cannot hope yet will in despite of that knowledge hope and do notwithstanding all think to come to Heaven Certainly while a man goes on to sin to hope for mercy is presumtion in him and so another sin added to the rest yea 't is a disbelieving of Gods threatning an affronting him in his veracity an imputing falsehood to his menaces and a putting himself almost out of the possibility of repenting For he that do's hope for Salvation in the condition he is in hath no temtation at all to change his condition but is likely to go on confidently and hopingly to eternal perdition it were a mercy to such a person to be struck into despair that he may be taught the wretchedness of his condition and hurried out it in which as long as he does hope there 's no reason to expect that he should leave it but by becoming hopeless in it may be frighted from it and the gates of hell is the onely probable means to let that man into the way of heaven O the Christians Hope it is the hope of righteousness Gal. 5. 5. Nothing else but holiness and righteousness can give a man ground for it And certainly my Brethren it is such a Hope as would countervail the trouble and the pains of reforming our selves What will not a man undertake which he can but hope to go thro and is assur'd of a large recompence for doing and surely Heaven is worth the endeavouring after and that blessed Hope worth purifying our selves for For it was worth the death of the Son of God Christ was content to be crucified to compass it and cannot we be content to purify our selves for it Will you see what hope can perswade a man to do See Abraham to whom God promis'd onely the Land of Canaan and that not to be enjoied by himself nor by his Son but onely by the Posterity of Isaac his Son and his Promises were further off than Heaven yet after that before Isaac had any Posterity when he was but a child God commands him to go and sacrifice his Isaac and go to cut off all hopes of ever enjoying it yet against hope he believed in hope saith St Paul and he that had receiv'd the promises of God offer'd up his onely begotten Son Heb. 11. 17. i. e. having entertain'd and embrac'd the promise of a numerous seed and people that should spring from him and having no other Son but this from whom they should spring nor possibility in nature nor promise above nature that he should have any more children but a plain affirmation that this People to whom the Promises belong'd should come from Isaac yet having once truly hop'd that God would perform his promise he absolutely obei'd that command of Gods resolving to kill the Son on whom all those Promises depended And now my Brethren there is no such puzles in our Hope nor no such hard thing requir'd of us no Sons to be sacrific'd but onely a few vices no doubtful perplext promise of a Canaan onely but plain assured Heaven and then had we but the least degree of his hope as we have infinitely greater reason how would we sacrifice any thing to Christs command how would we offer up a lust and think a sin a good exchange for the hopes of Heaven and he that had this hope would certainly purify himself as he is pure It is but now the Church hath celebrated the Ascension of our Lord Christ and the great Proposal of the Angels Acts 1. 11. to all those Disciples that beheld him going up to Heaven and gaz'd after him so wishly was that they should see him come again Now the particular comfort of that coming so again is when he shall appear we shall be like him 1 John 3. 2. and the hopes of being so St John thought a sufficient motive to set every man on purifying and that himself for this lustration cannot be perform'd by Proxy and be remitted to another for even our Saviors Righteousness will not be imputed unto those who will have none besides he redeems and saves none but them whom he has sav'd from their sins Reveal O Blessed God some of thy Glory which thou hast prepar'd for them that love thee some of that blessed Hope of a Christian calling to our hearts that it may stir our desires and longings and heat them into hopes and that we having the hopes of seeing thee may purify and may escape that day of fire which shall melt the Heavens and purge those glorious bodies which are not pure in thy sight Behold O God we tremble with horror of thy dreadful Judgment The Angels are not clean in thy sight and the Seraphims cover their faces what then shall become of us vile filthy Sinners whose daily impurities have so defil'd both our souls and bodies that we are but one mass and heap of uncleaness Blessed God we know that as long as we continue such we cannot hope to see thee in mercy we know that if we repent not we shall all perish we know that if we live after the Flesh we shall die eternally we know that neither fornicators c. shall have any inheritance O let this knowledg apply it self to our hearts and consciences that the terrors of it may fright us from the vain hopes that we do cherish of being happy notwithstanding we go on in our sinful courses for alas those hopes will perish with us and that those terrors may so work on us to set upon amendment Cleanse and wash we pray thee all our impurities in the bloud of thy Son bury them in his grave never to rise hereafter and melt our hearts into repentant tears that so our hearts may become purer O thou that didst cleanse us with thy bloud baptize us with thy Holy Spirit and with fire that it may purge out our dross and filthiness and be an earnest to us of that glorious Purity which we shall have in Heaven seeing thee as thou art and becoming like thee where we shall sin no more but for ever serve and praise thee SERMON VIII OF THE HIDING PLACE From Indignation Isaiah 26. 20. Come my people enter thou into thy chambers and shut thy doors about thee hide thy self as it were for a little moment until the Indignation be overpast UPON the Eve as it were and the Vigils to the day of Indignation when we cannot but look upon it as ready to be pour'd out on us in a full stream when we see destruction make close approches to us work round about us and punishment like our sin lies at the very door ready either to enter in upon us or seize us if we offer to come out to offer at a way to prevent all this that should discover to you a safe retreat from those threats that pursue this Nation in general open a shelter from the present storm cannot chuse but be seasonable yet such a thing the Text do's venture at
of this World can entertain and slatter Thus they did and thus they did prevail For the first Ages of the Church were but so many Centuries of Men that entertained Christianity with the Contempt of the World and Life it self They knew that to put themselves into Christ's Service and Religion was the same thing as to set themselves aside for spoil and Rapine dedicate themselves to Poverty and Scorn to Racks and Tortutes and to Butchery it self Yet they enter'd into it did not onely renounce the Pomps and Vanities of the World in their Baptism when they were new born to God quench their affections to them in those waters but renounc'd them even to the death drown'd their affections to them in their own heart bloud ran from the World into flames and fled faster from the satisfactions and delights of Earth than those flames mounted to their own Element and Sphere In fine they became Christians so as if they had been Candidates of death and onely made themselves Apprentises of Martyrdom Now if it were not possible it should be otherwise than thus as the World stood then it was necessary that the Captain of Salvation should lead on go before this noble Army of Martyrs if it were necessary that they must leave all who followed him then it was not possible that he should be here in a state of Plenty Splendor and Magnificence but of Poverty and Meanness giving an Example to his followers whose condition could not but be such To give which Example was it seems of more necessity than by being born in Royal Purple to prevent the fall of many in Israel who for his condition despis'd him I am not so vain as to hope to persuade any from this great Example here to be in love with Poverty and with a low condition by telling them this Birth hath consecrated meanness that we must not scorn those things in which our God did chuse to be install'd that Humility is it seems the proper dress for Divinity to shew it self in But when we consider if this Child had been born in a condition of Wealth and Greatness the whole Nation of the Jews would have received him whereas that he chose prov'd an occasion of falling to them Yet that God should think it much more necessary to give us an Example of Humility and Poverty below expression then it was necessary that that whole Nation should believe on him When of all the Virgins of that People which God had to chuse one out to overshadow and impregnate with the Son of God he chose one of the meanest for he hath regarded the low estate of his Handmaiden said she and one of the poorest too for she had not a Lamb to offer but was purified in formâ pauperis When he would reveal this Birth also that was to be the joy of the whole Earth he did it to none of that Nation but a few poor Shepherds who were labouring with midnight-watches over their Flocks none of all the great Ones that were then at ease and lay in softs was thought worthy to have notice of it Lastly when the Angels make that poverty a sign to know the Saviour by This shall be a sign unto you You shall â—ind the Babe wrap'd in swadling cloaths and laid in a Manger As if the Manger were sufficient testimony to the Christ and this great meanness were an evidence 't was the Messiah From all these together we may easily discover what the temper is of Christianity You see here the Institution of your Order the First born of the Sons of God born but to such an Estate And what is so original to the Religion what was born and bred with it cannot easily be divided from it Generatio Christi generatio populi Christiani natalis Capitis natalis Corporis The Body and the Head have the same kind of Birth and to that which Christ is born to Christianity it self is born Neither can it ever otherwise be entertain'd in the heart of any man but with poverty of spirit with neglect of all the scorns and the Calamities yea and all the gaudy glories of this World with that unconcernedness for it that indifference and simple innocence that is in Children He that receiveth not the Kingdom of Heaven as a little Child cannot enter thereinto saith Christ True indeed when the Son of God must become a little Child that he may open the Kingdom of Heaven to Believers Would you see what Humility and lowliness becomes a Christian see the God of Christians on his Royal Birth-day A Person of the Trinity that he may take upon him our Religion takes upon him the form of a Servant and He that was equal with God must make himself of no Reputation if he mean to settle and be the Example of our Profession And then when will our high spirits those that value an huâ—â— of Reputation more than their own Souls and set it above God himself when will these become Christian Is there any more uncouth or detestable thing in the whole World than to see the great Lord of Heaven become a little one and Man that 's less than nothing magnifie himself to see Divinity empty it self and him that is a Worm swell and be puffed up to see the Son of God descend from Heaven and the Sons of Earth climbing on heaps of Wealth which they pile up as the old Gyants did Hills upon Hills as if they would invade that throne which he came down from and as if they also were set for the fall of many throwing every body down that but stands near them either in their way or prospect Would you see how little value all those interests that recommend this World are of to Christians see the Founder of them chuse the opposite extream Not onely to discover to us that these are no accessions to felicity This Child was the Son of God without them But to let us see that we must make the same choice too when ever any of those interests affront a Duty or solicite a good Conscience whensoever indeed they are not reconcilable with Innocence Sincerity and Ingenuity It was the want of this disposition and temper that did make the Jews reject our Saviour They could not endure to think of a Religion that would not promise them to fill their basket and to set them high above all Nations of the Earth and whose appearance was not great and splendid but look'd thin and maigre and whose Principles and Promises shew'd like the Curses of their Law call'd for sufferings and did promise persecution therefore they rejected him that brought it and so this Child was for the fall of many in Israel 2. This Child is for the fall of many by the holiness of his Religion while the strictness of the Doctrine which he brings by reason of mens great propensions to wickedness and their inability to resolve against their Vices
bliss which to conceive is to be as God and to enjoy is to be one with him And O thou Blessed Jesu the eternal Lord of all those comforts be favourable unto us thy servants that turn to thee with weeping and with mourning that do with hearty bewailing for our hardness desire thee to teach our souls with some compunction for those iniquities that did put thee to death and would ruin us to break our rocky hearts that they may stream out tears for those our sins which shed thy bloud and would cast us into eternal wailings and as thou hast humbled us into the dust and prostrated our very souls unto the ground to grant unto us to sit down in that dust and to bewail our own demerits which our very ruin can neither equal nor amend O suffer us not to be so obdurate as to prove unmoveable by all thy pressures insensible of our own miseries and sufferings and such as amidst the pains of sin do still retain the malice and the obstinacy and then at last by these thy methods and our greifs recover us from the follies of our lives close our eyes and withdraw our affections from the temting lightnesses and vanities of our conversations and fix our thoughts and appetites upon thy serious comforts those heavenly refreshments after so much sadness that we being reckon'd amongst them whom thou dost chasten put into the number of thy mourners whose share of sorrows are dispenc't in this life may have title to the inheritance of Sons the joys of blessedness and the portion of eternal consolations in the land of everlasting pleasures with thee the Lamb that wert slain and art therefore worthy to receive all honor power praise might majesty and dominion with the Father and the Holy Ghost now and for evermore SERMON VII OF THE CLEANSING POWER Of Christian HOPE 1 John 3. 3. Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself as he is pure HOPE is of all others the most active passion setting all the rest of them and the whole man on work for who would ever do or desire any thing if he did not hope for some good by it It is this hope alone that employs all the men and all the professions of the world it is the wings of the Desires and Actions carrying them thro the greatest difficulties with courage and alacrity with Confidence and an unwearied Constancy Ad bonas spes pertinax animus est Never will a man leave so long as he does hope and of all hopes that of the Christian should be the most active because it aims at the highest good in comparison of which all other good things are but shadows For what are the pleasures of earth to the things of God not worthy to be the expressions no nor the foils of them Now we see the greater the hopes the more active men are in the pursuit of them for who is there that will take so much pains for a Cottage as for a Crown And is it not then a wonder that of all Hopes yet this Hope of Heaven should be the least effectual in the minds of men and of all pleasures those of God should least invite and least imploy us For what one is there that does not with more eager and constant industry pursue the hopes of profit or the hopes of pleasure than he does the hopes of Immortality and of Blessedness How few are there that do not spend more time and more endeavors take more and longer pains in their Sports than in their Religion which could not certainly be if they had not surer and greater hopes of joy from their sports than from Heaven for the greater hope would certainly set them the more on work No Heaven is a thing of no tast carries no profit no pleasure in the meaning of it for if it did it would employ them in the gaining of it and every one that had this hope would purify himself as he is pure Matth. 5. 8. If the inheritance of the Kingdom of God were as some were upon earth entail'd so that do they what they will they could not be put by it there were then some reason not to wonder wherefore we see men live in the broad way to Hell and yet then hope to come to Heaven and certainly nothing but such a perswasion as that can possibly lull men into such a wretchless security as they are possest with in a thing of this eternal consequence For if we should examin them the most sinful wretch of them all hath hopes to be sav'd yea he would not be able to stand under the burden and the horror of his own killing thoughts if he should but once despair of that so that hope he will and yet if he believe one jot of Scripture it is impossible for him to hope it For that bids him not be deceiv'd neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor effeminate nor abusers of themselves with mankind nor theeves nor covetous nor drunkards nor revilers nor extortioners shall inherit the Kingdom of God So that he dares not not hope and yet if he do but ask himself he knows he cannot hope and what then makes him do it Certainly the opinion that such and such the inheritance is entail'd upon and be they what they will they shall have Heaven But alas they are mistaken in the nature of the inheritance we may read of many that were cast off and the Heir must be a servant as long as he is a child if he do not obey no hopes of his arriving at his inheritance when he is come to age St John here will dash all those vain hopes and will tell them as they cannot justly hope for none such as they can be possest of that inheritance and therefore 't is to no purpose for them to hope it So also that they do not indeed hope for if they did ever expect to arrive at Heaven they would not run on in a course that leads a clean contrary way The Apostle here propounds five Arguments to exhort them to the study of Piety to press after Holiness and to leave off their courses of sin I shall name them backwards First in the tenth verse if we be Christians we not onely will not but cannot sin Yea secondly we are indeed Children of the Devil if we do v. 8. Neither thirdly have we any Communion with Christ possibly or interest in his Righteousness v. 6 7. Nay fourthly they destroy the very end of Christ's coming into the world v. 5. Lastly in the front of all these neither can they hope to enjoy any of those glorious promises that God hath made to his Children those of giving them glory and immortality For he that hath this hope in him purifieth himself as he is pure In the handling of these words I shall shew you what it is to purify himself Secondly what kind of purity he is to strive after as he is pure Thirdly what the
indeed they saw a glimpse of it but straight a Cloud did overshadow it verse 34. But at his Passion he bids them Watch with him Matth xxviii 38. and when he findeth them asleep he says What could ye not watch with me one hour ver 40. and bids them watch again ver 41. and comes again a third time and upbraids their drowsiness ver 45. So much more necessary was it to behold his Agonies than to see his Felicities Glory does not discover or invite to Heaven so much as Sufferings drive to it and we are more concerned to take a view of that Garden in Gethsemane than that of Paradise and the going down from the Mount of Olives does more advantage us in climbing the Eternal hill than all Mount Tabors height Nor do Afflictions only drive us toward Heaven but they beget an hope of it Knowing that Tribulation worketh Patience Patience Experience and Experience Hope Rom. v. 3. 4. And I will give them the Valley of Achor for a door of Hope Hos. ii 14. As if Despair opprest them into Hope and that low troublous Valley opened into the highest Firmament Now he that rides at Anchor of this Hope though his Anchor lie buried under Waves yet those rouling Hills of Sea swell'd by storms of Affliction and raised too by his Tears do without Hyperbole mount him to Heaven He that hath entertained these Expectations in earnest how will he slight Temptations here below What will he not sacrifice to Christs Command See Abraham that did but hope for Canaan and that far off too to be possest by the Posterity of his Son Isaac yet when God commands him to slay Isaac before he had any posterity and so to dash all his own Promises and quite cut off the very motive to Abrahams Obedience yet he hopes and obeys even to contradiction Does both against hope And had we but the shadow of his hope as he had but the shadow of our Promises how would we sacrifice a sin at his Command and think a Fleshly lust a good exchange for the hope of Heaven which Tribulation worketh and he that had suffered in the Flesh would certainly cease from sin And now my last work is to view our own Concern in this and surely that must be all Exultation and Triumph and this not so much that our sufferings are ceast as that our sins are so not that our Enemies are sunk but that our flesh is vanquisht that sub hoc signo vinces is thus also come to pass with the Standard of the Cross that Cross on which our selves were Crucified we have overcome and with this Christian Banner we have put to flight the Armies of our Heathen Vices For thus it must be if my Text be true and sure it is not possible it should be otherwise For look upon the Muster-roll of these our Foes which S. Paul does produce Gal. v. v. 19 20 21. and see which of them could escape it runs thus Adultery Fornication Vncleanness Lasciviousness Idolatry Witchcraft Hatred Variance Emulations Wrath Strife Seditions Heresies Envyings Murder Drunkenness Revellings To begin with the great Commanders those that lead the Van and bring up the Rear Vncleanness and Revellings They that consider how they not only suffered for but by these Vices which did misplace mens watches and attendances sins that were not only like Achans in our Army and ruin'd it by bringing the accursed thing into it but were like Hannibal's Numidians in the Roman Army that did at once betray to and inflict Ruin sins that did merit and effect Destruction and made as well as provok'd overthrows and sins that by Gods goodness did cut off themselves while they did bring men into a condition that would not bear such Vices These are the guilts of Wealth and Splendor that do attend Felicity and Pomp it is not only hopeful that men did resolve to be reveng'd on these great workers of their mischief and will no more reset such Traitors in their bosoms But sure these sins are ceast that did put out themselves Then for Seditions They who consider when they broke the Scepter they left us nothing but the Rod of God instead of it a Rod that turned straight into a Serpent that changed our Seas into Blood or rather made new Seas of our own blood that brought Locusts over the Earth and Frogs into the Temple also to croak there that struck Lights here worse than Egyptian Darkness and destroyed all the first born of the Nation all the Nobles of the Land these will easily believe that we have selt this Rod too much to seize upon it hastily again the Scepter is restored and this Rod like to that in Israel laid up I hope within the Ark together with the Tables of the Law never to be dis joyn'd from Gods Commands nor taken thence against them Next for Heresies Truly we have left us none to revive or to make new the mischief both of them and their Cause the want of Government in the Church is now discerned and remedied And for Divisions and Schisms they who reflect on the said issues of them how well meaning soever all their Causes were will certainly avoid them To see how while we quarelled for the Fringes of Religion we tore the seamless Coat of Christ to pieces yea and the body too How when we first dislik'd a Liturgy the daily Sacrifice of Prayer was made to cease and then the House of Prayer was demolisht next Christs our Lords Prayer was rejected that Liturgy of his own framing thrown away in the Rubbish of his Temple and then it was a sin to pray at all His Table we must have remov'd and then his Supper was so too and that great Mystery of our Religion the Sacrament of our Redemption was buried in the Ruins of his Altar To see how thus out of heats of Religion we destroyed all Religion because that some adjacent Circumstances did not please us and fetcht a Coal from the Altar to set fire to and burn down the Temple because the building of some out-Court was we thought irregular is Document enough not to attempt this any more for Religions sake For now it would be in despite of Christ who hath almost verified the Jewish accusation of him Destroy this Temple also and in three days he will build it up again and hath built it up we hope as he did that of his own Body never to fall again by us Surely we will not kill this Body of his out of Love to him and make his Temple his burnt Offering When God hath set our sins in order thus before our eyes shewed them us in their sad effects there is no fear that we should fall in love with them But where it is not thus where Gods last and most working Method hath been able to produce no good I must to keep my word Apply the Danger In that case what remains but the Curse of the ground Heb. vi
other Resolutions thou seest the things that men with so much care and sin provide to make their lives delightful here although success answer their care are vain and helpless things and life it self as vain and I must die and drop from Heaven and therefore be thou sure to take a care their treacherous comforts do not make me die into the everlasting want of them and of all comforts The Artificial pleasures of the Palate whether in meats or drinks forc'd tasts that do at once satisfie and provoke the Appetite will rellish ill when I begin to swallow down my spittle but sure I am I am invited to the Supper of the Lamb to drink new Wine with Christ in my Father's Kingdom The fatted Calf is dressing for my Entertainment and shall I choose to be a while a Glutton with the Swine rather than the eternal Guest of my Father's Table and Bosom and refuse these for a few sick Excesses which would end in qualms and gall and vomits if there were no guilt to rejolt too and which will kindle a perpetual Feaver The Honours and the Glories of this Life will lose their shine when I am going to make my Bed in the Dark in a black lonely desolate hole of Earth my Gayeties must die when I must say to Corruption thou art my Father and to the Worm thou art my Mother and my Sister And if there were pride or ambition in them their Worm will never die that Pride will make me fall as low as Lucifer that Glory will go out into utter darkness and that Ambition change my Honour into everlasting Shame Envy and Torment But sure I am that there are Glorious Robes and Thrones and Scepters in God's Promises and let thy gayety my Soul be in the Robe of Immortality the Throne of thy Ambition that of Glory When I shall lie tortur'd or languishing in my last Bed Palaces and Possessions will no more relieve me than the Landskip of them in the Hangings can do it And if there were Covetousness Bribery Sacriledg or Injustice in them I shall be carried out of these and have no other Habitation assigned me but with the Devil and his Angels shall inherit and possess nothing but the Almighty's Indignation for ever But in my Father's House are many Mansions Places prepared for me and an Inheritance as wide as Heaven as Endless and Incorruptible as Eternity and God Himself And sure if I may choose there I will live where there is neither Will nor possibility to die where there is Life fulness of Joy Pleasures for Evermore To which c. The Sixth SERMON Preached at WHITE-HALL PSALM LXXIII v. 25. Whom have I in Heaven but thee and there is none upon Earth that I desire besides thee MY Text is the result of the Pious man's Audit the foot of the account in summing up his whole that he hath either in Possession or Desire and instead of nice Division of the Words I shall observe in them these Subjects of Discourse First the different tenure or condition of Estates in the two different Countreys we relate to this here is a Land onely of desires the other is a place of enjoyments Have in Heaven Desire on Earth Yea Secondly Though our estate here in this Earth be present and that other seem removed far off yet the possessions of that are present and in hand but the most native satisfactions of the Earth are still at distance onely the object of our aims and expectations I have now I have in Heaven on the Earth I but desire Thirdly Here is the matter of both these desires and enjoyments to the Pious man No Person or no thing for so it bears also but God There is nothing upon Earth that I desire besides thee And as to Heaven the negation is express'd emphatically by a Question Whom have I in Heaven but thee Yet least this Question should look like an Expostulation and he that asks it seem unsatisfied with his Portion we will therefore Lastly see the Importance of it to the Christian since our Saviour is gone up into Heaven see whom the Christian hath there And if the Psalmist could find none but God and David if he were the Author could not see the Son of David there yet since Christ is set at the Right hand of God the Christians present Interest in Heaven is such that looking with contempt on all that worldly men applaud themselves in the enjoyment of rejecting all but thee O Christ he justly triumphs in resolving of this question to himself and being satisfied in having thee he does renounce even the desiring any thing but thee Of these in their order beginning here on Earth where our tenure even of earthly things is but desire this World does give no satisfactions in hand but still they are onely the objects of our Expectations and wishes When God hath given Man an erect Countenance Eyes that do naturally look towards him and the very frame of him is such that Heaven is his constant Object it were no wonder if his looks and thoughts were always there since both the duty and necessity of that does seem imprest upon him in his making and to desire things above is as it were the Law in his members But when he swims in delicacies here upon the Earth is immerst in the plenties of all kinds that these should give him nothing but desires of themselves that the delights should not be present to him but he should still pursue and need that which he is encompast with that while with open mouth and in a most intemperate current he swills down the pleasures yet his open mouth should gape only with thirst and he be sensible of nothing but the want of these is strange even to astonishment Yet such it seems the nature of them is When S. John would enumerate all that is in the World the particular that he gives in is thus 1 John ii 16. All that is in the world the lust of the Flesh the lust of the Eyes and the Pride of Life He does not say the objects of these Lusts that are to serve and satisfie them for there 's no such thing as satisfaction but onely lust and if we make enquiry into the particulars we shall find it To begin with that of the Eyes Covetousness or the love of Money 'T is evident that where an Object is not useful to the faculty it cannot satisfie for satisfaction is fulfilling of our needs and uses but Money is not useful to the sight nor indeed does it prove useful to or serve any of the Covetous mans occasions or faculties rather the contrary in every kind he does bereave himself of good because he hath it He is in agonies of trouble and sollicitude lest he should need and not have that which when he hath acquir'd he will still need and will not have enjoyment of Nor is it possible it should be otherwise for since there is no natural
House and Land to Land till he become the Lord of his Horison and his Eyes cannot travel out of his Demesne For notwithstanding that we may have known ill Courses or ill Accidents consume all this or Force throw him out of all and that great Lord have no House but a Goal nor Land enough to make a Grave But sure I am that I shall be provided for in all necessities unless there happen such a one for which there 's no relief in God nor can I be disseis'd they must void Heaven e're they can disfurnish me For thee I have in Heaven But yet though chance nor violence cannot put me out yet I may forfeit this Possession too for Sin will separate betwixt me and my God cast me out of his presence and enjoyments as sure as it did Adam out of Paradise And then alas if I had none but him in Heaven he is now become my Adversary holds possession against me as he did that of Paradise with flames so he does Rain snares fire and brimstone thence and this is all the Sinner's portion Psalm xi All that I am like to get unless I have a person that will attribute the cause or mediate there is no hopes of a recovery for me if I have none in Heaven but thee Now here my last Consideration will come in If while my Soul lies grovling under fearful Apprehensions of its Forfeiture casting about for help and finding none upon the Earth if it look upwards and enquire whom have I in Heaven have I none there but my offended Adversary God it may resolve it self with comfort he hath other interests there For First I have an Intercessor there Rom. viii 34. a Master of Requests one that will not onely hand in my Petitions get access for my Prayers and my tears to God but will make them effectual For saith S. Paul Seeing we have a great High Priest that 's passed into the Heavens let us come boldly to the Throne of Grace that we may obtain Mercy and find Grace in time of need Heb. iv 14. 16. For though my supplications have not strength nor ardour that can mount them into Heaven and are too impure however wash'd in my repenting Tears to draw nigh to the Lord yet being put into the High Priests Censor with the Altar coals to give them holy flame and wrap'd up in his Cloud and Smoak of Incense that will cover all the failings of my Prayers they may get access into his Ears and his Compassions Indeed how can they choose when Christ does joyn his Intercessions for my requests will go where the High Priests do go he carries them now He himself doth sit at the right hand of God The intercessions that are made for me are made upon the Throne and therefore cannot be repuls'd from thence and such desires command and they create effects But should my Prayers fail and should God hide himself from my Petitions withdraw himself and hide his face from them although they be even before his face Yet Secondly I have an Advocate there too 1 John ii 1 2. If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the Righteous and he is the propitiation for our sins one that not onely pleads for me but brings the satisfaction of my Forfeiture in his hands makes the just value plead appears there with his Blood and proves a recompence 'T is Jesus Christ the righteous Advocate that does propitiate and atone son what he pleads for purchase what he begs 'T is true that poor Worm saith he hath provok'd thee often Lord but thou didst smite the Man that is thy fellow for it Behold my Hands and look into my Sides see there thy Recompence wilt thou refuse that Satisfaction thy self didst contrive and thy beloved Son did make why did a Person of the blessed Trinity descend from Heaven and Divinity to be made Sin and be a Curse but to Redeem him from the Curse and Sin and to entitle him again to the possession of Heaven and God Why was I Crucified but that thou might'st be aton'd and he be pardon'd Thus he solicites for us there presents himself in our stead as our Attorney He was not a publique Person onely on the Cross but he is so at the right hand of God as he was there our Representative and bore our sins so he is here our Representative and bears our wants was there our Proxey to the Wrath of God is here our Proxey to his Mercies and Compassions He looks upon himself as in our case whose Cause and Persons he supplies and so is prompted to desire and beg for our poor sakes and he looks upon us as on himself and so obtains as for his own beloved sake pleads as our selves and then as to himself he does decree Sentence and grant For Thirdly I have there a Judg and this is he who sits at the right hand of God to Judg the quick and dead I might have said a Saviour for he was exalted to a Saviour to give Remission of Sins But my Judg is as kind a word For however there be some will cry for Rocks and Hills to hide them from his Face yet this they are afraid of is the Face but of the Lamb Apoc. vi 16. And it is strange that they who can look upon Hell and charge Fiends in a sin should tremble at a Lamb and fly him so But to the Faithful and sincere endeavouring Christian though be sins as his Advocate is his propitiation so his Judg is his Sacrifice is that Lamb that does take away the sins of the World is his â—in-offering his expiation onely remov'd off from the Altar to the Judgment-Seat indeed the Mercy-Seat the Throne of his Atonement and his Absolution Where his Judg notwithstanding that his Forseit shall Decree Possession to him Come ye blessed of my Father inherit the Kingdom prepared for you Lastly we have our first fruits for so S. Paul does call our Saviour and then in whatsoever sense that which is done to the first Fruits is applicable to the Harvest all this being hallowed in their Consecration in that sense we our selves are raised to the right hand of God together with this our First Fruits And now O Lord whom have I in Heaven but thee I have my self in pledg and earnest there And then they that rather than have these Interests these Heavenly possessions in present will have onely desires here on Earth are certainly of a preverse and Reprobate choice Sure it would make Consideration sick to think of the comparison betwixt the after-expectations of a Pious man and those things which our worldly persons call present Enjoyments how for the little spangles of their pride they are so taken with its rustling Pomp they reject Glory that can never wither fade or sully forfeit the being cloath'd upon with Immortality How they lose all that everlasting Heaven means for little
that then through the faith which is in Christ Jesus that is together with the faith of all things necessary to be known concerning Christ is meant Now since St. John after the view of all that the other three Evangelists had wrote concerning Christ adding his story also says that Christ did and spoke more than what is written yet affirms most positively that those things were written that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God and believing might have life through his name and so enough is written for that faith which is in Jesus that is necessary to eternal life therefore the Holy Scripture of the Old Testament together with the faith of what is written in the New is that which St. Paul affirms is able to make us wise unto Salvation 3. Here is the advantage Timothy had above others as to Faith in these and consequently the far greater obligation to continue in it He had known them from a child And that from a child thou hast known the holy Scripture c. The first thing that doth offer it self to our consideration is the state suppos'd Salvation But because my Text supposes it I shall do so too nor shall think it needful to prove here that there is such a state nor consequently that all those are stupid who propose not to themselves this everlasting safety for their main end and by strict care in the duties of Religion and Gods service aime at it for if that state be granted nay if it be but possible it must be granted that there can be no security but in doing so nor consequently any wisdom without being wise thus unto salvation But then if this were granted that the wisest thing man could propose to himself were by strict care in all the duties of Religion to design Gods honor and his own salvation still as to the other part of prudence which consists in the choice of means we are to seek for that Religion we are to pursue this end by and attain it since there are so many and so opposite Religions in the world that t is not easier to reconcile them then to make peace between enemies and contradictions And it alwaies was so for excepting that mankind agreed still in the notion of the necessity of Religion that all had apprehensions of invisible powers above us and differ'd not much in the rules of Justice and Morality in other things there was no nearness Almost from the beginning there was more variety of Gods then Nations I had almost said then Worshippers Beasts were their sacrifices and their Deities and therefore their Votaries were certainly no better Vices also were their worships things which their Cities and their Camps would not endure found Sanctuary in their Temples and the actions which were whipt in the Judgment-hall were their piety in the holy places And tho some wise men among them found good reason to decry this yet they knew not what to take up in the stead I need not add the present differences of the world even that call'd Christian too great part of which as heretofore they seal'd their faith with their own blood now seal it in the blood of all that differ from them and by their persecutions hope to merit Heaven more then those did hope to gain it by their Martyrdoms But these I need not add to make up this into a demonstration that it is impossible for lapsed men so far as they are left to themselves and have no other guide to follow but their reason to find out what they are to believe of God and how to serve him and save themselves The Fathers and Philosophers too conclude that we can learn from none but God what we must understand of God who must be known only as he himself is pleas'd to revele himself His worship also how he will be serv'd and what observances he does require or will admit since it depends on his own good plesure therefore without his directions t is in vain to hope to please him with our Religious service whatever it be and by consequence impossible without his guidance and assistance to acquire the end of all our Service and Religion the salvation of our souls So that how wise soever he be who does propose this blessed end to himself if yet withall he be not some way from the Lord instructed by what means he must pursue that end and do not make choice of and use those means it is impossible he can be wise unto salvation Now for this St. Paul assures us most expresly here we may be furnished For he saies The Holy Scriptures are able to make us wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus And he does assert this on the very ground we mention'd for they are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 inspir'd by God they come from him All which must be made out in the next place That those Holy Scriptures which St. Paul first mentions those of the Old Testament were so and did contain sufficient revelation both of God and of the way of worship of the Jews that Nation did so perfectly believe that neither Sufferings nor Miracles could perswade the contrary neither the Roman persecutors that destroy'd their worship nor the Son of God that chang'd it could yet take them off from Moses and his Scriptures Now that this Moses led that Nation out of Egypt with an high hand and made himself their Prince and Law-giver multitudes of forreign Histories of the first times and the best account assure us whose relations we cannot question as deriv'd from themselves because they hated Jews beyond all possibility of such compliance But the Scriptures also tell us how in Egypt by strange wonders such as their Magicians could not imitate nor bear who tho they had permission to do some it was that so they might appear to be outdon the more miraculously themselves confessing Gods hand in those prodigies Moses wrought on the Egyptians to give leave the people should depart and how when yet notwithstanding that leave given they were pursu'd he made way for them through the Sea by Miracles which was a rampart and defence to them a ruine to their enemies How they were fed for forty years with Manna raining down from Heaven in the wilderness and that they might depend on Providence for their daily provision when he forbad them to take care or gather for the morrow whatsoe're their greediness or want of faith provided strait bred worms and stank except that on the Sabbath eve to keep off such cares from the day of their Religion they gather'd double which corrupted not How when they mutined for flesh would have variety Paradise in the desert such great plenty of Quailes flew to them as fed the whole Nation till their very lust was surfetted and they had no more will then hunger to them How Moses Rod did strike a living
apparent Miracle to all Jerusalem the suns prodigious Eclipse when it was impossible by nature he should be eclips'd it being then full moon was so to the whole Hemisphere It serves the use I am to make of this that 't is here recorded but withal Heathen Historians and Chronologes bear witness to it for when they relate that in the 4th year of the 202 Olympiad the year that is assign'd to Christ's death there was such a great Eclipse as never had bin day at noon turn'd into night tâ—e stars appearing and earthquakes as far as Bythyma since 't is apparent by the motions of the Heavens and the calculations of Astronomy there could be none such then according to the course of nature it must be this the â—ospel speaks of But beyond all this 't is registred here that according as he had foretold he rais'd himself from death the 3d day yea and many bodies of the Saints that had bin buried long it may be some of them he rais'd with him That notwithstanding all the art and treachery of the Cheif Priests to conceal it yet that very day he appear'd First to Mary Magdalen 2dly the Women 3dly Peter 4thly to them that went to Emaus last of all on that day to the eleven except Thomas being seen and handled by and eating with them 6thly eight daies after to the same eleven with Thomas 7thly at the sea of Galilee appearing in a miracle of fishes 8thly to all his Disciples and 500 Brethren more in Galilee then to James then to all his Apostles promising them the Holy Ghost and lastly all of them beholding he ascended into Heaven and ten daies after as he promised sent the Holy Ghost upon them in the shape of fiery tongues so as that they spoke all Languages immediatly to the amazement of the Jews of every Nation under Heaven to which they were scatter'd that the Miracle might spread as far Now if all this be true he that did these must have communication with a power above all that we account the powers of Nature such an one most certainly as can perform whatsoever he in this book promises inflict what e're he threatens such as is Divine And since he wrought all these on purpose to evince he came commission'd from that Divine power brought these Miracles as seals of that commission that we might believe him therfore whatsoever he delivers must be embrac't by us as we hope for those blessed rewards that he proposeth and on pain of those eternal torments if we do not of both which it is not possible to doubt if these accounts be true 2d ly Since the most and greatest of these must be don but once he could not be incarnated and born and live and preach and dye and rise again and go to Heaven every day of every age in every place to convince every man by his own senses to all those that did not see the matter of fact therefore faith of all these must be made by witnesses And 3dly If we can be sure the witnesses that do assert a fact understand it exactly if the things be palpable and they must certainly know whether they were really don or no and if we can be sure too that they are sincere will not affirm that which they do not know and do not lye their testimony of it must be most infallible because it is impossible such witnesses can be deceiv'd or will deceive 4thly The witnesses in this case the Apostles and the 70 Disciples for I 'le name no more must needs know most perfectly for they not only saw the Miracles but were instruments parties in some of them sent to cure diseases cast out Devils and knew whether all this were in earnest And most certainly they saw as all the Jews did too Christ crucified his heart pierc'd with a spear and his body buried and whether they did see him risen handle him eat with him they knew And if they might mistake in his Ascention yet the fiery tongues if such did light on them they must needs see and whether they themselves who spoke no Languages could then speak Tongues it cannot be but they must know In these there is no possibility they could err unless they did it wilfully but then 't is as impossible that they could do it wilfully if they were sincere and honest such as would not lye Now that they were such I might urge their simplicity and openness without disguise not covering their own errors men who seem'd to live as well as preach against all artifice and to have no design on any thing but the amendment and salvation of mankind For he that can suppose it possible that they were otherwise men of art and finess that they contriv'd the story must needs know First that such would not seal their falsehood with their blood design no recompense to all their travels but contemt and hatred persecutions prisons whippings wounds and death to be the scum and the off-scouring of the world lay out their lives against their conscience to preach that Jesus who did only call them out to be a spectacle to all the world just such as Malefactors when expos'd to fight with and to be devour'd of wild beasts Their sufferings are too known to stay upon St Pauls own catalogue of his for five whole verses 2 Cor. 11. is such that to sustain them only for this end to put a cheat on mankind count a so laborious vext torn miserable life and an infamous death gain so the fable might be beleiv'd to think they could do this is sure as great a madness as to do it But yet I will suppose that possible that those who wove the fable pleas'd themselves so infinitly with the expectations of imposing on mankind as that those hopes could make misery and death it self look lovely to them But Then 2dly that all and every of them should be of that mind that amongst so many that bare witness of Christs Miracles and resurrection not a man should discover the cheat that when their persecutors did with arts of torment as it were examin them upon the rack they should work not one single confession out of them that no ones courage should be broke nor have a qualm so far as to acknowledg how it was disclose the plot lay open the confederacy the whole mystery and the contrivance of it When of twelve Disciples one was so false to betray his Masters person at a vile rate yet that all of them and many more in a feign'd story of his Miracles should be so true to one another that no engin of mans cruelty ever could screw out the sacret not one should betray the forgery and be a Judas where he ought to be no not that Judas whose concern it was whose treason to his Master had bin justified had he bin an impostor yet that he should stir no least suspicion
by the Ancients we may perceive in that as if there either really were or at least analogically whatsoever gives solemnity or force in Law to an engagement so as that it may become inviolable that they word this with They seem to think it was an oath Tertullian calls the Answers Verba Sacramenti So they might call a vow made with hands lift up as that was They were to do it before many Witnesses for more assurance in the face of the whole Church Yea that profession too was registred in the Church records always and St Austin says it was in heaven too Deo Angelis ejus conscribentibus dixisti Renuncio And tho there were not really in fact what Vicecomes dream't a signing and sealing this their compact with Almighty God meant when Cyril says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and in Tertullians ring Signaculo lavacri quo fidei pactionem interrogatus obsignat yet the meer allusion does assure us they intended to convince us that as in Covenants amongst men when there 's no one Ceremony wanting of all the formalities and ties of Law to make a compact sure and not to be rescinded or avoided then performance of Conditions only will serve turn and is necessary so this Sacrament puts all the same necessities upon the baptized And it is no wonder therefore if the same Tertullian word that men are intinctione alligati tied from Sin by it Nay more St Paul says we are held from it by the bonds of Death for here he says we are baptiz'd into Death to Sin as if he did suppose us no more able to have any motion to it then a carkass hath yea shut up sequestred from the practice of it as it were in the grave buried with Christ or as Christ was in that Death 'T is plain this Scripture does suppose a baptiz'd person dead to Sin as truly as they are suppos'd dead who are buried for the Ceremony represents a burial upon that account and signifies the bonds or obligations that by Baptism are put upon a Christian to restrain him from Sin are in moral speaking of like force as those bonds and swaths in which they wind up dead men grave-cloaths that do bind them hand and foot in natural speaking are of to restrain from motion and a Christian that hath burst all these engagements and walks in the way of Sinners that courts pleasures and embraces lusts pursues the world or runs to the excess of riots is a great prodigy in manners as a corps that had broke his coffin thrust away his grave-stone and that lapt up in his winding-sheet should yet come and converse and practise all the offices of life would be a prodigy in nature And therefore 't is not strange if our Apostle press hard and suppose that they never do again return to live to Sin to which they were already dead and buried with Christ for they that are baptiz'd into the death of Christ are they were so to die as Christ that is to die to Sin once so as to live always afterwards to God having engag'd to keep Gods holy will and commandments and to walk in the same all the days of their life the 3d thing that I was to speak to That Baptism does bind us so to die to Sin as that we never live to it again i. e. be given up to it so that it come to have dominion of us and that we obey it in fulfilling of its lusts and go on in a known deliberate habit in a course of its repeated acts is the thing my text is brought to prove for in the verse before he says We that are dead to Sin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 How shall we yet again live to it That cannot be for they that are baptiz'd are baptiz'd into the death of Christ a death like his who in that he died to Sin died but once v. 10. but ever afterwards he lives to God and cannot die again So also reckon yee your selves to be dead to Sin v. 11. He therefore that is truly dead to Sin must be so dead as that he cannot live to it for then there would be a necessity that he should die to it again which can no more be it should seem by the importances of Baptism then that Christ can die again We read indeed of those that crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh Heb. 6. 6. but he dies not for them again there remains no more sacrifice for sin which words being said of those who being once by Baptism inlightned fall away and do not persevere to their lives end makes it look fearfully as if it were meant of every one that after having undertaken this in earnest do's relapse to Sin so far as that it lives in him and reigns over him again In the race that is set before us he that runs with all his might and heart may stumble and fall but 't is impossible that he can wilfully turn back again walk contrary in full cariere Our Savior seems to state the question perfectly John 13. v. 8 9 10. where he tells St Peter and the rest of the Apostles that they that were washt were clean wholly save their feet need only have them afterwards washt but they had so much need of that otherwise they had no part in him The Traveller that had cleans'd himself and had preserv'd his body carefully from all defilements let him do his best his journey yet must needs foul his feet and therefore 't was the custome always there to wash them So in your Pilgrimage here those that have by Baptism bin cleans'd for so the Author in St Cyprian expounds it and Tertullian from this verse proves the Apostles had bin baptiz'd and according to the vow there made renounced sincerely rid themselves of all the gross unclean habitual courses of their life yet their conversing with this Earth will certainly contract such sullages that if that which is typ'd and meant here by my washing of your feet be not don to them however they have bin baptiz'd into me they can have no part in me no benefit from me All of you my Apostles must be cleans'd from your ambitions your contentious pride which puts you upon frequent strifes whiâ—h of you shall be greatest Math. 20. c. Some of you from the fury of your passion and revengeful heats that would needs call for fire from heaven Luke 9. 54. Peter in one night some think in this that he was washt did also find there was occasion that his arrogant presumtion of his own strength how tho all should be offended he would not but would die for his Master Math. 26. 33. should be washt away his negligence and carelesness in duty also watching not even in temtation when he saw his Master by him in an Agony v. 40 his wrath so great as that it made him draw his sword and wound without autority and beyond all that evil
and so on to glory and to be partakers of his Nature as a kindness that is in great degree Divine And certainly if acts of Mercy be as we have seen so well pleasing to God 't is certain that the acts of greatest Mercy must be most well-pleasing and it is as certain that those Mercies are the greatest which releive from greatest miseries and invest with highest blessedness but the eternal happy preparations for the Penitent and the as infinite and immortal torments that await the Sinner transcend all comparison with other things Both of them indeed were propos'd in Mercy Hell it self was threatned merely in compassion to affright our passage and to make our entry inaccessible 'T is true it must be executed on the final impenitent that God may be true he is engag'd in his veracity to inflict it and yet he scarce knows how to do it or to punish How shall I give thee up O Ephraim how shall I deliver thee O Israel My heart is turn'd within me my repentings are kindled together Hos. 11. 8. Since thou wilt not do it not turn not repent sure I must for how shall I give thee up Yea he does it till that he be weary with repenting Jer. 15. 6. till he be in passion so as that with oaths he does expostulate as I live saith the Lord I would not the death of the wicked turn ye turn ye from your evil waies for why will ye die yea more he sent his Son out of his bosom to prevent it Would you know the value of that kindness that endeavors to reform such Sinners it was worth the Incarnation of the Son of God the Word was made flesh purposely to call such to repentance so my text saith I came to call Sinners to repentance But to call them to it Lord out of thine own mouth we will challenge more from thee for thou didst answer to this very same reproch of being a guest to one that was a Sinner The Son of man came to seek and to save that which is lost Luke 19. 10. not to call onely but to seek and how he shews you in the Parable chap. 15. v. 4 5. What man of you having an hundred sheep if he lose one of them doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness and go after that which is lost until he find it and when he hath found it he laieth it on his shoulders rejoicing The Sinner he hath straid into by paths gon away from the Shepherd of his soul is a lost sheep but yet when he is gon his farthest is in mazes knows not which way to betake himself then this good Shepherd do's not onely call invite to a return or as the Father in the Parable run to meet him in his coming back but goes himself to seek him seems to mind the recovery of each single one that 's lost and contributes as carefully to his return as if that one were all his charge and the whole flock not dearer to him then that sheep he leaves the ninety and nine to seek that one and he seeks till he finds it and then laies it on his shoulders the wandring sheep it seems had strai'd till it was weary and had tir'd it self with running from its Shepherd so as that it neither could come nor be driven home but that too is provided for for therefore he is carried that none how far soever he hath gon away may yet despair of coming back This sheep had wandred to so great a distance and to so much weariness that he was fain to be born back when he was found Yea and the burden was most acceptable for he laid it on his shoulders rejoicing assure thy self he will refuse no burden for thy sake who was willing to bear the Cross for thee be but contented to be found by him and he will carry thee with gladness the joy will spread it self to Heaven also v. 7. There is joy in heaven over one Sinner that repenteth The kindness that effects this is worth a triumph in Gods presence among all God Angels it is worth a passion of the Son of God it is fit to make a joy in Heaven and fit to make the Lord of Heaven descend to earth and to the grave for it Nor yet content with having don all this himself he gave his Spirit to ordain and qualify a state of men to agitate this onely work to the worlds end For saith St Paul we are Ambassadors for Christ as tho God did beseech you by us we pray you in Christs stead be ye reconciled to God I know not whether the Ambassadors are likely to prevail in what the Son himself hath fail'd and whether Gods beseeching us will do that which his dying for us hath not yet bin able to effect or whether they that come with the same Ambassy have not reason to expect the same unkind reception for it is no wonder if that Message which did cause Christ to be crucifi'd and his Heralds martyr'd which was so unwelcome that they shed the blood of intire Nations almost to extinguish it and lay'd wast whole Regions to extirpate it should not now be any whit more grateful for without all doubt men love their vices now as well as ever and indeed 't is hard to love the men that come to tear their bosome inclinations from their heart whose words are corrosives and caustics lances sawes and whatsoever other instruments that serve to mortify and to cut off men that design to sower all their satisfactions they have in the world by throwing in the thoughts of present guilt and after torments whom if they beleive not they must needs despise and hate them for assuming so to check and censure lay such black dooms on their actions if they do beleive them they must needs be tortur'd by them feel convulsions wracks within at their discourses and by consequence cannot much affect them 'T is hard not to be enemies to them who tho they say they come to treat a reconciliation are Ambassadors of war and whose commission 't is to cry aloud not spare but lift up their voice like a trumpet to proclaime defiance sound a charge against them and to shew the people their transgressions and the house of Jacob their sins Now to be told of faults to have ones bosome ript up and the guilt displai'd was hardly ever acceptable good counsel admonitions and reproofs never have bin welcome and then how should they be so whose office 't is to bring them and who are as the Wise Man saith Ordain'd to reproving But 't is as unhappy sure as 't is unreasonable to dislike the greatest kindnesses for being such if mercy shall be thought to merit hate because it is the highest mercy what then shall oblige The poor man does not scorn the garment that is sent to cloth his nakedness or the food that is bestow'd upon his croaking clinging bowels tho the
curiosity or emulation or sin does long for they will prostitute before me But what are all those satisfactions in comparison with the joys of God Is there delight in the full affluence of those enjoyments Hath God indulg'd pleasure to those things which he hath allow'd to wicked Egypt and shall I think he hath not provided greater pleasures for his own self and for those he intends to make happy with him Now let me have Gods delights Heaven I do assure my self hath the more advantages and therefore there I chuse And so he chose rather the afflictions of this world for he had an eye to the recompence of the reward and by this we are sure if we had hopes we should make other choices than we do If a sin come to temt me drest with all its pleasures and cloath'd with all the bewitching arts it can put on or fancy paint it out with if at the same time I can but look up to my Hopes bethink my self of the rewards of Religion and recollect that there are no such pleasures in the sin as there are prepar'd for me if I abstain from it shall I not then reject and scorn the temtation think it impertinent and foolish and wonder it should be so unreasonable to desire or think me so vain as to grant upon score of pleasure in the commission when I am sure of greater if I do not commit it Shall I not have reason to believe the sin very unkind to me when it allures me with some little delight and I must part with all blessedness for it No surely nothing can withdraw him whom a Christians Hopes do entertain But because temtations are apt to prevail where there is no appearance of danger to come a little nearer to you that you may with terror see that none can have this Hope but they that purify which was the last thing I shall onely ask thee whosoever thou art that hopest to have thy sins forgiven thee and to have Eternal Life upon what grounds thou hopest it We have no reason to hope for any thing but what God hath promis'd Now hath God any where promis'd that thou particularly â—â—alt be sav'd Certainly no. What then why dost thou hope if thou canst answer me Because he hath promis'd to the Pure in heart that they shall see God he hath given assurance to them that repent that they shall be forgiven and I how sinful soever I have bin yet I am penitent I endeavor to purge out that old leaven to cleanse my self I am resolv'd not to allow my self any of my vicious inclinations or my customes I 'le strive against my petty sins and my soul is humbled in me and therefore have I Hope If thou canst answer thus thou hast indeed good grounds thou hast prov'd that thou maiest hope but withal thou hast prov'd also that thou dost purify and upon that score dost hope For if thou didst not repent and amend and purge thy self from thy filthy wickednesses thou must then know that the same God that seal'd all his promises with the bloud of his Son did also represent and seal these threatnings in his suffering Without holiness no man shall see God Except ye repent ye shall all perish The axe is laid to the root of the tree every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be hewn down and cast into the fire s And Be not deceiv'd neither fornicator nor adulterer nor covetous person nor rietous and the like hath any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ or God For without are dogs and whoremongers and murderers and idolaters and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie and They that live after the flesh shall die and Christ himself pronounc'd Go ye cursed into everlasting fire Now if thou goest on in a course of any of these sins dost any of these deeds of the Flesh I shall onely ask thee are not these threats as true and as much to be believ'd as his promises And if thou dost believe them how is it possible that thou that liv'st in any of those courses which these threats belong to canst have any hope When God hath so solemnly declar'd thou shalt have nothing but everlasting ruin how darest thou how canst thou hope for Heaven This is the same thing as to think to anchor on the billows or to lay foundations in a wave and on a storm to hope in threats at least in opposition to all Scripture and to all promise to wage war with the Gospel and resolve to have them both against and in despite of God and that certainly will very little avail thee No he that does not amend cannot hope for he that hopes must needs purify himself And now should we apply this to the careless Sinner if we consider first not onely what sad character St Paul does give of men in that condition how it is the description he gives of the Heathen and he joins it with other most comfortless expressions Eph. 2. 12. without Christ strangers from the Covenant of promise having no hope and without God in the world but also look upon the experience how to be in a lost desperate condition in relation to so eternal a consequence as the world to come imports is such a thing as none was ever able to stand under the consideration of it one hours despair sinks them for ever we could not bear the weight of it Judas did chuse all the sad issues of it hereafter rather than the passion here thought it easier to go meet Gods fury than despair of mercy and when he saw he had no hopes of pardon he ran to damnation No we are resolv'd we must hope to be sav'd 2. Consider that it is impossible for the wicked man while he continues such to hope he cannot chuse but know that the promises concern him not they are conditional they are made onely to them that repent and believe and God knows that he hath not don yet so that nothing but the threats belong to him And then how shall we reconcile these considerations if we put them both together in the Sinners mind How shall they be at peace and not tear one another and the soul It is impossible to endure not to hope and yet 't is impossible that man should hope and if this contest happen when he goes to die then his own thoughts will drag him down to the Abyss with more violence than the fiends Sure 't is a very sad consideration to think that men that know the wretchedness of being hopeless that dare not not hope will not yet industriously and piously set upon the performance of that condition on which they may hope will not purify that they may have reason to expect the promises And it is more sad to see that men who never purge themselves from filthiness of Flesh or Spirit but go on in their sinful courses and consequently know that while they are such they
which he found death from till we labor under that which he sunk under we have no regard of his mercies to us but renounce all relation to him and close with his mortal enimy and cannot then hope to be received by him And thus you have the reason why these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are the onely fit persons to be invited by him because till we are so we cannot truly come unto him depend upon him and till we are so we are not fit to be received by him And now for application But what cannot we truly come til we find our selves to be heavy laden till we labor and are tired and wearied with iniquity We see the perverse conditions of man whom nothing but misery can perswade to Heaven Heaven is no bait tho it prostitute all its glories Happiness is a word that hath no musick in it the pleasures with which God entertained himself from all eternity have no temtation in them compared to those of sin Come unto me is not an invitation till we labor till we find our selves perishing in our choice ruined in those sins we have embraced we never will uncling nor come to Christ we must have our happiness inflicted on us and be goaded into bliss But then 2. Learn hence how willing Christ is to have us come to him when he makes use of Hell not to punish onely them that will not come but to drive us to come to him Had it not bin enough for him to set before us life and death and bid us take our choice No he knows our blind and unadvised appetites would chuse the guilt poison the painted the pleasant death and make a Covenant with Hell and therefore he lets us feel part of that Hell to fright us and yet then receives us To force us to love ease he lets us travel under the burdens of our own desiring and yet after that invites us to rest he do's not onely accept them whose choice he is not but refuge when as he might reject us You would none of me but chose weight load and labor go and look for ease thence But alas if I should bid you seek refreshment from your pleasant sins what comfort would you find when you are tired with those sins and the pleasures of them do forsake you and leave you nothing but the stings and horror of the after expectations No no come to me yet I will receive you after all your refusals and tho you come to me but as to a last hold having nothing else to trust to tho you have already tri'd all other and slighted me you shall yet be welcome my pierced side is yet open to receive all of you that will yet come and let you into my very heart my arms are yet as wide as on the Cross at their full length to take you into their embraces Ah my Brethren Christ doth not send us back to our beloved miseries when we come to him but he makes those miseries a part of his Rhetoric to invite us uses our labour and weariness to perswade us to come makes those burdens the indearment of and provocation to his ease and Hell it self a part of his wooing And how will he receive and embrace us who doth thus desire and court us The story of the Prodigal is hugely evictive of this and so indulgent that it would almost invite a man to sin but then it do's far more invite a man that will repent him of his sin to be secure of God's acceptance He that had so villanously betraied his Father's dearness to his own beastliness and ruin to whom all kindness would seem lost and to receive him in again and to assist him would be but to encourage him and to furnish him for a return back to the prodigalities of sin and to the former riots of iniquity yet when he do's repent he do's obtain far more than he desires he is received to feast and bosom is entertain'd much more than the first born and had he never gon away he had not bin so dear Do but consult the story Luke 15. When weary and fainting under the burden of himself which his languishing spirits were scarce able to sustain he came at last to himself v. 17. and began to wonder that he chose to stay with husks with famine rather than to go to daily plenty and chose to dwell in the unclean uncomfortable company of swine before his Father's houshold and then strait to think of leaving that condition and society and to resolve on a return When he began to put those resolutions into act and his impotent starv'd limbs would scarce serve his desires at least he was unable to make hast in the pursuit of his intentions for he was yet a great way off v. 20. yet then his Father had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him His compassions did not keep state or stand expecting till his ungracious son should come and humble himself and deprecate and beg but he ran to meet him and made far greater hast to receive and entertain than the other could do to be received and as if the humiliations or weaknesses had bin on his side he fell at least the impotencies of his affection did vie with those of the others condition for he fell on his neck and kissed him And whereas his repenting son did resolve to become prostrate and low in condition as well as posture I will go to my Father and say unto him Father I have sinned before heaven and against thee and am no more worthy to be called thy son make me as one of thy hired servants v. 18 19. I dare not hope for favor from any tie of nature which I have broken all I do not beg thy kindness as the issue of thy Relation but as the wages of my labor I will serve for thy affections and let me have it as the hire of my repentance and endeavors but 't was enough it seems to have resolv'd thus lowly in earnest for when he comes to act it v. 21. as he had said I am unworthy to be called thy son his Father cuts him off and calls for the best Robe and for a Ring and for the fatted Calf will not let him so much as beg to be a servant but if he once acknowledge himself unworthy for a son he puts him strait in such an equipage as he may owne him in with credit in the best Robe and he rejoyces quickens and sets out his joy with Feasts and Music Now saith Tertullian Quis ille nobis intelligendus Pater What Father is this in the story Why certainly 't is God No one so much a Father no one so compassionate if the Sinner once come to himself as the prodigal son is said to do for while he do's go on he is indeed beside himself and in a fit and when he has collected sober thoughts about him and do's compare his wanting husks with the
in many of the great duties of our Christianity which are scofft and ridicul'd but in the very case that makes the opposition in the context here betwixt the Psalmist and the men of this world their excessive rich full way of living If I do not live up to the heights and vain pomps of condition or the mode indeed tho my condition will not bear it if I be not as expensive as luxurious as others I am then concluded sordid near short handed sleighted by all those that do exceed me and by all that judg by such appearances so that here is disreputation lights upon me And besides if I retrench not superfluities alone but all licencious conversation and the other evil uncomly entertainments of societies retire out of them allow my self none of these liberties grow more severe than others and consequently singular in my behavior then I must keep company with no body must withdraw from every meeting be a Recluse as if the world were but a Cloyster or rather Hermitage so that here 's uncomfortable solitude attends this 'T were very sad if onely vicious conversation could cement societies or make acquaintances and licencious folly sawce their meetings give them relish What comfort is there like to be in such companions that have nothing to endear themselves to one another but that they will not refuse to sin be sick or mad with one another In truth it were no very eligible thing to be counted good pleasant company if to be so a man must hazard his sobriety or modesty make bold with his Religion and good manners Even common decency can scarce entertain without extravagance or detraction either they must be ridiculous or sharpe and bitter Now it is ill to be engaged by reputation to play the Satyrist or to play the fool and have no other recompence or satisfaction but to make others laugh But God be thanked 't is not thus but men that have some little latent affections to their sins or follies still frame these objections against reformation of their evil customs the age is not so vitiated such ill conversation unless it be by those that like and use it is not every where to be found but if it were and so far as we meet it Davids resolution is most necessary They may take their course but as for me I will retire into God's presence and behold his face And what if by withdrawing thus I frequently deprive my self of the society that I was us'd to was friendly and delightfull to me 'T is better by denying my self and reforming to make joy in Heaven in God's presence among Angels than assist in making sport with such men and 't will be but little comfort to go merrily and with good company to my damnation Let them enjoy themselves in such society but as for me I will seek other will live always in God's presence I will behold his face As to the other obstacle the scoffs and the disreputations that are cast upon those that are singular on this account comply not with the modes and evil customs of the age according as St Peter tells his Proselytes 1 Pet. 4. 3 4. The time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentile World when we walked in lasciviousness lusts excess of wine revellings banquetings wherein they think it strange that you run not with them to the same excess of riot speaking evil of you It cannot be deni'd but that the world do's put disreputation strangly upon things and most unreasonably Some virtues are the most reprochfull things that can be a man can scarce live under the disparagement of being guilty of obeying God and on the other side one of the greatest and most sinfull injuries in the whole world is if not laudable yet not blam'd in the man that does it while the innocent sufferer of it is contemn'd and is branded because he is wrong'd Indeed if Christ's discipline were in force to censure every vicious person 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if every open contumacious Sinner were render'd as contemtible as a Publican was to the Jews as Christ left order disreputation then would lie where it ought and the objection would have no force But as the world is singularity in good things and in not comporting with modes and customs tho it may derive upon it self the scoffs of vain licencious men cannot want esteem enough to bare it up against that There is indeed no reputation like that of a discreet well manag'd virtue for many men that will not practise it will yet commend it For to pass the great things and to name that which there is scarce any that is none sensible of the instance which I made of this out of the context where the Psalmist sets himself against the custom of those men that pride themselves in ostentation of the plenties and the gayeties and the excess of this world a mode which may be grown to such an height even in the lower ranks of people also that they are so undervalued who comply not with it that most cannot bear the shame of not having that which others have tho their condition will not bear the charge of it and this is almost universal But be it so yet they that do not see thy pomps like others thy estate spangle glare about thee and thy rooms and thy retinue do not see it spilt about thy table if they see thee live up to thy own condition onely taking care not to exceed it and resolving not to owe thy plenties to thy debts that is thy abundance to the needs of others make their dues their wants and nakedness to dress thy vanities and if they see thee furnish those that need with what thou sparest they cannot count this lower stricter sort of living Sordidness but discreet just charitable Piety the others gaudiness proud lavishness yea unjust unchristian folly which at last will fall and that unpitied But at once suppose to set our selves against the evil customs of the world and to be singular in duty should be likely to create us sleights and scoffs and disreputation yet consider what our Savior says Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy Angels He couples these and makes it the same guilt to be asham'd of him and of his words asham'd of obedience to his word and asham'd of his person to be afraid of loath to do ones duty because possibly some will speak meanly of it is not onely not to to dare to go to Heaven because some men laugh and scoff at those that do go thither but 't is reckon'd the same thing as to be asham'd of the Son of God who requir'd that duty and think meanly of him scorn to own that their elder Brother God Almighty's First-born
came along to them by the way of oral practical Tradition If it did 't is not a sure infallible Rule of conveying Faith if it did not then that Church did not still receive their Faith upon that Rule and Principle or by that method tho that they did so is their first great Principle and the great Master of that Scheme assur'd his Holiness it was not possible to maintain their doctrine otherwise against the subtlety of the English Hereticks And truly they that make the greatest noise amongst us now are fled to the last hold of it but that indeed it does alone protest Infallibility whether of the Church or the Succession of their doctrine by that way of practical Tradition and that is the infallible most necessary certainty of Faith But I shall say no more to this than what the grand Abettor of the Principle hath said in answer to himself objecting what was to be said to them that could not penetrate into his demonstrations see the force and evidence of that Rule and Principle and yet have that Faith that 's necessary to Salvation I shall give it you in his own words as near as I can put them into English He says there is a certainty deriv'd into the understanding of these men out of their will for since they think themselves assur'd these truths were brought down by the Church from Christ to them stand convinc't of that act this is sufficient to cause their wills firmly to adhere to them and by that adherence to repell all difficulties and objections to which curious wits are subjects And whether the man see that the Autority of the Church which he follows is of more force at least to him than particular objections in those truths or whether he thinks nothing at all of it but rests stedfast in that assent which his very ignorance caus'd 't is plain he hath a certainty of will which in its way extends it self to the Government of his whole life answerably to that his perswasion and by consequence he hath a certainty exclusive of all doubt and such as moves him to direct his actions all to God that is there is in him that Faith which worketh by love So he Now hence 't is evident by his Concessions first that there may be a saving Faith which hath not that infallible certainty arising from the motives Guide or Principle or way of Resolution And that secondly a Certainty deriv'd into the Understanding from a Will that is piously dispos'd sufficeth Thirdly that there is this certainty where the Will firmly cleaves and adheres to God relying on him with a vigorous hope and trust directing all the actions up to God and to his service and persevering in it to the life's end Now this is all that I am all this while contending for It is not by self-evident or demonstrative methods or by an infallible Guide that he provides against mens unbelief but when with preparation like our man here in the Text in weeping earnestly we betake our selves to him crying out for help and direction and applying our understanding meekly to attend his methods he disposes piously the Will to entertain the gracious blessed Proposals of the Gospel with complacency and heartiness and from conversing with the experience of them to prefer them before all worldly carnal things that used to bait our lusts ravish our hearts and carry us away from God and from our duty and it is against this unbelief in thus departing from the living God that his assistances are mainly level'd and our Praiers chiefly are to be directed For 't is most infinite madness to perswade and satisfy our selves we are of the true Church have the onely true certain Faith if yet our practices be such as set us at as great a distance from Almighty God as Hell is from Heaven and while we do commit such things 't is as impossible we can adhere to God as 't is impossible for Christ to have communion with Belial It is a Contradiction by ungodly actions to defy God and turn our backs upon and depart from him yet to cling and adhere to him 't is as I say a Contradiction to believe that we have Faith while we do not cling to and adhere but depart from him Lord help thou this our unbelief And if his grace but once dispose us to prefer the blessed expectations of a Christian he does easily prevail with us to cling to them with such certain assurances as will carry us thro all the stages of our life and duty with all chearfulness and constancy This is that certainty of Faith by which the Martyrs cleav'd to and embrac'd at once the Cross and their Religion firm in dying as believing and when with arts of torment they broke all their joynts and their limbs piece-meal scatter'd all their parts asunder tore their souls out of their bodies still they kept their Faith whole and their Tormentors could not tear one Article of their belief or Christian practice from them and when their Wills were once inflam'd with the desires and expectations of God's preparations then no other martyring flames could make them shrink Those seem'd to them but brighter Emblems of and speedier Conveyances to that Eternal Light and Glory which their Faith had given them the evidence and the first vision of they knew by them they onely did expire into Everlasting Life and Glory SERMON XIV THE CHRISTIANS LIGHT is to shine before men Matt. 5. 16. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in Heaven THE words have two parts a command and a reason of it the command Let your light shine before men the reason That they may see your good works c. The command affords to us this instruction the life of a Christian is to be fruitful and exemplary Both these are commanded not onely in the command it self but proved in the reason That they may see your good works there must therefore be works which are the fruits of virtue Yea and fruitfulness is every where requir'd by Christ and if we look upon the current of Scripture and our duty we shall find that it will not serve a Christian's turn not to bring forth ill fruit to be onely barren ground not to have vices bud and sprout within us and grow with an increase of sin but we must do good In the Parable of the Sower Matt. 13. 23. But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word and understandeth it which also beareth fruit and bringeth forth some an hundred fold We are gods Husbandry 1 Cor. 3. 9. Now is any of you satisfied with his field because it plows well and receives the seed most kindly if it bring you no increase or crop yield you no harvest No saith the Author to the Hebrews c. 6. 8. such ground is nigh to cursing Why your works they are your
to every creature Mark 16. 15. and our Church does teach us in her Articles that we must receive Gods promises in such wise as they be generally set forth to us in Holy Scripture there is no pretence for controversy with a Preacher of the Gospel who shall publish there is such an offer of Salvation made us all a time wherein we may be sure to be accepted Yea more not onely to ascertain but to work effectually this acceptance howsoever wicked and rebellious we had bin he sent his Son the Son of God to be incarnated to treat a Reconciliation for so chapter 5. 19. 't is said God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself not imputing their trespasses For this he made him shed his bloud upon the Cross and die and live again for thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead that Repentance and Remission of sins might be preached in his name to all Nations Luke 24. 46 47. Yea for that he gave this crucified Jesus all the Glory Majesty and Power of Heaven for him hath God exalted to his right hand to be a Prince and Savior to give Repentance and Remission of sins Acts 5. 31. A wonderful Oeconomy if we reflect upon it and sufficient to astonish both our faith and apprehension also that the Great Creator and the onely Lord of all things should make God man and then ignominiously suffer a most cruel death that he might mediate and purchase for us terms of this acceptance and salvation and make that ignominious sufferer that dead man God and give him all the Power of Heaven and Earth that he might make us fit for and bestow it on us This strange transaction is no argument at all most surely that to be at peace with us can be of any consequence to him to whom felicity is most essential Lord what is man that thou art thus mindful of him and the son of man that thou so regardest him in whom if we look thro him we can find nothing in the world that 's very notable but onely that he can defy his most Almighty Maker so as nothing but the bloud of such a Mediator could be fit to satisfy for nothing but Eternal Hell fit to revenge and can defy his own concerns and interests so far as to make that Eternal Hell his choice his most deliberate option But however the Oeconomy of this so strange a mediation tho it cannot prove God is concern'd at all to have this Reconciliation wrought with us that we should be accepted and be sav'd for is it any pleasure to Almighty God that thou art just or is it gain to him that thou makest thy ways perfect If thou be righteous what givest thou him or what receiveth he of thine hand If thou sinnest what doest thou against him or if thy wickedness be multiplied what dost thou to him yet of how much the less consequence we are to God it is so much the greater demonstration of his infinite benignity and goodness who when he had no one motive in the world but pity to our lost condition was so bountiful that when all the compassion of Divinity would not serve our turn for the provision of a ransom he took in Humanity that God might give somwhat besides himself to purchase us a time of Grace and a day of salvation Yet more if we should trace him in his several ways of mercy which he constantly pursues those wretchless creatures miserable us in that all that may be effectual and succeed to our Salvation we should find he uses all means possible to engage us to accept of it for not content with all his Son had don he order'd a Succession of men to sollicite the same suit to the world's end What God was in Christ doing that he hath committed to us the ministry of Now then we are Embassadorâ—s for Christ as if God did beseech you by us we pray you in Christ's stead be ye reconciled to God 2 Cor. 5. 20. a little before my Text 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith St Chrysostome when he that had obliged us infinitely our Almighty Benefactor and had bin as infinitely affronted and provoked with all ingratitude imaginable and all possible defiance gave his own Son to be reconciled and when they murder'd that Son when he came to mediate and were so far from kearkning to him that they crucified him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one would think 't were time to leave such to themselves and give them over as things hopeless and irreconcileable No he sends others on the Embassy and will not let it fall with all the soft and lowly arts of invitation they must pray you and in Christ's name beg of you and God does beseech you by them Now did he please out onely to expostulate it with us why we will resolve to be at enmity with him and Salvation too why we will die for ever it would argue a concern for us the apprehension of which ought to be very comfortable to us but when God descends to beseech us the expression looks uncouth indeed but yet it is not strange he should intreat that which he died for beg of us what he ask'd for not with importent weak tears but with strong cries on the Cross with the bloudshed of his own onely-begotten Son when he thus conveighs his importunate entreaties to us that we would endure his kindness a 〈◊〉 own eternal Blessedness would suffer ourselves to be sav'd it is impossible there can be more assurance given he would have us be so that 't is offer'd us and we may be accepted Nor did he send these his Ambassadors as bare petitioners with emty importunities and meer intreaties of this but they strengthen these proposals with exceeding great and precious promises as St Peter calls them Epist. 2. 1. 4. promises both of the life that now is and of that which is to come St Paul says 1 Tim. 4. 8. yea and these as sure as that there is a God that made them Neither are they wanting to inform us of the dangers we most certainly incurr if we refuse him merely to affright us to him to incline us to admit Salvation rather and preferr it before everlasting misery and all this by his express commission they being set by God as watch-men to give warning to the wicked from him as he tells Ezekiel c. 3. 17. And least their discourse should be too faint and not have force to move us God does frequently step in himself by providential acts when unsubduable by Reason or Religion deaf to our very interests we pursue our sinful satisfactions with ungovernable fierce carrier he lays a Cross on us to trash us or le ts loose a feaver at us so to bring us low and make us sensible or else he suffers our own evil counsels to entangle us we are catcht in our own machinations and designs he lets us tast the bitter fruit of
mercy are upon their death-bed gasping the accepted time and the day of Salvation just ending there is no doubt his will his appetite and resolutions to it are immortal and 't is therefore also fit his worm should be so and there is no security against this but by laying hold upon the present for behold now is the day of Salvation the last thing I am to speak to I shall not press this from the common place of the uncertainty of this life of which whatever we have past as death possesses so the succeeding moments Judgment may lay hold of we are sure of nothing but the present But if we had not onely the assurances which constancy of health and strength of constitution give but a lease of years as Hezekiah had from God himself we have no assurance of the time of acceptance Many men tho they live fast furiously spend the stock of Nature sin yet with a much fiercer carrier as the horse in Jeremies expression rusheth into the battel and they spend the day of Salvation faster Men may deceive themselves by reckoning to repent hereafter We cannot conclude with reason we have space left for it while our life lasts since those opportunities are not always and perchance not frequently commensurate with the life or being of a profligate man or Nation and when they end together 't is not that their whole life or being was allotted to those opportunities but when these are forfeit or extinguisht God cuts off the other Thus indeed he did destroy the old World when the one hundred and twenty years for their repentance were expir'd and several men are cut down out of time as Job saith c. 22. 16. men that shall not live out half their days as David saith of the deceitful and the bloudy men that drink their own Bloud when they thirst for others men whose time for their acceptance went not out while their life lasted because when it went out God cut off their life But 't is not always so Not first in Nations four Generations filled the measure of the Amorites iniquity but five were past before destruction made approaches to them Judah had its sentence of excision in Manasses reign but its execution was suspended till the time of Zedekiah near a hundred years And again the things that belonged to the peace of Jerusalem were taken from them when they kill'd the Peace-maker their day of Salvation too was darkned at Christ's Crucifixion but the City liv'd yet fourty years Nor secondly in persons Pharaohs time was out at the sixth plague but God at once upheld and hardned him until the tenth was past And those six hundred thousand that were doom'd for murmuring were afterwards near fourty years in dying liv'd so long to rebel against more miracles Now all that time the state of all these whether men or Nations was irreversible as to the doom past upon them Did we know indeed our measure of iniquity how many crimes we wanted to fill up our Ephah make an end at once of sin and the day of Salvation also 't were no wonder if we did not think it necessary now to seize the opportunity having yet so many sins good But there are commissions of great bulk few of which will do it the men that sin post soon arrive at the end of the race that is set before them There are whose life is nothing else but perpetual variety of wickedness and they will quickly make up their account the constancy inflames the reckoning and the sum does advance mightily how know they but the next of any of these greater magnitudes may fill up the score To such now onely may be the accepted time However 1. They that whenever such considerations are suggested will not at that present even now resolve to attemt to break their sins off by repentance it is plain they are intangled in them love them so that they resolve expresly not to part with them yet tho they are made to consider by the course of all God's several workings for them and their own provokings that they may have wasted almost all the stock both of God's methods and their own opportunities and will venture doing it completely rather than forego their darling customs Now such a love to sin as it works induration as I shew'd you hardens mens hearts so it does betray it and evince they are in some degree so Such a resolution is sufficient not onely to provoke God to contract the measure and cut short the account Rom. 9. 28. but it self bids fair to fill it up The present therefore must be their accepted time and they do all that in them is to put out the day of Salvation who do thus put off from them this Now. 2. Of this that hath bin said whether Almighty God be now about to make the application either as to what concerns the Nation or particular persons is not may part to determine or debate It is not for us to know the times and seasons which the Father hath put in his own power Many seem indeed to have uncomfortable expectations great fears both as to the Nation and I must say they have reason we may justly fear those judgments which we have deserv'd most justly and provok'd most heinously wilfully impudently and great fears too as to Religion nor without good cause yet not because those men that earnestly desire a change talk of it as at hand with comfort False ungracious treacherous Sons to their poor Mother who do what they can to blast and weaken her that they may have color to forsake her But this they have talkt oft with great confidence and he that sits in Heaven always laught their confidence to scorn we hope he will do so to the world's end Sure I am there could be no fear of what they expect and wish so from comparison of the Religions or if we would answer our Religion by our living But there is great cause of fear we may provoke God to desert that reformation we deform so with our manners and put out the Worship we unhallow And inded a flood of Atheism and contemt of all Religion and Virtue or the having a Religion that is next to that itself looks like just dereliction of them who would not let God be in their thoughts nor Piety or Morality in their actions Now if this be so and by consequent these fears be reasonable just there can be no prevention but by closing now with the proposal of my Text by laying hold upon the present Any least forbearance may make our state irreversible and does certainly provoke God towards it whereas if now when God shews us the rod we would break off our sins reform our selves live up to our Religion there would be no cause to fear destruction since God's work were don whatever shall happen all would work together for the everlasting good of those that did so This if earnest
St Paul to such a one was that Saint crucified for thee that he should be more concerned for and more sensible of thy condition and that thou shouldest have a greater confidence of his good will than of his that did and suffer'd all that for thee that he might be merciful and faithful toucht with thy necessities that I mention not the rest of those qualifications that do make one fit to be relied upon 'T is to be fear'd such persons do not know well whom they have believ'd But I pass them There are that trust their being here to Policy and Prudence to their own contrivances that is trust to themselves and give credit onely to what interest or their ambition suggests and accordingly design ends and devise means weave plots spread their nets abroad with cords and lay snares and do all this with that confidence of success as if they did believe they were fulfilling Prophecies and mov'd by the directions of Heaven for many times they seem to do this in the fear of God and in subserviency to Religion but whatever fair pretences some of them may have to wash or color their intentions God you may be sure hath no hand there in those designs where his Commandments are broken Where you discern either as to particulars treachery or fraud or falseness undermining and supplanting to serve interests or pride or malice or revenge or as to publick interverting justice and the due course of Laws or mutiny sedition raising discontents and making breaches 't is not he on whom they have believ'd And did they but consider what they see perpetually how false interests are and how unstable high place how this tumbles men down headlong those change daily and altho men thrive so that they wash their steps with butter they are only so much more in slippery places where God also leaves them somtimes overturns them suddenly Or did they consider who the great Patrons of interest and ambition are Mammon the fomenter and encourager of almost all the mischiefs upon Earth and Lucifer that was discontent in Heaven had ambition to be greater there too mutinied and stirred sedition up against God and got by it to be chief of Devils onely Prince of Hell Did these designers but reflect on these things they would know then whom they have believ'd a deceitful world a false glistering light that mocks them and a treacherous malicious Devil that hath bin a Liar and a Murderer from the beginning I might ask the sensual person whether he that hearkens to the cravings of the one or other of his inclinations and is so perswaded overcome by their insinuations that whenever any of his appetites is high he thinks there is no joy that is like the satisfaction of that appetite and is mad till he have it yet hath found himself betraied fool'd cheated every time he serv'd it but still courts and embraces the false treacherous mischief and will not be disenchanted whether he considers whom he hath believ'd whether he knows that he lets his horse ride him and is guided animated by and believes the beast Once more whether he knows whom he hath believ'd that ownes being an Infidel any one of those that with great seeming gravity or wit and railery declares dissatisfaction at the proof of those things which the world for many hundred years continued so convinc'd of that they chose to die rather than say that they did not believe them when as for them good Souls they think they can believe nothing but upon demonstration yet if a man consider but the men themselves the method and the means of their conviction into that their unbelief he would find that themselves are always vicious and that they examin little but converse much and keep company with them that in the heat and confidence of drink and vice swear 't is impossible those things can be and rally them that give heed to or profess them and then themselves give easy credit to this and their own inclinations that would have them all impossible for it is their concern they are eternally unhappy if they be not so that we know whom they have believ'd their debaucht company and their evil inclinations and these stupid Infidels are the most credulous we see on the least grounds of any in the world It is not my emploiment at this time to make comparison betwixt the one and others grounds the several motives of belief and infidelity 't is plain Christ Judg'd the arguments and grounds of faith were so sufficient that he positively gives his charge thus Go and preach the Gospel to the whole world he that believeth is sav'd and he that believeth not is damn'd And if his threats are as inviolable as his promises 't will be but ill knowing him whom we would not believe the conviction will be very fatal when their unbelief will become vision And this gives me yet occasion to ask what temtation Sinners can have not to believe to be willing to come in to Christ and be sav'd They cannot chuse but see all others whom they have believ'd betraied them and will fail them all their satisfactions must go out their expectations die and perish and why will ye not take up here then why will ye die for ever Is your case think you desperate and have you gon too far to be receiv'd if you should turn Why our Saint here the person of the Text declares he was the chief of Sinners that obtain'd mercy for encouragement to all that would believe and turn and if you did but know whom he believ'd you must know one that went to meet the Prodigal in his return when he was yet far off that sought the lost sheep while he straied and ran away still till he found him and when he was gon so far that he could not return he carried him And will you neither be invited into life nor carried into it Why will ye die Can ye not help it Have your inclinations and customs think you so prevail'd upon you that to leave them looks impossible Then 't is plain you know not whom you have believ'd Is any thing impossible for him that is Almighty whose grace is sufficient Or can he command too hard things who enables to perform what he commands who as St Paul saith worketh in us both to will and to do if we will suffer him He never praied and tried in earnest watched endeavor'd and comported with God's workings that complains thus You cannot but believe indeed they are too hard while you hearken to the cravings of your lusts your customs and your inclinations but why will you believe them still Why will you die Is it not in fine worth while to strive against it but e'en go on with the stream abandon all consideration of concern for that life Indeed if that which God thought worth the concern of all his Attributes the contrivance of his Wisdom the assistances of his Almightiness the
intention if there be no other unhandsom circumstance will serve to make the common actions of life innocent and not blameable but without the Religious intention the action cannot be accounted duty and upon this score 't is in Religion reprovable Among all creatures here below man is the only one that hath a faculty to chuse his ends consequently that can direct his intentions Things without life are carried only to the makers ends not to their own the stone however by its own weight it hurry downwards to it's sphere of rest and as it does approch goes faster still and faster as if there were it's inclination and that inclination were more sensible as it came nearer and so increas'd upon it yet 't is determined to it's line 't is bound to move by plummet and cannot possibly turn one point aside not make the smallest crook to meet a nearer knob of earth that stretches up it self to give it soonest rest and all it's hast is only weight not inclination not choice but natural violence as it were Things that have life and sense have inded aims and these do prosecute those aims with eager strong intentions but they also are limited determinantur ad unum as the Schools speak their end is set to them nor do they pick and chuse upon comparative considerations that which strikes their present sense with strongest relish that they necessarily fix upon and therefore Buridan tells us of an Asse that was so justly plac'd between two bottles of hay of so exact and equal sent and goodness that neither of them being able to determine his appetite to the one more then the other his inclinations stood divided equally betwixt those equal invitations and being not able to preferr nor consequently chuse any he wanted both and two bottles sterv'd him whom one would have preserved But 't is not so with man for as there is as great a difference betwixt his ends as does distinguish Hell from heaven in obedience on one side and transgression on the other life and death eternity of blessedness and immortality of misery are set before his choice one of these everlastingnesses sets out it self before every action of his that is not merely indifferent and offers it self to be his aim So also he hath as it mostly proves a most unhappy privilege that he can chuse his ruine and as by the assistance of that Grace which God does not deny he can intend those actions that look directly towards happiness so he can by the power of his will prosecute his own destruction Now then as for him that can thus chuse his ends that can direct his intentions either to good or evill to limit this his freedom to the choice of evill would be most unreasonable God knows 't is too much so for him to let the lawful delights of his senses according to their degrees and strengths fix and determine much of his intentions and to employ his soul to spring and start such pleasures and let his appetite still hover over them and the fairest quarry alwaies engage it in the pursuit tyed to that object that does strike his sense with greatest vigor of temtation for this is to live merely a life of sense 't is to degenerate from man into the rank of lower creatures for just these are their aims and so they make their choices and did God place an immortal and Angelic Spirit in a man only to make him be a more sagacious brute But then much more then brutish would it be when as two objects court his choice as different as Hell and Heaven in desireableness for him to chuse the terrors to pursue that which carries with it inconsistency to all his happinesses The beasts cannot do so they cannot chuse the worse but man will preferr misery and make his choice of wretchedness And truly thither every action of man does tend that is not otherwise level'd and directed by honest intentions It is the meaning that distinguisheth the deeds and as the mind intends so it alters the exterior action into good bad or indifferent If I do take a walk to the next town whether I do it for fresh aire and recreation or else to make a charitable Christian visit so to relieve or help a weak sick soul or go to meet companions of my sin and to appoint or execute a vice the walk is still the same but those so different ends do make the action tend to consequences of an eternal difference Nay the aim hath so great an influence upon the deeds that tho the action be an action of a vertue or Religion yet according to the quality of the mans meaning that performs it so it may either lose its vertue or transmute into a vice and the very Religion become sin The first part of this chapter is all demonstration of this 't is lawful without question by all good humane means to seek to advance my reputation but he that does endeavor it by his devotions tho his life be all strictnesses and he do spend himself in alms and fasts and praiers by all these holy practices he does not purchase the reward of piety but only praise of men so that all that Religion ceaseth to be holy and if it mainly aim at that becomes hypocrisy And all the reason in the world it should be so for he that merely in order to his ends does chuse and practise such means 't is certain he does love those means no otherwise then as they serve that end and therefore tho the means be vertue he does not love the Religion of that vertue but the convenience of it as it does contribute to his aim Now if it be convenient to an ill end 't is an evill convenience and so in chusing vertue he chuseth evill if but to an indifferent end 't is an indifferent convenience and so the Religion becomes insipid and indifferent and tho there be honesty in the thing yet 't is by accident as to his mind 't is not for that he chuses it but for its usefulness and ordinarily 't is not that males it convenient or useful for ends or if it do yet the appearance of it is as good as it is it self and so 't is clear howsoever he chuse vertue yet the vertue hath no interest in his performance not in his intention nor election Thus he that is charitable to one in distress on purpose to oblige him afterwards for some designs he hath in using him he does contract not give and 't is not alms but commerce 't is rather earnest of wages then a liberality She that abstains from vicious and suspected company and observes strictest chastity merely to avoid an ill name or worse consequences does not fear God but shame and being undone and 't is not vertue this but care of reputation she 's no more chast as to the Religion of it then she that does abstain from places suspected of diseases that would spoil her face
not good and I am sure of my own heart that if I thought it were so I would not do it here is no chusing of a sin not with the least degree of inclination 'T is this secures the Physitian who cannot possibly be assur'd there may not something lurk in his Patient's body for whose dark and unwholsome closets he hath no prospective to which the physic he prescribes may be pernicious yet because God hath revel'd no certain grounds for guidance in this case therefore he upon diligent search and grounds of art which are the best God hath allow'd us prescribing what he really believes will do him good satisfies a good conscience Upon the same account the Pilot satisfies himself where he adventures his ship and fraight upon shelfs and shallows and the Captain when he leads his men upon he canon's mouth and other desperat attemts of war Shall I make more familiar instances to you some have doubted whether celebrating Christ's Nativity be not will-worship because 't is not commanded in Scripture other have doubted of the use of Garments prescribed Ministers from the same ground and from their being significant Now as to these not to shew the unreasonableness of these doubts tho I could easily do it for in God's name why is it to set apart a day to thank God for the Redemtion of mankind will-worship and yet to set apart a day for the deliverance of a Nation from a temporal plague not will-worship Is the fifth of November in the Scripture any more than the twenty fifth of December Or is it the infinitely greater mercy of Christ's Birth-day that makes it more unlawful than the Gunpowder-Treason day and therefore 't is not lawful because 't is more fit And for the Garments of the Clergy I would they were all significant but that that is an argument against them in these daies It is true Scripture prescribes them not and by that rule they should wear none for it prescribes none but pray tell me will not any of these doubting men seek a Pulpit to preach in or now a daies a bason to baptize with never looking whether they have a warrant in Scripture to command it Just so rational and sensible men select a particular habit for a Priest whereby his words and exhortations may be receiv'd with greater respect and authority and this without any written precept for as where Scripture commands it renders every thing necessary so where it is silent it renders nothing unlawful in such circumstantials So a prescribed way of Praier is boggled at and why that more unlawful than a limited way of praising God They had effusions of those in the first times why do not we as well pretend to the one as to the other Or why should it be less faulty to have set forms of singing Psalms than have set forms of Liturgy in which too people might communicate as they do also join in praises or indeed would that Rhyme and tune become unlawful should the Magistrate command them too But passing over this and to speak in short of the whole matter If the man that doubts bids his conscience stand aside and because of legal penalties muffles himself and resolvedly goes on notwithstanding his speculative irresolution with desperat boldness judging it better to trust God with his soul than the Law with his estate or liberty if he fears to consider or enquire least he should get conviction that suits not with his interest and thinks it easier to doubt than to be certain because he 's certainly determin'd to do what is enjoin'd tho it be never so unlawful This is a profligate state of mind that wants nothing but occasion to engage upon the greatest villanies and close with Apostacy it self when recommended by impunity But if this doubting makes another scheme of reasoning and performs what is enjoind because the Magistrate's command is certain but its unlawfulness is only dubious and the safest course is ever the most innocent because it is the most prudent then the obligation to suspend the going on to act in case of doubting is superseded by another obligation actually to obey the undoubted injunction of Superiors and the good Subject will not fail to be a good Christian too But alas why should I busy my self in picking cases which here I hope are not useful when as upon this very Proposition we are now upon other things do apply themselves to most mens hearts of a more strong concern and of more daily practice If an action otherwise lawful will make up an indictment to our condemnation if don with a doubting conscience what guilt and damnation is there in those actions that are don against present full perswasion of conscience Truly my Brethren I have no aggravation for sins don against knowledg that being the worst that can be said of sin and I shall only add that they who so defie their conscience are in the ready way to have no conscience the sad estate of whom my last did display to you and in short 't is no wonder if God's Vicegerent do depart when he is so affronted There is a great and sad example of this procedure Rom. 1. 18 19 20. For the wrath of God is reveled from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them for God hath shewed it unto them For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even his eternal power and God-head so that they are without excuse There is no plea for such because they did not use their knowledg to his service but sin'd against it and by their deeds of darkness put out that light which was vouchsafed them by God yea indeed did commit those deeds of darkness in the face of light I have to what I have already said one word to add for the scrupulous conscience Scruples are little suspicions in things of small concern or indifferency and where there is but little ground for otherwise they swell into that we call doubts and which denominates a doubting conscience Now scruples which are small particles of dust do indeed cast dust into the eies which dim the sight and make the eies to roule and fret and grieve and so do these the mind they disturb duty wonderfully by taking up the heart and making it restless and unquiet and so quite discompos'd for duty for the heart is still call'd aside wandring about that which troubles it And indeed these quite take off the edge of the mind for while scruples arise I am unsatisfied in every thing I do and then with what heart can I do them I am in fear of every performance and such a fear exceedingly damps love and quashes all endeavors I have no cheerfulness in my actions and consequently never can be eager and forward but cold and slack
of darkness If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness how great is that darkness THE Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a treasure hid in a field Matth. 13. 44. a field this much richer than it shews for that provides for several uses of our life that furnisheth with food and wealth too and is both granary and treasury and just such is the word of the Kingdom also it hath in it more than it promises to sight there are still hidden treasures besides the food that grows before our eies if we search we shall find still more and more furniture for life more wealth yet in the bowels of it These words give us experience of this from which tho we have had several spiritual entertainments provisions for divers cases of our life yet have we not exhausted them for we shall find that yet in another sense The light of the body is the eie c. To the two interpretations I have given of these words the first of which that by a single eie should be meant a single intention an intire honest meaning an heart like that of Jacob plain simple and upright such as may therefore stile a man an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile no doubling but such an one as laies alwaies to it self good ends and intends to take in no ill means to compass them hath bin generally adhered to by almost all Expositors The second that by the single eie should be meant the pure clear good conscience which to me indeed seems much more proper than the other to neither of them have I any objection but this that they do not at all relate to the matter of the discourse which our Savior hath in hand and 't is not imaginable why Christ should in the midst of a Paragraph concerning mortifying the desire and love of wealth the beginning of which commands laying up treasure in heaven and the end tells us we cannot serve God and Mammon should interpose any thing of conscience or intentions and therefore tho what we have delivered of them be exactly consonant to the words and built upon other certain Scripture and be the sense of most men yet we will view one other which tho it be assign'd but by one Expositor that I know of yet being exactly pertinent to the matter in hand and having a surer plea for its being the sense of the place than any of the rest have it shall not escape us tho no more have lighted upon it Now the way of finding out the meaning was not to consider what may be compar'd to a single eie or an evil eie for possibly so many things may be but by seeing what those words do constantly signify in Scripture and so what light and darkness also do and then put them together and see whether they will so here and we shall take those grounds 1. Then what a single eie and evil eie do use to signify in Scripture and for the evil eie we find it often Prov. 23. 6 7. Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eie neither desire thou his dainty meats for as he thinketh in his heart so is he eat and drink saith he to thee but his heart is not with thee which means eat not the meat of him that is a niggard who tho he do invite thee to it yet he do's grudge it thee and grieves thou eatest it his heart do's not speak in his invitations but he had rather thou wouldest spare and he computes thy morsels So again Prov. 28. 22. He that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eie that is is covetous he envies every other man's prosperity so most Translations render it here is troubled to see another flourish and thinks their gain his loss So Matt. 20. 15. Is thine eie evil because I am good he saies to them who tho they had contracted for a penny by the day for labor yet when they saw those that had wrought but a little part receive so much strait entertain'd desires and hopes of more than they had bargain'd for and when they saw they should have nothing but their due they murmur'd to whom the Master do's reply Friend I do thee no wrong didst thou not agree with me for a penny be thou content with that which comes to thy share This man that came last to work it being not his fault that he came no sooner but his not being sooner call'd and he having labored honestly and cheerfully ever since he came shall by me who accept the will for the deed be rewarded with the same reward that thou hast and sure thou hast no reason to complain that I dispose of my own as I see cause what reason is there that my bounty to others should be matter of envy and discontent to thee So that an evil eie signifies unsatisfiedness with ones own condition and envy at anothers an eie that grieves to see any thing go besides it self in one word an illiberal covetous envious mind You have its perfect character Ecclesiasticus 14. from v. 3. to 10. Riches are not comely for a niggard and what should an envious man do with mony He that gathereth by defrauding his own soul gathereth for others that shall spend his goods riotously he that is evil to himself to whom will he be good he shall not take pleasure in his goods There is none worse than he that envieth himself and if he doth good he doth it unwillingly The envious man hath a wicked eie he turneth away his face and despiseth men a covetous man's eie is not satisfied with his portion and the iniquity of the wicked dries up his soul a wicked eie envieth his bread and he is a niggard at his table Next for the single eie that certainly is set as opposite to the evil eie as meaning liberality and chearful bounty and we shall see accordingly that singleness do's signify for so our Bible almost alwaies translates the word 2 Cor. 8. 2. Their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality the riches of their singleness it is in the Original So chap. 9. 11. being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness to all singleness again v. 13. liberal distribution singleness of distribution the Greek do's say and so in many places which others have observ'd and Rom. 12. 8. He that giveth let him do it with simplicity or singleness for 't is the same word still and there our Margent tells you that it means liberality Single therefore do's in Scripture signify bountiful and we shall find that coupled with the eie Prov. 22. 9. He that hath a bountiful eie shall be blessed for he giveth of his bread to the poor And so we have the Scripture sense of these two words the single eie do's signify a liberal mind and the evil eie a niggardly uncontented envious disposition And here let us stop a little and say a word on these expressions why these things to
tenth Commandment is the certain consequent of this disposition of mind or indeed rather it is but several instances of forbidding discontentedness with our own condition and in it Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife is not meant thou shalt not desire to commit adultery with her for that was forbidden in the seventh Commandment but as thou shalt not covet his house which do's not signify thou shalt not desire once to walk thro it or to sit and dine in it but thou shalt not desire the possession nor propriety of what is not thine own shalt not desire it should be thy house but be contented with thy lot so here thou shalt not be troubled that his wife or servant is not thy wife or servant and think it as fit thy Neighbor should enjoy the comforts of a happy wife if God have given him one or the pleasures and splendors of an estate or the advantages of a commodious servant as thou dost think it fit thou shouldest enjoy what is thine and not desire not only to be theif but not the owner of them be content with what is thine 4. All the Seditions and Rebellions in the world and those armies of Sins that attend them that wage their wars which are upheld by legions of villanies as numerous as those of men all the disturbances of States and Churches are but the effects of discontented spirits men that were unsatisfied with their condition desir'd a change and car'd not by what means they compast it They can charge thro seas of bloud and sin over the faces of men and conscience to get out of the condition which they are not well content with I could assign more sins that do attend a discontented heart when it hath opportunity to break into them all the effects of anger and of malice and of concupiscence and a whole shole of others are in its train but that I must reserve one word for Envy 2. Envy to say all in one word however slight a thing we may esteem it For to envy at another person 's having better qualities or greater dignities or richer furnitures or wider estates or handsomer provisions this we think do's no mischief to the persons and therefore is no crying crime Yet besides that it is more unjust than hatred or than malice for these have still pretences that do look like reason I cannot hate a man but because he do's me some wrong and that is some reason for I hate his injustice but envy hath not any least pretence Is it a wrong to me because that person is better qualified or better endowed Is he unjust because he is rich or learned or well provided and yet for this I envy him Besides this I say to stab it with one thrust Envy hath all the vices and all the ruins in the world for its issue all sin and all damnation is its brood The Devil envied man's felicity and therefore temted him and so man lost Original Righteousness and he lost Paradise and he envies his recovery by Christ and therefore temts him still until he ruin him eternally Whatever guilt and whatever misery is in the world hence it springs it is a feind-like devilish humor And now would you take the prospect of these two qualities discontent and envy Lucifer was not satisfied with his condition and he was therefore cast from Heaven and all his fellow Angels became Devils and then he envied man's condition and chang'd his Paradise into everlasting misery These two qualities rob'd Heaven it self of those inhabitants that should have fill'd it and the Son of God himself and peopled Hell it made Angels become Feinds it made God die and made men damn'd and there is enough for that 3. Covetousness I am sure I can say no more of that than what S. Paul hath said nor more to my purpose 1. Tim. 6. 6 7 8 9 10. Godliness with contentment is great gain for we brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out and having food and raiment let us be therewith content But they that will be rich fall into a temtation and a snare and into many foolish and hurtfull lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition for the love of mony is the root of all evil which while some coveted after they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves thro with many sorrows And oh that three such dismal qualities with their accursed trains should breed in that same little part the eie An evil eie is the womb wherein they are conceiv'd and if that one small faculty be so fruitful in guilt and in destructions how shall we reckon the whole man Miserable men that we are who shall deliver us from a whole body of death and from the state of those deaths and from darkness in which this evil eie engages us A darkness which our Savior could not otherwise express but by astonishment How great is that darkness A darkness great indeed because 't is wilfully incurable no state do's so withstand the light as this The Sun of Righteousness the Day-spring from on high that came to visit us could strike the light thro darkness and make the shadow of death bright Luke 1. 79. that did shed light that was a glory Luke 2. 32. could not yet break in upon a Country clouded with this humor his Miracles and he were both desired to withdraw could have no least Reception when interest and profit came to be toucht and a Legion of Devils that did plot together could contrive no surer means to keep out Christ himself than by setting up an evil eie to look upon him and his Miracles than by engaging this greedy affection against him and that but in a small instance We read a strange story Matt. 8. 28. Marke the contrivance and the policy the Devils knowing that Christ would cast them out of the two possessed men and by that Miracle so far show forth his power that it would probably bring all the Country to believe on him they desir'd to prevent this and thereupon fall on this project which might incense the men of that Country against him and in order to it they besought Christ that if he did cast them out he would suffer them to go into the herd of Swine and tho he seldom wrought any destructive Miracles yet that the people might see the virulency of these Devils how destructive they were if not restrain'd by his omnipotent goodness and so they might understand the mercy don to those that were possessed and likewise see the mercy now approching to their Country by the coming of Christ if they will accept of it and withal to try whether their love to their Swine was greater than that to their own souls he permitted the Devils to go into the Swine he would not restrain them and they went into them They who fed the Swine gave to the owners notice of their loss and did let them know
I now described hath none of that hath no good wishes nothing else but hate is worse than a perpetual Pestilence Yet neither is this state so comfortless in respect of this life as not to have a Friend in the concernments of the Life to come none that hath so much kindness for my Soul as every man hath for his Enemies Beast which if he see fallen in a Ditch he will at least give notice that it may be help'd out thence No one that when a sin like to that Falling sickness in the Gospel and it is such indeed without a Parable is casting me into the water quenching my parts my Reason and the Immortal spark within me or throwing me into the Fire raising Lascivious heats within which after will break out into Hell fires none yet that will stretch out his hand to catch me or to pull me out None that does care to see me perish to Eternity or that values my Soul which yet did cost the Blood of God at a word speaking This is to be like Dives in the Flames to whom they would not lend the help of the tip of a finger or give the kindness of a drop of Water I am as it were on the other side the Gulf already Here is the use of Friendship the only noble one that 's worthy of that blessed quality When I have one that will be an assistant Conscience to me who when that within me sleeps or is benummed will watch over my actions will testifie them to my Face will be as faithful to me as the Conscience should be hold a Glass to my Soul shew me the stains and the proud tumours the foul Ulcers that are there and then will fret and rub or prick lance and corrode to cure those Tumours and do off those spots such an one is a familiar Angel Guardian is truly of that blessed Heavenly rank and onely less than the Friend in the Text the Person related to and my next Part. My Friends There are three things from which men use to take the measures of a Friend First From the good things he bestows on them He that thinks to keep friendship alive onely with Air that gives good words but parts with nothing that entertains onely with Garbs and Civilities is but the pageant of a Friend They that own having but one Soul and seem to clasp as if they would have but one Body too cannot keep such distinct and separate proprieties in other little things as not to have communication one from the other And Secondly The friendship of these benefits is rated by the measures of our need of them When Midas was ready to die for hunger his God was kinder to him in a little bread than in making all that he touch'd turn into Gold Great things engage but little where there is but little use of them And all these Thirdly Are endeared by the Affection they are given with Good turns done with design what need soever I have of them are hire and not friendship it is the kindness onely that obligeth the gift without the love does but upbraid and scorn my want Now to measure the Friend here in the Text by these were an impossible undertaking whose Friendship did exceed all bounds and measures I shall do no more towards it but read the words before my Text which were the occasion of it Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his Friends and then it follows Ye are my Friends The token therefore of his Friendship the gift he gave them was his life rather that was the least he gave He gave his glory first that so he might be qualified to give his life for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Phil. ii 7. He lessened himself from the condition of being Lord of all into that of a Servant 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heb. ii 9. being diminished made lower meaner than his Creatures for the suffering of Death Now with the price of such Divine essential glory to buy onely a life rather onely a possibility of Death that after he might give that life for us and with his Death purchase us an immortal life is such a gift as no Romance of friendship ever fancied or did aim at We may have heard of two Companions that would die for one another that never quarrelled in their lives but for this who should suffer first to save the other and strave onely for Execution But for a Person of the Trinity to leave his Heaven to come down to us to dwell with Agonies that he might be at one with us and be tyed to the Cross that he might be united to us this is a friendship fit for Ecstasies of apprehension Of all the things that court thy kindness here below that spread snares and lay baits for thy friendship if any bid so fair so temptingly if any will give such a price in Gods name let it have thy love I shall not blame him that engageth his Affection there But sure Heaven cannot give a greater gift than this for what can God give greater than himself Yea I may say God could not give so much for he must be Man too to give his life and this saith he he gave for his Friends even in our stead who must have perish'd else eternally which intimates the second thing the need we had of this A need great as the gift necessity invincible that could break into Heaven rifle the Trinity to serve it self throw Death into those Regions of Immortality and which would not be satisfied but with the Blood of God And now is not the kindness and the condescension of Friendship in his expressions too when he saith greater love than this hath no man which was the third Endearment There never were such wounds of Love as those that tore this Heart never such meltings of Affection as dissolv'd this Lover into sweats of Blood There was no motive to all this but his meer love For all this he designed to us before we were and therefore sure before we were deserving And O our God! thou that from all Eternity didst lay Contrivances to give thy Life for us so to redeem and then to glorifie us what were we then that thou shouldst do this for us what were we then when we were not and yet that thou from the Abyss of Everlastingness shouldst think thoughts of such kindness to us and such blessedness for us who then were not and deserved nothing and who since we were have deserved nothing but Damnation And as there was no other motive to all this design but love so neither was there any thing but love in the fulfilling Look on your Saviour in the Garden and upon Mount Calvary and you shall find him there in as great Agonies of Affection as Torment and hanging down his head upon the Cross with languishments of kindness more than weakness His Arms stretched out and rack'd as if on purpose to the
this their confidence unless it rise from the unhappy use they make of Gods preserving Mercies and his kindness to them in the concernments of this life They see without their cares and upon very weak intreaties indeed against all provocations both of God and danger yet his protections secure them although they neither mind the asking them nor mind the walking worthy of them The man whose Sins not Prayers prepare him for his Bed he sleeps well perhaps more soundly than he who at his Bedside throws himself on his face into Gods Arms and there bequeaths himself to the Securities of the Almighty And he whose Sleeps onely refresh him for returns to Sin does often live as long as safely and as merrily as he that daily most Religiously does beg Protections from above And others that afford the Lord some little homages themselves some Prayers when their pleasures or occasions permit God hath a care of them and their desires flow into them all does succeed well with them Now they take confidence hence to conclude these are the Tokens of Gods friendship and all his mercies will come in at the like easie rates that such a short Petition as committed them to the refreshments of the night and after which they wak'd into renewed strengths and pleasures such another shall lay them down in safety to the sleeps of that long night that afterwards will break in happy Resurrection For why God will not sure fail his own mercies but be as friendly to their Souls as he is to their Bodies And thus God's Preservations here in meer defiance of our provocations which are the arts of his long-suffering his strivings of Compassion meerly to give us opportunities of being reconciled to him and to invite us to be so while we make them occasions of carelesness and security they are so far from being pledges of his Friendship that they have all the aggravations of affornted goodness become Temptations and degrees of Ruin 'T were fine indeed it Christ's eternal preparations for his Friends would come in to us without care or doing any thing as an accession to our pleasures if when we had lived many years as in a Garden our days all flower'd with delight we might expire into Paradise and in soft Airs of Musick breath into Hallelujah's But alas the smooth easie way leads down the Hill and he must strive and pant that will get up into the Mansions and the Bosom of his Saviour and whosoever will be his Friend must do that he commands But is there nothing less indeed will qualify The Scripture saith that Abraham believed God and it was imputed to him for Righteousness and he was called the Friend of God James ii 23. and then is Christ more inaccessible and harder to be made a Friend Why truly God and Christ both are so much Friends to all true Believers that the Life of Christ was given for them for God so loved the World that he gave his onely begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life John iii. 16. Nor are there any qualities more signally peculiar to friendship more engaging than confidence and trust dependance and relying embosoming my self in him Now these are but the exercise of Faith and 't is most certain if we heartily endeavour to do what he commands there is employment then for all this work of Faith place for its applications and assurances My Text does make this good But when his friendship is made over on Conditions as 't is not onely in these words but every where in Scripture there being not one Promise absolute that does concern Gods favour justification and eternal Life he does not once offer Remission of sins but to those that amend their Lives nay does express as if he could not give it otherwise peradventure they will repent that I may forgive them Jer. xxxvi 3. The Promises therefore being conditional Faith must be answerable to the Promises that it does rest on and apply and at the most can be but an assurance that you shall be partaker of what 's promised that is to say partaker of the favour and the life of Christ if ye do his Commands But then if I perform not this Condition to trust upon his friendship which I am not qualified for to think by Faith to receive a Pardon which in that case I am was never offered me to apply to my self Promises which were never made me for none were ever made to them that do not do and to assure my self Christ will transgress his everlasting Covenant for my Vices sake meerly to give me leave to enjoy my sins will do that which God may not do forgive one that will not repent If I believe thus against Promise and against Decree am confident whether Christ will or no and will rely upon him in despite of him if such a faith will make us friends affronts do reconcile This is indeed to lay violent hands on his favour and to invade his friendship and without Metaphor take Heaven by force But sure I am that this is not the Faith made Abraham be called the friend of God in that place of S. James but a Faith that was perfected by doing ver 22. of that Chapter a Faith that made him offer up his onely Son upon the Altar ver 21. 'T is true he did in hope believe against all hope Rom. iv 18. So that his faith was stronger than a contradiction but yet his resolutions of obedience seem stronger than his faith for he did that even to the cutting of the grounds of all his faith and hope He trusted God would make his Promise good to him make all the Nations of the Earth be blessed in the seed of Isaac though Isaac had no seed nor could have if he should be slain And he resolved at Gods command himself to slay that Isaac so to make him have no seed His Faith indeed did not despute the great impossibility but his obedience caused it He did not question how can God perform with me when I have offered up my Son I cannot look that a large Progeny should rise out of the Ashes on the Altar nor will those Flames that devour all my Seed at once make my seed numerous lasting and glorious as the Stars in Heaven which he promised me But much less did he question why should I obey in this He that does his Commands can but expect what he hath promised but if I should do this Command and slay my Son I make his Promise void and destroy my own expectations And if I disobey I can but suffer what he bids me do my own obedience will execute all that his Indignation would threaten to my disobedience Though Abraham had three days time and journey to the Altar that Nature might have leisure the mean while to reason with the Precept thus and his Affection might struggle with his Duty yet he goes on resolves to tear
words but they do them not And if they flash in Hell against their Vices in torrents of threatning Scripture they concern themselves no more than they would in the story of a new Eruption of Mount Aetna or Vesuvius Yea they do quench the Spirit and his fires do not like the deaf Adder stop their ears against his whisperings and the charms of Heaven that were a weaker and less valiant guilt but are Religious in hearing them curious that they may be spoke with all advantages to make it harder not to yield and live that so they may express more resolution to perish and with more courage and solemnity may sin and dye Nay more when God hath found an Art to draw themselves into a League and Combination against their Vices bound them in Sacraments to Virtue made them enter a Covenant of Piety and seal it in the Blood of God and by that foederal Rite with hands lift up and seizing on Christ's Body and with holy Vows oblige themselves to the performances or to the Threats of Gospel which they see executed in that Sacrament before their eyes see there death is the wages of iniquity they shew themselves its damned consequences while they behold it tear Christ's Body spill his Blood and Crucifie the Son of God yet neither will this frightful spectacle nor their own ties hold them from sin and ruine they break these bonds asunder to get at them The Wiseman says that wicked men seek death and make a Covenant with it and so it seems But sure they are strange wilful men that seek it at Gods Table in the Bread of Life that will wade through an Ocean of mercy to get at Perdition and find it in the Blood of Christ will drink Damnation in the Cup of blessing men that poyson Salvation to themselves They that contract thus for Destruction and tye it to them at the Altar with such sacred Rites and Articles are sure resolv'd and love to dye Fourthly God had provided other Guards to secure men from sin and Death the Censures of the Church of which this Time was the great Season and the discipline of abstinence we now use is a piteous relique all that the World will bear it seem But as the Lord appointed them they were so close a fence that our Saviour calls them Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven as if they lock'd us in the Path of Piety and Life and we must pick or break all that the Key of Heaven can make fast burst Locks as well as Vows before we can get out have liberty to sin God having bounded in the Christians race as that among the Grecians was which had a River on one side and Swords points all along the other so that Destruction dwelt about it on the borders And God hath mounded ours with the River of Hell the Lake of Fire and with these spiritual Swords as S. Cyprian and S. Hierome call the Censures But yet a Mound too weak alas to stand the Resolution and assaults of Vices now adays which do not onely make great breaches in the Fence but have quite thrown it down and slighted it and the Church dares not set it up again should she attempt it they would scoff it down Men will endure no bar in the way to Perdition they will have liberty of Ruine will not be guarded from it so far from brooking Censures they will suffer no Reproof nor Admonition not suffer one word betwixt them and Death eternal But Fifthly Though we will not let Almighty God restrain us with his Censures yet he will do it with his Rod and set the sharp stakes of Affliction in our walk to keep us in thus he makes sins sometimes inflict themselves and then we straight resolve to break off from them and while we suffer shame and feel destruction in the Vice we shrink and uncling And now the Sinner would not dye especially if his Precipitance have thrown him to the confines of the grave and while he took his full careers of Vice the fury of his course did drive him to the ports of Ruine and Death seemed to make close and most astonishing approaches when standing on the brink of the Abyss he takes a prospect of the dismal state that must receive him and his Vices then he trembles and flyes his apprehensions swoon his Soul hath dying qualms caused as much by the Nausea of sin as by the fear of Hell he is in agonies of passion and of Prayer both against his former courses he never will come near them more and now sure God hath catch'd him and his will is wholly bent another way now he will live the new life if God will grant him any But alas have we never seen when God hath done this for him stretch'd out his Arm of Power hal'd him from the brow of the Pit and set him further off how he does turn and drive on furiously in the very same path that leads to the same Ruine and he recovers into death eternal And now this Will is grown too strong for the Almighties powerful methods and frustrates the whole Counsel of God for his Salvation neglects his Calls and Importunacies whereby he warns him to consult his safety to make use of Grace in time not to harden his heart against his own mercies and perish in despight of mercy And when he can reject Gods Graces and his Judgments thus defie his Conscience and his own Experience too there is but one thing left wherein this Resolution can shew its courage and that is Sixthly His own present Interests All which the Sinner can break through and despise to get at Death It is so usual to see any of the gross wasting Vices when it is once espoused murder the Reputation and all those great concerns that do depend upon a mans Esteem eat out his Wealth and Understanding make him pursue pernicious ways and Counsels besot him and enslave him fill his life with disquiet shame and neediness and the sad consequents of that Contempt and all that 's Miserable and unpitied in this Life and yet the sin with all these disadvantages is lovely not to be divorc'd nor torn off from him that I were vain should I attempt to prove a thing so obvious I shall give but one instance of the power of the Will the violence and fury of its inclinations to Ruine The man who for anothers inadvertency possibly such as their own rules of Honour will not judg affront yea sometimes without any shadow of a provocation meerly becaue he will be rude does that upon which they must call one another to account and to their last account indeed at Gods dread Judgment-seat whither when he hath sacrific'd two Families it may be all their hopes and comforts in this Life two Souls which cost the Blood of God having assaulted Death when it was arm'd and at his heart and charged Damnation to take Hell by Violence he comes with his own
and deprecates and when he durst not meet the apprehensions wilt thou stand the storm see what a sting death hath when it makes out-lets for such clots and globes of Blood and stings the Soul so too that it pours out it self in Sweat And then he sinks again under the deprecation of it and prays that that Cup may pass from him Blessed Saviour when thou hadst just now made thy Death thy Legacy thy Sacrament dost thou intreat to scape this death if this Cup pass from thee what will the Cup of Blessing profit us thou hadst but now bequeathed a Cup to us which was the New Testament in thy Blood and now wilt thou not shed that Blood But dost thou refuse thy Cup Oh 't was a Cup of deadly Wine red with God Indignation poison'd with Sin And can the Sinner thirst for the Abyss of this the Lake that hath no bottom and when he goes again and prays the same words the third time be yet not onely so supine as not ask to scape it seldom and very sleight in any Prayer or wish against it but also so resolv'd to have it as to gape that he may swill it down to everlastingness Follow him from that Garden and you see him even dying under his Cross he cannot bear that when it is laden with sin who yet upholdeth all things by the word of his Power 'T is said the time will come when the Sinner will cry out to the Hills to fall on him any weight but that of iniquity the burden of that is intolerable 't is easier for him to bear a Mountain than a Vice and yet Christ saith he hath a beam in his Eye and can he shrink at any weight whose part that is most sensible tender to an expression can bear that which shoulders must fall under onely Pillars can sustain Oh yes that which did sink the shoulders of Omnipotence Then the Mountains rather and the Rocks to cover but in vain they will not cover for thy very Groans will rent them Christ's were so sad that his did they tore the Rocks and that which is much more inflexible the Monuments Death started at them and the bonds of the Grave loosened and the Dust was frighted into Resurrection and more the Hypostatick Union seem'd rent by them the God to have forsaken his own Person And can the Sinner hope to stand this shock will the courage of his Iniquity make his heart harder than those Rocks more insensible than the Grave and better able to endure than he that was a God and will you die into this state eternally which it was necessary for him to have the assistance of Divinity in his Person that he might be able to endure one day and which yet notwithstanding made one day intolerable The sum is this a Person so desiring Death and yet so dreading it and sinking under the essays of it and this Person the Son of God and that dread meerly because there was sin in the Death for if this were not in the cause no Martyr but had born death with more courage but that Son of God all this as it does leave no Reason for the Sinners choice of death Eternal so neither doth it leave a possibility of bearing it And if so give me leave in God's Name to Expostulate the last imployment of these words Why will ye die After this killing Prospect while the damp of it is on you let my Bowels debate with you which yearn more over you than they did over my Beloved Son in whom I was well pleased when I have sent my only Son God one with my own Self to be made Man that he might suffer what was necessary to be suffer'd to preserve you from eternal sufferings when I have laid on him that was brought up with me from everlasting and that was daily my Delight all your Iniquities and my own Indignation that so you might be freed from both When I have found out made an Expiation with which I am more pleased than ever your transgressions offended me which hath quite blotted out your sins and my Displeasure when your Redemption from death is made the Ransom paid the Price is in my hand why do you then refuse your selves your own Eternal Blessedness which was thus dearly purchas'd and is ready for you Why will you seize that Indignation which you are redeemed from and force those sufferings on your selves which have been laid already and inflicted on another 'T is a small thing that you refuse me the return of my Expence that which I gave my Son for but do you renounce Happiness because my Love and Blood is in it and will you die because you may and I desire you should live when my Son went from the essential felicities of my Bosom to embrace Agonies and dy'd for you why will you also die as you have slain his Person will you Crucifie his Kindness too and crucifie your selves rather than have it and having us'd him most despightfully will you therefore use his favours so and not let his Death and Passion do you any good contemn his methods of Salvation his divine Acts of making you for ever Blessed is your Saviour and Life it self so hateful to you and after such Redemption of your persons is there no redemption of your Will from perishing nothing of value that can bribe your choice against it nothing that can betroth you into a desire of Life and take you off from your resolves to die had I set no advantage on the other side if sin had sweetned misery to your Palate it had been no such great despite and contradiction to Appetite but when Heaven and the Joys of God are in the Scale against it to prefer Misery is Wretchless beyond aggravation Oh why will you rather die Those very things that tempt your Wills were they abstracted from the death they do inveigle you into were they sincere and innocent if they were set against that Life that blessed life immortal Life would vanish quite in the comparison when you should see they are but frolicks of delight that never take you but when you are turn'd up to them in moods and fits and the complacencies you take in them are but starts of Appetite that swells and breaks out to them and then falls again and so the pleasures die even in the birth and therefore cannot satisfie indeed do but disquiet an immortal appetite such as man's is so that it were impossible to choose a life these rather although there were no misery annex'd to them if you consider'd For it were to resolve that a few drops were more than an immence Ocean of Delight a Moment longer than Eternity a Part were bigger than the Whole an Atome greater than an Infinite Now there is nothing then that can prefer these to your choice but the Death only and Oh will ye without and against all Temptation Will ye die O thou my Soul take
does croak aloud Thirst makes the insensate Earth to gasp as if with open mouth it gap'd not onely to receive but beg Gods showers and God expects to be intreated for these things He feeds but those young Ravens that do call upon him and the young Lions roar to him and seek their meat at God The eyes of all things wait on him for that yea this our Psalmist in this very Psalm desires other things and Christ himself hath put into his little Summary these needs and these desires Give us this day our daily bread and my Text does but regulate not exclude these desires if we shall read it in the old Translation there is none upon Earth that I desire in comparison of thee 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There 's none or nothing that I desire or delight in equally with thee like thee so we translate the same word ver 5. I shall not doubt to beg what my needs crave But if God and any the most signal earthly advantage stand in competition and I cannot have one with the other his Providence or his Commands have made them inconsistent that I will not desire with him then he shall be my Choice alone Rather Obedience and my God than any satisfaction how desirable soever This is the Touchstone of a Pious mans desires 't is not unusual for inclinations to things below more to possess our thoughts employ our faculties than any other and we are far more sensible of their impressions more busie in the pursuit and more tender in our cares of them But if upon contest betwixt God and our inclinations upon debate betwixt a Pleasure and Command we can decree for God and for Obedience pass Sentence with the Precept we are safe here the desire is not inordinate 'T is a known instance and you may have seen a tender Mother spending almost her whole time in caressing her little Infant you would think she had Eyes for no uses but to view it and that she had her Arms and Breasts but to embrace and suckle it to whom these are so wholly given up as if they had no part for any other as the Husband had no share in her entertains and caresses of whom are far more sleight and not so pressing But should it come to this pinch once that she must straight resolve to part with one of these however close her Arms would grasp her Child to rescue him to force whom thence were like the tearing of her bowels from her yet would she give those bowels to redeem her bosom guest and the Husband would be the Choice so that although the other inclinations were more expressive these are the stronger and the better setled So it may happen we may be more sensibly affected to some dear things here below our thoughts and Eyes and our embraces cling and fasten more to these but if it come to this that we must leave one break with the Duty or the Passion if we resolve however not to part with God but lay hold there and let the other go then our affections are not onely regular when we desire nothing in comparison with him but our desires are enjoyments seize and take possession of him and we have him So my Text implies here Whom have I in Heaven but thee importing that we have him Which brings me to the other parts that yet remain to be discours'd of Three things are here to be considered 1. That Heaven is the place of Possessions in opposition to this Land of Desires 2. That God is the possession there 3. That the Pious man hath this possession in present The first of these is so much common place I shall not stay upon it those onely qualities that make this World to be a Land of Desires have no place there to wit the instability and emptiness of all things in it he that lays hold on them does but grasp Mercury which the more he clasps the more he forces it to slip away and he retains onely the soyl and the defilement of it like Lightning which but passes by stays not to cherish onely dazels and it may be scorches So the shine of Earthly glories startles the mind amuses us inflames desires of them and goes out But then above the tenure is Eternity and that assures immutability yea if it be nunc stans an indivisible Infinity of permanent duration whose every point does coexist to every point a perfect and entire possession all at once of an interminable life that never can be all possest then nothing can pass by us or cease from us but we shall always every moment have what we shall have in every any moment Our enjoyment also being like him that we enjoy all in the whole and all in every part being not onely endless in the mass but every moment of it is immortal And then there can be nothing but enjoyment no place for desire there where there is nothing absent where all past and all futurity is always present and where also the Infinite and all-sufficient God is the Possession which is my next Proposition and that God himself affirms Gen. xv i. I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward Yea this he hath present possession of which my third Proposition and my Text asserts in saying Whom have I in Heaven but thee importing thee I have The things we call most our possessions hee both personal and real and our portions and inheritances Now David claims God under both these dues Thou art my portion O Lord and the lot of mine Inheritance as other men maintain themselves by these so I live upon thee And that we may not think that God is such but in Reversion those are present possessions which men reap the uses of in present to themselves Now what is there of God the Pious man hath not the present uses of His Eyes are over him and his Ears are open to his Prayers watch to attend each motion of his heart and underneath him are the everlasting Arms to carry and sustain him his right hand wears him as his signet and his left hand pours down Blessings on him his wings are spread for him to nestle in that warm security and hide him in the shadow of his bowels found and turn within him with compassion over him and himself self is about his Bed and about all his paths not so much to spy out his ways as to preserve him in them all and he waits that he may be gracious In a word all the Securities that Gods Preserving Mercies signifie the watches of his Providence the Blessings that fulfill his Attributes of goodness all are exerted upon his occasions are made the present objects and the satisfactions of his nearest senses and he may taste and see how gracious God is And then give me O Lord seizin of this the Pious man's Estate I shall not envy other mens possessions though one lay House to
with these break with Virtue when their interest cannot consist with it that these false hypocritical pretenders should be offended with the mean condition of this Child and of his followers in this World and with the poor spirited Principles of his Religion In sum they that upon these or any other grounds finally disbelieve or disobey him God design'd this Child to be a means of bringing sorer Punishments even to everlasting ruin upon such A black Decree this one would think He that had so much kindness for Mankind to give away the onely Son both of his Nature his Affections and his Bosom to them could he then design that Gift to be the Ruin of the greatest part of men This Child Simeon said but just before my Text is Gods Salvation which he had prepared before all people and does he now say God hath set him for their fall The Angels preached this was a Birth that brought glad tidings of great joy that should be to all people and is there so much comfort in destruction that most men should rejoyce at that which is ordained to be the great occasion of it to them But we have no reason to complain 'T is not unkind to deny Mercy to them that refuse the offers of it that will not accept Salvation when their God himself does come to bring it to them tenders it upon condition of accepting and amending Which if they despise and prefer Hell before Repentance chuse sin rather than Gods blessed retributions 't is but reason to deny them what they will not have and let them take their chosen Ruine to will their Judgment which they will themselves set and ordain Him to be that to them which themselves do ordain and make him to be to themselves So S. Peter says expresly He is a Stone of stumbling and a Rock of offence to them who being disobedient stumble at the Word whereunto they were appointed Disobedience where it is obdurate alters so the temper of our God that it makes Him who swears he would not have the Sinner die yet set out his Son to make such sinners fall into eternal Death Makes Judgment triumph over Mercy even in the Great contrivances and executions of that Mercy and while God was plotting an Incarnation for the everlasting Safety of Mankind prevails with him to decree Ruins by the means of that Salvation to Decree even in the midst of all those strivings of his Mercies that that Issue of his kindness should be for the fall of such as they Oh! let us consider whether they are likely to escape that which is set and ordain'd for them by God Whether they can hope for a Redemption when the only great Redeemer is appointed for the Instrument of their Destruction and God is so bent on their ruine that to purchase it he gives this Child his Son Yea when he did look down upon this Son in Agonies and on the Cross in the midst of that sad prospect yet the Ruine of such sinners which he there beheld in his Sons Bloud was a delight to him that also was a Sacrifice and a sacrifice of a sweet smell to him For S. Paul says We are unto God a sweet savour of Christ in them that perish because we are the savour of Death unto death to them As if their Brimstone did ascend like Incense shed a perfume up to God and their evrlasting burnings were his Altar-fires kindled his holocausts and he may well be pleased with it for he ordain'd it 'T is true indeed This Child riding as in Triumph in the midst of his Hosannas when he saw one City whose fall he was set for on this very account He was so far from being pleas'd with it that he wept over it in pity But alas that onely more declares the most deplored and desperate condition of such sinners Blessed Saviour hadst thou no Blood to shed for them nothing but Tears or didst thou weep to think they very Bloodshed does but make their guilt more crimson who refuse the mercy of that Bloodshed all the time that is offered Sad is their state that can find no pity in the Tears of God and remediless their Condition for whom all that the Son of God could do was to weep over them all that he did do for them was to be for their fall too sad a part indeed for festival Solemnity very improper for a Benedictus and Magnificat To celebrate the greatest act of kindness the Almighty could design onely by the miseries it did occasion to magnifie the vast descent of God from Heaven down to Earth onely by reason of the fall of Man into the lowest Hell of which that was the cause My Text hath better things in view The greatness of that fall does but add height to that Resurrection which He also is the cause of Behold this Child is set for the rising again of many My remaining Part. Rising again does not particularly and onely refer to the foregoing fall here in the Text which this Child did occasion as I shewed you but to the state wherein all Mankind both in its nature and its Customs lay ingulâ—'d the state of Ignorance and sin A state from which recovery is properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a resurrection and a reviving in this Life and so call'd in Scripture often as Ephes. v. 15. Wherefore he saith Awake thou that sleepest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and arise from the dead And Rom. vi 13. Yield not your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin but yield your selves unto God as those that are alive form the dead Now to raise us from the death of sin into the life of Righteousness by the amendment of our own lives to recover us into a state of Vertue is the thing this Child is said here to be set for This was that which God thought worth an Incarnation Neither was there any greater thing in the prospect of his everlasting Counsel when he did decree his Son into the World than that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He is set for this The Word was made Flesh to teach practise and persuade to Vertue To make men Reform their lives was valued at the price of a Person of the Trinity Piety and his Exinanition yea his Blood and Life were set at the same rates All of him given for our recovery The time would fail me if I should attempt onely to name the various methods he makes use of to effect this How this Child that was the brightness of his Fathers Glory came to lighten us shining in his Doctrine and Example How he sent more light The fiery Tongues Illuminations of the Holy Ghost to guide us in the ways of Piety How he suffered Agonies and Death for sin to appale and fright us from it How he Rose again to confirm Judgment to us to demonstrate the rewards of Immortality to them that will repent and leave their sins and everlasting Torments to those
Miracle and the Rock must give them drink yet having no Imployment they made Feasts They sate down to eat and drink and rose up to play Nor would eating to the uses of their nature serve them but they must have entertainments for their wantonness Had they been imployed to get their Bread their labour would have made their morsels sweet But since God as the Wise-man says sent them from Heaven bread prepared without their labour they must have varieties to sweeten it they require him to prepare a Table also in the Wilderness and furnish them with choice And although they had the food of Angels able to content every mans delight and agreeing to every taste and serving to the appetite of the eater it temper'd it self to every mans liking and what could they fancy more The latitude of Creatures the whole Universe of Luxury could do nothing else in every single morsel they had sorts Variety all choice as if that Desert had been Paradise that Wilderness the Garden of the Lord Yet so coy is Idleness so apt to nauseate that they abhor the constancy of being pleas'd And though they were not sated neither he that gather'd much had nothing over onely to his eating God as well providing for their Health and Vertue as Necessity and dieting their Temperance as he did their Hunger Yet their very liking does grow loathsom to them When their Bodies were thus excellently well provided for having no imployment nothing to take up their Minds and Entertain their Souls they require 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 meat for their Souls meat not to serve the uses of their bodies but to feed their fancies their extravagant minds Thus Idleness requires to be dieted And all this but to pamper and feed high mens inclinations so to make Temptations irresistible and by consequence Vice necessary It were easie to recount more of those ways by which the Devil does make use of mens want of Imployment to debauch their lives and ruin all the hopes of Vertue in them S. Jude finds more of its effects at Sodom They gave themselves over to Fornication and went after other flesh and are set forth for an Example suffering the vengeance of Eternal fire Indeed these are most certain consequents of not being imployed Quaeritur Aegysthus is too known an instance and great holy David is another But it s dire influence is sufficiently visible in that which it rain'd down upon those Cities Since it did fulfill the guilt of Sodom and made Heaven furnish Hell for it and God himself turn Executioner of fire and brimstone to revenge it this shall serve to prove it is one of the Devil's Master-pieces 3. Next succeed his fiery darts as S. Paul calls them namely Persecutions or Calamities of any kind Which he manageth either by inflicting pressures and he was so confident of the force of these that he did tell God he would make Job curse him to his face with them Or if he find men in necessities and pressures then by tempting them to get from under them by methods which he shall direct and he had such assurance of the strength of this Temptation that by it he tried our Saviour to find out whether he were the Son of God or no believing none but he that was so would be able to resist it Indeed the trials are severe which this Temptation does present to draw men from their Duty and to overcome their Constancy Whether it solicite by inflicting punishment as on the Mother and her Children 2 Maccab. vii or by offering to withdraw it if they will submit to their unlawful terms and so they tried her youngest Son there verse 24. or at leastwise by some feigned act some ambiguous words or practices will pretend compliance so they dealt with Eleazar Chap. vi 21. whom they would have had to bring flesh of his own provision such as he might use without offence and so onely seem to eat forbidden meat Each of which is as great a trial also and to stand against them reckon'd up amongst as vigorous acts of Faith as those that held out in the greatest tortures persecuting malice could invent Heb. xi 17. They were stoned sawn asunder were tempted Now to fetch an instance of the sad success of these I shall not need to go so far as to those Persecutions of Antiochus nor those of the primitive times of Christianity when they had no other choices but these to deliver up their Bibles or their Lives either to sacrifice to Idols or at least procure a Ticket which should certifie that they had done it or to be themselves an Holocaust and give those Idols a Burnt-offering with their martyr-flames Which made the Traditores Lapsi the Thurificati and the Libellatici to be so numerous Through Gods blessed mercy there is no use of such instances as there is no fear of such a trial 't is not death to be a Christian now For if the Son of Man or Satan's self should come to try us at those rates 't were a great doubt whether the one or other would find Faith upon the Earth whether they would sacrifice a life to our Religion who are not content to sacrifice a little interest or pleasure to it whether they are likely to resist unto blood fighting against sin who will not resist to tears nor sober resolutions Alas what Religion should we be of if God should raise a Dioclesian come to tempt us with the fiery trial Martyrs as we are to nothing but our Passions and our lusts Nor shall I produce more known and near experiences when by reason of such storms of Persecution men made shipwreck if not of their Faith yet of good Conscience When by order or permissions of Providence they were brought to such a streight that either they must let go their possessions or their honesty acting against Principles and Conscience of Duty I shall not remember how when God did shake his angry hand thus over them they fled to the Devils kindness and made Hell their refuge to save them from their Fathers rod how they grew so Atheistical as to believe a Perjury or other crime greater security that would preserve their selves and their condition better than all God had promis'd were such Infidels that they did rather trust their being here to the commission of a sin than to the Providence and the Engagements of the Almighty For indeed what need I instance in these greater cases where the trial was so sharp as not to offer any easier choice than this either to part with Conscience or with all they had God knows we find less Interests will do The Devil by no more than this driving the Gadarens swine into the Sea was able to drive Christ out of their Coasts You have the story Matth. viii from the 28. verse A legion of those evil spirits did possess two men and finding Christ would cast them out
all that does pretend to God or Vertue in him Where 't is thus let no man flatter or persuade himself he does what he would not when it is plain he does impetuously will the doing it Let him not think that he allows not but hates that which he does when it is certain in that moment that he does commit not to allow that which he does resolve and pitch upon and chuse to hate what with complacency he acts or to do that unwillingly which he is wrought on by his own Concupiscence to do and by his inward incitations by the mutiny of his own affections which the Devil raises and when it is the meer height and prevailency of his appetite that does make him do it as it must be where there is reluctancy before he do it his desires and affections there are evidently too strong for him or at last to hate the doing that which 't is his too much love to that makes him do are all impossibilities the same things as to will against the will desire against appetite But do but keep thy self sincerely and in truth from being willing and thou must be safe For God expects no more but that we should not voluntarily yield to our undoing He hath furnish'd us with his own compleat Armour for no farther uses of a War but to encourage us to stand Take unto you the whole Armour of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the Devil And again Put ye on the whole Armour of God that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand There is no need to do more than this not to be willing and consent to fall for no man can be beaten down but he that will fall It were very easie for me to prescribe you how to fortifie against those Engines of the Devils battery which I produced to you But that I may not stay upon particulars directing those whom he prevails upon through want of Imployment to find out honest occasions not to be idle and sure it is the most unhappy thing in the World for any man to be necessitated to be vicious by his having nothing else to do and because while the World accounts it a Pedantick thing to be brought up by Rules and under Discipline he cannot learn how to imploy himself to his advantage to pass by these I say the universal strength against this Enemy is Faith Your adversary the Devil like a roaring Lion goeth up and down seeking whom he may devour whom resist stedfast in the Faith And that not onely as it frustrates all that he attempts by means of Infidelity but it also quenches all his fiery darts whatsoever bright Temptation he presents to draw us from our Duty or whatever fiery trial he makes use of to affright and martyr with For the man whose Faith does give him evidence and eye-sight of those blessed Promises eye hath not seen and gives substance present solid being to his after-hopes and whose heart hath swallowed down those happy expectations which have never entred in the heart of man to comprehend what is there that can tempt or fright him from his station To make all that which Satan gave the prospect of prevail on such a Soul the Kingdoms of the Earth must out-vie Gods Kingdom and their Gauds out-shine his Glory and the twinkling of an eye seem longer than Eternity For nothing less than these will serve his turn all these are in his expectations Or what can fright the man whose heart is set above the sphere of terrours who knows calamity how great soever can inflict but a more sudden and more glorious blessedness upon him and the most despiteful cruel usage can but persecute him into Heaven 'T is easie to demonstrate that a Faith and Expectation of the things on Earth built upon weaker grounds than any man may have for his belief of things above hath charg'd much greater hazards overcome more difficulties than the Devil does assault us with For sure none is so Sceptical but he will grant that we have firmer grounds to think there is another World in Heaven than Columbus if he were the first Discoverer had to think there was another Earth and that there are far richer hopes laid up there in that other World for those that do deny themselves the sinful profits and the jollities of this and force them from their inclinations than those Sea-men could expect who first adventur'd with him thither For they could not think to gain much for themselves but onely to take soism of the Land if any such there were for others covetous Cruelty could get little else but only richer Graves and to lie buried in their yellow Earth Nor are we assaulted in our Voyage with such hazards as they knew they must encounter with the path of Vertue and the way to Heaven is not so beset with difficulties as theirs was when they must cut it out themselves through an unknown new World of Ocean where they could see nothing else but swelling gaping Death from an Abyss of which they were but weakly guarded and removed few inches onely And as if the dangerousest shipwrecks were on shore they found a Land more savage and more monstrous than that Sea Yet all this they vanquish'd for such slender hopes and upon so uncertain a belief A weak Faith therefore can do mighty works greater than any that we stand in need of to encounter with our Enemy It can remove these Mountains too the golden ones that Covetousness and Ambition do cast up Yea more it can remove the Devil also for if you resist him stedfast in the Faith he flies which is the happy issue and my last Part. Resist the Devil and he will Fly from you And yet it cannot be denied but that sometimes when the messenger of Satan comes to buffet though S. Paul resist him with the strength of Prayer which when Moses managed he was able to prevail on God himself and the Lord articled with him that he might be let alone yet he could not beat off this assailant 2 Cor. xii 7 8 9. When God either for prevention as 't was there v. 7. or for exercising or illustrating of Graces or some other of his blessed ends gives a man up to the assaults of Satan he is often pleased to continue the temptation long but in that case he does never fail to send assistances and aids enough against it My grace is sufficient for thee â—aith he to S. Paul there And when he will have us tempted for his uses if we be not failing to our selves he does prevent our being overcome so that there is no danger in those Trials from their stay But yet it must not be denied but that the Devil does prevail sometimes by importunacy and by continuance of Temptation so that Resistance is not always a Repulse at least not such an one as to make
in conscience to that superior to depart from their own Judgment and to yield and sign their assent to his determinations Witness the matter of Jansenius Yea their great Cardinal is positive that If the Pope could err so far as to call evil good good evil to prohibit vertues or command vices the Church were bound in conscience to believe those vices good and honest and those vertues evil So far he Indeed if that Church be the Mother and Nurse of all Christians 't is from her breasts only they must seek the sincere Milk of the word Now that she is so they must take her word as Children do their Parents words that they are so And indeed this is properly to receive the Doctrine as a little Child not judge nor reason not examin but believe it And such legendary doctrines as well as Histories which they deliver are most fit to be receiv'd by such as Children Yet as if this had been the proper method among Christians always in S. Austin's time we find the Manichees derided Christianity that discipline of Faith because by that men were commanded to believe and were not taught how to distinguish truth from falshood by clear reason and again that it requires us to assent before we have a reason for it And long before that Celsus did advise the Christians to receive no doctrines but on the account of reason credulity being the inlet to deceit saying they that without grounds believe are like those that admire and â—e satisfied with juglers and take appearances and sleight of hand for truth adding many of the Christians neither would receive nor give a reason of their faith but us'd to say 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 do not you examin but believe 't is your faith shall save you and as if from the beginning it were so we cannot but have heard the story of that man that reading Genesis where Moses says In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth And he said let there be light and there was light c. Swore at him saying this Barbarian only asserted boldly but prov'd nothing As if Argument and Reason never had place in the Jewish or the Christian Religion only those who were the inâ—titutors of each Religion did deliver it others had no more to do but to believe it that is to receive it as a little Child Whether these reproaches and the Oath of these known enemies may go for proofs that it was so I shall not now enquire But it is certain on the other side S. Paul requires of his new Christian Corinthians that they be not Children in understanding that they be in malice Children but in understanding Men. Now a Man and a Child differ not in this that the one hath an understanding reasonable soul and the other hath not but in that the one cannot use his understanding or his reason and the other where he acts as man does So that our Religion in requiring that we be in understanding men does require of us that we use our reason in it And since assenting to a thing as truth is an Act of the highest faculty of the soul of man as it is properly and truly reasonable namely as it understands and judges it is not possible a man should really believe a thing unless he satisfie himself that he hath reason for so doing Yea whether that be true or not which many men so eagerly contend for that the will though free is bound and cannot choose but will that which appears best at that time it wills yet it is sure that he who with his understanding which is not free in her apprehensions and judgments but must necessarily embrace that which hath most evidence of truth He I say who really assents to any proposition does satisfie himself that he hath better and more cogent reasons for that then the contrary And therefore it is impossible that any man can verily believe a thing which he is throughly convinc't is contrary to clear and evident right reason for he cannot have a better reason for the thing that is so and were it possible for any man to believe so there could be neither grounds nor Rules for such a ones belief for there is nothing in the World so false and so absur'd although he were assur'd it were so but he might assent to it for whatever demonstrations could be offer'd why he should not yet it seems he might believe against acknowledg'd evident truth and reason but this were onely wish or fancy and imagination not belief And to prevent such Childish weak credulity was the great work and care of Christ so far is he from requiring we should be as Children in this kind For when he was ascended up to heaven he gave some Apostles some Evangelists some Pastors and Teachers he shed down the Holy Spirit and his gifts that we might not be as Children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of Doctrine Eph. 4. 14. First For want of rational grounds instable in our Faith as Children are in body and in judgment also taking all appearances for truths If men were only to believe there must needs be as great variety of Religions as of teachers And though God hath appointed that some Church should be as perfectly infalliable as that of Rome pretends to be yet since there are so many Churches and the true one therefore could be known no otherwise then by some marks there must be disquisition before Faith and men must reason and examin ere they can believe upon good grounds for were they to receive Religion as a little Child be nurst up with the Doctrine as with milk a Child we know may suck infection from the poyson'd breast of an unwholesom mother or some other person for it knows not to distinguish and so may be nurst to death A soul like theirs that is but rasa tâ—bula white paper is as fitted to receive the mark of the beast as the inscription of the living God just as the first hand shall impress Therefore we are bid not to believe every Spirit not every Teacher though he come with gifts pretend and seem to be inspir'd but try them and our Saviour forewarn'd the Jews of false Christs that should come with signs and wonders Something therefore must be known first and secur'd before the understanding can be thus oblig'd to give up its assent and Captivate every thought into obedience as S. Paul directs Now what that was here to the hearers in the Text is easily collected namely that he was the Christ that does require it And S. Paul expresses it in the forecited place where he says we must bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ to wit of that Christ who as he does himself profess that if he had not done among them the works which no other had done they had not had sin John 15. 24. If his
preys upon that it may keep alive and nourish torment to eternity or how each man 's peculiar dust that is digested into several mens being and so become no one mans peculiar when it shall be also blended with the ashes of the Universe can be singled out and parted to its proper owner when there are so many own it because their reason cannot comprehend all this therefore Scriptures lake of fire must be no more then the Poets Acheron and Resurrection was fram'd as the apparition of a Ghost is wont to do to fright men meerly and however 't is attested Christ did never rise but all is fable Thus from such premises as these our rational disputing men conclude And here I shall not ask how these men dare presume that if there be a God who hath declar'd that he will bring such things to pass yet he must be unable to affect them if they cannot comprehend the manner how he does them or be confident they can look through those beams that come out of his hand in which the hiding of his Power is But this I shall say to our men of reason theirs is the most unreasonable way of arguing in the world to dispute against plain matters of fact the being and the Works of such and such so many ages since and witnessed by a greater testimony then the World can shew for any other thing and ever since appearing in their visible and vast effects as the Conversion Suffering Faith of the whole Earth almost Now to attempt the confutation of such matter of fact by reasonings drawn from difficulties in some things which those men are witnessed to have deliver'd or to conclude that there can never have been any such persons in the World because they cannot understand all that those persons taught or possibly because they can take some occasions to buffoone on what they taught is most ridiculous Thus History must have been false and several known places not to have been because the story hath been turn'd into Burlesque Thus he that with the Ancients cannot comprehend how it is possible that there should be Antipodes or the Earth can be any thing but a plain flat otherwise he thinks the inhabitants must fall down to Heaven may as rationally despise all the discoveries of the Earth assure himself our constant Navigations which perswade us 't is a Globe inhabited on both sides bring home from the Indies nothing else but false relations and that indeed there are no Indies I need not urge how Christianity approves it self even to the reasoning of the sober part of mankind and the morality of it had the suffrage of the World before it self appeared For while the evidence stands good if the matter of fact be true the Doctrine must be true and the commands obey'd and to use such arguings to resell such matter of fact is just like that which Zeno did attempt namely by subtilties to prove it was impossible there could be any motion while another did disturb his Lecture by his motion up and down the Schools it is the same thing as to take a bowl to cut with or the vessels of the Danaid's to carry water in For such reasonings are alike improper for that work And indeed these arguings are not the exceptions of reason but the struglings of mens vices against Religion And it must be impossible so many Thousands would give up their Bodies rather then their Bibles to the fire in Dioclesian's days because it is a book which they can find no other pleasure in but that of railling it or helping them with subjects to be prophane upon It must be false that Christ did feed 5000 with 5 loaves and 2 small fishes 'till 12 baskets full of broken pieces did remain yet not so much because they know not how their eating could nourish the victuals so and make it grow as because they are angry with the worker of the miracle who forbids and upbraids the excesses of their luxury which can easily and does daily consume the price of that that would suffice 5000 without miracle on 5 single persons and all that when 't is drest according to the modern mode of eating well dissolved turned into juyces and exalted into the Elixir of the Epicure shall leave alas no broken pieces for the Alms-basket This is the quarrel this does make the miracle impossible And yet methinks upon the same account they should allow that at a feast he turned so many pots of water into wine because that seems to gratifie the thirsts of their intemperance In fine we do not live as men prepared or willing to be called to an account of all our doings therefore we have no mind to rise again to give it When we are thus minded it is not hard to meet with difficulties that encourage the opinion that we shall not rise Which difficulties when we look into we cannot find how it is possible we can be raised and 't is easie then to think we cannot that it is impossible especially when it is our will and interest to think so and then it must be false whatever is in Scripture that we shall These are the processes of those that reason against Christianity such the grounds that they dispute upon But their reasons are but Sophisms of lust and interest which will guild and paint whatever they are much in love with and it is no wonder they find colours for it and can think them reasons for they always did so against present evident conviction When Moses by his miracles endeavoured to let Pharaoh know who was the Lord and to persuade him to let Israel go while God permitted the Magicians to counterfeit those miracles it lookt like reasonable indeed that Pharaoh should not be convinced but when they could not immitate but did confess the finger of the Lord and themselves suffered those plagues which they could not either conjure up or down then if Pharaoh will not be persuaded 't is plain nothing but his interest not the wonders which were brought by the Magicians were the reasons that prevailed with him for those were not reasons against more and greater miracles yet they were effectual with him to the destruction of himself and his nation Again when they who knew the mighty works Christ did and were forewarned by him of false Christs and false Prophets that would come with signs and lying wonders God allowing Sathan leave to struggle at his last gasp and to make a blaze when he was to fall from heaven as lightning but far beneath the glory of his onely begotten Son when they who knew both these chose yet to follow a Barchocab a false falling Meteor who came indeed with greater shew and not with such strict mortifying Doctrines nor onely with the thin encouragement of after-expectations as Christ did for he gave them hopes of present temporal enjoyments but he did no wonder besides spitting fire S. Jerome says
Angels met us in to Worship and God dwelt in to bless us there the place appointed for the Divinest Mysteries of our Redemption for the Celebration of Christ's Agonies for the Commemoration of the blessed Sacrifice the place for nothing but Christ's Blood then to become the place of a most odious and insolent uncleanness If I had worded this more aggravatingly it had been only to infer that then to see a consecrated person to polute himself with those black foulnesses that made hell and made fiends is sure a sadder and a more unhappy spectacle If an Apostle become wicked he is in our Saviour's Character a Devil Have I not chosen Twelve and one of you is a Devil Yea if the good Saint Peter do become a scandal tempt to that which is not good Get thee behind me Satan Christ calls his nearest Officers Stars Emblems of a great separateness those that teach them how far their Conversation should be remov'd from Earth for they are of another Orbe Heaven is the Region of Stars But they are Emblems of a greater purity there 's nothing in the World so clean as light 't is not possible so much as to fully shine it may irradiate dung-hills but they do not defile it you may Eclipse a Star but cannot spot it you may put oâ— the light you cannot stain it 'T is a word for God's purity only his light is glory and as his holiness is so separate that it is incommunicable so his Light is inaccessible Yet sure they that are stars in Christ's right hand they do come neer and mix their light with his and they of all men must be pure and holy whom the spirit calls to that place as he does all whom he calls to that separation that he did Barnabas and Saul the Persons and the next Part Separate me Barnabas and Saul I intend not to make particular reflections upon these persons although the Character of Barnabas be registred the 11. Chap. v. 24. He was a good man full of Faith and of the Holy Ghost and the good influence that that had upon the people follows And much people was added to the Church And as for Saul though he began the Christian persecution and was baptiz'd in the first Martyr-blood and breath'd out threatnings so that nothing but thunder could out-voice him and at last was born as an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as an untimely birth aborting through those wounds which his own hands had made in the Church and making himself a birth with ripping up her bowels yet this Abortive prov'd the strongest birth and 't was a Miscarriage into the chiefest Apostle As he began the after-sufferings of Christ in Stephen so he fulfill'd the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and made up all that was behind in himself being in deaths more than those he inflicted The sound of his preaching was louder than that at his Conversion out-voic'd the thunder for this went out into all lands as if himself alone meant to execute the whole Commission Preach the Gospel to every creature which he did almost not only preaching to those places where Christ was not named without the other Apostles line but even where the rest imploy'd themselves he wrought as much as they in Asia as Saint John at Antioch as Peter yea and at Rome too having as much to do in their foundation If I had said more I could have brought the Popes own Seal for evidence where not only both are but Saint Paul hath the right hand And truly if they had had the luck to think at first of founding all their pretensions on Saint Paul his care of all the Churches would have born them out as well as feed my Lambs does now But these considerations I pass though they would give a Man that hath done mischief in the Church a pattern for the measures of his future Service to the Church The thing I shall concern my self in is the solemn separation here of those who were before separated to the work of the Gospel Barnabas sent by the Church of Jerusalem to Antioch Act. 11. 22. and Paul not only separated from his Mothers womb Gal. 1. 15. but chosen by express Revelation and by the laying on of Ananias's hands that so he might receive the Holy Ghost qualified to Preach the Gospel to the Gentiles and to Kings In which work both of them had for some years â—ercised themselves Yet here is a new consecration and they are taken up to a condition more separate and distinct from what they were before And all those vast advantages in which these persons did excell the one of Faith and fulness of the Holy Ghost the other besides those of express and immediate mission from Heaven and the most strange success their labours had been blest with all these I say did not qualifie them to assume these powers which the Holy Ghost commands another separation to enstall them in And 't was this 〈◊〉 that call'd Paul to be an Apostle Rom. 1. 1. as from this time he is always call'd Paul not sooner Nor do we find any least footsteps of their being Apostles before though Barnabas were sent to Antioch yet he does not undertake what Peter and John did at Samaria in the very same case for they confirm and give the Holy Ghost Act. 8. 15 37. but Barnabas does nothing but Exhort Act. 11. 23. and he and Paul together Preacht the Word abroad but we find nothing else they enterpriz'd but from this time they exercise Jurisdiction settle Churches and ordain them Elders in the Churches Ch. 14. 22 23. and as it does appear singly deriv'd these powers to others to be exercised by them singly To Titus most expresly Tit. 1. 5. the like also to Timothy with all the other Acts of Jurisdiction of which their Epistles are the Records particularly that of Censures which Paul himself had inflicted on offenders in the Churches he had planted Powers these which by such steps and by degrees of separation an Apostle himself receives and does not execute 'till he ascend the highest that which they have a new solemnity ordain'd from Heaven to enstate them in by a new laying on of hands and the holy Ghost himself commanding separate The separateness of this highest order in the Church is a doctrine handed down to us both by the writings of all Ages and the practices two things which as they scarcely do concur in such a visible degree in any other things in our Religion so also when they do concur they make and secure tradition beyond all contradiction give it sufficient infallibility and truly he that does refuse the evidence which such tradition gives to all the motives of believing Christianity if he be not a Socinian he must be an Enthusiast and can receive his Religion only from Revelation Now the matter of fact of this tradition is a subject for Volumes not for
For them it is very necessary for persecution or despightful usage offending God as by a disobedience to his precept so also by the sufferings it does inflict on man to forgive or require which that man hath right God does not use to put the injur'd person by this right or by its paramont Authority assume to pardon the mans part of the wrong but does retain the sin till that either in deed or desire do satisfied for or remitted there being 'till then an obstruction to Gods forgiveness for 'till then the man hath not repented but when the fufferer does pray for him in doing so he pleads that that obstruction is remov'd that his part is remitted and so leaves no bar in the way to that pardon which he begs for him of God and which that bar being gone the Lord is us'd to grant with all advantage the prayers of our Martyr in the seventh of the Acts are a demonstration to which the Fathers say the Church did owe not only her deliverance from all the violent intentions of Saul but all that Christianity which St. Paul planted the dying voice of that petition Lord lay not this sin to their charge was answered by that voyce from Heaven which converted Saul in his career of fury One prayer for a persecutor puts an end to persecution si Stephanus non or asset Ecclesia non habuiesset Paulum Jobs miserable comforters whose visits prov'd afflictions to him could not a tone themselves to God by their burnt offerings but Job must pray for them 42. Chr. 8. seven Bullocks and seven Rams cannot expiate but one petition from the sufferer will do it for him I will accept saith God and he accepted him not for them only but for himself for the Lord turned the Captivity of Job when he prayed for them vers 10. These intercessions speed sooner then direct supplications and such a petition is heard to our selves when 't is made for others And reason good for such requests lay the condition of our pardon before God making evidence of our performance and they cry for we forgive and so call for pardon And to encourage this procedure our Saviour before he did commend his own spirit into the hand of his Father he commended his Executioners to the mercies of his Father Our Martyr did not so indeed but first pray'd for himself Lord Jesus receive my Spirit Acts. 7. 59. But though Heaven opening he saw that Jesus standing at the right hand of God as ready to receive it yet his spirit would not leave his body so yet made him live yet to endure more stoning from his persecutors for whom he had not pray'd yet but when he once fell on his knees not beaten down by their storm but his Charity and pray'd Lord lay not this sin to their charge when he had said so he fell asleep v. 60. his Spirit taken hence as it were osculo pacis though by the most violent death and he lies down in a perpetual rest and peace that thus lies down in Love These are requests to breath out a soul into heaven in and heaven it self did open to receive that soul that came so wafred And now we are at the top of Christ's Mount the highest and the steepest point of christianity which view with that â—o which our Martyrs Spirit did ascend For it makes perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect it sets our heads within those higher and untroubled Regions wherein there are no Meteor-fires the flame of Passion cannot wing it thither for he that is above the power of injury discontent cannot look up to him it is with him as in the upper Orbs where there is only harmony and shine all is peace and love the state of heaven it self Now as it does happen to them that look down from great heights every Object below is dwarf'd And if the distance of the prospect be as great as that from Heaven to Earth they tell us this whole Globe would be but like a spot all being swallowed in it self so if from this great height of duty we should look down upon the World of Christianity would it not almost wholly disappear and vanish Something like a dark spot of it you may perchance behold stain'd and discolour'd with the Blood of Christians which their constant quarrels shed Some it may be dye that Blood in colours of Religion their Animosity is christened Zeal they kill only for Sacrifice thus they interpret and fulfill Christs precepts this they call holy love as if Christ when he bid his Disciples take no Staves with them meant they should carry Swords as if the love he had commanded we should have for them that are in errour if our enemies be so indeed were but to murder them forsooth out of their errours Next for the kindnesses that Christians do to those that hate them or have disoblig'd them they are God knows so little that no perspective can shew them from this height we are upon And yet 't is not for want of light we cannot see them 't is very rare men do those things in the dark for if they do not blazon them themselves the enemy whom they oblige must do it The distance also is too great to hear the prayers that are made for those that treat men with despiteful usage perhaps it is because they are put up in secret bur then what means the yelling of those curses That ill Language that is banded to and fro While none will be behind in the returns of these how far soever we are off like Thunder these are heard And thence you may behold them also tearing Christs wounds wider to mouth their swelling passion We may see their anger redden with his Blood and themselves spitting out that Blood by imprecations at the face of him that did provoke them we may see them raking Hell to word these prayers sending themselves thither in wishes that they may express them with more horrour The Hatreds and Revenges which men act on them that have offended them hates that seldom ever dye 'till themselves do which the Frost of the Grave onely cools yea many times they are rak'd up and keep their heat in the ashes live in the grave and are as long liv'd as the families which for the most part is more careful and tenacious of them than of their Inheritance The executions of these are often writ in Characters legible at utmost distance in this Mount of the Lord they may be seen but where now are the Christians of my Text and of this day There 's no appearance of them in the face of the whole Globe of our Profession nay worse it is scarce possible they should appear the Duties of loving enemies of returning affronts with kindnesses these are banisht thence other virtues are practic'd down but these are scorn'd and quarrel'd down 'T is become a base thing and not to be endur'd to be a Christian