in He becomes something without a body and above the Earth who for a preparative must be taken up to Paradise and call'd from all commerce and all intelligence with his own body Saint Paul was call'd from Heaven to preach the Gospel but he was call'd to Heaven to qualifie him for this higher separation to an Apostle and Church-Governour And now you see your calling Holy Fathers And to pass by such obvious unconcerning observations as at first sight follow that those who are not qualified are not call'd I shall only take notice hence of the counter-part of this call the charge God takes upon him when he calls to this charge and that is he owns and will protect whom himself calls 'T was that he promised to the Founder and God of your Order I the Lord have call'd thee and I will hold thine hand and I will keep thee Isai. 42. 6. And when he said of Cyrus I have call'd him he said also be shall make his way prosperous Isai. 48. 15. And so he shall be the way what it will for thus he said to Jacob I have called thee when thou goest through the Water I am with thee and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee Isai. 43. 1 2. There was Experience of all this in one of the chief Princes of your Order when the Apostles were scarce safe within their Ship they were so toss'd with waves and fears yet if our Lord will call him Peter is confident he shall be safe even in the Sea Lord if it be thou bid me come unto thee on the Water saith he and the Lord did but call him and he went down and walked on the water safely As if the swelling billows did only lift themselves to meet his steps and raise him up from sinking And when his own doubts which alone could were neer drowning him and he but call'd the Lord immediately he stretched out his hand and caught him He answers his call if we answer ours if we obey when he says come then will he come and save when we call to him And so Peter receiv'd no hurt but a rebuke O thou of little faith why didst thou doubt couldst thou imagin I would not sustein thee in the doing what I bid thee do In answering my call But why seek we experience of so old a date There is a more encouraging miracle in these late calls themselves Had God sustein'd the Order in its Offices and dignities amidst those waves that rack'd the Church of late it had been prodigy of undeserved Compassion to our Nation But whenas all was sunk to bid the Sea give up what it had swallowed and consumed this is more than to catch a sinking Peter or to save a falling Church The work of Resurrection is emphatically call'd the working of God's mighty power and does out-sound that of his ordinary conservation And truly 't was almost as easie to imagination how the scattered Atomes of mens dust should order themselves and reunite and close into one flesh as that the parcels of our Discipline and Service that were lost in such a wild confusion and the Offices buried in the rubbish of the demolisht Churches should rise again in so much order and beauty Stantia non poterant tect a probare Deum This calling of the Spirit is like that when the Spirit moved upon the face of the abyss and call'd all things out of their no-seeds there or like the call of the last Trump Thus by the miraculous mercies of these calls God hath provided for our hopes and warranted our faith of his protections yet he hath also sent us more security hath given us a Constantine if his own be not a greater Name and more deserving of the Church for which it is well known to some he did contrive and order when he could neither plot nor hope for his own Kingdom and did with passion labour a succession in your Order when he did not know how to lay designs for the Succession of himself or any of his Fathers house to his own Crown and Dignity Nor is the secular arm all your security God himself hath set yet more guards about his consecrated ones he hath severe things for the violaters of them Moses the meekest man upon the Earth that in his life was never angry but once at the rebellious seems very passionate in calling Vengeance on those that stir against these holy Offices Smite through the loins of all that rise against them and of them that hate them that they rise not again The loins we know are the nest of posterity so that strike through the loins is stab the succession destroy at once all the posterity of them that would cut off this Tribe and hinder its Succession Nor was this Legal Spirit Gospel is as severe Those in Saint Jude that despise these Governours that do as Corah and his Complices did who gathered themselves against Moses and Aaron and said You take too much upon you ye Sons of Levi since all the Congregation is holy every one of them and the Lord is among them wherefore then lift you up your selves above the Congregation of the Lord words these that we are well acquainted with and which it seems St. Jude looks on as sins under the Gospel these perish in the gainsaying of Core whom God would not prepare for punishment by death but he and his accomplices went quick into it He would not let them stay to dye but the Lord made a new thing to shew his detestation of this sin and the Earth swallow'd it in the Commission and all that were alli'd and appertain'd to them that had an hand in it And truly they may well expect strange recompences who do attempt so strange a Sacrilege as to pull stars out of Christ's own right hand From whence we have his word that no man shall be able to pluck any but if they shine thence on their Orbs below and convert many to righteousness their light shall blaze out into glory and they shall ever dwell at his right hand To which right hand He that brought again from the dead the Lord Jesus that great Shepherd and Bishop of the Sheep and set him there He also bring you our Pastors and us your flock with you and set us with his sheep on his right hand To whom with the same Jesus and the Holy Ghost be ascribed all blessing honour glory and power from henceforth for ever Amen A SERMON PREACHED AT HAMPTON-COURT ON The Twenty Ninth of May 1662. Being the Anniversary of His Sacred Majesties Most happy Return BY RICHARD ALLESTRY D. D. and Chaplain to His MAJESTY LONDON Printed by John Playford in the Year 1683. TO THE Right Honourable EDWARD Earl of CLARENDEN Lord high Chancellour of England and Chancellour of the University of Oxford My LORD TO vouch your Lordships commands for the publishing this Discourse I might
engage to be true and faithful to my own ruin pay allegiance to my perdition Thou hast my worship and my service by bargain and by oath I have sworn Thou art my Lord. Now all this is of much more force in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper where I do formally and knowingly seal to this Covenant and when we do this on our knees in the most solomn manner that is possible this must needs be a more express entring into Christ's oath than that there of the Jewss was the entring God's oath which was in probability onely coming and standing before the Lord to hear the Covenant which God had struck with that nation before in Horeb. Or if it were performed with Sacrifice which may seem probable in that it is exprest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that thou shouldest pass into the covenant So your Margent reads there verse the 12. alluding to their manner of confirming Covenants by dividing the beasts and setting one half against the other and passing betwixt the divisions so we see Jer. 34. 18. This is passing into the Covenant and therefore the LXX read here Deut. 29. 12. That thou shouldest enter into the Covenant of the Lord thy God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that rite of dividing and passing thro being onely the Symbol of curses against them that shall break their Covenant and imprecations in Hieroglyphicks so that in Jer. 34. 18. 't is most literally if we translate the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 according to their importance I will make those men that have transgressed my Covenant the calf or as the calf as the Syriac reads I will divide and separate them among the Nations and give them to the sword and cut them in pieces the ceremony signifying to be don to him that does not stand to his Covenant Now surely this is don to more advantage in the Sacrament where Christ's body is torn and his bloud poured out no doubt with the like commination implied that being the very meaning of pouring out bloud in Covenants so that we entred there the Lord's Covenant and imprecation swearing that he shall be our Lord with a most threatning sense And surely if we be not careful to observe our oath we have vow'd agonies to our selves and sworn our own condemnation when there I curse myself with all the curses of the Covenant if Christ be not my Lord. And now it will be needless for me to go on and prove that if we be not careful to fulfil the importance of this relation my Lord in order to what it requires 't will be in vain to expect the benefit of that relation in what it does import He that hath not don service as to his Lord must not look to enter into the joys of his Lord he that hath not don his will 't will be in vain for him to cry at the last day Lord Lord altho he come with never so applying Titles and cry my Lord and tho he call upon any other Title of his Jesus He died indeed for our sins but he rose again for our justification His Resurrection did entitle him to be our Lord. If he be risen to thee he is thy Lord. But these two make up the confession of a Christian Rom. 10. 9. If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead thou shalt be saved and look not for it from any other relation to him Thy Priest may sacrifice for thee but Christ thy Lord must pardon thee thy Jesus on the Cross must pay thy ransom but if the Lord make you free then are ye free indeed John 8. 36. Do not deceive thy self with looking no farther than to thy Jesus in his sufferings thou must relate to him also in his Power and Autority thou must depend upon thy Jesus dying and risen too not onely on thy Jesus on the Cross but on thy Jesus on the Throne thou must cry out My Savior and thou must cry My Lord and if thou canst in truth and in reality he is the Author of eternal salvation to all them that obey him that is he is an everlasting Savior to them to whom he is a Lord. His all Autority will be emploied in thy deliverance he will shew himself a Lord to thee onely in pardoning saying and rewarding thee and his all-power both in Heaven and Earth will be to thee Omnipotence of mercy for he that is thy Lord he is thy God also The third thing My God I must take the same method here that I us'd before First see what the Resurrection did contribute towards this Title God and what that Title does imply both as to what it doth require and as to what it imports by way of promise and encouragement Secondly see what the Sacrament contributed towards making the application My God and what that imports in order to both the other things 1. Altho this Son of God according to his Divine Nature was Everlasting God and as the Nicene Creed expresses begotten of his Father before all worlds God of God Light of Light very God of very God and was called so in Scripture John 1. 1. and the Word was God yet it is sure this person Jesus Christ was declared to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead Rom. 1. 4. And this text is the first place in the New Testament where this person is expresly called God Thomas upon the evidence of this Resurrection crying out I do acknowledge that thou art my very Lord and that is a most certain argument to me that thou art the Omnipotent God of Heaven and this his Resurrection did contribute to his Title God Now I enquire what this implies and that will be made clear from Deut. 26. 16 17 18 19. This day the Lord thy God hath commanded thee to do these statutes and judgments thou shalt therefore keep and do them with all thine heart and with all thy soul. Thou hast avouched the Lord this day to be thy God and to walk in his ways and to keep his statutes and his commandments and his judgments and to hearken unto his voyce And the Lord hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people as he hath promised thee and that thou shouldest keep all his commandments And to make thee high above all nations which he hath made in praise and in name and in honor and that thou maiest be an holy people unto the Lord thy God as he hath spoken So that you have there the certain meaning of that mutual relation My God and My People as to what it requires and so we see 't is but the same engagement that the other Title did import onely with an higher inforcement and ground of obligation and therefore God himself that by his Prophet Malachy c. 1. had used the other-argument of Master or Lord 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 v. 6. and Governor v. 8. Offer
own Indictment yea and his own Sentence too for our own heart condemns us saith S. John And when ever it does so Oh that we would follow it through all the gradations that brought Christ to Death and use our wickedness as he was us'd strip it from its Cloaths bare it from its fair pretexts it useth to be dress'd in Lay our anger naked from all those excuses which our provocations that either wrath or humour will be sure to think intolerable do make for it strip our Pride and Vanity from those paints and dresses which the Custom of the Age that does require and warrant strange things dawbs the sin with use our Luxuries and Intemperances so and the other greater and more thirsty dropsie that of Wealth and of unjust unworthy gains which there are richer Luxuries in too And there are none of these but have their pleas their colours which they set themselves out in to please the Appetite and to deceive the Mind all which we must strip off and then when we have laid them naked spit upon them vomit all our spleen and contumelious despite at that which hath made us so ugly in Gods sight scourge it with Austerities and buffet it as they did Christ and S. Paul did himself 1 Cor. xvi 27. And when the Body of Sin is thus tamed and weakened it will be easie then to lead it out and crucifie it A Crucifiction this that does make our Good-Friday be a day of Expiation and Atonement to us A sight which next to that of his own Son upon the Cross is the most acceptable to the Lord when he does see us execute his Enemies although they be our selves and Crucifie the dear Affections of our bosom as God did This is indeed to be conform'd unto the death of Christ. If I might have leave to go before you and to let you into the Example draw the Curtain from before the Passion I would call my Sins out drag them to behold that Prospect hale them into the Garden shew them how he was us'd there You my Extravagancies of my youth my mad follies and wild jollities come see my Saviour yonder how he swoons when guilt began to make approaches towards him and can I make my self merry with nothing else but that which made him die tickle chear and heighten my self with Agonies You my intemperate Draughts my full Bowls and the riotous Evenings I have past look yonder what a sad night do these make Christ pass look what a Cup he holds which makes him fall lower to deprecate than ever my Excesses made me lie You my lazy Luxuries Fulness of Bread and Idleness whereby I have controul'd Gods Curse and onely in the Sweat of others Faces eat my Bread and in that dew drank up the Spirits of those multitudes that toil to faintings to maintain my dissolute life see how he is forc'd to bear the whole Curse for me how the Thorns grow on his head and how he Sweats all over You my supine Devotions which do scarce afford my God a knee and less an heart not when I am deprecating an Eternity of all those Torments which kill'd Christ look yonder how he prays behold him on his Face petitioning see there how he sweats and begs You my little Malices and my vexatious Anger 's that are hot and quick as Fire it self and that do fly as high too that are up at Heaven strait for the least wrong on Earth look how he bears his how his patience seems wounded onely in a wound that fell upon his Persecutors and when one that came to apprehend him wrongfully was hurt as if the Sword of his defence had injur'd him he threatned and for ever curs'd the black deeds of that angry Weapon and made restitution of what he had not taken made his Adversary whole whom he had not hurt See how with his cruel Judges he is as a Sheep that not before his shearers onely but before his Butcher too is dumb You my Scorns and my high Stomach that will take no satisfaction but Blood and Soul for the faults of inadvertency for such as not the wrong but humour makes offences lookhow they use him they buffet and revile and spit upon him Ye my dreadful Oaths and bitter imprecations which I use to lace my speeches with or belch out against any one that does offend me in the least making the Wounds and Blood of God and other such sad words either my foolish modes of speaking or the spittings of my peevishness There you may see what 't is I play with so you may behold the Life of Christ pouring out at those Wounds which I speak so idly of and what I mingle with my sportive talk is Agony such as they that beheld afar off struck their breasts at and to see them onely was a Passion Ye my Atheisms and my Irreligion but alas you have no prospect yonder it 's but faint before you who out-do the Example whatsoever Judas and the rest did to the Man Christ Jesus you attempt on God you invade Heaven Sentence Cruicifie Divinity it self And now having shewed my Sins this Copy of themselves what they are in their own demerits when my bowels do begin to turn within me at that miserable usage which Christ underwent it will be a time to execute an act of Indignation at my self who have resetted in my bosom all these Traytors to my Saviour made those things the joy and entertainment of my life which had their hands in the Blood of my God and what a stupid sensless Soul have I that was never troubled heartily at that which did make him almost out of hope and if this be the effect of sin then it is time for me to throw it off O my Jesu sure I am I am not able to support the weight of that thou didst sink under Thou didst come to bear our sins in thy own Body on the Tree therefore in thy Body they were nailed to the Cross and then certainly I will not force and tear them thence No there I leave them and will never re-assume them more which resolution is the effect of that vertue and efficacy which is in the Cross of Christ to the crucifying of sin which is the second sense in which the Christian does profess with S. Paul I am Crucified with Christ. There are some Learned Men that when they would assign reasons sufficient to move God to lay the punishment of our iniquities upon his Son and execute that Indignation that was due to us on the most innocent most Holy Jesus give this onely that this was the highest and most signal way imaginable to discover Gods most infinite displeasure against Sin and by consequence to terrifie men from the practice of it For if any thing in Heaven or in Earth could make us fear and from henceforth commit no such evil it was surely this to see Sin sporting in the Agonies of Christ Iniquity
it self in the sackcloth and neglected rudenesses of a pious penitent sorrow The prides of this side Hell are of a different garb I 'm sure if theirs be such if they design by those just means to settle the inheritance of Heaven in their Families sure the vices of Hell may be fit patterns for our Religious performances and 't were to be desired that all Christians had this mans ardencies and flames in their affections to their Houses Yet neither can I from this one particular instance draw any general proposition concerning the kindness of that place to Sinners upon Earth although all those that make this History not Parable would give me colour for it But waving that since Christ hath so framed the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is a relation of such words as they would have spoke had they spoke on this occasion I shall take that as ground enough to apply it to the conviction of those who are so far from these Charitable designs to the Souls of others that they contrive nothing more than how to have the company of their Friends in those ways that lead to this place of Torment prevail with them to join in sinning and shew a Vice how to insinuate into them The kindnesses of our man here in the flames were divine God like Charities compared to these Our Saviour says Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones for I say unto you that in Heaven their Angels do always behold the Face of my Father which is in Heaven Matth. xviii 10. Which one expounds if we neglect to do what is in our power to preserve the meanest Christians from Vice and sleight their sinning their Tutelary Angels that have continual recourse to God and are high in his favour will make complaints of us in their behalf at least they will if we offend them and any action of ours prove an occasion of their sins And if a favourite of Heaven shall accuse us to the Lord for that Then how will he complain of us when we tempt when he shall have to say against us that we have ensnared and drawn such a Soul into a Custom that will ruin it eternally and when he shall bring against us an instance out of Hell here and the kindnesses of one among the Devils shall come in Judgment against us where we see the Rich Man thought not of his own condemnation so much he thought of the averting that of his Brethren We might suppose a man in his condition could not consider any thing but his own Tortures O yes to preserve others from them yet when the man in Hell does so the men on Earth do think of nothing more than to entice others into them And is it not a strange Age then when to tempt is the onely mode of kindness and men do scarcely know how to express themselves civil to their Friends but by pressing them to sin and so be sick with them as if this were the gentile use of Societies to season Youth into good Company and bring the Fashionable Vices into their acquaintance And 't is well if they stay there it happens so that Parts and Wit Faculties and Acquisitions do ingratiate men into these treacherous kindnesses and qualifie them for the desires and friendships of such persons as entertain them by softning them into loosness and then into prophaneness debauch their manners and then their Principles teach them to sport themselves with Vice and then with Holy things and after with Religion it self which is a greater Luxury than that their Riots treat their Appetites withal the Luxury of Wit And thus they educate them into Atheism and these familiar Devils are call'd Acquaintances and Friends And indeed the Companions in sin a man would think should be dear Friends such as pour an heart into one another in their common Cups shed Souls in their Lusts are friends to one another even in ruin and love to their own Condemnation are kind beyond the Altar-flames even to those everlasting fires such communications certainly cement affections so that nothing can divide them And let them do so but Lord send me the kindness of Hell rather one that will be a friend like this man in his Torments that with unsatisfied cares minded the reformation of his Friends Nay Father Abraham but if one went unto them from the dead they will repent which brings me to the Choice the second thing If a Ghost should indeed appear to any of us in the midst of our Commissions it would certainly hurry us from our Enjoyments and there are no such ties unions by which the advantages of sin do hold us fix'd and jointed to them but the shake and tremble we should then be in would loosen and dissolve them all and make us uncling from them if we may believe discourses that tell us such a sight is able to startle a man however he be fix'd by his most close Devotions for what the Jews were wont to say we shall die because we have seen an Angel of the Lord from Heaven most men do fear if they should see the Spirit of a dead man from the Earth Indeed the affrights which men do usually conceive at the meer apprehension of such an Apparition do probably arise from a surprise in being minded hastily of such a state for which they are not then prepared so as they would wish or hope to be to which they think that is a Call for we shall die said the Jews But not to ask the reason of this now but find the reason why our Rich Man thinks when Moses and the Prophets cannot make a man repent such a Ghost should We have it in ver 28 they do but discourse to us but one from the dead could testifie he could bear witness that it is so as they say speak his own sight and knowledg and therefore though they hear not Moses and the Prophets yet if one went unto them from the dead they will repent For First One from the Dead could testifie that when we die we do not cease to be and he would make appear that our departing hence is not annihilation and so would dash the hopes of Epicures such as I was and I may fear they are who as they live like Beasts do think to die so too and who are rational in this alone that they desire to be but Animal And all the rest of men whether worldly or sensual that enclose their desires and enjoyments within this life and above all the Atheist that dares not look beyond it all these would be convinc'd by such an evidence Indeed this would take away the main encouragement of all ungodliness which upon little reasonings how thin soever that there 's no life after this does quicken and secure it self Wisd. 2. and therefore every Sect of men that did prescribe Morality did teach an after life nothing was more believ'd among the Heathen Their Tribunal below where three most
of this World can entertain and slatter Thus they did and thus they did prevail For the first Ages of the Church were but so many Centuries of Men that entertained Christianity with the Contempt of the World and Life it self They knew that to put themselves into Christ's Service and Religion was the same thing as to set themselves aside for spoil and Rapine dedicate themselves to Poverty and Scorn to Racks and Tortutes and to Butchery it self Yet they enter'd into it did not onely renounce the Pomps and Vanities of the World in their Baptism when they were new born to God quench their affections to them in those waters but renounc'd them even to the death drown'd their affections to them in their own heart bloud ran from the World into flames and fled faster from the satisfactions and delights of Earth than those flames mounted to their own Element and Sphere In fine they became Christians so as if they had been Candidates of death and onely made themselves Apprentises of Martyrdom Now if it were not possible it should be otherwise than thus as the World stood then it was necessary that the Captain of Salvation should lead on go before this noble Army of Martyrs if it were necessary that they must leave all who followed him then it was not possible that he should be here in a state of Plenty Splendor and Magnificence but of Poverty and Meanness giving an Example to his followers whose condition could not but be such To give which Example was it seems of more necessity than by being born in Royal Purple to prevent the fall of many in Israel who for his condition despis'd him I am not so vain as to hope to persuade any from this great Example here to be in love with Poverty and with a low condition by telling them this Birth hath consecrated meanness that we must not scorn those things in which our God did chuse to be install'd that Humility is it seems the proper dress for Divinity to shew it self in But when we consider if this Child had been born in a condition of Wealth and Greatness the whole Nation of the Jews would have received him whereas that he chose prov'd an occasion of falling to them Yet that God should think it much more necessary to give us an Example of Humility and Poverty below expression then it was necessary that that whole Nation should believe on him When of all the Virgins of that People which God had to chuse one out to overshadow and impregnate with the Son of God he chose one of the meanest for he hath regarded the low estate of his Handmaiden said she and one of the poorest too for she had not a Lamb to offer but was purified in formâ pauperis When he would reveal this Birth also that was to be the joy of the whole Earth he did it to none of that Nation but a few poor Shepherds who were labouring with midnight-watches over their Flocks none of all the great Ones that were then at ease and lay in softs was thought worthy to have notice of it Lastly when the Angels make that poverty a sign to know the Saviour by This shall be a sign unto you You shall â—ind the Babe wrap'd in swadling cloaths and laid in a Manger As if the Manger were sufficient testimony to the Christ and this great meanness were an evidence 't was the Messiah From all these together we may easily discover what the temper is of Christianity You see here the Institution of your Order the First born of the Sons of God born but to such an Estate And what is so original to the Religion what was born and bred with it cannot easily be divided from it Generatio Christi generatio populi Christiani natalis Capitis natalis Corporis The Body and the Head have the same kind of Birth and to that which Christ is born to Christianity it self is born Neither can it ever otherwise be entertain'd in the heart of any man but with poverty of spirit with neglect of all the scorns and the Calamities yea and all the gaudy glories of this World with that unconcernedness for it that indifference and simple innocence that is in Children He that receiveth not the Kingdom of Heaven as a little Child cannot enter thereinto saith Christ True indeed when the Son of God must become a little Child that he may open the Kingdom of Heaven to Believers Would you see what Humility and lowliness becomes a Christian see the God of Christians on his Royal Birth-day A Person of the Trinity that he may take upon him our Religion takes upon him the form of a Servant and He that was equal with God must make himself of no Reputation if he mean to settle and be the Example of our Profession And then when will our high spirits those that value an huâ—â— of Reputation more than their own Souls and set it above God himself when will these become Christian Is there any more uncouth or detestable thing in the whole World than to see the great Lord of Heaven become a little one and Man that 's less than nothing magnifie himself to see Divinity empty it self and him that is a Worm swell and be puffed up to see the Son of God descend from Heaven and the Sons of Earth climbing on heaps of Wealth which they pile up as the old Gyants did Hills upon Hills as if they would invade that throne which he came down from and as if they also were set for the fall of many throwing every body down that but stands near them either in their way or prospect Would you see how little value all those interests that recommend this World are of to Christians see the Founder of them chuse the opposite extream Not onely to discover to us that these are no accessions to felicity This Child was the Son of God without them But to let us see that we must make the same choice too when ever any of those interests affront a Duty or solicite a good Conscience whensoever indeed they are not reconcilable with Innocence Sincerity and Ingenuity It was the want of this disposition and temper that did make the Jews reject our Saviour They could not endure to think of a Religion that would not promise them to fill their basket and to set them high above all Nations of the Earth and whose appearance was not great and splendid but look'd thin and maigre and whose Principles and Promises shew'd like the Curses of their Law call'd for sufferings and did promise persecution therefore they rejected him that brought it and so this Child was for the fall of many in Israel 2. This Child is for the fall of many by the holiness of his Religion while the strictness of the Doctrine which he brings by reason of mens great propensions to wickedness and their inability to resolve against their Vices
apparent Miracle to all Jerusalem the suns prodigious Eclipse when it was impossible by nature he should be eclips'd it being then full moon was so to the whole Hemisphere It serves the use I am to make of this that 't is here recorded but withal Heathen Historians and Chronologes bear witness to it for when they relate that in the 4th year of the 202 Olympiad the year that is assign'd to Christ's death there was such a great Eclipse as never had bin day at noon turn'd into night tâ—e stars appearing and earthquakes as far as Bythyma since 't is apparent by the motions of the Heavens and the calculations of Astronomy there could be none such then according to the course of nature it must be this the â—ospel speaks of But beyond all this 't is registred here that according as he had foretold he rais'd himself from death the 3d day yea and many bodies of the Saints that had bin buried long it may be some of them he rais'd with him That notwithstanding all the art and treachery of the Cheif Priests to conceal it yet that very day he appear'd First to Mary Magdalen 2dly the Women 3dly Peter 4thly to them that went to Emaus last of all on that day to the eleven except Thomas being seen and handled by and eating with them 6thly eight daies after to the same eleven with Thomas 7thly at the sea of Galilee appearing in a miracle of fishes 8thly to all his Disciples and 500 Brethren more in Galilee then to James then to all his Apostles promising them the Holy Ghost and lastly all of them beholding he ascended into Heaven and ten daies after as he promised sent the Holy Ghost upon them in the shape of fiery tongues so as that they spoke all Languages immediatly to the amazement of the Jews of every Nation under Heaven to which they were scatter'd that the Miracle might spread as far Now if all this be true he that did these must have communication with a power above all that we account the powers of Nature such an one most certainly as can perform whatsoever he in this book promises inflict what e're he threatens such as is Divine And since he wrought all these on purpose to evince he came commission'd from that Divine power brought these Miracles as seals of that commission that we might believe him therfore whatsoever he delivers must be embrac't by us as we hope for those blessed rewards that he proposeth and on pain of those eternal torments if we do not of both which it is not possible to doubt if these accounts be true 2d ly Since the most and greatest of these must be don but once he could not be incarnated and born and live and preach and dye and rise again and go to Heaven every day of every age in every place to convince every man by his own senses to all those that did not see the matter of fact therefore faith of all these must be made by witnesses And 3dly If we can be sure the witnesses that do assert a fact understand it exactly if the things be palpable and they must certainly know whether they were really don or no and if we can be sure too that they are sincere will not affirm that which they do not know and do not lye their testimony of it must be most infallible because it is impossible such witnesses can be deceiv'd or will deceive 4thly The witnesses in this case the Apostles and the 70 Disciples for I 'le name no more must needs know most perfectly for they not only saw the Miracles but were instruments parties in some of them sent to cure diseases cast out Devils and knew whether all this were in earnest And most certainly they saw as all the Jews did too Christ crucified his heart pierc'd with a spear and his body buried and whether they did see him risen handle him eat with him they knew And if they might mistake in his Ascention yet the fiery tongues if such did light on them they must needs see and whether they themselves who spoke no Languages could then speak Tongues it cannot be but they must know In these there is no possibility they could err unless they did it wilfully but then 't is as impossible that they could do it wilfully if they were sincere and honest such as would not lye Now that they were such I might urge their simplicity and openness without disguise not covering their own errors men who seem'd to live as well as preach against all artifice and to have no design on any thing but the amendment and salvation of mankind For he that can suppose it possible that they were otherwise men of art and finess that they contriv'd the story must needs know First that such would not seal their falsehood with their blood design no recompense to all their travels but contemt and hatred persecutions prisons whippings wounds and death to be the scum and the off-scouring of the world lay out their lives against their conscience to preach that Jesus who did only call them out to be a spectacle to all the world just such as Malefactors when expos'd to fight with and to be devour'd of wild beasts Their sufferings are too known to stay upon St Pauls own catalogue of his for five whole verses 2 Cor. 11. is such that to sustain them only for this end to put a cheat on mankind count a so laborious vext torn miserable life and an infamous death gain so the fable might be beleiv'd to think they could do this is sure as great a madness as to do it But yet I will suppose that possible that those who wove the fable pleas'd themselves so infinitly with the expectations of imposing on mankind as that those hopes could make misery and death it self look lovely to them But Then 2dly that all and every of them should be of that mind that amongst so many that bare witness of Christs Miracles and resurrection not a man should discover the cheat that when their persecutors did with arts of torment as it were examin them upon the rack they should work not one single confession out of them that no ones courage should be broke nor have a qualm so far as to acknowledg how it was disclose the plot lay open the confederacy the whole mystery and the contrivance of it When of twelve Disciples one was so false to betray his Masters person at a vile rate yet that all of them and many more in a feign'd story of his Miracles should be so true to one another that no engin of mans cruelty ever could screw out the sacret not one should betray the forgery and be a Judas where he ought to be no not that Judas whose concern it was whose treason to his Master had bin justified had he bin an impostor yet that he should stir no least suspicion
countenance from Scripture and for want of better they are therefore forc'd to interpret those words I will lift up mine eyes unto the Hills thus I will invocate the Saints Now will any say 't is the obscurity of this Scripture that does hinder Protestants from seeing the bright evidence of this argument and not rather that it is the weak foundation of this practice that does make the Romanists seek to build it on those mountains So among those several texts which in the 2d Nicen general Council are produc't for adoration of the images of Christ and of the Saints and are expounded to evince it none is plainer then that which I produced now from Bellarmin I shall give one or two examples from the Psalms Thy face Lord will I seek and Lord list thou up the light of thy countenance upon us and again the rich among the people shall entreat thy face therefore David thought the picture of Christ was to be ador'd It is their own conclusion from these texts and they have no better for it Yet they saw the doctrine in these so apparently as that with great opposition to great Councils and more bood-shed I think then yet ever any doctrine hath bin setled with it was impos'd Yea more the first experiment of the Popes power over Soveraign Princes was on the account of this same doctrine when for opposing Image-worship Gregory the 26d excommunicated the Greek Emperour Pope Constantine for the same cause indeed had 14 years before don so to Philippicus but he did not go much further whereas Gregory absolv'd the Emperor's subjects in the Roman Dutchy from their Allegiance commanded them not to pay him any tribute nor in any wise obey him whereupon they kill'd their Governors and swore obedience to the Pope And this was the beginning of St Peters patrimony and it was thus gotten by this doctrine which they saw so cleerly in these Scriptures when they cannot see the contrary in those plain words Thou shalt not make to thy self any whether Graven image or idol it matters not since it follows nor the likeness of any thing which is heaven above c. nor in those where God takes care expresly that himself be not worship't by an image Deut. 4. 15. and then judg if 't is obscurity or plainness that makes them see or not see doctrines in the Scripture rather if it be not meerly the necessity of prejudice So again we differ in the meaning of the 14th chap. of the 1. of Cor. where we think St Paul asserts and argues yea and chides against all service in an unknown tongue in the public assemblies saying all must be don there so as it may be understood and to edification But that which is perform'd there in an unknown tongue does not edify says he there yet to justify this practice they must make it have a different meaning which no Fathers countenance but which several expound as we do yea and diverse of their own do so too particularly their Pope John 8th in his 247th Epistle writing expresly on that Subject Once more so their half communion that it may be reconcil'd with that express command Drink yee all of it and this do obliges them to find another meaning drink yee all must be directed to them only as Apostles and do this must signify consecrate the Elements altho St Paul apply it most directly to the drinking and the drinking to his lay Corinthians Nor dare they say in truth it means the other for St Paul when he does say do this did not intend to make his Lay Corinthians male and female all priests and give them power to consecrate The words are plain there 's nothing in the text obscure that makes us differ but the practice had by little and little grown upon them till it became Universal and so grew into their faith and then since they believe they cannot erre they must expound Christ's words so as they may not contradict their practise because that would overthrow their Principle But the Church that builds upon no Principle but Gods word can have no temtation to pervert or strain it since what ever does appear to be the meaning of it that their Principle must needs engage them to believe And therefore if it say This is my body we believe it if it saies too after consecration it is bread we believe that also and because it therefore says 't is both we so believe it one that it may be the other which since both say it is impossible that it can be substantially neither hath God in express words told us which it is substantially therefore seeing when he calls it body he is instituting his Sacrament there 's all reason in the world he should mean Sacramentally since 't is the most proper meaning and by consequence 't is bread substantially as all waies of judging in the world assure us Here 's no stress on Scripture as there is no Principle to serve when as the other makes us differ not in Scripture only even where 't is plainest but tradition too For the most express and evident sayings of the primitive Fathers are on every head of difference as much the matter of contention as the texts of Scripture are as it were easy to demonstrate if that were my business So that it is meer deceit to lay our quarrels to defects in Gods word and particularly to its obscurity which a man would think were evident enough from this that Children knew it The last thing I am to speak to And that from a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus I cannot pass this that it is St Chrysostomes observation that Timothy was nurst up in the Scriptures from his childhood Yea and since his Father was an Heathen he must have bin taught them by his Grandmother Lois and his Mother Eunice whose faith St Paul speaks of 2 Tim. 1. 5. Children therefore then and Women and they sure are Laics read the Bible Yea and since they knew it they must read it in a language which they understood and we know where that is unlawful now If we consider the first prohibition that appear'd in that Church with Synodical autority against such mens having any Bibles in their own tongue we shall find it was immediatly upon the preaching of the Waldenses one of whose doctrines it was that the Scripture was the rule to judg of faith by so that whatsoever was not consonant to that must be refus'd This they preach't in France and over Europe in the latter end of the twelf Century and that Council which forbad their having of the Bible we find lately put forth by the frier D. Achery as held at Tholouse in the beginning of the 13th Century It seems they apprehended then their doctrines hardly
and cheerfully accept this punishment of their iniquity this return of their demerits 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and since it is on their account namely thro their demerit that she is so low since they are sensible themselves did make her fall into the dust they cannot chuse but be more tender love and pity her the more and be more willing to do what they can to raise her up pulverem ejus evehere cupiunt In the words there is an holy confidence that God will grant the thing they long for mercy to Sion thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Sion 2dly A Reason of that Confidence for the time of shewing favor the appointed time for it is come 3 dy A ground for that because thy servants think upon her stones and it pitieth them to see her in the dust In handling which I shall consider 1. The Stones of Sion and those in the dust or at least in great danger of impendent ruin 2. That tho God is not alwais minded to succor his own Sion yet he hath set appointed times for that 3. That when the Sons of Sion are affected towards her as the Text expresses then is usually Gods season for deliverance his time of mercy and of shewing favor then the appointed time for it is come and then we may take holy confidence and in full assurance of faith say Thou shalt arise First of the Stones of Sion and those in the dust Sion was we know either the City of the King where there was the seat of Judgment the thrones of the house of David Psalm 122. 5. or else it was the mountain of the Lords house and so the stones of Sion are either the stones of the seat of Judgment of the Throne in the dust or the stones of the Lords house the Sanctuary there Both these therefore might be treated of and I shall speak to both but more particularly to the later And those stones may be either taken naturally as they are the stones of a material Sanctuary or else mystically in that sense they often have in Scripture which sais we as lively stones are all built up a Spiritual house 1 Pet. 2. 5. 1. The stones of Sion the material Sanctuary in the dust the Psalmist thought an object for so much pity that some Psalms are but the Liturgies of his pious resentments upon that occasion Psalm 74. is full herein Think upon Mount Sion where thou hast dwelt lift up thy feet that thou maist utterly destroy every Enimy which hath don evil in thy Sanctuary Thine Adversaries roar in the midst of thy Congregations and set up their banners for tokens they break down all the carved work thereof with axes and hammers they have set fire upon thy holy Places and have defil'd the dwelling place of thy name even unto the ground yea they said in their hearts let us make havock of them all together It is not many years since this was our complaint concerning both the house of God and of the King the Church and Monarchy as if the life of one were bound up in the others life We saw Gods honor at least the place where his honor dwelt laid in the dust nor was it suffer'd to stay there the stones of Sion not allow'd to find a place for burial in that dust which is the common grave the Church it self had not a Monument nor the tombs a sepulcher but the very ruins were disquieted the rubbish troubled and the stones and dust suffer'd a deportation us'd as if men thought with them to build a Sanctuary for those Sins that demolisht them and make a Refuge for their Sacrilege 'T is true to many this seem'd no sad spectacle nor would it now to such as think any occasional room of the lowest name and usage might do as well for the uses of Gods service Strange when there was never a Religion in the world that did acknowledg any sort of God but would allot some place peculiar to his worship with them whose deities were Sicknesses the Feaver had its Temple Yea and stranger in a world that does devote set rooms to every use of nature of convenience and of pleasure the recreations have a place made for them and the meanest instruments of sport have so meals have one and feasts have another luxury hath its offices State hath many chambers antichambers and withdrawing places merely because there may be so many rooms of which there is no use for that is Pomp if God should not have one too for all uses that relate to him to meet us in with all his train of Angels and to bless us and to entertain us with the food of heaven with himself But whether men desire it so again yet so it lately was and when his table was remov'd his entertainment too was laid aside and the Sacrament become as desolate as the Altar Gods houses his mysteries too in the dust God did arise I cannot chuse but see that we have no such object of resentment now but how much farther off it is from being thus at this time and how much less apposite to our condition at this present the discourse is so much greater demonstration of what my Text affirms that when Gods honor is affronted thus and his house vilified and ruin'd then the time for favor the appointed time is come and when the stones of Sion are thrown down into the dust his Servants humbled too into the dust with sorrow and resentments then God shall arise for so he did It was so also if we look upon the Stones of Sion in their mystical and figurative sense Now altho every sincere Christian every one in whom on the foundation of a true sound faith an holy life is superstructed be not onely in St Peters words a lively stone but in St Pauls a Temple yet more properly the whole community of Christians is in Scripture represented to us as the body of a building St Peter tells them ye are built up a Spiritual house 1 Pet. 2. 5. and St Paul saith built upon the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone in whom all the building fitly fram'd together groweth up a holy Temple in the Lord in whom ye also are built up together for an habitation of God thro the Spirit Eph. 2. 20 21 22. The ends for which 't is call'd so seem indeed more lively represented in the parallel resemblance of a natural body Rom. 12. 1 Cor. 12. 12. and that body the body of Christ Eph. 1. 23. or that of which he is the head Col. 1. 18. from which all Christians do receive their life and motion their increase and strength no otherwise then as they are united and tied by joints and nerves to one another and that head Eph. 4. 16. and have all one Spirit also 1 Cor. 12. 13. Of all which expressions as one end is to enforce such unity in the profession
accompanied with foolish discourses very oft prophane and with swearings idle and bitter jestings at those which are present and detractions of those that are absent whence proceed quarrels and the like they are also full of apishness in the process of them below the gravity of common sense much more of a Christian a member of the Son of God we should find these I say to jarr with more than one of the former requisites of recreation Some other sorts are oft the instruments of infinite vanity the great engines of lasciviousness and lust Wanton Songs and unchast books these very things they put a fucus upon sin and they dress iniquity with all the adulteries of possible art that they may the more enticingly prostitute her here are young souls ensnar'd by these to whom the very description of sin is invitation and conquest Do not sit by a woman that is a Singer saith the wise Son of Syrach and if innocent beauty be irresistible temtation if it do at once assault both at the eyes and ears charge the soul with charms at both those ports how then shall the very pleasure of that temtation the wantoness it self be resistible when it comes drest with harmony when it do's melt the imagination into the soft looseness of its own smooth airs and gentle warblings How shall they escape when they see sin cloath'd in all the flowers of Rhetorick as books present when they see the example of men temting to it and learn the method when they see it acted and the delight of it exprest with all the advantages of sinful art with very prurient words and committing language Some others as great gaming 's not that I condemn the thing in general when they are us'd with much appetite either of the sport it self or of the price they become immoderate too much time is spent upon them And Causinus saith did a man commit no other sin but conversing a good part of his life with kings and knaves of cards being invited to the conversation of Angels yet were it no small offence But besides that they are the nurses of anger they dictate ill language and they are the apprentiship of cursings oaths and blasphemy so that if you put all these together you shall find that by all these recreations we do but bait and temt our sins we do the Devils work against our selves and we that know our strength is not miraculous that find how oft and easily we fall are bound in conscience to avoid those things which we find are occasions to us of sin and if you would instead of those impressions which the vain pleasures of those recreations do leave upon your desires entertain and heighten these few considerations to your selves it might a little bridle 1. A Christian is a mourner my blacks my dark sad veils are are spread over me and should I see a woman in that habit and while it was new go to revels sing obscene catches and spend much of her time in gaming 's what would I think of that woman Why even the same strumpet lewd thing is my soul that in the days of her mourning does thus luxuriate And is it not a sad thing that a Christian a very serious name that a man that hath the delights of heaven to refresh himself with that hath God to converse with should not yet know how to pass his time without these lighter vain follies which yet he would be loath to do before a man of quality and discretion yea that he cannot refresh himself without sinful delights that he must go take a walk in Hell to divert himself for fear he nauseate upon Heaven 2. All the holy Angels that so great cloud of witnesses they look upon me acting these my impertinent ridiculous follies and it do's break off their melody they mourn to see me a Christian a man that should be one of them thus foolishly passing my irrevocable time idly spending my hours of repentance and vainly throwing away my possibilities of Heaven and doing this so unseemly destroying my self with lightness and to no purpose 3. How many now do mourn in their state and expectation of miseries and with sad yellings bewail their lost hours and the sins which their lightnesses and recreations drew upon them the curses and ill language of their gaming the fornications of the lusts which their songs and dances did provoke them to and the intemperance of their revels and the idle words of all of them in general of which yet our Savior saith we must give an account and have I not reason to fear the same expectations and woes and then had I not better be a little more serious and grave put on the strictness and severity of a Christian here unless I can resolve so I may but sing wantonly here not to care tho I howl in hell eternally so I may but revel and drink here let the never-dying worm for ever gnaw upon the very marrow of my soul and Gods fury drink up my spirits and my self for ever suffer the perpetual thirst of feavor dwell with everlasting burnings and rather than I will put on black and be a mourner here I will be thrust into the land of utter darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth But I will now descend to the particular exercises of this duty of which I will name but two the first is to bewail and mourn for the calamities that befal or are impendent on a Church and State or any member of it either others or our selves without considering whether this be like to be our case or no I onely put it in the general as a duty and a particular exercise of this in the text whensoever any judgment do befal a Land to be truly humbled and sadded by it and to compassionate any one that is afflicted by it and as St Paul bid us Rom. 12. 15. to weep with them that weep Now to move us to this he that is not affected he declares plainly that he is no fellow-member of him whose sufferings he does not partake in nor a part of that Church in whose judgment he is not humbled for saith St Paul if one member be afflicted all the rest suffer with it and experience saith it too and then shall the body of our Head Christ a whole Church be wounded and maim'd have its last death-pangs upon it lie strugling and gasping and we unmov'd at this have the same full delights and tast them too feel no gripes no sympathy of convulsions and shall we yet think our selves members of that body of Christ Oh no we hold not of the Head our Savior we have no communion with him for if we had we should have communion of sufferings a fellow-sense There is no such convincing sign as this in the world this flowing from the very nature of greif for greif cannot properly be but for an evil that is some way annext and proper to
confidence to present a Strumpet to him for a Bride and care not that he find us Virgins at the Marriage of the Lamb Or can we expect any thing but an eternal divorce from him whom we have thus us'd I have given you some expressions by which you may judg what kind of Purity we are to aim at I shall come a little nearer that of the Text by one or two more 3. Purity and Holiness are exprest in Scripture by White Raiment Revel 3. 18. a White Robe c. 7. 9. for the Fine Linnen is the Righteousness of the Saints as it there follows Now the reason of this compellation is it is call'd Raiment because it is to cover our nakedness and our shame for our sins are accounted such In Gods eyes every wicked person is the same thing as a deform'd creature with his nakedness shamefully uncover'd and prostituted This is clear out of those places Rev. 16. 15. least he walk naked and they see his shame Rev. 3. 18. Buy of me White Raiments that thou maist be cloth'd and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear For that it is call'd Raiment and White Linnen because of the Purity White is the purest color the least spot or stain is immediatly discern'd upon it and if it be upon Fine Linnen makes it presently cast off by them whose glory it is to be neat and clean it shall no more come neer them till the spots and stains be wash'd off And Oh that we had but this pride for our souls that we were but as ambitious to have our immortal Spirits neatly deckt when we appear in Gods sight as our putrifying carkasses when we go in company that when we slip or fall and when a spot does stain this Linnen even of Righteousness that we would instantly wash it in our tears and the bloud of Christ the laver that is prepar'd for this Linnen for they made their garments white in the bloud of the Lamb and that for the time to come we would be but as careful of keeping it neat of preserving it from stains as we are of finer linnen And God himself makes use of our pride in that kind to be our exprobation Jer. 2. 32. Can a maid forget her ornaments or a bride her attire yet my people have forgotten me dayes without number And sure I am the expression of Fine Linnen aims at a great degree of Purity when it calls that careful conscionable duty the walking worthy of the Christian calling whereunto we are called even the walking diligently in all the Commandments of God calls I say this Righteousness fine linnen clean and white for it is the very expression of that pure clothing that we shall be drest in at our wedding with Christ it is our spousal linnen when we go to meet our Bridegroom Rev. 19. 7 8. The Marriage of the Lamb is come and his wife hath made her self ready and to her was granted that she should be arraied in fine linnen clean and white to teach us that we should be always as careful of our ways always drest in mind and so prepar'd as if we were to go and meet our Bridegroom Yea it is the expression of that pure Clothing which we shall be cloth'd in Heaven with where we shall be pure as God is pure perfectly holy Rev. 3. 4. Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments and they shall walk with me in white to let us see that this expression by which our Righteousness is call'd white clothing requires us to have our conversation in Heaven even while we are here to make our lives here but as a preparation to that Marriage-feast to be but the time of dressing our selves before hand For we must array our selves in fine linnen the very same dress in which we must walk with Christ for they shall walk with me in white saith he yea 't is his own dress also for the garments of Christ Moses and Elias in the Mount was white shining Raiment Holiness is transfiguration upon earth so that this compellation from our daily diligence in the cleansing and the keeping of our linnen does direct us to the same diligence in neatness of our souls and requires of us such a Purity as with which God is pure 4. Purity it is called light as also sin is called darkness Rom. 13. 12. Put ye off the works of darkness and put ye on the armor of light and Matth. 5. 16. Let your light so shine before men and that very fitly because nothing so pure as light so clear as shine and noon-day it is the most pure of all visible creatures it is not possible so much as to sully shine or to spot the light the foulest dung-hill that it can shine upon does not at all defile it you may put out the day but you cannot stain it And truly no expression comes near the Purity of Light for it is so clean as it is set to express the very Holiness of God himself 1 John 1. 5. This then is the message which we have heard of him and declare unto you that God is Light and in him is no darkness at all And therefore while our Piety is called light it teaches us that we labor to be pure as he is pure the kind of Purity which how it is St James hath set down c. 1. 17. where he explains this very expression Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variableness neither shadow of turning They are Astronomical expressions belonging to the Lights of Heaven God is not like them that change oft not like the Moon that hath its tides of light now full and then dark nor is he like the Sun he hath not any 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Tropick who when he is come near to us and makes summer then turns back again and goes fromward us neither must our Light have any such our Holiness must have no Solstice our Devotion sometimes mounting with a bright and holy flame as it would breath up into Heaven it self sometimes fainting and sinking as it would expire and die now our endeavors strong and violent we strive pant and climb afterwards we slacken and go backwards Neither yet a waning Moon Holiness ebbing and flowing now increasing then again decaying which tho it be sometimes glorious with a full shine is yet otherwhile the darkest part of the whole Firmament It must not be so with our Piety sometimes at a Sermon or before a Communion or upon some sharp rebuke of Gods in an affliction cross or other occasion very high and shining but then again at another time like the New-Moon no light at all the Devotion is sunk and extinct and our vanities possess us wholy No fits of Purity Paroxysms of Piety that come like the heats of agues now and then but with great intervals
cannot hope yet will in despite of that knowledge hope and do notwithstanding all think to come to Heaven Certainly while a man goes on to sin to hope for mercy is presumtion in him and so another sin added to the rest yea 't is a disbelieving of Gods threatning an affronting him in his veracity an imputing falsehood to his menaces and a putting himself almost out of the possibility of repenting For he that do's hope for Salvation in the condition he is in hath no temtation at all to change his condition but is likely to go on confidently and hopingly to eternal perdition it were a mercy to such a person to be struck into despair that he may be taught the wretchedness of his condition and hurried out it in which as long as he does hope there 's no reason to expect that he should leave it but by becoming hopeless in it may be frighted from it and the gates of hell is the onely probable means to let that man into the way of heaven O the Christians Hope it is the hope of righteousness Gal. 5. 5. Nothing else but holiness and righteousness can give a man ground for it And certainly my Brethren it is such a Hope as would countervail the trouble and the pains of reforming our selves What will not a man undertake which he can but hope to go thro and is assur'd of a large recompence for doing and surely Heaven is worth the endeavouring after and that blessed Hope worth purifying our selves for For it was worth the death of the Son of God Christ was content to be crucified to compass it and cannot we be content to purify our selves for it Will you see what hope can perswade a man to do See Abraham to whom God promis'd onely the Land of Canaan and that not to be enjoied by himself nor by his Son but onely by the Posterity of Isaac his Son and his Promises were further off than Heaven yet after that before Isaac had any Posterity when he was but a child God commands him to go and sacrifice his Isaac and go to cut off all hopes of ever enjoying it yet against hope he believed in hope saith St Paul and he that had receiv'd the promises of God offer'd up his onely begotten Son Heb. 11. 17. i. e. having entertain'd and embrac'd the promise of a numerous seed and people that should spring from him and having no other Son but this from whom they should spring nor possibility in nature nor promise above nature that he should have any more children but a plain affirmation that this People to whom the Promises belong'd should come from Isaac yet having once truly hop'd that God would perform his promise he absolutely obei'd that command of Gods resolving to kill the Son on whom all those Promises depended And now my Brethren there is no such puzles in our Hope nor no such hard thing requir'd of us no Sons to be sacrific'd but onely a few vices no doubtful perplext promise of a Canaan onely but plain assured Heaven and then had we but the least degree of his hope as we have infinitely greater reason how would we sacrifice any thing to Christs command how would we offer up a lust and think a sin a good exchange for the hopes of Heaven and he that had this hope would certainly purify himself as he is pure It is but now the Church hath celebrated the Ascension of our Lord Christ and the great Proposal of the Angels Acts 1. 11. to all those Disciples that beheld him going up to Heaven and gaz'd after him so wishly was that they should see him come again Now the particular comfort of that coming so again is when he shall appear we shall be like him 1 John 3. 2. and the hopes of being so St John thought a sufficient motive to set every man on purifying and that himself for this lustration cannot be perform'd by Proxy and be remitted to another for even our Saviors Righteousness will not be imputed unto those who will have none besides he redeems and saves none but them whom he has sav'd from their sins Reveal O Blessed God some of thy Glory which thou hast prepar'd for them that love thee some of that blessed Hope of a Christian calling to our hearts that it may stir our desires and longings and heat them into hopes and that we having the hopes of seeing thee may purify and may escape that day of fire which shall melt the Heavens and purge those glorious bodies which are not pure in thy sight Behold O God we tremble with horror of thy dreadful Judgment The Angels are not clean in thy sight and the Seraphims cover their faces what then shall become of us vile filthy Sinners whose daily impurities have so defil'd both our souls and bodies that we are but one mass and heap of uncleaness Blessed God we know that as long as we continue such we cannot hope to see thee in mercy we know that if we repent not we shall all perish we know that if we live after the Flesh we shall die eternally we know that neither fornicators c. shall have any inheritance O let this knowledg apply it self to our hearts and consciences that the terrors of it may fright us from the vain hopes that we do cherish of being happy notwithstanding we go on in our sinful courses for alas those hopes will perish with us and that those terrors may so work on us to set upon amendment Cleanse and wash we pray thee all our impurities in the bloud of thy Son bury them in his grave never to rise hereafter and melt our hearts into repentant tears that so our hearts may become purer O thou that didst cleanse us with thy bloud baptize us with thy Holy Spirit and with fire that it may purge out our dross and filthiness and be an earnest to us of that glorious Purity which we shall have in Heaven seeing thee as thou art and becoming like thee where we shall sin no more but for ever serve and praise thee SERMON VIII OF THE HIDING PLACE From Indignation Isaiah 26. 20. Come my people enter thou into thy chambers and shut thy doors about thee hide thy self as it were for a little moment until the Indignation be overpast UPON the Eve as it were and the Vigils to the day of Indignation when we cannot but look upon it as ready to be pour'd out on us in a full stream when we see destruction make close approches to us work round about us and punishment like our sin lies at the very door ready either to enter in upon us or seize us if we offer to come out to offer at a way to prevent all this that should discover to you a safe retreat from those threats that pursue this Nation in general open a shelter from the present storm cannot chuse but be seasonable yet such a thing the Text do's venture at
full plenties of his Fathers house the unsatisfying transient delights of sin that have filthy toil and noisom drudgery in the gaining and instantly when they are gain'd put out themselves are gon and leave nothing but snuff or stink behind offence onely and trouble of mind compar'd those with the gladsom expectations of blessedness with the comforts that are in all the promises of Christ and the feasts of our Fathers mansion Gods entertainments the glories he hath studied for those that love him and being satisfied these are the better pleasure resolves to leave the swine his unclean beastly courses and betake himself to his Father he shall then find this fiction experience and God outdoing all the Parables of himself He will run to meet him that do's but set himself to come in earnest not onely as the proposition saies accept his service but prevent it and however miserable poor and naked he do meet him as the Sinner is Rev. 3. 17. he calls for the best Robe even the Robe of Christ's Righteousness to put upon him and puts a Ring upon his finger he does espouse him to his Son he kills the fatted calf makes ready the supper of the Lamb for him and it is the poor repenting Sinner's wedding supper with his Savior It is a chapter full of comfort to the Penitent and hath a greater advance for it than this story v. 3 4. The Sinner he hath straied into by-paths gon away from the Shepherd of his soul is a lost sheep but yet when he is gon his farthest and is in his mazes knows not which way to betake himself then this good Shepherd do's not invite onely to a return or as the Father in the Parable run to meet him in his coming back but he do's go himself to seek him seems to mind the recovery of each single one that is lost and contributes as carefully to his return as if that one were all his charge and the whole flock is not dearer to him than that one He leaves the ninety and nine to seek that one and he seeks till he finds it and when he finds it he laies it on his shoulders The wandring sheep was wearied it seems with straying and had tir'd it self with running from its shepherd but this too is provided for he could not come home therefore he is carried It is not now Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden I will not refuse you Nay when you are so lost in Labyrinths of guilt out of which you can see no issue when you have so labor'd in the paths of error that you are not able to come home if you will but be found I will seek you yea and carry you home too That no one how far soever he have gon away may yet despair of coming home this sheep had wander'd to such a distance and to so much weariness that he was fain to be born back when he was found And he laies it on his shoulders rejoycing was glad of such a burden How willing is our Savior to find out a straied Sinner when after such long errors he do's seek him till he finds him and carries him if he be weak and fainting yea and rejoyces in that carriage as if that rest he gives the Sinner were such ease and refreshment to himself he joys in it And that joy spreads it self to Heaven for there is joy in Heaven at that sight and v. 10. There is joy in the presence of the Angels of God over one sinner that repents Heus tu peccator bono animo sis vides ubi de tuo reditu gaudeatur Thou poor disconsolate Sinner that liest groveling under the sense of the burden of thy sins thy soul sinking under that heavy weight and sinking also in the waters of thy fears drown'd in thy sorrow be of good chear Dost thou not think there is some joy in this estate of thine when it can make a joy in Heaven Those tears assure thy self have comfort in them for God and Christ and all the Angels do rejoyce at sight of them And do not dread thy burden if thou dost truly labor under it and dost but faithfully desire and endeavor to throw it off thee Dost thou not see him that laid the lost sheep on his shoulders as ready to take thee up He that would not reject thy Cross when it was loaden with thy guilt will not reject thy self when thou art lighted from that guilt He that would receive thee on his shoulders when thou wast fainting under the burden of thy sins when that is cast away into the sea and buried in his grave will certainly receive thee into his bosom He that would carry thee to give thee ease when thou wert wearied with running from him when thou dost come to him and faint into his arms will give thee everlasting rest a rest whose blessedness to understand were to enjoy it and to be able to conceive were to be infinite as it self is a blessedness which to behold is beatific O cast away your burdens and make hast and come and see Lastly learn hence the method you are to take in coming to him how you are to begin your journey The first advance is by this conviction of the burden and horror of sin till this be in us we will never move a step towards him The Church hath taught us when she invites us to come to him in Sacrament to make the first step this confession We be heartily sorry for these our transgressions the remembrance of them is grievous unto us the burden of them is intolerable And Christ hath told us here that we must find the very same things in our selves an intolerable burden that tires and wearies us until we faint before we come to him we are otherwise no part of his invitation will be no part of his retinue And then whosoever thou art that art so far from finding them intolerable that without them thy life is hardly tolerable so far from burden that thy very days are burdensom that are restrain'd from conversations of sin that dost account them thy delight not weariness and art refresht not tir'd with them and canst not think of parting with them or if no very vicious company or custom hath brought thee to this necessity and height of sinning yet thou look'st upon them as slight regardless things mistakes and oversights that slip from thee all whose repentance is but Lord have mercy and never thinkest more of it dost not apprehend that every such gross fault hath an eternal weight in it and dost not humble thy self under that weight bethink thy self whether thou art yet in the way to Christ or whether thou indeed be called to come Oh no the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are the men for thou especially that takest pleasure in them dost thou think Christ will call thee to do worse with him than the damned do in Hell There they indeed nourish their sinfull appetites
OF THE CHRISTIAN'S BLESSEDNES In beholding God's Face Psalm 17. 15. As for me I will behold thy face in righteousness I shall beâ—â—atisfied when I awake with thy likeness Or as the other Rendring reads it very little different from that But as for me I will behold thy presence in righteousness and when I awake up after thy likeness I shall be satisfied with it THE words import an express opposition between the satisfactions of the person in the Text and those of them that are describ'd before here in the context â—â—amely of the men of the world which have their portion in this life and whose belly thou O God fillest with thy hid treasure v. 14. of whom he had also said v. 10. they are inclosed in their own fat their mouth speaketh proud things i. e. the satisfaction of these wordlings lies in this that they are great and rich abound with all things that they and their children have their fill of their desires they leave plentiful remains to their posterity these advantages of this life are the onely good things which they value and seek after they receive them as their portion and the having them so plentifully makes them proud of the possession insolent in the use but as for my part I will serve thee faithfully truly and justly and with all sincerity and diligence in the performance of my duty I will seek thy face mercy and favor and so doing wait till thou lift up the light of thy countenance upon me and then whatsoever my condition be on this earth where I would not have my good things I expect other sort of portion from my Heavenly Father yet when I awake out of the dust at thy appearance in thy glory since we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him then at my rising it will be impossible that any thing which is to satisfy me can be wanting to me for my satisfactions cannot but be Glorious Divine Infinite and Immortal as thine are if I awake up in thy likeness So that we have here 1. The nature of that state and the certain satisfactions of it which King David did propose to and assure himself of to awake up after God's likeness and he knows he shall be satisfied with it 2. The sure means of arriving at this state beholding of God's face in righteousness 3. His peremtory resolution as to the use of these means I will behold 4. With the courage of resolution which is taken up against the almost universal practice and the as great contradiction of the World that generally minds far different satisfactions I declare publickly and confess But as for me I will 1. The nature and the certain satisfactions of that state which holy David in the Spirit did propose to and assure himself of The state the Psalmist do's suppose expresly here a state to which he shall awake out of the sleep of death For however some expound his words another way yet from his opposition of himself as to his own expectations to the men of this world as to their enjoiments and declaring of them that they have their portion in this life 't is plain he sets his not in this life in that therefore which he says he shall awake to That state also which St Paul assure us Heb. 11. all the Patriarchs did look for which all the Nation of the Jews had such a faith of that the Sadduces were always from their first appearance counted Heretics for their denying it That I say there is such a state now after so much signal revelation after so much miracle of Resurrections from death is not to be made the argument of a discourse to Christians who can be such no otherwise nor further than as they believe and are assur'd of it And it seems altogether as absurd to undertake to treat upon the nature of that state which St Paul after he had a tast of it says is unspeakable and not possible to be utter'd which he was so far from knowing after he had bin in it that he knew not himself in it knew not whether he were in the body or out of it when he did enjoy that state which St Peter when he had a glimps in our Saviors Transfiguration in the astonishment by reason of the light attemted but to speak of it it is said he knew not what he said it put him so beside out of himself And 't is no wonder if we cannot pertinently discourse of it if as Scripture says it cannot enter into the heart of man to comprehend it while he is in this animal and mortal state And indeed it were the same thing as to comprehend what is the Incomprehensible God himself for 't is the nature of that state that we awake into his likeness the Text says and St John hath said the same more expressly 1 John 3. 2. Beloved now we are the sons of God and it doth not yet appear what we shall be but we know that when he or it shall appear we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is I do not find it said in Scripture of the Angels in what ever rank of Principality they stand that they are like God rather to be like the most High is believ'd that very ambition that destroy'd all those that fell But as when man was made out of the dust he was the onely creature that was said to be made after God's own image and similitude so after he is fallen again into that dust when he awakes out of it he is that onely thing that is sayd to bear the image of the Lord from Heaven to be like God And 't is not strange if that nature which God did assume to himself come at last to be glorified with some endowments which transcend all those of Angels yet 't is said of them they always see the face of our heavenly Father Matt. 18. 10. To see God therefore as he is do's seem more than to see his face continually and is such a sight as if it do not causally produce a likeness to God in us which yet possibly it may and the Schools think it do's yet 't is certain that it consequentially proves 't is absolutely necessary that we shall be like him otherwise it were impossible that we should see him as he is Which evidently follows from the Argument of our Apostle we know we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is so that such a sight of him is that which either makes us or concludes us like God yea and that to such a degree that in St Peter's words we are made partakers of the Divine nature 2 Pet. 1. 4. I shall not undertake to be interpreter to the Apostles as to this expression or to give the meaning of those words but whatsoever more it may imply surely it signifies that those Attributes that are essentially natural to the Divinity
soever their petitions cry for mercy and remission their crying sins will call as loud for vengeance such Worship sure cannot possibly be grateful to him we cannot think he will accept that which he nauseates like that which his soul hates and reward that which he cannot bear Indeed such Worshippers do plainly rally him in praying to him He that hath not faithfully endeavor'd to reform his manners what does he in his confessions but tell God Almighty solemnly that he is wicked but in truth he shall continue so as not at all as yet intending to be otherwise He that begs God not to lead him into temtation but goes on in impieties minds not the keeping of himself out of the opportunities of it but loves occasions and converses with the provocations plays upon the brink does all that is to make it unavoidable for him to sin mocks God in praying that he will not lead into temtation him that leads himself into it What use were it to him God should hear his praiers and not do that to him which he does to himself Or if he beseech God to grant for example he may live a sober life yet never purposing to fail one assignation not resolving to abate one meeting nor one draught he is so pleasant with Almighty God to wish if he wish any thing when he is praying that he may be as immoderate as ever but that God would keep him sober may have all the drink he went for but not the drunkenness this he desires God would preserve him from and yet it may be not that neither for that may be useful to him but however for the rest let him do as he did Now sure it is our interest God should not hear such praiers and therefore tho in all our actions we had need be carefull since God is always present yet we should especially in our Religious Worship semper enim praesentamus ostendimus nos quasi facie ad faciem cum Domino loquentes we present our selves to him and speak face to face with him Now if we lay not down our sins but bring our crimes thither with our Devotions and so make our very Worship an abomination to present our provocations to himself and to his face is such an affront that will not easily be pardon'd no if we will behold God's face we must do it in Righteousness Indeed the Psalmist's joyning these in the expression does insinuate that the onely hopefull means to make men be Religious not at their Devotions onely but in all their actions to live holy virtuous lives is to live always as before God's face I will behold thy presence in Righteousness He that in every thing he goes about would teach himself the custom to look up to behold God's face and see his eyes over him he would be carefull that there should be no unrighteousness in what he did King David was acquainted with the influence of this Psalm 119. 168. I have kept thy precepts and thy testimonies for all my ways are before thee Indeed the presence of whatever person we had reverence for to behold his face towards us inspecting our actions would make us wary and fearful of a vanity or folly much more of a gross action Martials Lucretia blusht says he laid his Epigrams aside when Brutus came in Brute recede leget but as soon as he was gon she took them up and read them Few vices hurry men with so impetuous a ferocity but they can check themselves before a virtuous grave person One of them that pretends to stings as sharp as any would send off a boy and tho it be as impudent a sin as any cannot suffer a spectator and then would I but consider always I were always in God's presence shut my eyes and see his face intent upon me marking not my actions onely but my purposes and deliberations I should start most certainly at the approaches of a sin and no more dare to close with it then a Cut-purse temted by an opportunity which he was going to make use of would proceed if he discern'd the Judg upon the bench beheld him saw his eye upon him watching him 't is such a guard this nothing can be greater or securer I have set God always before me says King David therefore I shall not fall Nor would this contemplation onely make us cautious but it would excite incourage our devotions if we saw our selves before him we would be humble and attent as people really concern'd they would be full of reverence and godly fear indeed we would be righteous just and upright in all our doings our whole conversation seeing who is present would not dare to be unclean or rude it would not be vain or uncomly in fine the business of our life would be to do that which is well pleasing in his sight perfecting holiness in the fear of God always looking up to him whose face is towards us This must needs raise all our affections and our aims and place them upon him on whom our eyes and thoughts are set especially if there be resolution in the use of this means most of all if the resolution have the courage of King David's in the Text a resolution which was taken up against the almost universal practice and the as great contradiction of the world which generally minds far different satisfactions But as for me I will behold both which considerations of the resolution and the courage of it I shall joyn in my last particular And indeed there 's nothing else but such a resolution that can set it self against the practice of the world will serve our turns for as Seneca says vice is but common madness and we see that very oft against their temper inclinations and their principles and the conviction of their heart and soul men will do vile and shamefull things because they will be mad if others be so it seems so difficult a thing to endure to be singular in any company And tho to be so singular I mean in any the advantages of this world either as to goods of mind of body or of fortune for the most part is more valued far than the advantages themselves we would inclose and be alone in every such thing and as if we thought an excellency lost its vertue if another had it 't is the rarity that takes with every body yet the advantages of Heaven and the real true goods of the mind Religion Piety and Virtue 't is far otherwise as to those there are none of those emulations in their practices and manners Be the the consequence never so dreadfull men will do and be as others 't is impossible to resist the tide of custom go against the torrent of a croud and multitude or bear the being singular And there are two great obstructions to it the solitude of singularity and the censures scoffings and disreputations that use to attend it For example that I instance not as well I might
his Body and his Bloud is he himself Therefore thou didst receive him as verily as thou didst those and if the Sacramental food be thine then Christ is thine and thou maist say my God My Brethren it was the Bloud of Christ that purchased all the glorious mercies of the Gospel all the blessed expectations of a Christian that was the price of all the joys of Heaven that reconciled God to us bought us an interest in him and the happy enjoyments of himself for us and then if in the Sacrament Christ do give me his bloud when I can shew God that bring him the price of the remission of my sins the value of those glories even the bloud of Jesus come with the purchase-money in my hands that bought my interest in God cannot I say those are mine my Heaven and my God Yea when I can say O Lord Christ whom I have undertaken to obey my God whom I have vowed to serve and worship thou art even my flesh for there I ate thy flesh and thou becamest flesh of my flesh Thou art the portion of my cup when thy very bloud doth fill full my cup and so thou art my flesh and my bloud then surely I may say with Thomas here my Lord and my God O Holy and Eternal Savior who art made both Lord and Christ and by thy Resurrection didst manifest the Omnipotency of thy person the truth of thy Promises and open a way to the everlasting glory and salvation which thou hast prepared for them that give themselves up to serve and worship thee their Lord and God pour down that blessed influence of this thy Resurrection on our hearts in raising us from the death of sin to the life of Righteousness Be thou our Lord and Christ ruling us by thy laws saving us by thy grace and by thy Spirit applying the mercies of thy death and so making us partakers of thy Resurrection therein turning us from our iniquities hereafter in raising us to Glory O Lord we have this day made a Covenant of this with thee and signed the Articles of it in the bloud of our God swore to them at the Altar give us grace we beseech thee to use the strictest care and watchfulness in our endeavors to perform with thee Regard not how we have in times past onely mock'd thee sacredly in these performances O let it from this day be otherwise We have bin onely on a stage of Religion when we are at our devoutest performances and having turn'd our backs unto the Church turn'd them also to our duty put off the vizards of Religion and we untired our selves of all our Piety almost as soon as the exercises of it were don and howsoever we tied our selves our froward wills have bin too strong for all our obligations and burst out of them broke all thy bonds asunder and cast away thy cords from us altho we tied them with all things that were most solemn and most sacred vows and oaths and tied them before the body of our crucified Lord and Savior with the body and bloud of Christ in our hands as if we had no other desires no other cares that should do us good than as we were careful to keep those resolutions and vows and yet O Lord we did let them instantly loosen and slack pass by and fail Yea we did break them wilfully and would not be held in by thine or our own bonds O Lord if thou look upon us in this guilt sure thou wilt have no more to do with us such false and perjured vow-breakers But O look upon us in thine own bloud which thou hast bid us pour out still to establish and renew our Covenant with thee and let this Covenant wherein we have now taken thee to be our Lord and God and taken thee who art so in us remain inviolable be there then with thy Power and Autority subdue our hearts and our desires and bring them under the obedience of thy laws Thou that art God Almighty that didst conquer Death and Satan bring it to pass that none of them prevail against thee now in our Souls where thou art but use thy strength O Lord to drive their power thence that thy servants and thy people may not be enslaved to corruption and ruin nor thy Enimy gain souls from thee which thou hast purchased with thy bloud that we having attain'd thee for our Lord and God may claim the privileges of thy People here have the watches and cares and securities that thou laiest out upon thy Treasures and the Jewels of thy Crown and by thy body and thy bloud being made one with thee and thou being ours all things may be ours thy grace here and thy joys hereafter thy Spirit may be ours and thy Heaven ours and we in thee and thou in us may all enjoy thy Kingdom Power and Glory for ever SERMON XIII THE BELIEVERS CONCERN to pray for Faith Mark 9. 24. Lord I believe help thou my Vnbelief WHICH are the words of a poor parent passionately earnest and afflicted sadly for his child that from his infancy had bin tormented miserably by a Devil for which having sought help every way but finding none no not from Christ's Disciples at last he repairs to him himself beseeching him to have compassion on him and if he were able to relieve him To whom Christ replies that if he could believe then he could work the miracle and help his child all things being possible to be don for him that could believe but nothing otherwise whereupon strait way the father of the child cried out and said with tears Lord I believe help thou my unbelief In which words we have first the necessary Qualification that is to make all that had ever heard of Christ capable of having any benefit from Christ that is belief in him I believe And since Christ hath made this qualification absolutely necessary and by consequence must be suppos'd to have provided means sufficient to work in us that belief that he requires so peremtorily we shall then In the second place enquire how it comes to pass that they so often fail that men do either not believe or their Faith is so weak that much unbelief do's mix with it as in our Confessor here in the Text who tho he did profess he did believe yet withal acknowledges his unbelief And thirdly to prevent and remedy all that here is discovered whither we are to betake our selves for help and where alone 't is possible to find it and that is Christ himself who alone is able to repair in us whatever degree of true belief is wanting in us Lord help thou my unbelief and how he do's repair it And fourthly when it is repair'd to that due height what that degree is can make us capable of those benefits which he hath promis'd to bestow on true Believers and whether such believers can say with our man here I believe yet say too Help my unbelief First of
came along to them by the way of oral practical Tradition If it did 't is not a sure infallible Rule of conveying Faith if it did not then that Church did not still receive their Faith upon that Rule and Principle or by that method tho that they did so is their first great Principle and the great Master of that Scheme assur'd his Holiness it was not possible to maintain their doctrine otherwise against the subtlety of the English Hereticks And truly they that make the greatest noise amongst us now are fled to the last hold of it but that indeed it does alone protest Infallibility whether of the Church or the Succession of their doctrine by that way of practical Tradition and that is the infallible most necessary certainty of Faith But I shall say no more to this than what the grand Abettor of the Principle hath said in answer to himself objecting what was to be said to them that could not penetrate into his demonstrations see the force and evidence of that Rule and Principle and yet have that Faith that 's necessary to Salvation I shall give it you in his own words as near as I can put them into English He says there is a certainty deriv'd into the understanding of these men out of their will for since they think themselves assur'd these truths were brought down by the Church from Christ to them stand convinc't of that act this is sufficient to cause their wills firmly to adhere to them and by that adherence to repell all difficulties and objections to which curious wits are subjects And whether the man see that the Autority of the Church which he follows is of more force at least to him than particular objections in those truths or whether he thinks nothing at all of it but rests stedfast in that assent which his very ignorance caus'd 't is plain he hath a certainty of will which in its way extends it self to the Government of his whole life answerably to that his perswasion and by consequence he hath a certainty exclusive of all doubt and such as moves him to direct his actions all to God that is there is in him that Faith which worketh by love So he Now hence 't is evident by his Concessions first that there may be a saving Faith which hath not that infallible certainty arising from the motives Guide or Principle or way of Resolution And that secondly a Certainty deriv'd into the Understanding from a Will that is piously dispos'd sufficeth Thirdly that there is this certainty where the Will firmly cleaves and adheres to God relying on him with a vigorous hope and trust directing all the actions up to God and to his service and persevering in it to the life's end Now this is all that I am all this while contending for It is not by self-evident or demonstrative methods or by an infallible Guide that he provides against mens unbelief but when with preparation like our man here in the Text in weeping earnestly we betake our selves to him crying out for help and direction and applying our understanding meekly to attend his methods he disposes piously the Will to entertain the gracious blessed Proposals of the Gospel with complacency and heartiness and from conversing with the experience of them to prefer them before all worldly carnal things that used to bait our lusts ravish our hearts and carry us away from God and from our duty and it is against this unbelief in thus departing from the living God that his assistances are mainly level'd and our Praiers chiefly are to be directed For 't is most infinite madness to perswade and satisfy our selves we are of the true Church have the onely true certain Faith if yet our practices be such as set us at as great a distance from Almighty God as Hell is from Heaven and while we do commit such things 't is as impossible we can adhere to God as 't is impossible for Christ to have communion with Belial It is a Contradiction by ungodly actions to defy God and turn our backs upon and depart from him yet to cling and adhere to him 't is as I say a Contradiction to believe that we have Faith while we do not cling to and adhere but depart from him Lord help thou this our unbelief And if his grace but once dispose us to prefer the blessed expectations of a Christian he does easily prevail with us to cling to them with such certain assurances as will carry us thro all the stages of our life and duty with all chearfulness and constancy This is that certainty of Faith by which the Martyrs cleav'd to and embrac'd at once the Cross and their Religion firm in dying as believing and when with arts of torment they broke all their joynts and their limbs piece-meal scatter'd all their parts asunder tore their souls out of their bodies still they kept their Faith whole and their Tormentors could not tear one Article of their belief or Christian practice from them and when their Wills were once inflam'd with the desires and expectations of God's preparations then no other martyring flames could make them shrink Those seem'd to them but brighter Emblems of and speedier Conveyances to that Eternal Light and Glory which their Faith had given them the evidence and the first vision of they knew by them they onely did expire into Everlasting Life and Glory SERMON XIV THE CHRISTIANS LIGHT is to shine before men Matt. 5. 16. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in Heaven THE words have two parts a command and a reason of it the command Let your light shine before men the reason That they may see your good works c. The command affords to us this instruction the life of a Christian is to be fruitful and exemplary Both these are commanded not onely in the command it self but proved in the reason That they may see your good works there must therefore be works which are the fruits of virtue Yea and fruitfulness is every where requir'd by Christ and if we look upon the current of Scripture and our duty we shall find that it will not serve a Christian's turn not to bring forth ill fruit to be onely barren ground not to have vices bud and sprout within us and grow with an increase of sin but we must do good In the Parable of the Sower Matt. 13. 23. But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word and understandeth it which also beareth fruit and bringeth forth some an hundred fold We are gods Husbandry 1 Cor. 3. 9. Now is any of you satisfied with his field because it plows well and receives the seed most kindly if it bring you no increase or crop yield you no harvest No saith the Author to the Hebrews c. 6. 8. such ground is nigh to cursing Why your works they are your
yet give a roomful of example let none grope thro ignorance or fall into sin in the house where thou dost dwell if thy small light of knowledg can instruct or thy good carriage and encouragements can perswade him And this especially concerns them that are set out to be Lights to walk before them in knowledg Husbands Masters Parents or any others whose emploiment is to instruct or govern of whom whosoever he be that by any evil carriage of his own gives ill example to those he hath to deal with if they follow it as 't is not to be expected but they will he multiplies his guilt and derives on himself all the sins that are his imitations The vices of all that follow him are all his retainers his is a family of sins and the imitations of his Children are to be imputed to him he is Father of villany and hath a whole off-spring of guilt too and all the sins that are don by his example will appear the same thing as the Devil at the day of Judgment and claim their Father there the brood of iniquity will come and challenge him and there alike curse their Parent and the Devil to whom they equally and as accursedly relate as those that joined to beget their vices that have destroy'd them eternally both Parents of their destruction This is certain hence for he that but puts out the Candle is accessary to all the falls and hurts that the darkness causeth Now thy good Example is the Candle which if thou do not shew forth thou leavest them in the dark And then if not to walk holily in all thy actions be a thing of so much guilt it would be worth the sad serious consideration of every man whom any others do but hear or look upon especially if those whose age makes them capable of little else but imitation to bethink themselves that every oath or curse of theirs may teach some others every obscene word may stir up others lust and instruct others what to learn hereafter every passion every drunkeness may make the ignorant believe those sins are not so foul which are so customary with those that know more than they do and by often seeing them may be invited to them and so for other sins And if they do how many sins shall they have to answer for besides their own which God knows are an infinity too many What an invitation may one take for this from that happy consideration that an innocent carriage an holy Example does contribute to the blessedness of all the Souls that look upon me Let others take delight to entertain the desires of those that keep them company with the pleasures of sin or vanity to furnish them with instruments of delightful folly but let me be instrumental to their being happy to eternity I had rather be a lover of their Souls than of their mirth Let me be useful to the glory of my God and the Salvation of those that are about me which certainly I am in a good measure if I can but have a care of approving all my actions so as may give others no occasions to sin but may effectually attract them to my profession Then I do cooperate with the Bloud of Christ for that was poured out to buy men from their vain conversation from which if my Example will but help to reduce them I shall save Souls and in my Light they shall see a Light of everlasting Glory on themselves and my Light also will shed Glory towards God for so I glorify my Father which is in heaven the reason of the precedent command And this is incumbent especially in a dark season such as this to which we are condemned wherein to say nothing of those mists of error in which the generality of us are lost engaged in a confused crowd of Religions tost up and down with a tumult of pretending opinions and either wholly in the dark or having onely false lights that do misguide us so that we know not which way to get out Omitting these there is a grosser darkness does inhabit with us such as that which makes Hell the Region of utter darkness 'T is not ignorance but wickedness that dwells there and that is the Region not of mistakes but of impiety and we go on in such a constancy of works of darkness as does require an everlasting night to cover and go on in such a fearlesness as if that night could hide us from that God who clothes himself with light And what is the duty in relation to such a season You have it Phil. 2. 15 16. That ye may be blameless and harmless the Sons of God without rebuke unblemish'd in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom shine ye as lights in the world holding forth the word of life A severe harsh injunction that man must therefore have the stricter care that his life be blameless and unblemish'd must therefore be more forward in devotions holy performances because most men about him are far otherwise because he lives among loose people The contrary indeed might prove a good encouragement to live a blameless life because I live amongst harmless holy people for then what provocation have I to be otherwise Besides the shame of being otherwise among such would abundantly restrain me when if I did commit any enormity I must be look't upon as a stain and blemish in the very beauty of Holiness look like a Negro in the midst of glorious beauties as a dash of Hell in the Landshape of Heaven besides this 't is easier to be harmless among those that are so If the generality of persons were truly pious how could any one almost be otherwise among them that are so dispos'd as neither to provoke nor give admission to a sin where every one is so truly meek as to bear any thing and yet every one so virtuously just as to offer nothing unfit such humble patience as to entertain any cross any vexation quietly and yet such meek true-hearted charity as not to give any Indeed if every body that one hath occasion to converse or deal with were a full Christian there could be no discontent at all Heaven would be upon Earth and then if I were in the midst of such a Nation or People there were Argument enough to make me harmless both because I should have no occasion to be otherwise and because I must be so that I might be unblemish'd But a perverse and crooked Generation as it deserves no kind of dealing but its own to return them the like is but just dealing one would think and onely recompence not injury So not to do is almost impossible perversness is so great a goad that with the froward thou wilt shew thy self froward saith David to the Lord Psalm 18. 26. and then to tell me I must be harmless because I live in the midst of a perverse and crooked Generation looks like a very unreasonable reason This
judgment the soul shall be rewarded with the blessing of its intentions As it did often do its part in piety without the body so it shall have a crown before the body shall forestal happiness and for a while it shall alone be blessed as oftentimes it hath been vertuous alone in good intentions when it could not act 4. But all this is not strange that the great mercy of our God should so interpret to our advantage our designs of piety as to impute good meanings to our glory as if they were good doings and consequently where the intentions are holy the actions must be holy and where this eye is clear the body must have light but 't will be very strange if a clear eye make the whole body full of light illustrate those performances which have no relation to the soul. Most of the actions of our life are common and indifferent serve only the necessities or recreations of nature and how can these be holy Why yes by pure Religious intentions a man may sanctify all the actions of his life and if thine eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light Whether you eat or drink or whatsoever you do do all to the glory of God saith S. Paul 1 Cor. 10. 31. Every therefore the most common action may be intended to Gods glory and then 't is sanctified That the Lord should look for honor from the devout performances of our strictest Religion 't is no wonder for therefore he requires them but that when in the meanest instance I do serve my self in doing so I should be able to give glory to my God is sure by vertue of some strange stratagem some Divine elixar that will so transmute things why a good meaning will do this To shew thee how when thou goest about the employments of thy lawful calling have but good thoughts about thee good intentions in them and the actions of thy calling are for the uses of grace and thy necessities do prove thy vertue As for instance when thou labourest do but consider to what pains sin hath put thee sells thee thy bread for sweat for if man had not sin'd Eden had furnish't him with all the delicacies of Paradise without his care or contribution and he had had the fruits of the tree of life without the pains of planting any thing 't is sin that gives thee all this toil and then do but resolve to use this as an argument to thy self to make thee hate the cause of so much trouble I will sure labour most against that which hath so chang'd and debas'd my condition and which do's aim to make me far more miserable to eternity If I am weary of my work e're night what shall I be of everlastingness of torment If little thirsty heats and drops of sweat offend me what will unquenchable feavors and what a lake of brimstone And think again upon the mercies of thy God who offers thee at the rate of easier endeavors the food that lasteth to eternal life the calling of a Christian being the least painful and yet it brings the greatest fruits the price of that high calling being blessedness if thou but labor in it If thou be sustaining the necessities of nature in meat and drink look up to him that do's provide for them and resolve only not to use his blessings to his dishonor by excesses not to spew his mercies out into his face again but use them as assistances of nature to enable thee for such emploiments as his providence hath assign'd to thee And in thy recreations also do but take notice thankfully how God hath provided for delights too how he hath not only brought forth bread to strengthen man but wine to make his heart glad and oyl to make him a cheerful countenance and instruments of sport to delight him and but acknowledg all these things to God and intend with thy self to use them only to his ends Thy calling either to provide for thy subsistence here that thou may'st serve him or to do good to others Thy meals for preservation of that life which he hath lent thee for his uses and recreations for refreshment and for health and make no doubt if nothing do interpose to spoil these instances that thou art serving God in all of these that thy most secular actions are thus make spiritual imploiments by being dedicated so to God undertaken in his fear and intended for the uses of his providence so that if whensoever thou art going about any thing thou do but ask thy self why thou do'st set upon it and can'st but make a good intention look towards it and resolve only to let it serve such ends resolve not to transgress in it the bounds that God hath set thee either of time or measure and to make all subordinate and to assist towards piety some way or other and then sometimes with eyes lift up call for and look for a blessing down upon thee in it and by this means the action is sanctified so thou dost consecrate thy deeds to God and he accepts thy meaning in it as an offering to him the action is adopted into the stock of Religion meant to God and so thy whole life may be made pious by such good intentions and thus thy single eye makes thy whole body full of light And this consideration alone might apply it self with pressingness upon us Shall I think God not easy to be serv'd when I may teach my recreations to serve him Shall I think Heaven placed out of my possibilities when I can learn my sports to wing me towards it Religion sure is not so very difficult when a good honest meaning can transmute every action of my life into Religion and then who would not at such easy rates change his imployments which he must do and his sports which he will do into pieties when it is don by putting good intentions into them by good thoughts and ejaculations engaging God along in them But the last words do urge an application which I promised in one word But if thine eye be evil thy whole body is full of darkness My brethren if ill intentions have so destructive an influence upon our actions that when the end is foolish tho the action I practise be a vertue yet that aim do's defeat it of its vertuosness it loseth all its tast of piety and an ill enddo's debauch it into vice as I have prov'd and so for want of a good meaning I either lose my Religion or my Religion becomes sin unto me Unhappy I that when with such intentions I practise duty I lose the pleasures or the profits of the sins I might have practis'd every jot as innocently and much more usefully as to those ends and I lose the duty and by the very duty I purchase condemnation enjoy neither the vice I do omit nor yet the piety I practise nor any thing but the sad sentence of they have their reward And on the
not good and I am sure of my own heart that if I thought it were so I would not do it here is no chusing of a sin not with the least degree of inclination 'T is this secures the Physitian who cannot possibly be assur'd there may not something lurk in his Patient's body for whose dark and unwholsome closets he hath no prospective to which the physic he prescribes may be pernicious yet because God hath revel'd no certain grounds for guidance in this case therefore he upon diligent search and grounds of art which are the best God hath allow'd us prescribing what he really believes will do him good satisfies a good conscience Upon the same account the Pilot satisfies himself where he adventures his ship and fraight upon shelfs and shallows and the Captain when he leads his men upon he canon's mouth and other desperat attemts of war Shall I make more familiar instances to you some have doubted whether celebrating Christ's Nativity be not will-worship because 't is not commanded in Scripture other have doubted of the use of Garments prescribed Ministers from the same ground and from their being significant Now as to these not to shew the unreasonableness of these doubts tho I could easily do it for in God's name why is it to set apart a day to thank God for the Redemtion of mankind will-worship and yet to set apart a day for the deliverance of a Nation from a temporal plague not will-worship Is the fifth of November in the Scripture any more than the twenty fifth of December Or is it the infinitely greater mercy of Christ's Birth-day that makes it more unlawful than the Gunpowder-Treason day and therefore 't is not lawful because 't is more fit And for the Garments of the Clergy I would they were all significant but that that is an argument against them in these daies It is true Scripture prescribes them not and by that rule they should wear none for it prescribes none but pray tell me will not any of these doubting men seek a Pulpit to preach in or now a daies a bason to baptize with never looking whether they have a warrant in Scripture to command it Just so rational and sensible men select a particular habit for a Priest whereby his words and exhortations may be receiv'd with greater respect and authority and this without any written precept for as where Scripture commands it renders every thing necessary so where it is silent it renders nothing unlawful in such circumstantials So a prescribed way of Praier is boggled at and why that more unlawful than a limited way of praising God They had effusions of those in the first times why do not we as well pretend to the one as to the other Or why should it be less faulty to have set forms of singing Psalms than have set forms of Liturgy in which too people might communicate as they do also join in praises or indeed would that Rhyme and tune become unlawful should the Magistrate command them too But passing over this and to speak in short of the whole matter If the man that doubts bids his conscience stand aside and because of legal penalties muffles himself and resolvedly goes on notwithstanding his speculative irresolution with desperat boldness judging it better to trust God with his soul than the Law with his estate or liberty if he fears to consider or enquire least he should get conviction that suits not with his interest and thinks it easier to doubt than to be certain because he 's certainly determin'd to do what is enjoin'd tho it be never so unlawful This is a profligate state of mind that wants nothing but occasion to engage upon the greatest villanies and close with Apostacy it self when recommended by impunity But if this doubting makes another scheme of reasoning and performs what is enjoind because the Magistrate's command is certain but its unlawfulness is only dubious and the safest course is ever the most innocent because it is the most prudent then the obligation to suspend the going on to act in case of doubting is superseded by another obligation actually to obey the undoubted injunction of Superiors and the good Subject will not fail to be a good Christian too But alas why should I busy my self in picking cases which here I hope are not useful when as upon this very Proposition we are now upon other things do apply themselves to most mens hearts of a more strong concern and of more daily practice If an action otherwise lawful will make up an indictment to our condemnation if don with a doubting conscience what guilt and damnation is there in those actions that are don against present full perswasion of conscience Truly my Brethren I have no aggravation for sins don against knowledg that being the worst that can be said of sin and I shall only add that they who so defie their conscience are in the ready way to have no conscience the sad estate of whom my last did display to you and in short 't is no wonder if God's Vicegerent do depart when he is so affronted There is a great and sad example of this procedure Rom. 1. 18 19 20. For the wrath of God is reveled from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them for God hath shewed it unto them For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even his eternal power and God-head so that they are without excuse There is no plea for such because they did not use their knowledg to his service but sin'd against it and by their deeds of darkness put out that light which was vouchsafed them by God yea indeed did commit those deeds of darkness in the face of light I have to what I have already said one word to add for the scrupulous conscience Scruples are little suspicions in things of small concern or indifferency and where there is but little ground for otherwise they swell into that we call doubts and which denominates a doubting conscience Now scruples which are small particles of dust do indeed cast dust into the eies which dim the sight and make the eies to roule and fret and grieve and so do these the mind they disturb duty wonderfully by taking up the heart and making it restless and unquiet and so quite discompos'd for duty for the heart is still call'd aside wandring about that which troubles it And indeed these quite take off the edge of the mind for while scruples arise I am unsatisfied in every thing I do and then with what heart can I do them I am in fear of every performance and such a fear exceedingly damps love and quashes all endeavors I have no cheerfulness in my actions and consequently never can be eager and forward but cold and slack
instruments of thy delight thy Dogs it may be or thy Hawks but feed poor Christians but feed the members of thy Savior to see when with a great deal thou canst hardly furnish one room well much less of it do's furnish such poor laboring families furniture of a very comfortable prospect it will be at that day I am sure when all the other satisfactions of thy eies are dead or else dissolving in a floud of fire then to behold those works which thy estate did help thee to perform for they shall follow thee to Heaven Rev. 14. 13. and to see that Christ upon the Throne whom in his members thou hast oft reliev'd an object that will comfort such a single eie with everlasting light And so I pass to the second terms to be expounded Light and Darkness 1. Light in Scripture do's often signify Prosperity as Darkness do's the contrary I need not cite much Scripture for it Psalm 18. 28. For thou wilt light my canlde the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness Job 21. 17. How often is the candle of the wicked put out and how oft cometh their destruction upon them God distributeth sorrows in his anger to them Isaiah c. 5. 30. do's express times of affliction thus and if one look unto the earth behold darkness and distress and the light is darkned in the heavens thereof So chap. 8. 22. Behold trouble and darkness and dimness of anguish Now if it mean thus here then the sense is a single eie fills the body full of light Charity makes a man prosperous in all his actions but if the eie be evil the body shall be full of darkness he that either to furnish coffers pride or pleasures or excesses do's retrench from bounty however he advance these for a while yet before long God will cut off the opportunities of these he that will not put a good portion of what he hath to good uses the time will come when either he or his however well provided for shall not have for their own uses if their eie be so evil as not to let their candle shed a light to any other but themselves God will put out their canlde and uncharitableness shall bring adversity upon them or upon their families and if the verse mean thus then it agrees with Solomon's Aphorism Prov. 11. 24. There is that scattereth and yet increaseth there is that withholdeth more than is meet and it tendeth to penury But to this I have spoke already now I shall only say this is a doctrine that we need not only trust on Christ for the truth of a very Turk believes it and not the Gospel only but the Alcoran affirms it saying that which they lay out of their wealth in the way of God in pious charitable uses is like a grain that brings forth seven stalks Blessed harvest of Charity increase more than an hundred fold and I will add but one place of Scripture to it which saies over the Text in larger and more glorious words Isaiah 58. 7 8 10 11. To deal thy bread to the hungry and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house when thou seest the naked that thou cover him and that thou hide not thy self from thine own flesh then shall thy light break forth as the morning and thine health shall spring forth speedily and thy righteousness shall go before thee and the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward and if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul then shall thy light rise in obscurity and thy darkness be as the noon-day and the Lord shall guide thee continually and satisfy thy soul in droughts and make fat thy bones and thou shalt be like a water'd garden and like a spring of water whose waters fail not The expressions seem to grow upon the Prophet first he saies Thy light shall break forth as the morning by little slow degrees of increasing light which peeps out first in a dawn and so grows into day and so shall thy prosperity which dawns and brightens by degrees as thou drawest out reliefs but he corrects these words and thinks this is not blessing quick enough for this vertue whose return shall be more eminent conspicuous and notable thy light saies he shall rise in obscurity shall have no creeping twilight for to usher it but they very night shall break into Sun-shine and in the midst of hopeless affliction the face of joy and gladness shall rise upon thee Yea more as if the rising light were but weak and too faint for his meaning Thy darkness shall be as the noon-day strong and hot brightness shall break in upon thy occasions of sadness which shall both cherish and enlighten thee thaw every thing that did sit cold about thine heart and make all pleasant shine about thee But where I pray you are the Luminaries that are to shed this Noon The Prophet hath them here thy Righteousness that is in Scripture dialect thy Alms shall go before thee and the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward Light express'd not only in terms of overflowing blessedness but terms of guard and strength Light he shall have here that shall be glory to him and shall be fortification to him the glory of the Lord shall be his reward as if the charitable man did also dwell in Light that were inaccessible who is so guarded as to have righteousness in his van for his avantguard and the glory of the Lord of hosts and victories for his rere-defence which means in plain words this that the Lord will make the righteousness of such a man appear and will do good and glorious things for him in this life And then let others please themselves to have their wealth break out in shining pomps of bravery about them or flow in streams of plenty and of delicacy or of pleasure alas the spring of these will quickly fail If any scorching weather come any fiery trial any persecution yea any daies of adversity the wealth will go out that is to furnish them or if there do not come such daies yet the too full streams will drain the fountain and there will be no spring to feed the current yea or however in a while these streams must grow unpleasant and they will choak the soul that swims in them but the charitable man the man that deals his bread and draws out his soul to the hungry in relief while he hath the means and in compassion and assistance while he hath not whatever fail the fountain of the glory of the Lord cannot be exhausted he will have righteousness and glory still about him the comfortable streams of which are of another relish than those carnal worldly delights which wealth provides or else can give of a more blessed goust the inextinguishable shine of which is surely far more cherishing and gladsom than the gauds of vanity or fading pleasures The brightness of God's glory cannot die cannot be
taken from thee it is its own defence and shine for righteousness shall go before thee and the glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward and then 't is clearly prov'd that such a single Eie shall make the body full of light 2. Light do's signify holiness of life deeds truly Christian walk as Lights in the Lord nothing more common in Scripture and Darkness signifies a sinful and un-Christian life a life that 's full of deeds of darkness And then the words mean thus as the eie is the candle of the body lightens and directs it well if it be as it ought but otherwise very ill and the man is in the dark if his eie be ill and do not serve him so is the heart of man as to the guidance and direction of his actions if his eie be single if he have an heart taken off from the world a liberal bountiful mind not set upon the love and desire of the things of this world his whole body will be full of light his whole life will be very Christian all his actions holy and heavenly and to the making of them so liberality of mind hath a very observable influence It will incline a man wonderfully to pious courses it is a leading vertue as the eie is a leading part But if the eie be evil but if the heart be worldly set upon wealth either for it self or for those heights or fine things or pleasures which wealth do's procure if it be unsatisfied in these things for it self or envious at others for them the whole body will be full of darkness the whole life will be very un-Christian such a disposition of mind as that quite draws a man off from the temper that Christ requires the unsatisfied the envious and the covetous person can never serve God but only Sin those dispositions being the root of all evil Now if the light that is in thee be darkness if thy heart be un-Christian and if thy leading vertue that was to take thee off from all worldly inclinations be extinct and dark in thee how great is that darkness what an un-Christian life will there be and whatever light do's shine about thee of the Gospel whatever light thou dost pretend of knowledg or of whatsoever else there is a deep darkness dwells upon thy heart and is in all thy actions Now this sense we see connects what went before and that which follows after drives on our Savior's design that he is pressing here and to this sense Scripture alwaies speaks in the expressions of single and of evil eie of light and darkness and therefore this was certainly the sense that was intended by our Savior and to the prosecuting of it I shall shew 1. That to have a generous liberal mind an heart taken off from the self uses and advantages of wealth is the great means the great engine and instrument of making all the actions very Christian the life holy 2. This grace in the heart bounty of mind is a great evidence of a true Christian heart 3. A worldly heart loving and desiring wealth troubled at its condition envying others that are in better and for the ends of any advantages to it self straitning its liberality is not only in it self an un-Christian temper but such as is the root and cause of a life wholly un-Christian and unholy Of these in their order 1. To have a liberal mind c. That the throwing of this earth out of the heart is a most hopeful way of making the man clean and pure we have most pregnant Scripture Luke 11. 39 40 41. Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter but your inward part in full of ravening and wickedness Ye fools did not be that made that which is without make that which is within also But rather give alms of such things as you have and behold all things are clean unto you which bears this sene ye hypocritical Pharisees wash yor selve as if a man should wash his vessels the outside of them only leaving the insides of them full of filthiness for thus do ye wash your bodies leaving your souls full of all uncleaness This is an extreme folly for it your outward washings were in obedience to God you would cleanse the insides your hearts and souls as well as your bodies The best way of purifying your selves your estates your meats and drinks c. from all pollution cleaving to them is by works of mercy and liberal alms gifts and not by washing pots and vessels Thy broken meats thy scraps thy charities shall cleanse thy platters more than washing them shall do alms shall make all things clean But how this To cleanse hath two aspects either on the guilt of past actions or on the habits and dispositions to future commissions and is to cleanse us from the evil that we have don or to make us clean from those vices that were in us and which would make us do more evil the first of these is don by Repentance not by Alms. Indeed the Wise man saies the alms of a man is as a signet with the Lord and he will keep the good deeds of a man as the apple of an eie and give repentance to his sons and daughters Ecclesiasticus 17. 22. the happiest way of purchase for a family in the world The give to children an estate perchance is but to give an instrument of vice bestow the means of sining on them at best 't is but to leave them pomp and superfluity but to give Repenetance to them is to give security of everlasting blessedness this is as it were to entail Heaven on ones children But this is not the thing we mean we are to see how Alms should make us clean from vice It is observ'd by a Reverend Expositor that our Savior speaking Syriack useth a word for alms which in that language and Arabick signifies cleansing that is give Alms which as it comes from a word that signifies to cleanse so all shall be clean to you and they give this reason of the notion they derive Alams from a word that signifies to cleanse quod opes ab inquinamento animum ab avaritiae sordibus purgat because 1. Alms purgeth our wealth from the pollution and filthiness that adheres to it As among the Jews it was not lawful for any man to use the increase of his own land or cattle to eat part of his own harvest nor feed on his own vineyard or imploy the profits of any one beast of his own herd or flock till he had given up to God the first-born of that beast offered the first fruits every year of his fruit-yards and dedicated a first sheaf of his harvest this must sanctify all the rest which till then was unclean not to be used by him to this it seems our Savior do's look in his direction There is an unclean tacke in every thing that comes from earth it do's derive a soil and
uncouth till a man be experienced in them and also as it smooths the way for such beginnings do nurse up a Habit and prepare a Custom and make Vice very easie which at first it is not while the Appetite is modest and not able to digest full Doses till use enlarge and stretch it And now the Mind which by these means tasts diverse Pleasures and the Degrees of them and finds a gust in them yet not being satisfied in any one as 't is impossible it should be stirs up the Appetite to vary and proceed that that contentment which single pleasures could not afford diversified might make up Wretched Nature using that as an Attractive which should repell for who would hugg a Cloud embrace that which does not cannot satisfie but only Flesh which for that very reason hunts on and follows the scent And by doing so a while it brings upon it self Fourthly Something like a necessity of doing so Thus Continence would be some mens Disease and the Intemperate cannot live without his Vice but gapes as much as Thirst and Fever do and if he have not satisfaction suffers as many qualms and pangs as his Riot used to cause in the Apprentisage of his sin so that there is a kind of necessity of the practice and he wisely seeming to make a vertue of necessity begins to think them the only happiness at least of this life freely without reluctancy embracing them And now the Flesh is Callous and if you doubt how it could so harden it self as not to be pervious to any stings of Conscience but Proof against all Pricks though Experiment may persuade you yet I will shew you the Method As all Appetite you know is blind so the Guides also of Carnal appetite The senses are very short-sighted they cannot look forward to the next Life to the hopes of Heaven or the pains of Hell to bring them into the ballance with the present pleasure and see which does over-weigh The Flesh only lives extempore looks but upon that which is before it scarce on that We have sufficient experience of this for when one Vice will not look forwards a year or two to the penury and rottenness some courses do pull down And when another Vice as if it had learnt to fulfill our Saviours command and take no care for the morrow will not think of the next mornings pains and Headach Nay when the ambitious Usurper will not look just before him to see where he does place his steps on Precipices and Sword-points to note how the Pyramids he does climb are made slippery with blood Pyramids did I say pointed Reeds rather things that have not strength to bear but only sharpness to stab and where the man 's own weight makes his Upholders fail and wound him both together at once sink under him and pierce him thorough Nay we see many whose sins inflict themselves who may be truly said to bear their Iniquities yet chuse those sins that bring their Plauges along with them for we see men with most excessive difficulty practise a Vice only that they may have the Vice swallow sickness drink Convulsions and dead Paralyses foaming Epilepsies only that all this may be easie to them And this is but one instance of the many that might be made just as the King of Pontus that are Poison that so he might be used to it Strange that a man should torture himself with all those deadly symptoms that Poison racks the body with only that he might eat Poison yet just such is the Sinners Design and all the ease and pleasure he acquires at last in sinning is but familiarity of Poison custom of Danger and acquaintance of Ruine Good God! that men should train and exercise themselves so for perdition that they should go through a discipline of torments to get an Habit of destroying themselves that they should work out their own condemnation with hardships and agonies that as if 't were too easie to go down the hill to Hell the descent shall be made craggy and they force breaches into it and great headlong Precipices to make the way more painful and more dangerous to make the fall more wounding and more irrecoverable And what shall give a check where difficulty does provoke and torments do ingratiate Well But though Flesh be so short-sighted and inconsiderate the mind might trash it by suggesting other sorts of punishments that do await transgression Why truly if rude and unmannerly Conscience do sometimes thrust in the thoughts of Hell the Flesh which I told you is not terrified with any thing but what it feels now Conscience presents Hell as a thing of hereafter not till Death be past it satisfies Conscience with a Repentance of Hereafter before Death come I will be sorry for my sins and God is merciful Conscience being thus quieted and both Reins and Spur given to the Flesh it takes its full Carier and leaves behind all thoughts of Repentance and indeed of God or Heaven the hope and joys of which are the only possible method that is left to take off the Man from his eager pursuit or to divert him in his course But as to that also that I may shew you the next heat The Mind that is immerst in body and hath been long accustomed to tast no pleasure but the carnal ones its fancy fill'd with those Ideas it does imbibe such a tincture of sensuality receives such an infusion of Flesh and so impregnated with the fumes of Carnality which clog the Spirit that its complexion and temper is quite altered it is diluted and deprest and so grown stupid and unactive to all higher things Heaven and all after-things it may be are the prejudice of such persons not their persuasions some thin conceptions of such things have been thrown into them but never were improved for their Mind hath otherwise been employed and they can have no appetite to them because they have never had any tast or relish of any thing but sensual And indeed that both longings after and thoughts of a better Life should be altogether dead in the carnal man is but a natural and necessary effect of the verge of his Delights For what motive is there in Heaven to stir up his appetite to whom Heaven it self would not be a place of Joy For I am verily persuaded were the Carnal man in those Eternal Mansions compast with streams of Glory it were impossible for him to take delight in them and he would grope for Paradise in the midst of Heaven As much impossible as for the most unlearned Idiot to satisfie himself with the pleasures of a Mathematical demonstration Let him have the Hecatombe and let Pythâ—goras be an Epicure on the dimensions of a Triangle the other hath no palate for these pleasures and indeed how could the unclean lascivious please himself in the enjoyment of those Felicities that have no Sex Where they neither Marry nor are given in Marriage Or how the
indeed they saw a glimpse of it but straight a Cloud did overshadow it verse 34. But at his Passion he bids them Watch with him Matth xxviii 38. and when he findeth them asleep he says What could ye not watch with me one hour ver 40. and bids them watch again ver 41. and comes again a third time and upbraids their drowsiness ver 45. So much more necessary was it to behold his Agonies than to see his Felicities Glory does not discover or invite to Heaven so much as Sufferings drive to it and we are more concerned to take a view of that Garden in Gethsemane than that of Paradise and the going down from the Mount of Olives does more advantage us in climbing the Eternal hill than all Mount Tabors height Nor do Afflictions only drive us toward Heaven but they beget an hope of it Knowing that Tribulation worketh Patience Patience Experience and Experience Hope Rom. v. 3. 4. And I will give them the Valley of Achor for a door of Hope Hos. ii 14. As if Despair opprest them into Hope and that low troublous Valley opened into the highest Firmament Now he that rides at Anchor of this Hope though his Anchor lie buried under Waves yet those rouling Hills of Sea swell'd by storms of Affliction and raised too by his Tears do without Hyperbole mount him to Heaven He that hath entertained these Expectations in earnest how will he slight Temptations here below What will he not sacrifice to Christs Command See Abraham that did but hope for Canaan and that far off too to be possest by the Posterity of his Son Isaac yet when God commands him to slay Isaac before he had any posterity and so to dash all his own Promises and quite cut off the very motive to Abrahams Obedience yet he hopes and obeys even to contradiction Does both against hope And had we but the shadow of his hope as he had but the shadow of our Promises how would we sacrifice a sin at his Command and think a Fleshly lust a good exchange for the hope of Heaven which Tribulation worketh and he that had suffered in the Flesh would certainly cease from sin And now my last work is to view our own Concern in this and surely that must be all Exultation and Triumph and this not so much that our sufferings are ceast as that our sins are so not that our Enemies are sunk but that our flesh is vanquisht that sub hoc signo vinces is thus also come to pass with the Standard of the Cross that Cross on which our selves were Crucified we have overcome and with this Christian Banner we have put to flight the Armies of our Heathen Vices For thus it must be if my Text be true and sure it is not possible it should be otherwise For look upon the Muster-roll of these our Foes which S. Paul does produce Gal. v. v. 19 20 21. and see which of them could escape it runs thus Adultery Fornication Vncleanness Lasciviousness Idolatry Witchcraft Hatred Variance Emulations Wrath Strife Seditions Heresies Envyings Murder Drunkenness Revellings To begin with the great Commanders those that lead the Van and bring up the Rear Vncleanness and Revellings They that consider how they not only suffered for but by these Vices which did misplace mens watches and attendances sins that were not only like Achans in our Army and ruin'd it by bringing the accursed thing into it but were like Hannibal's Numidians in the Roman Army that did at once betray to and inflict Ruin sins that did merit and effect Destruction and made as well as provok'd overthrows and sins that by Gods goodness did cut off themselves while they did bring men into a condition that would not bear such Vices These are the guilts of Wealth and Splendor that do attend Felicity and Pomp it is not only hopeful that men did resolve to be reveng'd on these great workers of their mischief and will no more reset such Traitors in their bosoms But sure these sins are ceast that did put out themselves Then for Seditions They who consider when they broke the Scepter they left us nothing but the Rod of God instead of it a Rod that turned straight into a Serpent that changed our Seas into Blood or rather made new Seas of our own blood that brought Locusts over the Earth and Frogs into the Temple also to croak there that struck Lights here worse than Egyptian Darkness and destroyed all the first born of the Nation all the Nobles of the Land these will easily believe that we have selt this Rod too much to seize upon it hastily again the Scepter is restored and this Rod like to that in Israel laid up I hope within the Ark together with the Tables of the Law never to be dis joyn'd from Gods Commands nor taken thence against them Next for Heresies Truly we have left us none to revive or to make new the mischief both of them and their Cause the want of Government in the Church is now discerned and remedied And for Divisions and Schisms they who reflect on the said issues of them how well meaning soever all their Causes were will certainly avoid them To see how while we quarelled for the Fringes of Religion we tore the seamless Coat of Christ to pieces yea and the body too How when we first dislik'd a Liturgy the daily Sacrifice of Prayer was made to cease and then the House of Prayer was demolisht next Christs our Lords Prayer was rejected that Liturgy of his own framing thrown away in the Rubbish of his Temple and then it was a sin to pray at all His Table we must have remov'd and then his Supper was so too and that great Mystery of our Religion the Sacrament of our Redemption was buried in the Ruins of his Altar To see how thus out of heats of Religion we destroyed all Religion because that some adjacent Circumstances did not please us and fetcht a Coal from the Altar to set fire to and burn down the Temple because the building of some out-Court was we thought irregular is Document enough not to attempt this any more for Religions sake For now it would be in despite of Christ who hath almost verified the Jewish accusation of him Destroy this Temple also and in three days he will build it up again and hath built it up we hope as he did that of his own Body never to fall again by us Surely we will not kill this Body of his out of Love to him and make his Temple his burnt Offering When God hath set our sins in order thus before our eyes shewed them us in their sad effects there is no fear that we should fall in love with them But where it is not thus where Gods last and most working Method hath been able to produce no good I must to keep my word Apply the Danger In that case what remains but the Curse of the ground Heb. vi
other Resolutions thou seest the things that men with so much care and sin provide to make their lives delightful here although success answer their care are vain and helpless things and life it self as vain and I must die and drop from Heaven and therefore be thou sure to take a care their treacherous comforts do not make me die into the everlasting want of them and of all comforts The Artificial pleasures of the Palate whether in meats or drinks forc'd tasts that do at once satisfie and provoke the Appetite will rellish ill when I begin to swallow down my spittle but sure I am I am invited to the Supper of the Lamb to drink new Wine with Christ in my Father's Kingdom The fatted Calf is dressing for my Entertainment and shall I choose to be a while a Glutton with the Swine rather than the eternal Guest of my Father's Table and Bosom and refuse these for a few sick Excesses which would end in qualms and gall and vomits if there were no guilt to rejolt too and which will kindle a perpetual Feaver The Honours and the Glories of this Life will lose their shine when I am going to make my Bed in the Dark in a black lonely desolate hole of Earth my Gayeties must die when I must say to Corruption thou art my Father and to the Worm thou art my Mother and my Sister And if there were pride or ambition in them their Worm will never die that Pride will make me fall as low as Lucifer that Glory will go out into utter darkness and that Ambition change my Honour into everlasting Shame Envy and Torment But sure I am that there are Glorious Robes and Thrones and Scepters in God's Promises and let thy gayety my Soul be in the Robe of Immortality the Throne of thy Ambition that of Glory When I shall lie tortur'd or languishing in my last Bed Palaces and Possessions will no more relieve me than the Landskip of them in the Hangings can do it And if there were Covetousness Bribery Sacriledg or Injustice in them I shall be carried out of these and have no other Habitation assigned me but with the Devil and his Angels shall inherit and possess nothing but the Almighty's Indignation for ever But in my Father's House are many Mansions Places prepared for me and an Inheritance as wide as Heaven as Endless and Incorruptible as Eternity and God Himself And sure if I may choose there I will live where there is neither Will nor possibility to die where there is Life fulness of Joy Pleasures for Evermore To which c. The Sixth SERMON Preached at WHITE-HALL PSALM LXXIII v. 25. Whom have I in Heaven but thee and there is none upon Earth that I desire besides thee MY Text is the result of the Pious man's Audit the foot of the account in summing up his whole that he hath either in Possession or Desire and instead of nice Division of the Words I shall observe in them these Subjects of Discourse First the different tenure or condition of Estates in the two different Countreys we relate to this here is a Land onely of desires the other is a place of enjoyments Have in Heaven Desire on Earth Yea Secondly Though our estate here in this Earth be present and that other seem removed far off yet the possessions of that are present and in hand but the most native satisfactions of the Earth are still at distance onely the object of our aims and expectations I have now I have in Heaven on the Earth I but desire Thirdly Here is the matter of both these desires and enjoyments to the Pious man No Person or no thing for so it bears also but God There is nothing upon Earth that I desire besides thee And as to Heaven the negation is express'd emphatically by a Question Whom have I in Heaven but thee Yet least this Question should look like an Expostulation and he that asks it seem unsatisfied with his Portion we will therefore Lastly see the Importance of it to the Christian since our Saviour is gone up into Heaven see whom the Christian hath there And if the Psalmist could find none but God and David if he were the Author could not see the Son of David there yet since Christ is set at the Right hand of God the Christians present Interest in Heaven is such that looking with contempt on all that worldly men applaud themselves in the enjoyment of rejecting all but thee O Christ he justly triumphs in resolving of this question to himself and being satisfied in having thee he does renounce even the desiring any thing but thee Of these in their order beginning here on Earth where our tenure even of earthly things is but desire this World does give no satisfactions in hand but still they are onely the objects of our Expectations and wishes When God hath given Man an erect Countenance Eyes that do naturally look towards him and the very frame of him is such that Heaven is his constant Object it were no wonder if his looks and thoughts were always there since both the duty and necessity of that does seem imprest upon him in his making and to desire things above is as it were the Law in his members But when he swims in delicacies here upon the Earth is immerst in the plenties of all kinds that these should give him nothing but desires of themselves that the delights should not be present to him but he should still pursue and need that which he is encompast with that while with open mouth and in a most intemperate current he swills down the pleasures yet his open mouth should gape only with thirst and he be sensible of nothing but the want of these is strange even to astonishment Yet such it seems the nature of them is When S. John would enumerate all that is in the World the particular that he gives in is thus 1 John ii 16. All that is in the world the lust of the Flesh the lust of the Eyes and the Pride of Life He does not say the objects of these Lusts that are to serve and satisfie them for there 's no such thing as satisfaction but onely lust and if we make enquiry into the particulars we shall find it To begin with that of the Eyes Covetousness or the love of Money 'T is evident that where an Object is not useful to the faculty it cannot satisfie for satisfaction is fulfilling of our needs and uses but Money is not useful to the sight nor indeed does it prove useful to or serve any of the Covetous mans occasions or faculties rather the contrary in every kind he does bereave himself of good because he hath it He is in agonies of trouble and sollicitude lest he should need and not have that which when he hath acquir'd he will still need and will not have enjoyment of Nor is it possible it should be otherwise for since there is no natural
Dogs Dogs that are taught to snarle and bite and make more sores not lick them this is a state more killing than my want able almost to tempt a man to any courses But then if with the Eye of Faith I do but look beyond the gulph and there behold the Rich man in his flames begging for water and although it be the Region of eternal weeping yet not able to procure one drop of his own tears to cool his Tongue O then I see 't is better to be Lazarus although there were no Abraham's bosom But if my Faith look through that bosom also into that of God and there behold the Son of God leaving all the essential felicities of that Bosom to come live a life of Vertue here on Earth and to teach us to do so choosing to do this also in a state of the extreamest poverty consecrating want and nakedness contempt and scorn making them thus the Ensigns of a divine Royalty And to encourage us not to sink under any of the Worlds assaults he hath proposed Rewards of Vertue such as God is blessed in did my Faith give me but a constant view of all this sure the paint and varnish of these little things below the twinkling exhalations of the glories of this World could not dazle my mind and captivate my Soul I should burst these entanglements to catch at those 'T is evident and 't is acknowledg'd that when our belief shall be all Vision and our expectation possession when our Understanding shall become all Sense in Heaven and we see and tast and have those glories then we cannot sin cannot be tempted from them And therefore by the measures of the nearness of these Objects of our sight and of our interest so are our strengths to stand and overcome Temptations Now Faith is sight gives presence we have seen and it gives interest too He that believes is born of God saith the Apostle and therefore hath a right Now to be born of one is to receive from him a principle of life He then that hath receiv'd from God a Principle of life such as he can derive life like his own such as is led in Heaven when he does consider his original and looks upon himself as born of God and consequently heir of Gods possessions which his Faith gives him a prospect of how will he look down on the tempting glories of this World on all that makes it grateful and desirable as upon abject things and sleight and undervalue whatsoever worldly men poor Souls do fear or hope or long for and pursue The Mathematicks say that the whole Globe of Earth to one that looks upon it from the Fitmament is but as a point and sure it is demonstrable it must be so And then how low and how contemptible must it needs seem to him that looks on it as from the Region of the Blessed from Gods Mansion and when his Soul having defecated and freed it self from all earthy muddy gross affections and become expedite and light expatiates through those unbounded unfathom'd extensions of Heaven and glory and looks upon all as his own that he is very shortly to come to take the full enjoyment of and hath already seisin of it by his Faith how will he despise those narrow those ridiculous bounds which the great ones of this World with Fire and Sword contend for when he â—ees this little point half cover'd with the Sea almost as much too hid from us and not to be discovered by our arts or industry of that which is much Desart some parts Frozen some burnt up and not inhabited and then the little remnant of this point to be the strife and the vexation of Mankind while multitudes of Nations tear one anothers bowels spill the Blood and Souls of Myriads for some little patch or other of it and those that are not doing so yet in their sphere too they oppress deceive do any thing to get and all the rest are in perpetual hurry of vexatious employments or of toilsom pleasures or of ruining Vices Will he not look on this more unconcern'd than we do on the busie labours of a little World of Ants about a Mole-hill which Philosophers compare us to The spectacle is much more to be pitied indeed the crouds and Squadrons of those Ants though they should have as many traverses and walks as men have they have not Soul enough to have their guilt Probably had they Humane understandings they would then divide their Mole-hill into Empires would be false and treacherous to one another Cheat Defraud Oppress and Murder one another for the present share and had they Reason they would be more Brutes than now they are but Pismires For Beasts have less folly too because they are not Men. But he whose Faith mounts him to Heaven his Birth-place where he nestles in the secret Bosom of his Father he needs not be concern'd in any of the carriages of this World he is above them all without the sphere of their attraction or magnetism without the dangers of temptations from them The World is but as his slave and it hath no command upon him he treads it all under his feet and therefore certainly hath overcome it the Condition and degree of which Victory is the next and last thing we are to enquire into If you ask the Stoick who is this great Conquerour that overcomes the World he will answer somewhat to this purpose It is not any of those great successful Robbers that with Armies forrage Nations it is not he that peoples the whole Sea filling it with his Navies nor he that sets his Confines on the remotest parts of the Inhabited World that can call all his own that the Sun views so that it shines not out of his Dominions But the Man that hath conquer'd his own Inclinations to the things below he that hath rais'd his mind above the Crosses or Contents of this World that can march among them both dreadless and unconfus'd the man whose Soul is nothing dazled by the brightness of Wealth it shall not blind his Eyes but through the varnish or the glory that the shine of it does shed he can discover and will hate an evil action he that can severely look on all those blandishments that Prosperity furnishes and decks out pleasure in and can sit continent and abstemious in the midst of its delights that when it is all Halcyon day with him nothing but Sunshine and he swims in the calm streams of flowing Plenty is not melted by one or other does not become loose and dissolute at all the man also that is not shaken by the tumults of Adversity when like an Earthquake she renverses all his mind then stands unmov'd that does not so much suffer as receive and welcom all that happens as if he would not have it happen otherwise In a word it is the man that hath rais'd his mind above all casualties the man that does but remember that
severe Judges were appointed meant the same thing with our last Assize and their Elizian fields were but Poetical Paradise their Phlegethon River of Fire was set to express our stream of Brimstone flame Thus Resurrection in fable made them vertuous the guess at it made Socrates die chearful and though his hopes had faint weak Principles they had Heroick almost Martyr resolutions And on the other side of those that among them deny'd an after life though we are told that Epicurus was a vertuous man yet his Sect did give name to Vice and is still the expression for it and all that did espouse the Tenents of it did the Vices too the Sadduces among the Jews are call'd Epicures not onely for Opinions sake because they did make God a body and totally denyed his Providence as Zakuth says but Epicures also for their practice sake For they used to scoff at the Pharisees for afflicting themselves by Fasting and Austerities in this life 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when there is nothing at all of recompence for them in any life to come Yea and Josephus says of them they were the worst of all Sects living like savage Beasts towards one another and uncourteous to their own Sect as to strangers and this says he was but a natural effect of their Opinion which wholly denied the Immortality of the Soul and all Rewards and Punishments after this Life which Principle one coming from the dead would rectifie and so contribute to Repentance Especially if Secondly That one were Lazarus if he that at the Supper of the Lamb sits next the Father of the faithful and the friend of God in one of the higher Seats of Paradise in Abraham's Bosom if he would go and speak his knowledg of the Pleasures of that Bosom which he tasts and of the glories of that Place and but compare them with the little gayeties of my Fathers House shew them the difference betwixt their Structures and that Foundation whose builder and maker God is betwixt the entertainments of their riotous Palats and the Festivals of the Blessed Trinity then sure they would disrellish those and catch at these which do exceed them by a whole Infinity and will out-live them an Eternity And here should I attempt what he would have had Lazarus perform to dash out the blessedness of that place making the first draught of them with notions of delight not such as the Understanding cannot apprehend but such as seize the heart with pleasure in this Life and that give it the strongest agitations here and sweetning that by those transcendencies which I could fill it up with and should I raise it then with shadow evince that reason though it cannot fathom can yet by sure Discourse conclude the greatness of those Glories which I would leave for your expectations to loose themselves into should I attempt all this I were an insolent undertaker Yet were it very easie to describe them so as that viewing them with the things below these would vanish in the comparison And to do so much was the utmost that our Rich Man could design by sending Lazarus who if he could have been believ'd might probably have done the work for if Faith did but do what Lazarus did look into Abraham's Bosom were it but turn'd into a little Vision and but as clear an evidence of things not seen as eye-sight hath of its temptations had the spiritual Object but that advantage the carnal hath of being present now it is the work of Faith to give it that advantage sure it would be impossible for the sensitive Objects the pleasures or the Profits of this World which ae so far inferiour to the other in desireableness and onely make advantage of their being present when the other is so far off 't would be impossible for them to gain our wills consent at any time and therefore when those glories shall be present to the Soul 't will be impossible for any other Object to steal or ravish any way to engage one thought away from them In Heaven they cannot wish to sin Nay the flash alone of that glory fascinates the heart Peter and James and John saw but a glimpse of it and that transfigur'd too onely the other way that Moses and Elias were for the glory suffered an exinanition and they but wak'd into the sight of it so that 't was but an apparition of Heaven and yet they never would have left the place which it once lightned Master it is good for us to be here let us go down no more never converse with any thing beneath Mount Tabor but let us build three Booths such Tents would be like that which He hath spread and such Booths be some of the many Mansions of his House who spreadeth out the Heavens for a Tent for himself to dwell in But the truth is while men do onely hear of Joys above and have but thin neglected notions of them and on the other side a sense of present profits pleasures honours which the World affords they will not be affected with the future dry hopes of those as with all these in present will nor have as effectual a tast of the Supper of the Lamb as of their own delicious daily fare nor be as much wrought upon by the Promises of being Cloath'd upon with the white Robe of Immortality and by the mentions of a Crown although of Glory as they are pleas'd with their own Royal Purples they have much surer Conviction of the delights of present things than of those far removed futurities but now if Lazarus would go from Abraham's Bosom he might Convince them from his own Experience and then they would Repent Especially Thirdly because Lazarus hath seen me in my Torments and can give account of them wherefore I pray thee Father Abraham send him for if such an one went unto them from the Dead one that could testifie of this place he would tell them such sad stories of my condition here how in lieu of all my sumptuous fare I have nothing now but gnashing of teeth streams indeed of Brimstone and a lake of fire but everlasting feaver of thirst for my delicious intemperate Palate my short-liv'd sins turn'd to eternal Agonies sure this would prevail with them to cut off their sins by Repentance before Death cut off their sin and them together and so they might prevent the coming hither And very probably it might have taken for upon such Conviction 't is hard not to resolve to change for who is he that can resolve thus with himself well I will now content my self with everlasting Condemnation and this sin for I see they are consequent now this I cannot leave therefore let the other come they that were once affected with the apprehensions of the greatness and the certainty of that Damnation cannot resolve thus and therefore we see fewer men adventure to transgress Man's Law whose Punishment is near and most assur'd than God's
all that does pretend to God or Vertue in him Where 't is thus let no man flatter or persuade himself he does what he would not when it is plain he does impetuously will the doing it Let him not think that he allows not but hates that which he does when it is certain in that moment that he does commit not to allow that which he does resolve and pitch upon and chuse to hate what with complacency he acts or to do that unwillingly which he is wrought on by his own Concupiscence to do and by his inward incitations by the mutiny of his own affections which the Devil raises and when it is the meer height and prevailency of his appetite that does make him do it as it must be where there is reluctancy before he do it his desires and affections there are evidently too strong for him or at last to hate the doing that which 't is his too much love to that makes him do are all impossibilities the same things as to will against the will desire against appetite But do but keep thy self sincerely and in truth from being willing and thou must be safe For God expects no more but that we should not voluntarily yield to our undoing He hath furnish'd us with his own compleat Armour for no farther uses of a War but to encourage us to stand Take unto you the whole Armour of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the Devil And again Put ye on the whole Armour of God that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand There is no need to do more than this not to be willing and consent to fall for no man can be beaten down but he that will fall It were very easie for me to prescribe you how to fortifie against those Engines of the Devils battery which I produced to you But that I may not stay upon particulars directing those whom he prevails upon through want of Imployment to find out honest occasions not to be idle and sure it is the most unhappy thing in the World for any man to be necessitated to be vicious by his having nothing else to do and because while the World accounts it a Pedantick thing to be brought up by Rules and under Discipline he cannot learn how to imploy himself to his advantage to pass by these I say the universal strength against this Enemy is Faith Your adversary the Devil like a roaring Lion goeth up and down seeking whom he may devour whom resist stedfast in the Faith And that not onely as it frustrates all that he attempts by means of Infidelity but it also quenches all his fiery darts whatsoever bright Temptation he presents to draw us from our Duty or whatever fiery trial he makes use of to affright and martyr with For the man whose Faith does give him evidence and eye-sight of those blessed Promises eye hath not seen and gives substance present solid being to his after-hopes and whose heart hath swallowed down those happy expectations which have never entred in the heart of man to comprehend what is there that can tempt or fright him from his station To make all that which Satan gave the prospect of prevail on such a Soul the Kingdoms of the Earth must out-vie Gods Kingdom and their Gauds out-shine his Glory and the twinkling of an eye seem longer than Eternity For nothing less than these will serve his turn all these are in his expectations Or what can fright the man whose heart is set above the sphere of terrours who knows calamity how great soever can inflict but a more sudden and more glorious blessedness upon him and the most despiteful cruel usage can but persecute him into Heaven 'T is easie to demonstrate that a Faith and Expectation of the things on Earth built upon weaker grounds than any man may have for his belief of things above hath charg'd much greater hazards overcome more difficulties than the Devil does assault us with For sure none is so Sceptical but he will grant that we have firmer grounds to think there is another World in Heaven than Columbus if he were the first Discoverer had to think there was another Earth and that there are far richer hopes laid up there in that other World for those that do deny themselves the sinful profits and the jollities of this and force them from their inclinations than those Sea-men could expect who first adventur'd with him thither For they could not think to gain much for themselves but onely to take soism of the Land if any such there were for others covetous Cruelty could get little else but only richer Graves and to lie buried in their yellow Earth Nor are we assaulted in our Voyage with such hazards as they knew they must encounter with the path of Vertue and the way to Heaven is not so beset with difficulties as theirs was when they must cut it out themselves through an unknown new World of Ocean where they could see nothing else but swelling gaping Death from an Abyss of which they were but weakly guarded and removed few inches onely And as if the dangerousest shipwrecks were on shore they found a Land more savage and more monstrous than that Sea Yet all this they vanquish'd for such slender hopes and upon so uncertain a belief A weak Faith therefore can do mighty works greater than any that we stand in need of to encounter with our Enemy It can remove these Mountains too the golden ones that Covetousness and Ambition do cast up Yea more it can remove the Devil also for if you resist him stedfast in the Faith he flies which is the happy issue and my last Part. Resist the Devil and he will Fly from you And yet it cannot be denied but that sometimes when the messenger of Satan comes to buffet though S. Paul resist him with the strength of Prayer which when Moses managed he was able to prevail on God himself and the Lord articled with him that he might be let alone yet he could not beat off this assailant 2 Cor. xii 7 8 9. When God either for prevention as 't was there v. 7. or for exercising or illustrating of Graces or some other of his blessed ends gives a man up to the assaults of Satan he is often pleased to continue the temptation long but in that case he does never fail to send assistances and aids enough against it My grace is sufficient for thee â—aith he to S. Paul there And when he will have us tempted for his uses if we be not failing to our selves he does prevent our being overcome so that there is no danger in those Trials from their stay But yet it must not be denied but that the Devil does prevail sometimes by importunacy and by continuance of Temptation so that Resistance is not always a Repulse at least not such an one as to make
Trajan's time when St. John's date was almost out his life and his Commission expiring and the Churches of Asia to be provided with succession the Men were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signified by the Holy Ghost But the Chron. Alex. saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he went clean throughout Asia and the adjacent Regions constituting not only Bishops but others of inferiour Clergie And even in the lowest thus it was when the first Deacons were to be made Men full of the Holy Ghost and Wisdom were to be look'd out Act. 6. 3. But yet that did not authorize them the Holy Ghost and Wisdom did not make a Deacon For besides that the Apostles will appoint them over their business ibid. and they are brought to them and they do lay their hands upon them v. 6. Thus it was in those times of full effusion of the Holy Ghost Men always had to do in giving that Commission so that whoever pleads an Order of the Spirit for his Office although such a Commission of the Spirit if he had it would evidence it self and if it were it would appear for 't was the manifestation of the Spirit that was given to every man to profit withall yet if we yield him his pretensions and let his own incitations pass for inspirements and his strong fancie for the Holy Ghost if the Holy Ghost did call him who did separate him Whom the Holy Ghost calls he sends to his Officers to empower they both work He says do ye separate And here a Consideration offers it self unto those holy Fathers whom the Spirit makes his Associates in separating men to sacred Offices that when they set apart even to the lowest stalls of the Church they labour to perform it so that the Holy Ghost may be engag'd and act along with them in the performance Separate such as they may presume the Spirit hath call'd and will own He does not call the ignorant or appoint blind eyes for the Body of Christ or make men Seers to lead into the pit The Holy Spirit calls not the unclean or the intemperate we know it was another fort of Spirit that went into the swine nor does he ever say Separate me those who separate themselves the Schismaticks the Spirit calls not such as break the unity of the Spirit nor sets into the rank of higher members in Christs body those who tear that body and themselves from it the factious those that will not be bound neither in bonds of peace nor of obedience but break all holy tyes that make commotions and rave and foam sure 't is the Legion that sends them and not the Holy Ghost He whom the spirit will call must not be under the reputation of a Vice but should be of a good report lest he fall into reproach and so into the snare of the Devil 1 Tim. 3. 7. i. e. lest he fall into reproach and then his teaching do so too and men learn to slight or not heed the doctrines of such a one as is under scandal for his life and so the Devil get advantage over them and do ensnare them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For to be to any an occasion of falling is to be the Devils snare Now Christ's Fishers of men those whom the Holy Ghost appoints to spread nets for the catching Souls to God their lives must not lay snares for the Devil and entangle Souls in the toyls of perdition Those also that come to you out of Ambition or of greediness of gain the spirit calls not neither He calls we see 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to a work so that they who seek more then they can well attend the labour of or are qualified for the work of they are not of his sending But of all men the Holy Ghost will least deal with the Simoniacal that come not to a work but to a market that contract with Patrons for the spirits call or worse than their master Simon would hire the Holy Spirit himself to say Separate me them The Successors of the Apostles have a Canonical return to these Your money perish with you They whom the Holy Ghost does call must have his gifts and temper St. Paul hath set all down to Timothy and Titus and those who minister in this employment if they will be what he hath made them joynt Commissioners with him and his Co-workers they must order it so that he may work and act which he does not but where he calls nor does he call but those whom he hath qualified And 't is of those only whom he hath call'd that he says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Separate The Third particular the thing enjoyn'd And the Holy Ghost said Separate The separateness of the Functions of the Clergy the incommunicableness of their Offices to persons not separated for them is so express a doctrine both of the Letter of the Text and of the Holy Ghost that sure I need not to say more though several heads of Probation offer themselves As first the condition of the Callings which does divide from the Community and sets them up above it And here I might tell you of bearing rule of thrones of stars and Angels and other words of as high sence and yet not go out of the Scripture bounds although the dignity did not die with the Scripture Age or expire with the Apostles the age as low as Photius words it thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That Apostolical and Divine Dignity which the chief Priests are acknowledged to be possest of by right of Succession Styles which I could derive yet lower and they are of a prouder sound than those the humble ears of this our age are so offended with But these heights it may be would give Ombrages although 't is strange that men should envy them to those who are only exalted to them that they may with the more advantage take them by the hands to lift them up to Heaven Those nearnesses to things above do but more qualifie them to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Theoph. and to draw near to God on your behalf that those your Angels also may see the face of your Father which is in Heaven and those stars are therefore set in Christ's right hand that they may shed a blessed influence on you from thence The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Work and labour of the work the one is the 〈◊〉 and the other Saint Paul's word require a whole man and therefore a man separate and if St. Paul one of our separated persons here who had the fulness of the Spirit and the fulness of Learning too that was brought up in the Schools and brought up in Paradise taught by the Doctors and taught by the mouth of the Lord in the third heaven snatcht from the feet of Gaâ—aliel to the presence of God to have a beatifical Vision of the Gospel if after
Condition There never was so much pretence of seeking God as in those late days of his absence from us and it should seem indeed we knew not where to find him we took such several ways to seek him But if God did not look down from heaven then as he did Psal. 14. to see if any did understand and seek after God should he not then have found it here as there They are altogether gone out of the way their throat is an open sepulcher with their tongues have they deceived the poison of asps is under their lips their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness their feet are swift to shed blood destruction and unhappiness is in their ways and the way of peace have they not known there is no fear of God before their eyes They eat up my people as it were bread and which is worse in these then them they even then call upon God as if they craved a blessing from the Lord upon that meal that did devour his people and when they did seek God they meant to find a prey Yet where were any others that did seek him Or that do cleave to him now The Schismatick does not seek God who shuns the place where he appears and meets and dwells nor does he cleave to God who tears himself off from the Lord's body Mark such as cause divisions saith S. Paul and avoid them and if all Christians must avoid them then I am sure God is not with them The other Schismaticks that divide from the World by cutting off the World from them do they seek God that are diverted by so many Saints and Angels that terminte divinest Worship in a creature Or do they cleave to God when their devotion embraceth stocks and stones Or did they seek God for the purpose of my Text who did not seek David their King but did apply themselves to several foreign Princes and to others which they hoped would set up their Golden Calf Incendiaries that make fires and raise commotions these are farr from God for the Lord was not in the fire or in the Earth-quake but in the still small voice in the soft whispers of peace and love The Atheist he that says in his heart there is no God will not seek God you may be sure nor does he care to seek David his King who is equally well under all Governments that will allow his Licences and who hath no Religion to tie him to any If he at all disliked the former it was upon reasons of Burthen or of Pride or Libertinism So much Religion though counterfeit was a reproach to him and the face of such strictness was uneasie to him These are so far from seeking God that God says these did drive him out of Israel Ezek. 9. 9. And then when that hath so long been the Wit that it is now the Complexion of the Age and they who thought fit to shew their not being Hypocrites by License and to give it an easie word by drollâ—ry in sacred things have now made nothing to be sacred to them how shall the Lord dwell among such They are enough to exercise God out of a Nation The Hypocrite also for all his Fasts and Prayers never did seek God for he is but a whited Sepulcher our Saviour says Now who would seek the Living God among the dead the Lord of Life sure is not to be found in Graves Golgotha was a place to crucifie him in not Worship him He takes not in the Air of Funeral Vaults for Incense it was a Demoniack that used to be among the Tombs The subtle false and faithless men that walk in Mazes never shall meet God These are the windings and the tracts of the Old Serpent and they lead only to his habitation They that do climb as if they meant to find God on his own Throne that follow Christ up to a pinnacle of the Temple or to the top of that exceeding high Mount whence they can over-look the glories of the World and pick and chuse these do not go to seek Christ there It is the Devil that does carry up thither upon his own designs Nor is it possible to seek the Lord in the ways that lead to the strange Womans house for her house is the way to hell Solomon says and he did know nay more her steps take hold on hell seise on those everlasting burnings which her foul heats kindle and begin In a word they that seek their own that turn all meerly to their advantage they cannot seek God too he will not be joynt God with Mammon And then where are the men that sought him That did retrive him to us Or with whom does he dwell If he be not among us we do in vain flatter our selves in our prosperity and peace gawd it in all our bright appearances Have we not seen the Sun rise with a glory of day about him and mounting in his strength chase away all the little receptacles and recesses of the night not leave a cloud to shelter the least relicks of her darkness or any spot to chequer or to fleck the countenance of day When strait a small handful of vapor rais'd by that Sun it self did creep upon his face and by little and little getting strengh be-dasht his shine and pour'd out as full streams of storm as he had done of light 'till it even put out the day and shed a night upon the Earth in spight of him So may prosperity it self if the Lord and his blessing be not in it raise that which will soon overcast and benight the most glorious condition of a Nation That Wine which now makes your hearts glad may prove like that which did commit the Centaâ—res and the Lapithae first kindle Lusts then Wars and at last onely fill a Cup of trembling and astonishment and that Oyl that does make you chearful countenances may make your paths slippery and nourish flames that will devour and ruine all But God who is found of them that seek him not nay who himself sought the lost sheep and carried him when with his straying he was wearied into impossibility of a return as also sought and found and brought together us and our great Shepherd For this is the Lords doing and it is marvellous in our eyes These ways of his also are so past finding out that we may well conclude they are the meer foot-steps of his incomprehensible goodness and we have onely now to fear that goodness But give me leave to say Those that despise his goodness do not fear it and they whom it does not lead to repentance do despise it S. Paul says Rom. 2. 4. Despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long-sufferance not knowing that the goodness of the Lord leads thee to repentance And now O Lord what sort of men among us hath thy goodness wrought upon and made repent Those whom it was directed to convince
and came on purpose to to prove by their own onely argument they had of providential Miracles they were not in the right but that destruction and misery were in their ways yet these chuse rather to deny their own conclusions and resist Gods goodness then to be convinced and repent For we have seen them as bold Martyrs to their Sin as ever any to Religion signalize their resolv'd impenitence with chearful suffering as if the fire they were condemn'd to were that Triumphal Chariot in which the Prophet mounted up to Heaven Others that did not go so far in condemnation nor guilt as they and therefore think they have no reason to repent of that do they repent of what they did contribute to it Of those that lifted up their hands to swear and fight how many are there that have made them fall and smite their own thigh saying What have I done Do not all rather justifie as far as they themselves proceeded And if all that were well why do not we repent of our Allegiance and Loyalty If all that were well what hath thy goodness done O Lord that hath reverst it all And for the rest those that do not partake the plenties of thy goodness murmur and repine at it are discontent at having what they pray'd for what they would have died for Those that have been partakers of it have turned it into wantonness have made it furnish them for base unworthy practices such as have not the generosity of Vice have not a noble manly wickedness are poltron sins have made it raise a cry on the Faithfullest party the best Cause and the purest Church in the World While we have debauched Gods own best Attribute made his goodness procure for our most wicked or self-ends and the face of things is so vicious in every order and degree and sex that But the Confession is onely fit for Litanies and we have need to make the burthen of ours be Lord give us some afflictions again send out thy Indignation for we do fear thy goodness it hath almost undone us and truly where it does not better it is the most fearful of Gods Attributes or Plagues for it does harden there St. Paul says so in the forecited place and Origen does prove this very thing did harden Pharaohs heart indulgence was his induration Now induration is the being put into Hell upon the Earth There is the same impenitence in both and judgment is pronounced already on the hardned and the life they lead is but the interval betwixt the Sentence and the Execution and all their sunshine of Prosperity is but kindled Brimstone onely without the stench And then to make the treasures of Gods bounty be treasures of wrath to us to make his kindness his long-suffering that is St. Peter says salvation condemn us his very goodness be Hell to us But sure so great a goodness as this we have tasted cannot have such deadly issues and it was great indeed so perfectly miraculous in such strange and continued successes resisting our contrivances and our sins too overcoming all opposition of our vices and our own policies that do not comport with it and in despight of all still doing us good it was fatality of goodness Now sure that which is so victorious will not be worsted by us But Oh! have we not reason so much more to fear the goodness The greater and more undeserved it is the more suspicious it is As if it were the last blaze of the Candle of the Lord when its light gasps its flash of shine before it do go out the dying struggles and extream efforts of goodness to see if at the last any thing can be wrought by it And if we did consider how some men manage the present goodness make use of this time of it and take and catch we would believe they did fear the departure of it But yet it is in our power to fix it here If we repent Gods gifts then are without repentance but one of us must change Bring Piety and Vertue into countenance and fashion and God will dwell among us Nay St. Paul says Goodness to thee if thou continue in his goodness If we our selves do not forsake it and renounce it not fear it so as to flie from it but with the fears of sinking men that catch and grasp lay fast dead hold upon it if as God promises he so put his fear in our hearts that we never depart from it fear that hath love in it and is as unitive as that then it shall never depart from us but we shall see the goodness of the Lord in the Land of the Living and shall be taken thence to the eternal fulness of it This day shall be the Birth-day of Immortal Life the entring on a Kingdom that cannot be moved A Crown thus beautified is a Crown of Glory here and shall add weight and splendor to the Crown hereafter A Church thus furnished is a Church Triumphant in this World and such a Government is the Kingdom of Heaven upon Earth and then we shall all reign with him who is the King of Kings and who washed us in his Blood to make us Kings and Priests to God and his Father To whom be glory and dominion for ever Amen SERMON XVIII AT CHRIST'S-CHURCH IN OXFORD ON St STEVEN's Day MATH V. 44. But I say unto you love your Enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you I Need no Artifice to tie this Subject and this Day together The Saint whose memory we celebrate was the Martyr of this Text And 't is impossible to keep the Feast but by a resolution of obeying these Commands you being call'd together on this day to beseech God to grant that you by the Example of this first Martyr St. Stephen who pray'd for his Murderers may learn to love your Enemies and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you A strange command in an Age in which we scarcely can find men that love their Friends nor any thing but that which serves their interests or pleasures that indeed love nothing but themselves nor is it onely injury that works their hate and enmity but difference in opinion divides hearts and men are never to be reconcil'd that have not the same mind in every thing as if one Heaven should not hold them that have not one judgment in all things we see that one Church cannot hold them and they that have but one same God one Redeemer and Saviour one Holy Spirit of Suplication cannot agree yet in one Prayer to him though they have but one same thing to pray for to him will not meet in their Worship because they do not in some Sentiments and 't is no wonder all Christ's reasonings and upbraidings all the Advantages he does propose to them that love the shames he casts on them
For them it is very necessary for persecution or despightful usage offending God as by a disobedience to his precept so also by the sufferings it does inflict on man to forgive or require which that man hath right God does not use to put the injur'd person by this right or by its paramont Authority assume to pardon the mans part of the wrong but does retain the sin till that either in deed or desire do satisfied for or remitted there being 'till then an obstruction to Gods forgiveness for 'till then the man hath not repented but when the fufferer does pray for him in doing so he pleads that that obstruction is remov'd that his part is remitted and so leaves no bar in the way to that pardon which he begs for him of God and which that bar being gone the Lord is us'd to grant with all advantage the prayers of our Martyr in the seventh of the Acts are a demonstration to which the Fathers say the Church did owe not only her deliverance from all the violent intentions of Saul but all that Christianity which St. Paul planted the dying voice of that petition Lord lay not this sin to their charge was answered by that voyce from Heaven which converted Saul in his career of fury One prayer for a persecutor puts an end to persecution si Stephanus non or asset Ecclesia non habuiesset Paulum Jobs miserable comforters whose visits prov'd afflictions to him could not a tone themselves to God by their burnt offerings but Job must pray for them 42. Chr. 8. seven Bullocks and seven Rams cannot expiate but one petition from the sufferer will do it for him I will accept saith God and he accepted him not for them only but for himself for the Lord turned the Captivity of Job when he prayed for them vers 10. These intercessions speed sooner then direct supplications and such a petition is heard to our selves when 't is made for others And reason good for such requests lay the condition of our pardon before God making evidence of our performance and they cry for we forgive and so call for pardon And to encourage this procedure our Saviour before he did commend his own spirit into the hand of his Father he commended his Executioners to the mercies of his Father Our Martyr did not so indeed but first pray'd for himself Lord Jesus receive my Spirit Acts. 7. 59. But though Heaven opening he saw that Jesus standing at the right hand of God as ready to receive it yet his spirit would not leave his body so yet made him live yet to endure more stoning from his persecutors for whom he had not pray'd yet but when he once fell on his knees not beaten down by their storm but his Charity and pray'd Lord lay not this sin to their charge when he had said so he fell asleep v. 60. his Spirit taken hence as it were osculo pacis though by the most violent death and he lies down in a perpetual rest and peace that thus lies down in Love These are requests to breath out a soul into heaven in and heaven it self did open to receive that soul that came so wafred And now we are at the top of Christ's Mount the highest and the steepest point of christianity which view with that â—o which our Martyrs Spirit did ascend For it makes perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect it sets our heads within those higher and untroubled Regions wherein there are no Meteor-fires the flame of Passion cannot wing it thither for he that is above the power of injury discontent cannot look up to him it is with him as in the upper Orbs where there is only harmony and shine all is peace and love the state of heaven it self Now as it does happen to them that look down from great heights every Object below is dwarf'd And if the distance of the prospect be as great as that from Heaven to Earth they tell us this whole Globe would be but like a spot all being swallowed in it self so if from this great height of duty we should look down upon the World of Christianity would it not almost wholly disappear and vanish Something like a dark spot of it you may perchance behold stain'd and discolour'd with the Blood of Christians which their constant quarrels shed Some it may be dye that Blood in colours of Religion their Animosity is christened Zeal they kill only for Sacrifice thus they interpret and fulfill Christs precepts this they call holy love as if Christ when he bid his Disciples take no Staves with them meant they should carry Swords as if the love he had commanded we should have for them that are in errour if our enemies be so indeed were but to murder them forsooth out of their errours Next for the kindnesses that Christians do to those that hate them or have disoblig'd them they are God knows so little that no perspective can shew them from this height we are upon And yet 't is not for want of light we cannot see them 't is very rare men do those things in the dark for if they do not blazon them themselves the enemy whom they oblige must do it The distance also is too great to hear the prayers that are made for those that treat men with despiteful usage perhaps it is because they are put up in secret bur then what means the yelling of those curses That ill Language that is banded to and fro While none will be behind in the returns of these how far soever we are off like Thunder these are heard And thence you may behold them also tearing Christs wounds wider to mouth their swelling passion We may see their anger redden with his Blood and themselves spitting out that Blood by imprecations at the face of him that did provoke them we may see them raking Hell to word these prayers sending themselves thither in wishes that they may express them with more horrour The Hatreds and Revenges which men act on them that have offended them hates that seldom ever dye 'till themselves do which the Frost of the Grave onely cools yea many times they are rak'd up and keep their heat in the ashes live in the grave and are as long liv'd as the families which for the most part is more careful and tenacious of them than of their Inheritance The executions of these are often writ in Characters legible at utmost distance in this Mount of the Lord they may be seen but where now are the Christians of my Text and of this day There 's no appearance of them in the face of the whole Globe of our Profession nay worse it is scarce possible they should appear the Duties of loving enemies of returning affronts with kindnesses these are banisht thence other virtues are practic'd down but these are scorn'd and quarrel'd down 'T is become a base thing and not to be endur'd to be a Christian
Acts iv 12. 2. Tim. ii 19. Verse 20. Verse 28. Ibid. John xi 25. Phil. lii 21. Verse 15. Ephes. iv 12. Gen. iii. 4. 6. Jer. xvii 10. Ephes. ii 2. John iii. 36. Job v. 7. Verse 44. 45. Matth. viii 29. Luke viii 31. 1 Tim. v. 13. Rom. iii. 13. Ezek. xvi 49. Exod. xxxii 6. Psalm lxxviii 19 25. Wisd. xvi 20 21. Exod. xvi 18. Psalm lxxvii v. 18. Verse 7. 2 Sam. xi 1 2. Ephes. vi 16. Job i. 11. Matth. iv 3. Luke xviii 8. Heb. xii 4. Matth. iv 8 9. Ephes. v. 5. Rev. ix 11. John xiii 2 27. Isai. xiv â—4 Matth. iv 4. Ephes. vi 11. 2 Tim. ii 26. Ephes. vi 11. 13. 1 Pet. 5. 9. Ephes. vi 16. Heb. xi 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heb. xi 1. Deut. ix 14. James iv 6. Matth. xxv 29. Acts vii 51. Ephes. vi 16. 1 Thess. v. 19. Gen. xix 16. Verse 4 9. Ephes. iv 30. Isal. vi 9. Matth. xiii 14 15. John xii 40. Acts xxvâ—i 26. Rom. xi 8. Ezek. xxxiii 11. Ephes. vi 12. 2 Cor. x. 4 5. Acts 26. 18. Rev. iii. 21. Heb. xiii 20 10. 29. Gal. 4. 1 Cor. i. 18. Poly. Ignat. Ep. p. 23. Edit Usserian pro persequentibus odientibus vos pro inimiâ—is crucis Teâ—tul Apolog. c. 1. Gal. vi 14. Matth. xvi 24. 1 John v. 8. Heb. xii 2. 2 Cor. iv 17. 1 Cor. i. 18 19 21 23. Luke xii 15. Tertul. Apol. c. 16. Tertul. ad Nat. c. 11. Ibid. John i. 36. Rev. xiii 8. Heb. ix 26. John xv 13. Rom. v. 8 10. Cant. viii 6. Ibid. 70. Col. ii 15. a Mat. 28. 18. 19. b Joh. 20. 21. c Si Papa erraret praecipiendo vitia vel prohibeâ—do virtutes teneretur Ecclesia credere vitia esse bona virtutes malas nisi vellet contra conscientiam peccare Bellarm. de Rom. Pontif. l. 4. c. 5. sect ultima d Irridere Catholicae Fidei disciplinam quod juberentur homines credere non autem quid esset verum certissimâ ratione docerentur l. 1. Retract c. 14. e De util cred c. 1. ante Fidem nobis quam rationem imperari f Origen adv Celsum l. 1. p. 8. editio Cantabrig C. 1. g 1 Cor. 14. 20. h I Joh. 4. 1. i Mat. 24. 24. a 2 Cor. 10. 5. b Mat. 16. 16. c John â— 12. d John â— 2. e Mat. 19. â— f v. 10. g Luke 19. 38. h De utilit cred c. 14. i 〈…〉 Tad Shegagoth c. 12. 13. V. 〈…〉 l. 3. c. â— p. 465. Or see Aiâ—sworth upon that place of Leviâ—â—â—â— m vid. Eusâ—b l. 8. c. 3. n vid. Baron Annal. ad annum 302. num 22. 26. o Spondanus ad annum 302. num 4. Severus l. 2. hist ait Omnis ferisacro martyrum cruore orbis infectus est p There were â—ut seven years betwixt the death of S. Joh. and the Persecution of Trajan some say but one q Plinius Procon Ponti by th niâ— vid. ipsius Ep. l 10. Ep. 97. Tertul. Apol. Euseb. Ecc. hist. l. 3. c. 3â— r Euseb. lib. 3. c. 7. Hist Eccl s I Joh. 1. 1 2. t Joh. 20. 27. u Quod ergo videtis panis est calix quod vobis etiam oculi vestri renunciaâ—t Aug. serm ad infantes x Tertul. de Anima c. 17. y Mat. 26. 29. z I Cor. 11. 26. 27. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Talm. Baby tit Pesachim c. 10. sec. 3. Maiâ—on Yad titulo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. 8. sec. 7. a The Schoolman b The Socinian c Ego quidem etiamsi non semel sed saepe id in sacris monimentis scriptum extaret non id circo taman ita prorsuâ— se habere crederem Socinâ—s de Servatore l. 3. c. 6. 2 Vol. 204. d Mat. 5. 39. e Mat. 5. 29 30 f And the men of Jabesh Gilead said unto Nabash make a covenant with us and we will serve thee And Nabash answered them on this condition will I make a Covenant with you that I may thrust out all your right eyes and lay it for a reproach upon all Israel 1 Sam. 11. 1 2. g 1 Tim. 6 10. h Mat. 6. 19 20 i Mat. 19. 24 26. Hab. III. 4. Mat. XIV 20. 21. John II. 6. 7. a Exod. VII 11 13 22. b Exod. VIII 19. c Exod. IX 11. d Mat. 24. 29. Vid. Raimundi Martini pug fidei p. 262. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 e Four Millions vide pug fid ibid. f 2 Thes II. 10. Tert. Apol. c. 23. Edatar hic aliquis sub tribunalibus vestris ex iis qui de Deo pati exist imantur qui aris inbalanâ—es numen de nidore concipiunt qui ructando conantur qui anhelando profantur nisi se damones confessi â—uerint Christiano mentiri non audentes ibidem c. Arist. hist. Anim l. 5. c. 27. Plin. nat hist. l. 11. c. 24. Rom. VIII 7. Verse 1. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 5. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Ark of the Covenant with the Propitiatory and Cherubiâ—s the Vrim and Thummim the fire that came down form Heaven to confume the burnt offerings the Glory of God that appear'd between the Cherubiâ—s and the Holy Ghost that spake by the Prophets See Gemar c. 1. in Joma See also Galat. l. 4. citing the same out of R. Elias R. Solomon R. David b Hag. 2. 10. e Joel 2. 28. John 3. 14. 1 Pet. 2. 25. d Ep. ad Corint p. 54. edit Junii e Apud Euseb. l. 3. c. 23. f On 1 Tim 4. 14. Matth. 28. 20. Matth. 12. 20. 2. 1 Joh. 2. 20. a Epip haer 75 b Vide Athanaâ— Apol. 2. How this judgment did derive it self down into the Reformation may be seen from the account of the Fratres-Bohemi who sought over the World for Episcopal Ordination and were never quiet in their consciences 'till they had obtained it Vide Johan in Coment Ratio Disciplinae ordiâ—isque Ecclesiastici in unitate Fratrum Boâ—emorum c Bed Eccl. hist. l. 2. cap. 2. d Suid. in voce 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Tit. 1. 5. 1 Cor. 12. 7. Mar. 5. 13. Luke 8. a Theophyl in locum b Matt. 4. 19. Act. 8. 20. c 1 Tim. 5. 17. Heb. 13. 7. d Mat. 19. 28. e Rev. 1. 20. e Rev. 1. 20. f Phot. ep 54. a Matt. 18. 10. b Apoc. 1. 20. c 1 Tim. 5. 17. 2 Cor. 12. 1 2 3 4. Heb. 5. 1. Col. 1. 24. a Ephes. 2. 21. b 1 Tim. 3. 15. c Vid. Tharg Hierosolym Gen. 9. 3. Jonath ibid. Solom Iarch Glossam ad Exod 19. 22. ad cap. 24. 5. d Vide Isido Pelusio l. 2. Epist. 47. Jac. 1. 27. e Rom. 12. 2. f Joh. 15. 19. Matt. 5. 14. g 1 Cor. 11. 10. h Exod. 15. 17. l Exod. 20. 14. John 6. 7. Mat. 16. 23. Apoc. 1. 20. 1 Tim. 6. 16. Apoc. 1. 20. Acts. 9. 1. 1 Cor. 15. Col. 1. 24. Mat. 16. 15. Rom. 15. 10. 2 Cor. 10. 16. 2 Cor. 11. 28. John 21. 15. a Acts 9. 17. Putting on his hands he said the Lord hath sent me that the mightest be filleâ— with the Holy Ghost b Act. 9. 15. 22. 14. c 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Separate for the work that is for the Apostleship Oecumenius upon this text And so Theoph. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Theoph. in Act. Apostol p. 2. in locum p. 118. Vid Tâ—eoph in locum p. 119. d 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Goari p. 684. Apoc. 1. 26. Acts 7. 1. 2. b Lev. 16. 12 13. c 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Greg. Naz. Orat. 6. ad Greg. Nyssen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Aben. Ezr. ad Psal. 99. d 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Greg. Naz. ubi supra 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Philo de vita Mosis l. 1 3. e Had not Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach to turn away his wrath lest he should destroy them f 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Miracles gifts of healing Governments diveasities of tongues g That sense he puts upon it in the Epistle to the Galathians c. 5. v. 3. 4. a ab annis quatuordecim saith the Arab. Math. 14. 28. 29. 31. ibid. Eph. 1. 19. 20. Num. 12. 3 20 10. Deut. 33. 11. Num. 16. 3. Jude 11. Num. 16. 30. ver 32 33. John 10. 21. Heb. 13. 20. Matth. 25. 33. Psal. 44. 19. Luk. 22. 44. Ver. 42. Mat. 27. 46. Mat. 27. 45. a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 b Exod. 29. 42 43. c Psal. 42. 4. d Psal. 74. 7. e Psal. 31. 20. f Jer. 17. 12. 14. 21. Psal. 74. Ver. 3. Psal. 4. 6. Ver. 7. Ver. 1. 2. Psal. 42. 4. Arist. Pol. 1 7. Joseph 1. con Appio 〈…〉 1 Kings 12. 16 Luke 16. 26. Prov. 28. 2. a E. Simeo the Son of Jochai said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and R Simeon the Son of Menasiah said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Deut. 33. 5. Exod. 32. 1 5. Judg. 3. 7. and ver 12. Ch. 4. 1. Ch. 6. 1. Ch. 10. 6. b 1 Kings 16. 26. Ch. 21. 22. 22. 52. c. Ch. 13. 1. Tim. 2. 2. ver 35. 1 Sam. 12. 15. Psal. 89. 49. Isa. 5. 16. 2 Chro. 34. 2. 2 King 14. 3. 2 Chron. 17. 3. Psal. 122. 3 5. Psal. 130. 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Judg. 5. 9. 2 Sam. 5. 4. Inter 7 9. Sauli qui regnavit an 20. Vid. Sim. Chron. Psal. 120. 5. Psal. 14. Rom. 3. Rom. 16. 17. 1 Kings 19. 11 12. Matth. 2â— 27. Matth. 4. Prov. 9. 27. Prov. 5. 5. Phil. 2. 21. Isai. 65. 1. Luk. 15. 4 5. 2 King 2. 11. Jer. 31. 19. Rom. 2. â— 2 Pet. 3. 15. Rom. 11. 22. Jer. 32. 40. Apoc 1. 5 6. a Mat. 18. 22. John 13. 3 4 5. b 1 Pet. 4 8 Vers. 21. 22. 1 John v. 16. 〈…〉 Psalm 1. 3. 〈…〉 White Psal. 109. 17. 18. Gal. 6. 10. Tertul. a Act. 7. 60. b Act. 9 4. Luk. 23. 34. 46. Mat. 5. 48. Per. 5. 12.
for these do still put demurs and nothing but discomfort dwells upon my spirit A dark and ill state this and therefore 't is no wonder if the Spirit of darkness sheds it especially where he cannot draw in the soul to works of darkness if he cannot quench the heats of their devotion then he will strive to cool them by these arts which like little dashings of water thrown into the fire if they cannot put it out yet at least they darken the flame and change that which was pure and clear into thick fume and smother so do these raise smoak and cloud in the soul. If the Devil cannot betray the heart to downright vice but his suggestions are shut out and temtations scorn'd or at least avoided then he will trouble them in their duties he will suggest things that under the vizor of nicer and stricter Religious shall be let in and when they are in shall put the soul in little combustions and disturb all its performances Therefore these are to be combated with and the heart to be fortified against them as soon as ever we find these little spies and incendiaries of Satan stirring in the mind let us strait seize them and examin what they do there what account they can give of themselves Have they any ground or plea when a thought checks me with a sudden motion of heart least what I do may be amiss I will question instantly hath God said so any where is there any Law that forbids it If I cannot resolve my self I will call in counsel for if I be not ashamed to whisper the unhandsomnesses of nature to a Physician to betray uncomely infirmities shall the chearful quiet of my Soul and the comfortable progress of my Religion be less considerable to me and if by these means I cannot find God hath forbid it any way either directly or by consequence why then shall I do Satan's work for him help him to disquiet my own heart make the semblance of Religion hinder my Religion and with a pudder about duty keep my self from doing duty much more of which I might perform with less trouble than I do think of these things and with infinitely more comfort No sure I will make no sins to my self that God hath not made but in God's name with an upright heart set about my known duty in full assurance of faith But Secondly it will become us whosoever is at any time troubled with these to consider with our selves when we find scruples arise about things of very small concern to examin am I thus wary and thus nice in every peice of known duty have I as sharp checks there and is my conscience as stirring in every circumstance of sure Religion if a true object of charity pass by me or I hear of such an one whose real wants seem to call upon me for Christ's sake and I instead of satisfying his needs satisfy only the importunity of my own thoughts by some little excuse I have not about me or let others give that are more able or why should I give to every one that asks me In this case now is my heart restless and scrupulous least the real wants of the poor soul should make an alms duty unsatisfied till I either know that or till I do releive him If when Praiers call and at the same time either a trifle or something which I had time enough before to prevent and knew well enough the fit times of doing one and t'other yet seek to detain me have I scruples here and are they strong enough to throw aside the less concerns and will not let my heart rest till it brings me honestly and zealously to my devotions If some little slight injury or it may be inadvertency of another fret my mind and begin to swell me into a passion or thicken into a grudg and I am in present heat of words and remember him with a slight or a less esteem do scruples rise as fast as these heats and my heart become more troubled at it self than at the little conceiv'd injury and never well at ease till I am calm to him If it be not thus but we who strain at gnats and swallow camels we whose eies boggle at motes in the Sun can wink or suffer beams to hood-wink them we that scruple at things indifferent things of which we have no rule to judge them sins and are not nice at all in things of certain duty have no such scrupulous conscience in known faults or at least in much more concerning matters we may do well to consider whether our nicest carefulness in these do not betray that in such little things the main of our Religion lies our hearts lay their greatest stress upon these There are certain formalities of Religion things that speak people Professors distinctive characters of a Party professing Godliness little things by which they are discriminated as niceties in habits or gestures or modes or tones of speaking or forms of doing things in Religion or some strict forbearances of things that all the world beside themselves never imagin'd hurt in Now they that do make such to be the stamp and signature of a Professor it is no wonder if they be nice and scrupulous in them and truly to be scrupulous especially in such indifferencies do's dangerously look towards that 't is certain where the greatest care and watchfulness is laid there will the most and greatest scruples be apt to stir so that if these be most in such indifferencies either the heart hath entertain'd some end besides Religion the seeming strict or a Professor or else the heart hath bin betraied and by being bred up to strict cares especially in such things it hath let it self be besotted by those strict and handsom appearances and low spirited as it is hath rais'd no higher but set up his cheif rest there they think if they do these things they are religious There cannot be any other reason given of these different strictnesses this scrupulosity in little things and negligence in greater interests and therefore 't is worth the search in every heart in which examination whosoever shall find his scruples to be universal and proportion'd to the duty his heart watchful especially where the concern is greatest and there most careful where it most behoves him let that heart take comfort that quality is but the nicety the quickness of a clear pure eie that can endure no dust no soil upon it and such an eie shall lead a person thro the paths of God's word which is a light to the feet and a light unto the paths here to the Land of everlasting light and glory where in God's light he shall see light for evermore SERMON XXI THE LIGHT OF THE BODY is the Eye Matt. 6. 22 23. The light of the body is the eye if therefore thy eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light But if thine eye be evill thy whole body shall be full
of darkness If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness how great is that darkness THE Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a treasure hid in a field Matth. 13. 44. a field this much richer than it shews for that provides for several uses of our life that furnisheth with food and wealth too and is both granary and treasury and just such is the word of the Kingdom also it hath in it more than it promises to sight there are still hidden treasures besides the food that grows before our eies if we search we shall find still more and more furniture for life more wealth yet in the bowels of it These words give us experience of this from which tho we have had several spiritual entertainments provisions for divers cases of our life yet have we not exhausted them for we shall find that yet in another sense The light of the body is the eie c. To the two interpretations I have given of these words the first of which that by a single eie should be meant a single intention an intire honest meaning an heart like that of Jacob plain simple and upright such as may therefore stile a man an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile no doubling but such an one as laies alwaies to it self good ends and intends to take in no ill means to compass them hath bin generally adhered to by almost all Expositors The second that by the single eie should be meant the pure clear good conscience which to me indeed seems much more proper than the other to neither of them have I any objection but this that they do not at all relate to the matter of the discourse which our Savior hath in hand and 't is not imaginable why Christ should in the midst of a Paragraph concerning mortifying the desire and love of wealth the beginning of which commands laying up treasure in heaven and the end tells us we cannot serve God and Mammon should interpose any thing of conscience or intentions and therefore tho what we have delivered of them be exactly consonant to the words and built upon other certain Scripture and be the sense of most men yet we will view one other which tho it be assign'd but by one Expositor that I know of yet being exactly pertinent to the matter in hand and having a surer plea for its being the sense of the place than any of the rest have it shall not escape us tho no more have lighted upon it Now the way of finding out the meaning was not to consider what may be compar'd to a single eie or an evil eie for possibly so many things may be but by seeing what those words do constantly signify in Scripture and so what light and darkness also do and then put them together and see whether they will so here and we shall take those grounds 1. Then what a single eie and evil eie do use to signify in Scripture and for the evil eie we find it often Prov. 23. 6 7. Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eie neither desire thou his dainty meats for as he thinketh in his heart so is he eat and drink saith he to thee but his heart is not with thee which means eat not the meat of him that is a niggard who tho he do invite thee to it yet he do's grudge it thee and grieves thou eatest it his heart do's not speak in his invitations but he had rather thou wouldest spare and he computes thy morsels So again Prov. 28. 22. He that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eie that is is covetous he envies every other man's prosperity so most Translations render it here is troubled to see another flourish and thinks their gain his loss So Matt. 20. 15. Is thine eie evil because I am good he saies to them who tho they had contracted for a penny by the day for labor yet when they saw those that had wrought but a little part receive so much strait entertain'd desires and hopes of more than they had bargain'd for and when they saw they should have nothing but their due they murmur'd to whom the Master do's reply Friend I do thee no wrong didst thou not agree with me for a penny be thou content with that which comes to thy share This man that came last to work it being not his fault that he came no sooner but his not being sooner call'd and he having labored honestly and cheerfully ever since he came shall by me who accept the will for the deed be rewarded with the same reward that thou hast and sure thou hast no reason to complain that I dispose of my own as I see cause what reason is there that my bounty to others should be matter of envy and discontent to thee So that an evil eie signifies unsatisfiedness with ones own condition and envy at anothers an eie that grieves to see any thing go besides it self in one word an illiberal covetous envious mind You have its perfect character Ecclesiasticus 14. from v. 3. to 10. Riches are not comely for a niggard and what should an envious man do with mony He that gathereth by defrauding his own soul gathereth for others that shall spend his goods riotously he that is evil to himself to whom will he be good he shall not take pleasure in his goods There is none worse than he that envieth himself and if he doth good he doth it unwillingly The envious man hath a wicked eie he turneth away his face and despiseth men a covetous man's eie is not satisfied with his portion and the iniquity of the wicked dries up his soul a wicked eie envieth his bread and he is a niggard at his table Next for the single eie that certainly is set as opposite to the evil eie as meaning liberality and chearful bounty and we shall see accordingly that singleness do's signify for so our Bible almost alwaies translates the word 2 Cor. 8. 2. Their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality the riches of their singleness it is in the Original So chap. 9. 11. being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness to all singleness again v. 13. liberal distribution singleness of distribution the Greek do's say and so in many places which others have observ'd and Rom. 12. 8. He that giveth let him do it with simplicity or singleness for 't is the same word still and there our Margent tells you that it means liberality Single therefore do's in Scripture signify bountiful and we shall find that coupled with the eie Prov. 22. 9. He that hath a bountiful eie shall be blessed for he giveth of his bread to the poor And so we have the Scripture sense of these two words the single eie do's signify a liberal mind and the evil eie a niggardly uncontented envious disposition And here let us stop a little and say a word on these expressions why these things to