Lord it 's my own as well as others Joy and wonder that your Lordships dawning is a serene Meridian That you came out of the Mine refined gold and a polished Jewel from the Rock That your equally amiable graces and eminent accomplishments do honour your honour and ennoble your Nobility That your green years and blooming youth have those gray hairs snowed upon them which are at once the Ornament Comfort Crown and Glory of venerable age I mean Learning Wisdome and Vertue That these equally beautifull and fragrant flowers should be full blown in your Lordships January when they scarce peep out but are very rarely â—udded in the May of others and that you are not only fair and flourishing but also both sweet and ripe in the very Blossome when the most are either foul or blasted deformed or withered or both with ignorance and vices in their youth This I say being really true and without an Hyperbole Flattery or fram'd Idea of what might or should be in a Christian or a Person nobly descended 't is both an happy Prodigie and a most auspicious Omen that your Lordship will grow up prosper rise shine and live to be the Glory of your Noble Family the honour of your Nation the darling happinesse and triumph of your Countrey and like the Sun a great choyse blessing to all those that do or shall live under your cherishing comforting reviving influence by being so happy as to have any relation unto or dependance upon your Honour My Lord that is the right the true Nobility indeed that is inlaid with vertue and piety for he is the Noblest peer in the World that is sincere religious There is no creature on this side Heaven either so glorious or excellent as a Godly great man The purest Gold is but shining clay the most precious and resplendent Gemms are but common and dushkish Stones all the sparkling stars are but dim candles set in dark Lanthorns and the refulgent eye of Heaven is but a glimmering Gloworm or Taper compared with his worth and brightnesse He 's a Phaenix whom the other Birds of Honour cannot but applaud esteem and admire though they will not imitate him A Titus Vespasian the love and delight of mankind the Loadstone joy and jewel of all honest gracious hearts He 's one of Gods most honourable Privy Counsellours A Prince of the most truly Royall bloud the richest Heir and the greatest the happiest Monarch in the World for Heaven is his Inheritance and Kingdome These these my Lord are the prerogatives priviledges and portion of those that are great and good My Lord it s a custome in some places when a Tenant dyes for the next that injoies the lease of the deceased to pay his Land-lord an Harriot viz. The best of all his quick goods and Cattle My Fore-fathers who for an hundred years were Tenants to your Lordships noble Progenitors lye all of them in their beds of dust I succeed them in that Relation they had to your Honorable Family I humbly hope therefore that it will not be interpreted a breach of Covenants though I pay that service in lieu of a Harriot to your Lordship which I confesse I doe most justly owe and therefore in Duty and Gratitude ought also to pay unto that mirrour and honour of her Sex Family and Name your Lordships truly noble Mother But yet I dare not tender this Homage to your Honour without this most humble Supplication That your Lordship will be pleased to pardon my very high criminal presumption in thus daring to setan orient Jewel in a leaden Ring to stamp your Lordships beautiful image upon a copper medal and in offering to pay or rather to acknowledge a little of my great debt in leather instead of silver But truly my Lord besides a faithful heart and fervent prayers for your felicity this is the best of all my goods and the chiefest of all my treasures that I have to lay at your Lordships feet And this is also the liveliest the truest portraiture that I am able to draw Either of your Honours merits which to expresse fully or to speak elegantly silence is both the best Orator and the most eloquent Panegyrick Or of your Honourable Family's favours Nobleness and Goodness to their Tenants who did both know and consider that the faint and sickly sweats the naked backs empty bellies crying wants complaining sufferings and the inevitable beggery of Tenants and their Families impoverished famished and undone by being unmercifully racked in their rents were both bloudy gain sinful providence cruel thrift and also a sure way to canker and lessen yea to consume their estates And therefore your Lordships Noble Progenitors so far as I do either know or could ever hear have carefully wisely constantly shunned scorned and abhorred those fatal shelvs of oppression and exaction upon which so many great avaritious worldly greedy Land-lords have wrack't and ruin'd their estates honour consciences and posterities Lastly this is the exactest draught that I can make of my own thankfulnesse and obligations Be pleased therefore my most Noble Lord once more I earnestly beseech you to pardon both my uncivil prolixity and my unmannerly injurious boldnesse in presuming to beg of your Lordship not only that you would condescend so much below your self as to alight and stay in so mean a Fabrick but also that you would deign to lodg in such Sheets as are both very course and black This honour and favour if your Lordship will vouchsafe to confer upon me then these rough-hewn stones which I have set up as columns of my faithfulnesse duty gratitude will become and continue in spite of the iron teeth and the insatiable appetite of devouring time that eats and consumes without fulnesse surfeiting or satisfaction even flinty pillars as well as feeble persons a double monument of your Lordships noblenesse and goodnesse to succeeding ages These these my Lord are the Forces and weapons wherewith you have do and will easily certainly gloriously not only conquer but indear all reall vertuous hearts These are the fetters too wherewith they will be not only chained most strongly and kept most securely but also wherein they will be both willing joyful and ambitious to follow the Triumphal Chariot of your transcendent worth And amongst all those happy Captives who thus adorn your Lordships victories none will or can more cordially honour you then he who with his most ardent prayers for the temporal Spiritual and eternal prosperity Felicity and glory both of your Honour and your Noble relations on earth and in Heaven takes the boldnesse to subscribe himself My LORD Your Honours most Humble and most faithful Servant Tho. Goddard TO THE Christian Reader BOOKS are a Feast or Banquet to which the invited guests all that can read understand do come with various appetites and palats Some do hunger after and like best that meat which is most unwholesom and dangerous corrupt principles Others do desire and delight
which so hurt his face that he bled again he left his singing and clapt both his hands on his face but afterwards he put his hands abroad and sung again m Idem vol. 3. p. 537. And when George Roper came to the stake where he was to be burned he leaped at it for joy Some have blessed God for setting the Crowne of Martyrdome upon their heads n Idem vol. 3. p. 850. When Alice Driver who was burned at â—pswich had the Iron chain put about her Neck O said she here is a goodly Neckerchief blessed be God for it Id. vol. 3. p. 888. Blessed be the time that ever I was born to come to this said John Noye when he came to the stake to be burned Others have both fervently desired to glorifie God in those fires and grieved that God would not suffer them to be made a burnt sacrifice as that precious Jewel our Bishop Jewel did Thus we see the pious gracious faithful Servants Subjects and Souldiers of Jesus Christ are not only desirous to raign with him but they are also ready to suffer for him And for such Lambs and such only as do copy out the holy Life of Jesus Christ and write it in their owne in those golden characters of sanctity constancy humility meeknesse patience charity prayer obedience c. did this Lambe of God Jesus Christ die Redemptor noster pro bonis misericorditer incarnatus est Nihil igitur haec Margarita ad porcos canes The Prayer MOST deare and yet most dreadful Jesus who art a God of might and Majesty as well as mercy of justice as we as pity a Lyon as well as a Lamb a Saviour and a Soveraign and at once the Creator Husband Brother and Redeemer of thine Elect Be pleased blessed Jesus to grant that those who own thine own name wear thy Livery and have Covenanted with thee to be thy Servants may be careful watchful zealous conscientious and willing to honour their Master thy sacred and most excellent Majesty to obey thy commands to imitate thy holy Life and to accept thee on thine own terms joyfully thankfully heartily even as a Lord King Prophet to govern command teach them as well as a Priest and Saviour to sacrifice and die for them Let them consider what it will cost them to buy this precious field this inestimable jewel what they must do to be real Christians and to get a saving Interest in Jesus Christ That they must sell all that they have part readily and resolvedly with the World with their sins their Isaacs Idols yea their Lands Liberties and Lives also if he who is the Lord and giver of them require us to surrender them to and for his own use and glory That they must take Christ as in a matrimonial Covenant and be not only chast obedient pleasing faithful constant to him but also that they must honour and esteem him above all other things admit no corrival into their affection with him rejoyce in his presence mourn for his absence grieve when he 's offended by them and angry with them forsake all for him cleave stedfastly to him and neither for either love of life or fear of death leave dishonour or deny him That they must be mortify'd Self-denying sincere Christians That they must not expect to be carryed on Beds of Down or to have their way green smooth easy soft or strawed with flowers to Heaven That they must run without fainting loytering or tyring to the end of the Race if they would obtain the prize That they must cheerfully couragiously bear Christs crosse or else they shall never triumphantly wear a Crown That they must not only sweep sweeten cleanse and open the dusty dirty-filthy sin-lockt houses of their hearts with the beesome of repentance and the hands of Faith and Love to entertaine him but they must also welcome him set him at the upper end of the Table in the highest seat esteem affect him above and beyond all other persons or things whilest they live on earth or else when they die he will never open the narrow Gate of Life to let them into Heaven That if they be not good and holy in the Kingdome of Grace they shall never be great or happy in the Kingdome of Glory That if their sins and lusts which Lord it over them revel in them captivate them and are dear and sweet unto them be not hated crucified and forsaken by them the Lord Jesus Christ though he was crucified for sinners and died to purchase Life for transgressors who were spiritually dead will never save them That therefore we may resolve and labour to get into that Arke Jesus Christ where safety and salvation only are to be found make us I beseech thee speedingly really savingly sensible of the want the worth the excellency All-sufficiency and the necessity of a Jesus that so we may court seek and value thee in and from whom alone is all fulnesse sweetnesse happinesse above all things And let O most gracious God all our sins be laid upon the Head set upon the Account of that Scape-goat Jesus Christ that so they may be carried into the Wildernesse of forgetfulnesse Take away O Lord our filthy Garments from us and clothe us with change of Raiment impute the Righteousnesse of Jesus Christ to us that so being found in the Garments of our elder Brother we may receive from our heavenly Father the Blessing of Grace here and that wherewith thou crownest thy own freely given and yet by Christ dearly purchased Grace eternal Glory hereafter Grant this O Lord for his sake who died to satisfie thy dreadfull Justice who shed his heart-bloud to quench the fire of thy flaming consuming wrath to pay our debts to purchase our pardon to redeem us from eternall slavery and misery and to save our undone Souls Amen In Christo per Christum solum modo Vita Libertas Foelicitas et beata Aeternitas III. Of the Holy Ghost THE Holy Ghost is the third Person in the glorious blessed a Deus est indivise â—â—us in Triniâ—e et inconfuse trinus in unitate undivided b Sacramentum hoc venerandum non scrutandum quemodo pluralitas sit in unitate unitas it plura litate Scâ—utaâ—i hoc temeritas est credere pietas nosse verò vìta aeterna Incomprehensible Trinity proceeding from both the Father and the Son and yet Coessentiall Coeternall and Coequal with them The opera officia the works and Offices of the Holy Ghost are these 1. It illuminates our blind understandings and teacheth us to know what we are by nature together with the necessity and felicity of being born again It teacheth us also to know the danger deformity and misery of sin the infinite and undeserved love of God and Christ to undone man and the means both to escape eternal death and to obtain immortal glory 2. It regenerates us making us that were profane holy barren fruitfull rebellious
intreat them to joine science and conscience together to live up to their knowledge and duty by burning inwardly with a well-grounded well-guided zeal for God and by shining outwardly towards men with sobriety innocency sanctity Since great gifts parts and abilities without honesty and grace are great snares temptations mischiefs and plagues both to themselves and others And since without a holy diligent careful improvement of them both to Gods glory and the good of others all those whom God hath honoured and enriched with them will by him be greatly and grievously punished for abusing or not using and imploying of them And as for those who are yet in the petty school and lower forms that have not overgrown nor travailed beyond their A. B. C. in understanding and religion nor as yet rightly learned to know themselves sin the world or their Christs crosse that great work duty and comfort of true Christians there are lessens offered and set by me very necessary for them to be acquainted with instructed in imminded of and seasoned withall 5. Lastly because I know that although many instead of accepting my poor indeavours and receiving the truth in the love of it will not only reject and disregard it but also censure yea bite and revile the Author with their invenomed teeth and frothy filthy tongues yet my labour will not shall not be in vain because it 's in the Lord and for the Lord. In his name and fear this plain not mosaick or carved work was undertaken to his glory it was and is intended directed and by his assistance it is finished I do not I dare not say perfected His blessing his powerful gracious fruitful influence I do therefore most humbly beg upon it And do only desire these few very reasonable things and favours of my Readers First that they would instead of carping snarling or barking at my book which I confesse hath too much Alloy and drosse but no poison in it communicate their own more pure and better refined labours to the world It will be I assure them my joy and contentment not envy or sorrow to see and their own not only honour but comfort to build marble and magnificent fabricks where such low mudwalâ—'d Cottages as mine is are erected 2. Secondly that they would prize welcome and imbrace truth though it curb crosse or kill their carnall Joies profane waies and worldly interests 3. Thirdly That they would seriously consider that Jewels are both as precious and resplendent in a woodden box or in an earthen pot as in a cabinet of Pearl That there may be usefull wholesome and savoury herbs in that Garden which wants the bravery beauty glories and the gaudey embroidery of curious flowers And that sweet meats may do well for sauce or to taste of but are not fit or safe to be made our daily bread 4 Fourthly that they would not be their own murderers and Executioners by loving vice and hating vertue by adoring earth and trampling Heaven under their feet by forsaking Christ to follow the world by poisoning their souls to please their senses by deferring their repentance and an holy Life till death or by leaving the safe and pleasant ways of truth and righteousnesse to walk in the dangerous destructive paths of error heresies and wickednesse 5. Lastly I do earnestly intreat them to read what I have written without partiality passion prejudice and prepossession that Maxim being most true here Intus existens prohibet altenum For vessels top full of earth cannot receive without being emptied either gold or gemms And the most precious cordial the most soveraign Julep must needs be lost and spilt if it be put into a dish that is brim-ful of dung or muck-hill-pit water Read them then once more I do importunately pray and request you with hearts willing desirous and resolved to be informed imminded convinced reformed confirmed and if you receive any good by my weak labours remember to give God the glory of his own work and mercy and instead of your praises Crown me with your prayers But if you do not profit by them consider That bad disaffected and distempered stomacks do turn the best meats into ill humours and into dangerous if not mortall diseases That none are more either sure to languish or likely to die then those that refuse loath and cast away the Physick that should cure them That those who hate the light shall one day when 't is too late clearly see their folly sin and misery in outerdarknesse That glorified Saints would be Gaolers Angels tormentors and heaven it self an hell to those that are unholy unheavenly unregenerated on earth That they who have forgotten forsaken left and lost God and Jesus Christ shall never without humbling their souls mourning for their sins and returning to the Lord find or feel any true comfort peace or happinesse either in life or death That they who do not with the spiritual eye of a justifying faith stedfastly behold the sun of righteousnesse Jesus Christ as 't is said the eagle can with her natural eyes the sun of heaven will and do like the kite with the eyes of sense corrupt reason look earnestly yea longingly at stâ—op eagerly unto and feed greedily upon the carrion and garbage of creature-comforts which do only fit and fat the wicked as the richest soil doth beasts for the day of slaughter vengeance and damnation That they who do not impâ— the wings of their knowledge and reason with the golden feathers of vertue and piety will never be able to soar above the World or to mount up to Heaven a Solus vir bonus est revera prudens Arist Ethic. 6. Contrae inquit alius stolidi et imprudentes sunt mali Keck syst Ethic. lib. 1. c. 3. p. 148. That they only are really wise and good who are sincerely religious because discoursing learnedly is but the bark the shell of knowledge and because professing zealously is but the husk the leaf of sanctity for only honesty and piety are the kernell fruit head heart bloud spirits light heat soul and body of true wisdome and saving grace That therefore Christians ought to conform their practise to their principles their works to their words and their Lives to their light That they whose actions are eccentrick to Gods honour word and will will never without repentance and reformation be found weight in the ballance of the sanctuary That it 's infinitely more both honour and happiness to be a truly holy Christian than it is to be a victorious Caesar a famous Scipio a renowned Castriot or an invincible Alexander That it 's transcendently unspeakably yea unconceiveably more both glory comfort and felicity to and for Christians to morâ—ifie their sins lusts and passions then to overcome own or command the whole world Praeclarum quidem est inquit b Xevoph in Orat. de Agâ—filio Agesilaus inexpugnabiles hostium muros superare multo verum praeclarius animum parare suum
righteous because fidelibus totus mundus divitiarum est saith a Christian the Saints have all the world for their possession And if you would increase your riches the surest way is * Prov. 11 24. 1 Tim. 6. 19. Charitably to scatter them e Reinold Orat p. 397. Divitiae quo aliis jurandis profunduntur magis eo magis nobis ipsis amplificantur servando minuuntur minuendo crescunt acquiruntur largiendo congeruntur dissipando cetinentur impertiends Si parcas perdis amittis si recondas si distribuas custodis non erunt diu tuae si sint solius tuae nunquam erunt magis tuae quam si cunctis communes facias Qui ditissimus esse volet profusissimus sit oportet qui parcissimus esse studet egentissimus sit necesse est sayes the Orator elegantly Riches the more bountifully we distribute them the more abundantly we encrease them They are lessened by keeping and multiplied by lessening of them they are gotten by giving them away heaped together by dispersing and retained by bestowing of them If we spare them we consume them if we hide them we lose them but if we releive others with them we save them They will not stay long with us if we keep them only to our selves they will never be more truly ours then when we freely communicate them to others If then we would be wealthy we must be liberall since the way to be beggerly is to be niggardly and to be poor to be parsimonious The safest place to keep our Riches in is Christs treasury the poor When Alexander the Great had given away his Treasure and they asked him where it was he pointed to the poor and said in Scriniis in my Chests And the only way to take our wealth with us to Heaven or to find it there is to send it before on poor mens backs thither Money is a good Maid but a bad Mistress If we over love Riches they will destroy us If we trust in them they will deceive us They will serve a wordly wicked man when he puts off from the shoar of life by sicknesse and launches into the Ocean of eternity by death as Pharaohs Chariot wheeles did him and the Aegyptians in the midst of the red Sea they will fall off and fail him in his greatest extremity And as the f Mr. Weever Funer Acts Monuments Courtiers Counsellers Friends and Servants did that renowned King of England Edward the 3d. upon his death-bed they will forsake him and neither stay nor so much as appear to administer any either temporall or spirituall Comfort unto him g Rainold Oratus p. 290. What Hannibal said of Antiochus his Souldiers Auro fulgebant satis ad Pompam armis ad pugnam nihil valebant 't is most true of them They may yea can indeed make us shine and glitter with bravery but they cannot fit arm inable or spirit us to fight against our spirituall Enemies with Courage nor the wrath of God with victory And therefore Beatus ille qui non post illa abiit quae possessa onerant amata inquinant amissa cruciant A man may be very poor with abundance of Wealth yea when he hath the highest Tide of plenty and a man may be really h Mens bona possidet Regnum Nerva Imperator rich in the midst of wants yea in the lowest Ebbe of Poverty for pauper esse non potest qui apud Deum dives est 't is not goods but goodnesse not earthly wealth but Heavenly Wisdome not a great Estate in the World but a saving interest in Christ not gold * Prov. 8. 21. but grace that makes us truly rich Isse ad deum copiosus * Judges 4. 18 19-21 ille opulentus advenit cui adstabunt continentia misericordia potentia fides charitas God is not alwaies pleased with those he prospers in the World for he gives wicked men riches as †Jael gave Sisera milk and lodging * Judges 3. 17-21 As Ehud gave Eglon a to their destructions * 1 Sam. 18 21. And †as Saul gave Michal to David to be a snare unto them Riches are but the blessings of Gods left hand the comforts of the lower springs and therefore Goats profane men and women that shall be eternally damned may drink freely fill themselves at those wells and have abundance of them The Indians who never heard of Christ were owners of the Gold and Silver Mines when Christians had but quarries of stone But God deals with his Children as * Genes 24. 6. Abraham did to Isaac he gives them all that he hath grace mercy peace here and glory hereafter And as * 2 Cron. 21. 3. Jehoshaphat did with his Sons he gives the eldest those that are regenerate that are adopted and have the Spirit whereby they can truly comfortably cry Abba Father a Kingdome but unto all the rest to all those that are unconverted unholy he gives only gifts of silver and Gold and of precious things for the wicked have nothing but outward Mercies for their Portion The Prayer O LORD thou alone dost both blesse the substance and curse the blessings of Men. Thy dispensations holy God are various perplexing wonderfull For thou makest some persons that are poor oppressed distressed imprisoned banished and very indigent rich in Faith and dost assure them that they are heirs of an heavenly great glorious ever-enduring Inheritance whilst others that are great full opulent free from troubles and prosperous in the World are both exceeding miserable and very Beggers And yet thou art most just equall righteous in all thy doings wayes and dealings with men Thy mercy O Lord is plenty with Poverty Thy blessing is pure reall refined Riches having no mixture of sorrow care or fear in it Thou O God fillest the empty thou satisfiest the hungry and thirsty with good things when the wickedly wealthy are empty both of Grace comfort peace and contentment though they be brimful yea though they runne over with Abundance Let not Christians therefore O Lord fix their eyes or set their hearts upon earth or earthly things only as if there was no Heaven for them to look upon or no Celestiall riches for them to desire and seek But let them account all sublunary enjoyments but fair and fading Flowers which thine Anger can and will both blast and wither in a moment Let them not prefer a muck-hill before a Mine by esteeming gain more then Godlinesse Let them not strangle their souls with a silver Snare nor suffer themselves to be catched in a Net of Gold by either an inordinate Love of or an over-eager and sinful guest and pursuit after Riches while they live lest when they dye their Iniquity and Calamities teach them their folly upbraid them with their phrensy and sting them for ever with unexpressible misery Grant this O thou who art rich in Mercy for his sake in whom are hid all the Treasures of Wisdome reall
all transgressions pardoned and exiled persons were recalled Whoever cometh to this holy Sacrament clothed with the new and rich apparell of Christs righteousnesse and can with the hand of a justifying faith touch Jesus Christ shall be sure to find and receive comfort favor acceptance a discharge from the debt of sin liberty and inlargement from the slavery of his own Lusts and from the captivity of Satan communion with Christ here and admission into the Kingdome of Heaven out of which man was justly excluded exiled for sin and Rebellion hereafter For when by death a true Christian doth put off the Rags of his mortality God will invest him with the Robes of Glory to all Eternity The Prayer EVer blessed God such are thy tender mercies unspeakeable Love and matchlesse Bounty to thy Children upon earth that as thou hast prepared and provided for them both Mansions and a feast a Supper of Glory with the Lamb in the Kingdome of Heaven so hast thou also provided a spirituall Banquet and furnished thy Table with most exquisite curious precious and delicious dainties to refresh nourish comfort strengthen and unite them in their journey and whilest they are upon their way thither this Blessed Sacrament O Lord let not I beseech thee this Soul-feeding heart-chearing Grace-strengthening and increasing communion and Supper be neglected undervalued contemned or denyed through the corruptions contentions differences carelesnesse or ungrounded scrupulousnesse of Men. â—ut let Ministers O Lord carefully obey thy command and conscientiously discharge their own Duty in rightly and frequently administring of it to their people that thy bitter thy bloudy Death O Blessed Saviour may be constantly and thankfully remembred thy wonderful unparalleled undeserved love pity goodnesse acknowledged and thy great Name praised and glorified And let Christians O Lord come to this Holy Sacrament so qualified and prepared that their Graces may be strengthened their Souls as with marrow and fatnesse satisfied their interest in Christ cleared and confirmed their joyes and comforts multiplied their Affections inseparably united and their mutuall love to one another mightily increased Grant this O Lord for his sake who is both the maker of the Feast and the Feast himself Jesus Christ Amen Coena Domini cibus est Animae alimentum Gratiae Nutrix pietatis solaminis canalis pignus amoris condonationis sigillum et corroborationis Sacramentum XIX Of Preaching THE sacred word of God purely rightly and powerfully preached is that Bethesday wherein Mephibosheths souls lamed in their feet their affections by the fall which they had out of the arms of Adam and Eve are cured and thereby inabled to run the ways of Gods commandements 'T is the * Cantic 4. 16. and 7. 5. Garden the Gallery where Christ meeteth speaks to and walks with his people 'T is the mount of blessings conduit of faith Golden Scepter of mercy and the spirituall seed of Grace and Life 'T is the Chariot in which Christ rideth triumphantly into the Soul 'T is the hammer that breaks open the iron door of the heart the key that unlocks it T is the fire that consumeth all Satans strong holds in the spirit 'T is spirituall eye-salve that gives a blind Bartimeus his sight And 't is the voice that awakens the most drouzy deaf secure sinner a Rainold Orat. 1. p. 41. What the Orator saith de Oratione is true de praedicatione Morbis inquit animi medicinam facere debet praedicatio facit comprimendo quae tument roborando quae languent quae inflammant leniendo coercendo quae diffluunt expurgando quae redundant 'T is an Ark alwaies bringing blessings with it Nathan which wil rouse convince and humble Davids relapsing Saints T is a Peter pricking the hearts of great and grosse sinners to their conversion sanctification Salvation 'T is a messenger sent from God and bringing with it those three wonderfull glorious instimable Jewels and blessings to the soul sense of sin assurance of pardon and a through reformation both of the Heart and life It s the means which God hath promised commanded owned blessed and sanctyfied by the inward powerfull and effectual operation of his holy Spirit speaking home to the conscience stirring those healing waters of the sanctuary and accompanying the outward administration of the word most ordinarily and efficaciously to instruct the ignorant confirm the weak to warm the cold mollifie the hard melt the frozen comfort them that mourn to awaken those that are drowsie resolve those who doubt incourage and quiet such as fear guide them that erre bind up the broken hearted and to quicken those that are dead in trespasses and sins T is a Cornâ—copia of all those excellent spirituall mercies and comforts 'T is the granary of celestial food and Manna the silver trumpet of peace and the white flag of mercy to a people It 's a Nilus that softens refresheth and fructifieth barren hard and languishing hearts T is a Mary with Christ in the womb of it an Angell instructing a Philip a light in the thickest saddest darknesse and a comfortable seasonable rain in a drought 'T is both meat to the hungry water to the thirsty physick to the diseased milk to the weak a Lamp to them that wander and wine to the sorrowfull In Asia it was a custome that the Child which was not nursed by his mother should not have the goods of his Mother Those who are not nursed by that Mother the true Church of Christ with the breasts of Gods word and ordinances faithfully and duly administred are never like to have God for their Father nor to be heires of the Churches estate I mean the love promises protection grace and blessing of the Lord nor to enjoy the glorious inheritance of her Children eternall felicity hereafter The Prayer O LORD thou art so farre from desiring or delighting in the eternall Damnation of the vilest greatest grossest sinners that thou hast commanded the Gospell of Salvation to be preached to every creature both to Jews and Gentiles Yet since even this word of Life is both a dead and a killing Letter without the quickening sanctifying influence and efficacy of thy holy Spirit Grant blessed God that the Holy Ghost may both teach and speak effectually convincingly convertingly savingly to the ears and hearts of unregenerated Sinners that so the dead may both hear and feel the voice and power of the Son of God and live And be thou pleased most merciful God so to own blesse and prosper thine own Labourers in thy vine-yard that the Consciences of those who are enemies to thine own ordinances and Ministers may be convinced their spirits grieved and humbled their mouths stopped their sin and errours discovered to them hated by them and forsaken of them And that the understandings of those who hear and enjoy them may be savingly enlightened their hearts graciously changed their Lives throughly reformed and their souls everlastingly saved Let him who is the Word Jesus Christ be ushered
signum esset quam principii lenitas Suctonius like the heavy bloudy and condemning sentence of that cruell Emperour Domitian it do begin with a preface of Clemency with pleasure and outward prosperity yet it like his mercilesse Judgement will be sure to have a wofull horrible and most miserable Conclusion The Prayer O LORD thou hast acquainted us with the vanity frailty and uncertainty of this naturall Life in those lively reall teaching resemblances and comparisons of it in thy Word of Truth to a Post a Race a Shuttle a Vapour Span Bubble Flower Grasse And thou hast also informed us that as short brittle mutable as it is we must either whilest our Souls so journ in these houses of Clay our bodies whose foundations are in the dust both make our peace with God and get our Pardons sealed or else we shall lye under thy dreadful intolerable yet unavoidable vengeance for ever O Grant therefore most gracious God that we may not ravel out those Golden Skeans of precious opportunities offers of Grace and means of Salvation which thy mercy bounty patience have both given and continued unto us to make our callings and elections sure Suffer us not holy God to play loyter sinne or sleep away our precious Time seasons of Grace our Talents Gifts Hopes Comforts Promises lest while we live those daies come upon us wherein like Pashur thou in wrath and justice make us a burden to our selves Lest thou make our lives so bitter and grievous that we shall digge for death as Riches and seek it as for hid treasures even couâ—t crave court it and yet not be able to find it or prevaile to be taken out of our Misery by it And lest after all these terrors sufferings sorrows agonies and languishings our sinful Souls be for ever separated divorced banished from the God of love light life and cast into utter darknesse and eternal death amongst cursed Reprobates and damned Devills when we go hence and shall be seen no more Amen Vita vere religiosa optimum est medicamentum contra Timorem Terrorem Mortis Stimulum Bonus semper Vivit Abit enim non obit Asbconditnr non abscinditur Dormit non perit Mutatur non moritur XXIV Of Death T Is the Souls convoy to Heaven or Hell 'T is the Porter that lets a true sanctified mortified Christian into Paradise through the narrow Gate of Life The Pilot that steers him over the rough raging troublesome Sea of this World and lands him safe at the Haven of Happinesse Heaven 'T is the first statute in Magna Charta A Law made Primo mundi which can never be repealed * Hebr. 9. 27. For it 's appointed It 's inacted ordained in the High Court of Parliament in Heaven for all men once to dye 'T is to a Child of God the Soules Coronation day gaudy-day its glad day as a Mr. Fox B. of Martyr vol. 3 p. 431. Wolsey its wedding day as b Idem vol. 3. p. 502. Bishop Ridly the night before he was to be burned being at Supper he was very cheerful and did bid Ms. Irish his keepers Wise and the rest of the company at Boord with him to his Wedding For saith he to morrow I must be married blessed Bishop Ridley called it and its year of Jubilee But it 's a sluce pulled up to drown the wicked It 's an impenitent sinners ship-wrack 'T is the death buriall and period of his prosperity delights pleasures The funerall of all his comforts and the nativity of his eternall torments 'T is the Bâ—kers going out of Prison to execution a Josephs inlargement and promotion a Queene Elizabeths Exaltation to a Throne 'T is a good Mans Spring a Reprobates Autumne a Nuâ—c dimittis to a pious Simeon a Take him Gaoler bind him hand and foot and cast him into utter darkness to an impious Soul A quietus est a writ of ease to the godly a warrant signed and delivered for the destruction of the Wicked 'T is an Ahimaaz bringing good tidings to the righteous but the last and worst of all Jobs messengers to him that is unholy relating his sad his irrecoverable irreparable losse of all soul body goods riches pleasures friends children house lands honors mirth hopes offices power earth and Heaven unto him It lets that Dove the Soul out of the Cage the Ark of the body It knocks off those bolts mortality and frailty and sets it at liberty It 's the taking up of Jeremiah the Soul out of the dark filthy noysome irksome Dungeon of the flesh and the safe delivery of that Daniel from those hungry cruell terrible Lyons sin Satan Hell Christ hath disarmed death and now to the Godly Mors nomen est tantum c Owen Epiâ— Introitus non interitus So that what Camerarius appointed by his last will should be written on his monument may also most truly be ingraved upon the Tomb of every one that dies in the Lord Vita mihi mors est mors mihi nova vita est Life to me is death and death to me is a new a true a blessed a glorious Life Death t is both unavoidable and certainly uncertain d Apollonius Thyaneus who had travailed over the greatest part of Europe Asia and Affrica being asked at his return n Dial of Princes what wonderful things he had seen in those Countries through which he had travailed answered That he wondred most at two things 1. That in all the parts of the World where he had been he had seen quiet men troubled by seditious persons the humble subject to the proud the just obedient to the Tyrant the cruell commanding the merciful the ignoâ—ant teaching the wise and above all That he had seen great Thieves hang the innocent on the Gallows 2ly That the other thing at which he marvailed was that in aâ—l the Countries and places where he had been he knew not neither could he find any man who was immortal but that at length both high and low had an end And as Death is inevitable so it is also in it self terrible For groans sighs tears convulsions cries palenesse blacks and Funeralls are the Harbingers Heralds and the train thereof And yet to the Godly t is but like a Kings visit to his beloved Subjects in his progresse acceptable honorable welcome and comfortable Nam pompa mortis magis terret quam mors ipsa e Augustus Caesar died in a complement Vespasian in a Jest Galba with a Sentence Septimius Severus in dispatch c. Bacon Essâ—ys 2. p. 8. The very Heathens entertained it without fear embraced it without sorrow The * Hâ—rodotus lib. 5. Thracians or rather Thrausians wept at the birth of their Children and †In the primitive times Câ—ristians were wont at Funerals to sing Psalms of Thanksgiving Kinet Cathol Orthod Quest rejoyced at the death of their Friends Solon could say to rich Croesus Ante obitum nemo beatus No man is happy till
r. thy dele own p. 19. l 3 marg r. in Trinitate p. 12. l. 14. r. covet p. 23. l. 10. r. this p. 24. l. 12. r. all miseries p 25. l. 19. r. all whose prayers p. 27. l. 7. marg r. but. p. 35. r. storm p. 44. l. 13. r. but rebellion p 49 l. 6. r. erected p. 50. l. 25. r. pittacus p. 51. l. 24. r. eutrapelus p. 51. l. 19. marg r. Frilby p. 52. l. 22. r. juvandi p. 53. l. 22. r. is l. 36. r. patientia p. 54 l. 9. r. with Isaack p. 55. l. 7. r. quest p. 56. 10. r. dum sitiâ— sitare â—item p. 57. l. 21. r. visiting p. 61. l. 36. r. dark p. 62. l. 2. r. delight in p. 68. l. 27. r. their p. 71. l. 14. r. pleased p. 76. l. 15. r sheds l. 22 r. in the Center p. 89. l. 2. r. as l. 11. God in all things ends the parenthesis p 90. l. 5. r. clean p. 94. l. 16. r. expressions p. 95. l. 12. r. which p. 103. l. 8. r. leaden p. 104. l. 20. r. a Nathan p. 117. l. 31 del that p. 122. l. 9. r. pessimus p. 132. l. 21. r. and in the margenâ— r. and articles of the Ch. of England 23. A little Box of pils p. 13. l. 29. for Varius r. Narius p. 18 l. 23. r. down Reader thou art desired to take notice that all the Pages from 48 are false folied that instead of 49 there is 45 c but we have kept them in this â—rrata as they should be that is in order MISCELLANEA OR Serious Usefull Considerations Morall Historical Theologicall I. Of God THE nature of God who is the deepest Ocean of being cannot be measured by the short the snarled line of mans shallow dark erroneous understanding nay t is equal madness and presumption to attempt it For how can that which is narrow and finite contain or comprehend that which is infinite Deus religione intelligendus est pietate profitendus sensu vero persequendus non est sed adorandus His glorious essence so dazles the purblinde eyes of reason and naturall knowledge that the more they look on him the blinder they are We can at best but spell him in his wonderfull works of Creation Providence Preservation and his Gubernation of the world as Men as Christians we may and can read much of him and see his back parts in his Attributes Word Ordinances by his holy Spirit teaching illuminating and applying the spirituall eye-salve of heavenly wisdome and saving knowledge to our bemisted darkned benighted minds But when we are Saints in Heaven the Prospectives of Glory and Immortality being given unto us we shal then see him face to face and know him as he is Here on earth where we are but strangers guests pilgrims it is our duty to serve obey admire adore him There which is our City Heaven home it will be our both delight happinesse reward and portion to behold possess enjoy him for ever and this is the very Apex and completion of a Christians felicity Here it 's presumption danger sin to peep into the secret Cabinet the Sacred Ark of his unrevealed will there God will discover and the soul will with fresh unwearied renewed desires sweetest pleasures most refined blisse purest Joies and fullest contentment without all possibility of either sorrowing sinning losing them or being satiated with them see and possesse whatever can afford it blessedness glory or satisfaction Here errors crimes miseries and judgments are the fruits effects rewards of a busy bold curious profane inquiry into the essence of that thrice blessed incomprehensible Majestie and therefore we must be sober fearful humble modest in our search of it in our approach towards it and not dare or presume to touch that glorious Mount by any irreligious irreverent unwarrantable notions opinions or expressions of this great God blessed for ever for otherwise in stead of a discovering light to guide and comfort us we shal be sure to meet with a fire that will consume us Lâ—qui volentes de Dei profundo merst sunt in profundum It is honour comfort and happinesse enough for us to know him by a justifying faith to be our God in Christ while our souls abide in the Tents of our bodies in the Wildernesse of this world and that when death hath taken them down we shall have spiritual Mansions and a glorious inheritance in the Canaan of Heaven This Almighty yet most mercifull God is the sole Landlord of the whole world we are his Tenants at will and the Rents which he requires of us and hath obliged us to pay duly truly and not only yearly but daily unto him are obedience holinesse love praises praier and thankfulnesse This God is both omniscient omnipresent omnipotent and just and pure therefore he both knoweth all those sins that are acted though never so secretly or cunningly by the sons of men abhors them and will certainly yea severely punish them Yet he is also patient pitiful gracious and merciful therefore he is not only willing but ready yea desirous to forgive them and to be reconciled to all truly penitent transgressors a Aelius Spartianus Trajane the Emperour of Rome being on horseback to go to the Warrs he alighted again to hear the complaint of a poor Romane If the Lord of Hosts be marching against a poor soul in a way of wrath he will yet both stay to hear the Petition of an humble sorrowful sinner being that God who heareth prayers and he will also turn from his fierce wrath being that God who delighteth in shewing mercy b Thucidides Admetus Molossorum Rex ignovit Hosti suo Themistocli filiolum proprium intuens quem Themistocles supplex utraque manu complexus patri ostentabat This good God who is infinitely more compassionate then the most pitifull Prince yea then the most affectionate father and which is yet more then the most indulgent tender hearted * Esay 49. 15. Mother ever was or possibly can be to the child of her own womb wil both freely and fully pardon all those who bring his own his only son Jesus Christ in the Armes of faith and love with humility and supplication unto him for the life of their souls c Marc. Aurelius in a Letter to his friend Cornelius It was a custome amongst the Romanes after they had proclaimed open wars against an Enemy and when they had sent their Armies against them for all the Romane Senatours to go into the Temple of Jupiter and in it to swear that if those enemies against whom they were going to fight did desire to enter into a league with Rome or aske pardon for their faults that then all revenge laid aside they should grant them mercy The Lord of Hosts hath proclaimed open wars * Esay 3. 11. against all impenitent Sinners who are implacable enemies to his Majesty to the Prince of Peace Jesus Christ his son and to
gemms Joy Peace Honour Riches Comfort Light Life and Blisse O let us all-blessed God make thee our end our Center and Rest our Portion Our Treasure and our All and let us never be quiet till we know and experience thee to be a reconciled God and our merciful Father in and through thy dear Son Jesus Christ that so we may both enjoy thy Love O God which is better then life whilst we sojourne upon earth and live Crowned with the God of Love in glory when these Mud-wall'd Cottages of our fraile Bodies shall be crumbled and resolved into Dust by Death Grant this O God for Jesus Christ his sake Amen Sine Deo nec Gratia Gaudium Bonum nec Coelum II. Of Jesus Christ and A Christians Duty unto Christ HEE is truly really both God and man God that he might satisfie the Lords justice appease his wrath justifie and acquit guilty condemned man * Propter hominem homo Deus factus est man that he might die for sin purchase life for those who were spiritually dead and redeem them both from their woful slavery and from eternall misery He put off those Royall robes of Majesty and Glory and put on in his Incarnation the course rotten Garments or rather rags of flesh and frailty and so became like us in all things sin only excepted Behold here infinite astonishing miraculous debasement Compassion Condescension The Creator of the world became a mortall man the King of Kings a subject Man sins and his God willingly dies to expiate his Crimes The Actions and passion of this blessed Jesus are a continued series of miracles a golden chain let down from heaven to earth all whose links are love mercy goodnesse pity wonder a Dio Cassius Trajanum ferunt suorum vulneribus medicam manum adhibuisse cum fasciae dificerent nec fuaelquidem vesti pepercisse sed eam totam in ligamenta fomenta discidisse But this and ten thousand times more Compassion affection charity is not so much as a drop to the Ocean a beam of light to the Sun or a dust in the ballance to the whole earth compared with the love of Christ to undone man For never did the most tender hearted Soveraign do that for a wounded Souldier nor yet the most faithful lover for his dearest friend which Jesus Christ did for his deadlyest enemies What Prince did ever give his Throne Kingdome to his chiefest Rebells What Physitian did ever let the bloud out of his own heart to cure a most malitious unthankfull Patient What Judge did ever freely sacrifice his own life to save a condemned malefactor who did not only desire and resolve but indeavour to murther him upon the Bench What Generall or Commander did ever suffer willingly himself to be mortally wounded to cure the hurts or save the lives of those Souldiers who conspired to betray him Yet Jesus Christ did all this and infinitely more for he left heaven descended out of the Chariot and came down from the Throne of his Glory to sit upon his foot-stool the earth He willingly indured a close imprisonment in that dark Dungeon the womb of his both Mother and Creature for a time and afterwards he removed himself into that greater Gaole the world into which he was no sooner entred by his birth but disregard dishonor contempt dangers attended on him saluted him and was the best entertainment the chief Rent and Homage which his Tenants Subjects Creatures afforded presented paid unto him their Lord King Creator Immediately yea constantly after this cold uncivil unkind ingrateful usage till his death bloudy enemies hunted this Royal Lion of the Tribe of Juda to destroy him cruell Eagles pursued this harmlesse galless Dove to prey upon him Malitious cunning Foxes attempted to catch this innocent meek Lamb of God whom they should have worshipped to worrey him some openly persecuted others secretly combined against him some impudently affronted others subtilly by questions varnished with Religion and gilded with pretence of conscience laboured to insnare him some scorned and derided others blasphemed him This golden Ball was continually bandied and tossed up and down in the Tennis Court of this world by wicked men with the Rackets of Implacable malice inraged ignorance blind ambition and barbarous persecution till he was stricken into the hazzard of his Grave by the hand of death And yet all this was kindnesse Comdie to those injuries to that Tragedie which he received and soone after acted for they consulted apprehended accused buffeted derided reviled undervalued insulted slandered crowned with thornes at once to mock and wound him arraigned condemned and then crucifi'd him And yet all this too was love ease pleasure mercy to that ineffable yea unconceivable misery which their own and the sins of the whole world burthened and afflicted him withall in that bloudy violent terrible conflict of his upon the cross with sin Satan and the wrath of God the dreadfulnesse weight horror and fiercenesse whereof was such that it amazed affrighted nature and almost unhinged the whole Creation * Matth. 27. For the sun of heaven whilest the son of God was suffering upon earth hid his resplendent face under a pitchy cloud at once blushing grieving and fearing to behold so sad a spectacle The heavens put themselves into mourning wore a sable garment and gave a black livery to the world when that prodigious fact was committed that so they might both weare an habite sutable to the crime and apparell heaven aâ—d earth in a dresse fit to attend their maker withal to his grave expressing their sorrows in showers of tears The very Rocks to upbraid his more then flinty hearted Enemies to teach them and us compassion when others especially those who are innocent do suffer and compunction when we by sinning do crucifie our Saviour did relent yea break and because man was dumbâ— or rather silent and would not they clave themselves into mouths and tongues to proclaim and preach his Majesty mercy Divinity torments funerall The senselesse earth seemed to apprehend grew aguish and falling into a cold fit she did quake and tremble as if shee had both understood and been terrified with those wofull dismall dreadful calamities plagues and judgments with her equally stupid cruell and rebellious Children were then with both hands deliberately diligently certainly pulling downe upon their own wicked heads and by that fearfull bloudy prevailing Imprecation * Matth. 6 25. his bloud be upon us and our Children importuning an omnipotent just and highly offended God to intail upon their unborne posterity The vail of the Temple rent from the top to the bottome in twain and by that Sympathizing mysterious Act did declare assure and publish both to them and all the world 1. That the vail of ignorance and superstition which had so long covered and blinded the minds of men should be immediately taken way and torne in pieces by the promulgation of the glorious precious comfortable Gospell
Gall then Honey in it To arise to honour it is enough that the body sweat water but to maintain it it is necessary that the heart weep bloud said Sophia the Emperesse to Tiberius Thou wilt not deny said one to Alexander the great that all which thou hast in thy Conquest gotten is little and that the quietnesse which thou hast lost it much the Realms which thou hast subdued are many but the cares sighs thoughts which thou hast heaped upon thy heart are infinite for the Gods do seldome suffer them to injoy that quietly in peace which they have unjustly gotten in warre s Bacon Essai 19. p. 105. Kings like to heavenly bodies have much veneration but no rest for the choycest and best refined treasures or favours which the world hath to bestow upon her eldest sons are but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Giftless gifts nor doth she only deceive her Favourites but destroy them also even by advancing of them the price which they usually pay for their worldly felicity being not only temporal calamities but too often eternal miseries For dignity is not only often but most commonly the moth of vertue honour the Canker of honestie power the poyson of piety and greatnesse is too frequently the death of goodnesse t Mr. Baâ—ter Saints everlasting rest p. 78. The difficulty is so great of conjoyning graciousnesse with greatnesse that is next to an impossibility and their conjunction so rare that they are next to inconsistent To have a heart taken up with Christ and heaven when we have health and abundance in the world is neither easie nor ordinary u Oâ—uphriâ—s Pius quintus dixisse fertur Cum essem religiosus sperabam bene de salute animae Cardinalis factus extimui Pontifex Creatus pene despero Quid igitur insanius quam pro momentanea felicitate aeternis te mancipare suppliciis 'T is a madnesse even to miracle to lose eternal blisse and glory to gain temporal withering honour and mundane felicity The Prayer O LORD thou art that God who didst both create this beautifull World out of nothing and dost know that there is nothing in this bewitching beguiâ—ing insnaring intangling World that can either afford the Soul of man any reaâ—â— Comforts or make it truly happy For if thou but frown chide hide thy face or manifest the least displeasure against us all the lower springs of Creature-comforts will immediately fail dry up disappoint deceive us and like the early dew or morning Clouds consume fly away and vanish before the heat and wind of thy fiery wrath and fierce fearful irresistible Indignation Let therefore Christians O Lord I beseech thee that know the greatness the terriblenesse of thy Power admire thine omnipotency adore thy wisdome praise thy goodnesse tremble at thy wrath strive for Heaven and contenm the World Let them O Lord prefer Goodnesse before Greatness Holinâ—sse before Honour Piety above Pleasure and Righteousnesse bâ—yond Riches Let them not ship-wrack their Consciences or destroy their Souls for Dominion Let not their Ambition to be great men make them forget neglect or cease to be Christians and good men Let them study and endeavour more earnestly to command their own rebellious hearts to govern aright their unruly passions to get their misplaced Affections unnailed and their head-strong traiterous Lusts subdued then to obtain Authority or Dignity amongst Men. And let ibem account it a greater happinesse mercy advancement glory to be Loyall faithfull dutifull Subjects and Servants to Jesus Christ then to be Soveraigns over Kingdomes Let not their eyes be blinded with the Splendour of power nor dazled with the Lustre of Honour nor their hearts and affections lime-twigg'd by an inordinate sinfull Love of Wealth or Greatnesse that so their rise may not prove their ruine their exaltation their destruction their power their poyson and that so their temporall Eminency and momentany Felicity may not usher them unto ingulph and suck them into or both sadly suddenly unexpectedly and unpreparedly end in ever enduring misery Amen Mundus delectat decipit destruit VI. Of Loyalty and Rebellion THAT Kings whose Originall in England is beyond the Memory of History whether good or bad do derive and receive their Authority immediately from God That Subjects do justly and indispensably owe both submission and subjection unto them And that God hath placed them so far beyond the power and so high above the reach of their Subjects cruel unjust ingrateful when against them armed hands that they are accountable to himself only for their Actions are Truths so bright so evident that we may run and read them confirmed by the sacred Scriptures asserted by the pens of learned men and sealed with the bloud of pious Christians in all Ages * prov 8. 15. By me saith God Kings reign †Dan. 2 21. He removeth Kings and seteth Kings up * Dan. 1. 37. The God of Heaven saith Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar a wicked King hath given thee a Kingdome power and strength and glory 2. Touch not mine anointed saies David a man after Gods own heart †1 Sam. 24. 5. whose Counsel and Command to others was his own * practise as well as Duty Nor are we only inhibited to oppose or resist him for there is no rising vp against him sayes wise * Prov. 30. 31. Agur But which is yet more we are prohibited by †Eccles 8. 4. Who may say to a King what dost thou words to question him much more then certainly it is unlawful and sinful for his Subjects to depose or with Swords to murder him Holy Augustine tell us that Kings have their Kingdomes from God not from men Solus verus Deus dat regna terrena bonis malis Famous Bracton saith positively Rex non habet superiorem nisi Deum The King hath no superiour but God The Oath of Supremacy which we take both as lawful and necessary hath these expresse words in it The Kings Highnesse is the only Supream Governour of this Realm and all other his Highnesses Dominions and Countreys as well in all spirituall or Ecclesiastical things or Causes as Temporal c. And Lastly our a Magn. Cha. 29. Law saith That none shall be arrested imprisoned disseized of their Estates deprived of his Liberty banished or otherwise destroyed but by the verdict of his equalls and the Law of the Land This Magna Charta was granted enacted confirmed by the Kings of England from whom this and all other Laws receive their life and being For he is Anima Legis his Fiat animates and quickens them without it Bils are but breathless Embryo's where or whence then have we any Law or just power to restrain imprison arraign condemn banish or to destroy our Sacred Soveraign who hath no peers no equals within his Dominions Thirdly this truth That Christians ought not to resist or Râ—bell against their Kings though Pagans Papists or Tyrants hath been subscribed by millions of
spiders web which either the hands of enemies or the Bâ—esome of destruction or the wind of Gods displeasure can and will both easily and certainly break sweep down and blow away That deny and deprive themselves of all Comforts to make both themselves and their posterities miserable That acknowledge as it were a statute of that morgage nay sell their souls for a little wealth that so they may buy a corruptible fading inheritance for their Children although to purchase that they are sure to forfeit and lose both Heaven happinesse and their own souls That both lay and give * Esay 9. 18. fire to a train to blow up and consume those †I do earnestly desire all covetous irreligious Parents seriously to consider of and tremble at these few amongst many places of scripture Exod 34. 7. Job 18. 19. Job 19. 10 11 â—5 22. 23. 28. houses and lands which they have built upon and bought with the ruines of others That feed their Children with poysoned dainties That * Prov. 3. 33. sow their Lands with Sinne for their off-spring while they live which will bring forth no better fruits nor yeild any other harvest but infamy beggery curses and misery unto them and intail together with their inheritance the wrath of God upon them Certainly those that do thus are equally mad and miserable for as that Blessed and Pious Martyr Bishop Hooper said the gains of the World with the losse of Gods favour is beggery and wretchednesse And all they are such and so doe who preferre Earth before Heaven plenty before piety for they will one-day to their grief shame and astonishment find that their greenest hopes will be blasted their Aegyptian reeds broken their strongest holds demolished that their honey will be turned into †Prov. 20. 17. gall and gravell and that their wealth will end in wants and endlesse misery Alexander the great going upon a hopefull expedition gave away his Gold and being asked what he kept for himself he answered Spem majorum meliorum The hope of better and greater things But these infatuated Mammonists give away their hopes of the most choice and precious things Christ Heaven Pardon a good Conscience Salvation c. and reserve nothing but their Gold and the guilt both of over-loving and sinfully getting it And although they may or doe expect a plentifull harvest after so laborious and troublesome a seed-time yet they will find that they have only plowed upon a Rock laboured in the fire sown the wind and therefore that they shall reap nothing but the whirl-wind for †Prov. 10. 2. Riches profit not in the day of wrath sayes Solomon And a greater then Solomon God himself saith * Ezech. 7. 19. their silver and their Gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the Lords wrath they shall not satisfie their souls neitheir fill their Bowells Let us then as we desire not to be spirituall beggers and everlastingly undone with an holy greedinesse covet the best gifts and strive to be vertuous and pious since f Plato Omne super terram et sub terra Aurum non est ex ulla parte cum virtute comparandum Let us with an indefatigable diligence labour to be rich in faith and good works And let us with an holy scorne trample upon shining dirt and that thick clay wherewith whereby and wherein so many are both soiled and suffocated defiled and destroyed remembring alwaies that man is de terra ex terra sed non ad terram nec propter terram And also seriously considering that Avarice is one of the Divells strongest toiles wherein he takes a Drag-net wherewith he catches and a pioner whereby he both undermines and kills the soul Superbia clausit Diabolo coelum Gula primo parenti abstulit par adifum Avaritia diviti aperuit infernum All covetous persons are spiritual Idolaters i Heylyn Geog p. 790. so that what the people of Brasile said to the Spaniards holding up a wedge of Gold g viz. Behold the God of the Christians may truly and sadly be objected to and charged upon all avaritious men and women for they make goods their God account gain godliness and so do treasure up wrath instead of Wealth * Prov. 3 33. Curses instead of Riches to themselves and their posterities Having thus presented to your view though very unskilfully an Anatomy of that loathsome meagre unsavory unprofitable carcasse worldly mindednesse together with a true though unlively picture of the folly indigency slavery and misery of all covetous persons I shal now commend to your consideration a duty which Christ commands †Matth. 6. 20. But lay up for your selves treasures in Heaven c. Beg earnestly cry mightily to God for his favour and carefully endeavour to keep your selves in his Love labour for a justifying faith for purity humility and sincerity of heart for holinesse and all heavenly Graces c. For these are such Treasures to which all the Indian Mines are but dust heaps empty Exchequers or Gravel-pits and in comparison whereof the rarest the most precious Jewels in the World are but Glasse and flints As so many spurrs therefore to quicken or Arguments to perswade you to expresse your Loyalty to the King of Righteousnesse your Soveraign by your obedience and conformity to his will and Commands and also to prevail with you even for your own sakes and the eternal good of your Souls Conscientiously and carefully to put this duty the pious performance whereof you will find to be equally necessary profitable and comfortable unto you in practise consider First That these Celestiall treasures are not only permanent but they are also reall Riches such as will make you truely everlastingly great honourable wealthy happy Secondly Consider that these and only such treasures are suitable to the nature and necessities of the soul Gold they say is good Conira palpitationem cordis against that trouble called the palpitation or trembling of the heart but it cannot cure a wounded spirit nor so much as ease a heart that 's burdened with the sense and fear of Gods dreadfull wrath for sin The Soul is a spirituall substance and therefore it cannot be fed contented maintained or preserved with mundane mercies or carnal comforts though shel was Emperesse of the universe No nothing but a saving interest in Christ peace of Conscience a sweet communion with God victory over all her spirituall enemies assurance of Gods mercy in the full and free remission of all her Iniquities c. can quiet or satisfie her And therefore she cries out in her pangs wants and serious reflexions upon her self when she is either scorched with Gods hot displeasure and fiery indignation or warmed with the Beams of Love and Mercy darting from the Sun of righteousnesse and shining upon her as that Martyr John Lambert did in the fire h Fex B. of Martyrs vol. 2. p. 427. col 2. None
but Christ None but Christ He alone being able to quench her thirst to satisfie her hunger to grant her desires to supply her wants to cure her maladies to support her under pressures to ease her of her burdens to vanquish her enemies to resolve all her doubts to revive her in her swounings to strengthen her in her languishings to give her cordials in her faintings to secure her from her fears to comfort her in her sorrows to calm her in to sanctyfie unto her and to free her from all her troubles by confirming her faith increasing her graces multiplying her Joyes and establishing her peace in the firm assurance and cleer Evidence by his holy Spirit of his free infinite eternall unchangeable love unto her the full satisfaction given by him to the Justice of God for her and his free miraculous redemption of her from her spirituall thraldome from the curse and rigour of the Law from the raigning condemning power of sin and from Satan wrath eternal Death and Hell Thirdly Consider that these divine Treasures will afford you reall comforts in the dark cloudy showry daies of adversity yea in the saddest condition whereas all those sublâ—nary injoyments comforts and contentments which the worldly minded in their prosperity do so much admire delight and so eagerly pursue if you seek to them when you are afflicted tempted or dejected for relief deliverance or consolation will answer you as the * 2 Kings 26. 27. King of Israel did that distressed woman in the Famine of Samaria when she cryed to him as he passed by Help my Lord O King If the Lord do not help thee said he whence shall I help thee Riches will answer it is not in me to succour solace or save you Honour power pleasure c. will answer too nor in us For all we cannot make or give you an healing plaister for your hurt We cannot cure the wound which the fiery Serpent of sin hath made in your Consciences nor take out its painfull deadly sting We can neither make your peace with the Lord shield you from his mortall arrows interest you in his tender mercies procure the yearning bowels nor purchase the precious bloud of Jesus Christ to sanctifie or save to cure or comfort you Thus and no otherwise will they answer own befriend and bestead all those in the day of their visitation that have made earth their Heaven Honour their Idoll Opulency their Deity the World their God and Greatness their Happiness Fourthly Consider that you may have a Confluence of all temporall blessings and yet be both hated and Cursed of God You may have all the good things of this Life and yet be bad men You may enjoy the world and yet want Christ and so be truely eternally wretched undone ruined for all that Quid enim prodest si omnia habes eum tamen qui omnia dedit non habere 'T is not lucre but losse 't is not wealth but wants yea beggerie to have all the world from God if that God who made the World and gives us all things be not our God But if you have these spirituall treasures then you will enjoy Christ and with him all things * Rom. 8. 32. Will he who hath freely given us gold denie us clay Will he who hath bestowed pearls upon us refuse to grant pebbles to us Will he who hath cloathed us with Robes denie us Raggs will he who hath given us Diamonds denie us dust or dirt No * 1 Cor. 21. 22. 33. no do but read that great Charter of all true Christians which like the Laws of the Medes and Persians will never be altered nor repealed and there in Golden Letters you may run and read the portion priviledges and inheritance of every true beleever All is yours saith that great Apostle whether Paul or Apollo or Cephas or the World or Life or Death or things present or things to come all are yours and you are Christs and Christ is Gods So that every heavenly minded Christian as well as a holy Corinthian having a deed of Gift made to him by God written with Christs bloud sealed by his holy Spirit and witnessed by his faithful Servant pious and blessed St. Paul of such precious inestimable Riches may truly contemningly say to the World when she Courts him to imbrace covet love Idolize her and saies as the Divell did to Christ when he tempted him to worship him All these things will I give thee sugred pleasures gaudie riches glittering pomp swelling studied titles downâ—e ease rosie delights dazling Majestâ—e c. as * Dan. 5. 17. Daniel did to Belshazzer when he promised him Riches honour and promotion to interpret his Dreams Let thy gifts be to thy self and give thy Rewards to another And as †Genes 33. 9. Esau did to his Brother Jacob when he tendred his present to him I have enough keep that thou hast thy self For how can they want any thing whose Husband is not only kind loving and faithful but also both the Lord and Heir of all things and whose Father the God of truth hath promised to give to his Sons Wife every sincere Christian for a Dower or Jointure both * Psalm 84. 11 Grace Glorie and every good thing Lastly Consider that an holy greecinesse and covetousnesse after these ever enduring treasures these best gifts an indefatigable diligence to attain them a restlesse care for them and the setting of your hearts the fixing of your affections intirely upon them is both the best and surest way to provide not only for your selves but for your posteritie also For if God be your Father he will be your Childrens Guardian he will take the charge of them and care for them so that they shall neither * Psalm 37 25 want nor be wronged since the Lord is not only able but willing to protect and supply them And it 's a truth equally bright and comfortable that the Children of religious Parents who have had no other inheritance portions or legacies but their faithful prayers holy Counsells and pious Examples to settle upon them or be queath unto them to live upon and to set up withall in the World have yet prospered come to honour and been blest with both plentie and felicitie whereas the off-spring of the wicked who have been left heirs to very vast summs of money and great estates have come to a morsell of Bread by reason of Gods either secret or visible but alwaies most just curse upon what they enjoy for either their own or the sins of their fore-fathers in wickedly getting unlawfully keeping or sinfully abusing and mispending of them Male parta male et cito dilabuntur Besides Injusta lucra breves habent voluptates longos autem dolores The momentanie pleasures of unjust Gaine will be imbittered and punished with eternall pains and sorrows The Prayer O LORD so desirous art thou to save and so unwilling to destroy the miserable undone because
wicked and rebellious Children of Adam whose Life on Earth is both a Warfare and a wayfare a Fight and a voyage that thou hast both provided them a Magazine and set them up great yea glorious Land-marks The Holy Scriptures to furnish them with Weapons to subdue all their Enenemies And also to afford them Light and to give them Direction whereby they may safely saile by those Shelves and Quick-sands that threaten to ruine and swallow up their Souls in their passage to eternity And further as one of the greatest and most mischievous of them all hast in love to their Souls acquainted them with the danger mischief and misery of Avarice that so they may both fear avoid decline and escape that Soul-wracking Soul-ruining Rock Blessed God add one Link more I beseech thee to the long the precious Chain of thy free Love and rich immerited Mercy Give Christians hearts I pray thee to hate Covetousnesse Let not their Affections O Lord be riveted to earthly things Let them not set up Gold or goods in their minds above their good God Let them not sinfully love or seek that here which will either leave or betray them when they come to lye under black and sad Providences under the burden anguish trouble and terrours of a wakened Conscience and the affrighting confounding Arrest of Death Give them Grace O Lord to covet the best Gifts and then the best of Gifts Jesus Christ that reall Indie wherein all the most precious I never-failing Mines of Saving Grace heavenly Blessings spiritual Joyes and Comforts everlasting Treasures purest sweetest pleasures highest Honoures and eternal Felicity are to be found and gotten will be given unto them Let them O Lord make Christ their All and then they will be sure to want nothing Let all their fresh springs be in thee and then dry and broken Cisterns Creature-comforts will neither deceive nor destroy them And let all O Lord that enjoy the Gospel of Jesus Christ both remember and consider with timely Care and Fear that covetous Persons are not written in the Book of Life and enrolled in Heaven but that they are Registred Listed and put by the Lord into that black Catalogue and Muster-roll of hainous Sinners and odious Idolaters whose souls shall never enter into Gods rest Kingdome and Glory Amen Avaritia Averni est porta pietatis Gangraena Honestatis Tinea Mors Animae IX Of Pleasure IT s an Itch that overspreads all the senses till it grow an incurable disease A hand which tickles us like Trouts to our ruine A Tarantula that stings men so as to make them die laughing It deprives us of our Palats so that we cannot tast any sweetnesse in the duties of holinesse and service of God It 's pleasing but dangerous Opium to the soul and hath a Sirent tongue wherewith it sings such Melodious Lullabies unto it that at length the heart is laid down by it so fast asleep in the Cradle of security that nothing but either the thunder of threatning or the lightning of flaming wrath and scorching anger or the fire of Hell flashing in the very face of Conscience can awaken it * All sublunary delights pleasures and contentments Gustata magis quam potata delectant Cicer. Tusc lib. 2. The top of the cup is honey but the bottome Gall. It at our first acquaintance with us smiles upon us and bids us welcome but afterwards it scourges us with Scorpions By it men and women a Hackwel Apolog p. 458. like the Jesters of Heliogabalus are smothered with violets and buried under Roses a bitter sweet death Voluptuous persons like the b Sr. Anthony Shirlies relation Kings of Persia doe Hauke at Butterflies with Sparrows their lusts make them pursue vanities They are like the c Howel in the Life of Lewis 3. French of whom one saith in regard of their Inconsideratenesse that they are Animalta sine praeterito futuro Creatures that have no respect either to time past or time to come When they have tired glutted and turned the edge of their lusts by a full and free injoyment of their darling lushious delights and their foolish filthy pleasures they say of such a day or time as the d Burton melancholy Barbarous Prince did of that when he saw Julius Caesar and his gallant Romane Army that he had now seen the Gods and that it was the happiest day that ever he had in his life And as the Glutton did at a great feast sure there is no other Heaven but this They are like that Cardinal who said he would not give his part in Paris for his part in Paradise The Alpha of pleasures is mirth but the Omega mourning It 's a false fire an Ignis fatuus that lights leads and betraies those who follow it to danger dishonour destruction It 's a soft sweet pleasant Gale that fills the sails of mens corrupt affections and wasts them delightfully down the calm streams of carnall Joy and sensuall pleasures into the Mare mortuum of everlasting lamentation It 's like the Apples of Sodome very beautifull without when within there 's nothing but dust and rottennesse Like some pictures exceeding fair and amiable if look't upon one way but most ugly and deformed if beheld another way It hath a weight of lead on the one hand as well as a wing on the other a sting as well as a speckled skin And when best or sweetest it 's but honey and Aloes wine and water mixed together nay many times it stings the heart so painfully that even while smiles sit upon the * Prov. 14. 13. face sighs and sorrowes fill and pearch upon the spirit That very day saith Marcus Aurelius when I triumphed in Rome openly for my Victories my heart wept secretly Pleasure it strangles the soul with silken halters smothers it in a bed of down throws it from a Tower of Pearl stabs it with a Golden dagger kils it with a delicious banquet and drowns it in a Sea of Wine The infatuated Lovers of it are like e Speed Cro. p. 85. Domitian whose delight was to catch and kill flies Like f Hackwel Apolog p. 463. Nero who used to fish with golden hooks and nets drawn with purple coloured Lines for Gudgeons T is like Diogenes his laqueus melleus delightful but deadly A voluptuous person is an Aetna alwaies burning within with foolish and filthy desires and often flaming out in Acts of impurity beastialitie impiety Hee 's an Israelite dying with Quailes in his mouth Pleasure it 's like a Favourite both a summe and a cypher in a very little time all and nothing she serves and deludes her Lovers as t is said the Devill hath done some witches glving them shining leaves instead of reall Gold and proves an empty cloud instead of a Juno to those that embrace her She decoys men into snares and dangers and instead of a pleasant walk she proves at last a deep pit and a narrow
Socrates did of his enemies Anitus and Melitus they may kill me but they cannot hurt me for he is like the Amiantus stone called the Asbest which t is said being cast into the fire seems forthwith to be all on a flame but being taken out shines more gloriously And like gold which put into fire is more pure and being cast into the water is most radiant Tribulation is to him as the enemies sword was to that souldier who being therewith wounded in his side was thereby cured of an Impostume which otherwise would have caused his death Adversity it is a Christians Topicks from whence he deduces Arguments to prove himself a * Prov. 13. 1â— Favourite in the Court of Heaven 'T is his Heraldry or Coat of Arms where by he is able to prove himself allyed to Christ and an Heir of Glory they being Bastards Esay 27. 9. not Sons who are not chastened of the Lord. Deus unicum tantum habet filium sine peccato nullum sine flagello It 's the †Physick that purgeth out the peccant dangerous humours of sin 't is a painfull but a health-bringing medicine Nulla remedia quae vulneribus adhibentur tam faciunt dolorem quam quae sunt salutaria saith the Orator Corrections like Plato's suppers are best the day after * A gale of groans and sighs a stream of tears accompanies us to the very gates of Heaven and there bids us farewell for ever M. Baxter A good mans drink is wormwood here for he must not expect two Heavens Delicatus es si hic gauderevelis cum seculo postea regnare cum Christo Since they that would reap in joy must sow in tears they must expect both clouds and showres †1 Thess c. 3. v. 3â— it being the lot portion and condition of all Gods people to have foul weather and foul way in their Journey towards their everlasting home Heaven c Rainold Orat p 401. Cyrus olim suos Persas libertatis dulce dinem ex labore servitutis docuisse traditur * Si mihi tranquilla placata omnia faissent incredibili qua nunc fâ—uor laetitiae voluptate caruissem Cicer. post reditum Misery gives a sweet relish to mercy and therefore God will have his people to be slaves in Egypt before he makes them free denisons of Canaan * Afflictions are the snuffers wherewith God makes his people to burn and shine more bright Affliction 't is the Morter in which a Child of God is beaten and bruised to make his graces like sweet spices smell more fragrantly Afflictio piorum non est tam poenae criminis quam examen virtutis For Gods sharpest dealings and severest dispensations towards his children are corrections not judgments chastisements but not punishments or if they be punishments they are yet poenae emendatoriae non interfectoriae reforming not consuming temporall not eternall sin-killing but not soul-killing punishments Affliction 't is the Sive wherewith God sifts and as it were dresseth them to make them fit grain to be gathered into his Garner 'T is the workhouse in which he frameth his Servants like to his Son 'T is the mould wherein God casts his own people and forms Jesus Christ in them 'T is the Mint-house wherein the Lord stampeth his own Image upon them with this superscription Holinesse to the Lord. d There is no greater sign of damnation then to lie in sin and evill unpunished of God saith blessed Mr. Bradford 'T is the mark livery Cognizance of the friends sheep and servants of Christ 'T is a Rod like †1 Sam. 14. 27. Janathans with honey at the end of it whereby mens eyes are enlightned to behold their misery most men and women being too like the Mole who they say is blind till a little before her death but then see 's * Job 36. 8 9. If they be bound in fetters and be holden in the cords of affliction then God sheweth them their work and their transgressions that they have exceeded saith Elihu Manasses could not see his sins so as to be humble for them and to repent of them till affliction had opened his eyes Adversity 't is the Grave of sin and the Womb of Grace 'T is like d Rainold Orat p. 394. the picture of Diana in Chios which frowns when you come to it and smiles when you go from it * Nihil mihi videtur infeliciâ—s eo cui nunquam aliquid â—venit adversi Demetrius Demetrius an Heathen accounted it a great unhappinesse that he had no misfortune And not without just cause since prosperity is usually the mother and fore-runner of iniquity security * Prov. 1. 32. misery e Plutarch Apothegm When Philip King of Macedon had tidings brought unto him of many worthy and prosperous exploits atchieved all together in one and the same day he cryed out O fortune work me but some small displeasure I beseech thee for these so many blessed good turns f Camerar lib. 1 p. 38. And when Amasis King of Egypt heard of Polycrates his happinesse he wrote to him saying I have thy great felicity in suspicion And afterwards said that he feared he should be forced to sorrow and lamentation because of this his friend overwhelmed with misery And that he feared came to passe for not long after Polycrates was hanged upon a Gibbet by the Command of Oraetes the Lieutenant of Cyrus * Miserum te judico quod runquam fuisti miser Seneca de divin providentia Impunity is the greatest infelicitie * Prov. 2. 1â— prosperous wickednesse being the usuall Harbinger of grievous calamities for God is most angry at the wicked when he seems because he doth not punish them to be pleased with them Amongst men there is et misericordia punienâ— crudelitas parcens Witnesse Tiberius g Suetonius vita Tyberii who constrained them to live who were willing to dye And h Camerar lib. 5. p. 334. Caligula whose Command to the bloudy Executioner of his cruelties was Ita feri ut mori se sentiat strike so as he may feel Death And when a poor prisoner said to Tiberius I beseech your Majesty that I may dye he answered him thou art not yet in my favour So the Lord but most justly punisheth his enemies by sparing wounds by not striking and plagues them by prospering of them For Adversity with Gods mercy is true felicity but prosperity with Gods wrath is reall misery Paul in a Dungeon was happily miserable when Nero upon a Throne was miserably happy The way to Canaan for the Israelites lay through a howling desert Affliction is the Kings great road to Heaven i Don Anthony de Guevara Dial of Princes Fol. 28. Bias amongst others ordained this Law That none should be a Prince of the Perinenses but he that had been brought up ten years in the Warres Because saith he he alone doth know how
thinks I hear as it were some sweet instrument of Musick sounding in my ears Job 34. 29. Thus when God gives quietnesse who then can make troubles when he comforts speaks peace and gives Joy to his people who or what can make them sad unhappy or disconsolate It 's true Gods jewells may yea often do lye in a black Cabinet in a mournful condition for a time yet like diamonds in a dark night they do then sparkle and give a resplendent lustre for their graces like Sun-beams dart and shine through the thickest clouds of grief and misery Like Ballâ— they rise the higher by being stricken down with the hand of Correction And although they be loaden or pressed with a laden a very ponderous burden of inward or outward troubles yet they make good that impresse which the noble family of the Columni gave when they were banished by Pope Alexander the 6th A bending branch with this inscription Flecti potest frangi non potest They are Oaks proud stubborn obdurate sinners not Osiers meek humble penitent Saints that are torn blasted and consumed by Thunder and lightning by judgments vengeance and fiery wrath from Heaven The worst evills that befall them cannot hurt them n Marsil Ficin Epistolar lib. 4. Mala non patitur nisi malus And which is more they do them good for God takes the venome out of them and so makes them not only safe but healthfull also and necessary for them Christians therefore should yea must be Not only patient submissive and contented under chastisements saying with him ut fiat voluntas Domini quotidie oramus cum facta est voluntas Domini feramus But Joyfull also as the blessed Apostles and those that were spoyled for the name of Christ were when for a good cause a good conscience a good God and a gracious Saviour they were both scourged and plundered saying with another Placent mihi dolores per quos nihil in mundo placet They should be thankfull and say with Iob when all the beautifull and pleasant plumes of riches honour prosperity health and and his dearest creature-comforts were pluckt away from him by the just yet mercyfull hand of God but violent and unjust hands of cruell enemies who stript and left him naked and distressed * Job 1. 28. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Christians should labour to be soundly humbled for the * Lamen 3. 2â— 30. provoking procuring cause of all their sorrows and sufferings their transgressions They should seriously consider that there are two Oceans to drown those Egyptians their sins in Gods wonderfull mercy and the infinite merits of Jesus Christ and so by a lively faith keep their souls both from despairing and mourning They should by servent prayer seek to get the afflicting hand of God sanctified unto them that so his Rod as well as his Staffe may comfort them They must not only clear and justifie God in his severest dispensations towards them bat also acknowledge his mercy in that he doth but whip them with a rod whereas they have deserved to be scourged with Scorpions and because he doth lay but the little finger of his displeasure upon them whereas he might justly have smitten them with the hand of his wrath Christians must resolve to swallow that poyson no more to run into that fire no more that is to commit those crimes and iniquities no more which did so much indanger the lives of their Souls and whereby they did so much both dishonour and displease the Lord. They must be sure when they come safe to land * Psalm 76. 11 10. to perform those vows and promises which they made to God when they were tossed and distressed in the Sea of adversity Lastly Gods people must adore and admire the wisedome and goodnesse of that God who both can and doth make the Lyon of affliction to afford and give the honey of spirituall consolation and the sweet meat of saving grace to the souls of his people it being a most sadly experimented truth that if man should enjoy a Paradise all his dayes in this World he would then seek no further but sit down contented and say of it as Peter once did of Mount Tabor It 's good for me to be here Because that if our lives be not made bitter and sowr by tribulations neither Holynesse Christ nor Heaven will be either dear or desirable to our souls And though the Lord do afflict his Children yet the sharpest the longest calamities and sorrows which they can possibly endure on this side their graves are but a drop a moment of pain distresse trouble misery and griefe to that Ocean of Joy and eternity of Blisse which they shall surely enjoy after their death 2 Corinth 4. 17. * Our light afflictions which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternall weight of glory â— â—ips Epist 63. saith blessed Paul O felices inter omnes miserias hoc uno Christiani quod via nobis per haec ad aliam vitam in qua nec gaudiorum nec modum ullum esse scimus nec finem Adversity sanctyfied is a sharp but a sure way to felicity and glory Like honey it both purgeth and heales a Christian And as affliction hath a sting wherewith it pains and wounds so like that Serpent the Scorpion such is the compassionate goodnesse of the Lord it hath also in its own Bowels an antidote wherewith it doth both ease preserve and cure a Child of God and so becomes his Balsam not his Bane The Prayer O LORD thou art both Wisdome Love and Goodnesse it self 'T is pity therefore as well as anger compassion as well as indignation that moves thee to strike chasten frown upon and afflict thy people Thou knowest that even the best and most dutifull of all thy children are apt to become wilde wanton forgetfull stubborn unthankfull sickly and diseased if thou lay up thy rod and feed them fat with Mercies And thou seest that prosperity makes them to gather dust and to grow both mouldy and rusty but that Adversity makes and keeps them faire bright and clean O let the consideration therefore of thine infinite Wisdome make us quietly willingly contentedly silently to submit unto all thine angry dispensations to bear thine indignation and to kisse thy correcting Hand And let O Lord the serious meditation of thy wonderfull Love and Goodnesse make us both joyful and thankfull for those sharp but safe yea necessary Corrosivâ—s the soundest hearts having some proud flesh in them and for those painfull but purgative healing comfortable potions and pledges of thy fatherly care and tender compassions towards us Let us all when we are afflicted consider and remember that it 's for sinne we suffer and that our transgressions are the source of our punishments that so when we are chastised for our faults we may not murmur but mourn repine but repent nor be peevish but patient submissive
into their hearts by the preaching of thy Word Let not Christians spill the potion or throw away the plaister that should heal and cure their sin-diseased Sin-wounded Souls by neglecting or despising this Soul-converting and this Christ-conveying Ordinance But grant that we may both love prize and hunger after this Heavenly Manna thy word preached that so our souls may not be famished but fed and nourished unto eternall Life Grant this for Jesus Christ his sake Amen Evangelii praedicatio eternae est vitae promulgatio Pietatis semen virtutis pabulum consolationis vehiculum Cordis fulcrum Imber gratiae pharmacon Animae Mortuis tuba caecis Lux Dux errantibus Titubantibus baculus esurientibus cibuâ— ignorantibus fons Scientiae Oceanus gaudii parens Fidei XX. Of godly learned and of ungodly unlearned Ministers PIous Ministers they are the brightest stars in the firmament of the Church a Tully Diis proximi sunt Deorum sacerdotes They are the pillars on which it standeth The Spokesmen that wooe the soul with heavenly Rhetorique that court it with Divine Oratory to love Christ and the paranymphs that lead it to marry him They are Celestiall Ambassadors sent by the Lord Jesus to treat with sinners and to conclude an everlasting peace betwixt him and them They are the chariots horsemen watchmen and as Saint Ambrose was said to be of Millaine et ornamenta munimenta urbis ecclesiae The beauty safety blessing honour and bulwarks both of the Nation Cities Towns and places where thâ—y live b Dr. Arrowsmith Tact. Sa. Nequit Hippo devastari ante obitum Augustini nec ante obitum Parei Heidelberga c Dr. Stoughton Like the heavens they enlighten comfort fructifie that Microcosme Man with their heat light influence with the light of saving knowledge the heat of well grounded well guided zeal and the influence of an exemplary pious conversation without which Ministers are like those Physitians that give an Antidote with one hand to their patients their people and poyson with the other And at best they are but like that * Act. 27. 22. Ship wherein St. Paul was that perished it self though it saved others * Such Ministers are like Cooks that labor and sweat to dress meat for others but eate none of it themselves Or those carpenters that built the Ark wherein Noah his family were preserved and yet themselves were drowned in the deluge When they are wicked that may be said of them which was objected by Cato unto Tiberius concerning the Dalmatian commotions scl d Camden Annal. of Q. Elizabeth That their flocks are committed not to shepherds but Wolves e Such Ministers are praedatores non praedicatores seductores non doctores peculatores non speculatores raptores non pastores For such men do not watch but worrey they do not teach but tear they do not feed but kill and flay their sheep Ah Lord how black and terrible will that Bil of inditement appear which wil be both preferred found at that great assize the day of Judgment against such Ministers as do either poyson or pine their flocks That either kill them as Henry the first King of France is said to be murdered with consecrated wine with the deadly flesh-pleasing muskadine of erroneous or Heretical doctrins principles or famish them for want of the sincere milk of the word through their ignorance or idleness or lead them out of the narrow way of life and not only incourage and perswade them to but harden them in sin by their profaneness worldliness * Si quid injungere inferiorive lis id prius in te ac tu os si ipse stotueris facilius omnes obedientes habebis Liu. l. 26. vitious lives scandalous examples Certainly all such blind seducing dumb ungodly Ministers will inevitably irrecoverably without repentance and reformation sink under the insupportable weight of the bloud ruine and destruction of their wandering miscarrying and everlastingly undone people to the very bottome of Hell O Lord let them fear it here that they may not feel it hereafter There was as I have read a Woman in England who believed there was no God A Minister came to her to convince her and demanding of her how she became an Atheist she answered That the very first thing which caused her to question the Deity was the seeing of himself to live so wickedly for saies she I know you to be a Learned man and a good Preacher and the beholding you to live so impiously to be a Swearer a Lyar a Drunkard and a Profaner of the Sabbath this made me to question whether there was a God in Heaven or no seeing he did let you run on in your wickednesse still unpunished Methinks this sad story should make the hearts eyes and and ears of all scandalous ungodly Ministers to bleed weep and tingle that either do or shall know read or hear of and I heartily beseech the Lord it may But this is not all For besides the danger and misery to which they render their own souls obnoxious by their wickednesse they do also both bring a great * Thou therefore that teachest another teachest not thou thy self Thou that preachest a man should not steal dost thou steal 1 Rom 2. 21. 22 24. Turpe est doctori cum culpa redarguit ipsum scandall upon the Gospell and give their people just cause to complain of them for being a heavy burden and a grievous scourge unto them and most deservedly to account them the unworthiest men in the world That saying of Seneca is most true here Nullos pejus mereri de omnibus mortalibus quam qui aliter vivunt quam vivendum praecipiunt They are also wens and spots upon the fair face and beautifull body of the Ministery and which is yet more ignorant profane bad pastors are the very worst of men f Dr. Arrowsmith Tact. Sa. Perussima creaturarum visibilium est homo degener pessimus hominum pseudo-Christianus Christianorum vero pessimus nequam verbi Minister They live without Love honour and doing good and they dye without comfort g Gospell Ministers should resolve to do like him who said Ita literarum illud Nectar hauriam ita auditores mâ—os instruam tanquam parum victurus ita vivam tanquam semper docturus Pâ—tean Orat. He alone said that Tyrant Phalaris may be called happy of whom it may be truly said he gave good Doctrines to live and left a good example to dye Facile est monere said Thales that 's but the body pie vivere that's very difficult but it 's the soul of a true Gospell Minister Because the way for Ministers to do good is to be good Nisi praestes quod praedicas mendacium non evangelium videbitur It 's no peculiar conceit but a matter of sound consequence that all duties are by so much the better performed by how much the men are more religious from whose
false and wicked principles and in hardening them by their examples counsels and doctrines whom they have caused to wander from the way of truth and life Lastly to name no more if God permit such men to get power into their hands they do often if not alwaies persecute with extreamest rigour and remorselesse cruelty those of contrary Judgments though they be most innocent Orthodox and holy Witnesse those scarlet Theaters on which they acted in Germany which are and will be crimson monuments of their fury tyranny and impiety till time shall be no more The Church of God in St. Augustines time before his conversion used to pray Ab Augustini logica libera nos Domine And for my part I am fully perswaded that it is the Duty of Gods people heartily and fervently to joine togâ—ther in this Petition to the Lord From a toleration of an indulgence to or a connivence at all or any men that will to make themselves ministers and preachers Good Lord deliver us Because it will be high time for Religion to make her Will for the Gospell to take shipping to land in another Land and for Christians to provide an Arke to save themselves from perishing either in a deluge of superstition profanenesse Atheisme or else in a Red sea of persecution when it may be truly said of such men g When Galba came first to the Empire there was great confusion and licentiousnesse in the State whereupon a Senator said in full Senate It were better to live where nothing is lawfuâ—l then where all things are lawful Leigh Choice Observat p. 120. Quod libet id licet his c. The Jewes did highly esteem accounting barrennesse a curse and the Romanes did liberally reward those parents who had many Children h Camerar lib. 6. p. 415. And t is said that the chief reason why the Electors chose Rodolph Emperor of Germany was his plenteous off-spring So the Lord doth also both love honour and crown those spirituall fathers pious and rightly ordained Ministers that beget with the immortall seed of the word quickened by the spirit of life Sons and Daughters unto God for they shall * Dan. 12. 3. shine for ever and ever in the firmament of Glory And he doth blesse their labours But as for these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i Luther super Epist ad Galatas see also Jerem 23. 32. Nunquam fortunat Deus laborom eorum qui non sunt vocati quanquam quaedam salutaria afferunt tamen nihil aedificant saith Luther k Perphyr in â—jus vita Pythagoras when any of his Scholars deserted his Schoole in eorum usitatis sedibus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 posuisse dicitur quo significaret eos moraliter obiisse When those who have formerly professed themselves to be the Scholars and Disciples of Christ doe not only desert his School the Temple but also inveigh against and abandon both his ordinances and Ministers their spirituall teachers well may Christians set their Coffins in their seats for it 's much to be feared that they are spiritually departed and dead but however t is most certaine that they are fallen into a dangerous swoon of Apostasie I shall therefore conclude with these hearty and fervent petitions The Prayer EIther convince revive convert and reclaime all such O Lord and suffer them not is keep any longer a splint in their wounds to hinder their cure by adding l Mallâ—â— sâ—mpâ—r errarc quam semel errasse vide i. obstinacy to errouâ— perseverance in evill to ignorance impiety to iniquity or else never suffer most gracious God the wall of thy vineyard Church-Government according to the pattern in the Mount thine own Word and Will to be broken down by fraud or force for Foxes or wild Bores * Pictos agnos adorant vivos devorant Jesuits Apostates Hypocrites Persecutors seducers and temporizers to have free ingresse into it to root up the Vines therein or to pull off the Grapes thereof Nor the door of Christs Garden to be thrown off of those hinges orders and Ordination by the hands of power or policy for wild beasts Hereticks and popish Priests to enter therein to tread down thy Roses and Lillies or to crop or kill thy best fruit-trees Godly Ministers and truly gracious Christians Nor that Crystall pure sweet healing Fountain that spirituall bath and Spaw which cures all the maladies and diseases of the Soul in that Garden the Holy Scriptures to be muddyed defiled corrupted or poysoned by those nor any other unwashed diseased beleapered invenâ—â—d hands or feet till the stream of time shall fall into and lose it self in the boundlesse Ocean of Eternity m Platâ—â— Timeo And since there are two diseases of the Soul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 madnesse and ignorance and that by wofull experience it 's found that the most of these Leaders and teachers and also their Favourites and followers do labour under and are distempered either with both or one of them be pleasâ—d blessed God who art the great and good Physitian of the Soul and dost see their waies either to heal them by giving repentance to them and making them wise to Salvation or else according to thine own * 2 Tim. 3. 9. promise let their folly be made known to all men and let them proceed no further that so the banks of truth and piety may never be broken down nor over-flowed by the furious filthy and deadly streams of error idolatry heresie and profanenesse And Lastly since Distraction is the inlet of Destruction Division of Desolation to the greatest richest most flourishing and most prosperous Nation For he that is Wisdome it self Jesus * Matth. 12. 15. Christ hath told us so and the spirit of Truth hath also assured us that their †â—ames 3. 14 â—5 Wisdome who love contention and delight in strife is earthly sensuall devilish So that carnall policy makes such men like Children to stand upon their heads and to kick with their heels against Heaven and also seriously cunningly and unweariedly both to contrive plot and endeavour their own as well as others ruine witnesse Haman Absalom and many others Let O Lord piety for this is the best yea the only reall prudence and policy sit at the Helme of that Royall and impregnable Ship thy truly catholick Church and of this sinfull shaking divided unsetled reeling and rebellious Nation in particular once a beautiful Rachel but since a blear-ey'd Leah once a fair and lovely Sarah but since a foul and leprous Miriam yet still blessed be thy Name a true member thereof Let truth and righteousnesse as her hands guide and steer her by the Compasse of thy Holy Word Let O Lord peace and unity be her sailes and let the sweet and pleasant Gales of brotherly lâ—ve tranquillity and Christian charity fill them Let whatever Jonas whatever abomination or accursed thing it is that raises the overturning Tempests of thy wrath and fury
and some continue thereon untill they be full ripe by old age and then drop down into their graves Man hath as it were two Sepulchres One in the warm belly of his naturall Mother and the other in the cold Bowels of the common Mother of all both men and women the Earth By life he is put into a Gaole by Death into a Dungeon So soon as we are born we cry as if because we then want language to speak them our eyes did weep elegies and by those tears at once prognosticate expresse and lament our future troubles sorrowes sufferings Funerals The Mexicanes thus salute their Infants coming out of the Womb Infant thou art come into the World to suffer endure suffer and hold thy peace Our Mothers are living Tombs to us before our birth and so soon as ever we do but peep or step into the world every thing not only mindeth us of but also preacheth and readeth Sermons Lectures and Lessons to us of our departure out of it again For what are our swadling cloaths but winding sheets What are our cradles but Coffins What is the ringing of the Bell before our being Christened but an antedated passing peal What are those arms which carry us to Church to be baptized but a Biere What doth our being first undrest signifie but the putting off of our mortality What is our being layd down to sleep but an embleme of our Buriall And what is our first sleep but the Image and elder Brother of Death Life 't is a weak twig and a slender thread upon which fraile man hangeth over both his Grave and Hell 'T is a Tragae-Comedie whose scenes are health sicknesse strength weaknesse joy sorrow mirth and mourning The Prologue tears the Epilogue groans a Rainold Orat 185. Romani duas angorum voluptatum deas Angerioniam Volupiam ita colebant ut Angeroniae pontifices in sacello Volupiae et Angeroniae simulacrum in ara Volupiae collocarent quo significarent angores voluptatibus dolorem gaudiis humana vita semper temerari In this world there is no day without clouds The door of this naturall life is alwaies turning upon the hinges of mutability and variety of conditions Winter Summer Autumne Spring prosperity adversity sadnesse gladnesse black and white daies b Godwin Rom. Antiq. as the Romanes distinguished them make chequer-work in our lives Our complexions our outward estate and conditions are sometimes fair and ruddy with joy comforts mercies and sometimes they are black wrinkled pale and wan with sorrows crosses and miseries Man hath neither * Psalm 102. 11. Job 14. 2. Solstice nor rest here and therefore the Romanes built the Temple of Quies without the City to signifie that the lower Region of this Life is subject unto and disquieted with storms and showres * Lacrymae nobis decrunt antequam causae dolendi Sencca de brevitate vitae troubles and afflictions The Womb of Life is alwaies pregnant with both consolations and tribulations which struggle therein and the one as * Genes 25. 26. Jacob did Esau usually taketh the other by the heel c Plin. Secund Panegy ad Trajan Habet enim has vices conditie mortalium ut adversa ex secundis ex adversis secunda nascerentur Like ship-boys we stand sometimes upon the top of the mast of Prosperity and sometimes we are put down underâ— deck by Adversity Our life is a Sea wherein these tides are alwaies ebbing and flowing Dolor voluptas se invicem succedunt No man was ever yet so happy as to injoy all those mercies which the hand of God hath liberally scattered and divided amongst all men Nor was there ever yet any man so miserable but he had some comforts And though the line of calamity be often if not ordinarily to the godly longer then that of felicity in this Life yet it will be but very short even in his own judgment that is most miserable if it be measured or compared with the endlesse line of eternity And this consideration will make the waters of Marah sweet to a Child of God Our Life is an Irish a troubled dangerous tempestuous Ocean we take Shipping at our Birth with tears we â—ail over it with care fear sorrow and we land at the port of Death with sighs sadnesse unwillingnesse The thread of Life is so short and rotten that it is often yea alas too often spun out by the wheele and broken off by the hand of providence before it leads us out of the Labyrinths and maze of sin and misery many millions being carryed to their graves before they consider why or for what they came out of the Womb into the world For they do not consider that Man was not made and born to imbase his Soul with the allay of sin which alone renders it capable and maketh it fit to receive the impressions of temptations and all reall evills To fewell and feed his filthy Lusts or to gratifie and comply with his vile and vain desires To burn himself in the fire of uncleannesse anger or malice or to drown himself in the waters of drunkennesse and intemperance To choak himself in the dirty puddles and muddy Fennes of sensuality and Epicurisme To lye groveling upon or to spend his time in rooting in the earth by wilfully diseasing his Soul with the falling-sicknesse of Avarice or to entertain a dumb Devill into his heart not only to hinder but disable him from either praying to the Lord for grace and pardon of sin or praising him for his great and undeserved mercies And yet it 's too true that with the most of these devills some men and women are possessed and the most with some of them 'T is most certain that God did not give mans soal brave wings to pursue the poor quarrey of pleasure profit and honour or to fly unto hell but that by holy meditations and a religious conversation it should with them mount up to Heaven The Lord both gives us our beings and continueth us in them to trust love serve obey honour and delight in him He hath assured us we must dye and yet concealed from us how long we shall live that so we might every day and every where expect death and by a holy life and faith in Christ escape the torments of an everlasting death in hell We read of many that had alwaies some memento's of their Originall by them Agathocles who was but the Son of a Potter when he became a King had earthen pots brought up and set in his Presence chamber to immind him of his low extraction d Camerar lib. 1. p. 48. Willigis from a base condition for he was but the Son of a Carter being advanced to so high a dignity as to be made Arch-bishop of Ments caused these following words to be written in great Letters in his Lodging Chamber Willigis Willigis remember from whence thou camest And certainly if Men and Women even the most Royal
inauguration in Constantinople had severall sorts of stone presented to them by a Mason out of which they was to choose one to make them a Tomb to be buryed in o Joseph of Arimathea had his Tomb in a Garden and so had their great men also Mat. 27 60. 2 Kings 21. 18. The Jewes had their Sepulchers in their Gardens that so in the the midst of their delights they might remember their mortality And others have had a Deaths head served up to their Tables that they might in that perspicuous mortifying glasse behold their own frailty in the midst of their mirth pleasures jollity And certainly serious frequent and pious meditation of death will beget in us a vigilant continual expectation of death expectation of it will p Vivere in in tota vita discendum est Quod magis mirum est in tota vita dissendam est mori Seneca de brevitate vita ad Paulinam perswade and spurre us on to preparation for it so that we shall be able not only to look it in the face with comfort but triumphingly to say O Death where is thy sting c. It being nothing to such as have the Lamps of their Souls filled with saving Grace and their Garments washed white in the bloud of the Lamb but the Death and period of all their sins sorrows fears dangers troubles enemies yea and of death it self Mors vita duello conflixere mirando Rex mortuus regnat vivuâ— In hoc duello mors et vita in arenam descenderunt sed tandem vicit vita et gloriose exiit e sepulcro de morte triumphans Irrideamus ergo mortem cum Apostolo dicamâ—s Vbi mors victoria For q Quid ipsa mors quam timemus g Lips Epist p. 75. Requies gaudium et vera vita aut siquid in ea mali malis tantum What is that death which we so much fear and at the very name whereof we tremble 'T is rest joy and life or if there be any evill in it 't is only so to those that are evill And indeed 't is very sad yea wofull to all ungracious persons who have this punishment In dying they forget themselves because in their life time they forgat God But besides this grievous punishment and heavy judgment most justly inflicted by the Lord upon them because when he came to them in their health prosperity life and offered them mercy they refused with equall madnesse and cruelty to their own souls to hear and imbrace the tenders of love and salvation when their Life is lost and ended all hope comfort help all means of Grace and seasons of mercy all possibility of pardon together with the society of the Glorious Angels and glorified Saints the beatificall vision and blessed fruition of the thrice blessed Trinity and those ineffable pleasures which are prepared for all that love God will then be lost for ever Deus amissus est mors animae anima amissa est mors corporis The Death of the body is but the body of death therefore disce non metuendum existimare quae metuenda finit But the death of the Soul the losse of God and his favour is the Soul of Death Fear therefore by sin to provoke that God who can and for sin unrepented of and continued in will inflict eternal death both upon the body and soul and make all impenitent transgressors ever living objects of his never-dying wrath I shall conclude all with presenting and commending the Lord Gabriel Simeons Glasse to your view and perusall Beauty is deceitful money flyeth away Rule-bearing is odious victory doubtfull peace fraudulent old age miserable the fame of wisdome everlasting Life short death to the Godly * Mark the perfect man behold the upright for the end of that man is peace happy Psalm 37. 37 The Prayer O LORD Man hath but one Door to let him into the World by Life but there are a thousand Posterns Wickets and Passages to let him out of it by Death We are born both Mortall and Miserable O give us blessed God so to live that at the end of our daies we may be immortally happy we came into the World Sinners O grant that we may go out of it Saints We were unclean at our birth O let us be pure and holy at our dissolution The hand of every moment winds off some of the little clue of Life The string and plummet of our daies creep and descend every minute nearer and nearer to the ground our Graves The Sunne of this naturall Life never stands still but moves or rather flies from the East and morning of our birth and infancy to the South and noon of Youth and Manhood and then hastens to the West the evening of old Age. Grant therefore holy God that when this Sunne shall set in the night of Death our Soules may rise and shine with the Sunne of Righteousnesse in Glory That as we grow older we may grow holyer every day then other That we may passe the time of sojourning in these Tents of flesh in thy way and Fear that so the Conscience Evidence and Comfort of a wel-spent Life may both Antidote and Arme us against the Sting and Power of Death before it comes and free us from the Horreus and Misery of it when it doth come O let it be no Stranger to our thoughts and then it will be no terrour to our Hearts O let us get death into our mindes and that will put life into all our Actions O grant good God that our Lives may be pious and then our Death will be peaceable joyfull welcome unto us and precious in the sight of the Lord. And give us I beseech thee most mercifull Father some clusters of Grapes of the good Land of Canaan here even the Graces of thy holy Spirit and some fore-tasts of thy speciall Love in Christ while we continue in the Wildernesse of this World that when we die our Souls may enter into and for ever possesse the spirituall Canaan of Heaven Grant this O Lord for Jesus Christ his sake Amen Amen Diu vixit qui pie moritur Fructus est laboris finis operis placere melioribus FINIS Soli Deo Gloria THE CHARACTERS OF A True Beleever IN PARADOXES AND Seeming Contradictions AN ESSAY By THO. GODDARD Gent. Vetera legendo et metitando nova invenimus Quintil. Placere cupio prodesse precor laboro LONDON Printed by E. C. For Thomas Williams at the Bible in Litle-Brittain and William Thompson at Harborough in Leicestershire 1661. THE CHARACTERS OF A True Beleever In PARADOXES AND Seeming Contradictions 1. HE beleeveth that which he cannot comprehend because it is above reason That there are three distinct Persons in the Godhead yet but one God that God is the Father of Christ that the Holy Ghost proceedeth from them both and yet that they are all three Coeternall and but one in substance 2. He beleeveth that Christ who was
before all time and created the world was yet born in the fulnesse of time and became man in the world That he who fils both Heaven and earth and can neither be included nor excluded any where was shut up and confined within the narrow womb of a Virgin That he who is the Omnipotent and can do whatever pleaseth him could neither go nor stand That he who is Wisdome it self could not understand That he who is the Word could not speak That Christ was killed before he was alive and slain before he was born That he who is Almighty was held in the Arms and bound in the hands of a weak Woman That the Mother of Christ was both his Daughter Creature Spouse and a pure Virgin even after her Son was born And that if Jesus had not been slain for her from the beginning of the World Mary had not lived 3. A true beleever is both a Pebble and a Diamond a Pillar and a Troubler of the World He is both the honour and scorn the love envy and hatred of men In the Arithmetique of the wicked he standeth but for a Cypher but in the account of an holy God he is a Summe In the scales of the World he is drosse but in the Ballance of the Sanctuary Gold 4. A true Beleever is a merry mourner one cheerfully sorrowfull And as sometimes the clouds and Sun do rain and shine together So while Rivers of penitent griefe and tears spring up in his heart and run out at the floud-gates of his eyes celestiall beams of unknown joy comfort gladnesse dart upon irradiate and revive his dark troubled drooping Spirit 5. He riseth by falling Humiliation is his exaltation He goeth to Heaven by Hell And is never so high and precious in Gods eyes as when he is vilest and lowest in his own 6. A true Beleever is cured by sicknesse being never so well as when he fainteth is even ready to die of love for Christ Affliction is his physick Julip happinesse He is saved by ship-wrack landed by stormes and deeply rooted by winds and shakings 7. He beeleveth God to be most just and yet that the Lord from all eternity decreed that the innocent should be condemned and suffer to acquit the guilty And also that the greatest sinners should be saved by one should dye for sin and yet never committed any sin He beleeveth himself to be freely pardoned and yet knows that a price was paid for his redemption worth more then ten thousand Worlds He beleeves God to be most mercifull most loving and yet knows that God delivered up his own his only Son and suffered him to suffer not only the most bitter painfull and cruell but also the most shamefull Death And likewise that the Lord poured out upon him the fullest vials of his fiercest wrath and that all this was done endured and suffered for those who were both Enemies and Traytors to God and his Son 8. A true Beleever hateth all the World yet is no mans Enemy He is implacable yet without malice inexorable yet easy to be perswaded He prayeth for and heartily forgiveth his very Murderers His worst enemies are friends to him and do him good He sinneth least when he is most angry Taketh revenge on no body but himself And never pleaseth God more then when he is most offended and displeased with himself 9. A true Beleever is the most ambitious man in the World For nothing can satisfie or bound his aspiring mind but a Kingdome and Crown yet he is the most Loyall Subject and the greatest contemner of all sublunary things He wageth and maintaineth with courage resolution delight and constancy perpetuall Warrs and yet he is the greatest lover of peace lives in peace is the most quiet man and dies in peace He is victorious yea invincible yet fights without men against both men and Devills And though he be plundered beggered and lose all yet he groweth rich and great by wars without pay or pillage 10. He is born both alive and dead He dies twice and lives a threefold life of Nature Grace Glory He hath one resurrection before another after he is dead 11. He studieth with delight and diligence to know that which he is assured will both grieve and trouble him being known He is never so wise as when he knoweth himself to be a Fool. He is never so likely to get safe to shore as when he is most fearful of being cast away He is never beautifull untill he see and acknowledge himself to be ugly and deformed and the more he loaths himself the more God loves him 12. He is born of mean and base Parents and yet he is the only truly noble Man For he hath the Royallest bloud greatest alliances and relations highest titles choycest honours honourablest Attendants and the best estate of any man For God is his Father Christ is his Husband Heaven is his mansion Saints are his Brethren Angells are his Servants and Glory is his inheritance 13. A true Beleever is born both a Begger and an Heir He often lives poor yet is alwaies Rich and dies wealthy though without Lands money goods He keepeth his estate by sending it away and increaseth it by spending of it when others not only lessen but lose theirs by sparing and saving it And he taketh his treasure with him to his Grave and beyond it 14. He is never whole till he hath been broken He is never rightly throughly cured until he hath been deeply wounded He is never on earth more really happy then when he seemeth to be truly miserable Injuries are favours to him losses gain calamities mercies afflictions consolations The breaking of his bones setteth them and makes them both straight and strong 15. A true Beleever liveth in Heaven whilest he sojourns upon Earth he speaketh in company without being heard receives answers which no man can either intercept demurre or perceive enjoyes the best company though alone He walks while he lies still and is not there where men behold him 16. He hath a continuall feast without flesh and eating A Banquet without sweet meats melody without musick and Joy in the middest of sorrow He is dear beloved owned when he thinks himself despised rejected hated He beleeves he shall find pleasure in pain honey in gal life in death and doth so 17. He hath all things in the midst of his extreamest wants yet is beholding to the World for nothing for he fetcheth his meat drink clothes mercies comforts and whatever he possesseth from Heaven He sends by faithful frequent fervent prayers to Christ for them bids patience wait and appoints hope to bring him an answer which believing he shall receive it cometh indeed either according to his desires and expectation or beyond them He alwaies speeds and obtains even when his suit is denyed He hath what he will because he will have but what he may and therefore he sits down both contented and thankfull though he be crossed 18. A
true Beleever is afraid of that which with zeal courage sincerity and constancy he is resolved to do to serve God He delighteth in it yet is grieved that he can perform duty no better He seeketh diligently for that which he knows he shall not find and beggeth that importunately which he is assured will be both denyed and granted in this world unto him He is what he seems to be yet is not what he seems being like Solomons Tents black without but adorned with precious things within He is both black and white weak and strong contemptible and Honourable sick and well at Liberty and in Prison a Sinner and a Saint fearfull and yet bold as a Lyon 19. He leaves the dirty broad way of the World and by crossing that he goeth on directly in the right way toward Heaven Though he be far from home and from his friends in a strange Countrey yea in the darkest night yet he can go to his Father almost in a moment without wandring Though all the men in the World should lye armed in Ambush to surprize him yet he can passe either safely by them or victoriously through them For although he may be taken or killed yet he cannot be kept or overcome 20. A true Beleever loveth Gods Words and Ordinances as dearly as his Life Because by them he was wounded to his healing humbled to his raising inlightened to the beholding of his Blindnesse emptinesse nakednesse nothingnesse filthinesse and because without them though he had been the sole Monarch of the whole world he had been everlastingly undone and a very begger He trembles at the good the holy Word of God yet both rejoyceth in it and findeth transcendent sweetnesse spiritual yea soul-ravishing joy and gladnesse by it 21. He honoureth highly loveth dearly and obeyeth willingly his naturall Parents yet prizeth and affects his spirituall Father a Godly Minister above and beyond all men though he be not at all akin to him Because he knoweth that it 's better never to be then to be everlastingly miserable and never to be Borne then not to be Borne again 22. He will not he dare not spare his own Flock and take anothers only Lamb. He therefore dedicates and consecrates the Sabbath-day which is none of his own wholly cheerfully joyfully thankfully heartily and religiously to the Lord. And by so doing he getteth six for one to himself together with a promise of Gods guidance favour protection and blessing upon him his and his Labours in his calling in them And so by serving God he serves himself too and by giving God his due he both keep 's his own and getteth more then he had 23. A true Beleever increaseth his estate by giving it away gathereth by scattering By clothing others he adorns himself with Robes by relieving others he supplies his owne wants and by sowing Charity he reapâ—s Mercy 24. He saveth his Life by confessing his guiltinesse whereas others condemn themselves by concealing their crimes He 's the only happy man for nothing can make him miserable Because he is comforted when afflicted he is at Liberty in Bondage at home when Banished sed when famished full though empty satisfied when hungry advanced though degraded safe when most cruelly persecuted and when killed crowned 25. He is naturally heavy and droffy yet ascends and the nearer his body comes to its Center the earth and its long home the Grave by age and sicknesse the faster and the higher his Soul mounts towards Heaven And at length his Soul is divorced from his Body both with joy and griefe exultation and mourning 26. A true Beleever is never satisfied yet alwaies contented He feareth continually yet seldome wants Hope He doubts yet stedfastly beleeveth he is not worldly minded and yet he is so covetous that he never thinks he hath enough He is most temperate and sober yet is alwaies thirsty He is a modest Suiter yet is resolved to take no denyal He knoweth and confesseth himself to be unfit to ask and unworthy to receive either a gracious answer or any mercy and yet he will not cease begging till his prayers be heard and his petitions granted 27. He never sits stands nor lies but is alwaies walking His motion is neither retrograde nor circular but progressive yet the longer faster and further he travails the stronger and fresher he is All things â—re become new in him yet the old man is not destroyed He is very pitifull and tender hearted yet so mercilesse and implacable an enemy to sin that he is never quiet or pleased till it be mortified crucified and dead in him He is both in the world and out of it at the same time He is willing yea desirous to keep his estate yet freely parteth with it if God will have it and accounts the losse of all for Christ the greatest the truest gain 28. He injoies that which he doubts he wants loves unfainedly that which he feare he doth not care for prizeth above all things that which others trample under their feet He is assured of his Salvation and that he is an Heir of Glory yet questions his evidences and by * Nulla sunt sirmiora quam quae ex dubiis facta sunt certa doubting makes them firm and good 29. A true Beleever matters not his life nay he desires to dye yet strives more then any man to save himself He is terribly afraid of Hell and Damnation yet would not knowingly and with delight and perseverance commit or live in any one sin to obtain Heaven 30. He is diligent in his calling yet doth not mind earthly things He alone hath a true comfortable and religious right to the Creature yet accounts himself an Usurper till his Title be confirmed by his interest in Christ Though he hold his Land in free Soccage yet he acknowledgeth 't is but in Capite Though his Tenure be in Fee-simple yet he confesseth himself to be but a Tenant at Will Though his goods be his own yet he knows and beleeves himself bound freely and liberally if he be able to distâ—â—bute and communicate them unto others He beâ—eeveth all things without Christ are nothing but vaâ—ity and â—â—â—â—tion of Spirit and that Christ alone is all things without any thing else 31. That which others fear flie and abhorre he courts desires and welcomes That which is their Funerall is his Nuptials For death doth not kill but translate him it doth not execute but remove him He dies daily and so doth not die at all but deparâ— His sleep is a short death and his dissolution is but a long sleep Death which is a destructive deluge to the wicked is only an Ark to him preserving and carrying him safe to Mount Ararat Heaven and there it both lands and leaves him 32 A true Beleever anticipates the last day He accuseth arraigneth and condemneth himself and so is both acquitted and discharged by God at his death He is no Incendiaâ—y yet desires nothing so
for givenesse because he sins willingly even at that very time when he seems earnestly to beg of the Lord the pardon of his sins and so doth not please or serve but mock God For the God of love and life doth infinitely hate and will not hear those that love hatred and live in it But he will avenge himself severely upon all those that desire and delight to revenge themselves implacably upon others 64. 'T is midnight with an impenitent transgressor when he hath the brightest noontide of prosperity And 't is a serene a shining Noontide with a Saint when he is in the cloudiest midnight of adversity 65. A Saint is a great gainer though he lose all that he hath in the world But a wicked man is a great loser though he gain all that the world hath in it 66. He is mercifully cruell to his own Soul that spares the lives of those Amalekites his Sinnes But he is both cruelly merciful and merciful without any cruelty to his soul that kils them all without mercy 67. He that would live when he dies must kill by mortification all his deadly sins in his life And he that would never die * Mortibus viâ—imus Senec. must die daily 68. The sins of others will increase his sorrow that doth not sorrow for others sins 69. He that would be married to Jesus Christ must get his heart divorced from an inordinate love of worldly things because Christ Jesus will give him a Bill of Divorce that loves the things of the world inordinately For he that makes earth his Heaven or Paradise by suffering a sinful love thereof to enter into his Soul his Soul shal never enter into the Paradise of Heaven 70. He that hath a saving interest in Christ shall be full and rich even when he is empty wantful and deprived of all creature-comforts But he that wants a saving interest in Christ will be poor and empty in the midst of his fullest injoyments and greatest plenty 71. His Soul is sick to death that neither is nor ever yet was heart-sick with grief for the sins of his Life which will be without true repentance the death of his Soul nor love sick for the great and good physitian of the soul Jesus Christ who is both lovely and loving to those only that are sick of love for him 72. His sins are most both odious and hainous that after he hath repented of them returns again with delight to the commission of his hainous sinnes Because he hath laid God in one and put the Devill into the other Scale of the ballance and suffered the Devill to weigh down the Lord. He hath also heard God and the Devill argue and plead and after a full hearing he doth deliberately by wilful relapsing decree for Satan against his Saviour And so he doth both undervalue dishonour and provoke God and also repent that he did repent God will therefore most certainly judge him for his sins without mercy that gives so sinful a judgment against the God of mercy 73. It 's reported that when Caesar saw M. Brutus come running upon him amongst those that murdered him he said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And thou my son The sins of Gods Children do grieve and offend Christ more then the iniquities of his Enemies Because a contempt or an injury from a friend doth both dishonour him more highly and wound him more deeply then an affront or an abuse from a professed Adversary 74. He is a bad Magistrate that is not good for nothing And as pious Governors do clothe a Nation with the Robâ—â— of Joy and gladnesse So wicked Rulers do put it into Sackcloth and mourning 75. He that undermines the Church of God doth at once labour sweat and weary himself to dig a hole down to hel for his Soul to fall irrecoverably into the bottomlesse pit And he that persecutes the people of God by shedding their innocent crying bloud puls up a sluce to let in a crimson deluge to drown him 76. Never did any wicked men attempt to pull down God from his Throne by setting up themselves their lusts interests and idols above him or his glory but the God of glory pulled or rather tumbled them down headlong for that wicked attempt Either by humbling their proud presumptuous hearts or else by destroying their persons or blasting their cursed designes or which is yet more dreadful by damning their rebellious Souls 'T is then a fearful thing not to fear falling into the omnipotent Arms and the angry hands of that terrible God who both can and will with one irresistable blow kil and confound the offender and with one frown or stroke send him at once both to his Grave and Hâ—ll 77. A pious Christian though he hates no mans person is yet the worst most inexorable and invincible enemy of all mortall creatures to the ungodly whose works and waies his Soul doth loath and detest For by his faithful prayers he can prevail with God to infatuate their Counses dispirit their stout hearts blast their designs wither their flourishing hopes to break the Arme of their power and to rescue himself and those that fear God out of the Jawes of Enemies dangers and death 'T is therefore a stupendious astonishing madnesse in wicked men to hate those whom God loves to destroy those for whose sakes themselves are preserved to hope to build themselves houses upon earth by pulling the pillars thereof to condemn them that shall one day be their Judges and to plot and presume to plant themselves or their Posterities in the World by supplanting and rooting out the upright * Prov. 2. 1. who shall dwell in the Land whereas the * Prov. 3. 33. wicked * in whose house the curse of the Lord is shall be cut off from the earth †Prov. 2. 22. For if Cedars vinâ—â— olive and orenge trees be cut down then brambles briers and barren Fig-trees will certainly suddainly miserably be cursed burned and consumed 78. He is the worst malignant and Incendiary in a State that is a wicked man For he not only hates goodnesse and good Christians but he also both kindles the fire of Gods wrath against it and keeps it burning and flaming by casting continually the oyle of sinne upon it 79. Those Governours and great ones who are so bewitched with the fading dying and killing glories of this World as for the Love of them to slight Heaven neglect the great Salvation offered them and to reject Jesus Christ their pomp will end in pain their honour in Infamy and their Glory in eternal misery 80. He that slights opposes robs and wrongs the Ambassadours of Jesus Christ Gods faithful Ministers doth dishonour displease and bid defiance to their Master the Lord of Hosts He must therefore without repentance restitution and submission expect to receive neither peace pardon nor quarter but death without mercy that steals from or fights against the God of bounty Justice and Mercy and