that which is naturally indifferent is necessarie to them who are under his obedience some things are sinnes at one time which are not so at another as all the ceremoniall Law created new sinnes which were not sinnes before that Law was given nor since it expired some things are sinnes in a man now which will not be sinnes in the same man to morrow as when a man hath contracted a just scruple against any particular action it is a sinne to do it during the scruple and it may be a sinne in him to omit it when he hath digested the scruple Onely God hath Judicium detestationis he knows and therefore detests evil and therefore flatter not thy soul with a Tush God sees it not or Tush God cares not doth it disquiet him or trouble his rest in heaven that I break his sabbath here doth it wound his bodie or draw his bloud there that I swear by his bodie and bloud here doth it corrupt any of his virgins there that I sollicit the chastitie of a woman here are his martyrs withdrawn from their allegeance or retarded in their service to him there because I dare not defend his cause nor speak for him nor fight for him here Beloved as it is a degree of superstition and an effect of an indiscreet zeal perchance to be too forward by making indifferent things necessarie and so to imprint the nature and sting of sinne where naturally it is not for certainly it is a most slipperie and irreligious thing to be too apt to call things meerly indifferent and to forget that even in eating and drinking walking and sleeping the glorie of God is intermingled as if we knew exactly the presence and foreknowledge of God there could be nothing contingent or casuall for though there be a contingencie in the nature of the thing yet it is certain to God so if we consider duely wherein the glorie of God might be promoted in every action of ours there could scarce be any action so indifferent but that the glorie of God would turn the scale and make it necessarie to me at that time but then private interests and private respects create a new indifferencie to my apprehension and call me to consider that thing as it is in nature and not as it is conditioned with the circumstance of the glorie of God and so I lose that judicium detestationis which onely God hath absolutely and perfectly to know and therefore to detest evil And so he is a Judge As he is a Judge so judicat rem he judges the nature of a thing he is so too that he hath judicium discretionis and so judicat personam he knows what is evil and he discerns when thou committest that evil Here you are fain to supply defects of laws that things done in our countrey may be tried in another and that in offences of high nature transmarine offences might be enquired and tried here but as the Prophet sayes Who hath measured the waters in the hollow Isa 40. 12. of his hand or meted out the heavens with a spanne who comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure or weighed the mountains in a scale so I say Who hath divided heaven into shires or parishes or limited the territories or jurisdictions there that God should not have and exercise judicium discretionis the power of discerning all actions in all places when there was no more to be seen nor considered upon the whole earth but the garden of Paradise for from the beginning Deliciae ejus esse cum filiis hominum Gods delight was to be with the sonnes of men and man was onely there Shall we not diminish God or speak too vulgarly of him to say that he hovered like a falcon over Paradise and that from the height of heaven the piercing eye of God saw so little a thing as the forbidden fruit and what became of that and the reaching eare of God heard the hissing of the serpent and the whispering of the woman and what was concluded upon that shall we think it little to have seen things done in Paradise when there was nothing else to divert his eye nothing else to distract his counsels nothing else done upon the face of the earth take the earth now as it is replenished and take it either as it is torn and crumbled in rags and shivers not a kingdome not a family not a man agreeing with himself or take it in that concord which is in it as all the kings of the earth set themselves and all the rulers of the earth take counsel together against Psal 2. 2. the Lord take it in this union or this disunion in this concord or this disconcord still the Lord that sitteth in the heavens discerns all looks at all laughs at all and hath them in derision Earthly judges have their districtions and so their restrictions some things they cannot know what mortall man can know all some things they cannot take knowledge of for they are bounded no cloud no darknesse no disguise keeps him from discerning and judging all our actions and so he is a Judge too And he is so lastly as he hath Judicium retributionis God knows what is evil and he knows when that evil is done and he knows how to punish and recompense that evil For the office of a judge who judges according to a law being not to contract nor to extend that law but to know what was the true meaning of the lawmaker when he made that law God hath this judgement in perfection because he himself made that Law by which he judges When he hath said Stipendium peccati mors est Every sinne shall be rewarded with death If I sinne against the 1. Sam. 2. 25 Lord who shall intreat for me who shall give any other interpretation any modification any Non obstante upon his Law in my behalf when he comes to judge me according to that Law which himself hath made who shall think to delude the Judge and say Surely this was not the meaning of the Law-giver when he who is the Judge was the Law-maker too And then as God is Judge in all these three respects so he is a Judge in them all Sine appellatione and Sine judiciis man cannot appeal from God God needs no evidence from man For the appeal first to whom should we appeal from the Soveraigne wrangle as long as we will who is chief Justice and which Countie hath jurisdiction one over another I know the chief Justice and I know the Soveraigne court the King of heaven and earth shall send his ministring spirits his Angels to the wombe and bowels of the earth and to the bosome and bottome of the sea and earth and sea shall deliver Corpus cum causa all the bodies of the dead and all their actions to receive a judgement in his court when it will be an erroneous and frivolous appeal to call to the hills to fall down
SIX SERMONS UPON SEVERALL OCCASIONS PREACHED before the King and elsewhere By that late learned reverend Divine JOHN DONNE Doctour in divinitie and Dean of S. Pauls LONDON ¶ Printed by the Printers to the Vniversitie of CAMBRIDGE And are to be sold by Nicholas Fussell and Humphrey Mosley at their shop in Pauls Church-yard 1634. TWO SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE KING CHARLES Upon the xxvi verse of the first Chapter of GENESIS By Dr. DONNE DEAN OF PAVLS ¶ Printed by the Printers to the Vniversitie of CAMBRIDGE MDCXXXIIII Genesis 1. 26. And God said Let us make man in our image after our likenesse NEver such a frame so soon set up as this in this chapter For for the thing it self there is no other thing to compare it with for it is all it is the whole world And for the time there was no other time to compare it with for this was the beginning of time In the beginning God created heaven and earth That earth which in some thousands of yeares men could not look over nor discern what form it had for neither Lactantius almost three hundred yeares after Christ nor S. Augustine more then a hundred yeares after him would beleeve the earth to be round That earth which no man in his person is ever said to have compassed till our age That earth which is too much for man yet for as yet a very great part of the earth is unpeopled That earth which if we will cast it all but into a Map costs many moneths labour to grave it nay if we will but cast a piece of an acre of it into a garden costs many yeares labour to fashion and furnish it all that earth And then that heaven which spreads so farre as that subtill men have with some appearance of probabilitie imagined that in that heaven in those manifold Spheres of the Planets and the Starres there are many earths many worlds as big as this which we inhabit That earth and that heaven which spent God himself Almightie God six dayes in finishing Moses sets up in a few syllables in one line In principio In the beginning God created heaven and earth If a Livie or a Guicciardine or such extensive and voluminous authours had had this story in hand God must have made another world to have made them a library to hold their books of the making of this world Into what wire would they have drawn out this earth Into what leaf-gold would they have beat out these heavens It may assist our conjecture herein to cōsider that amongst those men who proceed with a sober modestie and limitation in their writing make a conscience not to clog the world with unnecessary books yet the volumes which are written by them upon the beginning of Genesis are scarce lesse then infinite God did no more but say Let this this be done and Moses doth no more but say that upon Gods saying it was done God required not Nature to help him to do it Moses required not Reason to help him to beleeve The holy Ghost hovered upon the waters and so God wrought The holy Ghost hovered upon Moses too and so he wrote And we beleeve these things to be so by the same Spirit in the mouth of Moses by which they were made so in Gods hand Onely Beloved remember that a frame may be thrown down in much lesse time then it was set up A childe an ape can give fire to a cannon and a vapour can shake the earth and when Christ said Throw down this Temple and in three dayes I will raise it they never stood upon the consideration of throwing it down they knew that might be soon done but they wondered at the speedy raising of it Now if all this earth were made in that minute may not all come to the generall dissolution in this minute Or may not thy acres thy miles thy shires shrink into feet and so few feet as shall but make up thy grave when he who was a great lord must be but a cottager not so wel for a cottager must have so many acres to his cottage but in this case a little piece of an acre five foot is become the house it self the house and the land the grave is all lower then that the grave is the land and the tenement the tenant too He that lies in it becomes the same earth that he lies in they all make but one earth and but a little of it But then raise thy self to a higher hope again God hath made better land the land of promise a stronger citie the new Jerusalem inhabitants for that everlasting citie us whom he made not by saying Let there be men but by consultation by deliberation God said Let us make man c. We shall pursue our great examples God in Divisio doing Moses in saying and so make haste in applying the parts But first receive them and since we have the whole world in contemplation consider in these words the foure quarters of the world by application by fair and just accommodations of the words First in the first word that God speaks here Faciamus Let Vs in the plurall a denotation of divers persons in the Godhead we consider our East where we must begin at the knowledge and confession of the Trinity for though in the way to heaven we have travelled beyond the Gentiles when we come to confesse but one God the Gentiles could not do that yet we are still among the Jews if we think that one God to be but one person Christs name is Oriens Zech. 6. 12. the East if we will be named by him called Christians we must look to this East the confession of the Trinitie there is then our East in the Faciamus Let Vs Vs make man And then our West is in the next word Faciamus hominem Though we be thus made made by the councell made by the concurrence made by the hand of the whole Trinity yet we are made but men and man but in the appellation in this Text and man there is but Adam and Adam is but earth but red earth died red in bloud in bloud in soul the bloud of our own souls To that West we must all come to the earth The sunne knoweth his going down even Psal 104. 19. the sunne for all his glory and height hath a going down and he knows it The highest cannot devest mortality nor the discomfort of mortality When you see a cloud rise out of the Lue. 12. 54. west straightway you say There cometh a storm sayes Christ When out of the region of your West that is your latter dayes there comes a cloud a sicknesse you feel a storm even the best morall constancie is shaken But this cloud and this storm and this West there must be and that is our second consideration But then the next word designes a North a strong and powerfull NOrth to scatter and dissipate these
to heaven without discharging his duties to other men then without doing them to God himself Man liveth not by bread onely sayes Christ but Luke 4. 4. yet he liveth by bread too every man must do the duties every man must bear the encumbrances of some calling Pulvis es Thou art earth he whom thou treadest upon is no lesse and he that treads upon thee is no more Positively it is a low thing to be but earth and yet the low earth is the quiet center there may be rest acquiescence content in the lowest condition But comparatively earth is as high as the highest Challenge him that magnifies himself above thee to meet thee in Adam there bid him if he will have more nobilitie more greatnesse then thou take more originall sin then thou hast If God have submitted thee to as much sin and penalty of sin as him he hath afforded thee as much and as noble earth as him And if he will not trie it in the root in your equalitie in Adam yet in another test another furnace in the grave he must there all dusts are equall Except an epitaph tell me who lies there I cannot tell by the dust nor by the epitaph know which is the dust it speaks of if another have been layed there before or after in the same grave nor can any epitaph be confident in saying Here lies but Here was laid for so various so vicissitudinarie is all this world as that even the dust of the grave hath revolutions As the motions of an upper sphere imprint a motion in a lower sphere other then naturally it would have so the changes of the life work after death And as envie supplants and removes us alive a shovell removes us and throwes us out of our grave after death No limbeck no weights can tell you This is dust royall this plebeian dust no commission no inquisition can say This is catholick this is hereticall dust All lie alike and all shall rise alike alike that is at once and upon one command The saint cannot accelerate the reprobate cannot retard the resurrection And all that rise to the right hand shall be equally kings and all at the left equally what the worst name we can call them by or affect them with is devil and then they shall have bodies to be tormented in which devils have not Miserable unexpressible unimaginable macerable condition where the sufferer would be glad to be but a devil where it were some happinesse and some kinde of life to be able to die and a great preferment to be nothing He made us all of earth and all of red earth our earth was red even when it was in Gods hands a rednesse that amounts to a shamefastnesse to a blushing at our infirmities is imprinted in us by Gods hands for this rednesse is but a conscience a guiltinesse of needing a continuall supply and succession of more and more grace and we are all red red so even from the beginning and in our best state Adam had the angels had thus much of this infirmitie that though they had a great measure of grace they needed more The prodigall childe grew poore enough after he had received his portion and he may be wicked enough that trusts upon former or present grace and seeks not more This rednesse a blushing that is an acknowledgement that we could not subsist with any measure of faith except we pray for more faith nor of grace except we seek more grace we have from the hand of God and an other rednesse from his hand too the bloud of his Sonne for that bloud was effused by Christ in the vail of this ransome for us all and accepted by God in the vail thereof for us all and this rednesse is in the nature thereof as extensive as the rednesse derived from Adam is both reach to all so we were red earth in the hands of God as rednesse denotes our generall infirmities and as rednesse denotes the bloud of his Sonne our Saviour all have both But that rednesse which we have contracted from bloud shed by our selves the bloud of our own souls by sinne was not upon us when we were in the hands of God that rednesse is not his tincture not his complexion no decree of his is writ in any such red ink Our sins are our own our destruction is from our selves We are not as accessaries and God as principall in this soul-murder God forbid We are not as executioners of Gods sentence and God the malefactour in this soul-damnation God forbid Cain came not red in his brothers bloud out of Gods hands nor David red with Vriahs bloud nor Achitophel with his own nor Judas with Christs or his own That that Pilate did illusorily God can do truely wash his hands from the bloud of any of those men It were a weak plea to say I killed not that man but it is true I commanded one who was under my command to kill him It is rather a prevarication then a justification of God to say God is not the authour of sinne in any man but it is true God makes that mans sinne that sinne God is innocencie and the beams that flow from him are of the same nature and colour Christ when he appeared in heaven was not red but white his hand his head and hairs too he and that that grows from him he and we as we come from his hands are white too his angels that provoke us to the imitation of that pattern are so in white two men two angels stood by the apostles in white Acts 1. 10. apparell the imitation is laid upon us by precept too At all times let thy garments be Eccles 9. 8. white those actions in which thou appearest to the world innocent It is true that Christ is both My beloved is white and ruddy sayes the Cant. 5. 10. Spouse but the white was his own his rednesse is from us That which Zipporah said to her husband Moses in anger the Church may say to Christ in thankfulnesse Verè sponsus sanguinum Thou art truely a bloudy husband to me Damim sanguinum of blouds blouds in the plurall for all our blouds are upon him This was a mercie to the militant Church that even the triumphant Church wondred at it They knew not Christ when he came up into heaven in red Who is this that cometh in red garments Isa 63. 1. wherefore is thy apparell red like him that treadeth in the wine-presse They knew he went down in white in entire innocencie and they wondred to see him return in red but he satisfies them Calcavi You think I have troden the wine-presse and you mistake it not I have troden the wine-presse and Calcavi solus and that alone All the rednesse all the bloud of the whole world is upon me and as he addes Non vir de gentibus Of all people there was none with me with me so as to have any part
in the merit so of all people there was none with me without me so as to be excluded by me without their own fault from the benefit of the merit This rednesse he carried up to heaven for by the bloud of his crosse came peace both to the things in heaven and the Col. 1. 21. things on earth For the peccabilitie that possibilitie of sinning which is in the nature of the angels of heaven would break out into sinne but for that confirmation which those angels have received in the bloud of Christ This rednesse he carried to heaven and this rednesse he hath left upon earth that all we miserable clods of earth might be tempered with his bloud that in his bloud exhibited in his holy blessed Sacrament our long robes might be made white in the bloud of the Lambe that though our sinnes be robes habits of long continuance in sinne yet through that rednesse which our sinnes have cast upon him we might come to participate of that whitenesse that righteousnesse which is his own We that is all we for as to take us in who are of low condition and obscure station a cloud is made white by his sitting upon it He sat upon a white cloud so to let the highest see that they have no whitenesse but from him he makes the throne white by sitting upon it He sat upon a great white throne It had been great if it had not been white white is the colour of dilatatiō Goodnesse enlarges the throne It had not been white if he had not sat upon it That goodnesse onely which consists in glorifying God and God in Christ and Christ in the sinceritie of the truth is true whitenesse God hath no rednesse in himself no anger towards us till he considers us as sinners God casts no rednesse upon us inflicts no necessitie no constraint of sinning upon us we have died our selves in sinnes as red as scarlet we have drowned our selves in such a red sea But as a garment that was washed in the Red sea would come out white so wonderfull works hath God Psal 106. 22. done at the Red sea sayes David so doth his whitenesse work through our red and makes this Adam this red earth Calculum candidum that white stone that receives a new name not Ish not Enosh not Gheber no name that tasts of miserie nor of vanitie but that name renewed and manifested which was imprinted upon us in our elections the sonnes of God the irremoveable the undisinheritable sonnes of God Be pleased to receive this note at parting that there is Macula alba a spot and yet white as well as a red spot a whitenesse that is an indication of a leprosie as well as a rednesse It is whole-Pelagianisme to think nature alone sufficient half-Pelagianisme to think grace once received to be sufficient super-Pelagianisme to think our actions can bring God in debt to us by merit and supererogation Catharisme imaginarie puritie in canonizing our selves as present saints and condemning all that differ from us as reprobates All these are white spots and have the colour of goodnesse but are indications of leprosie So is that that God threatens Decorticatio ficûs albi rami that Joel 1. 7. the fig-tree shall be barked and the boughs thereof left white To be left white without bark was an indication of a speedy withering Ostensa candescunt arescunt sayes S. Gregorie of that place the bough that lies open without bark looks white but perisheth The good works that are done openly to please men have their reward sayes Christ that is shall never have reward To pretend to do good and not mean it to do things good in themselves but not to good ends to go towards good ends but not by good wayes to make the deceiving of men thine end or the praise of men thine end all this may have a whitenesse a colour of good but all this is a barking of the bough and an indication of a mischievous leprosie There is no good whitenesse but a reflexion from Christ Jesus in an humble acknowledgement that we have none of our own and in a confident assurance that in our worst estate we may be made partakers of his We are all red earth In Adam we would not since Adam we could not avoid sinne and the concomitants thereof miseries which we have called our West our cloud our darknesse But then we have a North that scatters these clouds in the next word Ad imaginem that we are made to another pattern in another likenesse then our own Faciamus hominem So farre we are gone East and West which is half our compasse and all this dayes voyage for we are struck upon the sand and must stay another tide and another gale for our North and South FINIS THE SECOND SERMON PREACHED BEFORE KING CHARLES Upon the xxvi verse of the first Chapter of GENESIS By Dr. DONNE DEAN OF PAVLS ¶ Printed by the Printers to the Vniversitie of CAMBRIDGE MDCXXXIIII Genesis 1. 26. And God said Let us make man in our image after our likenesse BY fair occasion from these words we proposed to you the whole compasse of mans voyage from his launching forth in this world to his anchoring in the next from his hoysing sail here to his striking sail there in which compasse we designed to you his foure quarters first his East where he must begin the fundamentall knowledge of the Trinitie for that we found to be the specification distinctive character of a Christian where though that be so we shewed you also why we were not called Trinitarians but Christians and we shewed you the advantage that man hath in laying hold upon God in these severall notions That the prodigall sonne hath an indulgent father that the decayed father hath an abundant sonne that the dejected spirit hath a Spirit of comfort to fly to in heaven And as we shewed you from S. Paul that it was an Atheisme to be no Christian Without God sayes he as long as without Christ so we lamented the slacknesse of Christians that they did not seriously and particularly consider the persons of the Trinitie and especially the holy Ghost in their particular actions And then we came to that consideration whether this doctrine were established or directly insinuated in this plurall word of our text Faciamus Let us make man and we found that doctrine to be here and here first of any place in the Bible and finding God to speak in the plurall we accepted for a time that interpretation which some had made thereof That God spake in the person of a Soveraigne Prince and therefore as they do in the plurall We And thereby having established reverence to Princes we claymed in Gods behalf the same reverence to him that men would demean themselves here when God is spoken to in prayer as reverently as when they speak to the King But afterwards we found God to speak here not onely
speaking of our state in the generall resurrection That Lambe who was brought to the slaughter and Isa 53. 7. opened not his mouth and I who have opened my mouth and poured out imprecations and curses upon men and execrations and blasphemies against God upon every occasion that Lambe which was slain from the beginning and I who was slain by him who was a murderer from the beginning that Lambe which took away the sinnes of the world and I who brought more sinnes into the world then any sacrifice but the bloud of this Lambe could take away this Lambe and I these are the persons shall meet and marrie there is the action This is not a clandestine marriage not the private seal of Christ in the obsignation of his Spirit and yet such a clandestine marriage is a good marriage nor is it such a parish-marriage as when Christ married me to himself at my baptisme in a Church here and yet that marriage of a Christian soul to Christ in that sacrament is a blessed marriage But this is a marriage in that great and glorious congregation where all my sinnes shall be laid open to the eyes of all the world where all the blessed Virgins shall see all my uncleannesses and all the Martyrs see all my tergiversations and all the Confessours see all my double dealings in Gods cause where Abraham shall see my faithlesnesse in Gods promises and Job my impatience in Gods corrections and Lazarus my hardnesse of heart in distributing Gods blessings to the poore and those Virgins and Martyrs and Confessours and Abraham and Job and Lazarus and all that congregation shall look upon the Lambe and upon me and upon one another as though they would all forbid those banes and say to one another Will this Lambe have any thing to do with this soul And yet there and then this Lambe shall marrie me and marrie me In aeternum For ever which is our last circumstance It is not well done to call it a circumstance for the eternitie is a great part of the essence of that marriage Consider then how poore and needie a thing all the riches of this world how flat and tastlesse a thing all the pleasures of this world how pallid and faint and dilute a thing all the honours of this world are when the very treasure and joy and glorie of heaven it self were unperfect if it were not eternall and my marriage shall be so In aeternum For ever The Angels were not married so they incurred an irreparable divorce from God and are separated for ever and I shall be married to him In aeternum For ever The Angels fell in love when there was no object presented before any thing was created when there was nothing but God and themselves they fell in love with themselves and neglected God and so fell In aeternum For ever I shall see all the beautie and all the glorie of all the Saints of God and love them all and know that the Lambe loves them too without jealousie on his part or theirs or mine and so be married In aeternum For ever without interruption or diminution or change of affections I shall see the sunne black as sackcloth Reve. 6. 12 13 14. of hair and the moon become as bloud and the starres fall as a fig-tree casts her untimely figs and the heavens rolled up together as a scrowl I shall see a divorce between princes and their prerogatives between nature and all her elements between the spheres and all their intelligences between matter it self and all her forms and my marriage shall be In aeternum For ever I shall see an end of faith nothing to be beleeved that I do not know and an end of hope nothing to be wished that I do not enjoy but no end of that love in which I am married to that Lambe for ever yea I shall see an end of some of the offices of the Lambe himself Christ himself shall be no longer a Mediatour an Intercessour an Advocate and yet shall continue a Husband to my soul for ever where I shall be rich enough without joynture for my Husband cannot die and wise enough without experience for no new thing can happen there and healthy enough without physick for no sicknesse can enter and which is by much the highest of all safe enough without grace for no temptation that needs particular grace can attempt me There where the Angels which cannot die could not live this very bodie which cannot choose but die shall live and live as long as that God of life that made it Lighten our darknesse we beseech thee O Lord that in thy light we may see light illustrate our understandings kindle our affections poure oyl to our zeal that we may come to the marriage of this Lambe and that this Lambe may come quickly to this marriage and in the mean time blesse these thy servants with making this secular marriage a type of the spirituall and the spirituall an earnest of that eternall which they and we by thy mercie shall have in that kingdome which thy Sonne our Saviour hath purchased with the inestimable price of his incorruptible bloud To whom c. FINIS A SERMON Upon the xliiii verse of the xxi Chapter of MATTHEW By Dr. DONNE DEAN OF PAVLS ¶ Printed by the Printers to the Vniversitie of CAMBRIDGE MDCXXXIIII Matth. 21. 44. VVhosoever shall fall on this stone he shall be broken but on whomsoever it shall fall it will dash him in pieces ALmightie God made us for his glorie and his glorie is not the glorie of a tyrant to destroy us but his glorie is our happinesse he put us in a fair way towards that happinesse in nature in creation that way would have brought us to heaven but there we fell and if we consider our selves irrevocably he put us after into another way through many hedges and plowed lands through the difficulties and encumbrances of all the ceremoniall Law there was no way to heaven but that after he brought us a crosse way by the crosse of Christ Jesus and the application of his Gospel and that is our way now and if we compare one way of nature and our way we went out of that way at the towns end assoon as we were in it Adam died assoon as he lived and fell assoon as he was set on foot if we compare the way of the Law and ours the Jews and the Christians their Synagogue was but as Gods farm our Church is as his dwelling house Locavit vineam He let out his vine to husbandmen and then Peregrè profectus He went into a farre countrey he promised a Messias but deferred his coming a long time But to us Dabitur regnum A kingdome is given here is a good improvement the lease changed into an absolute deed of gift here is a good enlargement of the term he gives therefore he will not take away again he gives a kingdome therefore there is a
upon us and to the mountains to cover and hide us from the wrathfull judgement of God He is Judge then Sine appellatione Without any appeal from him he is so too Sine judiciis Without any evidence from us Now if I be warie in my actions here incarnate devils detractours and informers cannot accuse me if my sinne come not into action but lie onely in my heart the devil himself who is the Accuser of the brethren hath no evidence against me But God knows the heart Doth not he that pondereth the heart understand Prov. 24. 12 it where it is not in that faint word which the vulgar edition hath expressed it in Suspector cordium that God sees the heart but the word is Fochen that is every where to weigh to number to search to examine as the word is used by Solomon again The Lord weigheth the spirits and Prov. 16. 2. it must be a steadie hand and exact scales that shall weigh spirits so though neither man nor devil nay nor my self give evidence against me yea though I know nothing by my self I am not thereby justified Why where is the further danger in this which follows there in S. Paul He that judgeth 1. Cor. 4. 4. me is the Lord and the Lord hath means to know my heart better then my self And therefore S. Augustine makes use of those words Abyssus Psal 42. 9. abyssum invocat One depth calls up another the infinite depth of my sinnes must call upon the infinite depth of Gods mercie for if God who is a Judge in all these respects Judicio detestationis he knows and abhorres evil and Judicio discretionis he discerns every evil person and every evil action and Judicio retributionis he can and will recompense evil with evil and all these Sine appellatione we cannot appeal from him and Sine judiciis he needs no evidence from us if this Judge enter into judgement with me not onely not I but not the most righteous man nay nor the Church whom he hath washed in his bloud that she might be without spot or wrinkle shall appeare righteous in his sight This then being thus that judgement is an inseparable Part. II character of God and God the Father being Fons deitatis the root and spring of the whole deitie how is it said that the Father judgeth no man not that we should conceive a wearinesse or retiring in the Father or a discharging of himself upon the shoulders and labours of another in the administration and judging of this world for as it is truely said that God rested the seventh day that is he rested from working in that kinde from creating so it is true that Christ sayes here My Father worketh yet and I work and so it is truely said here The Father judgeth no man it is truely John 8. 5. said by Christ too of the Father I seek not mine own glorie there is one that seeketh and judgeth still it is true that God hath Judicium detestationis Thy eyes are pure eyes O Lord and cannot behold iniquitie sayes the Prophet still it is true that he hath Judicium discretionis Because they committed Jer. 29. 23. Villanie in Israel even I know it saith the Lord still it is true that he hath Judicium retributionis The Lord killeth and maketh alive he bringeth 1. Sam. 2. 6. down to the grave and bringeth up still it is true that he hath all these Sine appellatione for go to the sea or earth or hell as David makes the distribution and God is there and he hath them Sine judiciis for our witnesse is in heaven and our record on high All this is undeniably true and besides this that great name of God by which he is first called in the Scriptures ELOHIM is not inconveniently derived from Elah which is jurare to swear God is able as a Judge to minister an oath unto us and to draw evidence from our own consciences against our selves so that then the Father judgeth still but he judges as God and not as the Father In the three great judgements of God the whole Trinitie judges In the first judgement before all times which was Gods judiciarie separating of vessels of honour from vessels of dishonour in our election and reprobation In his second judgement which is in execution now which is Gods judiciarie separating of servants from enemies in the seals and in the administration of the Christian Church And in the last judgement which shall be Gods judiciarie separating sheep from goats to everlasting glorie or condemnation In all these three judgements all the three persons of the Trinitie are Judges Consider God all together and so in all outward works all the Trinitie concurres because all are but one God but consider God in relation in distinct persons and so the severall persons of the Trinitie do some things which the other persons of the Trinitie are not interessed in the Sonne had not generation from himself so as he had from the Father and the holy Ghost as a distinct person had none at all the holy Ghost had a proceeding from the Father and the Sonne but from the Sonne a person who had his generation from another but not so from the Father Not to stray into clouds or perplexities in the contemplation God that is the whole Trinitie judges still but so as the Sonne judgeth the Father judgeth not for that judgement he hath committed That we may husband our houre as well and rescribe as much as we can for our two last considerations the Cui and the Quid To whom and that is to the Sonne and what he hath committed and that is all judgement we will not stand much upon this more needs not then this that God in his wisdome foreseeing that man by his weaknesse would not be able to settle himself upon the consideration of God and his judgements as they are meerly spirituall and heavenly out of his abundant goodnesse hath established a judgement and ordained a judge upon earth like himself and like our selves too that as no man hath seen God so no man should go about to see his unsearchable decrees judgements but rest in those sensible and visible means which he hath afforded that is Christ Jesus speaking in his Church and applying his bloud unto us in the sacraments unto the worlds end God might have suffered Abraham to rest in the first generall promise Semen mulieris The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpents head but he would bring it nearer to a visible to a personall covenant In semine tuo In thy seed shall all nations be blessed he might well have let him rest in that appropriation of his promise to his race but he would proceed further and seal it with a sensible seal in his flesh with circumcision He might have let him rest in that ratification that a Messias should come by that way but he would refresh it by a