncing of judgements with this Vae dolentis a heart and voice of condoling and lamentation Grieve not then the holy Spirit of God says the Apostle extort not from him those Judgements which he cannot in justice forbear and yet is grieved to inflict How often doe we use that motive to divert young men from some ill actions and ill courses How will this trouble your friends how will this grieve your Mother this will kill your Father The Angels of heaven who are of a friendship and family with us as they rejoyce at our conversion so are they sorry and troubled at our aversion from God Our sins have grieved our Mother that is made the Church ashamed and blush that he hath washed us and clothed us in the whitenesse and innocency of Christ Jesus in our baptisme and given us his bloud to drinke in the other Sacrament Our sins have made our mother the Church ashamed in her selfe we have scandalized and offended the Congregation and our sinnes have defamed and dishonoured our mother abroad that is imprinted an opinion in others that that cannot be a good Church in which we live so dissolutely so falsely to our first faith and contract and stipulation with God in Baptisme Wee have grieved our brethren the Angels our mother the Church and we have killed our Father God is the father of us all and we have killed him for God hath purchased a Church with his bloud says Saint Paul And oh how much more is God grieved now that we will make no benefit of that bloud which is shed for us then he was for the very shedding of that bloud We take it not so ill pardon solow a comparison in so high a mystery for since our blessed Saviour was pleased to assume that metaphor and to call his passion a Cup and his death a drinking we may be admitted to that Comparison of drinking too we take it not so ill that a man go down into our Cellar and draw and drinke his fill as that he goe in and pierce the vessells and let them runne out in a wastfull wantonneste To satisfie the thirst of our soules there was a
not that the just shall feel no worldly misery but that that misery shall not make them miserable how evill so ever it be in it self it shall not be evill to them but Omnia in bonum All things work together for good to them that love God Who is he that will harme you if you be followers of God says Saint Peter The wicked will not follow you in that strange Country their conversation is not in heaven if yours be they will not follow you thither They will doe as he whose instruments they are do the Devill and Resist the Devill and he will flee from you A religious constancy blunts the edge of any sword dampes the spirits of any counsel benums the strength of any arme opens the corners of any Labyrinth and brings the subtilest plots against God and his servants not onely to an invalidnesse an ineffectualnesse but to a derision not onely to a Dimicatum de coelis that the world shall see that the Lord fights for his servants from heaven but to an Irridebit in coelis that he that sits in heaven shall laugh them to scorn he shall ruine them and ruine them in contempt That prayer that David makes Libera me Domine ab homine malo deliver me O Lord from the evill man is a large an extensive an indefinite prayer for there is an evill man occasion of tentation in every man in every woman in every action there is Coluber in via a snake in every path danger in every calling But Saint Augustine contracts that prayer and fixes it Liberet te Deus à temes noli tibi esse malius God blesse me from my selfe that I be not that evill man to my selfe that I lead not my selfe into tentation and nothing shall scandalize me To which purpose it concerns us to devest that naturall but corrupt easinesse of uncharitable mis-construing that which other men doe especially those whom God hath placed in his own place for government over us that we doe not come to think that there is nothing done if all bee not done that no abuses are corrected if all be not removed that there 's an end of all Protestants if any Papists bee left in the world Upon those words of our Saviour speaking of the last day of Judgement The son of man shall send forth his Angels and they shall gather out of his Kingdome Omnia scandala All things that might offend Calvin says learnedly and wisely Qui ad extirpandum quicquid displicet praepostere festinant They that make too much haste to mend all at once antevertunt Christi judicium ereptum Angelis officium sibi temereusurpant They prevent Christs judgment and rashly and sacrilegiously they usurp the Angels office Christ hath reserved the cleansing and removing of all scandals all offences to the last day the Angels of the Church the Minister the Angels of the State the Magistrate cannot doe it not the Angels of heaven themselves till the day of judgement All scandals cannot be removed in this life but a great many more might be then are if men were not so apt to suspect and mis-constru and imprint the name of scandall upon every action of which they see not the end nor the way for from this jealousie and suspicion and misconstruction of the Angels of Church and State our Superiours in those sphears wee shall become jealous and suspicious of God himselfe that he hath neglected us abandoned us if he do not deliver us and establish us at those times and by those means which we prescribe him we shall come to argue thus against God himselfe Surely if God meant any good to us he would not put us into their hands who doe us no good Reduce all to the precious mediocrity To be unsensible of any declination of any diminution of the glory of God or his true worship and religion is an irreligious stupidity But to bee so ombragious so startling so apprehensive so suspicious as to think every thing that is done is done to that end this is a seditious jealousie a Satyr in the heart and an unwritten Libell and God hath a Star-chamber to punish unwritten Libels before they are published Libels against that Law Curse not or speak not ill of the King no not in thy thought Not to mourn under the sense of evils that may fall upon us is a stony disposition Nay the hardest stone marble will weep towards foul weather But to make all Possible things Necessary this may fall upon us therefore it must fall upon us and to make contingent and accidentall things to be the effects of counsels this is fallen upon us therefore it is fallen by their practise that have the government in their hands this is a vexation of spirit in our selves and a defacing a casting of durt in the face of Gods image of that representation and resemblance of God which he hath imprinted in them of whom hee hath sayd They are Gods In divine matters there is principally exercise of our faith That which we understand not we beleeve In civill affairs that are above us matters of State there is exercise of our Hope Those ways which we see not wee hope are directed to good ends In Civill actions amongst our selves there is exercise of our Charity Those hearts which we see not let us charitably beleeve to bee disposed to Gods service That when as Christ hath shut up his wâ—e onely in those two Va quia fâ—rtes illusiones Wâ—e because scandals and offences are so strong in their nature and Va quia infirmivos wâ—e because you are so weak in yours we doe not create a third Woe Va quia praevaricatores in an uncharitable jealousie and mis-interpretation of him that we are not in his care nor of his Ministers that they doe not execute his purposes nor of one another that when as God hath placed us in a Land where there are no wâ—lfes we doe not think Hominem homini Lupum imagine every man to be a wolf to us or to intend our destruction But as in the Arke there were Lions but the Lion shut his mouth and clincht his paw the Lion hurt nothing in the Arke and in the Arke there were Vipers and Scorpions but the Viper shewed no teeth nor the Scorpion no taile the Viper bit none the Scorpion stung none in the Arke for if they had occasioned any disorder there their escape could have been but into the Sea into irreparable ruine so in every State though that State be an Arke of peace and preservation there will be some kind of oppression in some Lions some that will abuse their power but Vae si scandalizemur woe unto us if we be scandalized with that and seditiously lay aspersions upon the State and Government because there are some such in every Church though that Church bee an Arke for integrity and sincerity there will bee some Vipers Vipers that will gnaw at their Mothers
is his word in his servants mouth come to that Conscience now nor make him mis-interpret that which he does hear or call that passion in the Preacher in which the Preacher is but sagittarius Dei the deliverer of Gods arrows for Gods arrows are sagitta Compunctionis arrows that draw bloud from the eyes Tears of repentance from Mary Magdalen and from Peter And when from thee There is a probatum est in S. Aug. Sagittaveras cor meum Thou hast shot at my heart and how wrought that To the withdrawing of his tongue à nundinis loquacitatis from that market in which I sold my self for S. Aug. at that time taught Rhetorique to turn the stream of his eloquence and all his other good parts upon the service of God in his Church You may have read or heard that answer of a Generall who was threatned with that danger that his enemies arrows were so many as that they would cover the Sun from him In umbra pugnabimus All the better says he for then we shall fight in the shadow Consider all the arrows of tribulation even of tentation to be directed by the hand of God and never doubt to fight it out with God to lay violent hands upon heaven to wrastle with God for a blessing to charge and presse God upon his contracts and promises for in umbra pugnabis though the clouds of these arrows may hide all suns of worldly comforts from thee yet thou art still under the shadow of his wings Nay thou art still for all this shadow in the light of his countenance To which purpose there is an excellent use of this Metaphor of arrows Hâ—bak 3. 11. where it is said that Gods servants shall have the light of his arrows and the â—â—ining of his glittering spear that is the light of his presence in all the instruments and actions of his corrections To end all and to dismisse you with such a re-collection as you may carry away with you literally primarily this text concerns David He by tentations to sin by tribulations for sin by comminations and increpations upon sin was bodily and ghostly become a quiver of arrows of all sorts they stook and stook fast and stook full in him in all him The Psalm hath a retrospect too it looks back to Adam and to every particular man in his loines and so Davids case is our case and all these arrowes stick in all us But the Psalm and the text hath also a prospect and hath a propheticall relation from David to our Saviour Christ Jesus And of him and of the multiplicity of these arrows upon him in the exinanition and evacuation of himself in this world for us have many of the Ancients interpreted these words literally and as in their first and primary signification Turne we therefore to him before we goe and he shall return home with us How our first part of this text is applyable to him that our prayers to God for ease in afflictions may be grounded upon reasons out of the sense of those afflictions Saint Basil tels us that Christ therefore prays to his Father now in heaven to spare mankinde because man had suffered so much and drunk so deep of the bitter cup of his anger in his person and passion before It is an avoidable plea from Christ in heaven for us Spare them O Lord in themselves since thou didst not spare them in me And how far he was from sparing thee we see in all those severall weights which have aggravated his hand and these arrowes upon us If they be heavy upon us much more was their weight upon thee every dram upon us was a Talent upon thee Non delâ—r sicut dolor tuus take Rachel weeping for her children Mary weeping for her brother Lazarus Hezekiah for his health Peter for his sins Non est delor sicut dolor â—uus The arrows that were shot at thee were Alienae Afflictions that belonged to others and did not onely come from others as ours doe but they were alienae so as that they should have fallen upon others And all that should have fallen upon all others were shot at thee and lighted upon thee Lord though we be not capable of sustaining that part this passion for others give us that which we may receive Compassion with others They were veloces these arrows met swiftly upon thee from the sin of Adam that induced death to the sin of the last man that shall not sleep but be changed when thy hour came they came all upon thee in that hour Lord put this swiftnesse into our fins that in this one minute in which our eyes are open towards thee and thine eares towards us our sins all our sins even from the impertinent frowardnesse of our childhood to the unsufferable frowardnesse of our age may meet in our present confessions and repentances and never appear more They were as ours are too Invisibiles Those arrows which fell upon thee were so invisible so undiscernible as that to this day thy Church thy School cannot see what kinde of arrow thou tookest into thy soul what kinde of affliction it was that made thy soul heavy unto death or dissolved thee into a gelly of blood in thine agony Be thou O Lord a Father of Lights unto us in all our ways and works of darkenes manifest unto us whatsoever is necessary for us to know be a light of understanding and grace before and a light of comfort and mercy after any â—in hath benighted us These arrows were as ours are also plures plurall many infinite they were the sins of some that shall never thank thee never know that thou borest their sins never know that they had any such sins to bee horn Lord teach us to number thy corrections upon us so as still to see thy torments suffered for us and our own sins to be infinitely more that occasioned those torments then those corrections that thou layst upon us Thine arrows stook and stook fast in thee the weight of thy torments thou wouldest not cast off nor lessen when at thy execution they offered thee that stupesying drink which was the civil charity of those times to condemned persons to give them an easier passage in the agonies of death thou wouldest not tast of that cup of ease Deliver us O Lord in all our tribulations from turning to the miserable comforters of this world or from wishing or accepting any other deliverance then may improve and make better our Resurrection These arrows were in thee in all thee from thy Head torn with thorns to thy feet pierced with nayls and in thy soul so as we know not how so as to extorta Si possibile If it be possible let this cup passe and an Vt quid dereliquisti My God my God why half thou forsaken me Lord whilest we remain entire here in body and soul make us and receive us an entire sacrifice to
translate it in the Church tongue and make his morality divinity If we would have a zealous Preacher cry out as fast or as loud as sins are committed non irascendum sed in santiendum says he you would not call that man an angry man but a mad man you would not call that Preacher a zealous preacher but a Puritan Touch we but upon one of his reprehensions because that may have the best use now he considers the iniquities and injustices admitted and committed in Courts of justice and he says Turpes lites turpiores Advocati Ill sutes are set on foot and worse advocates defend them Delator est criminis qui manifestior reus even in criminall matters he informes against another that should be but defendant in that crime And as he carries it higher Iudex damnaturus quae fesit eligitur the Judge himself condemns a man for that which himselfe is farre more guilty of then the prisoner Nullus nisi ex alieno damno quaestus and one man growes rich by the empoverishing of many But then it is so in all other professions too And this Tyranny and dominion is justly permitted by God upon us ut qui noluit superiorr obedire nec et obediat inferior caro we have been rebellious to our Soveraigne to God and therefore our subject the flesh is first rebellious against us and then Tyrannicall over us But he that leadeth into captivity shall goe into captivity yea Christ hath led captivity it selfe captive and given gifts to men that is he hath established his Church where by a good use of those meanes which God hath ordained for it the most oppressed soule may raise it selfe above those exaltations and supergressions of sin And so we have done with our first part and with all that will enter into this time where David in his humble spirit feels in himselfe but much more in his propheticall spirit foresees and foretells in others the infectious nature of sin It is a mortall wound and in a strange consideration for it is a wound upon God and mortall upon man And then the propriety of sin that sin is not at all from God nor it is not all from the Devill but our sin is our own Our sins in a Plâ—rality our sins of one kind determine not in one sin we sin the same sin often and then we determine not in one kinde but slide into many And after this multiplication of sin the continuation thereof to an irrecoverablenesse supergressae sunt we thinke not of them till it be too late to think of them till they produce no thought but despaire for supergressae Caput they are got above our Heads above our strongest faculties Above us in the nature of an arched roof they keep Gods grace in a separation from us and our prayers from him so they have the nature of a roof and then they feel no weight they bend not under any judgement which he lays upon us so they have the nature of an Arch. Above us as a voice as a cry Their voice is in possession of God and so prevents our prayers above us as waters they disable our eyes and our eares from right conceiving all apprehensions And above us as Lords and Tyrans that came in by conquest and so put what Laws they list upon us And these instructions have arisen from this first the Multiplicity Mine iniquities are gone over my Head and more will from the other the weight and burden They are as a heavy burden too heavy for me SERMON XXII Preached at Lincolns Inne Second Sermon on PSAL. 38. 4. For mine iniquities are gone over my head as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me AS the Philosopher says if a man could see vertue he would love it so if a man could see sin he would hate it But as the eye sees every thing but it selfe so does sinne too It sees Beauty and Honour and Riches but it sees not it selfe not the sinfull coveting and compassing of all these To make though not sin yet the sinner to see himselfe for the explication and application of these words we brought you these two lights first the Multiplicity of sin in that elegancy of the holy Ghost supergressae sunt Mine iniquities are gone over my head and the weight and oppression of sin in that Gravatae nimis As a heavy burden they are too heavy for me In the first how numerous how manifold they are in the other how grievous how insupportable first how many hands then how fast hold sinne lays upon me The first of these two was our exercise the last day when we proposed and proceeded in these words in which we presented to you the dangerous multiplicity of sinne in those pieces which constituted that part But because as men how many soever make but a Multitude or a Throng and not an Army if they be unarmed so sin how manifold and multiform so ever might seem a passable thing if it might be easily shaked off we come now to imprint in you a sense of the weight and oppression thereof As a heavy burthen they are too heavy for mee The particular degrees whereof we laid down the last day in our generall division of the whole Text and shall now pursue them according to our order proposed then First then sinne is heavy Does not the sinner finde it so No marvail nothing is heavy in his proper place in his own Sphear in his own Center when it is where it would be nothing is heavy He that lies under water finds no burthen of all that water that lies upon him but if he were out of it how heavy would a small quantity of that water seem to him if he were to carry it in a vessell An habituall sinner is the naturall place the Center of sinne and he feels no weight in it but if the grace of God raise him out of it that he come to walke and walke in the ways of godlinesse not onely his watery Tympanies and his dropsies those waters which by actuall and habituall sinnes he hath contracted but that water of which he is properly made the water that is in him naturally infused from his parents Originall sinne will be sensible to him and oppresse him Scarce any man considers the weight of Originall sinne And yet as the strongest tentations fall upon us when wee are weakest in our death-bed so the heavyest sinne seises us when wee are weakest as soon as wee are any thing we are sinners and there where there can be no more tentations ministred to us then was to the Angels that fell in heaven that is in our mothers womb when no world nor flesh nor Devill could present a provocation to sinne to us when no faculty of ours is able to embrace or second a provocation to sin yet there in that weaknesse we are under the weight of Originall sin And truly if at this time God would vouchsafe mee my
Though mine iniquities be got over my head as a wall of separation yet in Christo omnia possum In Christ I can doe all things Mine iniquities are got over my head but my head is Christ and in him I can doe whatsoever hee hath done by applying his sufferings to my soule for all my sins are his and all his merit is mine And all my sins shall no more hinder my ascending into heaven nor my sitting at the right hand of God in mine own person then they hindered him who bore them all in his person mine onely Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus blessed for ever SERMON XXIV Preached at White-Hall EZEK 34. 19. And as for my flock they eate that which yee have troen with your feet and they drink that which yee have foulded with your feet THose four Prophets whom the Church hath called the great Prophets Esay and Ieremy Ezekiel and Daniel are not onely therefore called great because they writ more then the lesser Prophets did for Zecbary who is amongst the lesser writ more then Daniel who is amongst the greater but because their Prophecies are of a larger comprehension and extent and for the most part speake more of the comming of Christ and the establishing of the Christian Church then the lesser Prophets doe who were more conversant about the temporall deliverance of Israel from Babylon though there be aspersions of Christ and his future government in those Prophets too though more thinly shed Amongst the four great ones our Prophet Ezekiel is the greatest I compare not their extraction and race for though Ezekiel were de genere sacerdotali of the Leviticall and Priestly race And as Philo Iudâ—us notes all nations having some markes of Gentry some calling that ennobled the professors thereof in some Armes and Merchandize in some and the Arts in others amongst the Iews that was Priesthood Priesthood was Gentry though Ezekiel were of this race Esay was of a higher for he was of the extraction of their Kings of the bloud royall But the extraordinary greatnesse of Ezekiel is in his extraordinary depth and mysteriousnesse for this is one of those parts of Scripture as the beginning of Genesis and the Canticles of Solomon also are which are forbid to be read amongst the Iews till they come to be thirty years old which was the Canonicall age to be made Priests In so much that Saint Gregory says when he comes to expound any part of this Prophet Noctunum iter ago that he travelled by night and did but ghesse at his way But besides that many of the obscure places of the Prophets are more open to us then they were to the ancients because many of those prophecies are now fulfilled and so that which was Prophecy to them is History to us in this place which we have now undertaken there never was darknesse not difficulty neither in the first emanation of the light thereof nor in the reflection neither in the Literall nor in the Figurative sense thereof for the literall sense is plainly that that amongst the manifold oppressions under which the Children of Israel languished in Babylon this was the heaviest that their own Priests joyned with the State against them and infused pestilent doctrines into them that so themselves might enjoy the favour of the State and the people committed to their charge might slacken their obedience to God and surrender themselves to all commandements of all men This was their oppression the Church joyned with the Court to oppresse them Their own Priests gave these sheep grasse which they had troden with their feet doctrines not as God gave them to them but as they had tampered and tempered them and accommodated them to serve turnes and fit their ends whose servants they had made themselves more then Gods And they gave them water to drink which they had troubled with their feet that is doctrines mudded with other ends then the glory of God And that therefore God would take his sheep into his own care and reduce them from that double oppression of that Court and that Church those Tyrannous officers and those over-obsequious Priests This is the literall sense of our text and context evident enough in the letter thereof And then the figurative and Mysticall sense is of the same oppressions and the same deliverance over againe in the times of Christ and of the Christian Church for that 's more then figurative fully literall soon after the Text I will set up one shepheard my servant David And I will raise up for them a plant of renoune which is the same that Esay had called A rod out of the stem of Iesse and Ieremy had called A righteous brâ—nch a King thus should raigne and prosper This prophecy then comprehending the kingdome of Christ it comprehends the whole kingdome of Christ not onely the oppressions and deliverances of our forefathers from the Heathen and the Heretiques in the Primitive Church but that also which touches us more nearly the oppressions and deliverance of our Fathers in the Reformation of Religion and the shaking off of the yoak of Rome that Italian Babylon as heavy as the Chaldâ—an We shall therefore at this time fix our meditations upon that accommodation of the Text the oppression that the Israel of God was under then when he delivered them by that way the Reformation of Religion and consider how these metaphors of the holy Ghost The treading with their feet the grasse that the sheep were to eae and the troubling with their feet the water that the sheep were to drink doe answer and set out the oppressions of the Roman Church then as lively as they did in the other Babylon And so having said enough of the primary sense of these words as they concern Gods Israel in the first Babylon and something by way of commemoration and thankfulnesse for Gods deliverance of his Israel from the persecutions in the Primitive Church insist we now upon the severall metaphors of the Text as the holy Ghost continues them to the whole reigne of Christ and so to the Reformation First the greatest calamity of those sheep in Babylon was that their own shepherds concurred to their oppression In Babylon they were a part but in Rome they were all In Babylon they joyned with the State but in Rome they were the State Saint Hierome notes out of a Tradition of the Iews that those loafes which their priests were to offer to the Lord were to be of such corne as those Priests had sowed and reaped and threshed and ground and baked all with their own hands But they were so farre from that at Babylon and at Rome as that they ploughed iniquity and sowed wickednesse and reaped the same and as God himselfe complaines trod his portion under foot That is first neglected his people for Gods people are his portion And then whatsoever pious men had given to the Church is his portion too and that portion
it Moses required not reason to help him to be beleeved The holy Ghost hovered upon the waters and so God wrought The holy Ghost hovered upon Moses too and so he wrote And we beleeve these things to be so by the same Spirit in Moses mouth by which they were made so in Gods hand Onely beloved remember that a frame may be thrown down in much lesse time then it was set up A child an Ape can give fire to a Canon And a vapour can shake the earth And these fires and these vapours can throw down cities in minutes When Christ said Throw down this Temple and in three days I will raise it they never stopped upon the consideration of throwing it down they knew that might be soon done but they wondred at the speedy raising of it Now if all this earth were made in that minute may not all come to the generall dissolution in this minute Or may not thy acres thy miles thy Shires shrinke into feet and so few feet as shall but make up thy grave When he who was a great Lord must be but a Cottager and not so well for a Cottager must have so many acres to his Cottage but in this case a little peece of an acre five foot is become the house it selfe The house and the land the grave is all lower then that the grave is the Land and the Tenement and the Tenant too He that lies in it becomes the same earth that he lies in They all make but one earth and but a little of it But then raise thy selfe to a higher hope againe God hath made better land the land of promise a stronger city the new Ierusalem and inhabitants for that everlasting city Vs whom he made not by saying let there be men but by consultation by deliberation God said Let us make Man in our Image after our likenesse We shall pursue our great examples God in doing Moses in saying and so make hast in applying the parts But first receive them And since we have the whole world in contemplation consider in these words the foure quarters of the world by application by fair and just accommodation of the words First in the first word that God speaks here Faciamus Let us us in the plurall a denotation of divers Persons in one Godhead we consider our East where we must beginne at the knowledge and confession of the Trinity For though in the way to heaven we be travelled beyond the Gentiles when we come to confess but one God The Gentiles could not do that yet we are still among the Iews if we thinke that one God to be but one Person Christs name is Oriens the East if we will be named by him called Christians we must look to this East the confession of the Trinity There 's then our East in the Faciamus Let us us make man And then our West is in the next word Faciamus Hominem Though we be thus made made by the counsell made by the concurrence made by the hand of the whole Trinity yet we are made but men And man but in the appellation in this text and man there is but Adam and Adam is but earth but red earth earth dyed red in bloud in Soul-bloud the bloud of our own soules To that west we must all come to the earth The Sunne knoweth his going down Even the Sun for all his glory and heighth hath a going down and he knowes it The highest cannot devest mortality nor the discomfort of mortality When you see a cloud rise out of the west straightway you say there commeth a storme says Christ. When out of the region of your west that is your later days there comes a cloud a sicknesse you feele a storme even the best morall constancy is shaked But this cloud and this storme and this west there must be And that 's our second consideration But then the next words designe a North a strong and powerfull North to scatter and dissipate these clouds Ad imaginem similitudinem That we are made according to a pattern to an image to a likenesse which God proposed to himselfe for the making of man This consideration that God did not rest in that praeexistent matter out of which he made all other creatures and produced their formes out of their matter for the making of man but took a forme a patterne a modell for that work this is the North winde that is called upon to carry out of the perfumes of the garden to spread the goodnesse of God abroad This is that which is intended in Iob faire weather commeth out of the North. Our West our declination is in this that we are but earth our North our dissipation of that darknesse is in this that we are not all earth Though we be of that matter we have another forme another image another likenesse And then whose image and likenesse it is is our Meridionall height our noon our south point our highest elevation In Imagine nostra Let us make man in our Image Though our Sun set at noon as the Prophet Amos speakes though we die in our youth or fall in our height yet even in that Sunset we shall have a Noon For this Image of God shall never depart from our soule no not when that soule departs from our body And that 's our South our Meridionall height and glory And when we have thus seen this East in the faciamus That I am the workmanship and care of the whole Trinity And this West in the Hominem That for all that my matter my substance is but earth But then a North a power of overcomming that low and miserable state In Imagine That though in my matter the earth I must die yet in my forme in that Image which I am made by I cannot die and after all a South a knowledge That this Image is not the Image of Angels to whom we shall be like but it is by the same life by which those Angels themselves were made the Image of God himselfe When I am gone over this east and west and north and south here in this world I should be as sorry as Alexander was if there were no more worlds But there is another world which these considerations will discover and lead us to in which our joy and our glory shall be to see that God essentially and face to face after whose Image and likenesse we were made before But as that Pilot which had harbor'd his ship so farre within land as that he must have change of Winds in all the points of the Compasse to bring her out cannot hope to bring her our in one day So being to transport you by occasion of these words from this world to the next and in this world through all the Compasse all the foure quarters thereof I cannot hope to make all this voyage to day To day we shall consider onely our longitude our East and West
Halfe-pelagianisme to thinke grace once received to be sufficient Super-pelagianisme to thinke our actions can bring God in debt to us by merit and supererogation and Catarisme imaginary purity in Canonizing our selves as present Saints and condemning all that differ from us as reprobates All these are white spots and have the colour of goodnesse but are indications of leprosie So is that that God threatens Decorticatio ficus albi rami that the figtree shall be bark'd and the boughes thereof left white to be left white without barke was an indication of a speedy withering Ostensa candescunt arescunt says Saint Gregory of that place the bough that lies open without barke looks white but perishes the good works that are done openly to please men have their reward says Christ that is shall never have reward To pretend to doe good and not meane it To doe things good in themselves but not to good ends to goe towards good ends but not by good ways to make the deceiving of men thine end or the praise of men thine end all this may have a whiteness a colour of good but all this is a barking of the bough and an indication of a mischievous leprosie There is no good whiteness but a reflection from Christ Jesus in an humble acknowledgement that wee have none of our own and in a consident assurance that in our worst estate we may be made partakers of his We are all red earth In Adam we would not since Adam we could not avoid sinne and the Concomitants thereof miseries which we have called our West our cloud our darknesse But then we have a North that scatters these clouds in the next word Ad imaginem that we are made to another patterne in another likenesse then our own Faciamus hominem so far are we gone East and West which is halfe our Compasse and all this days voiage For we are strooke upon the sand and must stay another Tyde and another gale for our North and South SERMON XXIX Preached to the King at the Court. The second Sermon on GEN. 1. 26. And God said Let us make man in our Image after our likenesse BY fair occasion from these words we proposed to you the whole Compasse of mans voyage from his lanching forth in this world to his Anchoring in the next from his hoysing sayle here to his striking sayle there In which Compasse we designed to you his foure quarters first his East where he must beginne the fundamentall knowledge of the Trinity for that we found to be the specification and distinctive Character of a Christian where though that be so we shewed you also why we were not called Trinitarians but Christians and we shewed you the advantage that man hath in laying hold upon God in these severall notions that the Prodigall sonne hath an indulgent Father that the decayed Father hath an abundant Sonne that the dejected spirit hath a Spirit of comfort to fly to in heaven And as we shewed you from Saint Paul that it was an Atheisme to be no Christian without God says he as long as without Christ so we lamented the slacknesse of Christians that they did not seriously and particularly consider the persons of the Trinity and especially the holy Ghost in their particular actions And then we came to that consideration whether this doctrine were established or directly insinuated in this plurall word of our text Faciamus Let us us make man and we found that doctrine to be here and here first of any place in the Bible And finding God to speake in the plurall we accepted for a time that interpretation which some had made thereof that God spake in the Person of a Soveraigne Prince and therefore as they do in the plurall We. And thereby having established reverence to Princes we claim'd in Gods behalfe the same reverence to him That men would demeane themselves here when God is spoken to in prayer as reverently as when they speake to the King But after this we found God to speake here not onely as our King but as our maker as God himselfe and God in Counsell Faciamus and we applied thereunto the difference of our respect to a Person of that honorable rank when we came before him at the Counsell Table and when we came to him at his own Table and thereby advanced the seriousnesse of this consideration God in the Trinity And farther we failed not with that our Eastern winde Our West we considered in the next word Hominem that though we were made by the whole Trinity yet the whole Trinity made us but men and men in this name of our text Adam and Adam is but earth and that 's our West our declination our Sunset We passed over the foure names by which man is ordinarily expressed in the Scriptures and we found necessary misery in three of them and possible nay likely misery in the fourth in the best name We insisted upon the name of our text Adam earth and had some use of these notes First that if I were but earth God was pleased to be the Potter If I but a sheep he a shepheard If I but a cottage he a builder So he worke upon me let me be what he will We noted that God made us earth not ayre not fire That man hath bodily and worldly duties to performe and is not all Spirit in this life Devotion is his soule but he hath a body of discretion and usefulnesse to invest in some calling We noted too that in being earth we are equall We tryed that equality first in the root in Adam There if any man will be nobler earth then I he must have more originall sinne then I for that was all Adams patrimony all that he could give And we tryed this equality in another furnace in the grave where there is no meanes to distinguish Royall from Plebeian nor Catholique from Hereticall dust And lastly we noted that this our earth was red earth and considered in what respect it was red even in Gods hands but found that in the bloud-rednesse of sinne God had no hand but sinne and destruction for sinne was wholly from our selves which consideration we ended with this that there was Macula alba a white spot of leprosie as well as a red and we found the over-valuation of our own purity and the uncharitable condemnation of all that differ from us to be that white spot And so far we sayled with that Western winde And are come to our third point in this our Compasse our North. In this point the North we place our first comfort The North is not always the comfortablest clime nor is the North always a type of happines in the Scriptures Many times God threatens stormes from the North. But even in those Northern stormes we consider that action that they scatter they dissipate those clouds which were gathered and so induce a serenity And so fair weather comes from the North. And
midnight not to see where we all see him in the Congregation and to see him with terror in the Suburbs of despaire in the solitary chamber Man may sayes Scotus man must he cannot chuse sayes Thomas man hath seen God sayes the holy Ghost Man that is every man and that 's our last branch in this first part The inexcusablenesse goes over man over all men Because they would not see invisible things in visible they are inexcusable all Death passed upon all men for all have sinned All sinners all dead Is Gods right hand shorter then his left his mercy shrunk and his justice stretched no certainly certainly every man may see him Man cannot hide himselfe from God God does not hide himselfe from man not from any man Col-Adam Omnis home even in that low name that lowest acceptation of man as he is but derived from earth as he is but earth he may see God We have divers names for man in Hebrew at least foure This that makes him but earth Adam is the meanest and yet Col-Adam Every man may see God David cals us to the contemplation of the heavens Coeli enarrant and Iob to the contemplation of the firmament of the Pleiades and Orion and Arcturus and the ordinances of heaven but it is not onely the Mathematician that sees God Demini terra the earth is the Lords and all that dwell therein all in all corners of the earth may see him David tels us They that go down to the sea in ships they see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep but it is not onely the Mariner the discoverer that discovers God but he that puts his hand to the plough and looks not back may see God there Let him be filius terra the sonne of the earth without noble extraction without knowne place of uncertaine parents even Melchisedeck was so Let him be filius percussionis the sonne of affliction a man that hath inward heavy sentences and heavy executions of the law Let him be filius mortis the sonne of death as Saul said to Ionathan of David a man designed to dye nay let him be filius Belial the sonne of iniquity and of everlasting perdition there is no lownesse no naturall no spirituall dejection so low but that that low man may see God Let him be filius terrae the sonne of the earth and of no body else let him be Dominus terrae Lord of the earth busied upon the earth and nothing else let him be hospes terrae a guest a tenant an inmate of the earth halfe of him in the earth and the rest no where else this poore man this worldly man this dying man may see God To end this you can place the spheare in no position in no station in which the earth can eclipse the Sun you can place this clod of earth man in no ignorance in no melancholy in no oppression in no sinne but that he may but that he does see God The Marrigold opens to the Sunne though it have no tongue to say so the Atheist does see God though he have not grace to confesse it We have past through our first part and the three branches of that The object God in his works and the faculty that apprehends seeing that is knowing and the person indued with the faculty every man even Adam In our second part which is a tacite answer to a likely objection Is not God in the highest heaven afar off yes but man may see afar off we have the same three branches too and yet not the same the same object God but in another manifestation then in his worke in glory the same faculty seeing but with other manner of eyes glorified eyes the same person man but not man as he is Adam a meere naturall and earthly man but man as he is Enosh who by having tasted Gods corrections or by having considered the miseries of this world is prepared for the joy and glory of the next And in this part we will begin with the person man Man may behold it afar off How different are the wayes of God from the ways of man the eyes of God from the eyes of man and the wayes and eyes of a godly man from the eyes and wayes of a man of this world We looke still upon high persons and after high places and from those heights we thinke we see far but he that will see this object must lye low it is best discerned in the dark in a heavy and a calamitous fortune The naturall way is upward I can better know a man upon the top of a steeple then if he were halfe that depth in a well but yet for higher objects I can better see the stars of heaven in the bottome of a well then if I stood upon the highest steeple upon earth If I twist a cable of infinite fadomes in length if there be no ship to ride by it nor anchor to hold by it what use is there of it If Mannor thrust Mannor and title flow into title and bags powre out into chests if I have no anchor faith in Christ if I have not a ship to carry to a haven a soule to save what 's my long cable to me If I adde number to number a span a mile long if at the end of all that long line of numbers there be nothing that notes pounds or crownes or shillings what 's that long number but so many millions of millions of nothing If my span of life become a mile of life my penny a pound my pint a gallon my acre a sheere yet if there be nothing of the next world at the end so much peace of conscience so much joy so much glory still all is but nothing multiplied and that is still nothing at all 'T is the end that qualifies all and what kinde of man I shall be at my end upon my death-bed what trembling hands and what lost legs what deafe eares and what gummy eyes I shall have then I know and the nearer I come to that disposition in my life the more mortified I am the better I am disposed to see this object future glory God made the Sun and Moon and Stars glorious lights for man to see by but mans infirmity requires spectacles and affliction does that office Gods meaning was that by the sun-shine of prosperity and by the beames of honour and temporall blessings a man should see farre into him but I know not how he is come to need spectacles scarse any man sees much in this matter till affliction shew it him God made the ballance even riches may show God and poverty may show God let the two Testaments the old and the new be the ballance and so they are even the blessednesse of the old Testament runs all upon temporall blessings and worldly riches Blessed in the city and in the field blessed in the fruit of thy cattell and
staid with it then as closely as when he wrought his greatest miracles Beyond all this God having thus maried soule and body in one man and man and God in one Christ he maries this Christ to the Church Now consider this Church in the Type and figure of the Church the Arke in the Arke there were more of every sort of cleane Creatures reserved then of the uncleane seven of those for two of these why should we feare but that in the Church there are more reserved for salvation then for destruction And into that room which was not a Type of the Church but the very Church it selfe in which they all met upon whitsunday the holy Ghost came so as that they were enabled by the gift of tongues to convay and propagate and derive God as they did to every nation under heaven so much does God delight in man so much does God desire to unite and associate man unto him and then what shall disappoint or frustrate Gods desires and intentions so farre as that they should come to him but singly one by one whom he cals and wooes and drawes by thousands and by whole Congregations Be pleased to carry your considerations upon another testimony of Gods love to the society of man which is his dispatch in making this match his speed in gathering and establishing this Church for forwardnesse is the best argument of love and dilatory interruptions by the way argue no great desire to the end disguises before are shrewd prophecies of jealousies after But God made hast to the consummation of this Marriage between Christ and the Church Such words as those to the Colosrians and such words that is words to such purpose there are divers The Gospell is come unto you as it is into all the world And againe It bringeth forth fruit as it doth in you also And so likewise The Gospell which is preached to every creature which is under heaven such words I say a very great part of the Antients have taken so literally as thereupon to conclude That in the life of the Apostles themselves the Gospell was preached and the Church established over all the world Now will you consider also who did this what persons cunning and crafty persons are not the best instruments in great businesses if those businesses be good as well as great Here God imployed such persons as would not have perswaded a man that grasse was green that blood was red if it had been denyed unto them Persons that could not have bound up your understanding with a Syllogisme nor have entendred or mollified it with a verse Persons that had nothing but that which God himselfe calls the foolishnesse of preaching to bring Philosophers that argued Heretiques that wrangled Lucians and Iulians men that whet their tongues and men that whet their swords against God to God Unbend not this bowe blacken not these holy thoughts till you have considered as well as how soone and by what persons so to what Doctrine God brought them Wee aske but St. Augustins question Quis tantam multitudinem ad legem carni sanguini centrariam induceret nisi Deus Who but God himselfe would have drawn the world to a Religion so contrary to flesh and blood Take but one piece of the Christian Religion but one article of our faith in the same Fathers mouth Res incredibilis resurrectio That this body should be eaten by fishes in the sea and then those fishes eaten by other men or that one man should be eaten by another man and so become both one man and then that for all this assimilation and union there should arise two men at the resurrection Res incredibilis sayes he this resurrection is an incredible thing Sed magis incredibile totum mundum credidisse rem tam incredibilem That all the world should so soone believe a thing so incredible is more incredible then the thing it selfe That any should believe any is strange but more that all such believe all that appertains to Christianity The Valentinians and the Marcionites pestilent Heretiques grew to a great number Sed vix duo vel tres de iisdem eadem docebant says Irenaeus scarce any two or three amongst them were of one opinion The Acatians the Eunomians and the Macedonians omnes Arium parentem agnoscunt sayes the same Father they all call themselves Arians but they had as many opinions not onely as names but as persons And that one Sect of Mahomet was quickly divided and sub-divided into 70 sects But so God loved the world the society and company of good soules ut quasi una Domus Mundus the whole world was as one well governed house similiter credunt quasi una anima all beleeved the same things as though they had all but one soule Constanter praedicabant quasi unum os At the same houre there was a Sermon at Ierusalem and a Sermon at Rome and both so like for fundamentall things as if they had been preached out of one mouth And as this Doctrine so incredible in reason was thus soone and by these persons thus uniformely preached over all the world so shall it as it doth continue to the worlds end which is another argument of Gods love to our company and of his loathnesse to lose us All Heresies and the very names of the Heretiques are so utterly perished in the world as that if their memories were not preserved in those Fathers which have written against them we could finde their names no where Irenaeus about one hundred and eighty yeers after Christ may reckon about twenty heresies Tertullian twenty or thirty yeares after him perchance twenty seven and Epiphanius some a hundred and fifty after him sixty and fifty yeare after that St. Augustine some ninety yet after all these and but a very few yeares after Augustine Theodoret sayes that in his time there was no one man alive that held any of those heresies That all those heresies should rot being upheld by the sword and that onely the Christian Religion should grow up being mowed down by the sword That one graine of Corne should be cast away and many eares grow out of that as Leo makes the comparison That one man should be executed because he was a Christian and all that saw him executed and the Executioner himself should thereupon become Christians a case that fell out more then once in the primitive Church That as the flood threw down the Courts of Princes and lifted up the Arke of God so the effusion of Christian blood should destroy heresies and advance Christianity it self this is argument abundantly enough that God had a love to man and a desire to draw man to his society and in great numbers to bring them to salvation I will not dismisse you from this consideration till you have brought it thus much nearer as to remember a later testimony of Gods love to our
And at the judgement you shall stand but stand at the barre But when you stand before the Throne you stand as it is also added in this place before the Lamb who having not opened his mouth to save his owne fleece when he was in the shearers hand nor to save his own life when he was in the slaughterers hand will much lesse open his mouth to any repentant sinners condemnation or upbrayd you with your former crucifyings of him in this world after he hath nailed those sinnes to that crosse to which those sinnes nayled him You shall stand amicti stolis for so it follows covered with Robes that is covered all over not with Adams fragmentary raggs of fig-leafes nor with the halfe-garments of Davids servants Though you have often offered God halfe-confessions and halfe-repentances yet if you come at last to stand before the Lambe his fleece covers all hee shall not cover the sinnes of your youth and leave the sinnes of your age open to his justice nor cover your sinfull actions and leave your sinfull words and thoughts open to justice nor cover your own personall sinnes and leave the sinnes of your Fathers before you or the sinnes of others whose sins your tentations produced and begot open to justice but as he hath enwrapped the whole world in one garment the firmament so cloathed that part of the earth which is under our feet as gloriously as this which we live and build upon so those sinnes which we have hidden from the world and from our own consciences and utterly forgotten either his grace shall enable us to recollect and to repent in particular or we having used that holy diligence to examine our consciences so he shall wrap up even those sinnes which we have forgot and cover all with that garment of his own righteousnesse which leaves no foulnesse no nakednesse open You shall be covered with Robes All over and with white Robes That as the Angels wondred at Christ coming into heaven in his Ascension Wherefore art thou red in thine Apparell and thy garments like him that treadeth the wine fat They wondred how innocence it selfe should become red so shall those Angels wonder at thy coming thither and say Wherefore art thou white in thine apparell they shall wonder how sinne it selfe shall be clothed in innocence And in thy hand shall be a palm which is the last of the endowments specifyed here After the waters of bitternesse they came to seventy to innumerable palmes even the bitter waters were sweetned with another wood cast in The wood of the Crosse of Christ Jesus refreshes all teares and sweetnes all bitternesse even in this life but after these bitter waters which God shall wipe from all our eies we come to the seventy to the seventy thousand palms infinite seales infinite testimonies infinite extensions infinite durations of infinite glory Go in beloved and raise your own contemplations to a height worthy of this glory and chide me for so lame an expressing of so perfect a state and when the abundant spirit of God hath given you some measure of conceiving that glory here Almighty God give you and me and all a reall expressing of it by making us actuall possessors of that Kingdome which his Sonne our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood Amen SERMON XXXIII Preached at Denmark house some few days before the body of King Iames was removed from thence to his buriall Apr. 26. 1625. CANT 3. 11. Goe forth ye Daughters of Sion and behold King Solomon with the Crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the day of the gladnesse of his heart IN the Creation of man in that one word Faciamus let Vs make man God gave such an intimation of the Trinity as that we may well enlarge and spread and paraphrase that one word so farre as to heare therein a councell of all the three Persons agreeing in this gracious designe upon Man faciamus let us make him make and him mend him and make him sure I the Father will make him by my power if he should fall Thou the Sonne shalt repayr him re-edify him redeem him if he should distrust that this Redemption belonged not to him Thou the Holy Ghost shalt apply to his particular soule and conscience this mercy of mine and this merit of the Sonnes and so let us make him In our Text there is an intimation of another Trinity The words are spoken but by one but the persons in the text are Three For first The speaker the Director of all is the Church the spouse of Christ she says Goe forth ye daughters of Sion And then the persons that are called up are as you see The Daughters of Sion the obedient children of the Church that hearken to her voice And then lastly the persons upon whom they are directed is Solomon crowned That is Christ invested with the royall dignity of being Head of the Church And in this especially is this applyable to the occasion of our present meeting All our meetings now are to confesse to the glory of God and the rectifying of our own consciences and manners the uncertainty of the prosperity and the assurednesse of the adversity of this world That this Crown of Solomons in the text will appear to be Christs crown of Thornes his Humiliation his Passion and so these words will dismisse us in this blessed consolation That then we are nearest to our crown of Glory when we are in tribulation in this world and then enter into full possession of it when we come to our dissolution and transmigration out of this world And these three persons The Church that calls The children that hearken and Christ in his Humiliation to whom they are sent will be the three parts in which we shall determine this Exercise First then the person that directs us is The Church no man hath seen God and lives but no man lives till he have heard God for God spake to him in his Baptisme and called him by his name then Now as it were a contempt in the Kings house for any servant to refuse any thing except he might heare the King in person command it when the King hath already so established the government of his house as that his commandements are to be signifyed by his great Officers so neither are we to look that God should speak to us mouth to mouth spirit to spirit by Inspiration by Revelation for it is a large mercy that he hath constituted an Office and established a Church in which we should heare him When Christ was baptized by Iohn it is sayd by all those three Evangelists that report that story in particular circumstances that there was a voice heard from heaven saying This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased and it is not added in any of those three
are nearest and clearest glasses for thee to see thy self in and such is this glasse which God hath proposed to thee in this house And therefore change the word of the Text in a letter or two from Egredimini to Ingredimini never go forth to see but Go in and see a Solomon crowned with his mothers crown c. And when you shall find that hand that had signed to one of you a Patent for Title to another for Pension to another for Pardon to another for Dispensation Dead That hand that settled Possessions by his Seale in the Keeper and rectified Honours by the sword in his Marshall and distributed relief to the Poore in his Almoner and Health to the Diseased by his immediate Touch Dead That Hand that ballanced his own three Kingdomes so equally as that none of them complained of one another nor of him and carried the Keyes of all the Christian world and locked up and let out Armies in their due season Dead how poore how faint how pale how momentany how transitory how empty how frivolous how Dead things must you necessarily thinke Titles and Possessions and Favours and all when you see that Hand which was the hand of Destinie of Christian Destinie of the Almighty God lie dead It was not so hard a hand when we touched it last nor so cold a hand when we kissed it last That hand which was wont to wipe all teares from all our eyes doth now but presse and squeaze us as so many spunges filled one with one another with another cause of teares Teares that can have no other banke to bound them but the declared and manifested will of God For till our teares flow to that Heighth that they might be called a murmuring against the declared will of God it is against our Allegiance it is Disloyaltie to give our teares any stop any termination any measure It was a great part of Annaes prayse That she departed not from the Temple day nor night visit Gods Temple often in the day meet him in his owne House and depart not from his Temples The dead bodies of his Saints are his Temples still even at midnight at midnight remember them who resolve into dust and make them thy glasses to see thy self in Looke now especially upon him whom God hath presented to thee now and with as much cheerfulnesse as ever thou heardst him say Remember my Favours or remember my Commandements heare him say now with the wise man Remember my Iudgement for thine also shall be so yesterday for me and to day for thee He doth not say to morrow but to Day for thee Looke upon him as a beame of that Sunne as an abridgement of that Solomon in the Text for every Christian truely reconciled to God and signed with his hand in the Absolution and sealed with his bloud in the Sacrament and this was his case is a beame and an abridgement of Christ himselfe Behold him therefore Crowned with the Crown that his Mother gives him His Mother The Earth In anâ—ient times when they used to reward Souldiers with particular kinds of Crowns there was a great dignity in Corona graminea in a Crown of Grasse That denoted a Conquest or a Defence of that land He that hath but Coronam Gramineam a turfe of grasse in a Church yard hath a Crown from his Mother and even in that buriall taketh seisure of the Resurrection as by a turfe of grasse men give seisure of land He is crowned in the day of his Marriage for though it be a day of Divorce of us from him and of Divorce of his body from his soul yet neither of these Divorces breake the Marriage His soule is married to him that made it and his body and soul shall meet again and all we both then in that Glory where we shall acknowledge that there is no way to this Marriage but this Divorce nor to Life but by Death And lastly he is Crowned in the day of the gladnesse of his heart He leaveth that heart which was accustomed to the halfe joyes of the earth in the earth and he hath enlarged his heart to a greater capacity of Joy and Glory and God hath filled it according to that new capacity And therefore to end all with the Apostles words I would not have you to be ignorant Brethren concerning them which are asleepe that ye sorrow not as others that have no hope for if ye beleeve that Iesus died and rose again even so them also which sleepe in him will God bring with him But when you have performed this Ingredimini that you have gone in and mourned upon him and performed the Egredimini you have gone forth and laid his Sacred body in Consecrated Dust and come then to another Egredimini to a going forth in many severall wayes some to the service of their new Master and some to the enjoying of their Fortunes conferred by their old some to the raising of new Hopes â— some to the burying of old and all some to new and busie endeavours in Court some to contented retirings in the Countrey let none of us goe so farre from him or from one another in any of our wayes but that all we that have served him may meet once a day the first time we see the Sunne in the eares of almighty God with humble and hearty prayer that he will be pleased to hasten that day in which it shall be an addition even to the joy of that place as perfect as it is and as infinite as it is to see that face againe and to see those eyes open there which we have seen closed here Amen SERMON XXXIIII LUKE â—â—â—â— Father forgive them for they know not what they do THe word of God is either the co-eternall and co-essentiall Sonne our Saviour which tooke flesh Verbum Caro factum est or it is the spirit of his mouth by which we live and not by bread onely And so in a large acceptation every truth is the word of God for truth is uniforme and irrepugnant and indivisible as God Omne verum est omni vero consentiens More strictly the word of God is that which God hath uttered either in writing as twice in the Tables to Moses or by ministery of Angels or Prophets in words or by the unborne in action as in Iohn Baptists exultation within his mother or by new-borne from the mouths of babes and sucklings or by things unreasonable as in Balaams Asse or insensible as in the whole booke of such creatures The heavens declare the glory of God c. But nothing is more properly the word of God to us then that which God himself speakes in those Organs and Instruments which himself hath assumed for his chiefest worke our redemption For in creation God spoke but in redemption he did and more he suffered And of that kinde are these words God in his chosen man-hood saith Father forgive them for they know not what they do
too much for so I may presume Of Schoolmen some affirm Prayer to be an act of our will for we would have that which we aske Others of our understanding for by it we ascend to God and better our knowledge which is the proper aliment and food of our understanding so that is a perplexed case But all agree that it is an act of our Reason and therefore must be reasonable For onely reasonable things can pray for the beasts and Ravens Psalme 147. 9. are not said to pray for food but to cry Two things are required to make a Prayer 1. Pius affectus which was not in the Devills request Matth. 8. 31. Let us goe into the Swine nor Job 1. 2. Stretch out thy hand and touch all he hath and stretch out thy hand and touch his bones and therefore these were not Prayers And it must be Rerum decentium for our government in that point this may inform us Things absolutely good as Remission of sinnes we may absolutely beg and to escape things absolutely ill as sinne But mean and indifferent things qualified by the circumstances we must aske conditionally and referringly to the givers will For 2 Cor. 8. when Paul begged stimulum Carnis to be taken from him it was not granted but he had this answer My grace is sufficient for thee Let us now not in curiosity but for instruction consider the reason They know not what they doe First if Ignorance excuse And then if they were ignorant Hast thou O God filled all thy Scriptures both of thy Recorders and Notaries which have penned the History of thy love to thy People and of thy Secretaries the Prophets admitted to the foreknowledge of thy purposes and instructed in thy Cabinet hast thou filled these with prayses and perswasions of wisedome and knowledge and must these persecutors be pardoned for their ignorance Hast thou bid Esay to say 27. 11. It is a people of no understanding therefore he that made them shall not have compassion of them And Hosea 4. 6. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge and now dost thou say Forgive them because they know not Shall ignorance which is often the cause of sinne often a sinne it self often the punishment of sinne and ever an infirmity and disease contracted by the first great sinne advantage them Who can understand his faults saith the man according to thy heart Psalme 19. 12. Lord cleanse me from my secret faults He durst not make his ignorance the reason of his prayer but prayed against ignorance But thy Mercy is as the Sea both before it was the Sea for it overspreads the whole world and since it was called into limits for it is not the lesse infinite for that And as by the Sea the most remote and distant Nations enjoy one another by traffique and commerce East and West becoming neighbours so by mercy the most different things are united and reconciled Sinners have Heaven Traytors are in the Princes bosome and ignorant persons are in the spring of wisdome being forgiven not onely though they be ignorant but because they are ignorant But all ignorance is not excusable nor any lesse excusable then not to know what ignorance is not to be excused Therefore there is an ignorance which they call Nescientiam a not knowing of things not appertaining to us This we had had though Adam had stood and the Angels have it for they know not the latter day and therefore for this we are not chargeable They call the other privation which if it proceed meerly from our owne sluggishnesse in not searching the meanes made for our instruction is ever inexcusable If from God who for his owne just ends hath cast clouds over those lights which should guide us it is often excusable For 1 Tim. 1. 13. Paul saith I was ablasphemer and a persecutor and an oppressor but I was received to mercy for I did it ignorantly through unbelief So though we are all bound to believe and therefore faults done by unbeliefe cannot escape the name and nature of sinne yet since beliefe is the immediate gift of God faults done by unbeliefe without malicious concurrences and circumstances obtaine mercy and pardon from that abundant fountaine of grace Christ Jesus And therefore it was a just reason Forgive them for they know not If they knew not which is evident both by this speech from truth it self and by 2 Cor. 2. 8. Had they known it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory and Acts 3. 17. I know that through ignorance ye did it And though after so many powerfull miracles this ignorance were vincible God having revealed enough to convert them yet there seemes to be enough on their parts to make it a perplexed case and to excuse though not a malitious persecuting yet a not consenting to his Doctrine For they had a Law Whosoever shall make himself the sonne of God let him dye And they spoke out of their Lawes when they said We have no other King but Caesar. There were therefore some among them reasonably and zealously ignorant And for those the Sonne ever-welcome and well-heard begged of his Father ever accessible and exorable a pardon ever ready and naturall We have now passed through all those roomes which we unlockt and opened at first And now may that point Why this prayer is remembred onely by one Evangelist and why by Luke be modestly inquired For we are all admitted and welcommed into the acquaintance of the Scriptures upon such conditions as travellers are into other Countries if we come as praisers and admirres of their Commodities and Government not as spies into the mysteries of their State nor searchers nor calumniators of their weaknesses For though the Scriptures like a strong rectified State be not endangered by such a curious malice of any yet he which brings that deserves no admittance When those great Commissioners which are called the Septuagint sent from Hierusalem to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greeke had perfected their work it was and is an argument of Divine assistance that writing severally they differed not The same may prove even to weake and faithlesse men that the holy Ghost super-intended the foure Evangelists because they differ not as they which have written their harmonies make it evident But to us faith teacheth the other way And we conclude not because they agree the holy Ghost directed for heathen Writers and Malefactors in examinations do so but because the holy Ghost directed we know they agree and differ not For as an honest man ever of the same thoughts differs not from himself though he do not ever say the same things if he say not contraries so the foure Evangelists observe the uniformity and samenesse of their guide though all did not say all the same things since none contradicts any And as when my soule which enables all my limbs to their functions disposes my legs to go my whole body is truly said to
calling by being personally here at these exercises of Religion thou art some kinde of witnesse of this light For in how many places of the world hath Christ yet never opened such doors for his ordinary service in all these 1600. yeers And in how many places hath he shut up these doors of his true worship within these three or foure yeers Quod citaris huc That thou art brought hither within distance of his voyce within reach of his food intra sphaeram Activitatis within the spheare and latitude of his ordinary working that is into his house into his Church this is a citation a calling answerable to Iohn Baptists first calling from his fathers dead loins and his mothers barren wombe and his second citation was before he was borne in his mothers wombe When Mary came to visit Elizabeth the childe sprang in her belly as soone as Maries voice sounded in her eares And though naturally upon excesse of joy in the mother the childe may spring in her yet the Evangelist meanes to tell an extraordinary and supernaturall thing and whether it were an anticipation of reason in the childe some of the Fathers think so though St. Augustine do not that the childe understood what he did or that this were a fulfilling of that prophecy That he should be filled with the holy Ghost from his mothers wombe all agree that this was an exciting of him to this attestation of his Saviours presence whether he had any sense of it or no. Exultatio significat sayes St. Augustine This springing declared that his mother whose forerunner that childe should be was come And so both Origen and St. Cyrill refer that commendation which our Saviour gives him Inter natos Mulierum Among those that were born of women there was not a greater Prophet that is none that prophecyed before he was borne but he And such a citation beloved thou mayest have in this place and at this time A man may upon the hearing of something that strikes him that affects him feel this springing this exultation this melting and colliquation of the inwardest bowels of his soule a new affection a new passion beyond the joy ordinarily conceived upon earthly happinesses which though no naturall Philosopher can call it by a name no Anatomist assigne the place where it lyes yet I doubt not through Christ jesus but that many of you who are here now feele it and understand it this minute Citaris huc thou wast cited to come hither whether by a collaterall and oblique and occasionall motion or otherwise hither God hath brought thee and Citaris hîc here thou art cited to come neerer to him Now both these citations were before Iohn Baptist was borne both these affections to come to this place and to be affected with a delight here may be before thy regeneration which is thy spirituall birth a man is not borne not borne againe because he is at Church nor because he likes the Sermon Iohn Baptist had and thou must have a third citation which was in him from the desert into the publique into the world from contemplation to practice This was that mission that citation which most properly belongs to this Text when the word came to the voyce The word of God came to Iohn in the wildernesse and he came into all the Countrey preaching the Baptisme of repentance To that we must come to practise For in this respect an Vniversity is but a wildernesse though we gather our learning there our private meditation is but a wildernesse though we contemplate God there nay our being here is but a wildernesse though we serve God here if our service end so if we do not proceed to action and glorifie God in the publique And therefore Citaris huc thou art cited hither here thou must be and Citaris hîc thou art cited here to lay hold upon that grace which God offers in his Ordinance and Citaris hinc thou art cited from hence to embrace a calling in the world He that undertakes no course no vocation he is no part no member no limbe of the body of this world no eye to give light to others no eare to receive profit by others If he think it enough to be excrementall nayles to scratch and gripe others by his lazy usury and extortion or excrementall hayre made onely for ornament or delight of others by his wit or mirth or delightfull conversation these men have not yet felt this third citation by which they are called to glorifie God and so to witnesse for him in such publique actions as Gods cause for the present requires and comports with their calling And then Iohn Baptist had a fourth citation to bear witnesse for Christ by laying down his life for the Truth and this was that that made him a witnesse in the highest sense a Martyr God hath not served this citation upon us nor doth he threaten us with any approches towards it in the feare of persecution for religion But remember that Iohn Baptists Martyrdome was not for the fundamentall rock the body of the Christian religion but for a morall truth for matter of manners A man may be bound to suffer much for a lesse matter then the utter overthrow of the whole frame and body of religion But leaving this consideration for what causes a man is bound to lay downe his life consider we now but this that a man lays downe his life for Christ and beares witnesse of him even in death when he prefers Christ before this world when he desires to be dissolved and be with him and obeyes cheerefully that citation by the hand of death whensoever it comes and that citation must certainly be served upon you all whether this night in your beds or this houre at the doore no man knowes You who were cited hither to heare and cited here to consider and cited hence to worke in a calling in the world must be cited from thence too from the face to the bosome of the earth from treading upon other mens to a lying downe in your owne graves And yet that is not your last citation there is fifth In the grave Iohn Baptist does and we must attend a fifth citation from the grave to a Iudgement The first citation hither to Church was served by Example of other men you saw them come and came The second citation here in the Church was served by the Preacher you heard him and beleeved The third from hence is served by the law and by the Magistrate they binde you to embrace a profession and a calling and you do so The fourth which is from thence from this to the next world is served by nature in death he touches you and you sinke This fifth to Iudgement shall be by an Angell by an Archangell by the Lord himself The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout with the voyce of the Archangell and with
then the valley till the light invest it Si montem esse lucem putas in monte naufragium facies If you take the hill because it shines to be the light it self you shipwrack upon the top of a hill If we rest in the person or in the gifts of any man to what heighth soever this hill be raised in opinion or in the Church still we mistake Iohn Baptist men of the greatest endowments and goodnesse too are but instruments they are not the workman himself And therefore as they are most inexcusable that put an infallibility in the breast of one man our adversaries of Rome so do they transgresse too farre that way that runne and pant and thrust after strange preachers and leave their owne Church deserted and their owne Pastour discouraged for some one family by the greatnesse thereof or by the estimation thereof may induce both those inconveniences Truly though it may seeme boldly said it may be said safely that we were better heare some weaknesses from our owne Pastour then some excellencies from another go farther some mistakings from our own then some truths from another for all truths are not necessary nor all mistakings pernicious but obedience to order is necessary and all disorder pernicious Now what a way had Iohn Baptist open to him if he had been popularly disposed Amongst a people that at that time expected their Messias for all the Prophecies preceding his comming were then fulfilled and such a Messias as should be a Temporall King and had invested an opinion that he Iohn Baptist was that Christ what rebellions what earth-quakes what inundations of people might he have drawne after him if he would have countenanced and cherished their error to his advantage They would have lacked no Scriptures to authorize their actions They would have found particular places of the Prophets to have justified any act of theirs in advancing their Messias then expected Therein he is our patterne not to preach our selves but Christ Iesus not to preach for admiration but for edification not to preach to advance civill ends without spirituall ends to promote all the way the peace of all Christian Kingdomes but to refer all principally to the Kingdome of peace and the King of peace the God of heaven He confessed and denied not and said plainly I am not the Christ That was his Testimony we confesse and deny not and say plainly That our own parts our owne passions the purpose of great persons the purpose of any State is not Christ we preach Christ Iesus and him crucified and whosoever preaches any other Gospell or any other thing for Gospell let him be accursed I am not the man sayes Iohn Baptist for that man is God too but yet that man that God that Messias consisting of both is come though I be not he There is one amongst you whom you know not whose shooe-latchet I am not worthy to loose In which he says all this There is one among you you need seek no farther all the promises and Prophecies the Semen mulieris That the seed of the woman should bruise the Serpents head the appropriation to Abraham In semine tuo In thy seed shall all Nations be blessed the fixation upon David Donec Shiloh till Shiloh come Esay's Virgo concipiet Behold a Virgin shall conceive Micah's tu Bethlem that Bethlem should be the place Daniels seventy Hebdomades that that should be the time all promises all prophecies all computations are at an end the Messias is come Is he come and amongst you and do you not know him what will make you know him You beleeve you need a Messias you cannot restore your selfe You beleeve this Messias must come at a certaine time specified by certaine marks were all these marks upon any other or lacks there any of these in him Do you thus magnifie me and neglect a person whose shooe-latchet I am not worthy to loose Iohn Baptist was a Prophet more then a Prophet The greatest of the sonnes of women Who could be so much greater then he and not the Messias we must necessarily enwrap all these three in one another and into one another they do easily and naturally fall He testifies that he was not the man he preaches not himself he testifies that that man is come future expectations are frivolous and he testifies that the characters and marks of the expected Messias can fall upon none but this man and therefore he delivers him over to them with that confidence Ecce Agnus Dei Behold the Lambe of God there you may see him and this is his Testimony These three we we to whom Iohn Baptists Commission is continued testifie too First we tell you what is not Christ austerity of life and outward sanctity is not hee Iohn Baptist had them abundantly but yet permitted not that they should have that opinion of him But yet much lesse is chambring and wantonnesse and persevering in sinne that Christ or the way to him We tell you stetit in medio he hath been amongst you you have heard him preached in your ears yea yee have heard him knock at your hearts and for all that we tell you that you have not known him Which though it be the discomfortablest thing in the world not to have known Christ in those approches yet we tell it you somewhat to your comfort and to your excuse for had you knownâ— it you would not have crucified the Lord of glory as we doe all by our daily sinnes And though God have winked at these times of ignorance pretermitted your former inconsiderations now he commandeth all men every where to repent And therefore that thou maist know even thou as Christ iterates it at least in this thy day the things which belong to thy Peace we tell you who he is and where he is Ecce agnus Dei Behold the lambe of God Here here in this his ordinance he supplicates you when the Minister how meane soever prays you in his stead be yee reconciled to God Here he proclaims and cries to you Venite omnes come all that are weary and heavy laden Here he bleeds in the Sacrament here he takes away the sinnes of the world in deriving a jurisdiction upon us to binde and loose upon earth that which he will binde and loose in heaven This we testifie to you Doe you but receive this testimony Till you hear that voice of consummation in heaven Venite benedicti come yee blessed you shall never heare a more comfortable Gospell then this which was preached by Christ himselfe the Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach the Gospell to the poore to heale the broken hearted to preach deliverance to the captives and the acceptable yeare of the Lord for this was not a deliverance from their brick-making in Egypt nor from their scornes and contempts in Babylon but a deliverance from that unexpressible that unconceivable bondage of sinne and
shall feare the Lord and his goodnesse in the later dayes And beyond this land there is no more Sea beyond this mercy no more Judgement for with this mercy the Chapter ends Consider our text then as a whole Globe as an intire Spheare and then our two Hemispheares of this Globe our two parts of this text will bee First that no perversnesse of ours no rebellion no disobedience puts God beyond his mercy nor extinguishes his love still hee calls Israel rebellious Israel his Children nay his owne anger his owne Judgements then when hee is in the exercise thereof in the execution thereof puts him not beyond his mercy extinguishes not his love hee hides not his face from them then hee leaves them not then in the darke hee accompanies their calamity with a light hee makes that time though cloudy though overcast yet a day unto them the Children of Israel shall abide many days in this case But then as no disobedience removes God from himself for he is love and mercy so no interest of ours in God doth so priviledge us but that hee will execute his Judgements upon his Children too even the Children of Israel shall fall into these Calamities And from this first part wee shall passe to the second from these generall considerations That no punishments should make us desperate that no favours should make us secure we shall passe to the particular commination and judgements upon the children of Israel in this text without King without Prince c. In our first part we stop first upon this declaration of his mercy in this fatherly appellation Children the children of Israel He does not call them children of Israel as though hee disavowed them and put them off to another Father but therefore because they are the Children of Israel they are his Children for hee had maried Israel and maried her to himselfe for ever Many of us are Fathers and from God here may learne tendernesse towards children All of us are children of some parents and therefore should hearken after the name of Father which is nomen pietatis potestatis a name that argues their power over us and our piety towards them and so concernes many of us in a double capacity as we are children and parents too but all of us in one capacity as we are children derived from other parents God is the Father of man otherwise then he is of other creatures He is the Father of all Creatures so Philo calls all Creatures sorâ—res suas his sisters but then all those sisters of man all those daughters of God are not alike maried God hath placed his Creatures in divers rankes and in divers conditions neither must any man thinke that he hath not done the duty of a Father if he have not placed all his Sonnes or not matched all his daughters in a condition equall to himselfe or not equall to one another God hath placed creatures in the heavens and creatures in the earth and creatures in the sea and yet all these creatures are his children and when he looked upon them all in their divers stations he saw omnia valde bora that all was very well And that Father that imploies one Sonne in learning another to husbandry another to Merchandise pursues Gods example in disposing his children his creatures diversly and all well Such creatures as the Raine though it may seem but an imperfect and ignoble creature fallen from the wombe of a cloud have God for their Father God is the Father of the Raine And such creatures as light have but God for their Father God is Pater lâ—minum the Father of lights Whether we take lights there to be the Angels created with the light some take it so or to be the severall lights set up in the heavens Sun and Moon and Stars some take it so or to be the light of Grace in infusion by the Spirit or the light of the Church in manifestation by the word for all these acceptations have convenient Authors and worthy to be followed God is the Father of lights of all lights but so he is of raine and clouds too And God is the Father of glory as Saint Paul styles him of all glory whether of those beames of glory which he sheds upon us here in the blessings and preferments of this life or that waight of glory which he reserves for us in the life to come From that inglorious drop of raine that falls into the dust and rises no more to those glorious Saints who shall rise from the dust and fall no more but as they arise at once to the fulnesse of Essentiall joy so arise daily in accidentiall joyes all are the children of God and all alike of kin to us And therefore let us not measure our avowing or our countenancing of our kindred by their measure of honour or place or riches in the world but let us looke how fast they grow in the root that is in the same worship of the same God who is ours and their Father too He is nearest of kin to me that is of the same religion with me as they are creatures they are of kin to me by the Father but as they are of the same Church and religion by Father and mother too Philo calls all creatures his sisters but all men are his brothers God is the Father of man in a stronger and more peculiar and more masculine sense then of other Creatures Filius particeps con-dominus cum patre as the law calls the Sonne the partner of the Father and fellow-Lord joint-Lord with the Father of all the possession that is to descend so God hath made man his partner and fellow-Lord of all his other creatures in Moses his Dominamini when he gives man a power to rule over them and in Davids Omnia subjecisti when he imprints there a naturall disposition in the creature to the obedience of man So high so very high a filiation hath God given man as that having another Sonne by another filiation a higher filiation then this by an eternall generation yet he was content that that Sonne should become this Sonne that the Sonne of God should become the Sonne of Man God is the Father of all of man otherwise then of all the rest but then of the children of Israel otherwise then of all other men For he bought them and is not be thy Father that hath bought thee says God by Moses Not to speake of that purchase which he made by the death of his Sonne for that belongs to all the world he bought the Jews in particular at such a price such silver and such gold such temporall and such spirituall benefits such a Land and such a Church such a Law and such a Religion as certainly he might have had all the world at that price If God would have manifested himselfe poured out himselfe to the Nations as hee did to
Naphtali that hee should bee a well-spoken and a perswasive man For so Moses after God had farther inabled him saith Give eare O yee Heavens and I will speake Heare O Earth the words of my mouth My mouth saith Moses The Minister of God that cometh with convenient gifts and due preparation may speak such things as Earth and Heaven it selfe may be content to heare For when Saint Paul saith That to the Principalities and Powers in Heavenly places the manifold wisdome of God is made known by the Church that is by the Ministery and Service of the Church and by that which is done here wee may congruously and piously beleeve that even those Principalities and Powers in Heavenly places The Angels of Heaven doe heare our Sermons and hearken how the glory of God is communicated and accepted and propagated through the Congregation and as they rejoyce at the conversion of a Sinner so rejoyce also at the means of their Conversion the powerfull and the congruous preaching of the Word of God And therefore let no man though an Angell of the Church though an Archangell of the Church Bishop or Archbishop refuse to heare a man of imeriour place or inferiour parts to himself neither let any man be discouraged by the fewnesse or meannesse of his Hearers For as the Apostle saith with relation to Abraham Entertain strangers for thereby some have entertained Angels unawares so preach to all and that seat that thou thinkest empty may have Angels in it To them is the manifold Wisedome of God made knowne by the Church and Angels are here here for the augmentation of their owne Ioy in their fresh knowledge of the propagation of the Kingdome of God in this Congregation and they are here for their Accusation that are not here but frivolously and causelessely absent or negligently absently present if they be here Therefore Moses might say Give eare O yee Heavens though it bee but I that speake And hee might add as he doth there My Doctrine shall droppe as the rain and my speech shall distll as the dew And why Because I will publish the Name of the Lord saith Moses there because I will deliver the Messages of my God to his People What though you doe must this be ascribed unto you no Moses claimeth not that for when hee had said Give eare O yee Heavens let no man thinke himselfe too high or too wise to heare me and called it his Doctrine and his speech because he published the Name of the Lord yet he transferreth all upon God himselfe He establisheth their attentions with that Ascribe yee Greatnesse unto our God It becommeth me to make my selfe as acceptable a messenger as I can and to infuse the Word of God into you as powerfully as I can but all that I can doe is but a small matter the greatnesse of the worke lieth in your Application and that must proceed from the Word of God it selfe quickned by his Spirit and therefore Ascribe all Greatnesse unto our God for that is the Hony whatsoever or whosoever be the Hony-combe Truely when I reade a Sermon of Chrysostome or of Chrysologus or of Ambrose Men who carry in the very signification of their Names and in their Histories the attributes of Hony mouthed and Golden-mouthed Men I finde my selfe oftentimes more affected with the very Citation and Application of some sentence of Scripture in the middest or end of one of their Sermons then with any witty or forcible passage of their owne And that is it which Saint Hierome doth especially magnifie in Saint Paul After he had said Quotiescunque lego non verba mihi videor sed tonitrua audire wheresoever I open Saint Pauls Epistles it is not a word or a sentence but a clappe of Thunder that flieth out he addeth moreover Legatis doe but use your selves to the reading of Saint Pauls Epistles Videbitis in testimoniis quae sumit ex veteri Testamento quà m Artifex sit quà m prudens you will easily see how artificially how dexterously how cunningly and how discreetly he makes his use of those places which he citeth out of the Old Testament Videntur verba Innocontis rusticani you would take them saith hee sometimes for words of some plain Country-man as some of the Prophets were no other But before Saint Paul have done with those words Fulmina sunt capiunt omne quod tangunt hee maketh you see that they are flashes of lightning and that they possesse and melt affect and dissolve every soul they touch And hence it is Beloved that I return so often at home in my private Meditations that I present so often to Gods People in these Exercises this Consideration That there are not so exquisite so elegant Bookes in the World as the Scriptures neither is any one place a more pregnant example thereof for the purity and elegancy for the force and power for the largenesse and extention of the words then these which the Holy Ghost hath taken in this Text Hee that oppresseth the poore reproaches his Master c. And so we passe from this first Consideration The power and Elegancy of the whole word of God in generall to the same consideration in these particular words The Matter which in the generall is but this That the poor must bee relieved being a Doctrine obvious to all The Manner wil rather be our object at this time How the Holy Ghost by Solomons hand hath enwrapped this Doctrine in these words How the Omission of this Duty is aggravated how the performance thereof is celebrated in this Text and in the force and elegancies thereof Mans perversenesse hath changed Gods method God made man good but in a possibility of being ill Now God findes man ill but in a possibility of being good When man was good and enabled to continue so God began with him with affirmative Commandements Commandements that implied liberty and Soveraignty such as that Subjicite Dominamini Subdue the Creature and rule over the Creature and he comes not till after to Negative to Prohibitive Commandments Commandments that imply infirmity and servility such as this Of this Tree thou shalt not eate upon thy life this life and the next thou shalt not But now because God findes man ill and prone to bee worse God is faine to change his method and to begin and stop him at first with negative and prohibitive Commandments So he does in the thirty fourth Psalm ver 14. which is also again repeated first Depart from evill and then Doe good For man brings with him something into the world now to forget and to unlearn before he can take out any new lesson Man is so farre from being good of himselfe as that he must forget himselfe devest himselfe forsake himselfe before he can be capable of any good And such is the method of our Text Because God sees a naturall declination in man to abuse his power to the
Jesus before whose face I stand now and before whose face I shall not be able to stand amongst the righteous at the last day if I lie now and make this Pulpit my Shop to vent sophisticate Wares In the presence of you a holy part I hope of the Militant Church of which I am In the presence of the whole Triumphant Church of which by him by whom I am that I am I hope to bee In the presence of the Head of the whole Church who is All in all I and I thinke I have the Spirit of God I am sure I have not resisted it in this point I and I may bee allowed to know something in Civill affaires I am sure I have not been stupefied in this point doe deliver that which upon the truth of a Morall man and a Christian man and a Church man beleeve to be true That hee who is the Breath of our nostrils is in his heart as farre from submitting us to that Idolatry and superstition which did heretofore oppresse us as his immediate Predecessor whose memory is justly precious to you was Their wayes may bee divers and yet their end the same that is The glory of God And to a higher Comparison then to her I know not how to carry it As then the Breath of our nostrils our breath is his that is our speech first in containing it not to speak in his diminution then in uttering it amongst men to interpret fairly and loially his proceedings and then in uttering it to God in such prayers for the continuing thereof as imply a thankfull acknowledgement of the present blessings spirituall and temporall which we enjoy now by him So farre Breath is speech but Breath is life too and so our life is his How willingly his Subjects would give their lives for him I make no doubt but hee doubts not This is argument enough for their propensenesse and readinesse to give their lives for his honour or for the possessions of his children That though not contra voluntatem not against his will yet Praeter voluntatem without any Declaration of his will or pleasure by any Command they have been as ready voluntarily as if a Presse had commanded them But these ways which his wisdome hath chosen for the procuring of peace have kept off much occasion of triall of that how willingly his Subjects would have given their lives for him Yet their lives are his who is the breath of their nostrils And therefore though they doe not leave them for him let them lead them for him though they bee not called to die for him let them live so as that may bee for him to live peaceably to live honestly to live industriously is to live for him for the sinnes of the people endanger the Prince as much as his owne When that shall bee required at your hand then die for him In the meane time live for him live so as your living doe not kindle Gods anger against him and that is a good Confession and acknowledgement That hee is the breath of your nostrils That your life is his As then the breath of our nostrils is expressed by this word in this Text Ruach spiritus speech and life so it is his When the breath of life was first breathed into man there is called by another word Neshamah and that is the soule the immortall soule And is the King the breath of that life Is hee the soule of his Subjects so as that their soules are his so as that they must sinne towards men in doing unjust actions or sinne towards God in forsaking and dishonouring him if the King will have them If I had the honour to aske this question in his royall presence I know he would bee the first man that would say No No your souls are not mine so And as hee is a most perfect Text-man in the Booke of God and by the way I should not easily feare his being a Papist that is a good Text-man I know hee would cite Daniel saying Though our God doe not deliver us yet know O King that we will not worship thy Gods And I know hee would cite S. Peter We ought to obey God rather then men And he would cite Christ himself Feare not them for the soule that cannot hurt the soule He claimes not your souls so It is Ruach here it is not Neshamah your life is his your soule is not his in that sense But yet beloved these two words are promiscuously used in the Scriptures Ruach is often the soule Neshamah is often the temporall life And thus farre the one as well as the other is the Kings That hee must answer for your soules so they are his for hee is not a King of bodies but a King of men bodies and soules nor a King of men onely but of Christian men so your Religion so your soules are his his that is appertaining to his care and his account And therefore though you owe no obedience to any power under heaven so as to decline you from the true God or the true worship of that God and the fundamentall things thereof yet in those things which are in their nature but circumstantiall and may therefore according to times and places and persons admit alterations in those things though they bee things appertaining to Religion submit your selves to his directions for here the two words meet Ruach and Neshamah your lives are his and your souls are his too His end being to advance Gods truth he is to be trusted much in matters of indifferent nature by the way He is the word of our Text Spiritus as Spiritus is the Holy Ghost so farre by accommodation as that he is Gods instrument to convey blessings upon us and as spiritus is our breath of speech and as it is our life and as it is our soule too so farre as that in those temporall things which concern spirituall as Times of meeting and much of the manner of proceeding when we are met we are to receive directions from him So he is the breath of our nostrils our speech our lives our soules in that limited sense are his But then did those subjects of his And I charge none but his subjects with this plot for I judge not them who are without from whom God deliverd us this day did they think so of him That he was the breath of our nostrils If the breath be soure if it bee tainted and corrupt as they would needs thinke in this case is it good Physick for an ill breath to cut off the head or to suffocate it to smother to strangle to murder that man Hee is the breath of their nostrils They owe him their speech their thanks their prayers and how have these children of fooles made him their song and their by-word How have these Drunkards men drunke with the Babylonian Cup made Libels against him How have those Seminatores verborum word-scatterers defamed him even with
delivers himselfe to us here in the administration of his Sacraments he seals ratifies confirmes all unto us And to rest in these his seals and means of reconciliation to him this is not to be scandalised not to be offended in him and not to be offended in him not to suspect him or these meanes which he hath ordained this is our viatory our preparatory our initiatory and inchoative Blessednesse beyond which nothing can be proposed in this life And therefore as the Needle of a Sea-compasse though it shake long yet will rest at last and though it do not look directly exactly to the North Pole but have some variation yet for all that variation will rest so though thy heart have some variations some deviations some aberrations from that direct point upon which it should be bent which is an absolute conformity of thy will to the will of God yet though thou lack something of that afford thy soule rest settle thy soule in such an infallibility as this present condition can admit and beleeve that God receives glory as well in thy Repentance as in thine Innocence and that the mercy of God in Christ is as good a pillow to rest thy soule upon after a sinne as the grace of God in Christ is a shield and protection for thy soule before In a word this is our viatory our preparatory our initiatory and inchoative blessedness beyond which there can bee no blessedness proposed here first to receive a satisfaction an acquiescence that there are certaine and constant meanes ordained by Christ for our reconciliation to God in him in all cases in which a Christian soule can bee distressed that such a treasure there is deposited by him in the Church And then the testimony of a rectified Conscience that thou hast sincerely applied those generall helpes to thy particular soule Come so farre and then as the Suburbs touch the City and the Porch the Church and deliver thee into it so shall this Viatory this preparatory this initiatory and inchoative blessednesse deliver thee over to the everlasting blessednesse of the Kingdome of heaven Of which everlasting blessednesse I would ask leave not so much of you yet of you too for with you I would not be over-bold but I would aske leave of the Angels of heaven leave of the holy Ghost himself to venture to say a little of this everlasting blessednesse The tongues of Angels cannot the tongues of the holy Ghost the Authors of the books of Scripture have not told us what this blessednesse is And what then shall we say but this Blessednesse it self is God himselfe our blessednesse is our possession our union with God In what consists this A great limbe of the Schoole with their Thomas place this blessednesse this union with God In visione in this That in heaven I shall see God see God essentially God face to face God as he is We do not see one another so in this world In this world we see but outsides In heaven I shall see God and God essentially But then another great branch of the Schoole with their Scotus place this blessednesse this union with God in Amore in this that in heaven I shall love God Now love presumes knowledge for Amari nisi nota new possunt we can love nothing but that which we do or think we do understand There in heaven I shall know God so as that I shall be admitted not onely to an Adoration of God to an admiration of God to a prosternation and reverence before God but to an affection to an office of more familiarity towards God of more equality with God I shall love God But even love it selfe as noble a passion as it is is but a paine except we enjoy that we love and therefore another branch of the Schoole with their Aureolus place this blessednesse this union of our souls with God in Gaudio in our joy that is in our enjoying of God In this world we enjoy nothing enjoying presumes perpetuity and here all things are fluid transitory There I shall enjoy and possesse for ever God himself But yet every one of these to see God or to love God or to enjoy God have seemed to some too narrow to comprehend this blessednesse beyond which nothing can be proposed and therefore another limbe of the Schoole with their Bonaventure place this blessednesse in all these together And truly if any of those did exclude any of these so as that I might see God and not love him or love God and not enjoy him it could not well be called blessednesse but he that hath any one of these hath every one all And therefore the greatest part concurre and safely In visione That vision is beatification to see God as he is is that blessednesse There then in heaven I shall have continuitatem Intuendi It is not onely vision but Intuition not onely a seeing but a beholding a contemplating of God and that in Continuitate I shall have an un-interrupted an un-intermitted an un-discontinued sight of God I shall looke and never looke off not looke and looke againe as here but looke and looke still for that is Continuitas intuendi There my soule shall have Inconcussam quâ—etem we need owe Plato nothing but we may thank Plato for this expression if he meant so much by this Inconcussa quies That in heaven my soule shall sleep not onely without trouble and startling but without rocking without any other help then that peace which is in it selfe My soule shall be thoroughly awake and thoroughly asleep too still busie active diligent and yet still at rest But the Apostle will exceed the Philosopher St. Paul will exceed Plato as he does when he sayes I shall be unus spiritus cum Deo I shall be still but the servant of my God and yet I shall be the same spirit with that God When Dies quem tanquam supremum reformidas aterni natalis est sayes the Morall mans Oracle Seneca Our last day is our first day our Saturday is our Sunday our Eve is our Holyday our sun-setting is our morning the day of our death is the first day of our eternall life The next day after that which is the day of judgement Veniet dies quae me mihi revelabit comes that day that shall show me to my selfe here I never saw my selfe but in disguises There Then I shall see my selfe and see God too Totam lucem Totus lux aspiciam I shall see the whole light Here I see some parts of the ayre enlightned by the Sunne but I do not see the whole light of the Sunne There I shal see God intirely all God totam lutem and totus lax I my self shal be al light to see that light by Here I have one faculty enlightned and another left in darknesse mine uuderstanding sometimes cleared my will at the same time perverted There I shall be all light no shadow upon me my soule
what mariage includes and what it excludes what it requires what it forbids It is a mariage and a mariage after the death of another If one dye sayes the Text Howsoever the Romane Church in the exercise of their Tyranny have forbidden Church-men to mary then when they have orders and forbidden orders to bee given to any who have formerly beene maried if they maried Widowes God is pleased here to afford us some intimation some adumbration a Typicall and exemplar knowledge of the lawfulnesse of such mariages hee maries after the death of a former husband and then farther a brother maries the wife of his deceased brother Now into the reasons of the law literally given and literally accepted wee looke not It is enough that God hath a care of the preservation of names and families and inheritances in those distinctions and in those Tribes where hee layd them then but for the accommodation of the law to our present application it must bee a brother a spirituall brother a professor of the same faith that succeeds in this mariage in this possession and this government of that widow Church It must be a brother and Frater câ—habitans says our Text a brother that dwelt together with the former husband he must be of the same houshold of the faithfull as well as professe the same faith he must dwell in the house of God not separate himselfe or encourage others to doe so for matter of Ceremonies and discipline Idolaters must not Separaists must not be admitted to these mariages to these widow churches And then it is a surrendring to a brother dead without children In this spirituall procreation of children we all dye without children of our own Though by our labours when God blesses them you become children yet you are Gods children not ours we nurse you by his word but his Spirit begets you by the same word we must not challenge to us that which God onely can doe And then being thus maried to this widow taking the charge of this Church he must says our text performe the duty of a husbands brother He must it is a personall service not to be done always by Proxy and Delegates He must and he must performe not begin well and not persist commence and not consummate but performe the worke and performe the worke as it is a duty It is a meer mercy in God to send us to you but it is a duty in us to doe that which we are sent for by his Word and his Sacraments to establish you in his holy obedience and his rich and honourable service And then our duty consists in both these that we behave our selves as your husband which implies a power an authority but a power and authority rooted in love and exercised with love and then that we doe all as brothers to the former husband that as one intentation of this law was that inheritances and temporall proprieties might be preserved so our care might be through predecessor and successor and all that all rights might be preserved to all men that nothing not due or due onely in rigor be extorted from the people nothing that is in truth or in equity due be with-held from the Minister but that the true right of people and Pastor and Patron be preserved to the preservation of love and peace and good opinion of one another First then that which we take upon us is a Mariage Amongst the Iews it was almost an ignominious an infamous thing to die unmaried at least to die without children being maried Amongst the gentiles it was so too all well governed States ever enlarged themselves in giving places of command and profit to maried men Indeed such men are most properly said to keep this world in reparations that provide a succession of children and for the next world though all that are borne into this world doe not enter into the number of Gods Saints in heaven yet the Saints of heaven can be made out of no other materialls but men borne into this world Every stone in the quarry is not sure to be imployed in the building of the church but the Church must be built out of those stones and therefore they keep this world they keep heaven it selfe in reparation that mary in the feare of God and in the same feare bring up the children of such a mariage But I presse not this too literally nor over perswasively that every man is bound to Mary God is no accepter of persons nor of conditions But being to use these words in their figurative application I say every man is bound to marry himselfe to a profession to a calling God hath brought him from being nothing by creating him but he resolves himselfe into nothing againe if he take no calling upon him In our Baptisme we make our contract with God that we will believe all those Articles there recited there 's our contract with hiâ— and then pursuing this contract in the other Sacrament when we take his body and his blood we are maried to him So at the same time at our Baptisme we make a contract in the presence of God and his congregation with the world that we wil forsake the covetous desires of the world that is the covetous proprieting of all things to our selves the covetous living onely for our selves there 's our contract with the world that we will mutually assist and serve our brethren in the world and then when we take particular callings by which we are enabled to perform that former contract then we are maried to the world so every man is duly contracted to the world in Baptisme and lawfully maried to the world in accepting a profession And so this service of ours to the Church is our mariage Now in a Matrioniall state there is onus and Honos a burden to be born an Honour to be received The burden of the sinnes of the whole world was a burden onely for Christs shoulders but the sinnes of this Parish willly upon my shoulders if I be silent or if I be indulgent and denounce not Gods Judgement upon those sinnes It will be a burden to us if we doe not and God knowes it is a burden to us when be do denounce those Judgements Esay felt and groned under this burden when he cried Onus Babylonis Onus Moab and Onus Damasci O the burden of Babylon and the burden of Damscus and so the other Prophets grone often under this burden in contemplation of other places It burdened it troubled it grieved the holy Prophets of God that they must denounce Gods judgements though upon Gods enemies We reade of a compassionate Generall that looking upon his great Army from a hill fell into a bitter weeping upon this consideration that in fiftie or sixtie years hence there will not be a man of these that fight now alive upon the earth What Sea could furnish mine eyes with teares enough to poure out if I should
it all the yeare and all the yeares of an Everlasting life and of infinite generations Amen SERMON L. A Sermon Preached in Saint Dunstans 1 THES 5. 16. Rejoyce evermore WE reade in the naturall Story of some floating Islands that swim and move from place to place and in them a Man may sowe in one place and reape in another This case is so farre ours as that in another place we have sowed in teares and by his promise in whose teares we sowed then when we handled those two words Iesus wept we shall reape in Joy That harvest is not yet it is reserved to the last Resurrection But the Corne is above ground in the Resurrection of our head the first fruits of the Dead Christ Jesus and that being the first visible steppe of his exaltation begins our exultation who in him are to rejoyce evermore The heart knoweth his owne bitternesse he and none but he others feele it not retaine it not pity it not and therefore saies the Text A Stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy He shall have a Joy which no stranger not he himselfe whilest he was a stranger to God and to himselfe could conceive If we aske as Christs Disciples asked of him Quod signum what shall be the signe of thy comming of this Joy in the midst of thy bitternesse Ipsae lachrymae laetitiae testes nuncii The tears themselves shall be the sign the tears shall be Ambassadours of Joy a present gladnesse shall consecrate your sorrow and teares shall baptize and give a new name to your passion for your Wormwood shall be Manna even then when it is Wormwood it shall be Manna for Gaâ—debitis semper you shall Rejoyce evermore But our Text does more then imply a promise to us for it laies a precept upon us It is not Gaudebitis you shall Rejoyce by way of Comfort but it is Gaudete Rejoyce see that you doe Rejoyce by way of Commandement and that shall be our first part Cadit sub praecepto It hath the nature of a commandement Angels passe not from extreame to extreame but by the way betweene Man passes not from the miseries of this life to the joyes of Heaven but by joy in this life too for he that feeles no joy here shall finde none hereafter And when we passe from the substance of the precept to the extent thereof which will be our second part from the first word Rejoyce to the other Rejoyce alwaies we shall cleave that into two periods Gaudete in bonis Rejoyce in your prosperitie and Gaudete in malis Rejoyce in your adversitie too But because it is in sempiternum that must be in sempiterno because it is alway it must be in him who is alwaies yesterday and to day and the same for ever Joy in God Joy in the Holy Ghost which will be another branch in that second part of which Joy though there be a preparatory and inchoative participation and possession in this life yet the consummation being reserved to our entrance into our Masters Joy not onely the Joy which he gives that 's here but the Joy which he is that 's onely there we shall end in that beyond which none can goe no not in his thoughts in some dimme contemplation and in some faint representation of the Joyes of Heaven and in that Contemplation we shall dismisse you First then it is presented in the nature of a Commandement and laies an Obligation upon all at all times to procure to our selves and to cherish in our selves this Joy this Rejoycing What is Joy Comparatur ad desiderium sic ut quies admotum As Rest in the end of motion every thing moves therefore that it may rest so Joy is the end of our desires whatsoever we place our desires our affections upon it is therefore that we may enjoy it and therefore Quod est in brutis in parte sensitiva Delectatio in hominibus in parte intellectiva est gaudium Beasts and carnall men who determine all their desires in the sensuall parts come no farther then to a delight but men who are truly men and carry them to the intellectuall part they and onely they come to Joy And therefore saies Solomon It is the joy of the just to doe judgment to have lyen still and done no wrong occasions is not this Joy Joy is not such a Rest as the Rest of the Earth that never mov'd but as the Sunne rejoyceth to runne his race and his circuit is unto the end of heaven so this Joy is the rest and testimony of a good conscience that we have done those things which belong to our calling that we have mov'd in our Sphere For if men of our profession whose Function it is to attend the service of God delight our selves in having gathered much in this world if a Souldier shall have delighted himselfe in giving rules of Agriculture or a Architecture if a Counsellour of State who should assist with his counsell upon present emergencies delight himself in writing Books of good counsell for posterity all this occasions not this joy because though there have been motion and though there be Rest yet that is not Rest after the Motion proper to them A Man that hath been out of his way all the day may be glad to find a good Inne at night but yet 't is not properly Joy because he is never the neerer home Joy is peace for having done that which we ought to have done And therefore it is well expressed Optima conjectura an homo sit in gratia est gaudere The best evidence that a Man is at peace and in favour with God is that he can rejoyce To trie whether I be able by Argument and disputation to prove all that I believe or to convince the Adversary this is Academia animae the soules University where some are Graduats and all are not To trie whether I be able to endure Martyrdome for my beliefe this is Gehenna animae the rack the torture of the Soule and some are able to hold it out and all are not But to trie whether I can rejoyce in the peace which I have with God this is but Catechismus animae the Catechisme of the Soule and every Man may examine him selfe and every Man must for it is a Commandement Gaudete semper Rejoyce evermore It is we cannot say the Office but the Essence of God to doe good and when he does that he is said to rejoyce The Lord thy God will make thee plenteous there is his goodnesse and he will Rejoyce again over thee for good as he rejoyced over thy Fathers The Lord will love thee there is his goodnesse and rejoyce in thee and he will rest in his love Such a joy as is a rest a complacency in that good which he hath done we see is placed in God himselfe It is in Angels too Their office is to minister to Men for