in your private and publique devotions will ye not fast for this kingdome in cutting off superfluities will ye not fight for this kingdome in resisting suggestions will ye not take Counsaile for this kingdome in consulting with religious friends will ye not give subsidies for this kingdome in relieving their necessities for whom God hath made you his stewards weigh and measure your selves and spend that be negligent of that which is least and worst in you Is your soule lesse then your body because it is in it How easily lies a letter in a Boxe which if it were unfolded would cover that Boxe unfold your soule and you shall see that it reaches to heaven from thence it came and thither it should pretend whereas the body is but from that earth and for that earth upon which it is now which is but a short and an inglorious progresse To contract this the soule is larger then the body and the glory and the joyes of heaven larger then the honours and the pleasures of this world what are seventy years to that latitude of continuing as long as the Ancient of dayes what is it to have spent our time with the great ones of this time when when the Angels shall come and say that Time shall be no more we shall have no beeing with him who is yesterday and to day and the same for ever we see how ordinarily ships goe many leagues out of their direct way to fetch the winde Spiritus spirat ubi vult sayes Christ the spirit blowes where he will and as the Angel took Habakkâ—k by the haire and placed him where he would this winde the spirit of God can take thee at last by thy gray haires and place thee in a good station then Spirat ubi vult he blowes where he will and spirat ubi vis he blowes where thou wilt too if thou beest appliable to his inspirations They are but hollow places that returne Ecchoes last syllables It is but a hollownesse of heart to answer God at last Be but as liberall of thy body in thy mortifications as in thy excesse and licentiousnesse and thou shalt in some measure have followed Gods example for the publique to pretermit the private for the larger and better to leave the narrower and worser respects To proceed when we made that observation that God pretermitted the private for the publique we noted that God did not say non bonum Homini It was not good for man to be alone man might have done well enough in that state so as his solitarinesse might have been supplied with a farther creation of more men In making the inventaries of those goods which man possesseth in the world we see a great Author says In possessionibus sunt amici inimici not onely our friends but even our enemies are part of our goods and we may raise as much profit from these as from those It may be as good a lesson to a mans sonne Study that enemy as Observe that friend As David says propitius fuisti ulciscens Thou heardst them ô Lord our God and wast favour able unto them and didst punish all their inventions it was part of his mercy part of his favour that he did correct them So we may say to our enemy I owe you my watchfulnesse upon my selfe and you have given me all the goodnesse that I have for you have calumniated all my indifferent actions and that kept me from committing enormous ill ones And if then our enemies be in possessionibus to be inventaried amongst our goods might not man have been abundantly rich in friends without this addition of a woman Quanto congruentius says S. Augustine how much more conveniently might two friends live together then a man and a woman God doth not then say non bonum homini man got not so much by the bargaine especially if we consider how that wife carried her selfe towards him but that for his particular he had been better aloneâ— nor he does not say now non bonum hunc hominem esse solum It is not good for any man to be alone for Qui potest capere capiat says Christ he that is able to receive it let him receive it What That some make themselves Eunuchs for the kingdome of heaven that is the better to un-entangle themselves from those impediments which hinder them in the way to heaven they abstaine from mariage and let them that can receive it receive it Now certainly few try whether they can receive this or no. Few strive few fast few pray for the gift of continency few are content with that incontinency which they have but are sorry they can expresse no more incontinency There is a use of mariage now which God never thought of in the first institution of mariage that it is a remedy against burning The two maine uses of mariage which are propagation of Children and mutuall assistance were intended by God at the present at first but the third is a remedy against that which was not then for then there was no inordinatenesse no irregularity in the affections of man And experience hath taught us now that those climates which are in reputation hottest are not uninhabitable they may be dwelt in for all their heat Even now in the corruption of our nature the clime is not so hot as that every one must of necessity mary There may be fire in the house and yet the house not on fire there may be a distemper of heate and yet no necessity to let blood The Roman Church injures us when they say that we prefer mariage before virginity and they injure the whole state of Christianity when they oppose mariage and chastity as though they were incompatible and might not consist together They may for mariage is honourable and the bed undefiled and therefore it may be so S. Augustine observes in mariage Bonuam fidei a triall of one anothers truth and that 's good And bonum prolis a lawfull meanes of propagation and that 's good and bonum Sacramenti a mysticall representation of that union of two natures in Christ and of him to us and to his Church and that 's good too So that there are divers degrees of good in mariage But yet for all these goodnesses God does not say non bonum it is not good for any man to be alone but Qui capere potest capiat according to Christs comment upon his Fathers text He that can containe and continue alone let him doe so But though God do not say non homini It is not good for the man that he be alone nor quemvis hominem it is not good for every man to be alone yet considering his generall purpose upon all the world by man he sayes non bonum for that end it is not good that man should be alone because those purposes of God could not consist with that solitude of man In that production and in that survay
Father or of my friend shall bee glorifyed there mine eyes shall be glorifyed as much and we are both kept in the same proportion there as wee had towards one another here here my naturall eye could see his naturall face and there mine eye is as much mended as his body is and my sense as much exalted as mine object And as well as I may know that I am I I may know that He is He for I shall not know my selfe nor that state of glory which I am then in by any light of Nature which I brought thither but by that light of Glory which I shall receive there When therefore a man finds that this consideration does him good in his conversation and retards him towards some sinnes how shall I stand then when all the world shall see that my solicitation hath brought such a woman to the stews to the Hospitall to hell who had scap'd all this if I had not corrupted her at first which no man in the world knew before and all shall know then Or that my whispering and my calumny hath overthrown such a man in his place in his reputation in his fortune which he himself knew not before and all shall know then Or that my counsell or my example hath been a furtherance to any mans spirituall edification here He that in rectified reason and a rectified conscience finds this in Gods name let him beleeve yea for Gods sake let him take heed of not beleeving that we shall know one another Actions and Persons in the Resurrection as the Apostles did know Christ at the Transfiguration which was a Type of it This Transfiguration then upon earth was the same glory which Christ had after in heaven Qualis venturus talis apparuit such as all eyes shall see him to be when he comes in glory at last those Apostles saw him then but of the particular circumstances even of this transfiguration upon earth there is but little said to us Let us modestly take that which is expressed in it and not search over-curiously farther into that which is signifyed and represented by it which is the state of glory in the Resurrection First his face shin'd as the Sunne says that Gospell he could not take a higher comparison for our Information and for our admiration in this world then the Sunne And then the Saints of God in their glorifyed state are admitted to the same comparison The righteous shall shine out as the Sunne in the Kingdome of the Father the Sunne of the firmament which should be their comparison will be gone But the Sun of grace and of glory the Son of God shall remain and they shall shine as he that is in his righteousnesse In this transfiguration his clothes were white says the text but how white the holy Ghost does not tell us at once as white as snow says Saint Mark as white as light says Saint Matthew Let the garments of the glorifyed Saints of God be their bodies and then their bodies are as white as snow as snow that fall's from heaven and hath touâ—ht no pollution of the earth For though our bodies have been upon earth and have touched pitch and have been defiled yet that will not lye in proof not be given in evidence Though he that drew me and I that was drawen too know in what unclean places and what unclean actions this body of mine hath been yet it lyes not in proof it shall not be given in evidence for Accusator fratrum The accuser of the brethren is cast down the Devill shall find nothing against me And if I had spontaneum Daemonem as Saint Chrysostome speaks a bosome Devill and could tempt my self though there had been no other tempter in this world so I have spontanâ—um Demonem a bosome accuser a conscience that would accuse me there if I accuse my self there I reproach the mercy of God who hath seal'd my pardon and made even my body what sins soever had discoloured it as white as snow As white as snow and as white as light says that Gospel Light implies an active power Light is operative and works upon others The bodies of the Saints of God shall receive all impressions of glory in themselves and they shall doe all that is to bee done for the glory of God there There they shall stand in his service and they shall kneel in his worship and they shall fall in his reverence and they shall sing in his glory they shall glorifie him in all positions of the body They shall be glorified in themselves passively and they shall glorifie God actively sicut Nix sicut Lux their beeing their doing shall be all for him Thus they shall shine as the Sun Thus their garments shall be white white as snow in being glorified in their own bodies white as light in glorifying God in all the actions of those bodies Now there is thus much more considerable and applyable to our present purpose in this tranfiguration of Christ that there was company with them Be not apt to think heaven in an Ermitage or a Monastery or the way to heaven a sullen melancholy Heaven and the way to it is a Communion of Saints in a holy cheerfulnesse Get thou thither make sure thine own salvation but be not too hasty to think that no body gets thither except he go thy way in all opinions and all actions There was company in the transfiguration but no other company then Moses and Elias and Christ and the Apostles none but they to whom God had manifested himself otherwise then to a meer naturall man otherwise then as a generall God For in the Law and in the Padagogie and Schoolmastership and instruction thereof God had manifested himself particularly by Moses In Elias and the Prophets whom God sent in a continuall succession to refresh that manifestation which he had given of himself in the Law before in the example of these rules in him who was the consummation of the Law and the Prophets Christ Iesus And then in the Application of all this by the Apostles and by the Church established by them God had more particularly manifested himself then to naturall men Moses Elias Christ and the Apostles make up the houshold of the faithfull and none have interest in the Resurrection but in and by these These to whom and by whom God hath exhibited himself to his Church by other notions then as one universall God For nothing will save a man but to believe in God so as God hath proposed himself in his Son in his Scriptures in his Christ. These were with him in the transfiguration and they talked with him says that text As there is a Communion of Saints so there is a Communication of Saints Think not heaven a Charter-house where men who onely of all creatures are enabled by God to speak must not speak to one another The Lord of heaven is
Naphtali that hee should bee a well-spoken and a perswasive man For so Moses after God had farther inabled him saith Give eare O yee Heavens and I will speake Heare O Earth the words of my mouth My mouth saith Moses The Minister of God that cometh with convenient gifts and due preparation may speak such things as Earth and Heaven it selfe may be content to heare For when Saint Paul saith That to the Principalities and Powers in Heavenly places the manifold wisdome of God is made known by the Church that is by the Ministery and Service of the Church and by that which is done here wee may congruously and piously beleeve that even those Principalities and Powers in Heavenly places The Angels of Heaven doe heare our Sermons and hearken how the glory of God is communicated and accepted and propagated through the Congregation and as they rejoyce at the conversion of a Sinner so rejoyce also at the means of their Conversion the powerfull and the congruous preaching of the Word of God And therefore let no man though an Angell of the Church though an Archangell of the Church Bishop or Archbishop refuse to heare a man of imeriour place or inferiour parts to himself neither let any man be discouraged by the fewnesse or meannesse of his Hearers For as the Apostle saith with relation to Abraham Entertain strangers for thereby some have entertained Angels unawares so preach to all and that seat that thou thinkest empty may have Angels in it To them is the manifold Wisedome of God made knowne by the Church and Angels are here here for the augmentation of their owne Ioy in their fresh knowledge of the propagation of the Kingdome of God in this Congregation and they are here for their Accusation that are not here but frivolously and causelessely absent or negligently absently present if they be here Therefore Moses might say Give eare O yee Heavens though it bee but I that speake And hee might add as he doth there My Doctrine shall droppe as the rain and my speech shall distll as the dew And why Because I will publish the Name of the Lord saith Moses there because I will deliver the Messages of my God to his People What though you doe must this be ascribed unto you no Moses claimeth not that for when hee had said Give eare O yee Heavens let no man thinke himselfe too high or too wise to heare me and called it his Doctrine and his speech because he published the Name of the Lord yet he transferreth all upon God himselfe He establisheth their attentions with that Ascribe yee Greatnesse unto our God It becommeth me to make my selfe as acceptable a messenger as I can and to infuse the Word of God into you as powerfully as I can but all that I can doe is but a small matter the greatnesse of the worke lieth in your Application and that must proceed from the Word of God it selfe quickned by his Spirit and therefore Ascribe all Greatnesse unto our God for that is the Hony whatsoever or whosoever be the Hony-combe Truely when I reade a Sermon of Chrysostome or of Chrysologus or of Ambrose Men who carry in the very signification of their Names and in their Histories the attributes of Hony mouthed and Golden-mouthed Men I finde my selfe oftentimes more affected with the very Citation and Application of some sentence of Scripture in the middest or end of one of their Sermons then with any witty or forcible passage of their owne And that is it which Saint Hierome doth especially magnifie in Saint Paul After he had said Quotiescunque lego non verba mihi videor sed tonitrua audire wheresoever I open Saint Pauls Epistles it is not a word or a sentence but a clappe of Thunder that flieth out he addeth moreover Legatis doe but use your selves to the reading of Saint Pauls Epistles Videbitis in testimoniis quae sumit ex veteri Testamento quà m Artifex sit quà m prudens you will easily see how artificially how dexterously how cunningly and how discreetly he makes his use of those places which he citeth out of the Old Testament Videntur verba Innocontis rusticani you would take them saith hee sometimes for words of some plain Country-man as some of the Prophets were no other But before Saint Paul have done with those words Fulmina sunt capiunt omne quod tangunt hee maketh you see that they are flashes of lightning and that they possesse and melt affect and dissolve every soul they touch And hence it is Beloved that I return so often at home in my private Meditations that I present so often to Gods People in these Exercises this Consideration That there are not so exquisite so elegant Bookes in the World as the Scriptures neither is any one place a more pregnant example thereof for the purity and elegancy for the force and power for the largenesse and extention of the words then these which the Holy Ghost hath taken in this Text Hee that oppresseth the poore reproaches his Master c. And so we passe from this first Consideration The power and Elegancy of the whole word of God in generall to the same consideration in these particular words The Matter which in the generall is but this That the poor must bee relieved being a Doctrine obvious to all The Manner wil rather be our object at this time How the Holy Ghost by Solomons hand hath enwrapped this Doctrine in these words How the Omission of this Duty is aggravated how the performance thereof is celebrated in this Text and in the force and elegancies thereof Mans perversenesse hath changed Gods method God made man good but in a possibility of being ill Now God findes man ill but in a possibility of being good When man was good and enabled to continue so God began with him with affirmative Commandements Commandements that implied liberty and Soveraignty such as that Subjicite Dominamini Subdue the Creature and rule over the Creature and he comes not till after to Negative to Prohibitive Commandments Commandments that imply infirmity and servility such as this Of this Tree thou shalt not eate upon thy life this life and the next thou shalt not But now because God findes man ill and prone to bee worse God is faine to change his method and to begin and stop him at first with negative and prohibitive Commandments So he does in the thirty fourth Psalm ver 14. which is also again repeated first Depart from evill and then Doe good For man brings with him something into the world now to forget and to unlearn before he can take out any new lesson Man is so farre from being good of himselfe as that he must forget himselfe devest himselfe forsake himselfe before he can be capable of any good And such is the method of our Text Because God sees a naturall declination in man to abuse his power to the
which God made of all that he had made still he gives the testimony that he saw all was good excepting onely in his Second dayes worke and in his making of Man He forbore it in the making of the firmament because the firmament was to divide between waters and waters it was an embleme of division of disunion He forbore it also in the making of man because though man was to be an embleme of Gods union to his Church yet because this embleme and this representation could not be in man alone till the woman were made too God does not pronounce upon the making of man that the work was good but upon Gods contemplation that it was not good that man should be alone there arose a goodnesse in having a companion And from that time if we seeke bonum quia licitum if we will call that good which is lawfull mariage is that If thou takest a wife thou sinnest not sayes God by the Apostle If we seeke bonum quia bonus autor if we call that good whose author is good mariage is that Adduxit ad Adam God brought her to man If we seek such a goodnesse as hath good witness good testimony mariage is that Christ was present at a mariage and honoured it with his first miracle If we seek such a goodnesse as is a constant and not a temporary an occasionall goodnesse Christ hath put such a cement upon mariage What God hath joined let no man put as under If we seek such a goodnesse as no man that is no sort nor degree of men is the worse for having accepted we see the holiecst of all the High Priest in the old Testament is onely limited what woman he shall not mary but not that he shall not mary and the Bishop in the new Testament what kinde of husband he must have been but not that he must have been no husband To contract this as mariage in good in having the best author God the best witnesse Christ the logest terme Life the largest extent even to the highest persons Priests and Bishops as it is all these wayes Positively good so it is good in Comparison of that which justly seemes the best state that is Virginity in S. Augustines opinion Non impar meritum Iohannis Abrahae If we could consider merit in man the merit of Abraham the father of nations and the merit of Iohn who was no father at all is equall But that wherein we consider the goodnesse of it here is that God proposed this way to receive glory from the sonnes of men here upon earth and to give glory to the sonnes of men in heaven But what glory can God receive from man that he should be so carefull of his propagation what glory more from man then from the Sunne and Moon and Stars which have no propagation why this that S. Augustine observes Musca Soli praeferenda quia vivit A Fly is a nobler creature then the Sunne because a fly hath life and the Sunne hath not for the degrees of dignity in the creature are esse vivere and intelligere to have a beeing to have life and to have understanding and therefore man who hath all three is much more able to glorify God then any other creature is because he onely can chuse whether he will glorify God or no the glory that the others give they must give but man is able to offer to God a reasonable sacrifice When ye were Gentiles saies the Apostle ye were caryed away unto dumb Idols even as ye were led This is reasonable service out of Reason to understand and out of our willingnesse to doe God service Now when God had spent infinite millions of millions of generations from all un-imaginable eternity in contemplating one another in the Trinity and then to speake humanly of God which God in his Scriptures abhors not out of a satiety in that contemplation would create a world for his glory and when he had wrought the first day and created all the matter and substance of the future creatures and wrought foure dayes after and a great part of the sixth and yet nothing produced which could give him any glory for glory is rationabile obsequium reasonable service and nothing could give that but a creature that understood it and would give it at last as the knot of all created man then to perpetuate his glory he must perpetuate man and to that purpose non bonum it was not good for man to be alone as without man God could not have been glorified so without woman man could not have been propagated But as there is a place cited by S. Paul out of David which hath some perplexity in it we cannot tell whether Christ be said to have received gifts from men or for men or to have given gifts to men for so S. Paul hath it so it is not easse for us to discern whether God had a care to propagate man that he might receive glory from man or that he might give glory to man When God had taken it into his purpose to people heaven again depopulated in the fall of Angels by the substitution of man in their places when God had a purpose to spend as much time with man in heaven after as he had done with himself before for our perpetuity after the Resurrection shall no more have an end then his Eternity before the Creation had a beginning And when God to prevent that time of the Resurrection as it were to make sure of man before would send down his own Son to assume our nature here and as not sure enough so would take us up to him and set us in his Son at his own right hand whereas he never did nor shall say to any of the Angels Sit thou there That God might not be frustrated of this great and gracious and glorious purpose of his non bonum it was not good that man should be alone for without man God could not give this glory and without woman there could be no propagation of man And so though it might have been Bonum homini man might have done well enough alone and Bonum hunc hominem some men may doe better alone yet God who ever for our example prefers the publique before the private because it conduced not to his generall end of Having and of Giving glory saw and said Non bonum hominem it was not good that man should be alone And so we have done with the branches of our first part We are come now to our second generall part In which as we saw in the former that God studies man and all things necessary for man we shall also see that wherein soever man is defective his onely supply and reparation is from God Faciam I will doe it Saul wanted counsell he was in a perplexity and he sought to the Witch of Endor and not to God and what is the issue he Hears of his
speake for him After that first and heavy curse of Almighty God upon Man Morte morieris If thou eate thou shalt die and die twice thou shall die a bodily thou shalt die a spirituall death a punishment which no sentence of any law or law-maker could ever equall to deterre Men from offending by threatning to take away their lives twice and by inflicting a spirituall death eternally upon the Soule after we have all incurred that malediction Morte moriemur we shall die both death we cannot thinke to scape any lesse malediction of any law and therefore we are all Intestabiles we are all intestable in all these senses and apprehensions which we have touched upon We can make no testament of our owne we have no good thing in us to dispose we have no good inclination no good disposition in our Will we can make no use of anothers testament not of the double testaments of Almighty God for in the Old testament he gives promises of a Messias but we bring into the world no Faith to apprehend those promises and in the New testament he gives a performance the Messias is come but he is communicable to us no way but by baptisme and we cannot baptize our selves we can profit no body else by our testimony we are not able to endure persecution for the testimony of Christ to the edification of others we are not able to doe such workes as may shine before Men to the glorifying of our God Neither doth the testimony of others doe us any good for neither the Martyrdome of so many Millions in the primitive Church nor the execution of so many judgments of God in our owne times doe restifie any thing to our Consciences neither at the last day when those Saints of God whom we have accompanied in the outward worship of God here in the visible Church shall be called to the right hand and we detruded to the left shall they dare to open their mouthes for us or to testifie of us or to say Why Lord these Men when they were in the world did as we did appeared and served thee in thy house as we did they seem'd to goe the same way that we did upon Earth why goe they a sinister way now in heaven We are utterly intestable we can give nothing we can take nothing nothing will be beleeved from us who are all falshood it selfe nor can we be releeved by any thing that any other will say for us As long as we are considered under the penalty of that law this is our case Interdicti intestabiles we are accursed and so as that we are intestable Now as this great malediction Morte marieris in volves all other punishments upon whom that falls all fall so when our Saviour Christ Jesus hath a purpose to take away that or the most dangerous part of that the spirituall death when he will reverse that judgment Aqua igni interdicitur to make us capable of his water and his fire when he will reverse the intestabiles the inteâ—â—ability and make us able to receive his graces by faith and declare them by works then as he that will reedifie a demolished house begins not at the top but at the bottome so Christ Jesus when he will make this great preparation this great reedification of mankind he beginnes at the lowest step which is that we may have use of the testimony of others in our behalfe and he proceeds strongly and effectually he produces three witnesses from heaven so powerfull that they will be heard they will be beleeved and three witnesses on earth so neare us so familiar so domestique as that they will not be denied they will not be discredited Three are three that beare Record in heaven and three that beare record in earth Since then Christ Jesus makes us all our owne Iury able to conceive and judge upon the Evidence and testimony of these three heavenly and three earthly witnesses let us draw neare and hearken to the evidence and consider three things Testimonium esse Quid sit and Qui testes That God descends to meanes proportionable to Man he affords him witnesse and secondly the matter of the proofe what all these six witnesses testifie what they establish Thirdly the quality and value of the witnesses and whether the matter be to be beleeved for their sakes and for their reasons God requires nothing of us but Testimony for Martyrdome is but that A Martyr is but a witnesse God offers us nothing without testimony for his Testament is but a witnesse Teste ipso is shrewd evidence when God says I will speake and I will testifie against thee I am God even thy God when the voice of God testifies against me in mine owne conscience It is more pregnant evidence then this when his voice testifies against me in his word in his Scriptures The Lord testified against Israel by all the Prophets and by all the Seers When I can never be alone but that God speakes in me but speakes against me when I can never open his booke but the first sentence mine eye is upon is a witnesse against me this is fearfull evidence But in this text we are not in that storme for he hath made us Testabiles that is ready to testifie for him to the effusion of our bloud and Testabiles that is fit to take benefit by the testament that hee hath made for us The effusion of his bloud which is our second branch what is testified for us what these witnesses establish First then that which a sinner must be brought to understand and beleeve by the strength of these witnesses is Integritas Christi not the Integrity as it signifies the Innocency of Christ but integrity as it signifies Intireness not as it is Integer vitae but Integra vita not as he kept an integrity in his life but as he onely is intirely our life That Christ was a person composed of those two Natures divine and humane whereby he was a fit and a full satisfaction for all our sinnes and by death could be our life for when the Apostle writ this Epistle it seemes there had been a schisme not about the Mysticall body of Christ the Church but even about the Naturall that is to say in the person of Christ there had been a schisme a separation of his two natures for as we see certainly before the death of this Apostle that the Heresie of Ebion and of Cerinthus which denied the divine nature of Christ was set on foot for against them purposely was the Gospell of Saint Iohn written so by Epiphanius his ranking of the Heresies as they arose where he makes Basilides his Heresie which denied that Christ had any naturall body to be the fourth herefie and Ebions to be the tenth it seemes that they denied his humanity before they denied his Divinity And therefore it is well collected that this Epistle of Saint Iohn being written long
reuniting of body and soule in a blessed Resurrection Ite Surgite depart so as you may desire to rise Depart with an In manus tuas and with a Veni Domiâ—e Iesu with a willing surrendring of your soules and a cheerfull meeting of the Lord Jesus For else all hope of profit and permanent Rest is lost for as Saint Hierome interprets these very words Here we are taught that there is no rest in this life Sed quasiâ—â—â— mortuis resurgentes ad sublime tendere ambulare post Daminum Iesum we depart when we depart from sin and we rise when we raise our selves to a conformity with Christ And not onely after his example but after his person that is to hasten thither whither he is gone to prepare us a Room For this Rest in the Text though it may be understood of the Land of Promise and of the Church and of the Arke and of the Sabbath for if we had time to pursue them we might make good use of all these acceptations yet we accept Chrysostâ—me's acceptation best Requies est ipse Christus our rest is Christ himselfe Not onely that rest that is in Christ peace of conscience in him but that Rest that Christ is in eternall rest in his kingdome There remaineth a Rest to the people of God besides that inchoation of Rest which the godly have here there remains a fuller Rest. Iesus is entred into his Rest sayes the Apostle there his Rest was not here in this world and Let us study to enter into thatâ— Rest sayes he for no other can accomplish our peace It is righteousnesse with God is recompence tribulation to them that trouble you and to you which are troubled Rest but when in this world no when the Lord Iesus shall sheâ— himselfe from heaven with his mighty Angels then comes your Rest for for the grave the body lies still but it is not a Rest because it is not sensible of that lying still In heaven the body shall rest rest in the sense of that glory This Rest then is not here Not onely not Here at this Here was taken in the first interpretation Here in the Earth but not Here in the second interpretation not in Repentance it selfe for all the Rest of this life even the spirituall Rest is rather a Truce then a peace rather a Cessation then an end of the war For when these words I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians Every one shall fight against his brother and every one against his neighbour City against City and Kingdome against Kingdome may be interpreted and are so interpreted of the time of the Gospell of Christ Jesus when Christ himselfe says Nolite putare quod venerim mittere pacem in terrâ Never think that I came to settle peace or Rest in this world Nay when Christ sayes None of them that were bidden shall come to his supper and that may be verified of any Congregation none of us that are call'd now shall come to that Rest a Man may be at a security in an opinion of Rest and be far from it A man may be neerer Rest in a troubled Conscience then in a secure Here we have often Resurrections that is purposes to depart from sin but they are such Resurrections as were at the time of Christs Resurrection when as the strongest opinion is Resurrexerunt iterum morituri Many of the dead rose but they died again we rise from our sins here but here we fall again Monumenta aperta sunt it is Saint Hierome's note The graves were opened presently upon Christs death but yet the bodies did not arise till Christs Resurrection The godly have an opening of their graves they see some light some of their weight some of their Earth is taken from them but a Resurrection to enter into the City to follow the Lamb to come into an established security that they have not till they be united to Christ in heaven Here we are still subject to relapses and to looking back Memento uxoris Lâ—t Ipsa in loco manet transeuntes monet Shee is fixed to a place that she might settle those that are not fix'd Vt quid in statuam salis conversa si non homines ut sapiant condiat to teach us the danger of looking back till we be fix'd she is fix'd When the Prophetâ— Eliahâ— was at the dore of Desperation an Angell touch'd him and said Vp and eat and there was bread and water provided and he did eat but he slept again and we have some of these excitations and we come and eat and drink even the body and bloud of Christ but we sleep again we doe not perfect the work Our Rest Here then is never without a fear of losing it This is our best state To fear leâ—t at any time by forsaking the promise of entring into his rest we should seem to be depriv'd The Apostle disputes not neither doe I whether we can be depriv'd or no but he assures us that we may fall back so far as that to the Church and to our own Consciences we may seem to be depriv'd and that 's argument enough that here is no Rest. To end all though there be no Rest in all this world no not in our sanctification here yet this being a Consolation there must be rest some where And it is In superna Civitate unde amicus non exit quâ inimicus non intrat In that City in that Hierusalem where there shall never enter any man whom we doe not love nor any goe from us whom we doe love Which though we have not yet yet we shall have for upon those words because I live ye shall live also Saint Augustine sayes that because his Resurrection was to follow so soon Christ takes the present word because I doe live But because their life was not to be had here he says Vivetis you shall live in heaven not Vivitis for here we doe not live So as in Adam we all die even so in Christ shall all be made alive says the Apostle All our deaths are here present now now we dy our quickning is reserv'd for heaven that 's future And therefore let us attend that Rest as patiently as we doe the things of this world and not doubt of it therefore because we see it not yet even in this world we consider invisible things more then visible Vidimus pelagus non autem mercedem The Merchant sees the tempestuous Sea when he does not see the commodities which he goes for Videmus terram non autem messem The Husbandman sees the Earth and his labour when he sees no harvest and for these hopes that there will be a gain to the Merchant and a harvest to the Labourer Naturae fidimus we rely upon Creatures for our Resurrection fide usâ—orem habemus Coranatum Not Nature not Sea
but look to that which is neare thee not so much to those Decrees which have no conditions as to be able to plead conditions performed or at least a holy sorrow that thou hast not performed them Videte Cavete see that you doe heare God else every rumor will scatter you But take heed what you heare else you may come to call conditionall things absolute And lastly since Satan will be speaking too Videte be sure you doe heare him be sure you discerne it to be his voice and know what leads you into tentation For you may hear a voice that shall say youth must have pleasures and greatnesse must have State and charge must have support And this voice may bring a young man to transfer all his wantonesse upon his years when it is the effect of high dyet or licentious discourse or wanton Images admitted and cherished in his fancy and this voice may bring great officers to transfer their inaccessiblenesse upon necessary State when it is an effect of their own lazinesse or indulgence to their pleasures and this voice may bring rich landlords to transfer all their oppression of tenants to the necessity of supporting the charge of wives and children when it is an effect of their profusenesse and prodigality Nay you may heare a voice that may call you to this place and yet be his voice which is that which Saint Augustine confesses and laments that even to these places persons come to look upon one another that can meet no where else Videte see you doe heare that you doe discerne the voice for that is never Gods voice that puts upon any man a necessity of sinning out of his years and constitution out of his calling and profession out of his place and station out of the age and times that he lives in out of the pleasure of them that he lives upon or out of the charge of them that live upon him But then Cavete take heed what you heare from him too especially then when he speakes to thee upon thy death-bed at thy last transmigration then when thine eares shall be deafe with the cryes of a distressed and a distracted family and with the found and the change of the found of thy last bell then when thou shalt heare a hollow voice in thy selfe upbraiding thee that thou hast violated all thy Makers laws worn out all thy Saviours merits frustrated all the endeavours of his blessed Spirit upon thee evacuated all thine own Repentances with relapses then when thou shalt see or seem to see his hand turning the streame of thy Saviours bloud into another channell and telling thee here 's enough for Iew and Turke but not a drop for thee then when in that multiplying glasse of Despaire which he shall present every sinfull thought shall have the proportion of an Act and every Act of a Habite when every Circumstance of every sin shall enter into the nature of the sin it selfe and vary the sinne and constitute a particular sinne and every particular sinne shall be a sinne against the holy Ghost Take heed what you heare and be but able to say to Satan then as Christ said to Peter in his name Vade retro Satan come after me Satan come after me tomorrow come a minute after my soule is departed from this body come to me where I shall be then and when thou seest me washed in the bloud of my Saviour clothed in the righteousnesse of my Saviour lodged in the bosome of my Saviour crowned with the merits of my Saviour confesse that upon my death-bed thou wast a lyer and wouldest have been a murderer and the Lord shall and I in him shall rebuke thee See that yee refuse not him that speaketh says the Apostle not any that speakes in his name but especially not him whom he names there that speakes better things then the bloud of Abel for the bloud of Abel speakes but by way of example and imitation the bloud of Christ Jesus by way of Ransome and satisfaction Heare what that bloud says for you in the eares of the Father and then no singing of the flatterer no lisping of the tempter no roaring of the accuser no thunder of the destroyer shall shake thy holy constancy Take heed what you heare remember what you have heard and the God of heaven for his Sonne Christ Jesus sake by the working of his blessed Spirit prosper and emprove both endeavours in you Amen SERMON XXVIII Preached to the King at the Court in April 1629. GEN. 1. 26. And God said Let us make man in our Image after our likenesse NEver such a frame so soon set up as this in this Chapter For for the thing it selfe there is no other thing to compare it with For it is All it is the whole world And for the time there was no other time to compare it with for this was the beginning of time In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth That Earth which in some thousands of years men could not look over nor discern what form it had for neither Lactantius almost three hundred years after Christ nor Saint Augustine more then one hundred years after him would beleeve the earth to be round that earth which no man in his person is ever said to have compassed till our age That earth which is too much for man yet for as yet a very great part of the earth is unpeopled that earth which if we will cast it all but into a Mappe costs many Months labour to grave it nay if we will cast but a peece of an acre of it into a garden costs many years labour to fashion and furnish it All that earth and then that heaven which spreads so farre as that subtile men have with some appearance of probability imagined that in that heaven in those manifold Sphears of the Planets and the Starres there are many earths many worlds as big as this which we inhabite That earth and that heaven which spent God himselfe Almighty God six days in furnishing Moses sets up in a few syllables in one line In principio in the beginning God created heaven and earth If a Livy or a Guicciardine or such extensive and voluminous authors had had this story in hand God must have made another world to have made them a Library to hold their Books of the making of this world Into what Wire would they have drawn out this earth Into what leafe-gold would they have beate out these heavens It may assist our conjecture herein to consider that amongst those men who proceed with a sober modesty and limitation in their writing and make a conscience not to clogge the world with unnecessary books yet the volumes which are written by them upon this beginning of Genesis are scarce lesse then infinite God did no more but say let this and this be done And Moses does no more but say that upon Gods saying it was done God required not nature to help him to do
them all Grieve not the holy Ghost whereby you are sealed unto the day of Redemption says the Apostle they were sealed and yet might resist the Spirit and grieve the Spirit and quench the Spirit if by a continuall watchfulnesse over their particular actions they did not refresh those seales formerly received in their Creation in Christs incarnation in their Baptisme and in their beginnings of faith to themselves and plead them to the Church and to the world by such a declaration of a holy life But these seales being so many and so univesall that argues still that which we especially seek to establish that is the Accessiblenesse the communicablenesse the sociablenesse the affection shall I say the Ambition that God hath to have us all Now how is this extensivenesse declared here in our text It is declared in the great number of those who were sealed both before and after to the consideration of both which we are invited by this phrase which beginnes the text After this for before that Iohn saw this there were one hundred forty foure thousand sealed Is that then that one hundred forty foure thousand intended for a small number If it had been so it would rather have been said of such a Tribe but twelve thousand and but twelve thousand of such a Tribe but God as expressing a joy that there were so many repeats his number of twelve thousand twelve times over of Iuda twelve thousand of Levi twelve thousand and twelve thousand of every Tribe So that then we may justly take this number of twelve and twelve thousand for an indefinite and uncertain number and as Saint Augustine does wheresoever he finds that number of twelve as the twelve Thrones where the Saints shall judge the world and divers such we may take that number of twelve and twelve pro universitate salvandorum that that number signifies all those who shall be saved If we should take the number to be a certaine and exact number so many and no more yet this number hath relation to the Iews onely And of the Iews it is true that there is so long a time of their exclusion so few of them doe come in since Christ came into the world as that we may with Saint Augustine interpret that place of Genesis where Abrahams seed is compared both to the Starres of heaven and to the dust of the earth that the Stars of heaven signifie those that shall be saved in heaven and the dust of the earth those that perish and the dust of the earth may be more then the Stars of heaven though by the way there are an infinite number of Stars more then we can distinguish and so by Gods grace there may be an infinite number of soules saved more then those of whose salvation we discerne the ways and the meanes Let us embrace the way which God hath given us which is the knowledge of his Sonne Christ Iesus what other way God may take with others how he wtought upon Iob and Naaman and such others as were not in the Covenant let us not inquire too curiously determine too peremptorily pronounce too uncharitably God be blessed for his declaring his good-wil towards us his will be done his way upon others Truly even those places which are ordinarily understood of the paâ—city of the Iews that shall be saved will receive a charitable interpretation and extension God says in Ieremy I will take you one out of a City two out of a family yet he says he wil do this therefore because he is married to them so that this seems to be an act of his love And therefore I had rather take it that God would take a particular care of them one by one then that he would take in but one and one As it is in that place of Esay In that day ye shall be gathered one by one o yee children of Israel that is in the day of Christ of his comming to and toward Judgement Howsoever they come in but thinly yet by the way yet the Apostle pleads in their behalfe thus Hath God cast away his people God forbid At this present says he there is a Remnant then when they had newly crucified Christ God had a care of them God hath given them the spirit of slumber says he also it is but a slumber not a death not a dead sleep Have they stumbled that they should fall Fall utterly God forbid But says he as concerning the Gospell they are enemies for your sakes that is that room might be made for you the Gentiles but as touching election they are beloved for their Fathers sakes that is they have interest by an ancient title which God will never disannull And therefore a great part of the ancient and later men too doe interpret divers passages of Saint Paul of a generall salvation of the Iews that all shall be effectually wrought upon to salvation before the second comming of Christ. I end this concerning the Iews with this note that in all these Tribes which yeelded to this sealing twelve thousand a peece the Tribe of Dan is left out it is not said that any were sealed of the Tribe of Dan many have enquired the reason and satisfied themselves over easily with this that because Antichrist was to come of that Tribe that Tribe is forsaken It is true that very many of the Fathers Irenaeus Ambrose Augustine Gregory and more then these have thought so that Antichrist must be of that Tribe but yet for all that profession which they make in the Roman Church of adhering to the Fathers one amongst them says Incertum be the Fathers as clear and as unanimous as they will in it it is a very uncertain a very disputable thing and another says fabulosum est be the Fathers as earnest as they will it is but a poeticall and a fabulous thing that Antichrist must come of the Tribe of Dan. But he that hath most of the workes of Antichrist upon him of any person in the world now is thus far of the Tribe of Dan Dan signifies Iudgement And he will needs be the Judge of all faith and of all actions too and so severe a Judge as to give an irrevocable Judgement of Damnation upon all that agree not with them in all points Certainly this Tribe of Dan that is of such uncharitable Judges of all other men that will afford no salvation to any but themselves are in the greatest danger to be left out at this generall seale nothing hinders our own salvation more then to deny salvation to all but our selves This then which was done before though it concerne but the Iews was in a great number and was a great argument of Gods sociable application of himselfe to man but that which was after was more A great multitude which no man could number of all nations c. Gods mercy was not confined nor determined upon the Iews
her selfe had no Crown but that which he gave her The Crown that she gave him was that substance that he received from her our flesh our nature our humanity and this Athanasius and this Saint Ambrose calls the Crown wherewith his Mother crowned him in this text his infirm his humane nature Or the Corwn wherewith his Mother corwned him was that Crown to which that infirme nature which he tooke from her submitted him which was his passion his Crown of thornes for so Tertullian and divers others take this Crown of his from her to be his Crown of thorns Woe to the Crown of pride whose beauty is a fading flower says the Prophet But blessed be this Crown of Humiliation whose flower cannot fade Then was there truly a Rose amongst Thorns when through his Crown of Thorns you might see his title Iesus Nazarenus for in that very name Nazarenus is involved the signification of a flower the very word signifies a flower Esay's flower in the Crown of pride fades and is removed This flower in the Crown of Thornes fades not nor could be removed for for all the importunity of the Jews Pilate would not suffer that title to be removed or to be changed still Nazarenus remained and still a rose amongst thorns You know the curse of the earth Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth unto thee It did so to our Solomon here it brought forth thornes to Christ and he made a Crown of those thorns not onely for himself but for us too Omnes aculei mortis in Dominici Corporis tolerantia â—btusi sunt All the thorns of life and death are broken or blunted upon the head of our Solomon and now even our thorns make up our Crown our tribulation in life our dissolution in death conduce to our glory Behold him crowned with his Mothers Crown for even that brought him to his Fathers Crown his humiliation to exaltation his passion to glory Behold your Solomon your Saviour again and you shall see another beam of Comfort in your tribulations from his for even this Humiliation of his is called his Espousals his marriage Behold him crowned in the day of his Espousals His Spouse is the Church His marriage is the uniting of himselfe to this Spouse in his becomming Head of the Church The great City the heavenly Jerusalem is called The Bride and The Lambs wife in the Revelation And he is the Head of this body the Bridegroom of this Bride the Head of this Church as he is The first-borne of the Dead Death that dissolves all ours made up this marriage His Death is his Marriage and upon his Death flowed out from his side those two Elements of the Church water and bloud The Sacraments of Baptisme and of the Communion of himself Behold then this Solomon crowned and married both words of Exaltation and Exultation and both by Death and trust him for working the same effects upon thee That thou though by Death shalt be crowned with a Crown of Glory and married to him in whose right and merit thou shalt have that Crown And Behold him once again and you shall see not a beam but a stream of comfort for this day which is the day of his death he calls here The day of the gladnesse of his heart Behold him crowned in the day of the gladnesse of his heart The fulnesse the compasse the two Hemispheres of Heaven are often designed to us in these two names Ioy and Glory If the Crosse of Christ the Death of Christ present us both these how neare doth it bring how fully doth it deliver Heaven it self to us in this life And then we heare the Apostle say We see Iesus for the suffering of Death crowned with Honour and Glory There is half Heaven got by Death Glory And then for the joy that was set before him he indured the Crosse There is the other half Ioy All Heaven purchased by Death And therefore if any man suffer as a Christian let him not be ashamed saith the Apostle but let him glorifie God In isto Nomine as the vulgate read it In that behalfe as we translate it But In isto Nomine saith S. August Let us glorifie God in that Name Non solum in nomine Christiani sed Chriani patientis not onely because he is a Christian in his Baptisme but a Christian in a second Baptisme a Baptisme of bloud not onely as he hath received Christ in accepting his Institution but because he hath conformed himself to Christ in fulfilling his sufferings And therefore though we admit naturall and humane sorrow in the calamities which overtake us and surround us in this life for as all glasses will gather drops and tears from externall causes so this very glasse which we looke upon now our Solomon in the Text our Saviour had those sadnesses of heart toward his Passion and Agonies in his passion yet count it all Ioy when you fall into tentations saith the Apostle All Ioy that is both the interest and the principall hath the earnest and the bargain for if you can conceive joy in your tribulations in this world how shall that joy be multiplied unto you when no tribulation shall be mingled with it There is not a better evidence nor a more binding earnest of everlasting Joy in the next world then to find Ioy of heart in the tribulations of this fixe thy self therefore upon this first glasse this Solomon thy Saviour Behold King Solomon crownd c. and by conforming thy self to his holy sadnesse and humiliation thou shalt also become like him in his Joy and Glory But then the hand of God hath not set up but laid down another Glasse wherein thou maist see thy self a glasse that reflects thy self and nothing but thy selfe Christ who was the other glasse is like thee in every thing but not absolutely for sinne is excepted but in this glasse presented now The Body of our Royall but dead Master and Soveraigne we cannot we doe not except sinne Not onely the greatest man is subject to naturall infirmities Christ himself was so but the holiest man is subject to Originall and Actuall sinne as thou art and so a â—it glasse for thee to see thy self in Ieat showes a man his face as well as Crystall nay a Crystall glasse will not show a man his face except it be steeled except it be darkned on the backside Christ as he was a pure Crystall glasse as he was God had not been a glasse for us to have seen our selves in except he had been steeled darkened with our humane nature Neither was he ever so throughly darkened as that he could present us wholly to our selves because he had no sinne without seeing of which we do not see our selves Those therefore that are like thee in all things subject to humane infirmities subject to sinnes and yet are translated and translated by Death to everlasting Ioy and Glory
may be equall as the Devill is a Spirit and a condemned soule a spirit yet that soule shall have a Body too to be tormented with it which the Devill shall not How little we know our selves which is the end of all knowledge But we hast to the next branch In the Resurrection we shall be like to the Angels of God in Heaven But in what lies this likenesse In how many other things soever this likenesse may ly yet in this Text and in our present purpose it lies onely in this Non nubent In the Resurrection they shall not mary But did Angels never mary or as good or at least as ill as mary How many of the ancients take those words That the sonnes of God saw the daughters of Men that they were faire and they tooke them wives of all which they chose to be intended of Angels They offer to tell us how many these maried Angels were Origen saies sixty or seventy They offer to tell us some of their names Aza was one of these maried Angels and Azael was another But then all those who doe understand these words The sonnes of God to be intended of Angels who being sent downe to protect Men fell in love with Women and maried them all I say agree that those Angels that did so never returned to God againe but fell with the first fallen under everlasting Condemnation So that still the Angels of God in Heaven those Angels to whom we shall be like in the Resurrection doe not mary not so much as in any such mistaking they doe not because they need not they need not because they need no second Eternity by the continuation of children for says S. Luke they cannot die Adams first immortality was but this Posse non mori that he needed not to have died he should not have died The Angels immortality and ours when we shall be like them in the Resurrection is Non posse mori that we cannot die for whosoever dies is Homicida sui sayes Tertullian he kills himselfe and sinne is his sword In heaven there shall no such sword be drawn we need not say that the Angels in heaven have that we when we shall be like them in the Resurrection shall so invest an immortality in our nature as that God could not inflict Death upon them or us there if we sinned But because no sinne shall enter there no Death shall enter there neither for Death is the wages of sinne Not that no sinne could enter there if we were left to our selves for in that place Angels did sinne And fatendum est Angelos natura mutabiles saies S. Augustine Howsoever Angels be changed in their Condition they retaine still the same nature and by nature they are mutable But that God hath added another prerogative by way of Confirmation to that state so as that that Grace which he gives us here which is that nothing shall put a necessity of sinning upon us or that we must needs sinne God multiplies upon us so there as that we can conceive no inclination to sinne Therein we shall be like the Angels that we cannot die And the nearer we come to that state in this life the liker we are to those Angels here Now beloved onely he that is Dead already cannot die He that in a holy mortification is Dead the Death of the righteous dead to sinne he lives shall we dare to say so yes we may he lives a blessed Death for such a Death is true life And by such a heavenly Death Death of the righteous Death to sinne he is in possession of a heavenly life here in an inchoation though the consummation and perfection be reserved for the next world which is our last circumstance and the Conclusion of all At the Resurrection we shall be like the Angels Till then we shall not and therefore must not looke for Angelicall perfections here but beare one anothers infirmities It is as yet but in Petition fiat voluntas Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven And as long as there is an Earth it will be but in Petition His will will not be done in Earth as it is in Heaven when all is Heaven to his Saints all will be well but not all till then In the meane time remember all especially you whose Sacramentall that is Mysterious and significative union now is a Type of your union with God in as neare and as fast a band as that of Angels for you shall be as the Angels of God in Heaven That the office of the Angels in this world is to Assist and to supply Defects You are both of noble extraction there 's no defect in that you need not supply one another with Honour you are both of religious Education there 's no defect in that you need not supply one another with fundamentall instructions Both have your parts in that testimony which S. Gregory gave of your Nation at Rome Angli Angeli you have a lovelinesse fit for one another But though I cannot Name no nor Thinke any thing wherein I should wish that Angelicall disposition of supporting or supplying defects yet when I consider that even he that said Ego pater unum sumus I and the Father are one yet had a time to say utquid dereliquisti My God my God why hast thou forsaken me I consider thereby that no two can be so made one in this world but that that unity may be though not Dissolved no nor Rent no nor Endangered yet shaked sometimes by domestique occasions by Matrimoniall encumbrances by perversnesse of servants by impertinencies of Children by private whisperings and calumnies of Strangers And therefore to speake not Prophetically that any such thing shall fall but Provisionally if any such thing should fall my love and my duty and my Text bids me tell you that perfect happinesse is to be staid for till you be as the Angels of God in heaven here it is a faire portion of that Angelicall happinesse if you be alwaies ready to support and supply one another in any such occasionall weaknesses The God of Heaven multiply the present joy of your parents by that way of making you joyfull parents also and recompense your obedience to parents by that way of giving you obedient Children too The God of heaven so joine you now as that you may be glad of one another all your life and when he who hath joined you shall separate you againe establish you with an assurance that he hath but borrowed one of you for a time to make both your joies the more perfect in the Resurrection The God of Heaven make you alwaies of one will and that will alwaies conformable to his conserve you in the sincere truth of his Religion feast you with the best feast Peace of conscience and carry you through the good opinion and love of his Saints in this world to the association of his Saints and Angels and one
his Temple looks for first fruits from both that so on both sides mariage should have such a degree of eternity as to have had no beginning of mariage before mariage It should have this degree of eternity too this quality of a circle to have no interruption no breaking in the way by unjust suspitions and jealousies Where there is Spiritus immunditei as S. Paul calls it a spirit of uncleannesse there will necessarily be Spiritus zelotypiae as Moses cals it a spirit of jealousie But to raise the Devill in the power of the Devill to call up one spirit by another spirit by the spirit of jealousie and suspition to induce the spirit of uncleannesse where it was not if a man conjure up a Devill so God knows who shall conjure it down again As jealousie is a care and not a suspition God is not ashamed to protest of himself that he is a jealous God God commands that no idolatry be committed Thou shalt not bow down to a graven Image and before he accuses any man to have bowed down to a graven Image before any Idolatry was committed he tells them that he is a jealous God God is jealous before there is any harm done And God presents it as a curse when he says My jealousie shall depart from thee and I will be quiet and no more angry that is I will heave thee to thy self and take no more care of thee Jealousie that implies care and honour and counsell and tendernesse is rooted in God for God is a jealous God and his servants are jealous servants as S. Paul professes of himself I am jealous over you with a gedly jealousie But jealousie that implies diffidence and suspition and accusation is rooted in the Devil for he is the Accuser of the brethren So then this secular mariage should be in aeternum eternall for ever as to have no beginning before and so too as to have no jealous interruption by the way for it is so eternall as that it can have no end in this life Those whom God hath joyned no man no Devill can separate so as that it shall not remain a mariage so far as that if those separated persons will live together again yet they shall not be new maried so farre certainly the band of mariage continues still The Devil makes no mariages He may have a hand in drawing conveyances in the temporall conditios there may be practice but the mariage is made by God in heaven The Devil can break no mariages neither though he can by sin break off all the good uses and take away all the comforts of mariage I pronounce not now whether Adultery dissolves mariage or no It is S. Augustines wisdome to say Where the Scripture is silent let me be silent too And I may goe lower then he and say Where the Church is silent let me be silent too and our Church is so far silent in this as that it hath not said That Adultery dissolves mariage Perchance then it is not the death of mariage but surely it is a deadly wound We have Authors in the Romanc Church that think fornicationem non vagam that such an incontinent life as is limited to one certain person is no deadly sin But there is none even amongst them that diminish the crime of Adultery Habere quasi non haberes is Christs counsell To have a wife as though thou hadst none that is continency and temperance and forbearance and abstinency upon some occasions But non habere quasi haberes is not so not to have a wife and yet have her to have her that is anothers that is the Devils counsell That falutation of the Angle to the blessed Virgin Mary Blessed art thou amongst memen we may make even this interpretation not onely that she was blessed amongst women that is above women but that she was Benedicta blessed amongst women that all women blest her that no woman had occasion to curse her And this is the eternity of this secular mariage as far as this world admits any eternity that it should have no beginning before no interruption of jealousie in the way no such approach towards dissolution as that incontinency in all opinions and in all Churches is agreed to be And here also without any scruple of fear or of suspition of the contrary there is place for this benediction upon this couple Build ô Lord upon thine own foundations in these two and establish thy former graces with future that no person ever complain of either of them nor either of them of one another and so he and she are maried in aeternum for ever We are now come in our order proposed at first to our second Part for all is said that I intended of the secular mariage And of this second the spirituall mariage much needs not to be said There is another Priest that contracts that another Preacher that celebrates that the Spirit of God to our spirit And for the third mariage the eternall mariage it is a boldnesse to speak any thing of a thing so inexpressible as the joyes of heaven it is a diminution of them to goe about to heighten them it is a shadowing of them to goe about to lay any colours or light upon them But yet your patience may perchance last to a word of each of these three Circumstances The Persons the Action the Term both in this spirituall and in the eternall mariage First then as in the former Part the secular mariage for the persons there we considered first Adam and Eve and after every man and woman and this couple in particular so in this spirituall mariage we consider first Christ and his Church for the Persons and more particularly Christ and my soul. And can these persons meet in such a distance and in such a disparagement can these persons meet the Son of God and the son of man When I consider Christ to be Germen Iehovae the bud and blossome the fruit and off-spring of Jehovah Jehovah himself and my self before he took me in hand to be not a Potters vessell of earth but that earth of which the Potter might make a vessel if he would and break it if he would when he had made it When I consider Christ to have been from before all beginnings and to be still the Image of the Father the same stamp upon the same metall and my self a peece of rusty copper in which those lines of the Image of God which were imprinted in me in my Creation are defaced and worn and washed and burnt and ground away by my many and many and many fins When I consider Christ in his Circle in glory with his Father before he came into this world establishing a glorious Church when he was in this world and glorifying that Church with that glory which himself had before when he went out of this world and then consider my self in my circle I came into this world
no husband such a superiority no father such a soverainty but that there lies a burden upon them too to consider with a compassionate sensiblenesse the grievances that oppresse the other part which is coupled to them For if the servant the wife the sonne be oppressed worne out annihilated there is no such thing left as a Master or a husband or a father They depend upon one another and therefore he that hath not care of his fellow destroys himselfe The wife is to submit herselfe and so is the husband too They have a burden both There is a greater subjection lies upon her then upon the Man in respect of her transgression towards her husband at first Eyen before there was any Man in the world to sollicite or tempt her chastity she could sinde another way to be salfe and treacherous to her husband both the husband and the wife offended against God but the husband offended not towards his wife but rather eate the Apple Ne contristaretur delicias suas as S. Hierome assignes the cause left by refusing to cate when she had done so he should deject her into a desperate sense of her sinne And for this fault of hers her Subjection was so much aggravated Thy desire shall be subject to thy husband and he shall rule over thee But if she had not committed that fault yet there would have been a mutuall subjection between them as there is even in Nature between both the other couples for if Man had continued in innocency yet it is most probably thought that as there would certainly have been Mariage and so children so also there would have been Magistracy and propriety and authority and so a mutuall submitting a mutuall assisting of one another in all these three relations Now that submitting of which the Apostle speakes of here is a submitting to one another a bearing of one anothers burthens what this submission is on the wives part is expressed in the two former verses And I forbeare that because husbands at home are likely enough to remember them of it but in the duty in the submitting of the husband we shall consider first what that submitting is and that is love Husbands love your wives Even the love of the husband to the wife is a burthen a submitting a descent and secondly the patterne and example of this love Even as Christ loved his Church In which second part as sometimes the accessory is greater then the principall the Symptome the accident is greater then the disease so that from which the comparison is drawn in this place is greater then that which is illustrated by it the love of Christ to his Church requires more consideration then the love of the husband to the wife and therefore it will become us to spend most of our thoughts upon that and to consider in that Quod factum and Quis sinis what Christ did for his Church and that was a bounty which could not be exceeded seipsum tradidit he gave he delivered himselfe for it And then secondly what he intended that should worke and that was first that he might make it to himselfe a glorious Church and without spot and wrinkle in the Triumphant state of the Church at last And then that whilst it continues in a Militant state upon Earth it might have preparations to that glory by being sanctified and cleansed by the washing of water through his Word he provides the Church meanes of sanctification here by his Word and Sacraments First then De Amoremaritali of this contracting a Mans love to the person of a wife of one woman as we find an often exclamation in the Prophets Onus visionis The burden of my prophecy upon Nineveh and Onus verbi Domini The burden of the word of God upon Israel so there is Onus amoris a burden of love when a Man is appointed whom he shall love When Onan was appointed by his father Iudah to goe in to his brothers widow and to doe the office of a kinsman to her he conceived such an unwillingnesse to doe so when he was bid as that he came to that detestable act for which God slew him And therefore the Panegyrique that raised his wit as high as he could to praise the Emperour Constantine and would expresse it in praising his continence and chastity he expressed it by saying that he waried young that as soon as his years endangered him formavit animum maritalem nihil de concessu atati voluptatibus admittens he was content to be a husband and accepted not that freedome of pleasure which his years might have excused He concludes it thus Novum jam tum miraculum Iuvenis â—xorius Behold a miracle such a young Man limiting his affections in a wife At first the heates and lusts of youth overflow all as the waters overflowed all at the beginning and when they did so the Earth was not onely barren there were no Creatures no herbs produced in that but even the waters themselves that did overflow all were barren too there were no fishes no fowls produced out of that as long as a Mans affections are scattered there is nothing but accursed barrennesse but when God says and is heard and obeyed in it Let the waters be gathered into one place let all thy affections be setled upon one wife then the earth and the waters became fruitfull then God gives us a type and figure of the eternity of the joyes of heaven in the succession and propagation of children here upon the earth It is true this contracting of our affections is a burden it is a submitting of our selves All States that made Lawes and proposed rewards for maried Men conceived it so that naturally they would be loth to doe it God maried his first couple as soone as he made them he dignified the state of Mariage by so many Allegories and figures to which he compares the uniting of Christ to his Church and the uniting of our soules to Christ and by directing the first Miracle of Christ to be done at a Mariage Many things must concurre to the dignifying of Mariage because in our corrupt nature the apprehension is generall that it is burdenous and a submitting and a descending thing to mary And therefore Saint Hierome argues truly out of these words Husbands love your Wifes Audiant Episcopi audiant presbyteri audiant doctores subjectis suis se esse subjectos let Bishops and Priests and Doctors learne in this that when they have maried themselves to a charge They are become subject to their Subjects For by being a husband I become subject to that sex which is naturally subject to Man though this subjection be no more in this place but to love that one woman Love then when it is limited by a law is a subjection but it is a subjection commanded by God Nihil majus à te subjecti animo factum est quam quod imper are coepistiâ— A Prince
was come and gone for so much as belonged to the accomplishing of the types of the old law then Christ came againe to us by water and bloud in that wound which he received upon his side from which there flowed out miraculously true water true bloud This wound Saint Augustine calls Ianuam utriusque Sacramenti the doore of both sacraments where we see he acknowledges but two and both presented in this water and bloud and so certainely doe most of the fathers make this wound if not the foundation yet at least a sacrament of both the sacraments And to this water and bloud doth the Apostle here without doubt aime principally which he onely of all the Evangelists hath recorded and with so great asseveration and assurednesse in the recording thereof He that saw it bare record and his record is true and he knoweth that he saith truth that yee might beleeve it Here then is the matter which these six witnesses must be beleeved in here is Integritas Iesu quae non solvenda the intirenesse of Christ Jesus which must not be broken That a Saviour which is Iesus appointed to that office that is Christ figured in the law by ablutions of water and sacrifices of bloud is come and hath perfected all those figures in water and bloud too and then that he remaines still with us in water and bloud by meanes instituted in his Church to wash away our uncleannesses and to purge away our iniquities and to apply his worke unto our Soules this is Integritas Iesu Iesus the sonne of God in heaven Jesus the Redeemer of man upon earth Jesus the head of a Church to apply that to the end this is Integritas Iesu all that is to be beleeved of him Take thus much more that when thou comest to hearken what these witnesses shall say to this purpose thou must finde something in their testimony to prove him to be come not onely into the world but into thee He is a mighty prince and hath a great traine millions of ministring spirits attend him and the whole army of Martyrs follow the Lambe wheresoever he goes Though the whole world be his Court thy soule is his bedchamber there thou maist contract him there thou maist lodge and entertaine Integrum Iesum thy whole Saviour And never trouble thy selfe how another shall have him if thou have him all leave him and his Church to that make thou sure thine owne salvation When he comes to thee he comes by water and by bloud If thy heart and bowels have not yet melted in compassion of his passion for thy soule if thine eyes have not yet melted in tears of repentancâ— and contrition he is not yet come by water into thee If thou have suffered nothing for sinne nor found in thy selfe a chearfull disposition to suffer if thou have found no wresting in thy selfe no resistance of Concupiscences he that comes not to set peace but to kindle this war is not yet come into thee by bloud Christ can come by land by purchases by Revenues by temporall blessings for so he did still convey himselfe to the Jewes by the blessing of the land of promise but here he comes by water by his owne passion by his sacraments by thy tears Christ can come in a mariage and in Musique for so he delivers himselfe to the spouse in the Canticles but here he comes in bloud which comming in water and bloud that is in meanes for the salvation of our soules here in the militant Church is the comming that he stands upon and which includes all the Christian Religion and therefore he proves that comming to them by these three great witnesses in heaven and three in earth For there are three which beare record in heaven The Father the word and the holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three which bear record in the earth The spirit and the water and the bloud and these three agree in one By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be confirmed says Christ out of the law That 's as much as can be required in any Civill or Criminall businesse and yet Christ gives more testimony of himselfe for here he produces not Duos testes but Duas Classes two rankes of witnesses and the fullest number of each not two but three in heaven and three in earth And such witnesses upon earth as are omni exceptione majores without all exception It is not the testimony of earthly men for when Saint Paul produces them in abundance The Patriarch the Iudges the Prophets the elders of the old times of whom he exhibits an exact Catalogue yet he calls all them but Nubes testium cloudes of witnesses for though they be cloudes in Saint Chrysostomes sense that they invest us and enwrap us and so defend us from all diffidence in God we have their witnesse what God did for them why should we doubt of the like though they be cloudes in Athanasius sense they being in heaven showre downe by their prayers the dew of Gods grace upon the Church Though they be cloudes they are but cloudes some darkenesse mingled in them some controversies arising from them but his witnesses here are Lux inaccessibilis that light that no eye can attaine to and Pater Luminum the father of lights from whom all these testimonies are derived When God imployed a man to be the witnesse of Christ because men might doubt of his testimony God was content to assigne him his Compurgators when Iohn Baptist must preach that the kingdome of God was at hand God fortifies the testimony of his witnesse then Hic enim est for this is he of whom that is spoken by the prophet Esay and lest one were not enough he multiplies them as it is written in the prophets Iohn Baptist might be thought to testifie as a man and therefore men must testifie for him but these witnesses are of a higher nature these of heaven are the Trinity and those of earth are the sacraments and seales of the Church The prophets were full of favor with God Abraham full of faith Stephen full of the Holy Ghost many full of grace and Iohn Baptist a prophet and more then a prophet yet never any prophet never any man how much soever interessed in the favor of Almighty God was such an instrument of grace as a sacrament or as Gods seales and institutions in his Church and the least of these six witnesses is of that nature and therefore might be beleeved without more witnesses To speake then first of the three first the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost it was but a poore plot of the devill to goe about to rob us of their testimony for as long as we have the three last the spirit the water and bloud we have testimony enough of Christ because God is involved in his ordinance and though he be not tyed to the worke of the
but every poore soule in the Church may heare all these three witnesses testifying to him Integrum Iesum suum that all which Christ Jesus hath done and suffered appertaines to him but yet to bring it nearer him in visible and sensible things There are tres de terra three upon earth too The first of these three upon earth is the Spirit which Saint Augustine understands of the spirit the soule of Christ for when Christ commended his spirit into the hands of his Father this was a testimony that he was Verus hemo that he had a soule and in that he laid downe his spirit his soule for no Man could take it from him and tooke it againe at his pleasure in his resurrection this was a testimony that he was Verus Deus true God And so says Saint Augustine Spiritus The spirit that is anima Christi the soule of Christ did testifie De integritate Iesu all that belonged to Jesus as he was God and as he was Man But this makes the witnesses in heaven and the witnesses in earth all one for the personall testimony of Christs preaching and living and dying the testimony which was given by these three Persons of the Trinity was all involv'd in the first rank of witnesses Those three which are in heaven Other later Men understand by the Spirit here the Spirit of every Regenerate Man and that in the other heavenly witnesses the spirit is Spiritus sanctus the spirit that is holy in it selfe the holy Ghost and here it is Spiritus sanctificatus that spirit of Man which is made holy by the holy Ghost according to that The same spirit beareth witnesse with our spirit that we are the children of God But in this sense it is too particular a witnesse too singular to be intended here for that speakes but to one Man at once The spirit therefore here is Spiritus oris the word of God the Gospell and the preaching and ministration thereof We are made Ministers of the New testament of the spirit that giveth life And if the ministration of death were glorious how shall not the ministration of the spirit be more glorious It is not therefore the Gospell meerly but the preaching of the Gospell that is this spirit Spiritus sacerdotis vehioulum Spiritus Dei The spirit of the Minister is not so pure as the spirit of God but it is the chariot the meanes by which God will enter into you The Gospell is the Gospell at home at your house and there you doe well to read it and reverence it as the Gospell but yet it is not Spiritus it is not this Spirit this first witnesse upon earth but onely there where God hath blessed it with his institution and ordinance that is in the preaching thereof The stewardship and the dispensation of the graces of God the directing of his threatnings against refractary and wilfull sinners the directing of his promises to simple and supple and conâ—rite penitents the breaking of the bread the applying of the Gospell according to their particular indigences in the preaching thereof this is the first witnesse The second witnesse here is The water and I know there are some Men which will not have this to be understood of the water of Baptisme but onely of the naturall effect of water that as the abtutions of the old law by water did purge us so we have an inward testimony that Christ doth likewise wash us cleane so the water here must not be so much as water but a metaphoricall and figurative water These men will not allow water in this place to have any relation to the sacrament and Saint Ambrose was so far from doubting that water in this place belonged to the sacrament that he applies all these three witnesses to the Sacrament of Baptisme Spiritus mentem renovat All this is done in Baptisme says he The Spirit renewes and disposes the mind Aqua perficit ad Lavacrum The water is applied to cleanse the body Sanguis Spectat ad preâ—lium and the bloud intimates the price and ransome which gives force and virtue to this sacrament And so also says he in another place In sanguine mors in the bloud there is a representation of death in the water of our buriall and in the spirit of our owne life Some will have none of these witnesses on earth to belong to baptisme not the water and Ambrose will have all spirit and water and bloud to belong to it Now both Saint Ambrose who applies all the three witnesses to Baptisme and those later men which deny any of the witnesses to belong to baptisme doe both depart from the generall acceptation of these words that water here and onely that signifies the Sacrament of baptisme For as in the first creation the first thing that the spirit of God is noted to have moved upon was the waters so the first creature that is sanctified by Christs institution to our Salvation is this element of water The first thing that produced any living sensible creature was the water Primus liquor qnod viveret edidit ne mirum sit quod in Baptismo aquae aâ—nimare noverunt water brought forth the first creatures says Tertullian That we should not wonder that water should bring forth Christians The first of Gods afficting miracles in Egypt was the changing of water into bloud and the first miracle of grace in the new Testament was the changing of water into wine at the mariage So that water hath still been a subject and instrument of Gods conversation with man So then Aqua janua ecclesiae we cannot come into the Church but by water by baptisme for though the Church have taken knowledge of other Baptismes Baptisma sanguinis which is Martyrdome and Baptisma Flaminis which is a religious desire to be baptized when no meanes can be got yet there is no other sacrament of Baptisme but Baptisma Fluminis the Baptisme of water for the rest Conveniunt in causando sed non in significando says the Schoole that is God doth afford a plentifull retribution to the other baptismes Flaminis and Sanguinis but God hath not ordained them to be outward seales and significations of his grace and to be witnesses of Iesus his comming upon earth as this water is And therefore they that provide not duly to bring their children to this water of life not to speake of the essentiall necessity thereof they take from them one of the witnesses that Iesus is come into them and as much as they can they shut the Church dore against them they leave them out of the Arke and for want of this water cast them into that generall water which overflowes all the rest of the world which are not brought within the Covenant by this water of baptisme For though in the first Translation of the new Testament into Syriaque that be said in the sixth verse that Jesus is come per manus
then thirdly here is a continuation of Gods anger when they are risen for they are not rais'd to their former state and dignity from which they were fallen they are not rais'd to be established but it is arise and depart And in all this which is a fourth Consideration God precludes them from any hope by solicitation he reveales his purpose his Decree and consequently his inexorablenesse evidently in that word for never murmur never dispute never intreat you must depart For it is determined it is resolved and here is not your Rest In which also the Commination is yet more and more aggravated first in that they lose their Rest which God hath sold them so dearly by so many battailes and so many afflictions and which God had sworn to them so solemnly by so many ratifications they must lose their Rest they must have no Rest Here not there not in the Land of Promise it selfe And then lastly as they are denied all rest there There where was the wombe and Center of their Rest so there is no intimation no hope given that they should have rest any where else for as they were to rise onely to depart so they were to depart into Captivity The first is an increpation they were fallen but from whence It was once said Qui jacet in terra non habet unde cadat but he that is earth it selfe whither can he fall whither can Man derived from earth before his life enamored of the earth embracing it and maried to it in his life destined to the earth betrothed to it for a second mariage after this life whither can he fall It is true of us all I shall say to corruption Thou art my father and to the worme Thou art my Mother and my sister and can we fall into worse company contract an alliance with a more base and beggerly kindred then this Not if we were left there then we could not but when we consider a nation of whom God hath said sponsabo te mihi I will mary thee without any respect of disparagement in thy lownesse I will not refuse thee for it I will not upbraid thee with it I will mary thee for ever and without any purpose of divorce sponsabo in aeternum of this nation thus assum'd thus contracted thus endowed thus assured why may not we wonder as vehemently as the Prophet did of the fallen Angels Quomodo cecidisti de caelo Lucifer filius Orientis how did this nation fall out of Gods armes out of Gods bosome Himselfe tells us how what he had done to exalt them what they had done to devest his favours for their naturall lownes he says In thy nativity when thou wast born thy Navell was not cut thou wast not washed thou wast not salted thou wast not swadled No eye pitied thee but thou wast cast into the open fields in contempt I passed by and saw thee in thy bloud and said thou shalt live I sware unto thee and entred into a covenant with thee and thou becamest mine I washed thee anointed thee and adorned thee and thou wast perfect through my beauty which I set upon thee well then in this state Quomodo cecidisti de caelo how fell she out of Gods armes out of his bosome thus Thou didst trust in thine owne beauty because of thy renowne and so playedst the harlor When that nation was in massa damnata a loafe of Adams dow through all which the infectious leaven of sin had passed without difference when that nation had no more title nor pretence to Gods mercy then any of their fellow wormes when God had heaped and accumulated his tempor all blessings upon them and above all dwelt with them in the alliance and in the familiarity of a particular Religion which contracted God and them and left out all the world beside when God had imprinted this beauty in them and that they had a renowne and reputation for that they trusted to their owne beauty to worship whom they would and how they would they followed their own invention yea they trusted in beauty which was not their owne in borrowed beauty in painted beauty and so tooke in and applied themselves to all the spirituall fornications to all the Idolatries of the nations about them some that were too absurd to be hearkned to some too obscene and foule to be named now by us though the Prophets to their farther reproach and confusion have named them some too ridiculous to fall into any Mans consideration that could seriously thinke of a Majesty in a God which should be worshipped yet all these absurd and obscene and ridiculous Idolatries they prostituted them selves unto Take them in their lowness for any disposition towards the next world and this was their state Their navell was not cut that is they were still incorporated into their mother to earth and to sinne and they were not one step higher then all the world beside in Iacobs ladder whose top is in heaven Take them in their dignity in this world and then we finde them in Egypt where they were not Personae but Res they were not their Masters Men but their Masters goods they were their cattell to vex and wear out with their labours spent upon the delights of others They must goe farre for straw a great labour for a little matter and they must burne it when they had brought it they must make bricke but others must build houses with their materialls and they perish in the fields they must beget children but onely for the slaughter and to be murdred as sooneâ—â— they were borne what nation what Man what beast what worme what weed if it could have understood their state would have changed with them then This was their dejection their exinanition in Egypt if we shall beginne there to consider what he did for them As after in the Christian Church he made the bloud of the Martyrs the seed of the Church so in Egypt he propagated and multiplied his Children in the midst of their cruell oppressions and slaughters as though their bloud had been seed to encrease by under the weight of their depressions he gave them growth and stature and strength as though their wounds had been playsters and their vexations cordials when he had made Egypt as a Hell by kindling all his plagues in her bosome yet Non dereliquit in Inferno he left not his beloved in this Hell he paled in a Paradise in this Hell a Goshen in Egypt and gave his servants security briefly those whom the sword should have lessen'd whom labour should have creepled whom contempt should have begger'd he brought out numerous and in multitudes strong and in courage rich and in abundance and he opened the Red-sea as he should have opened the booke of life to shew them their Names their security and he shut the sea as that book upon the Egyptians to shew them their irrecoverable exclusion If we consider what he did
gate into Heaven in thy selfe If thou beest not sensible of others mens poverties and distresses yet Miserere animae tuae have mercy on thine own soule thou hast a poor guest an Inmate a sojourner within these mudwals this corrupt body of thine be mercifull and compassionate to that Soule cloath that Soul which is stripp'd and left naked of all her originall righteousnesse feed that Soule which thou hast starv'd purge that Soule which thou hast infected warm and thaw that Soul which thou hast frozen with indevotion coole and quench that Soul which thou hast inflamed with licentiousness Miserere animae tuae begin with thine own Soule be charitable to thy self first and thou wilt remember that God hath made of one bloud all Mankind and thou wilt find out thy selfe in every other poor Man and thou wilt find Christ Jesus himselfe in them all Now of those divers gates which God opens in this life those divers exercises of charity the particular which we are occasion'd to speak of here is not the cloathing nor feeding of Christ but the housing of him The providing Christ a house a dwelling whether this were the very place where Solomons Temple was after built is perplexedly and perchance impertinently controverted by many but howsoever here was the house of God and here was the gate of Heaven It is true God may be devoutly worshipped any where In omni loco dominationis ejus benedic anima mea Domino In all places of his dominion my Soule shall praise the Lord sayes David It is not only a concurring of men a meeting of so many bodies that makes a Church If thy soule and body be met together an humble preparation of the mind and a reverent disposition of the body if thy knees be bent to the earth thy hands and eyes lifted up to heaven if thy tongue pray and praise and thine ears hearken to his answer if all thy senses and powers and faculties be met with one unanime purpose to worship thy God thou art to this intendment a Church thou art a Congregation here are two or three met together in his name and he is in the midst of them though thou be alone in thy chamber The Church of God should be built upon a Rock and yet Iob had his Church upon a Dunghill The bed is a scene and an embleme of wantonnesse and yet Hezekiah had his Church in his Bed The Church is to be placed upon the top of a Hill and yet the Prophet Ieremy had his Church in Luto in a miry Dungeon Constancy and setlednesse belongs to the Church and yet Ionah had his Church in the Whales belly The Lyon that roares and seeks whom he may devour is an enemy to this Church and yet Daniel had his Church in the Lions den Aquae quietudinum the waters of rest in the Psalme were a figure of the Church and yet the three children had their Church in the fiery furnace Liberty life appertaine to the Church and yet Peter Paul had their Church in prison and the thiefe had his Church upon the Crosse. Every particular man is himselfe Templum Spiritus sancti a Temple of the holy Ghost yea Solvite templum hoc destroy this body by death and corruption in the grave yet there shall be Festum encaeniorum a renuing a reedifying of all those Temples in the generall Resurrection when we shall rise againe not onely as so many Christians but as so many Christian Churches to glorifie the Apostle and High-priest of our profession Christ Jesus in that eternall Sabbath In omni loco domiâ—ationis ejus Every person every place is fit to glorifie God in God is not tyed to any place not by essence Implet continendo implet God fills every place and fills it by containing that place in himselfe but he is tyed by his promise to a manifestation of himselfe by working in some certain places Though God were long before he required or admitted a sumptuous Temple for Solomons Temple was not built in almost five hundred years after their returne out of Egypt though God were content to accept their worship and their sacrifices at the Tabernacle which was a transitory and moveable Temple yet at last he was so carefull of his house as that himselfe gave the modell and platforme of it and when it was built and after repaired again he was so jealous of appropriating and confining all his solemne worship to that particular place as that he permitted that long schisme and dissention between the Samaritans and the Iews onely about the place of the worship of God They differed not in other things but whether in Mount Sion or in Mount Garizim And the feast of the dedication of this Temple which was yearly celebrated received so much honor as that Christ himselfe vouchsafed to be personally present at that solemnity though it were a feast of the institution of the Church and not of God immediatly as their other festivalls were yet Christ forbore not to observe it upon that pretence that it was but the Church that had appointed it to be observed So that as in all times God had manifested and exhibited himselfe in some particular places more then other in the Pillar in the wildernesse and in the Tabernacle and in the poole which the Angell troubled so did Christ himselfe by his owne presence ceremoniously justifie and authorise this dedication of places consecrated to Gods outward worship not onely once but anniversarily by a yearly celebration thereof To descend from this great Temple at Jerusalem to which God had annexed his solemne and publique worship the lesser Synagogues and Chappell 's of the Iews in other places were ever esteemed great testimonies of the sanctity and piety of the founders for Christ accepts of that reason which was presented to him in the behalfe of the Centurion He is worthy that thou shouldst do this for him for he loveth our Nation And how hath he testified it He hath built us a Synagogue He was but a stranger to them and yet he furthered and advanced the service of God amongst them of whose body he was no member This was that Centurions commendation Et quanto commedatior qui adificat Ecclesiam How much more commendation deserve they that build a Church for Christian service And therefore the first Christians made so much haste to the expressing of their devotion that even in the Apostles time for all their poverty and persecution they were come to have Churches as most of the Fathers and some of our later Expositors understand these words Have ye not houses to eate and drinke or doe ye despise the Church of God to be spoken not of the Church as it is a Congregation but of the Church as it is a Material building Yea if we may beleeve some authors that are pretended to be very ancient there was one Church dedicated to the memory
will confesse many fleshly infirmities and then it is the sounder for that though not for the infirmity yet for the confession of the infirmity Neither let that hand that reaches out to this body in a guiltinesse of pollution and uncleannesse or in a guiltinesse of extortion or undeserved see ever hope to signe a conveyance that shall fasten his inheritance upon his children to the third generation ever hope to assigne a will that shall be observed after his death ever hope to lift up it selfe for mercy to God at his death but his case shall be like the case of Iudas if the devill have put in his heart to betray Christ to make the body and bloud of Christ Jesus false witnesses to the congregation of his hypocriticall sanctity Satan shall enter into him with this sop and seale his condemnation Beloved in the bowels of that Jesus who is coming into you even in spirituall riches it is an unthrifty thing to anticipate your monies to receive your rents before they are due and this treasure of the soule the body and bloud of your Saviour is not due to you yet if you have not yet passed a mature and a severe examination of your conscience It were better that your particular friends or that the congregation should observe in you an abstinence and forbearing to day and make what interpretation they would of that forbearing then that the holy Ghost should deprehend you in an unworthy receiving lest as the Master of the feast said to him that came without his wedding garment then when he was set Amice quomodo intrâsti friend how came you in so Christ should say to thee then when thou art upon thy knees and hast taken him into thy hands Amice quomodo intrabo friend how can I enter into thee who hast not swept thy house who hast made no preparation for me But to those that have he knocks and he enters and he â—ups with them and he is a supper to them And so this consideration of making Churches of our houses and of our hearts leads us to a third part the particular circumstances in Iacobs action In which there is such a change such a dependence whether we consider the Metall or the fashion the severall doctrines or the sweetnesse and easinesse of raising them as scarce in any other place a fuller harmony The first linke is the Tunc Iacob then Iacob which is a Tunc consequentiae rather then a Tunc temporis It is not so much at what time Iacob did or said this as upon what occasion The second linke is Quid operatum what this wrought upon Iacob It awaked him out of his sleep A third is Quid ille what he did and that was Et dixit he came to an open profession of that which he conceived he said and a fourth is Quid dixit what this profession was And in that which is a branch with much fruit a pregnant part a part containing many parts thus much is considerable that he presently acknowledged and assented to their light which was given him the Lord is in this place And he acknowledged his owne darknesse till that light came upon him Et ego nesciebam I knew it not And then upon this light received he admitted no scruple no hesitation but came presently to a confident assurance Verè Dominus surely of a certainty the Lord is in this place And then another doctrine is Et timuit he was afraid for all his confidence he had a reverentiall feare not a distrust but a reverent respect to that great Majesty and upon this feare there is a second Et dixit he spoke againe this feare did not stupifie him he recovers againe and discerned the manifestation of God in that particular place Quam terribilis how fearfull is this place And then the last linke of this chaine is Quid inde what was the effect of all this and that is that he might erect a Monument and marke for the worship of God in this place Quia non nisi domus because this is none other then the house of God and the gate of heaven Now I have no purpose to make you afraid of enlarging all these points I shall onely passe through some of them paraphrastically and trust them with the rest for they insinuate one another and trust your christianly meditation with them all The first linke then is the Tunc Iacob the occasion then Iocob did this which was that God had revealed to Iocob that vision of the ladder whose foot stood upon earth and whose top reached to heaven upon which ladder God stood and Angels went up and down Now this ladder is for the most part understood to be Christ himselfe whose foot that touched the earth is his humanity and his top that reached to heaven his Divinity The ladder is Christ and upon him the Angels his Ministers labour for the edifying of the Church And in this labour upon this ladder God stands above it governing and ordering all things according to his providence in his Church Now when this was revealed to Iacob now when this is revealed to you that God hath let fall a ladder a bridge between heaven and earth that Christ whose divinity departed not from heaven came downe to us into this world that God the father stands upon this ladder as the Originall hath it Nitzab that he leanes upon this ladder as the vulgar hath it Innixus scalae that he rests upon it as the holy Ghost did upon the â—ame ladder that is upon Christ in his baptisme that upon this ladder which stretches so farre and is provided so well the Angels labour the Ministers of God doe their offices when this was when this is manifested then it became Iacob and now it becomes every Christian to doe something for the advancing of the outward glory and worship of God in his Church when Christ is content to be this ladder when God is content to govern this ladder when the Angels are content to labour upon this ladder which ladder is Christ and the Christian Church shall any Christian Man forbeare his help to the necessary building and to the sober and modest adorning of the materiall Church of God God studies the good of the Church Angels labour for it and shall Man who is to receive all the profit of this doe nothing This is the Tunc Iacob when there is a free preaching of the Gospell there should be a free and liberall disposition to advance his house Well to make haste the second linke is Quid operatum what this wrought upon Iacob and it is Iacob awoke out of his sleep Now in this place the holy Ghost imputes no sinfull sleep to Iacob but it is a naturall sleep of lassitude and wearinesse after his travell there is an ill sleep an indifferent and a good sleep which is that heavenly sleep that tranquillity which that soul which is at peace with
He was afraid and then he spoke againe that he might have an increase of grace The earth stands still and earthly Men may be content to doe so but he whose conversation is in heaven is as the heavens are in continuall progresse For Inter profectum defectum defectum medium in hac vita non datur A Christian is always in a proficiency or deficiency If he goe not forward he goes backward Nemo dicat satis est sic manere volâ— Let no man say I have done enough I have made my profession already I have been catechiz'd I have been thought fit to receive the Communion sufficit mihi esse sicut heri nudiustertius though he be in the way in the Church yet he sleeps in the way he is got no farther in the way then his godfathers carried him in their armes to engraffe him in the Church by Baptisme for this man says he In via residet in scala subsistit quod nemo angelorum fecit he stands still upon the ladder and so did none of the Angels Christ himself increased in wildome and in stature and in favour with God and Man so must a Christian also labour to grow and to encrease by speaking and speaking again by asking more and more questions and by farther and farther informing his understanding and enlightening his faith per transiit benefaciendo sanavit omnes says Saint Peter of Christ He went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the Devill and it was prophesied of him Exultavit ut Gigas ad currendam vim He went forth as a Gyant to run a race If it be Christs pace it must be a Christians pace too Currentem non apprehendit nisi qui pariter currit There is no overtaking of him that runnes without running too Quid prodest Christum sequi si non consequamur and to what purpose do we follow Christ if not to overtake him and lay hold upon him Sic currite ut comprehendatis fige Christiane cursus profectus metam ubi Christus suum runne so as ye may obtain and if thou beest a Christian propose the same end of thy course as Christ did factus est obediens usque ad mortem and the end of his course was to be obedient unto death Speak then and talke continually of the name and the goodnesse of God speak again and again It is no tautology no babling to speak and â—terate his prayses Who accuses Saint Paul for repeating the sweet name of Jesus so very many times in his Epistles Who accuses David for repeating the same phrase the same sentence for his mercy endureth for ever so many times as he doth in his Psalms nay the one hundred and nineteenth Psalm is scarce any thing else then an often repetition of the same thing Thou spokest assoon as thou wast awake as soon as thou wast born thou spokest in Baptism So proceed to the farther knowledge of Religion and the mysteries of Gods service in his house and conceive a fearfull reverence of them in their institution and speak again enquire what they mean what they signify what they exhibit to thee Conceive a reverence of them first out of the authority that hath instituted them and then speak and inform thy self of them God spent a whole week in speaking for thy good Dixit Deus God spake that there might be light Dixit Deus God spâ—ke that there might be a firmament for immediately upon Gods speaking the work follow'd Dixit factum he spake the word and the world was created As God did a godly man shall do If he delight to talk of God to mention often upon all occasions the greatnesse and goodnesse of God to prefer that discourse before obscene and scurrile and licentious and profane and defamatory and ridiculous and frivolous talke If he delight in professing God with his tongue out of the abundance of his heart his works shall follow his words he will do as he says If God had given over when he had spake of Light and a Firmament and Earth and Sea and had not continued speaking till the last day when he made thee what hadst thou got by all that what hadst thou been at all for all that If thou canst speak when thou awakest when thou beginnest to have an apprehension of Gods presence in a remorse if then that presence and Majesty of God make thee afraid with the horrour and greatnesse of thy sinnes if thou canst not speak again then not goe forward with thy repentance thy former speech is forgotten by God and unprofitable to thee Iacob at first speaking confessed God to be in that place but so he might be every where but he conceived a reverentiall fear at his presence and then he came to speak the second time to professe that that was none other but the house of God and the gate of heaven that there was an entrance for him in particular a fit place for him to testifie and exercise his Devotion he came to see what it was fit for him to doe towards the advancing of Gods house Now whensoever a man is proceeded so far with Iacob first to sleep to be at peace with God and then to wake to doe something for the good of others and then to speak to make profession to publish his sense of Gods presence and then to attribute all this onely to the Light of God himself by which light he grows from faith to faith and from grace to grace whosoever is in this disposition he may say in all places and in all his actions This is none other but the house of God and this is the gate of heaven He shall see heaven open and dwell with him in all his undertakings and particularly and principally in his expressing of a care and respect both to Christs Mysticall and to his materiall body both to the sustentation of the poor and to the building up of Gods house In both which kinds of Piety and Devotion non nobis Domine non nobis sed nomini tuo da gloriam Not unto us O Lord not unto us but unto thy Name be given the glory As to the confusion of those shamelesse slanderers who place their salvation in works and accuse us to avert men from good works there have been in this Kingdome since the blessed reformation of Religion more publick charitable works perform'd more Hospitals and Celleges erected and endowed in threescore then in some hundreds of years of superstition before so may God be pleased to adde one example more amongst us that here in this place we may have some occasion to say of a house erected and dedicated to his service This is none other but the house of God and this is the gate of heaven and may he vouchsafe to accept at our hands in our intention and in our endevour to consummate that purpose of ours that thanksgiving that
acclamation which he received from his Royall servant Salomon at the Consecration of his great Temple when he said Is it true indeed that God will dwell on the earth Behold the heavens and the heaven of heavens are not able to contain thee how much more unable shall this house bee that we intend to build But have thou respect unto the prayer of thy servant and to his supplication O Lord my God to hear the cry the prayer that thy servant shall make before thee that day That thine eye may bee open towards that house night and day that thou mayst heare the supplications of thy servants and of thy people which shall pray in that place and that thou mayst hear them in the place of thy habitation even in heaven and when thou hearest mayst have mercy Amen SERMON XII Preached at Lincolns Inne JOHN 5. 22. The Father judgeth no man but hath committed all judgement to the Sonne When our Saviour forbids us to cast pearl before swine we understand ordinarily in that place that by pearl are understood the Scriptures and when we consider the naturall generation and production of Pearl that they grow bigger and bigger by a continuall succession and devolution of dew and other glutinous moysture that fals upon them and there condenses and hardens so that a pearl is but a body of many shels many crusts many films many coats enwrapped upon one another To this Scripture which we have in hand doth that Metaphor of pearl very properly appertain because our Saviour Christ in this Chapter undertaking to prove his own Divinity and God-head to the Jews who acknowledged and confessed the Father to be God but denyed it of him he folds and wraps up reason upon reason argument upon argument that all things are common between the Father and him That whatsoever the Father does he does whatsoever the Father is he is for first he says he is a partner a cooperator with the Father in the present administration and government of the world My Father worketh hitherto and I work well if the Father do ease himself upon instruments now yet was it so from the beginning had he a part in the Creation Yes What things soever the Father doth those also doth the Son likewise But doe those extend to the work properly and naturally belonging to God to the remission to the effusion of grace to the spirituall resurrection of them that are dead in their iniquities Yes even to that too For as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickneth them even to the Son quickneth whom he will But hath not this power of his a determination or expiration shall it not end at least when the world ends no not then for God hath given him authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of man Is there then no Supersedeas upon this commission Is the Sonne equall with the Father in our eternall election in our creation in the meanes of our salvation in the last judgement in all In all Omne judicium God hath committed all judgement to the Son And here is a pearl made up the dew of Gods grace sprinkled upon your souls the beams of Gods Spirit shed upon your soules that effectuall and working knowledge That he who dyed for your salvation is perfect God as well as perfect man fit as willing to accomplish that salvation In handling then this Iudgement which is a word that embraces and comprehends all All from our Election where no merit or future actions of ours were considered by God to our fruition and possession of that election where all our actions shall be considered and recompensed by him we shall see first that Judgment belongs properly to God And secondly that God the Father whom we consider to be the root and foundation of the Deity can no more devest his Judgment then he can his Godhead and therefore in the third place we consider what that committing of Judgment which is mentioned here imports and then to whom it is committed To the Sonne and lastly the largnesse of that which is committed Omne all Judgment so that we cannot carry our thoughts so high or so farre backwards as to think of any Judgment given upon us in Gods purpose or decree without relation to Christ Nor so far forward as to think that there shall be a Judgment given upon us according to our good morall dispositions or actions but according to our apprehension and imitation of Christ. Judgment is a proper and inseparable Character of God that 's first the Father cannot devest himself of that that 's next The third is that he hath committed it to another And then the person that is his delegate is his onely Sonne and lastly his power is everlasting And that Judgment day that belongs to him hath and shall last from our first Election through the participation of the meanes prepared by him in his Church to our association and union with him in glory and so the whole circle of time and before time was and when time shall be no more makes up but one Judgment day to him to whom the Father who judgeth no man hath committed all Judgment First then Judgment appertaines to God It is his in Criminall causes â— Vindicta mihi Vengeance is mine I will repay saith the Lord It is so in civill things too for God himself is proprietary of all Domini est terra et plenitudo ejus The earth is the Lords and all that is in and on the earth Your silver is mine and your gold is mine says the Prophet and the beasts on a Thousand hills are mine says David you are usuâ—â—ructuaries of them but I am proprietary No attribute of God is so often iterated in the Scriptures no state of God so often incultated as this Judge and Judgment no word concerning God so often repeated but it is brought to the height where in that place of the Psalm where we read God judgeth among the Gods the Latine Church ever read it Deus dijudicat Deâ—s God judgeth the Gods themselves for though God say of Judges and Magistrats Ego dixi dii estis I have said ye are Gods and if God say it who shall gainsay it yet he says too Moriemini sicut homines The greatest Gods upon earth shall die like men And if that be not humiliation enough there is more threatned in that which follows yee shall fall like one of the Princes for the fall of a Prince involves the ruine of many others too and it fills the world with horror for the present and ominous discourse for the future but the farthest of all is Deus dijudicat Deos even these Judges must come to Judgment and therefore that Psalme which begins so is concluded thus Surge Domine arise ô God and judge the earth If he have power to judge the earth he is God and even in God himselfe it is expressed as a kind
of rising as some exaltation of his power that he is to Judge And that place in the beginning of that Psalme many of the antients read in the future Dijudicabit God shall judge the Gods because the frame of the Psalme seems to referre it to the last Judgment Turtullian reads it Dijudicavit as a thing past God hath judged in all times and the letter of the text requires it to be in the present Dijudicat Collect all and Judgment is so essentiall to God as that it is coeternall with him he hath he doth and he will judge the world and the Judges of the world other Judges die likemen weakely and they fall that 's worse ignominiously and they fall like Princes that 's worst fearfully and yet scornfully and when they are dead and faln they rise no more to execute Judgment but have Judgment executed upon them the Lord dyes not nor he falls not and if he seem to slumber the Martyrs under the Altar awake him with their Vsque quo Domine how long O Lord before thou execute Iudgment And he will arise and Judge the world for Judgment is his God putteth downe one and setteth up another says David where hath he that power Why God is the Judge not a Judge but the Judge and in that right he putteth downe one and setteth up another Now for this Judgment which we place in God we must consider in God three notions three apprehensions three kinds of Judgment First God hath Iudicium detestationis God doth naturally know and therefore naturally detest evill for no man in the extreamest corruption of nature is yet fallen so far as to love or approve evill at the same time that he knows and acknowledges it to be evill But we are so blind in the knowledge of evill that we needed that great supplement and assistance of the law it self to make us know what was evill Moses magnifies and justly the law Non appropinquâ—vit says Moses God came not so neare to any nation as to the Iews Non taliter fecit God dealt not so well with any nation as with the Iews and wherein because he had given them a law and yet we see the greatest dignity of this law to be That by the law is the knowledge of sinne for though by the law of nature written in our hearts there be some condemnation of some sinnes yet to know that every sinne was Treason against God to know that every sinne hath the reward of death and eternall death annexed to it this knowledge we have onely by the law Now if man will pretend to be a Judge what an exact knowledge of the law is required at his hand for some things are sinne to one nation which are not to another as where the just authority of the lawfull Magistrate changes the nature of the thing and makes a thing naturally indifferent necessary to them who are under his obedience some things are sinnes at one time which are not at another as all the ceremoniall law created new sinnes which were not sinnes before the law was given nor since it expir'd some things are sinnes in a man now which will not be sinnes in the same man to morrow as when a man hath contracted a just scruple against any particular action it is a sinne to doe it during the scruple and it may be sinne in him to omit it when he hath devested the scruple onely God hath Iudicium detestationis he knows and therefore detests evill and therefore flatter not thy self with a Tush God sees it not or Tush God cares not Doth it disquiet him or trouble his rest in heaven that I breake his Sabbath here Doth it wound his body or draw his bloud there that I swear by his body and bloud here Doth it corrupt any of his virgins there that I sollicit the chastity of a woman here Are his Martyrs withdrawn from their Allegeance or retarded in their service to him there because I dare not defend his cause nor speake for him nor fight for him here Beloved it is a degree of superstition and an effect of an undiscreet zeale perchance to be too forward in making indifferent things necessary and so to imprint the nature and sting of sin where naturally it is not so certainly it a more slippery and irreligious thing to be too apt to call things meerely indifferent and to forget that even in eating and drinking waking and sleeping the glory of God is intermingled as if we knew exactly the prescience and foreknowledge of God there could be nothing contingent or casuall for though there be a contingency in the nature of the thing yet it is certain to God so if we considered duly wherein the glory of God might be promov'd in every action of ours there could scarce by any action so indifferent but that the glory of God would turne the scale and make it necessary to me at that time but then private interests and private respects create a new indifferency to my apprehension and calls me to consider that thing as it is in nature and not as it is considered with that circumstance of the glory of God and so I lose that Iudicium detestationis which onely God hath absolutely and perfectly to know and therefore to detest evill and so he is a Judge And as he is a Judge so Iudicat rem he judges the nature of the thing he is so too as he hath Iudicium discretionis and so Iudicat personam he knows what is evill and he discernes when thou committest that evill Here you are fain to supply defects of laws that things done in one County may be tryed in another And that in offences of high nature transmarine offences may be inquir'd and tryed here But as the Prophet says Who measured the waters in the hollow of his hand or meted 〈◊〉 the heavens with a span who comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure or weighed the mountains in a scale So I say who hath divided heaven into shires or parishes or limited the territories and Jurisdictions there that God should not have Iudicium discretionis the power of discerning all actions in all places When there was no more to be seen or considered upon the whole earth but the garden of Paradise for from the beginning Deliciae ejus esse cum filiis hominum Gods delight was to be with the sons of men and man was only there shal we not deminish God nor speak too vulgarly of him to say that he hovered like a Falcon over Paradise and that from that height of heaven the piercing eye of God saw so little a thing as the forbidden fruit and what became of that and the reaching â—are of God heard the hissing of the Serpent and the whispering of the woman and what was concluded upon that Shall we think it little to have seen to have things done in Paradise when there was nothing else to divert
his eye nothing else to distract his counsels nothing else done upon the face of the earth Take the earth now as it is replenished and take it either as it is torn and crumbled into raggs and shivers not a kingdome not a family not a man agreeing with himselfe Or take it in that concord which is in it as All the Kings of the earth set themselves and all the Rulers of the earth take counsell together against the Lord take it in this union or this division in this concord or this discord still the Lord that sitteth in the heavens discernes all looks at all laughs at all and hath them all in derision Earthly Judges have their distinctions and so their restrictions some things they cannot know what mortall man can know all Some things they cannot take knowledge of for they are bound to evidence But God hath Iudicium discretionis no mist no cloud no darknesse no disguise keeps him from discerning and judging all our actions and so he is a Judge too And he is so lastly as he hath Iudicium retributionis God knows what is evill he knows when that evill is done and he knows how to punish and recompense that evill for the office of a Judge who judges according to a law being not to contract or extend that law but to declare what was the true meaning of that Law-maker when hee made that law God hath this judgement in perfection because hee himself made that law by which he judges and therefore when he hath said Morte morieris If thou do this thou shalt die a double death where he hath said Stipendium peccati mors est every sin shall be rewarded with death If I sinne against the Lord who shall entreat for me Who shall give any other interpretation any modification any Non obstante upon his law in my behalf when he comes to judge me according to that law which himself hath made Who shall think to delude the Judge and say Surely this was not the meaning of the Law-giver when he who is the Judge was the Law-maker too And then as God is Judge in all these respects so is he a Judge in them all Sine Appellatione and Sine judiciis man cannot appeal from God God needs no evidence from man for for the Appeal first to whom should we appeal from the Soveraign 〈◊〉 Wrangle as long as ye will who is Chief Justice and which Court hath Juris 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 over another I know the Chief Justice and I know the Soveraign 〈…〉 the King of heaven and earth shall send his ministring Spirits his Angels to the 〈◊〉 and bowels of the Earth and to the bosome and bottome of the Sea and Earth must deliver Corpus cum causâ all the bodies of the dead and all their actions to receive a judgement in this Court when it will be but an erroneous and frivolous Appeal to call to the Hils to fall down upon us and the Mountains to cover and hide us from the wrathfull judgment of God He is a Judge then Sine appellatione without any Appeal from him he is so too Sine judiciis without needing any evidence from us Now if I be wary in my actions here incarnate Devils detractors and informers cannot accuse me If my sinne come not to action but lye onely in my heart the Devill himself who is the accuser of the brethren hath no evidence against me but God knows my heart doth not he that pondereth the heart understand it where it is not in that faint word which the vulgar Edition hath expressed it in inspector cordium That God sees the heart but the word is Tochen which signifies every where to weigh to number to search to examine as the word is used by Salomon again The Lord weigheth the spirits and it must be a ready hand and exact scales that shall weigh spirits So that though neither man nor Devill nay nor my self give evidence against me yea though I know nothing by my selfe I am not thereby justified why where is the farther danger In this which follows there in Saint Paul He that judges me is the Lord and the Lord hath meanes to know my heart better then my self And therefore as Saint Augustine makes use of those words Abyssus Abyssum invocat one depth cals upon another The infinite depth of my sins must call upon the more infinite depth of Gods mercy for if God who is Judge in all these respects judicio detestationis he knows and abhors evill and judicio discretionis he discerns every evill person and every evill action judicio retributionis he can and will recompense evill with evill And all these Sine Appellatione we cannot appeal from him Sine judiciis he needs no evidence from us If this judgement enter into judgement with me not onely not I but not the most righteous man no nor the Church whom he hath washed in his blood that she might be without spot or wrinckle shall appear righteous in his sight This being then thus that Iudgement is an unseparable character of God the Father being Fons Deitatis the root and spring of the whole Deity how is it said that the Father judgeth no man Not that we should conceive a wearinesse or retiring in the Father or a discharging of himself upon the shoulders and labours of another in the administration and judging of this world for as it is truly said that God rested the seventh day that is he rested from working in that kind from creating so it is true that Christ says here My Father worketh yet and I work and so as it is truly said here The Father judgeth no man it is truly sayd by Christ too of the Father I seek not mine own glory there is one that seeketh and judgeth still it is true that God hath Iudicium detestationis Thy eyes are pure eyes O Lord and cannot behold iniquity says the Prophet still it is true that hee hath Iudicium discretionis because they committed villany in Israel and I know it saith the Lord still it is true that he hath Iudicium retributionis The Lord killeth and maketh alive he bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up still it is true that he hath all these sine appellatione for go to the Sea or Earth or Hell as David makes the distribution and God is there and he hath them sine judiciis for our witnesse is in heaven and our record is on high All this is undeniably true and besides this that great name of God by which he is first called in the Scriptures Elohim is not inconveniently deriv'd from Elah which is Iurare to swear God is able as a Judge to minister an oath unto us and to draw evidence from our own consciences against our selves so that then the Father he judges still but he judges as God and not as the Father In the three great judgements of God the
death But upon that part of the sentence In pulverem reverteris To dust thou shalt return there is no Non obstante though thou turn to God thou must turn into the grave for hee that redeem'd thee from the other death redeem'd not himself from this Carry this consideration to the last minute of the world when we that remain shall bee caught up in the clouds yet even that last fire may be our fever those clouds our winding sheets that rapture our dissolution and so with Saint Augustine most of the ancients most of the latter men think that there shall be a sudden dissolution of body and soul which is death and a sudden re-uniting of both which is resurrection in that instant Quis Homeo is Davids question What man is he that liveth and shall not see death Let us adde Quis Deoram What god is he amongst the Gentiles that hath not seen death Which of their three hundred Iupiters which of their thousands of other gods have not seen death Mortibus morjuntur we may adde to that double death in Gods mouth another death The gods of the Gentiles have dyed thrice In body in soul and in fame for though they have been glorified with a Deification nor one of all those old gods is at this day worshipt in any part of the world but all those temporary and transitory Gods are worn out and dead in all senses Those gods who were but men fall under Davids question Quis Home And that man who was truly God fals under it too Christ Jesus He saw death though he saw not the death of this text Corruption And if we consider the effusion of his precious blood the contusion of his sacred flesh the extention of those sinews and ligaments which tyed heaven and earth together in a reconciliation the departing of that Intelligence from that sphear of that high Priest from that Temple of that Dove from that Arke of that soul from that body that dissolution which as an ordinary man he should have had in the grave but that the decree of God declar'd in the infallibility of the manifold prophesies preserv'd him from it had been but a slumber in respect of these tortures which he did suffer The Godhead staid with him in the grave and so he did not corrupt but though our souls be gone up to God our bodies shall Corruption in the skin says Iob In the outward beauty These be the Records of velim these be the parchmins the endictments and the evidences that shall condemn many of us at the last day our own skins we have the book of God the Law written in our own hearts we have the image of God imprinted in our own souls wee have the character and seal of God stamped in us in our baptism and all this is bound up in this velim in this parchmin in this skin of ours and we neglect book and image and character and feal and all for the covering It is not a clear case if we consider the originall words properly That Iesabel did paint and yet all translators and expositors have taken a just occasion out of the ambiguity of those words to cry down that abomination of painting It is not a clear case if we consider the propriety of the words That Absolon was hanged by the hair of the head and yet the Fathers and others have made use of that indifferency and verisimilitude to explode that abomination of cherishing and curling haire to the enveagling and ensnaring and entangling of others Iudicium patietur aeternum says Saint Hierome Thou art guilty of a murder though no body die Quia vinum attulisti si faisset qui bibisset Thou hast poyson'd a cup if any would drink thou hast prepar'd a tentation if any would swallow it Tertullian thought he had done enough when he had writ his book De Habitu muliâ—bri against the excesse of women in clothes but he was fain to adde another with more vehemence De cultu foeminarum that went beyond their clothes to their skin And he concludes Illud ambitionis crimen there 's vain-glory in their excesse of clothes but Hoc prostitutionis there 's prostitution in drawing the eye to the skin Pliny says that when their thin silke stuffes were first invented at Rome Excogitatum ad faeminas denudandas It was but an invention that women might go naked in clothes for their skins might bee seen through those clothes those thinne stuffes Our women are not so carefull but they expose their nakednesse professedly and paint it to cast bird-lime for the passengers eye Beloved good dyet makes the best Complexion and a good Conscience is a continuall feast A cheerfull heart makes the best blood and peace with God is the true cheerfulnesse of heart Thy Saviour neglected his skin so much as that at last hee scarse had any all was torn with the whips and scourges and thy skin shall come to that absolute corruption as that though a hundred years after thou art buryed one may find thy bones and say this was a tall man this was a strong man yet we shall soon be past saying upon any relique of thy skinne This was a fair man Corruption seises the skinne all outward beauty quickly and so it does the body the whole frame and constitution which is another consideration After my skinne my Body If the whole body were an eye or an ear where were the body says Saint Paul but when of the whole body there is neither eye nor ear nor any member left where is the body And what should an eye do there where there is nothing to be seen but loathsomnesse or a nose there where there is nothing to be smelt but putrefaction or an ear where in the grave they doe not praise God Doth not that body that boasted but yesterday of that priviledge above all creatures that it onely could goe upright lie to day as flat upon the earth as the body of a horse or of a dogge And doth it not to morrow lose his other priviledge of looking up to heaven Is it not farther remov'd from the eye of heaven the Sunne then any dogge or horse by being cover'd with the earth which they are not Painters have presented to us with some horrour the sâ—cleton the frame of the bones of a mans body but the state of a body in the dissolution of the grave no pencil can present to us Between that excrementall jelly that thy body is made of at first and that jelly which thy body dissolves to at last there is not so noysome so putrid a thing in nature This skinne this outward beauty this body this whole constitution must be destroy'd says Iobâ— in the next place The word is well chosen by which all this is expressed in this text Nakaph which is a word of as heavy a signification to expresse an utter abolition and annihilation as perchance can be
vestruâ—â— it is not for you to know times and seasons Before in his state of mortality 〈…〉 ignor antibus he pretended to know no more of this then they that knew nothing After when he had invested immortality per sui exceptionem says that Father he excepts none but himselfe all the rest even the Apostles were left ignorant thereof For this non est vestrum it is not for you is part of the last sentence that ever Christ spake to them If it be a convenient answer to say Christ knew it not as man how bold is that man that will pretend to know it And if it be a convenient interpretation of Christs words that he knew it not that is knew it not so as that he might tell it them how indiscreet are they who though they may seem to know it will publish it For thereby they fill other men with scruples and vexations and they open themselves to scorne and reproach when their predictions prove false as Saint Augustine observed in his time and every age hath given examples since of confident men that have failed in these conjectures It is a poore pretence to say this intimation this impression of a certaine time prepares men with better dispositions For they have so often been found false that it rather weakens the credit of the thing it selfe In the old world they knew exactly the time of the destruction of the world that there should be an hundred twenty years before the flood came And yet upon how few did that prediction though from the mouth of God himselfe work to repentance Naâ—â— found grace in Gods eyes but it was not because he mended his life upon that prediction but he was grations in Gods sight before At the day of our death we write Pridiâ—râ—surrâ—ctioniâ— the day before the resurrection It is Vigilia resurectionis Our Easter Eve Adveniat regnum tuum possesse my soule of thy kingdome then And Fiâ—â— voluntas tua my body shall arise after but how soon after or how late after thy will bee done then by thy selfe and thy will bee knowne till then to thy selfe We passe on As in Massa damnata the whole lump of mankind is under the condemnation of Adams sinne and yet the good purpose of God severs some men from that condemnation so at the resurrection all shall rise but not all to glory But amongst them that doe Ego says Iob I shall I as I am the same man made up of the samebody and the same soule Shall I imagine a difficulty in my body because I have lost an Arme in the East and a leg in the West because I have left some bloud in the North and some bones in the South Doe but remember with what ease you have sate in the chaire casting an account and made a shilling on one hand a pound on the other or five shillings below ten above because all these lay easily within your reach Consider how much lesse all this earth is to him that sits in heaven and spans all this world and reunites in an instant armes and legs bloud and bones in what corners so ever they be scattered The greater work may seem to be in reducing the soul That that soule which sped so ill in that body last time it came to it as that it contracted Originall sinne then and was put to the slavery to serve that body and to serve it in the ways of sinne not for an Apprentiship of seven but seventy years after that that soul after it hath once got loose by death and liv'd God knows how many thousands of years free from that body that abus'd it so before and in the sight and fruition of that God where it was in no danger should willingly nay desirously ambitiously seek this scuttered body this Eastern and Western and Northern and Southern body this is the most inconsiderable consideration and yet Ego I I the same body and the same soul shall be recompact again and be identically numerically individually the same man The same integrity of body and soul and the same integrity in the Organs of my body and in the faculties of my soul too I shall be all there my body and my soul all my body all my soul I am not all here I am here now preaching upon this text and I am at home in my Library considering whether S. Gregory or S. Hierome have said best of this text before I am here speaking to you and yet I consider by the way in the same instant what it is likely you will say to one another when I have done you are not all here neither you are here now hearing me and yet you are thinking that you have heard a better Sermon somewhere else of this text before you are here and yet you think you could have heard some other doctrine of down-right Predestinations and Reprobation roundly delivered somewhere else with more edification to youâ— you are here and you remember your selves that now yee think of it This had been the fittest time now when every body else is at Church to have made such and such a private visit and because you would bee there you are there I cannot say you cannot say so perfectly so entirely now as at the Resurrection Ego I am here I body and soul I soul and faculties as Christ sayd to Peter Noli timere Ego sum Fear nothing it is I so I say to my selfe Noli timere My soul why art thou so sad my body why dost thou languish Ego I body and soul soul and faculties shall say to Christ Jesus Ego sum Lord it is I and hee shall not say Nescio te I know thee not but avow me and place me at his right hand Ego sum I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath Ego sum and I the same man shall receive the crown of glory which shall not fade Ego I the same person Ego videbo I shall see I have had no looking-glasse in my grave to see how my body looks in the dissolution I know not how I have had no houre-glasse in my grave to see how my time passes I know not when for when my eylids are closed in my death-bed the Angel hath said to me that time shall be no more Till I see eternity the ancient of days I shall see no more but then I shall Now why is Iob gladder of the use of this sense of seeing then of any of the other He is not He is glad of seeing but not of the sense but of the Object It is true that is said in the School Viciniùs se habent potentiae sensitivae ad animam quà m corpus Our sensitive faculties have more relation to the soul then to the body but yet to some purpose and in some measure all the senses shall be in our glorifyed bodies In actu or in potentiâ
one person in him My flesh shall no more be none of mine then Christ shall not be man as well as God SERMON XV. Preached at Lincolns Inne 1 COR. 15. 50. Now this I say Brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God SAint Gregory hath delivered this story That Eutychius who was Bishop of Constantinople having written a book of the Resurrection and therein maintained that errour That the body of Christ had not that our bodies in the Resurrection should not have any of the qualities of a naturall body but that those bodies were in subtilitatem redacta so rarifyed so refined so attenâ—ated and reduced to a thinnesse and subtlenesse that they were aery bodies and not bodies of flesh and blood This error made a great noise and raised a great dust till the Emperour to avoid scandall which for the most part arises out of publick conferences was pleased to hear Eutychius and Gregory dispute this point privately before himself and a small company And that upon conference the Emperour was so well satisfyed that hee commanded Eutychius his books to bee burnt That after this both Gregory and Eutychius fell sicke but Eutychius dyed and dyed with this protestation In hâc carne in this flesh taking up the flesh of his hand in the presence of them that were there in this flesh I acknowledge that I and all men shall arise at the day of Judgement Now the principall place of Scripture which in his book and in that conference Eutychius stood upon was this Text these words of Saint Paul This I say brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdome of God And the directest answer that Gregory gave to it was Caro secundum culpam non regnabit sed Caro secundum naturam sinfull flesh shall not but naturall flesh that is flesh indued with all qualities of flesh all such qualities as imply no defect no corruption for there was flesh before there was sin such flesh and such blood shall inherit the Kingdome of God As there have been more Heresies about the Humanity of Christ then about his Divinity so there have been more heresies about the Resurrection of his body and consequently of ours then about any other particular article that concerns his Humiliation or Exaltation Simon Magus strook deepest at first to the root That there was no Resurrection at all The Gnosticks who took their name from knowledge as though they knew all and no body else any thing which is a pride transferr'd through all Heretickes for as that sect in the Roman Church which call themselves Ignorantes and seem to pretend to no knowledge doe yet believe that they know a better way to heaven then all other men doe so that sect amongst them which called themselves Nullanos Nothings thought themselves greater in the Kingdome of God then either of the other two sects of diminution the Minorits or the Minims did These Gnosticks acknowledged a Resurrection but they said it was of the soul onely and not of the body for they thought that the soul lay dead at least in a dead sleep till the Resurrection Those Heretickes that are called the Arabians did as the Gnosticks did affirm a temporary death of the soul as well as of the body but then they allowed a Resurrection to both soul and body after that death which the Gnostickes did not but to the soul onely Hymeneus and Philetus of whom Saint Paul speakes they restrained the Resurrection to the soule but then they restrained this Resurrection of the soule to this life and that in those who were baptized the Resurrection was accomplished already Eutychius whom wee mentioned before enlarged the Resurrection to the body as well as to the soul but enlarged the qualities of the body so far as that it was scarce a body The Armenian hereticks said that it was not onely Corpus humâ—num but Corpus masculinum That all should rise in the perfecter sex and none as women Origen allowed a Resurrection and allowed the Body to be a naturall body but the contracted the time he said that when we rose we should enjoy the benefits of the resurrection even in bodily pleasures for a thousand years and then be annihilated or absorpted and swallowed up into the nature and essence of God himselfe for it will be hard to state Origens opinion in this point Origen was not herein well understood in his owne time not doe we understand him now for the most part but by his accusers and those that have written against him Divers of these Heretiques for the maintenance of their severall heresies perverted this Scripture Flesh and bloud cannot inherit the kingdome of God and that occasioned those Fathers who opposed those heresies so diverse from one another to interpret these words diversly according to the heresie they opposed All agree that they are an argument for the resurrection though they seem at first to oppose it For this Chapter hath three generall parts first Resurrectionem esse that there shall be a Resurrection which the Apostle proves by many and various arguments to the thirty fifth verse And then Quati corpore the body shall rise but some will say How are the dead raised and with what body doe they come in that thirty fifth verse And lastly Quid de superstitibus what shall become of them who shall be found alive at the day We shall all be changed verse fifty one Now this text is the knot and corollary or all the second part concerning the qualities of the bodies in the resurrection Now says the Apostle now that I have said enough to prove that a resurrection there is now now that I have said enough what kind of bodies shall arise now I show you as much in the Negative as I have done in the Affirmative now I teach you what to avoid as well as I have done what to affect now this I say brethren that flesh and bloud cannot inherit the kingdome of God Now though those words be primarily principally intended of the last Resurrection yet in a secondary respect they are appliable in themselves and very often applied by the ancients to the first Resurrection our resurrection in this life Tertullian hath intimated and presented both together elegantly when he says of God Nobis arrhabonem spiritus reliquit arrhabonem à nobis accepit God hath given us his earnest and a pawn from him upon earth in giving us the holy Ghost and he hath received our earnest and a pawn from us into heaven by receiving our nature in the body of Christ Jesus there Flesh and bloud when it is conformed to the flesh and bloud of Christ now glorified and made like his by our resurrectien may inherite the kingdome of God in heaven Yea flesh and bloud being conformed to Christ by the sanctification of the holy Ghost here in this world may inherit the kingdome of God here upon earth for God hath a
Verbum The word and his servants there talk of us here and pray to him for us They talked with him but of what They talked of hiâ— Decease says the text there which he should accomplish at Jerusalem all that they talked of was of his Passion All that we shall say and sing in heaven will be of his Passion accomplished at Jerusalem in that Hymn This Lamb hath redeemed as to God by his blood Worthy is the Lamb that was slaine to receive power and riches and wisdome and strength and honour and glory and blessing Amen Even our glory in heaven at last is not principally for our selves but to contribute to the glory of Christ Jesus If we inquire further then this into the state of our glorifyed bodies remember that in this reall Parable in this Type of the Resurrection the transfiguration of Christ it is said that even Beter himself wist not what to say and remember too That even Christ himself forbad them to say any thing at all of it till his Resurrection Till our Resurrection we cannot know clearly we should not speak boldly of the glory of the Saints of God nor of our blessed endowments in that state The summe of all is Fiducis Christianorum est resurrectio mortuorum My faith directs it self first upon that which Christ hath done he is dead he is risen and my hope directs it selfe upon that which shall bee done I shall rise again And yet says Luther Papa Cardinales primarii viri I know the Pope the Cardinals the Bishops are Iâ—genio doctrinâ ratione prudentiâ excellentes they abound in naturall parts in reading in experience in civill wisdome yet says he si tres sunt qui hunc â—â—ticulum indubitanter â—redunt If there be three amongst them that do faithfully and undoubtedly believe this article of the Resurrection of the body three are more then I look for amongst them Beloved as no things are liker one another then Court and Court the same ambitions the same underminings in one Court as in another so Church and Church is alike too All persecured Churches are religious all peaceable Churches are dissolute when Luther said that of the Church of Rome That few of them believed the Resurrection the Roman Church wall owed in all abundances and dissolutenesseâ— and scarce a man in respect opened his mouth against her otherwise then that the holy Ghost to make his continuall 〈◊〉 and to interrupt their prescription in every age raised up some to declare their impieties and usurpations But then when they bent all their thoughts entirely and prosperously upon possessing this world they thought they might spare the Resurrection well enough As hee that hath a plentifull fortune in Europe cares not much though there be no land of perfumes in the East nor of gold in the West-Indies God in our days hath given us and our Church the fat of the glory of this world too and we also neglect the other But when men of a different religion from them for they will needs call a differing from their errours a different Religion as though all their religion were errours for excepting errours we differ in no point when I say such men came to enquire into them to discover them and to induce or to attempt in divers parts of their government a reformation then they shut themselves up closer then they grew more carefull of their manners and did reform themselves somewhat though not thoroughly and are the better for that reformat on which was offered to them and wrought more effectually upon others As we say in the School that even the Devill is somewhat the better for the death of Christ so the Roman Church is somewhat the better for the Reformation Our assiduity of preaching hath brought them to another manner of frequency in preaching then before the Reformation they were accustomed to and our answers to their books have brought them to a more reserved manner of writing then they used before Let us therefore by their example make as good use of our enemies as our enemies have done of us For though we have no military enmity no hostility with any nation though we must all and doe out of a true sense of our duty to God pray ever for the continuance of peace amongst Christian Princes and to withhold the effusion of Christian blood yet to that intendment and in that capacity as they were our enemies in 88. when they provoked by their Excommunications dangerous invasions and in that capacity as they were our enemies in 603. when they bent their malice even against that place where the Laws for the maintenance of our religion were enacted so they are our enemies still if we be still of the same religion He that by Gods mercy to us leads us is as sure that the Pope is Antichrist now as he was then and we that are blessedly led by him are as sure that their doctrine is the doctrine of Devils now as we were then Let us therefore make use of those enemies and of their aery insolences and their frothy confidences as thereby to be the firmer in our selves and the carefuller of our children and servants that we send not for such a Physitian as brings a Roman Priest for his Apothecary nor entertain such a School-master as brings a Roman Priest for his Vsher nor such a Mercer as brings a Priest for his Tayler for in these shapes they have and will appear But in true faith to God true Allegiance to our Prince true obedience to the Church true dealing with all men make our selves sure of the Resurrection in the next life In carne incorruptibili in flesh that shall bee capable of no corruption by having that resurrection in this life in carne incorruptâ in devesting or correcting the corruptions which cleave to our flesh here that we bee not corrupted spiritually not disputed out of our Religion nor jeasted out nor threatened out nor bought out nor beat out of the truth of God nor corrupted carnally by the pleasures or profits of this world but that wee may conforme our selves to the purity of Christ Jesus in that measure which wee are able to attain to which is our spirituall Resurrection and constitutes our second part That Kingdome of God which flesh and blood may inherit in this life From the beginning we setled that That the primary purpose of the Apostle in these words was to establish the doctrine of the last Resurrection But in Tertullians exposition Arrabonem dedit arrabonem accepit That God hath left us the earnest of his Spirit upon earth and hath taken the earnest of our flesh into heaven it grew indifferent of which Resurrection spirituall or bodily first or last it be accepted but take Tertullian in another place upon the verse immediately preceding our Text Sicut portavimus portemus for so Tertullian reads that place and so does the Vulgate As we
covered himself with a cloud so that prayer could not passe thorough That was the misery of Ierusalem But in the acts and habits of sin we cover our selves with a roof with an arch which nothing can shake nor remove but Thunder and Earthquakes that is the execution of Gods fiercest judgments And whether in that fall of the roof that is in the weight of Gods judgments upon us the stones shall not brain us overwhelm and smother and bury us God only knows How his Thunders and his Earthquakes when we put him to that will work upon us he onely knows whether to our amendment or to our destruction But whil'st we are in the consideration of this arch this roof of separation between God and us by sin there may be use in imparting to you an observation a passage of mine own Lying at Aiâ— at Aquisgrane a well known Town in Germany and fixing there some time for the benefit of those Baths I found my self in a house which was divided into many families indeed so large as it might have been a little Parish or at least a great lim of a great one But it was of no Parish for when I ask'd who lay over my head they told me a family of Anabaptists And who over theirs Another family of Anabaptists and another family of Anabaptists over theirs and the whole house was a nest of these boxes severall artificers all Anabaptists I ask'd in what room they met for the exercise of their Religion I was told they never met for though they were all Anabaptists yet for some collaterall differences they detested one another and though many of them were near in bloud alliance to one another yet the son would excommunicate the father in the room above him and the Nephew the Uncle As S. Iohn is said to have quitted that Bath into which Cerinthus the Heretique came so did I this house I remembred that Hezekiah in his sicknesse turn'd himself in his bed to pray towards that wall that look'd to Ierusalem And that Daniel in Babylon when he pray'd in his chamber opened those windows that look'd towards Ierusalem for in the first dedication of the Temple at Ierusalem there is a promise annext to the prayers made towards the Temple And I began to think how many roofs how many floores of separation were made between God and my prayers in that house And such is this multiplicity of sins which we consider to be got over us as a roof as an arch many arches many roofs for though these habituall sins be so of kin as that they grow from one another and yet for all this kindred excommunicate one another for covetousnesse will not be in the same roome with prodigality yet it is but going up another stair and there 's the tother Anabaptist it is but living a few years and then the prodigall becomes covetous All the way they separate us from God as a roof as an arch then an arch will bear any weight An habituall sin got over our head as an arch will stand under any sicknesse any dishonour any judgement of God and never sink towards any humiliation They are above our heads sicus tectum as a roofe as an arch and they are so toe sicut clamor as a voice ascending not stopping till they come to God O my God I am confounded and ashamed to lift up mine eyes to ther O my God why not thine eyes there is a cloud a clamour in the way for as it follows Our iniquities are encreased over our heads and our trespasse is grown up to the heaven I think to retain a learned man of my counsell and one that is sute to be heard in the Court and when I come to instruct him I finde mine adversaries name in his book before and he is all ready for the other party I think to finde an Advocate in heaven when I will and my sin is in heaven before mee The voice of Abels bloud and so of Cains sin was there The voice of Sodomes transgression was there Bring down that sin again from heaven to earth Bring that voice that cries in heaven to speake to Christ here in his Church upon earth by way of confession bring that clamorous sin to his bloud to be washed in the Sacrament for as long as thy sin cries in heaven thy prayers cannot be heard there Bring thy sinne under Christs feet there when hee walks amongst the Candlesticks in the light and power of his Ordinances in the Church and then thine absolution will be upon thy head in those seals which he hath instituted and ordained there and thy cry will be silenced Till then supergrâ—sse caput thine iniquities will be over thy head as a roof as a cry and in the next place sicut aqua as the overflowing of waters We consider this plurality this multiplicity of habituall sinnes to bee got over our heads as waters especially in this that they have stupefied us and taken from us all sense of reparation of our sinfull condition The Organ that God hath given the naturall man is the eye he sees God in the creature The Organ that God hath given the Christian is the ear he hears God in his Word But when we are under water both senses both Organs are vitiated and depraved if not defeaâ—ed The habituall and manifold sinner sees nothing aright Hee sees a judgement and cals it an accident He hears nothing aright He hears the Ordinance of Preaching for salvation in the next world and he cals it an invention of the State for subjection in this world And as under water every thing seems distorted and crooked to man so does man himself to God who sees not his own Image in that man in that form as he made it When man hath drunk iniquity like water then The flouds of wickadnesse shall make him afraid The water that he hath swum in the sin that he hath delighted in shall appear with horrour unto him As God threatens the pride of Tyrus I shall bring the deep upon thee and great waters shall cover thee That God will execute upon this sinner And then upon every drop of that water upon every affliction every tribulation he shall come to that fearfulnesse Waters flowed over my head then said I I am câ—â— off Either he shall see nothing or see no remedy no deliverance from desperation Keep low these waters as waters signifie sin and God shall keep them low as they signifie punishments And his Dove shall return to the Ark with an Olive leaf to shew thee that the waters are abated he shall give thee a testimony of the return of his love in his Oyle and Wine and Milk and Honey in the temporall abundances of this life And si impleat Hydrias aqua if he doe fill all your vessels with water with water of bitternesse that is fill and exercise all your patience and
our sakes not onely sinfull but sin it self And as one cruell Emperour wished all mankinde in one man that hee might have beheaded mankinde at one blow so God gathered the whole nature of sinne into one Christ that by one action one passion sin all sin the whole nature of sinne might bee overcome It was sin that was upon Christ else God could not have been angry with him nor pleased with us It was sin and his own sin Mine iniquities says Christ in his Type and figure David and in his body the Church and we may be bold to adde in his very person Mine iniquities Many Heretiques denied his body to be his Body they said it was but an airy an imaginary an illusory Body and denied his Soul to be his Soul they said he had no humane soul but that his divine nature supplied that and wrought all the operations of the soul. But we that have learnt Christ better know that hee could not have redeemed man by that way that was contracted betweene him and his Father that is by way of satisfaction except he had taken the very body and the very soul of man And as verily as his humane nature his body and soul were his his sins were his too As my mortality and my hunger and thirst and wearinesse and all my naturall infirmities are his so my sins are his sins And now when my sins are by him thus made his sins no Hell-Devill not Satan no Earth-Devill no Calumniator can any more make those sins my sins then he can make his divinity mine As by the spirit of Adoption I am made the childe of God the seed of God the same Spirit with God but yet I am not made God so by Christs taking my sins I am made a servant of my God a Beads-man of my God a vassall a Tributary debtor to God but I am no sinner in the sight of God no sinner so as that man or the Devill can impute that sin unto me then when my Saviour hath made my sins his As a Soldier would not part with his scars Christ would not They were sins that lay upon him part with our sins And his sins and as it follows in his Type David sins in a plurality many sins I know nothing in the world so manifold so plurall so numerous as my sins And my Saviour had all those But if every other man have not so many sins as I he owes that to Gods grace and not to the Devils forbearance for the Devill saw no such parts nor no such power in me to advance or hinder his kingdome no such birth no such education no such place in the State or Church as that he should be gladder of me then of other men He ministers tentations to all and all are overcome by his tentations And all these sins in all men were upon Christ at once All twice over In the root and in the fruit too In the bullein and in the coin too In grosse and in retail In Originall and in Actuall sin And howsoever the sins of former ages the sins of all men for 4000 years before which were all upon him when he was upon the Crosse might possibly be numbred as things that are past may easilier fall within a possibility of such an imagination yet all those sinnes which were to come after he himself could not number for hee as the Sonne of man though hee know how long the world hath lasted knowes not how long this sinfull world shall last and when the day of Judgement shall be And all those future sins were his sins before they were committed They were his before they were theirs that doe them And lest this world should not afford him sins enow he took upon him the sins of heaven it self not their sins who were fallen from heaven and fallen into an absolute incapacity of reconciliation but their sins which remained in heaven Those sins which the Angels that stand would fall into if they had not received a confirmation given them in contemplation of the death and merits of Christ Christ took upon him for all things in Earth and Heaven too were reconciled to God by him for if there had been as many worlds as there are men in this which is a large multiplication or as many worlds as there are sins in this which is an infinite multiplication his merit had been sufficient to all They were sins his sins many sinnes the sinnes of the world and then as in his Type David Supergressae his sins these sins were got above him And not as Davids or ours by an insensible growth and swelling of a Tide in Course of time but this inundation of all the sins of all places and times and persons was upon him in an instant in a minute in such a point as admits and requires a subtile and a serious consideration for it is eternity which though it doe infinitely exceed all time yet is in this consideration lesse then any part of time that it is indivisible eternity is so and though it last for ever is all at once eternity is so And from this point this timelesse time time that is all time time that is no time from all eternity all the sins of the world were gone over him And in that consideration supergressae caput they were gone over his head Let his head bee his Divine nature yet they were gone over his head for though there bee nothing more voluntary then the love of God to man for he loves us not onely for his own sake or for his own glories sake but he loves us for his loves sake he loves us and loves his love of us and had rather want some of his glory then wee should not have nay then he should not have so much love towards us though this love of his be an act simply voluntary yet in that act of expressing this love in the sending a Saviour there was a kinde of necessity contracted on Christs part such a contract had passed between him and his Father that as himself says there was an oportuit pati a necessity that he should suffer all that he suffered and so enter into glory when he was come so there was an oportuit venire a necessity a necessity induced by that contract that he should come in that humiliation and smother and suppresse the glory of the divine nature under a cloud of humane of passible of inglorious flesh So be his divine nature this head his sins all our sins made his were gone above his head And over his head all those ways that we considered before in our selves Sicut tectum sicut fornix as a roof as an arch that had separated between God and him in that he prayed and was not heard when in that Transeat Calix Father if it be possible let this cup passe from me the Cup was not onely not taken out of his hands but filled up
to descend from heaven yet it did first ascend from the earth and retains still some such earthly parts as sheep cannot digest So howsoever these Revelations and Inspirations seem to fall upon us from heaven they arise from the earth from our selves from our own melancholy and pride or our too much homelinesse and familiarity in our accesses and conversation with God or a facility in beleeving or an often dreaming the same thing And with these Dews of Apparitions and Revelations did the Romane Church make our fathers drunk and giddy And against these does S. Augustine devoutly pray and praise God that he had delivered him from the curiosity of sipping these dews of hearkning after these apparitions and revelations But so ordinary were these apparitions then as that any son or nephew or friend could discern his fathers or uncles or companions soul ascending out of Purgatory into heaven and know them as distinctly as if they kept the same haire and beard and bodily lineaments as they had upon earth And as a ship which hath struck Sail will yet goe on with the winde it had before for a while so now when themselves are come to acknowledge That it was the unanime opinion of the Fathers that the souls of the dead did not appeare after death but that it was still the Devil howsoever sometimes that that he proposed were holy religious yet we see a great Author of theirs attribute so much to these apparitions and revelations that when he pretends to prove all controversies by the Fathers of the Church he every where intermingles that reverend Book of Brigids Revelations that they might also have some Mothers of the Church too which is not disproportionall in that Church if they have had a woman Pope to have Mothers of the Church too I speak not this as though God might not or did not manifest his will by women The great mystery of the Resurrection of Christ was revealed to women before men and to the sinfullest woman of company first But I speak of that bold injury done to the mysteries of the Christian Religion by pouring out that dew upon the grasse the Revelations of S. Brigid upon the controversies of Religion A book of so much blasphemy and impertinency and incredibility that if a Heathen were to be converted he would sooner be brought to beleeve Ovids Metamorphoses then Brigids Revelations to conduce to Religion And this is also another conformity between the two Babylons the Chaldean and the Italian Babylon that we could not receive our grasse pure but infected and dewed with these frivolous nay pernicious apparitions and Revelations But press we a little closer to the very steps metaphor of the holy Ghost who here lays the corrupting of the sheeps grasse in this That the shepheards had troden it down And this treading down will be pertinently considered two ways Tertullian in his Book De habitu muliebri notes two excesses in womens dressing One he cals Ornatum the other cultum One mundum muliebrem the other according to the liberty that he takes in making words Immundum muliebrem the first is a superfluous diligence in their dressing but the other an unnaturall addition to their complexion the first he pronounces to be always ad ambitionem for pride but the other ad prostitutionem for a worse for the worst purpose These two sorts of Excesses doe note these two kindes of treading down the grasse which we intend of which one is the mingling of too much humane ornament and secular learning in preaching in presenting the word of God which word is our grasse The other is of mingling humane Traditions as of things of equall value and obligation with the Commandements of God For the first humane ornament if in those pastures which are ordain'd for sheep you either plant rare and curious flowers delightfull onely to the eye or fragrant and odoriferous hearbs delightfull onely to the smell nay be they medicinall hearbs usefull and behovefull for the preservation and restitution of the health of man yet if these specious and glorious flowers and fragrant and medicinall hearbs be not proper nourishment for sheep this is a treading down of the grasse a pestering and a suppressing of that which appertained to them So if in your spirituall food our preaching of the Word you exact of us more secular ornament then may serve as Saint Augustine says Ad ancillationem to convey and usher the true word of life into your understandings and affections for both those must necessarily be wrought upon more then may serve ad vehiculum for a chariot for the word of God to enter and triumph in you this is a treading down of the grasse a filling of that ground which was ordained for sheep with things improper and impertinent to them If you furnish a Gallery with stuffe proper for a Gallery with Hangings and Chairs and Couches and Pictures it gives you all the conveniencies of a Gallery walks and prospect and ease but if you pester it with improper and impertinent furniture with Beds and Tables you lose the use and the name of a Gallery and you have made it a Wardrobe so if your curiosity extort more then convenient ornament in delivery of the word of God you may have a good Oration a good Panegyrique a good Encomiastique but not so good a Sermon It is true that Saint Paul applies sentences of secular Authors even in matters of greatest importance but then it is to persons that were accustomed to those authors and affected with them and not conversant not acquainted at all with the phrase and language of Scripture amongst us now almost every man God be blessed for it is so accustomed to the text of Scripture as that he is more affected with the name of David or Saint Paul then with any Seneca or Plutarch I am far from forbidding secular ornament in divine exercises especially in some Auditories acquainted with such learnings I have heard men preach against witty preaching and doe it with as much wit as they have and against learned preaching with as much learning as they could compasse If you should place that beast which makes the Bezoar stone in a pasture of pure but onely grasse it is likely that out of his naturall faculty he would petrifie the juyce of that grasse and make it a stone but not such a medicinall stone as he makes out of those herbes which he feeds upon Let all things concur in the name of God to the advancing of his purpose in his ordinance which is to make his will acceptable to you by his word onely avoid excesse in the manner of doing it Saint Augustines is an excellent rule when after in his book De Doctrina Christiana he had taught a use of all Arts in Divinity he allows them onely thus far ut cum ingenia his reddantur exercitatiora cavendum ne reddantur maligniora that when a man by
prepared a Whale to transport Ionas before Ionas was cast into the Sea God prepared thee a holy Patience before he reduced thee to the exercise of that Patience If thou couldest apprehend nothing done for thy self yet all the mercies that God hath exhibited to others are former mercies to thee in the Pattern and in the Seal and in the Argument thereof They have had them therefore thou shalt All Gods Prophecies are thy Histories whatsoever he hath promised others he hath done in his purpose for thee And all Gods Histories are thy Prophesies all that he hath done for others he owes thee Hast thou a hardnesse of heart knowest thou not that Christ hath wept before to entender that hardnesse hast thou a palenesse of soul in the apparition of God in fire and in judgement knowest thou not that Christ hath bled before to give a vigour and a vegetation and a verdure to that palenesse is thy sinne Actuall sinne knowest thou not that there is a Lamb bleeding before upon the Altar to expiate that Is thy terrour from thy inherence and encombrance of Originall sinne knowest thou not that the effect of Baptism hath blunted the sting of that sinne before art thou full of sores putrid and ulcerous sores full of wounds through and through piercing wounds full of diseases namelesse and complicate diseases knowest thou not that there is a holy Charm a blessed Incantation by which thou art though not invulnerable yet invulnerable unto death wrapt up in the eternall Decree of thine Election that 's thy pillar the assurance of thine Election If thou shake that if thou cast down that Pillar if thou distrust thine Election with Samson who pulled down pillars in his blindnesse in thy blindnesse thou destroyest thy self Begin where thou wilt at any Act in thy self at any act in God yet there was mercy before that for his mercy is eternall eternall even towards thee I could easily think that that that past between God and Moses in their long conversation that that that past between Christ and Moses in his trans-figuration that that that past between Saint Paul and the Court of Heaven in his extasie was instruction and manifestation on one part and admiration and application on the other part of the mercy of God Earth cannot receive Heaven cannot give such another universall soul to all all persons all actions as Mercy And were I the childe of this Text that were to live a hundred years I would ask no other marrow to my bones no other wine to my heart no other light to mine eyes no other art to my understanding no other eloquence to my tongue then the power of apprehending for my self and the power of deriving and conveying upon others by my Ministery the Mercy the early Mercy the everlasting Mercy of yours and my God But we must passe to the consideration of this immense Light in that one Beam wherein it is exhibited here that is long life The childe shall die a hundred years old Long life is a blessing as it is an image of eternity as Kings are blessings because they are Images of God And as to speak properly a King that possest the whole earth hath no proportion at all to God he is not a dramme not a grain not an atome to God so neither if a thousand Methusalems were put in one life had that long life any proportion to eternity for Finite and Infinite have no proportion to one another But yet when we say so That the King is nothing to God we speak then between God and the King and we say that onely to assist the Kings Religious humiliation of himself in the presence of God But when we speak between the King and our selves his Subjects there we raise our selves to a just reverence of him by taking knowledge that he is the Image of God to us So though long life be nothing to eternity yet because we need such Glasses and such Images as God shews us himself in the King so he shewes us his eternitie in a long life In this that the Patriarchs complain every where of the shortnesse of life and neernesse of death Iacob at a hundred and thirtie yeares tells Pharaoh that his dayes were few In this that God threatens the shortnesse of life for a punishment to Eli God saies There shall not be an old man in thy house for ever In this that God brings it into Promise and enters it as into his Audite and his revenue With long life will I satisfie him and shew him my salvation That God would give him long life and make that long life a Type of Eternity In this that God continues that promise into performance and brings it to execution in some of his chosen servants at a hundred and twenty Moses his eyes were not dim nor his naturall force abated and Caleb saith of himself I am this day 85. yeares old and as my strength was at first for warre so is my strength now In all these and many others we receive so many testimonies that God brings long life out of his Treasurie as an immediate blessing of his And therefore as such his blessing let us pray for it where it is not come yet in that apprecation and acclamation of the antient generall Councells Multos annos Caesari Aeternâ—s annos Caesari Long life to our Cesar in this world everlasting life to our Cesar in the world to come and then let us reverence this blessing of long life where it is come in honouring those Ancient heads by whose name God hath been pleased to call himself Antiquuâ— dierum the ancient of dayes and let us not make this blessing of long life impossible to our selves by disappointing Gods purpose of long life upon us by our surfets our wantonnesse our quarrels which are all Goths and Vandals and Giants called in by our selves to fight with God against us But yet so receive we long life as a blessing as that we may also find a blessing in departing from this life For so manifold and so multiforn are his blessings as even death it self hath a place in this Sphear of blessings The childe shall live a hundred yeares but yet The childe shall die When Paradise should have extended as man should have multiplied and every holy family every religious Colony have constituted a new Paradise that as it was said of Egypt when it abounded with Hermitages in the Primitive persecutions That Egypt was a continuall City of Hermitages so all the world should have been a continuall Garden of Paradises when all affections should have been subjects and all creatures servants and all wives helpers then life was a sincere blessing But but a mixt blessing now when all these are so much vitiated onely a possible blessing a disputable a conditionable a circumstantiall blessing now If there were any other way to be saved and to get to Heaven then by being born
people and gather them so So Christ tells us things in darknesse And so Christ speakes to us in our Ear And these low voices and holy whisperings and halfe-silences denote to us the inspirations of his Spirit as his Spirit beares witnesse with our spirit as the Holy Ghost insinuates himselfe into our soules and works upon us so by his private motions But this is not Gods ordinary way to be whispering of secrets The first thing that God made was light The last thing that he hath reserved to doe is the manifestation of the light of his Essence in our Glorification And for Publication of himselfe here by the way he hath constituted a Church in a Visibility in an eminency as a City upon a hill And in this Church his Ordinance is Ordinance indeed his Ordinance of preaching batters the soule and by that breach the Spirit enters His Ministers are an Earth-quake and shake an earthly soule They are the sonnes of thunder and scatter a cloudy conscience They are as the fall of waters and carry with them whole Congregations 3000 at a Sermon 5000 at a Sermon a whole City such a City as Niniveh at a Sermon and they are as the roaring of a Lion where the Lion of the tribe of Juda cries down the Lion that seekes whom he may devour that is Orthodoxall and fundamentall truths are established against clamorous and vociferant innovations Therefore what Christ tels us in the darke he bids us speake in the light and what he saies in our eare he bids us preach on the house top Nothing is Gospell not Evangelium good message if it be not put into a Messengers mouth and delivered by him nothing is conducible to his end nor available to our salvation except it be avowable doctrine doctrine that may be spoke alowd though it awake them that sleep in their sinne and make them the more froward for being so awaked God hath made all things in a Roundnesse from the round superficies of this earth which we tread here to the round convexity of those heavens w ch as long as they shal have any beeing shall be our footstool when we come to heaven God hath wrapped up all things in Circles and then a Circle hath no Angles there are no Corners in a Circle Corner Divinity clandestine Divinity are incompatible termes If it be Divinity it is avowable The heathens served their Gods in Temples sub dio without roofs or coverings in a free opennesse and where they could in Temples made of Specular stone that was transparent as glasse or crystall so as they which walked without in the streets might see all that was done within And even nature it self taught the naturall man to make that one argument of a man truly religious Aperto vivere voto That he durst pray aloud and let the world heare what he asked at Gods hand which duty is best performed when we joyne with the Congregation in publique prayer Saint Augustine hath made that note upon the Donatists That they were Clancularii clandestine Divines Divines in Corners And in Photius we have such a note almost upon all Heretiques as the Nestorian was called Coluber a snake because though he kept in the garden or in the meadow in the Church yet he lurked and lay hid to doe mischief And the Valentinian was called a Grashopper because he leaped and skipped from place to place and that creature the Grashopper you may hear as you passe but you shall hardly find him at his singing you may hear a Conventicle Schismatick heare him in his Pamphlets heare him in his Disciples but hardly surprize him at his exercise Publication is a fair argument of truth That tasts of Luthers holy animosity and zealous vehemency when he says Audemus gloriari Christum à nobis primo vulgatum other men had made some attempts at a Reformation and had felt the pulse of some persons and some Courts and some Churches how they would relish a Reformation But Luther rejoyces with a holy exultation That he first published it that he first put the world to it So the Apostles proceeded when they came in their peregrination to a new State to a new Court to Rome it selfe they did not enquire how stands the Emperour affected to Christ and to the preaching of his Gospel Is there not a Sister or a Wife that might be wrought upon to further the preaching of Christ Are there not some persons great in power and place that might be content to hold a party together by admitting the preaching of Christ This was not their way They only considered who sent them Christ Jesus And what they brough salvation to every soul that embraced Christ Jesus That they preached and still begunne with a Vae si non Never tell us of displeasure or disgrace or detriment or death for preaching of Christ. For woe be unto us if we preach him not And still they ended with a Qui non crediderit Damnabitur Never deceive your own souls He to whom Christ hath been preached and beleeves not shall be damned All Divinity that is bespoken and not ready made fitted to certaine turnes and not to generall ends And all Divines that have their soules and consciences so disposed as their Libraries may bee At that end stand Papists and at that end Protestants and he comes in in the middle as neare one as the other all these have a brackish taste as a River hath that comes near the Sea so have they in comming so neare the Sea of Rome In this the Prophet exalts our Consolation Though the Lord give us the bread of Adversity and the water of Affliction yes shall not our Teachers be removed into corners They shall not be silenced by others they shall not affect of themselves Corner Divinity But saies he there our eyes shall see our Teachers and our eares shall hear a word saying This is the way walke in it For so they shall declare that they have taken to heart this Commandement of him that sent them Christ Jesus All that you receive from me you must deliver to my people therefore Take heed what you hear forget none of it But then you must deliver no more then that and therefore in that respect also Take heed what you hear adde nothing to that and that is the other obligation which Christ laies here upon his Apostles That reading of those words of Saint Iohn Omnis spiritus qui solvit Iesum Every spirit that dissolves Jesus that takes him asunder in pieces and beleeves not all is a very ancient reading of that place And upon that Ancient reading the Ancients infer well That not onely that spirit that denies that Christ being God assumed our flesh not onely he that denies that Christ consists of two natures God and Mam but he also that affirmes this Christ thus consisting of two natures to consist also of two persons this man dissolves Iesus takes him asunder in
another that plotted to betray thee And therefore if you can heare a good Organ at Church and have the musique of a domestique peace at home peace in thy walls peace in thy bosome never hearken after the musique of sphears never hunt after the knowledge of higher secrets then appertaine to thee But since Christ hath made you Regale Sacerdotium Kings and Priests in your proportion Take heed what you hear in derogation of either the State or the Church In declaring ill affections towards others the Holy Ghost hath imprinted these steps First he begins at home in Nature He that curseth Father or Mother shall surely be put to death and then as families grow out into Cities the Holy Ghost goes out of the house into the consideration of the State and says Thou shalt not curse the Ruler of the people no Magistrate And from thence he comes to the highest upon earth for in Samuel it comes to a cursing of the Lords Anointed and from thence to the highest in heaven Whosoever curseth his God shall bear his sinne and as though both those grew out of one another The cursing of the King and the cursing of God the Prophet Esai hath joyned them together They shall be hungry says he indigent poor penurious and they shall fret be transported with ungodly passion and they shall curse their King and their God If they doe one they will doe the other The Devil remembers from what height he is fallen and therefore still clambers upward and still directs all our sinnes in his end upon God Our end in a sin may be pleasure or profit or satisfaction of affections or passions but the Devils end in all is that God may be violated and dishonoured in that sinne And therefore by casting in ill conceptions and distasts first against Parents and Masters at home and then against subordinate Magistrates abroad and so against the Supreme upon earth He brings us to ill conceptions and distasts against God himself first to thinke it liberty to bee under no Governour and then liberty to be under no God when as onely those two services of a gracious God and of a good King are perfect freedome Therefore the wise King Solomon meets with this distemper in the root at first ebullition in the heart Curse not the King no not in thy thought for that Thought hath a tongue and hath spoken and sayd Amen in the eares of God That which thy heart hath said though the Law have not though the Jury have not though the Peers have not God hath heard thee say The word which Solomon uses there is Iadung and that our Translators have in the margin called Conscience Curse not the King no not in thy conscience Doe not thou pronounce that whatsoever thou dislikest cannot consist with a good conscience never make thy private conscience the rule of publique actions for to constitute a Rectitude or an Obliquity in any publique action there enter more circumstances then can have fallen in thy knowledge But the word that Selomon takes there Iadâ—ng signifies properly all waies of acquiring knowledge and Hearing is one of them and therefore Take heed what you heare Come not so neare evill speaking as to delight to heare them that delight to speake evill of Superiours A man may have a good breath in himself and yet be deadly infected if he stand in an ill ayre a man may stand in a cloud in a mist in a fogge of blasphemers till in the sight of God himself shall be dissolved into a blasphemous wretch and in that cloud in that mist God shall not know him that endured the hearing from him that adventured the speaking of those blasphemies The ear in such cases is as the clift in the wall that receives the voice and then the Echo is below in the heart for the most part the heart affords a returne and an inclination to those things that are willingly received at the ear The Echo returnes the last syllables The heart concludes with his conclusions whom we have been willing to hearken unto We make Satyrs and we looke that the world should call that wit when God knowes that that is in a great part self-guiltinesse and we doe but reprehend those things which we our selves have done we cry out upon the illnesse of the times and we make the times ill so the calumniator whispers those things which are true no where but in himselfe But thy greater danger is that mischievous purpose which we spake of before to endanger thee by hearing and to entangle thee in that Dilemma of which an ingenuous man abhors one part as much as a conscientious man does the other That thou must be a Delinquent or an Accuser a Traitour or an Informour God hath imprinted in thee characters of a better office and of more dignity of a Royall Priesthood as you have sparks of Royaltie in your soules Take heed what you hear of State-government as you have sparks of holy fire and Priesthood in your soules Take heed what you heare of Church-government which is the other consideration The Church is the spouse of Christ Noble husbands do not easily admit defamations of their wives Very religious Kings may have had wives that may have retained some tincture some impressions of errour which they may have sucked in their infancy from another Church and yet would be loth those wives should be publikely traduced to be Heretiques or passionately proclaimed to be Idolaters for all that A Church may lacke something of exact perfection and yet that Church should not be said to be a supporter of Antichrist or a limme of the beast or a thirster after the cup of Babylon for all that From extream to extream from east to west the Angels themselves cannot come but by passing the middle way between from that extream impurity in which Antichrist had damped the Church of God to that intemerate purity in which Christ had constituted his Church the most Angelicall Reformers cannot come but by touching yea and stepping upon some things in the way He that is come to any end remembers when he was not at the middle way he was not there as soon as he set out It is the posture reserved for heaven to sit down at the right hand of God Here our consolation is that God reaches out his hand to the receiving of those who come towards him And nearer to him and to the institutions of his Christ can no Church no not of the Reformation be said to have come then ours does It is an ill nature in any man to be rather apt to conceive jealousies and to suspect his Mothers honour or his sisters chastity then a strange womans It is an irreverent unthankfulnesse to think worse of that Church which hath bred us and fed us and led us thus far towards God then of a forein Church though Reformed too and in a good degree How often
is but a Conscience a guiltinesse of needing a continuall supply and succession of more and more grace And we are all red red so even from the beginning and in our best state Adam had the Angells had thus much of this infirmity that though they had a great measure of grace they needed more The prodigall child grew poore enough after he had received his portion and he may be wicked enough that trusts upon former or present grace and seeks not more This rednesse a blushing that is an acknowledgement that we could not subsist with any measure of faith except we pray for more faith nor of grace except we seek more grace we have from the hand of God And another rednesse from his hand too the bloud of his Sonne so that bloud was effused by Christ in the value of the ransome for All and accepted by God in the value thereof for All and this redness is in the nature thereof as extensive as the redness derived from Adam is Both reach to all So we were red earth in the hands of God as redness denotes our generall infirmities and as redness denotes the bloud of his Sonne our Saviour all have both But that redness which we have contracted from bloud shed by our selves the bloud of our own soules by sinne was not upon us when we were in the hands of God That redness is not his tincture not his complexion No decree of his is writ in any such red inke Our sinnes are our owne and our destruction is from ourselves We are not as accessaries and God as principall in this soule-murder God forbid we are not as executioners of Gods sentence and God the Malefactor in this soule-damnation God forbid Cain came not red in his brothers bloud out of Gods hands nor David red with Vriahs bloud nor Achitophel with his own nor Iudas with Christs or his owne That that Pilat did illusorily God can doe truely wash his hands from the bloud of any of these men It were a weake Plea to say I killed not that man but 't is true I commanded one who was under my command to kill him It is rather a prevarication then a justification of God to say God is not the author of sinne in any man but t is true God makes that man sinne that sinne God is Innocency and the beames that flow from him are of the same nature and colour Christ when he appeared in heaven was not red but white His head and haires were white as white wooll and as snow not head onely but haires too He and that that growes from him he and we as we come from his hands are white too His Angels that provoke us to the Imitation of that pattern are so in white Two men two Angels stood by the Apostles in white apparell The imitation is laid upon us by precept too At all times let thy garments be white Those actions in which thou appearest to the world innocent It is true that Christ is both My beloved is white and ruddy says the Spouse But the white was his owne his rednesse is from us That which Zipporah said to her husband Moses in anger the Church may say to Christ in thankfulnesse Verè sponsus Sanguinum thou art truly a bloudy husband to me Damim sanguinum of blouds blouds in the plurall for all our blouds are upon him This was a mercy to the Militant Church that even the Triumphant Church wondred at it They knew not Christ when he came up to heaven in red Who is this that commeth in red garments Wherefore is thy apparell red like him that treadeth in the winepresse They knew he went down in white in intire innocency and they wondred to see him returne in red But he satisfies them Calcavi you thinke I have troden the winepresse and you mistake it not I have troden the winepresse and Calcavi solus I have troden it alone all the redness all the bloud of the whole world is upon me And as he adds Non vir de gentibus of all people there was none with me with me so as to have any part in the Merit So of all people there was none without me without me so as to be excluded by me without their own fault from the benefit of my merit This redness he carried up to heaven for by the bloud of his Crosse came peace both to the things in earth and the things in heaven For that peccability that possibility of sinning which is in the Nature of the Angels of heaven would breake out into sinne but for that confirmation which those Angels have received in the bloud of Christ. This rednesse he carried to heaven and this rednesse he hath left upon earth that all we miserable clods of earth might be tempered with his bloud that in his bloud exhibited in his holy and blessed Sacrament our long robes might be made white in the bloud of the Lambe that though our sinnes be robes habits of sinne though long robes habits of long continuance in sinne yet through that rednesse which our sinnes have cast upon him we might come to participate of that whitenesse that righteousnesse which is his owne We that is all we for as to take us in who are of low condition and obscure station a cloud is made white by his sitting upon it He sate upon a great white cloud so to let the highest see that they have no whitenesse but from him he makes the Throne white by sitting upon it He sate upon a great white Throne It had not been great if it had not been white White is the colour of dilatation goodnesse onely enlarges the Throne It had not been white if he had not sate upon it That goodness onley which consists in glorifying God and God in Christ and Christ in the sincerity of his truth is true whitenesse God hath no rednesse in himselfe no anger towards us till he considers us as sinners God cast no rednesse upon us inflicts no necessity no constraint of sinning upon us We have dyed ourselves in sinnes as red as Scarlet we have drowned our selves in such a red Sea But as a garment that were washed in the red Sea would come out white so wonderfull works hath God done at the red Sea says David so doth his whitenesse worke through our red and makes this Adam this red earth Calculum candidum that white stone that receives a new name not Ish not Enosh not Gheber no name that tasts of misery or of vanity but that name renewed and manifested which was imprinted upon us in our elections the Sonnes of God the irremoveable the undisinheritable Sonnes of God Be pleased to receive this note at parting that there is Macula Alba a spot and yet white as well as a red spot a whitenesse that is an indication of a Leprosie as well as a rednesse Whole-pelagianisme to thinke nature alone sufficient
midnight not to see where we all see him in the Congregation and to see him with terror in the Suburbs of despaire in the solitary chamber Man may sayes Scotus man must he cannot chuse sayes Thomas man hath seen God sayes the holy Ghost Man that is every man and that 's our last branch in this first part The inexcusablenesse goes over man over all men Because they would not see invisible things in visible they are inexcusable all Death passed upon all men for all have sinned All sinners all dead Is Gods right hand shorter then his left his mercy shrunk and his justice stretched no certainly certainly every man may see him Man cannot hide himselfe from God God does not hide himselfe from man not from any man Col-Adam Omnis home even in that low name that lowest acceptation of man as he is but derived from earth as he is but earth he may see God We have divers names for man in Hebrew at least foure This that makes him but earth Adam is the meanest and yet Col-Adam Every man may see God David cals us to the contemplation of the heavens Coeli enarrant and Iob to the contemplation of the firmament of the Pleiades and Orion and Arcturus and the ordinances of heaven but it is not onely the Mathematician that sees God Demini terra the earth is the Lords and all that dwell therein all in all corners of the earth may see him David tels us They that go down to the sea in ships they see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep but it is not onely the Mariner the discoverer that discovers God but he that puts his hand to the plough and looks not back may see God there Let him be filius terra the sonne of the earth without noble extraction without knowne place of uncertaine parents even Melchisedeck was so Let him be filius percussionis the sonne of affliction a man that hath inward heavy sentences and heavy executions of the law Let him be filius mortis the sonne of death as Saul said to Ionathan of David a man designed to dye nay let him be filius Belial the sonne of iniquity and of everlasting perdition there is no lownesse no naturall no spirituall dejection so low but that that low man may see God Let him be filius terrae the sonne of the earth and of no body else let him be Dominus terrae Lord of the earth busied upon the earth and nothing else let him be hospes terrae a guest a tenant an inmate of the earth halfe of him in the earth and the rest no where else this poore man this worldly man this dying man may see God To end this you can place the spheare in no position in no station in which the earth can eclipse the Sun you can place this clod of earth man in no ignorance in no melancholy in no oppression in no sinne but that he may but that he does see God The Marrigold opens to the Sunne though it have no tongue to say so the Atheist does see God though he have not grace to confesse it We have past through our first part and the three branches of that The object God in his works and the faculty that apprehends seeing that is knowing and the person indued with the faculty every man even Adam In our second part which is a tacite answer to a likely objection Is not God in the highest heaven afar off yes but man may see afar off we have the same three branches too and yet not the same the same object God but in another manifestation then in his worke in glory the same faculty seeing but with other manner of eyes glorified eyes the same person man but not man as he is Adam a meere naturall and earthly man but man as he is Enosh who by having tasted Gods corrections or by having considered the miseries of this world is prepared for the joy and glory of the next And in this part we will begin with the person man Man may behold it afar off How different are the wayes of God from the ways of man the eyes of God from the eyes of man and the wayes and eyes of a godly man from the eyes and wayes of a man of this world We looke still upon high persons and after high places and from those heights we thinke we see far but he that will see this object must lye low it is best discerned in the dark in a heavy and a calamitous fortune The naturall way is upward I can better know a man upon the top of a steeple then if he were halfe that depth in a well but yet for higher objects I can better see the stars of heaven in the bottome of a well then if I stood upon the highest steeple upon earth If I twist a cable of infinite fadomes in length if there be no ship to ride by it nor anchor to hold by it what use is there of it If Mannor thrust Mannor and title flow into title and bags powre out into chests if I have no anchor faith in Christ if I have not a ship to carry to a haven a soule to save what 's my long cable to me If I adde number to number a span a mile long if at the end of all that long line of numbers there be nothing that notes pounds or crownes or shillings what 's that long number but so many millions of millions of nothing If my span of life become a mile of life my penny a pound my pint a gallon my acre a sheere yet if there be nothing of the next world at the end so much peace of conscience so much joy so much glory still all is but nothing multiplied and that is still nothing at all 'T is the end that qualifies all and what kinde of man I shall be at my end upon my death-bed what trembling hands and what lost legs what deafe eares and what gummy eyes I shall have then I know and the nearer I come to that disposition in my life the more mortified I am the better I am disposed to see this object future glory God made the Sun and Moon and Stars glorious lights for man to see by but mans infirmity requires spectacles and affliction does that office Gods meaning was that by the sun-shine of prosperity and by the beames of honour and temporall blessings a man should see farre into him but I know not how he is come to need spectacles scarse any man sees much in this matter till affliction shew it him God made the ballance even riches may show God and poverty may show God let the two Testaments the old and the new be the ballance and so they are even the blessednesse of the old Testament runs all upon temporall blessings and worldly riches Blessed in the city and in the field blessed in the fruit of thy cattell and
to come to that light and that glory How then hath God doubled his mercies upon those persons to whom he hath afforded two great lights a Sunne to rule their day honour and prosperity and a Moone to rule their night humiliation and adversity to whom he hath given both Types in themselves to see this future glory by that is Titles and places of honour in this world and spectacles in themselves to see this glory by afflictions and crosses in this world And therefore since God gives both these no where so plentifully as in Courts the place of Honour and the place of Crosses too the place of rising and the place of falling too you you especially who by having your station there in the Court it selfe are in the Court exemplified and copied in your owne noble house you that have seen God characterized in his Types in titles of greatnesse you that have beheld God presented in his spectacle of Crosses and afflictions the daily bread of Courts Blesse ye the Lord praise him and magnifie him for ever and declare the wondrous workes that he hath done for the Sonnes of men for certainly many woes and invincible darknesse attend those to whom neither the hand of God in his works nor the hand of God upon themselves neither the greatnesse of this world nor the crâ—sses of this world can manifest God for what picture of God would they have that will neither have him in great nor litle SERMON XXXII Preached to the Earl of Exeter and his company in his Chappell at Saint Iohns 13. Iun. 1624. APOC. 7. 9. After this I beheld and loe a great Multitude which no man could number of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues stood before the Throne and before the Lambe clothed with white robes and Palmes in their hands WE shall have occasion by and by to say something of the danger of Curiosity and something of the danger of the broad way in which too many walk we will not therefore fall into either of these faults at first we will not be over curious nor we will not stray nor cast our selves into that broad and boundlesse way by entring into those various and manifold senses which Expositors have multiplyed in the handling of this place and this part of this book but we take the plainest way and that in which the best meet and concur that these words are spoken of the Ioyes and Glory reserved for them who overcome the fraud and the fury the allurements and the violences of Antichrist in whom in that name and person of Antichrist we consider all supplanters and all seducers all opposers of the kingdome of Christ in us for as every man hath spontaneum daemonem as S. Chrysostome speakes a devill of his own making which is some customary and habituall sin in him so every man hath spontaneuÌ„ Antichristum an Antichrist of his own making some objections in the weakness of his faith some oppositions in the perverseness of his manners against the kingdom of Christ in himself as if God would suspend the devill or slumber the devill a day I am afraid we should be as ill that day as if the devill were awake and in action so if those disputed problematical Antichrists Eastern Western Antichrist Antichrist of Rome and Antichrist of Constantinople Turk and Pope were removed out of the world we should not for all that be delivered of Antichrist that is of that opposition to the kingdome of Christ which is in our selvs This part of the book of the Revelation is literally and primarily the glorious victory of them who in the later end of the world having stood out the persecutions of the Antichrist enter into the triumph of heaven And it extends it self to all by way of fair accommodation who after a battel with their own Antichrists and victory over their owne enemies are also made partakers of those triumphs those joyes those glories of which S. Iohn in this propheticall glasse in this perspective of visions saw A great multitude which no man could number of all nations c. We are then upon the contemplation of the joyes of heaven which are everlasting must we wring them into the discourse of an houre of the glory of heaven which is intire and must we divide it into parts we must we will we doe into two parts first the number the great number of those that shall be saved And then the glorious qualities which shall be imprinted on them who are saved first that salvation is a more extensive thing more communicable then sullen cloystrall that have walled salvation in a monastery or in an ermitage take it to be or then the over-valuers of their own purity and righteousnesse which have determined salvation in themselves take it to be for It is a great multitude which no man can number of all nations c. And then in the second place salvation is the possession of such endowments as naturally invite all to the prosecution of that which is exposed and offered to all that we all labour here that we may all stand hereafter before the Throne and before the Lambe clothed in white robes c. In the first of these we shall passe by these steps first we shall consider the sociablenesse the communicablenesse of God himself who gives us the earth and offers us heaven and desires to have his kingdome well peopled he would have many he would have all he would have every one of them have all And then the first word of the text After this will carry us to the consideration of that which was done before which was first that they which were of this number were sealed and then they which were so sealed before were a great number one hundred forty four thousand but they who were made partakers of all this after were innumerable After this I beheld a great multitude which no man could number And therefore we shall shut up that first part with this consideration what sense what interpretation may belong unto those places where Christ says that the way to heaven is narrow and the gate straight of these peeces we shall make up our first part And for the particulars belonging to the second we shall fitliest open them then when we come to the handling of them Our first step then in this first part is the sociablenesse the communicablenesse of God He loves holy meetings he loves the communion of Saints the houshold of the faithfull Deliciae ejus says Solomon his delight is to be with the Sons of men and that the Sons of men should be with him Religion is not a melancholy the spirit of God is not a dampe the Church is not a grave it is a fold it is an Arke it is a net it is a city it is a kingdome not onely a house but a house that hath many mansions in it still it is a plurall thing consisting of
go because none stayes behinde so when the holy Spirit which had made himself as a common soule to their foure soules directed one of them to say any thing all are well understood to have said it And therefore when to that place in Matth. 27. 8. where that Evangelist cites the Prophet Ieremy for words spoken by Zachary many medicines are applyed by the Fathers as That many copies have no name That Ieremy might be binominous and have both names a thing frequent in the Bible That it might be the error of a transcriber That there was extant an Apocryph booke of Ieremy in which these words were and sometimes things of such books were vouched as Iannes and Iambres by Paul St. Augustine insists upon and teaches rather this That it is more wonderfull that all the Prophets spake by one Spirit and so agreed then if any one of them had spoken all those things And therefore he adds Singula sunt omnium omnia sunt singulorum All say what any of them say And in this sense most congruously is that of St. Hierome applyable that the foure Evangelists are Quadriga Divina That as the foure Chariot wheeles though they looke to the foure corners of the world yet they move to one end and one way so the Evangelists have both one scope and one way Yet not so precisely but that they differ in words For as their generall intention common to them all begat that consent so a private reason peculiar to each of them for the writing of their Histories at that time made those diversities which seem to be for Matthew after he had preached to the Jewes and was to be transplanted into another vineyard the Gentiles left them written in their owne tongue for permanency which he had preached transitorily by word Mark when the Gospell fructified in the West and the Church enlarged her self and grew a great body and therefore required more food out of Peters Dictates and by his approbation published his Evangile Not an Epitome of Matthewes as Saint Ierome I know why imagines but a just and intire History of our blessed Saviour And as Matthewes reason was to supply a want in the Eastern Church Markes in the Western so on the other side Lukes was to cut off an excesse and superfluitie for then many had undertaken this Story and dangerously inserted and mingled uncertainties and obnoxious improbabilities and he was more curious and more particular then the rest both because he was more learned and because he was so individuall a companion of the most learned Saint Paul and did so much write Pauls words that Eusebius thereupon mistaketh the words 2 Tim. 2. 1. Christ is raised according to my Gospell to prove that Paul was author of this Gospell attributed to Luke Iohn the Minion of Christ upon earth and survivor of the Apostles whose books rather seem fallen from Heaven and writ with the hand which ingraved the stone Tables then a mans work because the heresies of Ebion and Cerinthus were rooted who upon this true ground then evident aud fresh that Christ had spoke many things which none of the other three Evangelists had Recorded uttered many things as his which he never spoke Iohn I say more diligently then the rest handleth his Divinity and his Sermons things specially brought into question by them So therefore all writ one thing yet all have some things particular And Luke most for he writ last of three and largeliest for himselfe 1 Act. 1. saith I have made the former Treatise of all that Iesus began to doe and teach untill the Day that he was taken up which speech lest the words in the last of Iohn If all were written which Iesus did the world could not contain the Bookes should condemne Ambrose and Chrysostome interpret well out of the words themselves Scripsit de omnibus non omnia He writ of all but not all for it must have the same limitation which Paul giveth his words who saith Acts 20. in one verse I have kept nothing back but have shewed you all the counsell of God and in another I kept back nothing that was profitable It is another peculiar singularity of Lukes that he addresseth his History to one man Theophilus For it is but weakely surmised that he chose that name for all lovers of God because the interpretation of the word suffereth it since he addeth most noble Theophilus But the work doth not the lesse belong to the whole Church for that no more then his Masters Epistles doe though they be directed to particulars It is also a singularitie in him to write upon that reason because divers have written In humane knowledge to abridge or suck and then suppresse other Authors is not ever honest nor profitable We see after that vast enterprise of Iustinian who distilled all the Law into one vessell and made one Booke of 2000. suppressing all the rest Alciate wisheth he had let them alone and thinketh the Doctors of our times would better have drawn usefull things from those volumes then his Trebonian and Dorothee did And Aristotle after by the immense liberality of Alexander he had ingrossed all Authors is said to have defaced all that he might be in stead of all And therefore since they cannot rise against him he imputes to them errours which they held not vouches onely such objections from them as he is able to answer and propounds all good things in his own name which he ought to them But in this History of Lukes it is otherwise He had no authority to suppresse them nor doth he reprehend or calumniate them but writes the truth simply and leaves it to outweare falshood and so it hath Moses rod hath devoured the Conjurers rods and Lukes Story still retains the majestie of the maker and theirs are not Other singularities in Luke of form or matter I omit and end with one like this in our Text. As in the apprehending of our blessed Saviour all the Evangelists record that Peter cut off Malchus eare but onely Luke remembers the healing of it again I think because that act of curing was most present and obvious to his consideration who was a Physician so he was therefore most apt to remember this Prayer of Christ which is the Physick and Balsamum of our Soule and must be applied to us all for we doe all Crucifie him and we know not what we do And therefore Saint Hierome gave a right Character of him in his Epistle to Paulinus Fuit Medicus pariter omnia verba illius Animae languentis sunt Medicinae As he was a Physitian so all his words are Physick for a languishing soule Now let us dispatch the last consideration of the effect of this Prayer Did Christ intend the forgivenesse of the Jewes whose utter ruine God that is himselfe had fore-decreed And which he foresaw and bewaild even then hanging upon the Crosse For those Divines which reverently forbeare to interpret the words
wardrobe not to make an Inventory of it but to finde in it something fit for thy wearing Iohn Baptist was not the light he was not Christ but he bore witnesse of him The light of faith in the highest exaltation that can be had in the Elect here is not that very beatificall vision which we shall have in heaven but it beares witnesse of that light The light of nature in the highest exaltation is not faith but it beares witnesse of it The lights of faith and of nature are subordinate Iohn Baptists faith beares me witnesse that I have Christ and the light of nature that is the exalting of my naturall faculties towards religious uses beares me witnesse that I have faith Onely that man whose conscience testifies to himself and whose actions testifie to the world that he does what he can can beleeve himself or be beleeved by others that he hath the true light of faith And therefore as the Apostle saith Quench not the Spirit I say too Quench not the light of Nature suffer not that light to goe out study your naturall faculties husband and improve them and love the outward acts of Religion though an Hypocrite and though a naturall man may doe them Certainly he that loves not the Militant Church hath but a faint faith in his interest in the Triumphant He that cares not though the materiall Church fall I am afraid is falling from the spirituall For can a man be sure to have his money or his plate if his house be burnt or to preserve his faith if the outward exercises of Religion faile He that undervalues outward things in the religious service of God though he begin at ceremoniall and rituall things will come quickly to call Sacraments but outward things and Sermons and publique prayers but outward things in contempt As some Platonique Philosophers did so over-refine Religion and devotion as to say that nothing but the first thoughts and ebullitions of a devout heart were fit to serve God in If it came to any outward action of the body kneeling or lifting up of hands if it came to be but invested in our words and so made a Prayer nay if it passed but a revolving a turning in our inward thoughts and thereby were mingled with our affections though pious affections yet say they it is not pure enough for a service to God nothing but the first motions of the heart is for him Beloved outward things apparell God and since God was content to take a body let not us leave him naked nor ragged but as you will bestow not onely some cost but some thoughts some study how you will clothe your children and how you will clothe your servants so bestow both cost and thoughts thinke seriously execute cheerfully in outward declarations that which becomes the dignity of him who evacuated himselfe for you The zeale of his house needs not eat you up no nor eat you out of house and home God asks not that at your hands But if you eat one dish the lesse at your feasts for his house sake if you spare somewhat for his reliefe and his glory you will not be the leaner nor the weaker for that abstinence Iohn Baptist bore witnesse of the light outward things beare witnesse of your faith the exalting of our naturall faculties beare witnesse of the supernaturall We do not compare the master and the servant and yet we thank that servant that brings us to his master We make a great difference between the treasure in the chest and the key that opens it yet we are glad to have that key in our hands The bell that cals me to Church does not catechise me nor preach to me yet I observe the sound of that bell because it brings me to him that does those offices to me The light of nature is far from being enough but as a candle may kindle a torch so into the faculties of nature well imployed God infuses faith And this is our second couple of lights the subordination of the light of nature and the light of faith And a third payre of lights of attestation that beare witnesse to the light of our Text is Lux aeternorum Corporum that light which the Sunne and Moone and those glorious bodies give from heaven and lux incensionum that light which those things that are naturally combustible and apt to take fire doe give upon earth both these beare witnesse of this light that is admit an application to it For in the first of these the glorious lights of heaven we must take nothing for stars that are not stars nor make Astrological and fixed conclusions out of meteors that are but transitory they may be Comets and blazing starres and so portend much mischiefe but they are none of those aeterna corpora they are not fixed stars not stars of heaven So is it also in the Christian Church which is the proper spheare in which the light of our text That light the essentiall light Christ Jesus moves by that supernaturall light of faith and grace which is truly the Intelligence of that spheare the Christian Chruch As in the heavens the stars were created at once with one Fiat and then being so made stars doe not beget new stars so the Christian doctrine necessary to salvation was delivered at once that is intirely in one spheare in the body of the Scriptures And then as stars doe not beget stars Articles of faith doe not beget Articles of faith so as that the Councell of Trent should be brought to bed of a new Creed not conceived before by the holy Ghost in the Scriptures and which is a monstrous birth the child greater then the Father as soon as it is borne the new Creed of the Councell of Trent to containe more Articles then the old Creed of the Apostles did Saint Iude writing of the common salvation as he calls it for Saint Iude it seems knew no such particular salvation as that it was impossible for any man to have salvation is common salvation exhorts them to contend earnestly for that faith which was once delivered unto the Saints Semel once that is at once semel simul once altogether For this is also Tertullians note that the rule of faith is that it be una immobilis irreformabilis it must not be deformed it cannot be Reformed it must not be mard it cannot be mended whatsoever needs mending and reformation cannot be the rule of faith says Tertullian Other foundation can no man lay then Christ not onely no better but no other what other things soever are added by men enter not into the nature and condition of a foundation The additions and traditions and superedifications of the Roman Church they are not lux aeternorum corporum they are not fixed bodies they are not stars to direct us they may be meteors and so exercise our discourse and Argumentation they may raise controversies And they may be Comets and so
what ground he sayes or does or suffers that which he suffers and does and sayes Howsoever he pretend the honour of God in his testimony yet if the thing be materially false false in it self though true in his opinion or formally false true in it self but not known to be so to him that testifies it both ways he is an incompetent witnesse And this takes away the honour of having been witnesses for Christ and the consolation and style of Martyrs both from them who upon such evidence as can give no assurance that is traedi tions of men have grounded their faith in God and from them who take their light in corners and conventicles and not from the City set upon the top of a hill the Church of God Those Roman Priests who have given their lives those Separatists which have taken a voluntary banishment are not competent witnesses for the glory of God for a witnesse must know and qui testatur de scientia testetur de modo scientiae sayes the Law He that will prove any thing by his knowledge must prove how he came by that knowledge The Papist hath not the knowledge of his Doctrine from any Scripture the Separatist hath not the knowledge of his Discipline from any precedent any example in the primitive Church How farre then is that wretched and sinfull man from giving any testimony or glory to Christ in his life who never comes to the knowledge and consideration why he was sent into this life who is so farre from doing his errand that he knowes not what his errand was not whether he received any errand or no. But as though that God who for infinite millions of ages delighted himself in himself and was sufficient in himself and yet at last did bestow six dayes labour for the creation and provision of man as though that God who when man was sowr'd in the lumpe poysoned in the fountaine withered in the roote in the loins of Adam would then ingage his Sonne his beloved Sonne his onely Sonne to be man by a temporary life and to be no man by a violent and a shamefull death as though that God who when he was pleased to come to a creation might have left out thee amongst privations amongst nothings or might have shut thee up in the close prison of a bare being and no more as he hath done earth and stones or if he would have given thee life might have left thee a Toad or if he would have given thee a humane soule might have left thee a heathen without any knowledge of God or if he had afforded thee a Religion might have left thee a Iew or though he had made thee a Christian might have left thee a Papist as though that God that hath done so much more in breeding thee in his true Church had done all this for nothing thou passest thorough this world like a flash like a lightning whose beginning or end no body knowes like an Ignis fatuus in the aire which does not onely not give light for any use but not so much as portend or signifie any thing and thou passest out of the world as thy hand passes out of a basin of water which may bee somewhat the fouler for thy washing in it but retaines no other impression of thy having been there and so does the world for thy life in it When God placed Adam in the world he bad him fill it and subdue it and rule it and when he placed him in paradise he bad him dresse and keepe paradise and when he sent his children into the over-flowing Laud of promise he bad them fight and destroy the Idolaters to every body some task some errand for his glory And thou comest from him into this world as though he had said nothing unto thee but Go and do as you see cause Go and do as you see other men do Thou knowest not that is considerest not what thou wast sent to doe what thou shouldest have done but thou knowest much lesse what thou hast done The light of nature hath taught thee to hide thy sinnes from other men and thou hast been so diligent in that as that thou hast hid them from thy self and canst not finde them in thine owne conscience if at any time the Spirit of God would burne them up or the blood of Christ Jesus wash them out thou canst not finde them out so as that a Sermon or Sacrament can work upon them Perchance thou canst tell when was the first time or where was the first place that thou didst commit such or such a sinne but as a man can remember when he began to spell but not when he began to reade perfectly when he began to joyne his letters but not when he began to write perfectly so thou remembrest when thou wentest timorously and bashfully about sinne at first and now perchance art ashamed of that shamefastnesse and sorry thou beganst no sooner Poore bankrupt that hast sinned out thy soule so profusely so lavishly that thou darest not cast up thine accounts thou darest not aske thy selfe whether thou have any soule left how farre art thou from giving any testimony to Christ that darest not testifie to thy selfe nor heare thy conscience take knowledge of thy transgressions but haddest rather sleepe out thy daies or drinke out thy daies then leave one minute for compunction to lay hold on and doest not sinne alwaies for the love of that sinne but for feare of a holy sorrow if thou shouldest not fill up thy time with that sinne God cannot be mocked saith the Apostle nor God cannot be blinded He seeth all the way and at thy last gaspe he will make thee see too through the multiplying Glasse the Spectacle of Desperation Canst thou hope that that God that seeth this darke Earth through all the vaults and arches of the severall spheares of Heaven that seeth thy body through all thy stone walls and seeth thy soul through that which is darker then all those thy corrupt flesh canst thou hope that that God can be blinded with drawing a curtain between thy sinne and him when he is all eye canst thou hope to put out that eye with putting out a candle when he hath planted legions of Angels about thee canst thou hope that thou hast taken away all Intelligence if thou have corrupted or silenced or sent away a servant O bestow as much labour as thou hast done to finde corners for sin to finde out those sinnes in those corners where thou hast hid them As Princes giveâ— pardons by their own hands but send Judges to execute Justice come to him for mercy in the acknowledgement of thy sinnes and stay not till his Justice come to thee when he makes inquisition for blood and doe not think that if thou feel now at this presentâ— a little tendernesse in thy heart a little melting in thy bowels a little dew in thine eyes that if thou beest come to know that thou art a
the Trump of God and the dead in Christ shall rise This citation is not served by a bell that tolls to bring you hither not by a man that speaks to instruct you here not by a law that compells you to live orderly in the world not by a bell that rings out to lay thee in thy grave but by the great shout of the Lord descending from heaven with the voyce of the Archangel and with the Trump of God to raise the dead in Christ. It is not the Apeperire fores That the Levites have charge to open these doores every day to you that you may come in that is your first citation hither it is not the Domine labia mea aperies That God opens our mouth the mouth of the Preacher to worke upon you that is your second citation here it is not that aperuimus saccos The opening of your sack of Corne and finding that and your money too that is your trading in this world in a calling that is your third citation from hence nor it is not the Aperuit terra os situm That the earth opens her mouth and swallowes all in the grave that is your fourth citation from thence it is none of these Apertions these openings but it is the Aperta monumenta The grave it self shall be open againe and Aperti coeli The heavens shall be open and I shall see the Sonne of man the Sonne of God and not see him at that distance that Stephen saw him there but see him and sit down with him I shall rise from the dead from the darke station from the prostration from the prosternation of death and never misse the sunne which shall then be put out for I shall see the Sonne of God the Sunne of glory and shine my self as that sunne shines I shall rise from the grave and never misse this City which shall be no where for I shall see the City of God the new Ierusalem I shall looke up and never wonder when it will be day for the Angell will tell me that time shall be no more and I shall see and see cheerefully that last day the day of judgement which shall have no night never end and be united to the Antient of dayes to God himselfe who had no morning never began There I shall beare witnesse for Christ in ascribing the salvation of the whole world to him that sits upon the Throne and to the Lamb and Christ shall bear witnesse for me in ascribing his righteousnesse unto me and in delivering me into his Fathers hands with the same tendernesse as he delivered up his owne soule and in making me who am a greater sinner then they who crucified him on earth for me as innocent and as righteous as his glorious selfe in the Kingdome of heaven And these occasions of advancing your devotion and edification from these two branches of this part first the fitnesse of Iohn Baptist to be sent and then his actuall sending by so divers callings and citations in him appliable as you have seene to us More will be ministred in due time out of the last part and the two branches of that first why this light required any witnesse and then what witnesse Iohn Baptist gave to this light But those because they leade us not to the celebration of any particular Festivall as these two former parts have done to Christmas and Midsommer I may have leave to present to you at any other time At this time let us onely beg of God a blessing upon this that hath been said c. SERMON XXXVIII Preached at Saint Pauls 13. Octob. 1622. JOHN 1. 8. He was not that light but was sent to beare witnesse of that light THis is the third time that I have entertained you in a businesse of this nature intended for Gods service and your edification I must not say troubled you with this Text. I begun it at Christmas and in that darke time of the yeer told you who and what was this light which Iohn Baptist is denied to be I pursued it at Midsommer and upon his owne day insisted upon the person of Iohn Baptist who though he were not this light was sent to beare witnesse of this light And the third consideration which as I told you then was not tied nor affected to any particular Festivall you shall by Gods grace have now the office of Iohn Baptist his testimony and in that these two parts first a problematicall part why so evident a thing as light and such a light that light required testimony of man and then a dogmaticall part what testimony this man gives of this light And in the first of these we shall make these two steps first why any testimony at all then why after so many others this of Iohn First then God made light first ut innotescerent omnia that man might glorifie God in seeing the creature and him in it for frustra fecisset says the same Father it had been to no purpose to have a world and no light But though light discover and manifest every thing else to us and it selfe too if all be well disposed yet in the fifth verse of this chapter there is reason enough given why this light in our text requires testimony that is the light shines in darknesse and the darknesse comprehends it not and therefore Propter non intelligentes propter incredulos propter inâ—rmos Sol lucernas quaerit for their sakes that are weak in their understanding and not enlightned in that faculty the Gentiles for their sakes who are weake in their faith that come and heare and receive light but beleeve not for their sakes that are perverse in their manners and course of life that heare and beleeve but practise not sol lucernas quaerit this light requires testimony There may be light then and we not know it because we are asleep and asleep so as Iairus daughter was of whom Christ says the maid is not dead but asleep The maide was absolutely dead but because he meant forthwith to raise her he calls it a sleep The Gentiles in their ignorance are dead we in our corrupt nature dead as dead as they we cannot heare the voice we cannot see the light without Gods subsequent grace the Christian can no more proceed then the Gentile can beginne without his preventing grace But because amongst us he hath established the Gospell and in the ministery and dispensation thereof ordinary meanes for the conveyance of his farther grace we noware but asleep and may wake A sodain light brought into a room doth awaken some men but yet a noise does it better and a shaking and a pinching The exalting of naturall faculties and good morall life inward inspirations and private meditations conferences reading and the life doe awaken some but the testimony of the messenger of God the preacher crying according to Gods ordinance shaking the soule troubling the
then the valley till the light invest it Si montem esse lucem putas in monte naufragium facies If you take the hill because it shines to be the light it self you shipwrack upon the top of a hill If we rest in the person or in the gifts of any man to what heighth soever this hill be raised in opinion or in the Church still we mistake Iohn Baptist men of the greatest endowments and goodnesse too are but instruments they are not the workman himself And therefore as they are most inexcusable that put an infallibility in the breast of one man our adversaries of Rome so do they transgresse too farre that way that runne and pant and thrust after strange preachers and leave their owne Church deserted and their owne Pastour discouraged for some one family by the greatnesse thereof or by the estimation thereof may induce both those inconveniences Truly though it may seeme boldly said it may be said safely that we were better heare some weaknesses from our owne Pastour then some excellencies from another go farther some mistakings from our own then some truths from another for all truths are not necessary nor all mistakings pernicious but obedience to order is necessary and all disorder pernicious Now what a way had Iohn Baptist open to him if he had been popularly disposed Amongst a people that at that time expected their Messias for all the Prophecies preceding his comming were then fulfilled and such a Messias as should be a Temporall King and had invested an opinion that he Iohn Baptist was that Christ what rebellions what earth-quakes what inundations of people might he have drawne after him if he would have countenanced and cherished their error to his advantage They would have lacked no Scriptures to authorize their actions They would have found particular places of the Prophets to have justified any act of theirs in advancing their Messias then expected Therein he is our patterne not to preach our selves but Christ Iesus not to preach for admiration but for edification not to preach to advance civill ends without spirituall ends to promote all the way the peace of all Christian Kingdomes but to refer all principally to the Kingdome of peace and the King of peace the God of heaven He confessed and denied not and said plainly I am not the Christ That was his Testimony we confesse and deny not and say plainly That our own parts our owne passions the purpose of great persons the purpose of any State is not Christ we preach Christ Iesus and him crucified and whosoever preaches any other Gospell or any other thing for Gospell let him be accursed I am not the man sayes Iohn Baptist for that man is God too but yet that man that God that Messias consisting of both is come though I be not he There is one amongst you whom you know not whose shooe-latchet I am not worthy to loose In which he says all this There is one among you you need seek no farther all the promises and Prophecies the Semen mulieris That the seed of the woman should bruise the Serpents head the appropriation to Abraham In semine tuo In thy seed shall all Nations be blessed the fixation upon David Donec Shiloh till Shiloh come Esay's Virgo concipiet Behold a Virgin shall conceive Micah's tu Bethlem that Bethlem should be the place Daniels seventy Hebdomades that that should be the time all promises all prophecies all computations are at an end the Messias is come Is he come and amongst you and do you not know him what will make you know him You beleeve you need a Messias you cannot restore your selfe You beleeve this Messias must come at a certaine time specified by certaine marks were all these marks upon any other or lacks there any of these in him Do you thus magnifie me and neglect a person whose shooe-latchet I am not worthy to loose Iohn Baptist was a Prophet more then a Prophet The greatest of the sonnes of women Who could be so much greater then he and not the Messias we must necessarily enwrap all these three in one another and into one another they do easily and naturally fall He testifies that he was not the man he preaches not himself he testifies that that man is come future expectations are frivolous and he testifies that the characters and marks of the expected Messias can fall upon none but this man and therefore he delivers him over to them with that confidence Ecce Agnus Dei Behold the Lambe of God there you may see him and this is his Testimony These three we we to whom Iohn Baptists Commission is continued testifie too First we tell you what is not Christ austerity of life and outward sanctity is not hee Iohn Baptist had them abundantly but yet permitted not that they should have that opinion of him But yet much lesse is chambring and wantonnesse and persevering in sinne that Christ or the way to him We tell you stetit in medio he hath been amongst you you have heard him preached in your ears yea yee have heard him knock at your hearts and for all that we tell you that you have not known him Which though it be the discomfortablest thing in the world not to have known Christ in those approches yet we tell it you somewhat to your comfort and to your excuse for had you knownâ— it you would not have crucified the Lord of glory as we doe all by our daily sinnes And though God have winked at these times of ignorance pretermitted your former inconsiderations now he commandeth all men every where to repent And therefore that thou maist know even thou as Christ iterates it at least in this thy day the things which belong to thy Peace we tell you who he is and where he is Ecce agnus Dei Behold the lambe of God Here here in this his ordinance he supplicates you when the Minister how meane soever prays you in his stead be yee reconciled to God Here he proclaims and cries to you Venite omnes come all that are weary and heavy laden Here he bleeds in the Sacrament here he takes away the sinnes of the world in deriving a jurisdiction upon us to binde and loose upon earth that which he will binde and loose in heaven This we testifie to you Doe you but receive this testimony Till you hear that voice of consummation in heaven Venite benedicti come yee blessed you shall never heare a more comfortable Gospell then this which was preached by Christ himselfe the Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach the Gospell to the poore to heale the broken hearted to preach deliverance to the captives and the acceptable yeare of the Lord for this was not a deliverance from their brick-making in Egypt nor from their scornes and contempts in Babylon but a deliverance from that unexpressible that unconceivable bondage of sinne and
departs from that posture which God in nature gave him that is erect to look upward for his eye is always down upon them that lie in the dust under his feet Certainly he that seares up himselfe and makes himselfe insensible of the cries and curses of the poor here in this world does but prepare himselfe for the howlings gnashings of teeth in the world to come It is the Serpents taste the Serpents diet Dust shalt thou eate all the days of thy life and he feeds but on dust that oppresses the poor And as there is evidently more inhumanity more violation of nature in this oppression then in emulation so may there well seem to be more impiety and more violation of God himselfe by that word which the holy Ghost chooses in the next place which is Reproach He that oppresses the poor reproaches his Maker This word which we translate to Reproach Theodotion translates to Blaspheme And blasphemy is an odious thing even towards men For men may be blasphemed The servant of God Moses is blasphemed as well as God And Goliah blasphemed the Israel of God as well as the God of Israel and for the most part where we read Reviling the word is Blaspheming Our word here that we may still pursue our first way a reverent consideration of the elegancy of the Scriptures in the origination of the words is Charak and this word Iob uses as it is used in our text for reproach My heart shall not reproach me so long as I live And this this reproaching of the heart is in many cases a Blaspheming and a strange one a self-blaspheming When I have had by the goodnesse of Gods Spirit a true sense of my sinnes a true remorse and repentance of those sinnes true Absolution from those sinnes true seales of reconciliation after those sinnes true diligence and preclusion of occasions of relapsing into those sinnes still to suspect my state in Gods favour and my full redintegration with him still to deny my selfe that peace which his Spirit by these meanes offers me still to call my repentance imperfect and the Sacramentall seales ineffectuall still to accuse my selfe of sinnes thus devested thus repented this is to reproach this is to to blaspheme mine owne soule If I will say with Iob My heart shall reproach me of nothing this is not that I will accuse my selfe of no sinne or say the elect of God cannot sinne no nor that God sees not the sinnes of the elect nor that God is not affected or angry with those sinnes and those sinners as long as they remaine unrepented but after I have accused my selfe of those sinnes and brought them into Judgement by way of Confession and received my pardon under seale in the Sacrament and pleaded that pardon to the Church by a subsequent amendment of life then I reproach my selfe of nothing for this were a self-blaspheming and a reproaching of mine owne soule Now the word of our text in the root thereof Charak is manifestare prostituere It is to publish the fault or to prostitute the fame of any man extrajudicially not in a right forme of Judgement and amongst those men who are not to be his Judges So to fill itching eares with rumours and whisperings so to minister matter and fuell to fiery tongues so to lay imputations and aspersions upon men though that which we say of those men be true is a libelling is a calumny is a blaspheming and a reproach in the word of this text for it is manifestare prostituere to publish a mans faults and to prostitute a mans fame there where his faults can receive no remedy if they be true nor his fame Reparation if they be false It is properly to speake ill of a man and not before a competent Judge And in such a sense a man may reproach God himselfe But is there then a Judge between God and man Shall not the Iudge of all the earth doe right is Abrahams question but there that Judge of all the earth is God himself But is there a Judge of heaven too A Judge between God and man for Gods proceeding there There is The Scripture is a Judge by which God himself will be tryed As the Law is our Judge and the Judge does but declare what is Law so the Scripture is our Judge and God proceeds with us according to those promises and Judgements which he hath laid down in the Scripture When God says in Esay Iudge betweene me and my Vineyard certainly God means that there is something extant some contract some covenant something that hath the nature of a Law some visible some legible thing to judge by And Christ tels us what that is Search the Scriptures says hee for by them wee must bee tryed for our lives So then if I come to thinke that God will call me in question for my life for my eternall life by any way that hath not the Nature of a Law And by the way it is of the Nature and Essence of a Law before it come to bind that it be published if I think that God will condemn me by any unrevealed will any reserved purpose in himself this is to reproach God in the word of this Text for it is prostituere to prostitute to exhibit God otherwise then he hath exhibited himselfe and to charge God with a proceeding upon secret and unrevealed purposes and not rest in his Scriptures God will try us at last God himself will be tryed all the way by his Scriptures And to charge God with the damnation of men otherwise then by his Tantummodo Crede I have commanded thee to beleeve and thou hast not done that And by his Fac hoc vives I have commanded thee to live well and thou hast not done that which are conditions evidently laid downe in the Scriptures and not grounded upon any secret purpose is a reproaching of God in the word of this Text. This this Oppressor of the poor is said to doe here He reproaches the Maker God in that notion as he is the Creator Now this is the clearest notion and fastest apprehension and first handle that God puts out to man to lay hold upon him by as hee is The Creator For though God did elect mee before hee did actually create mee yet God did not mean to elect mee before hee meant to create mee when his purpose was upon me to elect me surely his purpose had passed upon me to create mee for when he elected me I was I. So that this is our first notion of God towards us as he is The Creator The School will receive a pregnant child from his parents and work upon him The Vniversity will receive a grounded Scholar from the School and work upon him The State or the Church will receive a qualified person from the University and worke by him But still the State and the Church and the University and the first School it self
God would give or at other times then God would give them is displeasing to him Use his meanes and stay his leisure But yet though God were displeased with them he executed his own purpose he was angry with their manner of asking a King but yet he gave them a King Howsoever God be displeased with them who prevaricate in his cause who should sustaine it and doe not Gods cause shall be sustained though they doe it not We may distinguish the period of the Jewish State well enough thus that they had Infantiam or pueritiam their infancy their minority in Adam and the first Patriarchs till the flood that they had Adolescentiam A growing time from Noah through the other Patriarchs till Moses and that they had Iuventuâ—em a youth and strength from Moses through the Judges to Saul but then they had Virilitatom virilem atatem their established vigor under their Kings and after them they fell in sâ—nectutem into a wretched and miserable decay of old age and decrepitnesse their kingdome was their best State and so much God in the Prophet intimates pregnantly when refreshing to their memories in a particular Inventory and Catalogue all his former benefits to them how he clothed Ierusalem how he fed her how he adorned her he summed up all in this one profecisti in regnum I have advanced thee to be a kingdome there was the Tropique there was the Solstice farther then that in this world we know not how God could goe a kingdome was really the best State upon Earth and Symbolically the best figure and Type of Heaven And therefore when the Prophet Ieremy historically beheld the declination of this kingdome in the death of Iâ—osiah and prophetically foresaw the ruines thereof in the transportition of Zedekiah or if he had seen that historically too yet prophetically he foresaw the utter devastation and depopulation and extermination which scattered that nation soon after Christ to this day and God and no man knows for how long when they who were a kingdome are now no where a village and they who had such Kings have now no where a Constable of their owne historically prophetically Ieremy had just cause of lamentation for the danger of that kingdome We had so also for this our kingdome this day God hath given us a kingdome not as other kingdomes made up of divers Cities but of divers kingdomes and all those kingdomes were destined to desolation in one minute It was not onely the destruction of the persons present but of the kingdomâ— for to submit the kingdome to the government of a forein Prelate was to destroy the Monarchy to annihilate the Supremacy to ruine the very forme of a kingdome a kingdome under another head besides the King is not a kingdome as ours is The oath that the Emperour takes to the Pope is by their authours called Iuramentum Sidelitatis an oath of Allegiance and if they had brought our Kings to take an oath of Allegiance so this were no kingdome Pope Nicolas the second went about to create two kingdomes that of Tuscan and that of Lombardy his successors have gone about to destroy more for to make it depend upon him were to destroy our kingdome That they have attempted historically and as long as these Axiomes and Aphorismes remaine in their Authors that one shall say that De jurs by right all Christian kingdomes doe hold of the Pope and De facto are forfeited to the Hope and another shall say that Christendome would be better governed if the Pope would take the forfeiture and so bring all these Royall farmes into his owne demesne we see also their propheticall desire their propheticall intention against this kingdome what they would doe In their Actions we have their history in their Axioms we have their prophecy Ieremy lamented the desolation of the kingdome but that expressed in the death and destruction of the King Hee did not divide the King and the kingdome as if the kingdome could do well and the King in distresse Umnipotentia Dei Asylum haeresicâ—rum it is well said by more then one of the ancients that the Omnipotence of God is the Sanctuary of Heretiques when they would establish any heresie they flye to Gods Almightinesse God can doe All therefore he can doe this So in the Roman Church they establish their heresie of Transubstantiation And so their deliverance of soules not from Purgatory onely but from Hell it selfe They think to stop all mouths with that God can do it no man dares deny that when as if that were granted which in such things as naturally imply contradiction in themselves or contradiction to Gods word cannot be granted for God cannot do that God cannot lye yet though God can do it concludes not that God will do it or hath done it Omnipotentiâ— Dei Asylum haereticorum The omnipotency of God is the Sanctuary of Heretiques and so Salus Regni is Asylum proditorum Greater Treasons and Seditions and Rebellions have never been set on foote then upon colour and pretence of a care of the State and of the good of the Kingdome Every where the King is Sponsus Regni the husband of the Kingdome and to make love to the Kings wife and undervalue him must necessarily make any King jealous The King is Anima Regni The soule of the Kingdome and to provide for the health of the body with the detriment of the soule is perverse physick The King is Caput Regni The head of the Kingdome and to cure a Member by cutting off the head is ill surgery Man and wife soule and body head and members God hath joyned and those whom God hath joyned let no man sever Salus Regni Asylum Proditorum To pretend to uphold the Kingdome and overthrow the King hath ever been the tentation before and the excuse after in the greatest Treasons In that action of the Iews which we insisted upon before in their pressing for a King The Elders of Israel were gathered together and so far they were in their way for this was no popular no seditious Assembly of light and turbulent men but The Elders And then they came to Samuel And so farre they were in their right way too for they held no counsels apart but came to the right place for redresse of grievances to their then highest Governour to Samuel When they were thus lawfully met they forbeare not to lay open unto him the injustice of his greatest Officers though it concerned the very Sonnes of Samuel and thus farre they kept within their convenient limits But when they would presse Samuel to a new way of remedy to an inconvenient way to a present way to their own way and referre nothing to him what care soever they pretended of the good of the State it is evident that they had no good opinion of Samuel himself and even that displeased God That they were ill affected to that person whom he had set over
without a pope they have made a problematicall a disputable matter and some of their Authours have diverted towards an affirmation of it but Aufleribilitas potestatis to imagine a King without Kingly Soveraignty never came into probleme into disputation We all lamented and bitterly and justly the losse of our Deborah though then we saw a Iosiah succeeding but if they had removed our Iosiah and his Royall children and so this form of government where or who or what had been an object of Consolation to us The cause of lamentation in the losse of a good King is certainly great and so it was if Ieremy lamented Iosiah but if it were but for zedekiah an ill King as the greater part of Expositors take it yet the lamentation you see is the same How ill a King was Zedekiah As ill as Iosiah was good that 's his measure He did evill in the sight of the Lord according to all that Iehoiakim had done Here is his sinne sinne by precedent and what had Iehoiakim done He had done evill in the sight of the Lord according to all that his Fathers had done It is a great and a dangerous wickednesse which is done upon pretext of Antiquity The Religion of our Fathers the Church of our Fathers the Worship of our Fathers is a pretext that colours a great deale of Superstition He did evill as his Fathers there was his comparative evill And his positive evill I meane his particular sinne was That he humbled not himself to Gods Prophets to Ieremy speaking from the mouth of the Lord there was irreligiousnesse And then He broke the Oath which he had sworne by God there was perâ—idiousnesse faithlesnsse And lastly He stiffned his neck and hardned his heart from turning to the Lord of Israel there was impenitiblenesse Thus evill was Zedekiah irreligious to God treacherous to man impenitible to himself and yet the State and men truly religious in the State the Prophet lamented him not his spirituall defections by sinne for they did not make themselves Judges of that but they lamented the calamities of the Kingdome in the losse even of an evill King That man must have a large comprehension that shall adventure to say of any King He is an ill King he must know his Office well and his actions well and the actions of other Princes too who have correspondence with him before he can say so When Christ sayes Let your communication be yea yea and nay nay for whatsoever is more then this that is when it comes to swearing that cometh of evill Saint Augustine does not understand that of the evill disposition of that man that sweares but of them who will not beleeve him without wearing Many times a Prince departs from the exact rule of his duty not out of his own indisposition to truth and clearnesse but to countermine underminers That which David sayes in the eighteenth Psalme David speaks not of man but of God himself Cum perverso perveriêris With the froward thou wilt show thy self froward God who is of no froward nêature may be made froward with crafty neighbours a Prince will be crafty and perchance false with the false Alas to looke into no other profession but our owne how often do we excuse Dispensations and pluralities and non-residencies with an Omnes faciunt I do but as other men of my profession do Allow a King but that That he does but as other Kings do Nay but this He does but as other Kings put him to a necessity to do and you will not hastily call a King an ill King When God gives his people for old shoes and sells them for nothing and at the same time gives his and their enemies abundance when God commands Abraham to sacrifice his own and onely Sonne and his enemies have Children at their pleasure as David speaks To give your selves the liberty of humane affection you would think God an ill God but yet for all this his children are to him a Royall Priesthood and a holy Nation and all their tears are in his bottles and registred in his booke for all this When Princes pretermit in some things the present benefit of their Subjects and confer favours upon others give your selves the liberty to judge of Princes actions with the affections of private men and you may think a King an ill King But yet we are to him as David sayes His brethren his bone his flesh and so reputed by him God himselfe cannot stand upright in a naturall mans interpretation nor any King in a private mans But then how soone our adversaries come to call Kings ill Kings we see historically when they boast of having deposed Kings Quia minus utiles Because some other hath seemed to them fitter for the Government and we see it prophetically by their allowing those Indictments and Attainders of Kings which stand in their books De Syndicatu That that King which neglects the duties of his place and they must prescribe the duty and judge the negligence too That King that exercises his Prerogative without just cause and they must prescribe the Prerogative and judge the cause That that King that vexes his Subjects That that King that gives himselfe to intemperate hunting for in that very particular they instance that in such cases and they multiply these cases infinitely Kings are in their mercy and subject to their censures and corrections We proceed not so in censuring the actions of Kings we say with St. Cyrill Impium est dicere Regi Iniquè agis It is an impious thing in him who is onely a private man and hath no other obligations upon him to say to the King or of the King He governs not as a King is bound to do we remit the judgement of those their actions which are secret to God and when they are evident and bad yet we must endevour to preserve their persons for there is a danger in the losse and a lamentation due to the losse even of Zedekiah for even such are uniti Domini The anoynted of the Lord and the breath of our nostrils First as it lies in our Text The King is spiritus narium the breath of our uostrills First Spiritus is a name most peculiarly belonging to that blessed Person of the glorious Trinity whose Office it is to convay to insinuate to apply to us the Mercies of the Father and the Merits of the Sonne He is called by this Name by the word of this Text Ruach even in the beginning of the Creation God had created Heaven and Earth and then The Spirit of God susâ—labat saith Pagnins translation and so saith the Chalde Paraphrase too it breathed upon the waters and so induced or deduced particular formes So God hath made us a little World of our own This Iland He hath given us Heaven and Earth The truth of his Gospel which is our earnest of Heaven and the abundance of the Earth a
invested in the light of joy and my body in the light of glory How glorious is God as he looks down upon us through the Sunne How glorious in that glasse of his How glorious is God as he looks out amongst us through the king How glorious in that Image of his How glorious is God as he calls up our eyes to him in the beauty and splendor and service of the Church How glorious in that spoufe of his But how glorious shall I conceive this light to be cum sub loco viderim when I shall see it in his owne place In that Spheare which though a Spheare is a Center too In that place which though a place is all and every where I shall see it in the face of that God who is all face all manifestration all all Innotescence to me for facies Deiest qua Deus nobis innotescit that 's Gods face to us by which God manifests himselfe to us I shall see this light in his face who is all face and yet all hand all application and communication and delivery of all himselfe to all his Saints This is Beatitudo in Auge blessednesse in the Meridionall height blessednesse in the South point in a perpetuall Sommer solstice beyond which nothing can be proposed to see God so Then There And yet the farmers of heaven and hell the merchants of soules the Romane Church make this blessednesse but an under degree but a kinde of apprentiship after they have beatified declared a man to be blessed in the fruition of God in heaven if that man in that inferiour state doe good service to that Church that they see much profit will rise by the devotion and concurrence of men to the worship of that person then they will proceed to a Canonization and so he that in his Novitiat and years of probation was but blessed Ignatius and blessed Xavier is lately become Saint Xavier aud Saint Ignatius And so they pervert the right order and method which is first to come to Sanctification and then to Beatification first to holinesse and then to blessednesse And in this method our blessed God bee pleased to proceed with us by the operation of his holy Spirit to bring us to Sanctification here and by the merits and intercession of his glorious Sonne to Beatification hereafter That so not being offended in him but resting in those meanes and seales of reconciliation which thou hast instituted in thy Church wee may have life and life more abundantly life of grace here and life of glory there in that kingdome which thy Sonne our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible bloud Amen SERMON XLV Preached at Saint Dunstans Aprill 11. 1624. The first sermon in that Church as Vicar thereof DEUT. 25. 5. If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no Childe the Wife of the dead shall not mary without unto a stranger her husbands brother shall goe in unto her and take her to him to wife and performe the duty of an husbands brother unto her FRom the beginning God intimated a detestation a dislike of singularity of beeing Alone The first time that God himselfe is named in the Bible in the first verse of Genesis hee is named plurally Creavit Dit Gods Gods in the plurall Created Heaven and Earth God which is but one would not appeare nor bee presented so alone but that hee would also manifest more persons As the Creator was not Singular so neither were the creatures First he created heaven and earth both together which were to be the generall parents and out of which were to bee produced all other creatures and then he made all those other creatures plurally too Male and female created hee them And when he came to make him for whose sake next to his own glory he made the whole world Adam he left not Adam alone but joyned an Eve to him Now when they were maried we know but wee know not when they were divorced we heare when Eve was made but not when shee dyed The husbands death is recorded at last the wives is not at all So much detestation hath God himselfe and so little memory would hee have kept of any singularity of being alone The union of Christ to the whole Church is not expressed by any metaphore by any figure so oft in the Scripture as by this of Mariageâ— and there is in that union with Christ to the whole Church neither husband nor wife can ever die Christ is immortall as hee is himselfe and immortall as hee is the head of the Church the Husband of that wife for that wife the Church is immortall too for as a Prince is the same Prince when he fights a battaile and when hee triumphs after the victory so the militant and the triumphant Church is the same Church There can bee no widower There can bee no Dowager in that case Hee cannot shee cannot die But then this Metaphore this spirituall Mariage holds not onely betweene Christ and the whole Church in which case thee can be no Widow but in the union between Christs particular Ministers and particular Churches and there in that case the husband of that wife may die The present Minister may die and so that Church be a Widow And in that case and for provision of such Widows wee consider the accommodation of this Law If brethren dwell together and one of them die and have no childe the wife of the dead shall not mary without unto a stranger c. This law was but a permissive law rather a dispensation then a law as the permitting of usury to bee taken of strangers and the permitting of divorces in so many cases were At most it was but a Iudiciall law and therefore layes no obligation upon any other nation then them to whom it was given the Iews And therefore wee enquire not the reasons of that law the reasons were determined in that people wee examine not the conveniences of the law the conveniences were determined in those times wee lay hold onely upon the Typique signification and appliablenesse of the law as that secular Mariage there spoken of may be appliable to this spirituall Mariage the Mariage of the Minister to the Church If brethren dwell together c. From these words then wee shall make our approaches and application to the present occasion by these steps First there is a mariage in the case The taking and leaving of a Church is not an indifferent an arbitrary thing It is a Mariage and Mariage implies Honour It is an honourable estate and that implies charge it is a burdensome state There is Honos and Onus Honour and labour in Mariage You must bee content to afford the honour wee must bee content to endure the labour And so in that point as our Incumbencie upon a Church is our Mariage to that Church wee shall as farre as the occasion admits see
they their beeing their ever-lasting well-beeing for their service You will scarce receive a servant that is come from another man without testimony If you put your selves out of Gods service whither will ye goe In his service and his onely is perfect freedome And therefore as you love freedome and liberty bee his servants and call the freedome of the Gospel the best freedome and come to the Preaching of that He cals you children as you are servants filii familiares and he cals you children as you are Alumni nurse-children filii mammillares as he requires the humility and simplicity of little children in you For Cum simplicibus sermocinatio ejus as the vulgat reads that place Gods secret discourse is with the single heart The first that ever came to Christ so as he came to us in blood they that came to him so before he came so to us that died for him before he died for them were such sucking children those whom Herod slew As Christ thought himself bound to thank his Father for that way of proceeding I thank thee O Father Lord of heaven and earth that thou hast revealed these things unto babes so Christ himself pursues the same way Suffer little children and forbid them not to come unto me for of such is the Kingdome of heaven Of such not onely of those who were truly literally children children in age but of such as those Talium est regnum coelorum such as come in such a disposition in the humility in the simplicity in the singlenesse of heart as children do An habituall sinner is always in minority always an Infant an Infant to this purpose All his acts all the bands of an Infant are void all the outward religious actions even the band and contract of Baptism in an habituall sinner is void and ineffectuall He that is in the house and favour of God though he be a child a child to this purpose simple supple tractable single-hearted is as Adam was in the state of Innocency a man the first minute able to stand upright in the sight of God And out of one place of Esay our Expositors have drawn conveniently enough both these conclusions A child shall die 100 years old says the Prophet that is say some a sinner though he live 100 years yet he dies a child in ignorance And then say others and both truly He that comes willingly when God cals though he die a child in age he hath the wisdome of 100 years upon him There is not a graver thing then to be such a child to conform his will to the will of God Whether you consider temporall or spirituall things you are Gods children For for temporall if God should take off his hand withdraw his hand of sustentation all those things which assist us temporally would relapse to the first feeble and childish estate and come to their first nothing Armies would be but Hospitals without all strength Councell-tables but Bedlams without all sense and Schools and Universities but the wrangling of children if God and his Spirit did not inanimate our Schools and Armies and Councels His adoption makes us men therefore because it makes us his children But we are his children in this consideration especially as we are his spirituall children as he hath nursed us fed us with his word In which sense the Apostle speaks of those who had embraced the true Religion in the same words that the Prophet had spoken before Behold I and the children that God hath given me And in the same sense the same Prophet in the same place says of them who had fallen away from the true Religion They please themselves in the children of strangers In those men who have derived their Orders and their Doctrine from a forein Jurisdiction In that State where Adoptions were so frequent in old Rome a Plebeian could not adopt a Patrician a Yeoman could not adopt a Gentleman nor a young man could not adopt an old In the new Rome that endevours to adopt all in an imaginary filiation you that have the perfect freedome of Gods service be not adopted into the slavery and bondage of mens traditions you that are in possession of the ancient Religion of Christ and his Apostles be not adopted into a yonger Religion Religio à religando That is Religion that binds that binds that is necessary to salvation That which we affirm our adversaries deny not that which we professe they confesse was always necessary to salvation They will not say that all that they say now was always necessary That a man could not be saved without beleeving the Articles of the Councell of Trent a week before that Councell shut up You are his children as children are servants and If he be your Lord where is his fear you are his children as he hath nursed you with the milk of his word and if he be your Father so your foster Father where is his love But he is your Father otherwise you are not onely Filii familiares children because servants nor onely Filii mammillares children because noursed by him but you are also Filii viscerales children of his bowells For we are otherwise allied to Christ then we can be to any of his instruments though Angels of the Church Prophets or Apostles and yet his Apostle says of one whom he loved of Onesimus Receive him that is mine owne bowells my Sonne says he whom I have begotten in my hands How much more art thou bound to receive and refresh those bowells from which thou art derived Christ Iesus himselfe Receive him Refresh him Carry that which the wiseman hath said Miserere animae tuae bee mercifull to thine owne soule higher then so and Miserere salvatoris tui have mercy upon thine owne Saviour put on the bowells of mercy and put them on even towards Christ Iesus himselfe who needs thy mercy by beeing so tome and mangled and embowelled by blasphemous oaths and execrations For beloved it is not so absurd a prayer as it is conceived if Luther did say upon his death bed Oremus pro Domino nostro Iesu Christo Let us pray for out Lord and Saviour Iesus Christ. Had we not need pray for him If he complaine that Saul persecutes him had we not need pray for him It is a seditious affection in civill things to divide the King and the kingdome to pray to fight for the one and leave out the other is seditiously done If the kingdome of Christ need thy prayers and thy assistance Christ needs it If the Body need it the Head needs it If thou must pray for his Gospell thou must pray for him Nay thou canst not pray for thy selfe but thou must pray for him for thou art his bowells when thou in thy forefathers the first Christians in the Primitive Church wast persecuted Christ cryed out why persecutest thou me Christ made thy case his because thou wast of his
tentations to sin He shall eat up my dust so as that it shall fly into mine eys that is so work upon my carnall affections as that they shall not make me blinde nor unable to discern that it is he that works It is said of one kinde of Serpent that because they know by an instinct they have that their skin is good for the use of man for the falling sickness out of Envy they hide their skin when they cast it The Serpent is loth we should have any benefit by him but we have even his tentations arm us and the very falling exalts us when after a sin of infirmity we come to a true and scrutiny of our conscience So he hath nothing to eat but our dust and he eats up our dust so as that he contributes to our glory by his malice The Whale was Ionas Pilot The Crows were Elias caters The Lions were Daniels sentinels The Viper was Pauls advocate it pleaded for him brought the beholders in an instant from extreme to extreme from crying out that Paul was a murderer to cry that he was a god Though at any time the Serpent having brought me to a sin cry out Thou art a murderer that is bring me to a desperate sense of having murdred mine own soul yet in that darkness I shal see light by a present repentance effectual application of the merits of my Savior I shall make the Serpent see I am a God thus far a God that by my adhering to Christ I am made partaker of the Divine Nature For that which S. Chrysost. says of Baptism is true too in the second Baptism Repentance Deposui terram coelum indui then I may say to the Serpent Your meat is dust and I was dust but Deposui terram I have shak'd off my dust by true repentance for I have shak'd off my self and am a new creature and am not now meat for your Table Iam terra non sum sed sal says the same Father I am not now unsavoury dust but I am salt And Sal ex aqua vento says he Salt is made of water and winde I am made up of the water of Baptism of the water of Repentance of the water that accompanies the blood of Christ Jesus and of that winde that blows where it list and hath been pleased to blow upon me the Spirit of God the Holy Ghost and I am no longer meat for the Serpent for Dust must he eat all the days of his life I am a branch of that Vine Christ is the Vine and we are the branches I am a leafe of that Rose of Sharon and of that Lilly of the valleys I am a plant in the Orchard of Pomegranats and that Orchard of Pomegranats is the Church I am a drop of that dew that dew that lay upon the head of Christ. And this Vine and this Rose and Lilly and Pomegranats of Paradise and this Dew of heaven are not Dust And dust must thou eate all the dayes of thy life So then the Prophecy of Esay fulfils it self That when Christ shall reign powerfully over us The wolf and the lamb shall feed together Saul and Ananias shall meet in a house as S. Hierome expounds that and Ananias not be afraid of a Persecutor The Lion shall eate straw like the Bullock says that Prophet in that place Tradent se rusticitati Scripturarum says the same Father The strongest understandings shall content themselves with the homelinesse of the Scriptures and feed upon plain places and not study new dishes by subtilties and perplexities and then Dust shall be the Serpents meat says the Prophet there The power of Satan shall reach but to the body and touch a soul wrapt up in Christ. But then it is Totâ vitâ all his life His diet is impaired but it is not taken away He eats but dust but he shall not lack that as long as hee lives And how long lives the Serpent this Serpent The life of this Serpent is to seduce man to practise upon man to prevaile upon man as farre and as long as man is dust And therefore wee are not onely his dust whilst wee live all which time we serve in our carnall affections for him to feed upon but when we are dead we are his dust still Man was made in that state as that he should not resolve to dust but should have passed from this world to the next without corruption or resolution of the body That which God said to Adam Dust thou art belonged to all from the beginning he and all we were to be of dust in his best integrity but that which God adds there in terram revertêris dust thou art and to it thou shalt returne that the Serpent brought in that was induced upon man by him and his tentation So that when we are living dust here he eats us and when we are dead dust too in the grave he feeds upon us because it proceeds from him both that we die and that we are detained in the state of exinanition and ingloriousnesse in the dust of the earth and not translated immediately to the joyes of heaven as but for him we should have been But as though he do feed upon our living dust that is induce sicknesses and hunger and labour and cold and paine upon our bodies here God raises even that dust out of his hands and redeemes it from his jaws in affording us a deliverance or a â—â—â—â—itution from those bodily calamities here as he did abundantly to his servant and our example Iob so though he feed upon our dead dust and detain our bodies in the disconsolate state of the grave yet as the Godhead the divine nature did not depart from the body of Christ when it lay dead in the grave so neither doth the love and power of God depart from the body of a Christian though resolved to dust in the grave but in his due time shall recollect that dust and recompact that body and reunite that soul in everlasting joy and glory And till then the Serpent lives till the Judgement Satan hath power upon that part of man and that 's the Serpents life first to practise our death and then to hold us in the state of the dead Till then we attend with hope and with prayers Gods holy pleasure upon us and then begins the unchangeable state in our life in body and soul together then we beginne to live and then ends the Serpents life that is his earnest practise upon us in our life and his faint triumph in continuing over our dust That time the time of the generall Resurrection being not yet come the devills thought themselves wronged and complained that Christ came before the time to torment them and therefore Christ yeelded so much to their importunity as to give them leave to enter into the swine And therefore let not us murmur
nor over-mourne for that which as we have induced it upon our selves so God shall deliver us from at last that is both death and corruption after death and captivity in that comfortlesse state but for the resurection For so long we are to be dust and so long lasts the Serpents life Satans power over man dust must he eate all the days of his life In the meane time for our comfort in the way when this Serpent becomes a Lyon yet there is a Lyon of the Tribe of Iudah that is too strong for him so if he who is Serpens serpens humi the Serpent condemned to creep upon the ground doe transforme himselfe into a flying Serpent and attempt our nobler faculties there is Serpens exaltatus a Serpent lifted up in the wildernesse to recover all them that are stung and feel that they are stung with this Serpent this flying Serpent that is these high and continued sinnes The creeping Serpent the groveling Serpent is Craft the exalted Serpent the crucified Serpent is Wisdome All you worldly cares all your crafty bargaines all your subtill matches all your diggings into other means estates all your hedgings in of debts all your planting of children in great allyances all these diggings and hedgings and plantings savour of the earth and of the craft of that Serpent that creeps upon the earth But crucifie this craft of yours bring all your worldly subtilty under the Crosse of Christ Jesus husband your farmes so as you may give a good account to him presse your debts so as you would be pressed by him market and bargaine so as that you would give all to buy that field in which his treasure and his pearle is hid and then you have changed the Serpent from the Serpent of perdition creeping upon the earth to the Serpent of salvation exalted in the wildernesse Creeping wisedome that still looks downward is but craft Crucified wisedome that looks upward is truly wisedome Between you and that ground Serpent God hath kindled a war and the nearer you come to a peace with him the farther ye go from God and the more ye exaspetate the Lord of Hosts and you whet his sword against your own souls A truce with that Serpent is too near a peace to condition with your conscience for a time that you may continue in such a sin till you have paid for such a purchase married such a daughter bought such an annuity undermined and eaten out such an unthrift this truce though you mean to end it before you die is too near a peace with that Serpent between whom and you God hath kindled an everlasting war A cessation of Arms that is not to watch all his attempts and tentations not to examine all your particular actions A Treaty of Peace that is to dispute and debate in the behalf and favour of a sin to palliate to disguise to extenuate that sin this is too near a peace with this Serpent this creeping Serpent But in the other Serpent the crucified Serpent God hath reconciled to himself all things in heaven and earth and hell You have peace in the assistance of the Angels of heaven Peace in the contribution of the powerfull prayers and of the holy examples of the Saints upon earth peace in the victory and triumph over the power of hell peace from sins towards men peace of affections in your selves peace of conscience towards God From your childhood you have been called upon to hold your peace To be content is to hold your peace murmure not at God in any corrections of his and you doe hold this peace That creeping Serpent Satan is war and should be so The crucified Serpent Christ Jesus is peace and shall be so for ever The creeping Serpent eats our dust the strength of our bodies in sicknesses and our glory in the dust of the grave The crucified Serpent hath taken our flesh and our blood and given us his flesh and his blood for it And therefore as David when he was thought base for his holy freedome in dancing before the Ark said he would be more base so since we are all made of red earth let him that is red be more red Let him that is red with the blood of his own soul be red again in blushing for that rednesse and more red in the Communion of the blood of Christ Jesus whom we shall eat all the days of our life and be mystically and mysteriously and spiritually and Sacramentally united to him in this life and gloriously in the next In this state of dust and so in the territory of the Serpent the Tyrant of the dead lies this dead brother of ours and hath lien some years who occasions our meeting now and yearly upon this day and whose soul we doubt not is in the hands of God who is the God of the living And having gathered a good Gomer of Manna a good measure of temporall blessings in this life and derived a fair measure thereof upon them whom nature and law directed it upon and in whom we beseech God to blesse it hath also distributed something to the poor of this Parish yearly this day and something to a meeting for the conserving of neighbourly love and something for this exercise In which no doubt his intention was not so much to be yearly remembred himself as that his posterity and his neighbours might be yearly remembred to doe as he had done For this is truly to glorifie God in his Saints to sanctifie our selves in their examples To celebrate them is to imitate them For as it is probably conceived and agreeably to Gods Justice that they that write wanton books or make wanton pictures have additions of torment as often as other men are corrupted with their books or their pictures so may they who have left permanent examples of good works well be beleeved to receive additions of glory and joy when others are led by that to do the like And so they who are extracted and derived from him and they who dwelt about him may assist their own happiness and enlarge his by following his good example in good proportions Amen SERMON XLVIII Preached at St. Dunstans LAMENT 3. 1. I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath YOU remember in the history of the Passion of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus there was an Ecce homo a shewing an exhibiting of that man in whom we are all blessed Pilat presented him to the Jews so with that Ecce homo Behold the man That man upon whom the wormwood and the gall of all the ancient Prophecies and the venome and malignity of all the cruell instruments thereof was now poured out That man who was left as a tender plant and as a roote out of a dry ground without forme or beauty or comelinesse that wee should desire to see him as the Prophet Esay exhibits him That man who upon the brightnesse of
it all the yeare and all the yeares of an Everlasting life and of infinite generations Amen SERMON L. A Sermon Preached in Saint Dunstans 1 THES 5. 16. Rejoyce evermore WE reade in the naturall Story of some floating Islands that swim and move from place to place and in them a Man may sowe in one place and reape in another This case is so farre ours as that in another place we have sowed in teares and by his promise in whose teares we sowed then when we handled those two words Iesus wept we shall reape in Joy That harvest is not yet it is reserved to the last Resurrection But the Corne is above ground in the Resurrection of our head the first fruits of the Dead Christ Jesus and that being the first visible steppe of his exaltation begins our exultation who in him are to rejoyce evermore The heart knoweth his owne bitternesse he and none but he others feele it not retaine it not pity it not and therefore saies the Text A Stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy He shall have a Joy which no stranger not he himselfe whilest he was a stranger to God and to himselfe could conceive If we aske as Christs Disciples asked of him Quod signum what shall be the signe of thy comming of this Joy in the midst of thy bitternesse Ipsae lachrymae laetitiae testes nuncii The tears themselves shall be the sign the tears shall be Ambassadours of Joy a present gladnesse shall consecrate your sorrow and teares shall baptize and give a new name to your passion for your Wormwood shall be Manna even then when it is Wormwood it shall be Manna for Gaâ—debitis semper you shall Rejoyce evermore But our Text does more then imply a promise to us for it laies a precept upon us It is not Gaudebitis you shall Rejoyce by way of Comfort but it is Gaudete Rejoyce see that you doe Rejoyce by way of Commandement and that shall be our first part Cadit sub praecepto It hath the nature of a commandement Angels passe not from extreame to extreame but by the way betweene Man passes not from the miseries of this life to the joyes of Heaven but by joy in this life too for he that feeles no joy here shall finde none hereafter And when we passe from the substance of the precept to the extent thereof which will be our second part from the first word Rejoyce to the other Rejoyce alwaies we shall cleave that into two periods Gaudete in bonis Rejoyce in your prosperitie and Gaudete in malis Rejoyce in your adversitie too But because it is in sempiternum that must be in sempiterno because it is alway it must be in him who is alwaies yesterday and to day and the same for ever Joy in God Joy in the Holy Ghost which will be another branch in that second part of which Joy though there be a preparatory and inchoative participation and possession in this life yet the consummation being reserved to our entrance into our Masters Joy not onely the Joy which he gives that 's here but the Joy which he is that 's onely there we shall end in that beyond which none can goe no not in his thoughts in some dimme contemplation and in some faint representation of the Joyes of Heaven and in that Contemplation we shall dismisse you First then it is presented in the nature of a Commandement and laies an Obligation upon all at all times to procure to our selves and to cherish in our selves this Joy this Rejoycing What is Joy Comparatur ad desiderium sic ut quies admotum As Rest in the end of motion every thing moves therefore that it may rest so Joy is the end of our desires whatsoever we place our desires our affections upon it is therefore that we may enjoy it and therefore Quod est in brutis in parte sensitiva Delectatio in hominibus in parte intellectiva est gaudium Beasts and carnall men who determine all their desires in the sensuall parts come no farther then to a delight but men who are truly men and carry them to the intellectuall part they and onely they come to Joy And therefore saies Solomon It is the joy of the just to doe judgment to have lyen still and done no wrong occasions is not this Joy Joy is not such a Rest as the Rest of the Earth that never mov'd but as the Sunne rejoyceth to runne his race and his circuit is unto the end of heaven so this Joy is the rest and testimony of a good conscience that we have done those things which belong to our calling that we have mov'd in our Sphere For if men of our profession whose Function it is to attend the service of God delight our selves in having gathered much in this world if a Souldier shall have delighted himselfe in giving rules of Agriculture or a Architecture if a Counsellour of State who should assist with his counsell upon present emergencies delight himself in writing Books of good counsell for posterity all this occasions not this joy because though there have been motion and though there be Rest yet that is not Rest after the Motion proper to them A Man that hath been out of his way all the day may be glad to find a good Inne at night but yet 't is not properly Joy because he is never the neerer home Joy is peace for having done that which we ought to have done And therefore it is well expressed Optima conjectura an homo sit in gratia est gaudere The best evidence that a Man is at peace and in favour with God is that he can rejoyce To trie whether I be able by Argument and disputation to prove all that I believe or to convince the Adversary this is Academia animae the soules University where some are Graduats and all are not To trie whether I be able to endure Martyrdome for my beliefe this is Gehenna animae the rack the torture of the Soule and some are able to hold it out and all are not But to trie whether I can rejoyce in the peace which I have with God this is but Catechismus animae the Catechisme of the Soule and every Man may examine him selfe and every Man must for it is a Commandement Gaudete semper Rejoyce evermore It is we cannot say the Office but the Essence of God to doe good and when he does that he is said to rejoyce The Lord thy God will make thee plenteous there is his goodnesse and he will Rejoyce again over thee for good as he rejoyced over thy Fathers The Lord will love thee there is his goodnesse and rejoyce in thee and he will rest in his love Such a joy as is a rest a complacency in that good which he hath done we see is placed in God himselfe It is in Angels too Their office is to minister to Men for