souls by fasting or by an issue at the Tongue or Eye in an humble confession of their sins and in weeping and mourning for them with tears of repentance And they did well now to make tryal of those Remedies again wherein they had found so much help in former times especially the Remedies being proper for the Malady and such as often may do good but never can do harm But alas fasting and weeping and mourning before the door of the Tabernacle of the Congregation had not strength enough against those more prevalent Corruptions wherewith the State of Israel was then pestered This Phinees saw who well perceived that as in a dangerous Pleurisie the party cannot live unless he bleed so if there were any good to be done upon Israel in this their little less than desperate estate a Vein must be opened and some of the rank Blood let out for the preservation of the rest of the Body This course therefore he tries and languishing Israel findeth present ease in it As soon as the Blood ran instantly the Grief ceased he executed Iudgment and the Plague was stayed As God brought upon that people for their sins a fearful destruction so he hath in his just wrath sent his destroying Angel against us for ours The sins that brought that Plague upon them were Whoredom and Idolatry I cannot say the very same sins have caused ours For although the execution of good Laws against both Incontinent and Idolatrous persons hath been of late years and yet is we all know to say no more slack enough yet God's holy Name be blessed for it neither Idolatry nor Whoredom are at that height of shameless impudency and impunity among us that they dare brave our Moseses and out-face whole Congregations as it was in Israel But still this is sure no Plague but for sin nor National Plagues but for National sins So that albeit none of us may dare to take upon us to be so far of God's Counsel as to say for what very sins most this plague is sent amongst us yet none of us can be ignorant but that besides those secret personal Corruptions which are in every one of us and whereunto every man 's own heart is privy there are many publick and National sins whereof the people of this Land are generally guilty abundantly sufficient to justifie GOD in his dealings towards us and to clear him when he is judged Our wretched unthankfulness unto GOD for the long continuance of his Gospel and our Peace our Carnal Confidence and security in the strength of our wooden and watry Walls our Riot and Excess the noted proper sin of this Nation and much intemperate Abuse of the good Creatures of GOD in our Meats and Drinks and Disports and other provisions and comforts of this life our incompassion to our brethren miserably wasted with War and Famine in other parts of the World our heavy Oppression of our Brethren at home in racking the rents and cracking the backs and Grinding the faces of the poor our cheap and irreverent regard unto Gods holy Ordinances of his Word and Sacraments and Sabbaths and Ministers our Wantonness and Toyishness of understanding in corrupting the simplicity of our Christian Faith and troubling the peace of the Church with a thousand niceties and novelties and unnecessary wranglings in matters of Religion and to reckon no more that universal Corruption which is in those which because they should be such we call the Courts of Iustice by sale of Offices enhaunoing of Fees devising new subtilties both for Delay and Evasion trucking for Expedition making Traps of petty poenal Statutes and but Cobwebs of the most weighty and material Laws I doubt not but by the mercy of God many of his servants in this Land are free from some and some from all of these common Crimes in some good measure but I fear me not the best of us all not a man of us all but are guilty of all or some of them at least thus far that we have not mourned for the Corruptions of the Times so feelingly nor endeavoured the reformation of them to our power so faithfully as we might and ought to have done By these and other sins we have provoked God's heavy judgment against us and the Plague is grievously broken in upon us and now it would be good for us to know by what means we might best appease his wrath and stay this Plague Publick Humiliations have ever been thought and so they are Proper Remedies against Publick Iudgments To turn unto the Lord our God with all our heart and with Fasting and with Weeping and with Mourning to sanctifie a Fast and call a solemn Assembly and gather the People and Elders together and weep before the door of the Tabernacle of the Congregation and to let the Priests the Ministers of the Lord weep between the Porch and the Altar and to pray the Lord to spare his people and not be angry with them for ever Never did people thus humble themselves with true lowly and obedient hearts who found not Comfort by it in the mean time and in the end benefit And blessed be God who hath put it into the heart of our Moses with the consent of the Elders of our Israel by his Royal Example first and then by his Royal Command to lay upon us a double necessity of this so religious and profitable a course But as our Saviour told the young man in the Gospel who said he had kept the whole Law Unum tibi deest One thing is wanting so when we have done our best and utmost fasted and wept and prayed as constantly and frequently and fervently as we can unless you the Magistrates and Officers of Justice be good unto us one thing will be wanting still One main Ingredient of singular Virtue without which the whole Receipt besides as precious and sovereign as it is may be taken and yet fail the Cure And that is the severe and fearless and impartial Execution of Iudgment Till we see a care in the Gods on Earth faithfully to Execute theirs our hopes can be but faint that the God of Heaven will in mercy remove his judgments If God send a Famine into the Land let holy David do what he can otherwise it will continue year after year so long as judgment is not done upon the bloody house of Saul for his cruelty in slaying the Gibeonites God will not be intreated for the land One known Achan that hath got a wedge of gold by sacrilege or injustice if suffered is able to trouble a whole Israel and the Lord will not turn from the fierceness of his Anger till he have deserved judgment done upon him If Israel have joyned himself unto Baal-Peor so as the Anger of the Lord be kindled against them he will not be appeased by any means until Moses take the heads of the people and hang them
we too severely censure the Persons either for the future as Reprobates and Cast-aways and such as shall be certainly damned or at leastwise for the present as Hypocriâ—es and unsanctified and profane and such as are in the state of Damnation not considering into what fearful sins it may please God to suffer not only his chosen ones before Calling but even his holy ones too after Calling sometimes to fall for ends most times unknown to us but ever just and gracious in him Or thirdly when for want either of Charity oâ— Knowledge as in the present case of this Chapter we interpret things for the worst to our Brethren and condemn them of sin for such actions as are not directly and in themselves necessarily sinful but may with due circumstances be performed with a good conscience and without sin Now all judging and condemning of our Brethren in any of these kinds is sinful and damnable and that in very many respects especially these four which may serve as so many weighty reasons why we ought not to judge one another The usurpation the rashness the uncharitableness and the scandal of it First it is an Usurpation He that is of right to judge must have a Calling and Commission for it Quis constituit te sharply replied upon Moses Exod. 2. Who made thee a Iudge and Quis constituit me reasonably alledged by our Saviour Luke 12. Who made me a Iudge Thou takest too much upon thee then thou son of man whosoever thou art that judgest thus saucily to thrust thy self into God's seat and to invade his Throne Remember thy self well and learn to know thine own rank Quis tu Who art thou that judgest another Iames 4. Or Who art thou that judgest anothers Servant in the next following Verse to my Text. As if the Apostle had said What art thou Or what hast thou to do to judge him that standeth or falleth to his own Master Thou art his fellow-Servant not his Lord. He hath another Lord that can and will judge him who is thy Lord too and can and will judge thee for so he argueth anon at Verse 10. Why dost thou judge thy brother We shall all stand before the Iudgment-Seat of Christ. God hath reserved three Prerogatives Royal to himself Vengeance Glory and Iudgment As it is not safe for us then to encroach upon God's Royalties in either of the other two Glory or Vengeance so neither in this of Judgment Dominus judicabit The Lord himself will judge his people Heb. 10. It is flat Usurpation in us to judge and therefore we must not judge Secondly it is rashness in us A Judge must understand the truth both for matter of fact and for point of Law and he must be sure he is in the right for both before he proceed to sentence or else he will give rash judgment How then dare any of us undertake to sit as Iudges upon other mens Consciences wherewith we are so little acquainted that we are indeed but too much unacquainted with our own We are not able to search the depth of our own wicked and deceitful hearts and to ran sack throughly the many secret windings and turnings therein how much less then are we able to fathome the bottoms of other mens hearts with any certainty to pronounce of them either good or evil We must then leave the judgments of other mens Spirits and hearts and reins to him that is the Father of Spirits and alone searcheth the hearts and reins before whose eyes all things are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the word is most Emphatical Heb. 4. Wherefore our Apostles precept elsewhere is good to this purpose 1 Cor. 4. Iudge nothing before the time until the Lord come who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts Unless we be able to bring these hidden things to light and to make manifest these counsels it is rashness in us to judge and therefore we must not judge Thirdly this judging is uncharitable Charity is not easily suspicious but upon just cause much less then censorious and peremptory Indeed when we are to judge of Things it is wisdom to judge of them Secundùm quod sunt as near as we can to judge of them just as they are without any sway or partial inclination either to the right hand or to the left But when we are to judge of Men and their Actions it is not altogether so there the rule of charity must take place dubia in meliorem partem sunt interpretanda Unless we see manifest cause to the contrary we ought ever to interpret what is done by others with as much favour as may be To err thus is better than to hit right the other way because this course is safe and secureth us as from injuring others so from endangering our selves whereas in judging ill though right we are still unjust 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the event only and not our choice freeing us from wrong judgment True Charity is ingenuous it thinketh no evil 1 Cor. 13. How far then are they from Charity that are ever suspicious and think nothing well For us let it be our care to maintain Charity and to avoid as far as humane frailty will give leave even sinister suspicions of our brethrens actions or if through frailty we cannot that yet let us not from light suspicions fall into uncharitable censures let us at leastwise suspend our definitive judgment and not determine too peremptorily against such as do not in every respect just as we do or as we would have them do or as we think they should do It is uncharitable for us to judge and therefore we must not judge Lastly There is Scandal in judging Possibly he that is judged may have that strength of Faith and Charity that though rash and uncharitable censures lye thick in his way he can lightly skip over all those stumbling-blocks and scape a fall Saint Paul had such a measure of strength with me it is a very small thing saith he that I should be judged of you or of humane judgment 1 Cor. 4. If our judging light upon such an Object it is indeed no scandal to him but that 's no thanks to us We are to esteem things by their natures not events and therefore we give a scandal if we judge notwithstanding he that is judged take it not as a scandal For that judging is in itself a scandal is clear from Vers. 13. of this Chapter Let us not therefore saith S. Paul judge one another any more but judge this rather That no man put a stumbling-block or an occasion to fall into his brothers way And thus we see four main Reasons against this judging of our brethren 1. We have no right to judge and so our
than that of the Sadduces § X. This is the most I think they have to say for themselves and upon supposal that all the particulars in the aforementioned Instances were indeed such Sins and Errours as they either take or mistake them for it must be admitted a very reasonable and sufficient PIea Only we require which is but equal that they mete unto us back again with the same measure and allow us the benefit of the same Plea mutatis mutandis so far as our Case is the same with theirs Let them but this do and the Objection will vanish First we nothing doubt but that the Papists by being baptized into the Faith of Christ are in a far better condition otherwise as we are sure they stand in a nearer relation to us thereby than Turks and Pagans do Yet as to external Communion in the publick Worship by refusing to assemble with us which is not our fault they are as very strangers to us as the very Turks are and in that respect to be looked upon as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those that are without And therefore we deemed it more expedient and a more brotherly act to endeavour the reducing of our Brethren that held Communion with us to their just obedience by discovering to their faces being personally present those their Errours that obstructed it than to beat the Air to little purpose in declaiming against those that did not hear us and we were sure would little regard us For Secondly were it not for the confirming of our Protestant Hearers in their present belief of the Truth against such as will attempt to draw them from us it would be a very impertinent thing to insist much upon the discovery of Popish Errors in our Churches whither they that should reap most benefit by such discovery never come They live among us indeed which the Turks do not but since they come not where they may hear us it is all one to us in respect of our Sermons as if they lived as far from us as the Turks do But at such times as the Clergy are met together which is chiefly done at the Visitations when most of them who are most concerned both for their own sakes and the peoples that depend upon them to have a right judgment concerning the Nature and Use of Indifferent things are present it seemeth to be very proper and by the blessing of God may conduce very much to the edification of his people in Truth Peace and Godliness that the just power of those that have authority in the Church for making Ecclesiastical Constitutions should be asserted and the necessity of yielding obedience thereunto when they are made by all under such authority should be pressed This is the very truth of the whole business And what is there in all this to deserve such out-cries What is there if men would but soberly consider it that is not every way agreeable to the dictates both of Christian Prudence and Charity Thirdly which is a very important consideration and cometh up to the full of the Objection we think it more needful seasonable and expedient upon such opportunities to clear these points in difference betwixt us and our Brethren at home than to handle any of the Controversies in debate betwixt us and those of Rome Both because the People are in more danger of being mis-led by these than of being seduced by Papists and because the Papists make a great advantage indeed the greatest and in a manner the whole advantage they have against us of these home-differences For although the Emissaries of Rome have long used all the art and diligence possible to advance the Roman Interest among us yet the People of England are so generally prepossessed with a detestation of that Religion as the people of Spain France and Italy are of ours that were it not for the advantage they make of the excesses of some troublesome spirits among our selves they could not have expected to have reaped so plentiful a harvest here as of late years they have done But our Brethren having by their much Preaching and inveighing against the Papists wrought our common people to such a prejudice against her Doctrines that many of them know no other Rule whereby to judge of the soundness of mens Religion than by the greater or lesser distance it hath from Popery have thereby withal gained that high esteem of their soundness in Religion above others in the hearts of many of our people led as most are by opinion more than true judgment that it is a very easie matter for them to draw multitudes after them into a dislike of any thing whereon they shall think good to fasten the imputation of being Popish For preventing whereof if we do our best endeavour upon all good occasions to undeceive them first and by them the people by letting them see if they will but open their eyes how unsound the Principles are they go upon and how unsafe the Practices those Principles lead unto Who can justly blame us for so doing § XI To the substance of the Second Objection if I may with their leave and without their offence pass by that quaint minute piece of wit of Paper-pellits and Cannon-bullets I shall need make no further Answer than what hath already been given to the First Only I shall ex abundanti add two things the one concerning my self the other to the Objectors For my self if I be not much mistaken I have been so far from offending in the kind objected that I may seem rather to have offended too much on the other hand The substance of the matter both against Papists and others is I hope all along justifiable And then if some sharper expressions both against them and others have here and there slipt from my tongue or pen such as heat and indignation in our greener years are apt to suggest they that are ingenuous considering how long it is since those Sermons were Preached may be pleased to pardon it upon the old plea Dandum aliquod aetati As for them that they Preach against Popery I not at all mislike Only I could wish that these two Cautions were better observed than as far as I can make conjecture of the rest by the proportion of what hath come to my knowledge I fear they usually are by the more zealous of that party Viz. 1. That they do not through ignorance prejudice or precipitancy call that Popery which is not and then under that name and notion Preach against it 2. That they would do it with the less noise and more weight It is not a business meerly of the Lungs but requireth Sinews too Or to use their own Metaphor let them not think that casting of squibs will do the deed or charging with powder alone that will give a crack indeed and raise a smoke but unless they have bullet as well as powder it will do little execution § XII To the Third Objection
to be cried down and condemned under the name of Will-worship nor doth it come within the compass of our Saviours reproof in this place If Ionadab had laid an obligation upon the Consciences of the Rechabites not to drink wine by telling them that for Conscience sake towards God they ought to abstain therefrom or if the Iewish Elders and Governors leaving the Consciences of the People free had only made a Law under some penalty for decency and cleanliness sake that no Man should sit down to Meat in publick with unwashen hands to my seeming had he then been guilty of this Pharisaical superstition and they free In brief then to conclude this Enquiry To lay an obligation either upon the judgements or consciences of Men in point of opinion or practice which God hath not laid that and nothing but that is to teach for doctrines the commandments of men 9. We have yet a third thing to be enquired of for the Explication of the words namely how and in what respect they that teach such Doctrines may be said to worship God in vain The Ambiguity of our English word Worship hath occasioned many Errors among Divines and mis-understandings of one anothers words and writings whereby the disputes and controversies about Worship are become of all other the most intricate and perplexed The Hebrews and the Greeks too have sundry words and those of distinct notions and significations which we in English for want of fitter expressions are fain to translate promiscuously by this one word Worship The Greek words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is the word here used are all indifferently rendred worshipping Here according to the notion of the Greek word it properly signifieth the performance of some Religious or devout act with an intention to honour God thereby Whereby it appeareth that these Pharisees placed a great part of their Religion in the observation of these Traditions of mens divising and flattered themselves with this conceit That they did God a great deal of honour in so doing and that therefore he could not choose but be marvellous well pleased with them for so doing By long accustoming themselves to which like outward observances they had almost lost the vigor and soul of true Religion which consisteth in the inward Reverence and Devotion of the heart and had little other left than the bare carcase or empty outside thereof and that also patcht and pieced up for the most part with the devices and inventions of men 10. And this our Saviour now telleth them is Worship in vain He saith so indeed but hath he any Text for it The place he citeth is in Isa. 29. 13. where the words according to the Original run but thus Their fear towards me is taught by the precept of men but that it is vain the Prophet doth not there say He doth not say it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in those very words according to the Hebrew but the scope of the place importeth all that and more For God there threatneth to punish the People for such worship which he would not have done if he had been either pleased with it or honoured by it But the very word and all is so found even as our Saviour citeth it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Septuagint there which being the most common and received Translation in those days was therefore for the most part followed by Christ and his Apostles in their quotations especially where it swerved not very much in sence from the Original Now a thing is said to be done in vain when it hath not that wished effect which the doer intended and expected Those Pharisees then intending by those superstitious Will-worships to honour God and hopeing to please him therewithal when their expectations should be so far frustrated that God should all on the contrary profess himself dishonoured and displeased thereby it must needs be acknowledged that this their Will-worship was all in vain Certainly God will reject what himself hath forbidden and he hath forbidden and that both frequently and with the severest interminations all manner of Will-worship of this kind and properly so called and all additions of Men unto his holy Word 11. In the several parts of the Text thus opened we may see the full meaning of the whole God will not approve of nor accept any Wit-worship or Will-worship forged or devised by Man with an Opinion as if it were a necessary part of Gods service nor allow of any Doctrine that tendeth to bind the Iudgments or Consciences of his people further than he hath thought fit himself to bind them by the expresses of his Word He will when time serveth root out every plant which is not of his own planting And when the day is come which shall declare by a fiery Trial every mans work of what sort it is the Gold and Silver and precious Stones shall abide the fire and the Workman that built with such good stuff shall receive a blessed reward But he that buildeth Wood or Hay or Stubble though by the great mercy of God he himself may pass through the fire and be saved with some difficulty so long as he holdeth fast the foundation which is Christ and his merits yet he shall suffer loss in his work however That shall be sure to burn and perish whatsoever becometh of him All that fear of God is but superstitious and vain that is taught by the Precepts and Commandments of men 12. From the Explication of the Text hitherto I come now to the Application of it Wherein I doubt not by Gods help but to make clear to the judgment of any Man that is not either uncapable through ignorance or fore-possessed with prejudice these three things First that the Papists are guilty of the Pharisaical Superstition and Will-worship here condemned Secondly that the Church of England and her regular and Obedient Children are not guilty of the same Thirdly that those Divines and others in the Church of England that so undutifully charge her therewithal are in truth themselves inexcusably guilty of that very Crime whereof they unjustly accuse her 13. First for the Papists That they are the right children and successors of the Pharisees no Man that rightly understandeth the Tenets of the Romish Church but will easily grant if he shall duly consider what a mass of humane Traditions both in point of belief and worship are imposed upon the judgments and consciences of all that may be suffered to live in the visible Communion of that Church and that with opinion of necessity and under pain of Damnation The Popes Supremacy Worshipping of Images Invocation of Saints and Angels the Propitiatory Sacrifice of the Mass Purgatory the seven Sacraments Transubstantiation Adoration of the Host Communion under one kind Private Masses forbidding Priests Marriage Monastical Vows Prayer in an unknown Tongue Auricular Confession All these and I know not how many more are such as even by the
rest as I have done in this my Meditations would swell to the proportion rather of a Treatise than a Sermon and what patience were able to sit them out therefore I must not do it And indeed if what I have spoken to this first point were duly considered and conscionably practised I should the less need to do it For it is the Accuser that layeth the first stone the rest do but build upon his Foundation And if there were no false reports raised or received there would be the less use of and the less work for false and suborned Witnesses ignorant or pack'd Iuries crafty and sly Pleaders cogging and extorting Officers but unto these I have no more to say at this time but only to desire each of them to lay that portion of my Text to their hearts which in the first division was allotted them as their proper share and withal to make application mutatis mutandis unto themselves of whatsoever hath been presently spoken to the Accuser and to the Magistrate from this first Rulē Whereof for the better furtherance of their Application and relief of our memories the summ in brief is thus First concerning the Accuser and that is every party in a Cause or Trial he must take heed he do not raise a false report which is done first by forging a meer untruth and secondly by perverting or aggravating a truth and thirdly by taking advantage of strict Law against Equity any of which whoever doth he first committeth a heinous sin himself and secondly grievously wrongeth his neighbour and thirdly bringeth a great deal of mischief to the Commonwealth All which evils are best avoided first by considering how we would others should deal with us and resolving so to deal with them and secondly by avoiding as all other inducements and occasions so especially those four things which ordinarily engage men in unjust quarrels Malice Obsequiousness Coverture and Greediness Next concerning the Iudge or Magistrate he must take heed he do not receive a false report which he shall hardly avoid unless he beware first of taking private informations secondly of passing over Causes slightly without mature disquisition and thirdly of countenancing accusers more than is meet For whose discountenancing and deterring he may consider whether or no these five may not be good helps so far as it lyeth in his power and the Laws will permit first to reject informations tendered without Oath secondly to give such Interpretations as may stand with Equity as well as Law thirdly to chastise Informers that use partiality or collusion fourthly to allow the wronged party a liberal Satisfaction from his Adversary fifthly to carry a sharp Eye and a strait Hand over his own Servants Followers and Officers Now what remaineth but that the several Premises be earnestly recommended to the godly consideration and conscionable practice of every one of you whom they may concern and all your persons and affairs both in the present weighty businesses and ever hereafter to the good guidance and providence of Almighty God we should humbly beseech him of his gracious goodness to give a Blessing to that which hath been spoken agreeably to his Word that it may bring forth in us the fruits of Godliness Charity and Iustice to the Glory of his Grace the Good of our Brethren and the Comfort of our own Souls even for his blessed Son's sake our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ To whom with c. AD MAGISTRATUM The Third Sermon At the Assises at Lincoln August 4th 1625. at the Request of the High-Sheriff aforesaid William Lister Esquire Psal. CVI. 30. Then stood up Phinees and executed Iudgment and the Plague was stayed THE Abridgment is short which some have made of the whole Book of Psalms but into two words Hosannah and Hallelujah most of the Psalms spending themselves as in their proper Arguments either in Supplication praying unto God for his Blessings and that is Hosannah or in Thanksgiving blessing God for his goodness and that is Hallelujah This Psalm is of the latter sort The word Hallelujah both prefixed in the Title and repeated in the close of it sufficiently giveth it to be a Psalm of Thanksgiving as are also the three next before it and the next after it All which five Psalms together as they agree in the same general Argument the magnifying of God's holy Name so they differ one from another in choice of those special and topical Arguments whereby the Praises of God are set forth therein In the rest the Psalmist draweth his Argument from other Considerations in this from the Consideration of God's merciful removal of those Iudgments he had in his just wrath brought upon his own People Israel for their Sins upon their Repentance For this purpose there are sundry instances given in the Psalm taken out of the Histories of former times out of which there is framed as it were a Catalogue though not of all yet of sundry the most famous rebellions of that people against their God and of Gods both Iustice and Mercy abundantly manifested in his proceedings with them thereupon In all which we may observe the passages betwixt God and them in the ordinary course of things ever to have stood in this order First he preventeth them with undeserved favours they unmindful of his benefits provoke him by their rebellions he in his just wrath chastiseth them with heavy Plagues they humbled under the rod seek to him for ease he upon their submission withdraweth his judgments from them The Psalmist hath wrapped all these five together in Vers. 43 44. Many times did he deliver them but they provoked him with their Counsels and were brought low for their iniquity the three first Nevertheless he regarded their affliction when he heard their cry the other two The particular rebellions of the people in this Psalm instanced in are many some before and some after the verse of my Text. For brevity sake those that are in the following verses I wholly omit and but name the rest which are their wretched Infidelity and Cowardice upon the first approach of danger at the Red Sea vers 7. Their tempting of God in the desert when loathing Manna they lusted for flesh vers 13. Their seditious conspiracy under Corah and his confederates against Moses vers 16. Their gross Idolatry at Horeb in making and worshipping the golden Calf ver 19. Their distrustful murmuring at their portion in thinking scorn of the promised pleasant land ver 24. Their fornicating both bodily with the daughters and spiritually with the Idols of Moab and of Midian ver 28. To the prosecution of which last mentioned story the words of my Text do appertain The original story it self whereto this part of the Psalm referreth is written at full by Moses in Numb 25. and here by David but briefly touched as the present purpose and occasion led him yet so as that the most
himself called not to deliberate but act without casting of scruples or fore-casting of dangers or expecting Commission from men when he had his warrant sealed within he taketh his weapon dispatching his errand and leaveth the event to the providence of God Let no man now unless he be able to demonstrate Phinees spirit presume to imitate his fact Those Opera liberi spiritus as Divines call them as they proceed from an extraordinary spirit so they were done for special purposes but were never intended either by God that inspired them or by those Worthies that did them for ordinary or general examples The error is dangerous from the privileged examples of some few exempted ones to take liberty to transgress the common rules of Life and of Laws It is most true indeed the Spirit of God is a free spirit and not tyed to strictness of rule nor limited by any bounds of Laws But yet that free spirit hath astricted thee to a regular course of life and bounded thee with Laws which if thou shalt trangress no pretension of the Spirit can either excuse thee from sin or exempt thee from punishment It is not now every way as it was before the coming of Christ and the sealing up of the Scripture Canon God having now settled a perpetual form of government in his Church and given us a perfect and constant rule whereby to walk even his holy word And we are not therefore now vainly to expect nor boastingly to pretend a private spirit to lead us against or beyond or but beside the common rule nay we are commanded to try all pretensions of private spirits by that common rule Adlegem ad testimonium To the Law and to the Testimony at this Test examine and Try the spirits whether they are of God or no. If any thing within us if any thing without us exalt it self against the obedience of this Rule it is no sweet impulsion of the holy Spirit of God but a strong delusion of the lying spirit of Satan But is not all that is written written for our Example or why else is Phinees act recorded and commended if it may not be followed First indeed Saint Paul saith All that is written is written for our learning but Learning is one thing and Example is another and we may learn something from that which we may not follow Besides there are examples for Admonition as well as for Imitation Malefactors at the place of execution when they wish the by-standers to take example by them bequeath them not the Imitation of their courses what to do but Admonition from their punishments what to shun yea thirdly even the commended actions of good men are not ever exemplary in the very substance of the action it self but in some vertuous and gracious affections that give life and lustre thereunto And so this act of Phinees is imitable Not that either any private man should dare by his example to usurp the Magistrates office and to do justice upon Malefactors without a Calling or that any Magistrate should dare by his Example to cut off graceless offenders without a due judicial course but that every man who is by virtue of his Calling endued with lawful authority to execute justice upon transgressors should set himself to it with that stoutness and courage and zeal which was in Phinees If you will needs then imitate Phinees imitate him in that for which he is commended and rewarded by God and for which he is renowned amongst men and that is not barely the action the thing done but the affection the zeal wherewith it was done For that zeal God commendeth him Numb 25. vers 11. Phinees the son of Eleazer the son of Aaron the Priest hath turned away my wrath from the children of Israel whilst he was zealous for my sake among them And for that zeal God rewardeth him Ibid. 13. He shall have and his seed after him the Covenant of an everlasting Pristhood because he was zealous for his God And for that zeal did Posterity praise him the wise son of Syrac Eccl. 45. and good old Matthias upon his death bed 1 Macc. 2. And may not this phrase of speech he stood up and executed judgment very well imply that forwardness and heat of zeal To my seeming it may For whereas Moses and all the congregation sate weeping a gesture often accompanying sorrow or perhaps yet more to express their sorrow lay grovelling upon the earth mourning and sorrowing for their sin and for the Plague it could not be but the bold lewdness of Zimri in bringing his strumpet with such impudence before their noses must needs add much to the grief and bring fresh vexation to the souls of all that were righteous among them But the rest continued though with double grief yet in the same course of humiliation and in the same posture of body as before Only Phinees burning with an holy indignation thought it was now no time to sit still and weep but rowzing up himself and his spirits with zeal as hot as fire he stood up from the place where he was and made haste to execute judgment Here is a rich example for all you to imitate whom it doth concern I speak not only nor indeed so much to you the Honourable and Reverend Iudge of this Circuit of whose zeal to do justice and judgment I am by so much the better perswaded by how much the eminency of your place and the weight of your charge and the expectation of the people doth with greater importunity exact it at your hands But I speak withal and most especially to all you that are in Commission of the peace and whose daily and continual care it should be to see the wholsome laws of the Realm duly and seasonably executed Yea and to all you also that have any office appertaining to justice or any business about these Courts so as it may lie in you to give any kind of furtherance to the speeding either of Iustice in Civil or of judgment in Criminal causes Look upon the zeal of Phinees observe what approbation it had from God what a blessing it procured to his seed after him what glorious renown it hath won him with all after-ages what ease it did and what good it wrought for the present State and think if it be not worthy your imitation It is good saith the Apostle to be zealously affected always in a good thing And is it not a good thing to do justice and to execute judgment nay Religion excepted and then care of that is a branch of justice too do you know any better thing any thing you can do more acceptable to God more serviceable to the State more comfortable to your own souls If you be called to the Magistracy it is your own business as the proper work of your Calling and men
Isaac he kept with him and gave him all that he had Right so God giveth temporal gifts to Hypocrites and Cast-aways who are bastards and not sons and not sons of the freewoman not sons of promise not born after the spirit and that is their portion when they have gotten that they have gotten all they are like to have there is no more to be looked for at his hands But as for the Inheritance he reserveth that for his dear Children the godly who are Born after the Spirit and Heirs according to promise on these he bestoweth all that ever he hath all things are theirs for on them he bestoweth his Son the heir of all things in whom are hid all the treasures of all good things and together with whom all other things are conveyed and made over unto them as accessories and appurtenances of him and on them he bestoweth Himself which is All in all in whose presence is fulness of joy and at whose right hand there are pleasures for evermore To which joy unspeakable and glorious O thou the Father of mercies who hast promised it unto us bring us in the end for thy dear Son's sake Jesus Christ who hath purchased it for us and given into our hearts the earnest of his and thy holy Spirit to seal it unto us To which blessed Son and holy Spirit together with thee O Father three persons and one only wise gracious Almighty and eternal Lord God be ascribed by us and all thy faithful people throughout the world the whole kingdom power and glory for ever and ever Amen Amen AD POPULUM The Second Sermon At Grantham Linc. Feb. 27. 1620. 3 KINGS 21. 29. because he humbleth himself before me I will not bring the evil in his days I Will not so far either distrust your Memories or straiten my self of Time for the delivery of what I am now purposed to speak as to make any large Repetition of the Particulars which were observ'd the last time from the consideration of Ahab's Person and Condition who was but an Hypocrite taken joyntly with his present Carriage together with the Occasion and Success thereof He was humbled It was the Voice of God by his Prophet that humbled him Upon his humbling God adjourneth his Punishment From all which was noted first That there might be even in Hypocrites an Outward formal Humiliation secondly the Power and Efficacy of the Word of God able to humble an Oppressing Ahab thirdly the boundless Mercy of God in not suffering the Outward formal Humiliation of an ungodly Hypocrite to pass altogether unrewarded All this the last time by occasion of those first Clauses in the Verse Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before me because he humbleth himself before me I will not We are now next to consider of the Great Favour which it pleased God to shew to Ahab upon his humiliation what it was and wherein it consisted It was the Removal at least for a time that is the suspension of an heavy judgment denounced against Ahab and his house most deservedly for his bloody and execrable oppression Because he humbleth himself before me I will not bring the evil in his days The Evil which God now promiseth he will not bring I will not bring the evil in his days is that which in vers 21. he had threatned he would bring upon Ahab and upon his house Behold I will bring evil upon thee and will take away thy posterity and will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall and him that is shut up and left in Israel and will make thy house like the house of Jeroboam the Son of Nebat and like the house of Baasha the Son of Abijah for the provocation wherewith thou hast provoked me to anger and made Israel to sin A great Judgment and an heavy But the greater the Judgment is when it is deserved and threatned the greater the mercy is if it be afterwards forborn as some of this was But whatsoever becometh of the Iudgment here we see is Mercy good store God who is rich in mercy and delighteth to be stiled the God of mercies and the Father of mercies abundantly manifesteth his mercy in dealing thus graciously with one that deserved it so little Here is mercy in but threatning the punishment when he might have inflicted it and more mercy in not inflicting the punishment when he had threatned it Here is mercy first in suspending the punishment I will not bring the evil and mercy again in suspending it for so long a time I will not bring the evil in his days Of these two points we shall entreat at this time and first and principally of the former I will not bring the evil It is no new thing to them that have read the sacred Stories with Observation to see God when men are humbled at his threatnings to revoke them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Chrysostom more than once this is ever Gods manner when men change their deeds to change his doom when they renounce their sins to recal his sentence when they repent of the evil they have done against him to Repent of the evil he had said he would do against them Search the Scriptures and say if things run not thus as in the most ordinary course God commandeth and Man disobeyeth Man disobeyeth and God threatneth God threatneth and man repenteth Man repenteth and God forbeareth Abimelech thou art but a dead man because of the woman which thou hast taken but Abimelech restoreth the Prophet his Wife untouched and God spareth him and he dieth not Hezekiah make thy Will and Put thine house in order for thou shalt die and not live but Hezekiah turneth to the Wall and prayeth and weepeth and God addeth to his days fifteen years Nineveh prepare for desolation for now but forty days and Nineveh shall be destroyed but Nineveh fasted and prayed and repented and Nineveh stood after more than forty years twice told Generally God never yet threatned any punishment upon person or place but if they repented he either withheld it or deferred it or abated it or sweetned it to them for the most part proportionably to the truth and measure of their repentance but howsoever always so far forth as in his infinite wisdom he hath thought good some way or other he ever remitted somewhat of that severity and rigour wherein he threatned it A course which God hath in some sort bound himself unto and which he often and openly professeth he will hold Two remarkable testimonies among sundry other shall suffice us to have proposed at this time for the clear and full evidencing hereof The one in Ier. 18. 7 8. At what instant I shall speak concerning a Nation and concerning a Kingdom to pluck up and pull down and to destroy If that Nation against whom I have pronounced turn from their evil I will
Promises of God they are true but yet conditional and so they must ever be understood with a conditional clause The exception there to be understood is Repentance and the Condition here Obedience What God threatneth to do unto us absolutely in words the meaning is he will do it unless we repent and amend and what he promiseth to do for us absolutely in words the meaning is he will do it if we believe and obey And for so much as this Clause is to be understood of course in all God's Promises we may not charge him with breach of Promise though after he do not really perform that to us which the letter of his Promise did import if we break the condition and obey not Wouldst thou know then how thou art to entertain God's Promises and with what assurance to expect them I answer With a confident and obedient heart Confident because he is true that hath promised Obedient because that is the condition under which he hath promised Here is a curb then for those mens Presumption who living in sin and continuing in disobedience dare yet lay claim to the good Promises of God If such men ever had any seeming interest in Gods Promises the interest they had they had but by Contract and Covenant and that Covenant whether either of the two it was Law or Gospel it was conditional The Covenant of the Law wholly and à priori conditional Hoc fac vives Do this and live and the Covenant of the Gospel too after a sort and à posteriori Conditional Crede vives believe and live If then they have broken the Conditions of both Covenants and do neither Believe nor Do what is required they have by their Unbelief and Disobedience forfeited all that seeming interest they had in those Promises God's Promises then though they be the very main supporters of our Christian Faith and Hope to as many of us as whose Consciences can witness unto us a sincere desire and endeavour of performing that Obedience we have covenanted yet are they to be embraced even by such of us with a reverend fear and trembling at our own unworthiness But as for the unclean and filthy and polluted those Swine and Dogs that delight in sin and disobedience and every abomination they may set their hearts at rest for these matters they have neither part nor fellowship in any of the sweet Promises of God Let dirty Swine wallow in their own filth these rich Pearls are not for them they are too precious let hungry Dogs glut themselves with their own vomit the Childrens bread is not for them it is too delicious Let him that will be filthy be filthy still the Promises of God are holy things and belong to none but those that are holy and desire to be holy still For our selves in a word let us hope that a Promise being left us if with Faith and Obedience and Patience we wait for it we shall in due time receive it but withal let us fear as the Apostle exhorteth Heb. 4. lest a Promise being left us through disobedience or unbelief any of us should seem to come short of it Thus much of the former thing proposed the magnifying of God's Mercy and the clearing of his Truth in the revocation and suspension of threatned Iudgments by occasion of these words I will not bring the evil There is yet a Circumstance remaining of this general part of my Text which would not be forgotten it is the extent of time for the suspending of the Judgment I will not bring the evil in his days Something I would speak of it too by your patience it shall not be much because the season is sharp and I have not much sand to spend I will not bring the evil in his days The Judgment denounced against Ahab's house was in the end executed upon it as appeareth in the sequel of the story and especially from those words of Iehu who was himself the Instrument raised up by the Lord and used for that Execution in 4 King 10. Know that there shall fall to the earth nothing of the word of the Lord which the Lord spake concerning the house of Ahab for the Lord hath done that which he spake by his servant Elijah which were enough if there were nothing else to be said to justifie God's truth in this one particular That which Ahab gained by his humiliation was only the deferring of it for this time I will not bring the evil in his days As if God had said This wretched King hath provoked me and pulled down a Curse from me upon his house which it were but just to bring upon him and it without farther delay yet because he made not a scoff at my Prophet but took my words something to heart and was humbled by them he shall not say but I will deal mercifully with him and beyond his merit as ill as he deserveth it I will do him this favour I will not bring the Evil that is determined against his house in his days The thing I would observe hence is That when God hath determined a Iudgment upon any People Family or Place it is his great mercy to us if he do not let us live to see it It cannot but be a great grief I say not now to a religious but even to any soul that hath not quite cast off all natural affection to fore-think and fore-know the future Calamities of his Country and Kindred Xerxes could not forbear weeping beholding his huge Army that followed him only to think that within some few scores of years so many thousands of proper men would be all dead and rotten and yet that a thing that must needs have happened by the necessity of Nature if no sad Accident or common Calamity should hasten the Accomplishment of it The Declination of a Common-wealth and the Funeral of a Kingdom foreseen in the general corruption of manners and Decay of Discipline the most certain Symptoms of a tottering State have fetched Tears from the Eyes and Blood from the Hearts of heathen Men zealously affected to their Country How much more grief then must it needs be to them that acknowledge the true God not only to foreknow the extraordinary Plagues and Miseries and Calamities which shall befal their Posterity but also to fore-read in them God's fierce wrath and heavy displeasure and bitter vengeance against their own sins and the sins of their Posterity Our blessed Saviour though himself without Sin and so no way accessary to the procuring of the evils that should ensue could not yet but weep over the City of Ierusalem when he beheld the present security and the future ruine thereof A Grief it is then to know these things shall happen but some Happiness withal and to be acknowledged as a great Favour from God to be assured that we shall never see them It is no small Mercy in
with it as if it were his own personal debt so Christ becoming surety for our sins made them his own and so was punishable for them as if they had been his own personal sins Who his own self bare our sins in his own body upon the tree 1 Pet. 2. That he was punished for us who himself deserved no punishment it was because He was made sin for us who himself knew no sin So that I say in some sence the assertion may be defended universally and without exception but yet I desire rather it might be thus Christs only excepted all the Pains and Evils of men are brought upon them for their own sins These three Points then are certain and it is needful they should be well understood and remembred because nothing can be objected against Gods Iustice in the punishing of sin which may not easily be removed if we have recourse to some one or other of these Three Certainties and rightly apply them All the Three Doubts proposed in the beginning have one and the same Resolution answer one and answer all Ahab here sinneth by Oppression and yet the evil must light though not all of it for some part of it fell and was performed upon Ahab himself yet the main of it upon his Son Iehoram I will not bring the evil in his days But in his Sons days will I bring the evil upon his house It is not Iehoram's case alone it is a thing that often hath and daily doth befal many others In Gen. 9. when Noah's ungracious Son Ham had discovered his Fathers nakedness the old man no doubt by Gods special inspiration layeth the Curse not upon Ham himself but upon his son Canaan Cursed be Canaan c. And God ratified the Curse by rooting out the posterity of Canaan first out of the pleasant Land wherein they were seated and then afterwards from the face of the whole Earth Ieroboam's Idolatry cut off his Posterity from the Kingdom and the wickedness of Eli his Sons theirs from the Priesthood of Israel Gehazi with the bribe he took purchased a Leprosie in Fee simple to him and his heirs for ever The Iews for stoning the Prophets of God but most of all for Crucifying the Son of God brought blood-guiltiness not only upon themselves but upon their Children also His Blood be upon us and upon our Children The wrath of God therefore coming upon them to the utmost and the curse of God abiding upon their Posterity even unto this day wherein they still remain and God knoweth how long they shall a base and despised people scattered almost every where and every where hated Instances might be endless both in private Persons and Families and in whole Kingdoms and Countries But it is a needless labour to multiply instances in so confessed a point especially God Almighty having thus far declared himself and his pleasure herein in the Second Commandment of the Law that he will not spare in his Iealousie sometimes to visit the sins of the Fathers upon the Children unto the third and fourth Generation There is no question then de facto but so it is the sins of the Fathers are visited upon the Children but de jure with what right and equity it is so it is as Saint Chrysostom speaketh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a question famous and much debated The Considerations which I find given in for the resolution of this question by those that have purposely handled it are very many But multitude breedeth confusion and and therefore I propose no more but two only unto which so many of the rest as are material may be reduced and those two grounded upon the certainties already declared The former concerneth the Nature of those Punishments which are inflicted upon the Children for the Fathers sins the latter the Condition of those Children upon whom such punishments are inflicted As to the first The punishments which God bringeth usually upon the Children for the Fathers sins are only temporal and outward punishments Some have been plagued with infectious diseases as Gehazi's posterity and Ioab's also if that curse which David pronounced against him took effect as it is like it did Some have come to untimely and uncomfortable ends as David's children Ammon and Absalom and the little ones of David and Abiram and others Some have had losses and reproaches and manifold other distresses and afflictions in sundry kinds too long to rehearse And all these temporal judgments their fathers sins might bring upon them even as the Faith and Vertues and other graces of the Fathers do sometimes convey temporal blessings to their posterity So Ierusalem was saved in the Siege by Senacherib for David's sake many years after his death Esay 37. 35. And the succession of the Crown of Israel continued in the line of Iehu for four descents for the zeal that he shewed against the worshippers of Baal and the house of Ahab So then men may fare the better and so they may fare the worse too for the Vertues or Vices of their Ancestors Outwardly and Temporally they may but Spiritually and Eternally they cannot For as never yet any man went to Heaven for his Fathers goodness so neither to Hell for his Fathers wickedness If it be objected that for any people or person to suffer a famine of the Word of God to be deprived of the use and benefit of the sacred and saving Ordinances of God to be left in utter darkness without the least glimpse of the glorious light of the Gospel of God without which ordinarily there can be no knowledg of Christ nor means of Faith nor possibility of Salvation to be thus visited is more than a temporal punishment and yet this kind of Spiritual judgment doth sometimes light upon a Nation or People for the Unbelief and Unthankfulness and Impenitency and Contempt of their Progenitors whilest they had the light and that therefore the Children for their Parents and Posterity for their Ancestry are punished not only with Temporal but even with Spiritual judgments also If any shall thus object one of these Two Answers may satisfie them First if it should be granted the want of the Gospel to be properly a Spiritual Judgment yet it would not follow that one man were punished spiritually for the fault of another For betwixt private persons and publick societies there is this difference that in private persons every succession maketh a change so that when the Father dieth and the Son cometh after him there is not now the same person that was before but another but in Cities and Countries and Kingdoms and all publick societies succession maketh no change so that when One generation passeth and another cometh after it there is not another City or Nation or People than there was before but the same If then the people of the same land should in this
us or doth offer us any means of such his gracious restraint it is our duty joyfully to embrace those means and carefully to cherish them and with all due thankfulness to bless the name of God for them Oh how oft have we plotted and projected and contrived a course for the expedition of our perhaps ambitious perhaps covetous perhaps malicious perhaps voluptuous designs and by the providence of God some unexpected intervening accident hath marred the curious frame of all our projects that they have come to nothing as a Spider's web spun with much art and industry is suddenly disfigured and swept away with the light touch of a besom How oft have we been resolved to sin and prepared to sin and even at the pits brink ready to cast our selves into hell when he hath plucked us away as he plucked Lot out of Sodom by affrightments of natural Conscience by apprehensions of dangers by taking away the opportunities by ministring impediments by shortning our power by sundry other means Have we now blessed the name of God for affording us these gracious means of prevention and restraint Nay have we not rather been enraged thereat and taken it with much impatience that we should be so crossed in the pursuit of our vain and sinful desires and purposes As way-ward children cry and take pet when the Nurse snatcheth a knife from them wherewith they might perhaps cut their fingers perhaps haggle their throats or putteth them back from the wells mouth when they are ready with catching at Babies in the water to tip over and as that merry mad man in the Poet was in good earnest angry with his Friends for procuring him to be cured of his madness wherein he so much pleased himself as if they could not have done him a greater displeasure Pol me occidistis amici Non servatis such is our folly We are offended with those that reprove us testy at those that hinder us impatient under those crosses that disable us yea we fret and turn again at the powerful application of the holy word of God when it endeavoureth to reform us or restrain us from those evils wherein we delight Let us henceforth mend this fault cheerfully submit our selves to the discipline of the Almighty and learn of holy David with what affections to entertain the gracious means he vouchsafeth us of restraint or prevention as appeareth by his speeches unto Abigail when she by her Wisdom had pacified his wrath against Nabal whose destruction he had a little before vowed in his heart Blessed â—e the Lord God of Israel that sent thee this day to meet me and blessed be thy advice and blessed be thou which hast kept me this day from coming to shed blood and from avenging my self with mine own hand He blessed God as the Cause and her as the Instrument and her discreet behaviour and advice as the Means of staying his hand from doing that evil he had vowed with his mouth and was in his heart purposed to have done Thirdly since we owe our standing to the hand of God who holdeth us up without whose restraint we should fall at every turn and into every temptation we cannot but see what need we have to seek to him daily and hourly to with-hold us from falling into those sins whereinto either our corrupt nature would lead us or outward occasions draw us We may see it by the fearful falls of David and Peter men nothing inferiour to the best of us how weak a thing man is to resist temptation if God withdraw his support and leave him but a little to himself Which made David pray to God that he would keep back his servant from presumptuous sins He well knew though he were the faithful servant of God that yet he had no stay of himself but unless God kept him back he must on and he must in and he must in deep even as far as to presumptuous sins No man though he be never so good hath any assurance as upon his own strength though it be never so great that he shall be able to avoid any sin though it be never so foul When a Heathen man prayed unto Iupiter to save him from his Enemies one that over-heard him would needs mend it with a more needful prayer that Iupiter would save him from his Friends he thought they might do him more hurt because he trusted them but as for his Enemies he could look to himself well enough for receiving harm from them We that are Christians had need pray unto the God of Heaven that he would not give us up into the hands of our professed Enemies and to pray unto God that he would not deliver us over into the hands of our false-hearted Friends but there is another prayer yet more needful and to be pressed with greater importunity than either of both that God would save us from our selves and not give us up into our own hands for then we are utterly cast away There is a way-ward old man that lurketh in every of our bosoms and we make but too much of him than whom we have not a more spightful Enemy nor a more false Friend Alas we do not think what a man is given over to that is given over to himself he is given over to Vile Affections he is given over to a Reprobate Sense he is given over to commit all manner of wickedness with greediness It is the last and fearfullest of all other judgments and is not usually brought upon men but where they have obstinately refused to hear the Voice of God in whatsoever other tone he had spoken unto them then to leave them to themselves and to their own counsels My people would not hear my Voice and Israel would none of me so I gave them up unto their own hearts lust and let them follow their own imaginations As we conceive the state of the Patient to be desperate when the Physician giveth him over and letteth him eat and drink and have and do what and when and as much as he will without prescribing him any diet or keeping back any thing from him he hath a mind unto Let us therefore pray faithfully and fervently unto God as Christ himself hath taught us that he would not by leaving us unto our selves lead us into temptation but by his gracious and powerful support deliver us from all those evils from which we have no power at all to deliver our selves Lastly since this Restraint whereof we have spoken may be but a common Grace and can give us no sound nor solid comfort if it be but a bare Restraint and no more though we ought to be thankful for it because we have not deserved it yet we should not rest nor think our selves safe enough till we have a well-grounded assurance that we are possessed of an higher and a better Grace even the grace of sanctification For that will hold out against
against them openly before their Congregations as unlawful but have been since convinced in their judgments of the Lawfulness thereof should yet with-hold their Conformity thereunto and chuse rather not only to expose themselves to such mischiefs and inconveniences as that refusal may bring upon them but to seem also to persist in their former error to the great scandal of their people and cheating their own Consciences than by acknowledging that they have erred adventure the loss of that great reputation they had by their former opposition gained amongst their credulous followers 3. Alas that there should still be found among our People men who being conscious to themselves of some secret wrongs done to their brethren in their worldly estate by oppression fraud or other false dealing do yet hold off from making them just restitution or other meet compensation for the same and so become really cruel to their own Consciences whil'st they are so fondly tender over their reputations with others as rather to continue still dishonest in retaining than acknowledge their former dishonesty in obtaining those ill gotten parcels 25. But leaving all these to the judgment of God and their own hearts and to ruminate on that sad Text Luk. 16. That which is highly esteemed amongst men is abomination in the sight of God For thee Christian brother who ever thou art that shall at any time be in a strait between two evils shaken with doubtings and distractions what to do when thy Conscience and thy Credit lie both at stake together ' ' Thou hast a ready resolution from the old Maxim E malis minimum As the Merchant in a storm throweth his dear commodities into the Sea to save himself so do thou resolve to redeem thy Conscience howsoever and at any rate whatsoever betide thy Credit I forbid thee not to be tender of thy good Name it is an honest care but I charge thee upon thy soul to be more tender of thy Conscience 26. This admonition premised I shall now with your patience proceed to some Inferences from what hath been delivered concerning the excellency of a good Name and what a precious thing it is But the more precious it is the more grievous first is their sin that seek to rob others of it We read in Pliny that there were some Ointments in the shops in his time made of such costly ingredients so great was the riot of those times that every pound weight was sold at 400 Roman Pence which by computation allowing to the Roman Penny seven pence half-penny of our Coyn cometh to above twenty two pounds English which was a very great rate especially considering the time wherein he lived about fifteen hundred years ago We would all think that man had done a very foul robbery that should have broken a shop and carryed thence any considerable quantity of such Costly ware And must we not then adjudge him a far worse Thief that injuriously taketh away a man's good Name from him which we have heard to be in many respects far more precious than the most precious Ointments can be But Murther is a felony of a higher degree than Theft Sometimes we pity Thieves but we detest Murtherers Yet neither Thieves nor Murtherers are more cruel and injurious than Slanderers and Back-biters and Tale-bearers and Whisperers and false Accusers are Those bereave a manâ— but of his Livelihood or at most of his Life but these take that from him which is justly more dear to him than either Life or Livelihood 27. It were to be wished that all malicious and envious persons would lay this to heart who seek to raise their own Fame upon the ruine of their Brothers whose daily endeavour it is and daily practice to raise scandalous reports of others and to cast foul aspersions upon them without cause to make their Names unsavoury and thereby to render their persons odious among such as will be ready to spread the Report farther and it is great odds they will do it with some addition of their own too or otherwise make ill use of it to their prejudice But since such mischievous persons will not or cannot learn to do better having been long accustomed to do ill no more then a Leopard can change his spots or a blackamore his skin It will concern us very much not to suffer our selves to become Receivers to these Thieves or Abbettors to these Murtheress by setting our Ears wide open to their detractions but rather to suspect him as an Impe of Satan that delighteth in Satan's Office in being an accuser of his Brethren 28. Secondly how distant are they from Solomon's judgment that value any outward thing in the World it may be some little sordid gain or some petty slippery preferment or some poor fruitless pleasure at a higher rate than they do their good Name which Solomon here so much preferreth before them all 1. The Covetous Worldling so he may but lade himself fast enough with thick clay what careth he what men say or think of him Call him Churl Miser Caitiff Wretch or what else they think good at mihi plaudo domi Tush saith he let them say on The Fox fareth best when he is curst If this man be a wise man as himself thinketh none wiser sure then Solomon was not so wise a man as he is taken for to say as he doth Prov. 22. A good Name is rather to be chosen than great riches c. 2. The Ambitious man that panteth after Preferment what regardeth he though all the World should tax him of Flattery of Bribery of Calumny of Treachery of Perjury So he can but climb up to the step at which he aimed and from which he knoweth not how soon he may be justled off by another as ambitious as himself 3. The luxurious Wanton the prodigal Gamester the Glutton Drunkard or other voluptuous beast in any kind when once imboldned in his ways sitteth him down in the seat of the scorner laugheth at all mankind that will not run with him to the same excess of riot resolveth against whatsoever dislikes sober men bewray of his exorbitances to take his own pleasure howsoever and then let others talk theirs bestoweth a nick-name or perhaps a rhime or two upon those that censure him and then as if he had stabb'd them dead and the day were his he insulteth like a Conqueror and thinketh he hath now quit himself sufficiently for the loss of his Reputation 29. Quid facias illi Without more than the ordinary mercy of God in awakening their Consciences by some immediate work of his own desperate is the condition of all these men Shame is the most powerful curb to restrain men from such vicious excesses as are of evil report and Reproof seasonably lovingly and discreetly tendered the most proper instrument to work Shame in those that have done amiss What hope is there then as to humane endeavours and
only to the manners of men but almost to common sense also they gave occasion to the Wits of those times under a colour of making themselves merry with the Paradoxes of the Stoicks to laugh even true vertue it self out of countenance 22. Lastly for why should I trouble you with any more These are enow by condemning sundry indifferent things and namely Church Ceremonies as unlawful we give great scandal to those of the Separation to their farther confirming in that their unjust Schism For why should these men will they say and for ought I know they speak but reason why should they who agree so well with us in our Principles hold off from our Conclusions Why do they yet hold communion with or remain in the bosom of that Church that imposeth such unlawful things upon them How are they not guilty themselves of that luke-warm Laodicean temper wherewith they so often and so deeply charge others Why do they halt so shamefully between two opinions if Baal be God and the Ceremonies lawful why do not they yield obedience chearful obedience to their Governours so long as they command but lawful things But if Baal be an Idol and the Ceremonies unlawful as they and we consent Why do they not either set them packing or if they cannot get that done pack themselves away from them as fast as they can either to Amsterdam or to some other place The Objection is so strong that I must confess for my own part If I could see cause to admit of those principles whereon most of our Non-Conformers and such as favour them ground their dislike of our Church-Orders and Ceremonies I should hold my self in all conscience bound for any thing I yet ever read or heard to the contrary to forsake the Church of England and to fly out of Babylon before I were many weeks older 23. Truly Brethren if these unhappy fruits were but accidental events only occasioned rather than caused by such our opinions I should have thought the time mis-spent in but naming them since the very best things that are may by accident produce evil effects But being they do in very truth naturally and unavoidably issue therefrom as from their true and proper cause I cannot but earnestly beseech all such as are otherwise minded in the bowels and in the name of the Lord Iesus Christ and by all the love they bear to Gods holy truth which they seem so much to stand for to take these things into their due consideration and to lay them close to their consciences Aud as for those my brethren of the Clergy that have most authority in the hearts of such as byass too much that way for they only may have some hope to prevail with them the rest are shut out by prejudice if I were in place where I should require and charge them as they will answer the contrary to God the Church and their own Consciences that they would approve their faithfulness in their Ministry by giving their best diligence to inform the judgments of Gods people aright as concerning the nature and use of indifferent things and as in love to their souls they are bound that they would not humour them in these their pernicious errors nor suffer them to continue therein for want of their rebuke either in their publick teaching or otherwise as they shall have opportunity thereunto in private discourses 24. But you will say if these things were so how should it then come to pass that so many men pretending to Godliness and thousands of them doubtless such as they pretend for it were an uncharitable thing to charge them all with hypocrisie should so often and so grievously offend this way To omit those two more universal causes Almighty God's Permission first whose good pleasure it is for sundry wise and gracious ends to exercise his Church during her warfare here with Heresies and Schisms and Scandals And then the wiliness of Satan who cunningly observeth whether way our hearts incline most to looseness or to strictness and then frameth his Temptations thereafter So he can but put us cut of the way it is no great matter to him on whether hand it be he hath his end howsoever Nor to insist upon sundry more particular causes as namely a natural proneness in all men to superstition in many an affectation of singularity to go beyond the ordinary sort of people in something or other the difficulty of shunning one without running into the contrary extreme the great force of Education and Custom besides manifold abuses offences and provocations arising from the carriage of others and the rest I shall note but these two only as the two great fountains of Error to which also most of the other may be reduced Ignorance and Partiality from neither of which God 's dearest Servants and Children are in this life wholly exempted 25. Ignorance first is a fruitful mother of Errors Ye err not knowing the Scriptures Mat. 22. Yet not so much Gross Ignorance neither I mean not that For your mere Ignaro's what they err they err for company they judge not at all neither according to the appearance nor yet righteous judgment They only run on with the herd and follow as they are led be it right or wrong and never trouble themselves farther But by Ignorance I mean weakness of judgment which consisteth in a disproportion between the affections and the understanding when a man is very earnest but withall very shallow readeth much and heareth much and thinketh that he knoweth much but hath not the judgment to sever truth from falshood nor to discern between a sound Argument and a captious Fallacy And so for want of ability to examine the soundness and strength of those principles from whence he fetcheth his Conclusions he is easily carried away 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as our Apostle elsewhere speaketh with vain words and empty arguments As St. Augustine said of Donatus Rationes irripuit he catcheth hold of some reasons as wranglers will catch at a small thing rather than yield from their opinions quas consider antes verisimiles esse potius quam veras invenimus which saith he we found to have more shew of probability at the first appearance than substance of truth after they were well considered of 26. And I dare say whosoever shall peruse with a judicious and unpartial eye most of those Pamphlets that in this daring age have been thrust into the World against the Ceremonies of the Church against Episcopal Government to pass by things of lesser regard and usefulness and more open to exception and abuse yet so far as I can understand unjustly condemned as things utterly unlawful such as are lusorious lots dancing Stage-plays and some other things of like nature When he shall have drained out the bitter invectives unmannerly jeers petulant girding at those that are in authority impertinent digressions but above all those most bold and perverse
of any great weight for altering the meaning of the words Nor is it my purpose to insist upon such inferior observations as might be raised from some expressions or circumstances in the Text otherwise than as they shall occasionally fall in our way in the prosecution of those main points which to the apprehension of evâ—râ— understanding hearer do at the very first view appear to have been chiefly intended therein 2. And they but two First The supposal of a duty tho for the most part and by most Men very slackly regarded and that is the delivering of the oppressed In the two former verses If thou faint in the day of adversity If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death and those that are ready to be slain Secondly The removal of the common pretensions which Men usually plead by way of excuse or extenuation at least when they have failed in the former duty In the last verse If thou sayest Behold we knew it not doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it c. So that if we will speak any thing to the purpose of the Text we must of necessity speak to those two points that do therefrom so readily offer themselves to our consideration to wit the necessity of the Duty first and then the vanity of the Excuses 3. The Duty is contained and the necessity of it gathered in and from the tenth and eleventh verses in these words If thou faint in the day of adversity thy strength is small If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death and those that are ready to be slain Wherein the particulars considerable are First The persons to whom the duty is to be performed as the proper object of our justice and charity Them that are drawn unto death and those that are ready to be slain They especially but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 also all others that are in their condition in any kind or degree those that are injured or oppressed or in danger to be injured or oppressed by any manner way or means 2ly An act of Charity and Justice to be performed towards those that are in such a condition by such as by reason of the power and opportunities and other advantages that God hath put into their hands are in a capacity to do it which is the very duty it self viz. to look upon them in the day of their adversity and to deliver them out of the hand of their oppressors 3ly A possibility of the neglect or non-performance of this so just and charitable a duty by those that might and therefore ought to do it expressed here by the name of forbearance If thou forbear to deliver 4ly The true immediate cause of that neglect wheresoever it is found viz. the want of spirit and courage in the heart faint-heartedness from whatsoever former or remoter cause thht faintness may proceed whether a pusillanimous fear of the displeasure or a desire to wind himself into the favour of some great person or the expectation of a reward or a lothness to interpose in other Mens affairs or meer sloth and a kind of unwillingness of putting himself to so much trouble or whatever other reason or inducement can be supposed If thou faint in the day of adversity Lastly The censure of that neglect it is an evident demonstration à posteriori and as all other visible effects are of their more inward and secret causes a certain Token and Argument of a sinful weakness of mind If thou faintest c. thy strength is small 4. The result of these particulars amount in the whole to this Every Man according to his place and power but especially those that being in place of Magistracy and Iudicature are armed with publick authority for it are both in Charity and Iustice obliged to use the utmost of their power and to lay hold on all fit opportunities by all lawful means to help those to right that suffer wrong to stand by their poorer Brethren and Neighbours in the day of calamity and distress and to set in for them throughly and stoutly in their righteous causes to protect them from injuries and to deliver them out of the hands of such as are too mighty or too crafty for them and as seek either by violence or cunning to deprive them either of their lives or livelihoods Briefly thus and according to the language of the Text It is our duty every one of us to use our best strength to deliver the oppressed but our sin if we faint and forbear so to do And the making good and the pressing of this duty is like to be all our business at this time 5. A point of such clear and certain truth that the very Heathen Philosophers and Law givers have owned it as a beam of the light of Nature insomuch as even in their account he that abstaineth from doing injuries hath done but the one half of that which is required to compleat Iustice if he do not withal defend others from injuries when it is in his power so to do But of all other Men our Solomon could least be ignorant of this truth not only for that reason because God had filled his heart with a large measure of wisdom beyond other Men but even for this reason also that being born of wise and godly Parents and born to a Kingdom too in which high calling he should be sure to meet with occasions enough whereon to exercise all the strength he had he had this truth considering the great usefulness of it to him in the whole time of his future Government early distilled into him by both his Parents and was seasoned thereinto from his childhood in his education His father David in Psal. 72. which he penned of purpose as a prophetical benediction and instruction for his Son as appeareth by the Inscription it beareth in the Title of it a Psalm for Solomon beginneth the Psalm with a Prayer to God both for himself and him Give the King thy judgments O God and thy righteousness unto the King's Son And then after sheweth for what end he made that Prayer and what should be the effect in order to the Publick if God should be pleased to grant it Then shall he judg the people according unto right and defend the poor vers 2. He shall keep the simple folk by their right defend the children of the poor and punish the wrong doer or as it is in the last Translation break in pieces the oppressor vers 4. and after at the 12 13 and 14 verses altho perhaps the passages there might principally look at Christ the true Solomon and Prince of Peace a greater than Solomon and of whom Solomon was but a Figure yet I believe they were also literally intended for Solomon himself He shall deliver the poor when he crieth the needy also and him that hath no helper He shall be favourable to the simple and needy and shall preserve the souls of the
of those that desire to live quiet in the land Devise not dilatory shifts to tug men on along in a tedious course of Law to their great charge and vexation but ripen their causes with all seasonable expedition for a speedy hearing In a word do what lieth in your power to the utmost for the curbing of Sycophants and Oppressors and the protecting of the peaceable and innocent use the Sword that God by his Deputy hath put into your hands for the punishment of evil doers and for the praise and safety of those that do well So shall the hearts of every good Man be enlarged towards you and their tongues to honour you and to bless you and to pray for you Then shall God pour out his blessings abundantly upon you and yours yea it may be upon others too upon the whole Land by your means and for your sakes The Lord by his Prophet more than once hath given us some comfortable assurance of such blessed effects to follow upon such premisses The words are worthy to be taken notice of If thou throughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbour if thou oppress not the stranger the fatherless and the widow and shed not innocent blood in this place Then will I cause you to dwell in this place for ever and ever Jer. 7. And in Ier. 22. Execute ye judgment and righteousness and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor and do no wrong do no violence to the stranger the fatherless nor the widow neither shed innocent blood in this place For if ye do this thing indeed then shall there enter in by the gates of this house Kings sitting upon the throne c. But if ye will not hear these words I swear by my self faith the Lord c. 32. Concerning which and other-like passages frequent in the holy Prophets I see what may be readily opposed True it is will some say where these things are constantly and generally performed a national Iudgment may thereby be removed or a Blessing procured But what are two or three of us if we should set our selves to it with all our strength able to do towards the turning away of God's Iudgments if there be otherwise a general neglect of the Duty in the Land There is something of truth I confess in this Objection for doubtless those passages in the Prophets aim at a general reformation But yet consider first we have to deal with a wonderful gracious and merciful God slow to anger and of great kindness and such a one as will easily be induced to repent him of the evil And who can tell but he may return and repent and leave a blessing behind him where but two or three in a whole Nation do in conscience of their duty and in compassion of the State set themselves unfeignedly to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with their God though the generality should be corrupt Especially since we have in the second place such excellent precedents of the riches of his Grace and Goodness in this kind upon record that we might not be without hope if we do our part tho we were left even alone God was ready to have spared the five Cities of old Gen. 18. if there had been in them to be found but twice so many righteous Men. But he did actually spare Israel by instantly calling in a great plague which he had a little before sent among them for their sin upon one single act of Iustice done by one single Man Phineas moved with an holy zeal did but stand up and execute judgment upon two shameless offenders and the plague was stayed Psal. 106. Add hereunto that most gracious Proclamation published Ier. 5. and you cannot want encouragement to do every Man his own part whatsoever the rest do Run to and fro through the streets of Ierusalem and see now and know and seek in the broad places thereof if you can find a Man if there be any that executeth Iudgment that seeketh the Truth and I will pardon it Or say thirdly that the sins of a Nation should be grown to that ripeness that the few righteous that are in it could not any longer adjourn the Iudgment for as there is a time of Mercy wherein the righteousness of one or a few may reprieve a whole Nation from destruction so when the appointed time of their fatal stroke is come tho Noah Job and Daniel should be in the midst of it they could prevail no farther than the delivery of their own souls yet even there those that have been faithful shall have this benefit that they shall be able to say with comfort either in the one sense or in the other Liberavi animam meam That is They shall either be preserved from being overwhelmed in the common destruction having their life given them for a prey and as a brand snatched out of the fire as Noah escaped when all the World was drowned and Lot from the deflagration of Sodom or if God suffer them to be involved in the publick calamities have this comfort to sustain their Souls withal that they were not wanting to do their part toward the preventing thereof But howsoever why should any Man fourthly to shift off his duty unseasonably obtrude upon us a new piece of Metaphysicks which our Philosophers hitherto never owned in abstracting the general reformation from the particulars For what is the general other than the particulars together And if ever there be a general reformation wrought the particulars must make it up Do not thou then vainly talk of Castles in the air and of I know not what general reformation but if thou truly desirest such a thing put to thy hand and lay the first stone in thine own particular and see what thy example can do If other particulars move with thee and so a general reformation follow in some good mediocrity thou hast whereof to rejoice that thou hadst thy part a leading part in so good a work But if others will not come on end chearfully so as the work do not rise to any perfection thou hast yet wherewithal to comfort thee that the fault was not thine 33. Thus have you heard sundry reasons and inducements to stir you up to the chearful performance of the duty contained in the Text of doing justice and shewing mercy in delivering the oppressed Some in respect of God who hath given us first his express command to which our obedience and secondly his own blessed example to which our conformity is expected Some in respect of our selves because first whatsoever power we have for the present it was given us for this end that we might therewithal be helpful to others and we know not secondly in what need we may stand hereafter of like help from others Some in respect of our poor distressed brethren who deserve our pity and best furtherance considering first the
account him no wiser than he should be that sluggeth in his own business or goeth heartlesly about it It is the Kings business who hath entrusted you with it and he is scarce a good subject that slacketh the Kings business or doth it to the halves Nay it is the Lords business for Ye judge not for man but for the Lord who is with you in the cause and in the judgment and Cursed is he that doth the Lords business negligently That you may therefore do all under one your own business and the Kings business and the Lords business with that zeal and forwardness which becometh you in so weighty an affair lay this pattern before your eyes and hearts See what Phinees did and thereby both examine what hitherto you have done and learn what henceforth you should do First Phinees doth not post off the matter to others the fervency of his zeal made him willing to be himself the Actor He harboured no such cool thoughts as too many Magistrates do Here is a shameful crime committed by a shameless person and in a shameless manner pity such an audacious offender should go unpunished My heart riseth against him and much ado I have to refrain from being my self his executioner rather than he should carry it away thus But why should I derive the envy of the fact upon my self and but gain the imputation of a busie officious fellow in being more forward than others A thousand more saw it as well as I whom it concerneth as nearly as it doth me and if none of them will stir in it why should I Doubtless my Uncle Moses and my father Eleazer and they that are in place of Authority will not let it pass so but will call him to an account for it and give him condign punishment If I should do it it would be thought but the attempt of a rash young fellow It will be better discretion therefore to forbear and to give my betters leave to go before me Such pretensions as these would have kept off Phinees from this noble Exploit if he had been of the temper of some of ours who owe it to nothing so much as their lukewarmness that they have at least some reputation of being moderate and discreet men But true zeal is more forward than mannerly and will not lose the opportunity of doing what it ought for waiting till others begin Alas if every man should be so squeamish as many are nothing at all would be done And therefore the good Magistrate must consider not what others do but what both he and they are in conscience bound to do and though there should be many more joyned with him in the same common care and with equal power yet he must resolve to take that common affair no otherwise into his special care than if he were left alone therein and the whole burden lay upon his shoulders As when sundry persons are so bound in one common bond for the payment of one entire sum conjunctim divisim every one per se in toto in solidum that every particular person by himself is as well liable to the payment of the whole as they all together are Admit loose or idle people for who can hold their tongues shall for thy diligence say thou art an hard and austere man or busiest thy self more than thou hast thank for thy labour First that man never cared to do well that is afraid to hear ill He that observeth the wind saith Solomon shall not sow and the words especially of idle people are no better Secondly He maketh an ill purchace that fore-goeth the least part of his duty to gain a little popularity the breath of the people being but a sorry plaster for a wounded conscience Thirdly what a man by strict and severe execution of Iustice loseth in the breadth he commonly gaineth it all and more in the weight and in the length of his Credit A kind quiet man that carrieth it for the present and in the voice of the multitude but it is more solid and the more lasting praise to be reputed in the opinion of the better and the wiser sort a Iust man and a good Patriot or Commonwealths-man Fourthly if all should condemn thee for that wherein thou hast done but well thy comfort is thine own conscience shall bestead thee more than a thousand witnesses and stand for thee against ten thousand tongues at that last day when the hearts of all men shall be made manifest and every man that hath deserved well shall have praise of God and not of man Secondly Phinees as he did not post off this execution to other men so he did not put it off to another day Phinees might have thought thus We are now in a religious work humbling our selves in a publick solemn and frequent assembly before the face of God to appease his just wrath against us for our sins Et quod nunc instat agamus It would be unseasonable leaving this work now another time may serve as well to inflict deserved punishment upon that wicked miscreant But zeal will admit no put offs it is all upon the spur till it be doing what it conceiveth fit to be done There are no passions of the mind so impetuous and so impatient of delay as Love and Anger and these two are the prime ingredients of true zeal If any man should have interposed for Zimri and taken upon him to have mediated with Phinees for his reprival I verily think in that heat he might sooner have provoked his own than have prorogued Zimri's exécution Delays in any thing that is good are ill and in the best things worst As Wax when it is chafed and Iron when it is hot will take impressions but if the Seal or Stamp be not speedily put to the hear abateth and they return to their former hardness so the best affections of the best men if they be not taken in the heat abate and lessen and die In the administration then of Iustice and the execution of Iudgment where there is Zeal there will be Expedition and the best way to preserve Zeal where it is is to use Expedition I am not able to say where the want is or where specially but certainly a great want there is generally in this Kingdom of Zeal to Iustice in some that should have it if that complaint be as just as it is common among men that have had sutes in the Courts that they have been wronged with far less damage than they have been righted there have been so many frustratoriae and venatoriae dilationes as St. Bernard in his time called them so many lingring and costly delays used And for Executing Iudgment upon Malefactors if Phinees had suffered Zimri to have lived but a day longer for any thing we know the plague might have lasted also a day longer and why might
not to morrow have been as yesterday with them and lessened the peoples number twenty three thousand more especially their former crying sins having received a new accession of a double guilt the guilt of Zimri's fact and the guilt of their connivance No rack should make me confess that man to be truly zealous of judgment who when he hath power to cut him short shall but so much as reprieve a foul and notorious Malefactor or grant him any respite or liberty to make his friends and to sue a pardon Solomon hath told us and we find it but too true Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil Third Phinees was nothing retarded in his resolution by fore-casting what ill will he might purchase or into what dangers he might cast himself by executing judgment upon two such great Personages The times were such as wherein sin had gotten head and was countenanced both with might and multitude Zimri was a mighty man a Prince of a chief house and he that should dare to touch him should be like to pull upon himself the enmity of the whole Tribe of Simeon It seemeth he was confident that his might and popularity in his own Tribe would privilege him from the enquiry of the Magistrate how durst he else have so braved Moses and the whole Congregation And the woman also was the daughter of one of the Five Kings of Midian And could Phinees think that the death of two such great persons could go unrevenged All this either Phinees either fore-casteth not or regardeth not His eye was so fixed upon the glory of God that it did not so much as reflect upon his own safety and his thoughts strongly possessed with zeal of the common good had not any leisure to think of private dangers Zeal is ever couragious and therefore Iethro thought none worthy to be Magistrates but such as were Men of courage And he hath neither Courage nor Zeal in him besitting a Magistrate that is afraid to do justice upon a great offender The sluggard saith there is a Lyon in the way and then he steppeth backward and keepeth aloof off But the worthy Magistrate would meet with such a Lyon to choose that he might win awe to Gods ordinances and make the way passable for others by tearing such a beast in pieces and would no more fear to make a Worshipful thief or a Right Worshipful murderer if such a one should come in his Circuit an example of Justice than to twitch up a poor sheep-stealer Great ones will soon presume of impunity and mean ones too by their example in time learn to kick at authority if Magistrates be not forward to maintain the dignity of their places by executing good Laws without favour or fear Hitherto of the spirit and zeal of Phinees by occasion of this his former Action or gesture of standing up There yet remain to be considered the other Action and the success of it He executed judgment and the plague was stayed Both which because I would not be long I will joyn together in the handling when I shall have first a little cleared the translation The Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here used is a word that hath three different significations to Iudge to Pray to Appease And Interpreters have taken liberty to make choice of any of the three in translating this place The Greek rendreth it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the vulgar Latine which for the most part followeth the Septuagint Placavit as if we should read it thus Then stood up Phinees and made an atonement or appeased God And the thing is true God himself testifying of Phinees Num. 25. that By being zealous for God he had turned away his wrath and Made atonement for the Children of Israel The Chaldee interpreteth it by Vetsalle and the ordinary English translation of the Psalms usually read in our Churches accordingly Then stood up Phinees and prayed But Hierom and Vatablus and the best translators render it according to the most proper signification of the word and most fully to the story it self Dijudicavit he executed judgment Verily prayer is a special means to appease Gods wrath and to remove his Plagues and prayer is as the salt of the Sacrifice sanctifying and seasoning every action we undertake and I doubt not but Phinees when he lift up his hand to execute judgment upon Zimri and Cosbi did withal lift up his heart to God to bless that action and to turn it to good In which respects especially if the word withal will bear it as it seemeth it will some men should have done well not to have shewn so much willingness to quarrel at the Church translations in our Service-Book by being clamorous against this very place as a gross corruption and sufficient to justifie their refusal of subscription to the book But I will not now trouble either you or my self with farther curiosity in examining Translations because howsoever other Translations that render it praying or appeasing may be allowed either as tolerably good or at least excusably ill yet this that rendreth it by Executing Iudgment is certainly the best whether we consider the course of the Story it self or the propriety of the word in the Original or the intent of the Holy Ghost in this Scripture And this Action of Phinees in doing judgment upon such a pair of great and bold offenders was so well pleasing unto God that his wrath was turned away from Israel and the plague which had broken in upon them in a sudden and fearful manner was immediately stayed thereupon Oh how acceptable a sacrifice to God above the blood of Bulls and of Goaâ—â—â— the death of a Malefactor slaughtered by the hand of Iustice When the Magistrate who is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Minister and Priest of God for thiâ— very thingeâ— putteth his knife to the throat of the beast and with the â—ire of â—â—â— holy zeal for GOD and against sin offereth him up in Holocaâ—stum for a Whole burnt Offering and for a peace-Offering unto the Lord. Samuel saith that to obey is better than Sacrifice and Solomon that to do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice Obedience that is the prime and the best sacrifice and the second best is the punishment of Disobedience There is no readier way to appease Gods wrath against sin than is the rooting out of sinners nor can his deputies by any other course turn away his just judgments so effectually as by faithful executing of Iustice and Iudgment themselves When Phinees did this act the publick body of Israel was in a weak state and stood in need of a present and sharp remedy In some former distempers of the State it may be they had found some ease by diet in humbling their
up before the Lord against the Sun If the Land be defiled with blood it is in vain to think of any other course when God himself hath pronounced it impossible that the Land should be purged from the blood that is shed in it otherwise than by the blood of him that shed it Up then with the zeal of Phinees up for the love of God and of his people all you that are in place of authority Gird your Swords upon your thigh and with your Iavelins in your hand pursue the Idolater and the Adulterer and the Murtherer and the Oppressor and every known Offender into his Tent and nail him to the Earth that he never rise again to do more mischief Let it appear what love you bear to the State by your hatred to them and shew your pity to us by shewing none to them The destroying Angel of God attendeth upon you for his dispatch if you would but set in stoutly he would soon be gone Why should either sloth or fear or any partial or corrupt respect whatsoever make you cruel to the good in sparing the bad or why should you suffer your selves for want of courage and zeal to execute Judgment to lose either the Opportunity or the Glory of being the instruments to appease Gods wrath and to stay his plagues But for that matters appertaining to Iustice and Iudgment must pass through many hands before they come to yours and there may be so much juggling used in conveying them from hand to hand that they may be represented unto you many times in much different forms from what they were in truth and at the first That your care and zeal to execute Iustice and Iudgment faithfully according to your knowledge may not through the fault and miscarriage of other men fail of the blessed end and success that Phinees found I desire that every of them also as well as you would receive the word of Exhortation each in his place and office to set himself uprightly and unpartially as in the sight of God to advance to the utmost of his power the due course and administration of Iustice. And for this purpose by occasion of this Scripture which pointeth us to the End of these Assemblies I shall crave leave to reflect upon another which giveth us sundry particular directions conducing to that End And it is that Scripture whereinto we made some entrance the last Assizes and would have now proceeded farther had not the heavy hand of God upon us in this his grievous Visitation led me rather to make choice of this Text as the more seasonable That other is written in Exodus 23. the Three first Verses Thou shalt not raise a false report put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his cause Wherein were noted five special Rules shared out among five sorts of persons the Accuser the Witness the Iurer the Pleader the Officer I will but give each of them some brief intimation of their duty from their several proper rules and conclude If thou comest hither then as a Plaintiff or other Party in a civil cause or to give voluntary Information upon a Statute or to prosecute against a Malefactor or any way in the nature of an Accuser Let neither the hope of Gain or of any other advantage to thy self not secret malice or envy against thine adversary nor thy desire to give satisfaction to any third party sway thee beyond the bounds of Truth and Equity no not a little either to devise an untruth against thy neighbour of thine own head or by an hard construction to deprave the harmless actions or speeches of others or to make them worse than they are by unjust aggravations or to take advantage of letters and syllables to entrap innocency without a fault When thou art to open thy mouth against thy brother set the first Rule of that Text as a watch before the door of thy lips Thou shalt not raise a false report If thou comest hither secondly to be used as a Witness perhaps Graecâ fide like a down-right Knight of the Post that maketh of an Oath a jest and a pastime of a Deposition or dealt withal by a bribe or suborned by thy Landlord or great Neighbour or egged on with thine own spleen or malice to swear and forswear as they shall prompt thee or to s enterchange deposition with thy friend as they use to do in Greece Hodie mihi cras tibi Swear thou for me to day I 'll swear for thee to morrow or tempted with any corrupt respect whatsoever by thy Word or Oath to strengthen a false and unrighteous report When thou comest to lay thy hand upon the book lay the second Rule in that Text to thy heart Put not thy hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness Though hand joyn in hand The false witness shall not be unpunished If thou comest hither thirdly to serve for the King upon the Grand Inquest or between party and party in any cause whatsoever like those selecti judices among the Romans whom the Praetor for the year being was to nominate and that upon Oath out of the most able and serviceable men in his judgment both for Estate Understanding and Integrity or to serve upon the Tales perhaps at thine own suit to get something toward bearing charges for thy journey or yoked with a crafty or a wilful foreman that is made before-hand and a mess of tame after men withal that dare not think of being wiser than their Leader or unwilling to stickle against a Major part whether they go right or wrong or resolved already upon the Verdict no matter what the Evidence be Consider what is the weight and religion of an Oath Remember that he sinneth not less that sinneth with company Whatsoever the rest do resolve thou to do no otherwise than as God shall put into thy heart and as the Evidence shall lead thee The third Rule in that Text must be thy rule Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil They are silly that in point either of Religion or Iustice would teach us to measure either Truth or Right by multitudes If thou comest hither fourthly as to thine Harvest to reap some fruit of thy long and expenceful study in the Laws to assist thy Client and his Cause with thy Counsel Learning and Eloquence think not because thou speakest for thy Fee that therefore thy tongue is not thine own but thou must speak what thy Client will have thee speak be it true or false neither think because thou hast the liberty of the Court and perhaps the favour of the Iudg that therefore thy tongue is thine own and thou mayest speak thy