of such as serve him Who cannot say that the Tempter does irresistibly debauch them though with the Vanities of the World he does assault them from without and with the Treacheries of the Flesh he does surprise them from within For the Devil 's very utmost is but to tempt us And let the matter of Temptation be what it will whether Honour or Disgrace whether Pain or Pleasure whether Frights or Flatteries whether want or superfluity or even the same in the Text wherewith he tempted our Blessed Saviour All the Kingdoms of the Earth and the Glory of them Yet because by all These he can but solicite and intice us we cannot say he does ravish but court our Wills 'T is true the Devil is represented by many terrible Appellations throughout the Scriptures as that of Abaddon and Apollyon a Murderer from the Beginning a Lyon and a Red Dragon a Roaring Lyon and a Serpent And in one respect or other he is indeed each of These But yet he carrys away the Wills and Assents of men not as a Lyon only by Strength nor as a Roaring one by Rapacity but rather as a Serpent by Circumvention § 3. Now then let us return to see how the Argument will go on having seen enough already upon what foot it stands and put a Block out of the way too at which too many are wont to stumble can we imagin it to be likely that the old experienced Serpent the subtlest Creature under Heaven could be so stupid and obtuse in the Art of Mischief as to employ his chief strength upon a Design of less importance and to reserve his weakest force for his very last Onset or Assault At first he tempted our Blessed Saviour to nothing else but Distrust and therefore only made use of his being hungry v. 3. Next he tempted him to Praesumption which is the opposite Provocation and thought it enough for that Effect to put him in mind of his Praerogative v. 6. But now at last he runs higher and seeks to bribe the most righteous Iudge to the greatest unworthiness in the World an Idolizing the unworthiest of all his Creatures He knew that Christ was the Son of God because he heard him so declared by God the Father Chap. 3. v. 17. He also knew the Son of God to be God the Son too And he knew that God the Son was even the Wisdom of the Father And when he would tempt Wisdom it self to Idolize the very Tempter he could not but know he was to use the highest Allective to be imagin'd Which by what other means should he hope to do than by taking up our Lord to an exceeding high Mountain shewing him there as in a Synopsis All the Kingdoms of the World with the Glory of them and then by making this lusty Proffer All These will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me § 4. This then does lead us to see the reason why 't is said by St. Paul That the love of mony is the Root of all Evil. And why by St. Iames Go to now ye rich men weep and howl for the Miseries that shall come upon you And why 't is said by our Saviour of whom we believe that he shall come to be our Judge Wo to you that are Rich for ye have received your Consolation Wo to you that are full for ye shall hunger Wo to you that laugh for ye shall mourn and weep And why 't was said by the Spanish Friar That Few Potentates go to Hell because comparatively speaking they All are but Few And why we vowed in our Baptism to fight manfully under Christ's Banner as well against the World as the Flesh and the Devil And why we pray in our publick Litany not only In all Time of our Tribulation of Lightning and Tempest of Plague Pestilence and Famine of Battle and Murder and suddain Death But as a Danger if not a Mischief as great as either In all Time of our WEALTH Good Lord deliver us Nor can we render a better reason as long as Charity sits as Iudge why so many who have been placed upon exceeding high Mountains a great deal higher even than That on which the Devil here placed our Blessed Saviour from whence they could not only see but injoy the Kingdoms of the Earth and the Glory of them have gladly laid down those Kingdoms and divorc'd themselves from those Glories as having known them by sad experience to be but exquisite Temptations and pleasant Snares § 5. But here I would not be so mistaken as our Lord was by his Disciples when he pronounced it impossible for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God For when I say that worldly Greatness is one of the Devil 's most cogent Engines whereby to batter down the Castle or Soul of Man I am far from implying 't is irresistible Though I argue that the Devil is then the greatest Poliorxetick as Soldiers word it when he lays Siege to a man's Soul with All the Kingdoms of the Earth yet can it not therefore be deny'd but that we may beat him out of his Trenches through him that strengthneth us and that as He did with an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 get thee hence Satan Honour and Riches are but Temptations and Temptations in Themselves are but Things Indifferent which accordingly as they are us'd do administer a Nourishment to Vice or Vertue Just as the very same Sword is of it self apt to serve to the most contrary Effects as well to punish as to protect the Guilty and either to defend or to kill the Innocent And thus the same Meat and Drink as it meets with an immoderate or sober Appetite serves for the Mischief of a Surfeit or for a necessary Refection The strength of a Temptation as it does in part lessen the Sinner's Guilt when yielded to and comply'd with so does it heighten the vertue too when victoriously resisted And as the Angels who fell from a state of Innocence and Bliss were the less capable of rising in that they fell without a Tempter so the Angels who never fell are the less capable of the Coronets which Virgins and Martyrs shall wear in Heaven because they are pure and impassive and so exempted by God Almighty from the Dignity and Privilege of suffering for him This then we must confess is the great Benefit of Temptations to give our Enemies their Due that by resisting them to the end we manfully fight under Christ's Banner conform our selves to his Example and suffer for his sake as He for ours In which respect no doubt it was as before I noted that St. Iames began his Epistle with this remarkable Exhortation Brethren count it all Ioy when ye fall into divers Temptations Some may wonder at the Expression and think it impious that at the instant in which we pray lead us not into Temptation we should be glad of those things we daily deprecate But St. Iames
under a Necessity of taking pains Conceiving it infinitely difficult for any man to live a strict and a vertuous life who is not bless'd with some Calling wherein to labour Ask't he was indeed by Xenophon and other Friends why of so many great Offers he would not accept at least of some if not in his own yet in his Childrens consideration But still He answer'd If they live as they ought they cannot want Blessings and if they live otherwise I cannot wish that they may have them If they are dutiful to their God they will find him an indulgent and loving Father And if they rebel against their Maker what have I to do with them Now consider how these Heathens who liv'd before Christ had more of Christian Self-denyal than most of Them that come after They were many of them plac'd upon exceeding high Mountains shew'd the Kingdoms of the Earth and the glory of them Yea though they were proffer'd those Injoyments and strongly tempted to accept them yet so great was their courage they did not yield Men who if they are not fit for our imitation are fit to shame us at least for our imitating no more of the Life of Christ. Who as it were in opposition to this Temptation of the Devil drawn from the Kingdoms of the Earth and the Glory of them made choice of Poverty and Despisedness for his external Qualifications For though by reason of his Divinity he could not possibly be obnoxious to the unworthiness of Sin yet by reason of his Humanity he was capable of suffering the most unworthy Solicitations And even those Solicitations disturb'd his Ease although they had not the power to hurt his Safety Something therefore there was in it for our Edification That when it pleased the God of Heaven to take upon him our Nature who had it in his own choice both of whom he would be born and in what Quality he would live He did not choose the greatest but rather the meanest and the most abject of all Conditions Now whoever he is that chooseth be he wise or foolish ever chooseth what is Best either really or in shew either best in it self or best to his imagina tion From whence it follows that our Saviour being the Wisdom of the Father as God the Son could not choose but choose wisely and what was really the best when he made choice to be so meanly both born and bred As for his Birth sure a Carpenter's Spouse was a very mean Parent The Stable of an Inn was an exceeding mean Place wherein an Oxe and an Ass were as mean Attendants And then for his Breeding It was in Galilee yea in Nazareth the meanest part of all Palestine In the House of Goodman Ioseph one of the meanest men of Nazareth And in the way of a Carpenter as mean a Trade as could well be chosen Our Saviour shall not choose for us if he chooses no better for Himself will the men of this World be apt to say We would choose had we our choice to be born of Princes to be bred in stately Palaces and brought up at Court None should be greater if we could help it nor any richer than our selves We would choose the very Things wherewith the Devil here tempted Christ All the Kingdoms of the Earth and the Glory of them Would not be so poorly spirited as to refuse a frank offer for want of a little Complaisance an act of Worship and Veneration A Beast indeed will rest contented when his Belly is full and looks no higher when he is Empty than to That which grows up from the Ground he treads on But Man is made of another Metal and He is scarce fit to live who has no Ambition but sits him down like a Beast completely satisfied with a sufficience Conscience and Contentment are fit for persecuted Churchmen or well-bred Quakers or else for men whose Wits are lost in their Studies and whose overmuch Learning has made them as mad as any Paul a Man who talks of Contentment in All Conditions and would have us look no farther as to the Goods of this World than Food and Rayment Is it not Pity that such as These should be the Reasonings of the Followers and Friends of Christ who followed the things which They eschew and eschewed those things which They contend for His choice I say was to be poorer and more despised than other men And because being a Man he was to be of some Calling he pitch'd on That that was lyable to least Temptations and so was registred at Nazareth not in the Quality of a Freeholder but of an Handicraft-Man He was but Faber Lignarius a Wooden Smith Had he been a Freeholder he had had though not a Kingdom yet a small Pittance of this World He might have trod his own Ground and have breath'd his own Air and have eaten his own Bread without depending upon the Charity of any other man's hands or on the Labour of his own But he was on the contrary so poor and destitute that he had neither Food nor Rayment but what he earn'd or had given him or got by Miracle As long as from his Twelfth to his Thirtieth year of Age diverse Fathers are of opinion that he wrought for his Living in his Father in Law 's Shop Nor is there any Church-Writer who gives another Accompt of him And from thence until his Death he obtain'd his Bread either by Teaching as a Prophet or doing good as a Physician Both gratuitously and freely although by some he was rewarded Now that our Saviour's way of choosing may have some Influence upon ours and this our second Consideration may be as useful as it is long § 18. Let us consider in the Third place how God and Satan are two Competitors for our choice Satan tempts us to joyn with Him in his Attempts against God God solicits us on the contrary to side with Him against Satan Satan tempts us to Rebellion with the Things that are seen which are but Temporal God solicits us to Obedience with the Things that are not seen which are Eternal Satan's Proposals are to the Flesh God's especially to the Spirit Satan takes us up to an exceeding high Mountain and discovers to us from thence all the Kingdoms of the Earth and the Glory of them God on the other side takes us up to Mount Sion or at least takes us down to the Valley of Achor and discovers to us from thence the Kingdom of Heaven and Glory of it and saith to us in effect as the Devil to Christ All This will I give you if falling down ye will worship me Now it remains that we consider to which Proposal of the two our Affections and Appetites have the most reason to incline Let 's put them Both into the Scales and then choose That that shall weigh the heaviest As for the Things of this present World the best we can say of them is This They all
Assyrians and Chaldaeans continued That How the Medes and the Persians invaded These How Philip of Macedon usurped All Greece And his insatiable Son the Eastern Empire How the Romans made All bow down to Italy How the Goths and the Vandals subdued the Romans and ravag'd the greatest part of Christendom as far as from Poland to Mauritania How Mahomed the First subdued the Saracens And Profaneness became possess 't of the Holy Land How the Ottoman Empire prospers against the Purity of the Gospel and the Profession of Christianity and so has done from Age to Age and that by the Practice of all Impiety How very clear a thing is it a thing of which the world is witness that the Great Sultan as they call him is the greatest Monarch under Heaven the greatest Enemy to Christ the most abandon'd and given up to work Iniquity even with Greediness the most incapable of Mercy either to Men in his Rage or to Women in his Lust and yet the fullest of Prosperity of any Potentate upon Earth How many Millions of Christian Souls are there now groaning under his Tyranny How many Princes within our Christendom are fain to buy their Peace of him or pay him Tribute How many Centuries of years have those Mahomedans still prosper'd more than any sort of Christians that can be nam'd Shall we now joyn in consort with all those Infidels and aver that though Christ was a great Prophet indeed yet Mahomed was a Greater Shall we infer that Those Turks are the special Favorites of Heaven That God in love to their Alchoran has signally favour'd them with the greatest and fairest Quarters of the World has made a Decision of the Controversie betwixt the Worshippers of Mahomed and Those of Christ even by yielding to the former his Approbation There are who talk at this rate and know not how to talk otherwise whilst they reason from the Principles which They are led by But God be thanked we are led by a clearer light As having learnt from St. Paul to say of such Thrivers in their Impiety not that God has indowed with much delight but That God has indured with much long-suffering the Vessels of Wrath fitted for Destruction And again with St. Paul we have learnt to say That God did SUFFER those Nations to walk in their own ways Had they walk't in God's ways God had been said to have made them do it But as they walked in their own God only suffer'd them We say as Abraham to Dives God permits them to have their Good things Here. And Here the Devil is permitted to have a very wide Scope to use a large kind of Freedom For however he is held in Chains of Darkness yet his Chains are so long and many times so much inlarged as that he goes to and fro upon the face of the Earth And not only so but by the Patience of which I spake and the long-suffering of the Almighty bestows the Kingdoms of the World on such as serve him All the Kingdoms I do not say but as many as God permits who yet at one time or other though not at once may be said with great Truth to permit them All. The Ottoman Emperours in their Successions have been placed by the Devil upon exceeding high Mountains have seen the Kingdoms of the world and the Glory of them And the Devil in effect has said to Them as here to Christ All these things will I give you if yee will fall down and worship me Those Emperours have been suffer'd to do the one And the Devil has been permitted to give the other I shall but name the wicked Phocas who of a very mean Soldier did by his complicated Impieties usurp the Empire of Mauritius a pious Prince And then for Him nearer Home who by his Practice and his Success drew That Phocas to the Life I think I need not so much as name him Nor is there any thing more acknowledged at least by the sober Rank of Men who are not yet asham'd to believe the Scriptures than that Witches and Wizards Magicians and Sorcerers have made their Contracts with the Devil as with a Bountiful Disposer of worldly Goods § 9. So that if we consult our own Experience if we ask our own Eyes and call our Memories to Accompt how very frequent a thing it is for the hand of wickedness to prevail for the stool of wickedness to prosper in devouring the man that is more righteous than He And if we consider at the same time That excepting some few and extraordinary Examples such as the Israelites of old who were commanded by God himself to spoil the Egyptians of their Iewels and take the Canaanites Land for their own Possession It has been meerly the Sin of Robbery in all the Ages of the World for any one or more men to seize upon That which is anothers by private Fraud or by publick Violence we cannot choose but subscribe to the Sense of our Saviour and St. Paul That the Devil under God and by God's permission is One Dispenser of Preferment if not the Chiefest And therefore not without Reason is said by our Lord and his Apostle to be the Ruler and the Prince and even the God of this World Experience has made it a kind of Proverb That He who cannot dissemble can hardly live And Conscience is so commonly the Beggar 's Vertue that That is grown too to a kind of Proverb As if the high way to Wealth were to serve Mammon rather than God Pluto was made the proper Name for the God of Wealth And 't was an Aphorism of State in the late ill Times He who will have something must do any thing to acquire it Like that of the Poet in Time of Yore Aude aliquid brevibus Gyaris Carcere dignum Sivis esse aliquid He who will rise to high Promotion and purchase the Friendship of the World must bravely dare to do something worthy the Gibbet or the Iayl. But if a man will serve God he is to do it at his Peril of being a Confessor perhaps perhaps a Martyr 'T was from the Topick of this Experience that the Devil here argued against our Saviour And my Text as I conceive does well admit of This Paraphrase If thou wilt violate God ' s Law in an adhaerence unto mine If thou wilt lay aside thy Conscience and stick at nothing which I command thee 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. I will give thee whatsoever thine Eye can see or thine Heart desire Thou may'st arrive a great deal sooner at Wealth and Greatness by taking those Courses which I suggest than by relying upon the Providence or on the Promises of God For do but look round about thee and trust thine Eyes Thou seest it goes best with the worst of men and that the men of nice Conscience are quite undone by their Integrity Weigh the Successes of Evil doers with the Calamities of
gather the Wheat into his Garner and burn up the Chaff with Fire unquenchable If the Flesh asks the Quaestion Why does the way of the wicked prosper Why are they happy who deal treacherously Why has the Devil so great a Power upon Earth Why does the wicked devour the man who is more righteous than He Let the Spirit make Answer in the words of the Apostle That this light Affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us afterwards a far more exceeding and eternal weight of Glory Whensoever we are tempted by either effect of the Devil's Power be it Prosperity or Affliction let us look up unto our Saviour upon the Top of two Mountains to wit the Mountain we are upon where he was tempted by the Devil with all the Kingdoms of the Earth and the Glory of them And the famous Mount Calvary whereon he was tempted by the Devil with all the Torments in the Earth and Disgraces of them Thence we may see the perfect Purity of that Immaculate Lamb who rather would suffer Those Torments than accept That Offer He had refus'd so many Kingdoms but would not refuse to receive a Cross Refus'd the Glory of the world but not The Shame too He had refus'd long before to be made a King But would not afterwards refuse to be vex't and disgrac'd with a Crown of Thorns The meanest things in this world he would by no means despise But he despis'd the Pomps and Vanities which ordinarily pass for the Greatness of it And therefore as often as the Devil shall use his Power against us as here he did against Christ let us relieve our selves with the memory of This one Thing That the Servant is not above his Lord. And that we are foolishly unreasonable if we expect to fare better than an Innocent Iesus in the midst of our manifold and hainous Guilts And that as He so we too may easily suffer many things by duly weighing how they dispose us for an Entrance into his Glory § 25. Now having evidenced the Truth of my second Doctrin with greater care of Perspicuity than of not being tedious both from Scripture from Reason and from Experience from Aphorisms of Scripture and from Scriptural Examples from Solitary Reason and Reason grounded upon Scripture from other mens Experience and from our own and all attested as well by Sacred as by Secular Story And having clear'd it yet farther by way of Answer to an Objection offer'd also at the Causes of this seemingly-strange oeconomy in God's disposal of Affairs and directed to the Lessons it ought to teach us I think it Time to pass forwards to the Third Observable I propos'd To wit That the whole Scope and Drift of all the Donatives of the Tempter is to turn our Adoration out of its true and proper Channel to steal it from God and to divert it upon Himself He seldom or never Proffers but with a Treacherous Proviso He does it liberally indeed All these things will I give thee But with this covetous Reserve If thou wilt fall down and worship me § 1. To demonstrate the Proposition with the greater Force and Perspicuity I am to imitate those men who go a step or two back that they may leap so much the farther And premise two or three words concerning the Bounty of God and Man before I come to That of Satan It was a very smart saying of Learned Philo and as true as it was smart 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God alone does give freely to all his Creatures whilst all his Creatures to one another are no better at the best than Ingenuous Hucksters The best of his Creatures under Heaven which are confessedly Men and Women yea the best of those best which are the liberal and the munificent when they do most seem to give they do but seem so For if they sell not their courtesies for Land or Mony yet commonly they sell them for praise and honour or at least for acknowledgments and humble thanks or if for nothing in the Earth yet at least for the hope of being rewarded for them in Heaven It is but a generous way of Trading for one rich man to send Presents unto another because there is commonly on the one side some expectation of Requital arising from the knowledge of Wealth and Gratitude on the other And this I take to be the reason why the most Covetous even of Worldlings will be liberal to a Person of Power and Plenty because they hope He will do them as good a Turn Nor can it truly and properly be call'd a Gift which is meant for a Decoy to some great Advantage whether a step to Preferment in Times of Safety or else a Bribe for Protection in Times of Danger The very clearest of our Gifts are those we give to Men in want and who for that very reason are the least able to requite us And yet even Those are a kind of Bargains For whilst we make a fair shew of giving any thing to the Poor the Scripture tells us that in Reality we are but* lending to the Lord. And farther adds for our Incouragement that whatsoever we thus impart shall be repaid to us again So true is that which I noted from learned Philo That God alone is a perfect Giver whilst the freest of Men are but liberal Hucksters Our profusest favours to one another are but a Mercenary Munificence as our largest Offertories to God are but a Mercenary Devotion § 2. Hereupon we are to argue à minori ad majus If the best Mens Gifts are so Imperfect what then are Satan's who besides that He has not a right to give does sell his Gifts for Mens Souls Things so infinitely precious that Christ Himself could not buy them but with his Blood When our Souls were to be purchas 't from Sin and Hell the Son of God being Incarnate could not have given enough for them if He had not vouchsafed to give Himself Now 't is the Avarice of Satan and his Ambition at the same instant to buy our Souls back unto Sin and Misery although he bids no more for them than the pitiful Allectives of Wealth and Greatness The Kingdoms of the Earth and the Glory of them And well it were if it were no worse For besides that he offers a great deal more than he can give he being ever God's Pris'ner as hath been shewn the saddest part of it is that however his biddings are on the Earth his general Payments are still in Hell All his Gifts do still flow from his Desire of such Gain He reacheth his offers to us with one hand that he may plunder us with the other His liberality to us is like the Fisherman's to the River who in Case he does cast in a worthless Fly 't is that the River may requite Him with some good Fish When Satan offers us any favours we must immediately consider he is but Angling after our Souls He baits
Unprofitable Repentance Were we at leisure to survey the several Orders and Ranks of men from Him that whistles at the Plough to Him that treads upon Crowns and Scepters we should find them all Byass't by Secular Interesses and Aims most incessantly pursuing their Carnal Projects and Designs Poor Boôtes will needs be asking so low and humble is his Ambition what He shall do to maintain a Teem The same Boôtes growing Rich will as willingly be able to keep a Coach Here a man is ambitious of some great Office in the Court whilst perhaps the great Courtier is at least as ambitious of being Greatest The only Subject of His Inquiry is what he shall do to wear a Crown But having waded as far as That through Blood and Rapine he thinks his Crown is too light and his Territory too narrow and therefore makes it his next Inquiry what he shall do for the inlarging the straitned Borders of his Dominion His next Project is how to be Monarch of the West And if perhaps he climbs thither his inlarged Ambition does want more Room from whence ariseth another Quaestion What he shall do to Subdue the World that Kings and Princes may bow down to him and that whole Nations may do him service Nay if he arrives at That too his Unlimited Desires are more imprison'd than before And so his last Quaestion is like That of the Great Macedonian Robber what he shall do for more Worlds wherewith to satisfie his Hunger and not to quench but to exercise his cruel Thirst. Thus is every man a scambler for some kind of Happiness here on Earth at least for the shadow and picture of it But there is not the like solicitude for the getting of a Kingdom and Crown in Heaven Where shall we meet with a man of Youth who joyns his Heart unto his Head and asks about the great Business for which he came into the World where shall we meet with a man of Riches who makes it the great Contrivance and Design of his Life to be advis'd in what manner he ought to live where shall we meet with a man of Power who will indure to be looking so far before him as to consider and contemplate his latter end or who will look so far within him as to examin the state of things betwixt his Saviour and his Soul as whether he hath made his Election sure or whether he hath not rather received the Grace of God in vain where is He that crys out with the frighted Iailour at Philippi What must I do that I may be saved that makes a strict and impartial search after the Requisites of his Salvation that sends as 't were an Huy and Cry after things future and invisible and makes it the Burden of his Inquiry with this young man this Rich man this Ruler in the Text Good Master what shall I do that I may Inherit Eternal Life A Text as worthy to be consider'd by every one who does believe an Immortality of his Soul and prepares for an Arrest at the hour of Death and expects to be try'd at a Day of Iudgment perhaps as any one Text in all the Scriptures A Text so fruitful of Particulars and of Particulars so pregnant for Meditation that 't is not easy to resolve with which of the many we should begin They do not come in such order as the Creatures once did into Noah's Ark two by two but they press in upon us all together in a Crowd as it were striving with one another which shall have the first Place in our consideration Here is a Servant a Master work and wages Here is an excellent Inquiry made by the Servant to the Master And here are both their Qualifications to make them pleasing to one another For the Servant is diligent the Master good Here is the manner also and matter and final cause of the Enquiry And here are divers other particulars growing out of the Body of these particulars as the lesser Branches of a Tree are wont to grow out of the greater But dismissing all the rest until we meet them in the Division I here shall fasten upon the Servant as fit to direct and assist us in it There being nothing more proper to entertain us till we come thither than the several looser Circumstances both of his Person and his Approach As for his Person we may observe him so qualified in three respects as one would think should ill dispose him for such an Inquiry as here he makes For in St. Matthew He is a Young man A Rich man in St. Mark In St. Luke a Ruler And it may seem a thing strange as the World now goes that being a young man he should inquire after life or that being a Rich man he should inquire after Heaven that being also a Ruler he should inquire after Subjection It is not easy to be believ'd so far it is from being usual that he who lately began to live should be solicitous for Aeternity that he who had purchased the present world should pursue an Inheritance in the next too And that a Person of Command should readily set himself to Service Yet thus he did and did with vehemence For whether we look upon his motion whilst he was hastening towards Christ or on his Posture when he was at him his Salutation in the Entrance or his Inquiry in the end we may by his Running guess his Readiness by his Kneeling his Humility by his Compellation his Zeal and by the manner of his asking the great Resignedness of Spirit wherewith he asked For when Iesus saith the Text was gone forth into the way there came one running and kneeled to him and asked him Good Master what shall I do that I may inherit Eternal Life Words which are partly The Evangelists and partly The Quaerist's of whom He speaks The Evangelist's own words have three Particulars of Remarque First The Person who here inquires Next The Nature of his Inquiry Thirdly The Oracle inquired of The Quaerist's words at first View consist of Three general Parts which again at the second View do afford us Six more Here is first a Compellation Secondly a Question Thirdly the End or the Motive or Cause of Both. In the first we have to consider Not only the Subject of the Quaerist's Compellation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Master But also the Adjunct or Qualification 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Good Again in the second we have two Things observable to wit The Matter of the Inquiry in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And the Manner in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 'T is what and what shall I do In the third we have also two First the Object to be obtained 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eternal Life And then the Manner of obtaining it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 't is by Inheriting But this is not all For I observe the Compellation hath a twofold Aspect upon the Question and seems to give us a pregnant
the New Ierusalem And what shall we do to be walking in it Which is the way to escape a Hell And what must we do to obtain a Heaven For this is certainly the Scope of the young man's Inquiry we have in hand What shall I do that I may Inherit Aeternal Life § 3. All the Kingdoms of the Earth can neither satisfie nor justifie all our Appetites and Desires But the Kingdom of Heaven expressed here by eternal life will be sure to do Both. For if we are Covetous Here are Riches to make it lawful If we are Amorous Here is Beauty to make it Vertuous If we are Ambitious Here is Glory to make it Good For we must know that our Affections receive their Guilt or Vitiosity not from their strength but from their blindness when they are either double-sighted and look asquint or else are short-sighted and cannot see a far off they embrace those things for fair or pleasant which like Ixion's watery Iuno do only mock them with their Injoyment Whereas were our Affections so Eagle-sighted as to see through the Creatures discerning Happiness in its Hypostasis and flying at it where it is our only fault would then be This That our Ambition is too low and our Avarice too little and that we are not Amorous enough For they are poor-spirited persons of thick Heads and narrow Hearts whose thoughts are groveling upon the Creature and aspiring to nothing but what is Finite It is an impotent Ambition a feeble Avarice and a very flat Love which makes a stoop at such low Trifles as Crowns and Kingdoms here on Earth He alone is of a Noble and erected mind who can say and say heartily with Christ to Pilate his Kingdom is not of this World Alas the Kingdoms here Below are less than Grass-Hoppers to the very least Mansion in the Kingdom of Heaven Nor are they genuine but degenerate and bastard Eagles which will greedily catch at such little Flies The Soul of man was created for the highest Purposes and Ends. And therefore we may not only be lawfully but even dutifully ambitious provided our Ambitions are great enough and every whit as high as our Soul's Extraction we are not only permitted but even obliged to be Covetous upon condition that it be but of solid Riches which are not liable to Plunder or to impairment We ought in Conscience to be inamour'd if it be of real Beauty and not of that which depends upon human Fansie not of handsome Dirt or well-complexion'd Clay not of Beauty so call'd whose Foundation is in the Dirt which saith to Corruption Thou art my Father and to the Worm Thou art my Mother But if we choose a right object like the Spouse in the Canticles we shall never be so well as when with that Spouse sick of Love For our Bowels ought to yern after the Bridegroom of our Souls we ought to pant after Goodness and in the phrase of Espensaeus to languish after him who is the Fountain of that Goodness and so to thirst after that Fountain as never to be satisfied 'till swallow'd up In this one sense the Italian Proverb is to be verified Bello fin fà chi ben amando muore He makes a good end that dyes a Lover to wit a Lover of Him who is the great Lover of Souls We should not vouchsafe to love our selves unless because we love Him or because he loves us the only measure of loving whom is to love him without measure § 4. Seeing therefore we have met with an easy way whereby to bridle a Passion and at the same time to let it loose how at once we may abjure and yet injoy our Sensuality or to speak more exactly how 't is the Duty of a Christian not to evacuate not to invalidate not to extenuate his Affections but only to regulate and to direct them to place them there where true Injoyment is to be found let no man say within himself what shall I do to get a Fortune to raise a Family to erect a Temple unto Fame what shall I do to be a man of this World of some Authority and Power able to mischief or to oblige to beat down mine Enemies and raise my Friends what shall I do to be a man of great Knowledge a famous Chymist an exact Mathematician a remarkable Lawyer or an eminent Divine for the best of These Inquiries has something in it of Carnality But let every man say within Himself what shall I do to get an Interest in Jesus Christ and to be sure I am a Member not only of his Visible but of his Mystical Body what shall I do for a Demonstration that my Faith is truly such as does work by Love and that it does work by such a Love as does bring forth obedience to the Commandments of Christ And such a kind of obedience as Christ will graciously accept what shall I do that I may repent and repent in such a manner as to bring forth fruits meet for Repentance what shall I do to see the secrets of my Heart and to know by some Token which will not fail me whether the Good which I do is well enough done I mean well enough to deserve Acceptance What shall I do whereby to work out mine own Salvation and yet for all that to serve my God without fear all the days of my life what shall I do whereby to make my Election sure and to make my self sure of my Election so as to be able to say in Truth with St. Paul Henceforth is laid up for me a Crown of Righteousness what shall I do or what shall I not do or what shall I suffer either for doing or not doing that by distress or persecution by nakedness or famin by peril or sword by banishment or bonds by sickness or death by any means whatsoever however troublesom or costly or any way terrible to the Flesh I may but finally inherit eternal Life § 5. But now how little there is to be found of real and solid Christianity even in that part of Christendom where Christ and his Gospel are always preach't least of all amongst Them who are the great Monopolizers of Life Aeternal 't will not be difficult to guess by the solemn Theme of their Inquiries what shall we eat and what shall we drink and wherewithal shall we be cloath'd which shews the Zeal and the Devotion wherewith they Sacrifice to the Flesh. And therefore well said our Saviour to shew the Religion such men are of After all these things do the Gentiles seek Matth. 6. 25 Thereby intimating unto us That Christians must seek for diviner things than such as perish in the using for in the seeking of such as these they do not differ from the Gentiles who know not God And yet if we look upon those Professors who do pretend to an Inclosure of all the good things in Heaven we may observe them still inclosing as many good things as they can
seven times a day and in many things we offend all and no flesh is righteous in the sight of God § 9. The Answer to it is briefly This That 't is not said by our Master Be ye as perfect as your Father in Heaven But Be ye perfect as he is perfect Which is as if he should have said Be ye perfect pro modulo as He is perfect sine modo You after your measure as He without it It is meant of a Likeness and not at all of an Equality Be ye perfect as the word perfect is oppos'd to unsincere and only signifies Integrity not as opposed to Infirm and signifies absolute perfection Or to expound it more exactly Our Master speaks in that place touching the latitude of our Charity which he would not have confin'd within the limits of our Country or our Acquaintance our Friends and Brethren But he would have us extend our Love as our Father in Heaven extendeth His as well to our Enemies as to our Friends That this is the meaning of the Text is very evident from the Context and from the parallel place of Scripture Luke 6. 36. where on the very same occasion of exhorting his Disciples to love their Enemies he concludes in these words Be ye merciful as your Father in Heaven is merciful But now suppose that That Text were to be literally expounded and that our Master had commanded us not only an impartial but an immaculate obedience an obedience without Sin as well as without Unsincerity yet by Aristotle's Rule which may be a Rule amongst Christians too That what is possible by our Friends is also possible to us our Obedience may be adequate to the very exactest of his Commands For our Master is our Friend as he himself hath call'd himself Iohn 13. 15. And he hath satisfied the Law as well by his Active as by his Passive Obedience And this he hath done in our behalf too And if by the Friendship of our Master imputing to us his own Obedience his Commands are foesible and to be done If we can do all things through Him that strengthens us by his Grace through Him that directs us by his Example through him that satisfies for our Rebellions by his perfection of Obedience in our Behalf we can never sure complain of an Egyptian Task-master But may modestly rather make him St. Austin's Challenge Da Domine quod jubes jube quod vis Do thou command us ô Lord even what thou wilt whilst thou dost give us both to will and also to do what thou commandest § 10. Come we now from the first unto the following Ingredients of which a perfectly good Master must be compos'd He sets his Servants such a Task as is not only possible but easy too nor only easy to be done but pleasant commonly in the doing First so easy to be done that Sincerity is imputed and reckon'd to us in stead of Innocence and a well-meant Endeavour doth pass with Christ for a Performance Himself hath told us Matth. 7. 7. That as pretious as Heaven is we may have it for the asking As inaccessibly as God is plac'd we may find him for the seeking And as fast as the Door is shut we shall have it open'd for but the knocking 'T is true indeed our good Master hath both a Yoke and a Burden Matth. 11. 30. But the one is so easy and the other is so light that even his Yoke gives us freedom and his Burden strength It is therefore a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or cold expression in St. Iohn to say His Commandments are not grievous for to use the Physician 's Language they are cordial and restaurative to such as faint paregorical and anodynous to such as are in great pain Witness the Recipe which is given by the great Physician of our Souls Matth. 11. 29. where first having praemised Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you Rest he presently adds this Receipt 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Take my Yoke upon you that is my Praecepts and ye shall find Rest unto your Souls He binds us we see But with silken Fetters He loads us indeed But as the Poets loaded Atlas when they plac'd that Heaven upon his shoulders without the Influence of which he could not have stood upon his Feet Thus our Lord without a fiction bids us bear our own Prop and undergo such a Burden as holds us up yea such a Burden as mounts us upwards Nor could we soar as high as Heaven if we were not thus laden § 11. Such is the easiness of our Service And then for the pleasantness we have the Verdict of St. Chrysostom 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vertue without a Heaven is so much pleasanter than Vice that all the School of the Peripateticks thought sit to call it their Summum Bonum Nor is there any thing more obvious in several parts of our Gospel than for Grace to be express'd by the Kingdom of Heaven As if our present state of Grace were the Inchoation of our Glory and that by the newness of our Life we did but antedate our Resurrection The greatest Happiness under Heaven being as Aristotle defines it when our Souls are ever working by the square and directions of the most exact and consummate vertue For what but this was the design of our own good Master in that Abridgment of all his Precepts Be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect § 12. That other Master of mens Souls Christ's Competitor for our Service treats all his Vassals with greater Tyranny than even the Malice of Zosimus could describe in Constantine or Suetonius in Vespasian Not only puts excize upon their offices of Nature and makes them prostitute their Daughters to pay their Tribute But even tortures them with the moral of what the Poets could but Invent. Uses the Proud man like Sisyphus the Envious like Prometheus the Avaricious like Tantalus and the Lustful like Ixion But now with This let us compare the most reasonable Service which Christ injoyns He does not busy us at once about many things For his Commandments at the largest are but a Decalogue and yet are shrunk to a Dichotomie The whole Duty of a Christian being only This To love his God with all his heart and his Neighbour as himself Now is there any thing in the world either more suitable to our Nature or more agreable to our desires I mean to our desires either of profit or reputation than to love God and our Neighbour after the measure that he injoyns Nothing sure is more noble than by the loving of our God to become his Favourites and Friends nothing more profitable or gainful than by the loving of our Neighbour to lay up Treasure upon use in the Bank of Heaven Yet into these two Bottoms the several Duties of a Christian are all wound up Which if we unravel into Particulars what a
their Brother Demas Or else like Agrippa 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they are within a very little of being good Christians as having made a fair shift to pass the narrowness of the way but only sticking as 't were at last at the straitness of the Gate As if when after a tedious march they are advanced as far as the Door of Heaven they would not be at the pains to enter in I cannot exemplifie what I say with so much pertinence to my Text as by the young and wealthy Ruler concerned in it It appears by the Question which here he makes and by his Care of the Commandments v. 20. and by our Saviour's Love to him v. 21. that he was one of some growth in his Master's School But withal it appears v. 22. that he shrunk at the thought of an harder Lesson He had observed the Commandments even from his youth That was well but not enough For one thing he lacked as his own Good Master told him even the selling all he had and giving it to the Poor But as if he had forgotten the generosity of his Quaestion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what shall I do whereby he evidently imply'd he would stick at nothing which by this his Good Master should be injoyn'd he was sad at that saying and went away grieved And the reason of it was He had great Possessions v. 23. It seems a Treasure here on Earth is so commonly inconsistent with one in Heaven that we must part with the one to injoy the other And agreably our Saviour Matth. 13. 46. compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a Pearl of great price which a Merchant sold all he had to purchase Great Possessions do so incumber a spiritual Traveller in his Iourney that the Door of Heaven to a Dives is in the Judgment of our Master who cannot err as the Eye of a Needle to a Camel v. 25. which 't is impossible he should enter or be able to pass through unless by crumbling his Possessions into as many small parts as there are objects of his Charity to assist him in the Division I do not say as many parts as there are poor men and women who crave for Alms the parts would then be too little and instead of entring the Needles Eye would fall beside it But I say as many parts as there are objects of his Charity which all are not who are very poor because their Poverty may be their Sin by an obvious Metonymy of the efficient for the effect unjustly gotten for want of labour and for the same want of labour unjustly kept Else our Laws had been unchristian in providing a Bridewell and a Beadle for such as beg nay St. Paul had been cruel in condemning some of them to dye by Famin. For he commanded his Thessalonians that if any would not labour they should not eat 2 Thess. 3. 10. But to resume my Discourse where this Parenthesis made me leave it we see the Camel or the Rich man may not only be enabled to pass the Eye of a Needle that is to say the Door of Heaven by giving the Bunch upon his Back that is his Riches to the Poor but he may do it and still be rich nor can be rich in good works until 't is done For though by having great Possessions he is in a capacity of being rich yet truly His they cannot be until he has mercifully employ'd them Quas dederis solas semper habebis Opes But however this is pertinent to as much of my Text as I am upon if the wealthy man's Quaestion be duly compar'd with the following Answers yet it seems 't is so sublime and so untrodden a piece of our Lord's Philosophy so very heterodox and strange to the conceptions of Carnality that it either transcendeth our Capacities or is too opposite to our Desires Such incompatible Masters are God and Mammon that as Conscience by a Proverb is the poor man's Vertue so Life Eternal by a Promise is the poor man's Reward For though to have life wedded to Eternity is a Match we like well yet unwilling we are often to pay the Dowry We are commonly more inclinable to part with our Sweat than with our Mony and are readier of the two to earn Heaven than to buy it And yet this Earning of it also as it does too much exceed our strength so it too much crosses our Inclinations We are contented to serve our Master but so as it may stand with our ease and leisure Like that Disciple in St. Matthew who was willing and ready to follow Christ but so as in the first place to bury his Father Or like them that were bid to the wedding Feast if we have nothing else to do we are forsooth his humble Servants But if we have either a Field to prove a yoke of Oxen to try or a Wife to marry we receive and return his Invitation with an I pray you have me excus'd If he invites us to the Miracle of Loaves and Fishes then indeed the Case is alter'd and we shall flock to him by thousands But if we are bid to sup with him upon a Mess of sowre Herbs as at the Passover or to partake of an Oleo made of Vinegar and Gall as at the time of his Crucifixion then we affect being abstemious we lay our hand upon our mouth and thank him as much as if we did That is to say in all such Cases either we are not at leisure or else we do not like our Fare Whereas when the Master is so transcendently Good that for the work of a few Minutes he gives an Eternity of Reward we should prevent his Commands with a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what kind of Service wilt thou command us we should afford him for shame as great a Resignedness of Wills as that Heathen man Cleanthes gave to his Iupiter and his Fate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Since on condition that he saves us we care not how we should invite him to command us we care not what and to lead us we care not whither We should give him up our Souls as so many Blanks or unwritten Tables aequally susceptible of all which our Master shall be pleas'd to imprint upon us For in the Eighteenth Chapter of St. Luke v. 17. Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God that is the Praecepts of the Gospel 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as a little Child that is as one who is passive and of a teachable Disposition impartially receptive of all impressions which the Tenor of the Gospel shall stamp upon him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith our Saviour he shall in no wise enter therein And this no doubt is the meaning of that Petition in the Lord's Prayer Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven Which notes a sufferance saith Tertullian to which when we pray we excite our selves But certainly That cannot be all For we pray in that Petition as well for the
by Snatches but that the Residue of his Time might be wholly God's Many others might here be nam'd Seven at least I am sure who eas'd themselves as being weary of the Great Seal of England in order to their advancement unto far greater things in a World to come And thô it cannot be deny'd but that being Persons of most incorruptible Integrity they might safely have continued in their Great Iudicatures on Earth without the danger of being cast in the Court of Heaven yet they resolv'd to take the Way which they thought the surest as knowing it better to make it easy than meerly possible to be sav'd For they consider'd what they well knew as well by Scripture as by Reason as well by History as by Experience as well by other men's Experience as by their own that thô it is not quite impossible yet'tis a difficult thing on Earth for the very same man to be Great and Innocent to be a Favourite both of This and the other World to fare as deliciously as Dives all his Days here below and yet at last to lye with Lazarus in Abraham's Bosom I am sure Sir Thomas Randolph thought it a thing so rare and difficult to be a man of much Publick and Secular Business and at the same Time to be fit to dye that by Letters he exhorted his intimate Friend Sir Francis Walsingham to bid adieu to all the Wiles of a Principal Secretary of State as He himself had newly done to all the Frauds or an Embassadour for the Number of his Embassies had been no less than Eighteen and to prepare himself by a penitent and private life for the life to come An Admonition very seasonable in regard of Both Persons concerned in it Walsingham to whom and Randolph himself by whom 't was given For they had long liv'd together as eminent Ministers of State and neither of them liv'd long from after the time of This Advice Nor did the one outlive the other above a Month or two at most What induced Queen Mary the Royal Sister of Charles the Fifth to quit her Government of Belgium in Exchange for a private and quiet Life 't is very easy to conjecture but hard to tell Perhaps 't was chiefly out of Reverence to the Example of her Brother as 't was done the same Day wherein He laid down his Empire and Crown of Spain and even wept out of Compassion to his poor Brother and his Son Philip whose feeble Shoulders were now to sink under two such Loads to wit the Kingdom of Spain and the German Empire I say whatever was Her Inducement to do a thing above the Rate of her Sex and Breeding sure we are that Queen Etheldred was wholly induced by her Devotion to forsake the Pomps and Pleasures she might have liv'd in all her days as the Daughter of one King the Widow of another and the Wife of a Third had she not thought it an happier choice to live retiredly in an Abby which she had built and indow'd and was the Abbess of till her Death And not to mention Queen Christina of Sweden or Bambas of Spain unless it be thus by a Paralipsis no fewer than Nine of our own Saxon Kings within the Space of Two hundred years did freely relinquish their Crowns and Kingdoms To which I add That when Ionadab impos'd That strict Command upon his Sons to drink no Wine to build no House to sow no Seed to plant no Vineyard and all their days to dwell in Tents in little despicable Huts by the River Iordan He did not only so command them to shew his Dominion and his Will or only to exercise their Obedience and Self-denial But because he did esteem it the safest state and condition to help enable them for an Innocent and Pious Life § 21. Another Use of This Text is with a Distinction to contradict it We must not seek Great Things for our selves because we must Not Great Things because the Greatest For what can be Greater than a Kingdom and what so Great Kingdom as the Kingdom of God to the seeking of which our Lord excites us Matth. 6. 33. So by St. Paul we are commanded to seek those things that are above Col. 3. 1. Not above us here on Earth but above every thing that is Earthy Nor are we only to seek God's Kingdom thô vastly Great But what is infinitely Greater we are to seek God himself who is The Great Rewarder of Them that diligently seek him and The Rewarder of None besides Heb. 11. 6. Thus the Dehortative Seek not is strongly inforced and urged on by a vehement Exhortation Seek Those Things that are Above Seek the Greatest Things imaginable and Seek them for your selves too Ye have not here a continuing City and therefore Seek one to come For what says the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews The life we have is worth Nothing compar'd with That we hope for Which being yet hid with Christ in God we must seek and seek on till we find it out Some things are Great which are not Good and some are Good but not Great But These are the Good and Great Things which alone are worth seeking and which we are not only allow'd but bid and bound to seek after In comparison with These The Life which is hid with Christ in God The Kingdom of God and God Himself we ought to slight the arrant Nothingness of the Things here below which by a pitiful Catachresis the World calls Great and as devoutly seeks after as after an Heaven upon Earth So every Hillock is a Great thing with a Community of Emmets wherewith 't is Peopled thô 't is not determin'd by Philosophers whether like Bees they are a Kingdom or like some other Insects a Commonwealth But yet as Great as That Hillock does seem to Them we know 't is no bigger in respect of all the Earth than All the Earth in respect of Heaven And yet so it is notwithstanding their littleness and their contemptibility we do no more excel Them in point of Quantity and Strength than they do us in the good Qualities of Peace and Prudence For all Communities of Emmets are still at Agreement among Themselves are never indanger'd much less destroy'd by any Intestine or Homebred either Divisions or Insurrections Whereas We have a Kingdom so sadly divided against It self that wicked men hope and wise men fear and there is ground for a suspicion it cannot long stand § 22. Now to shew the Real Littleness the Prophet Esa calls it the Nothingness of the Great Things below being weighed in the Ballance with Those Above It will not probably be amiss to put them Both into the Scales that so we may see how much the later weigh down the former First the Great Things below are but figuratively such and secundum quid somewhat Great in Appearance but not indeed or only Great in their relation to what is very much less and
both our Feet § 20. Thus we see this very Precept which seems a very rough Part of our Saviour's Yoke and a very heavy part of his Burden too does upon serious Consideration appear as Easy and as Light as any Servant can expect from so kind a Lord. For this Maxim being praemis'd as most unquestionable and cogent That without the pursuing of Peace and Holiness no man living shall see the Lord And that no unclean Thing can ever enter into the Kingdom of Heaven but does inevitably belong to the Commonwealth of Hell how could our Master have obliged us with better expressions of his love than by Commanding us to flee from the wrath to come and to forbear the least evil which may possibly lead unto the greatest rather to crucifie the Flesh than permit it to defile and destroy the Spirit even to pluck out our right Eye rather than suffer it to pollute us to lose any thing rather than Heaven to indure any thing rather than Hell And rather to smart for some Time than to all Eternity § 21. Say then again thou Habitual Sinner or who ever else thou art who hast a Share in the Objection Since 't is thy Duty and thy Interest to bear the Yoke of Christ's Precepts and the Burden of his Cross with Faith and Patience by whomsoever 't is laid upon thee whether spitefully by others or piously by thy self what pretense canst thou invent for thy unkindness to those Commandments which are not only not grievous but very agreeable to thy Nature if at least thou retainest and hast not rooted out that Nature which the God of Good nature implanted in thee or what Apologie canst thou make for thy starting aside from the Cross of Christ which alone can exalt thee to wear a Crown nor that a meer Earthly and Perishing Crown but one which fadeth not away eternal in the Heavens So that admitting the Cross of Christ were heavy or grievous in it self yet in respect of thy Reward it should cease to be so Shall any Thing be call'd grievous which does evidently tend to thy greatest Good All the Apologie Thou canst make and all the Reason thou canst give is that thou art not yet arrived at a True Christian Faith nor by consequence at a Love of the Lord Jesus in Sincerity For do but imagin honest Friend thou wert just falling from a Praecipice or from the Pinacle of a Temple And a Neighbour standing by should thrust his hand to thy Rescue and catching hold of thine Arm should snatch thee back with such a vehement and sudden Twinge as either to dislocate or break a Bone would'st thou be angry with thy Neighbour for so much rudeness And in stead of being thankful for springing in to thy Deliverance would'st thou accuse him of being hasty and quarrel the roughness of his motion asking why he did not use thee with greater softness and would not deliberate before he acted would'st thou not rather kneel down before him and make an offer of obedience as well as thanks and look upon him thenceforwards as dearer to thee than thy life And in case thou art a rich man as He a poor one would'st thou not give him an yearly Pension for such an obliging act of Friendship as that ransoming of Thy life with the utmost hazard of his own Apply this now to the Case in hand Imagin as strongly as thou art able that thou art even now falling into the Bottomless Pit of Hell a Lake eternally burning with Fire and Brimstone And suppose in this Case that God the Son shall spring forth from the Bosom of God the Father ascend the Cross with set purpose to fetch thee down and descend into the Grave for no other end than to raise thee up And go purposely into Hell to fetch thee back from thence to Heaven Wilt thou repine at That Deliverance in case the violence of the Twitch shall happen to cost thee a little pain or be displeas'd with thy Deliverer in case he should not set thee Free at a cheaper rate than that of taking off the Weights that kept thee down that is by mortifying the Flesh with the Affections and Lusts by Commanding thee to be clean and pure and holy And that for this obliging reason because thy happiness does depend on thy being Such Wilt thou grumble at thy Physician for being severely Faithful to thee in using the means of thy Recovery Or wilt thou not rather bethink thy self with the Royal Psal mist Quid Retribuam What shall I render unto the Lord for all his Benefits and Blessings bestow'd upon me If this Redeemer of thine is poor as in his Members indeed he is wilt thou not give him an yearly Pension devote a Part of thy Revenue to Pious uses as a small Token that thou resentest his Goodness to thee or admit that He is Great as in Himself he is immensly and unspeakably such wilt thou not Sacrifice unto him the constant Tribute of thy obedience though he should rigidly command thee to fight with Anakims and Lyons to fetch him Water from Bethleem or Grapes from Canaan Suppose he orders thee as he does to pluck out an Eye of Lust or Vanity To cut off an Hand of Fraud or Violence To cast away a Foot which is swift to shed blood rather than keep them to thy undoing wilt thou not execute those orders for the Love of thy Saviour and of thy self too rather than thine Eye shall find the right Rode to Hell Thine Hand work out thine own damnation Thy Foot carry thee in the Broad way which leadeth to Destruction Imagin strongly that thy Saviour does long as much for thy obedience as King David did to drink of the Well of Bethlem Christ as Perfectly out of kindness as David out of Curiosity Wilt thou not do as much for Christ as David's Soldiers did for Him what They did to please David was at the Peril of their Lives But what thou dost to please Christ is for the Safety of thine own And 't is so natural for a man to pursue his own Interest that there is no better way to make a Rebel become Obedient than by convincing him of This That 't is his interest to be so as well as Duty Although a man be such a passionate Idolizer of his Wealth that he will part with his Blood a great deal sooner than with his Mony yet a desperate fit of Sickness will make him send for the Physician And He conceiving it for his Interest will give him very large Fees too The tenderest Person and the most delicate who values his Body above his Soul if he esteems it for his Interest to have a Member saw'd off being infested with a Gangraene will as I said a little before even hire the Chirurgion to use his Tool And after the very same manner as well as on the same ground He who is now the greatest Enemy both to the Counsels and Commandments
Rom. 3. 27. And as the whole Moral Law was published by Christ as well as Moses which any man may see who will not wink in the fifth sixth and seventh Chapters of St. Matthew so Christ as well as Moses thought fit to give it upon a Mountain Nor is it unworthy our observation That throughout the New Testament though there is many times a Precept without a Promise annexed to it yet there is not one Promise which is not clogg'd with some Precept As if our Saviour had esteemed it an easier thing to make us believing and orthodox Christians than obedient and sincere ones According to which he elsewhere tells us that they only shall enter into the Kingdom of his Father not that call upon his Name but that do his Will Nay as there he goes on in the following Verses Though a man may have Faith to the working of Miracles yet if it be built upon the Sand as most certainly it is when 't is not seconded with obedience he foretells what he will say unto men of that sort at the Day of Judgment 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I never knew you Not that Christ can be ignorant of their persons or their works to whom he will say I never knew you For even that very saying imports he knew them well enough that is he knew them to be such as did deserve that such words should be spoken to them And therefore the meaning must needs be this I never knew you to be members of my Body or to be sheep of my Fold that is I know you to be Persons I cannot own For as to know in the holy Dialect does often signifie to approve so not to know does very often import no more than to disown I must confess we might think it exceeding strange but that our Oracle does assure us 't is very true That as Believers we may be able to cast out Devils and yet as Disobedient may be our selves possess 't with them We may preach to save others and yet be Castaways our selves For be we never so zealous Preachers or Professors of the Gospel and at the very same time Indulgent Transgressors of the Law our very Advocate will say when he shall come to be our Iudge 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Depart from me ye workers of Iniquity And therefore our blessed Saviour being about to leave the world and to teach his Disciples before he left them how to serve him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in such a manner as he would like did not speak in this stile If ye love me cast all your Care upon my Promises or If you love me stoutly rely upon my merits althô there is a place for each of these too But as preparatory to Both If ye love me keep my Commandments John 14. 15. which was as if he should have said shew me your Faith by your works and your Love by your obedience Plainly implying to Them and Us that our Sonship does not give us any Exemption from our Service our Service being the only thing by which we are able to prove our Sonship As Christ hath a Priestly and a Prophetical so hath he also a Kingly Office Nor may we kick at the Scepter and Throne of Christ and think it sufficient to declare we are his Majesty's most humble and loyal Subjects Some Earthly Potentates have been thus mock'd but the King of Kings will never be so We cannot honour our Lord by disobeying him or shew our selves kind by being undutiful For we see that our obedience is both the Argument and the Badge of a True Affection Our Saviour saith Matth. 10. 38. He that follows me not is unworthy of me Where to follow him is to be like him To conform our selves to him more than a Parasite to his Patron not to walk in his Path only but to tread in his very Footsteps According to that of the Pythagoreans which deserves for its worth to be Christianiz'd however writ by that Hierocles who writ a Book against Christ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Thou shalt honour God the better the more thou studiest to be like him For him we love most whom we most imitate and he honours God best who doth best resemble him And what kind of Resemblance he most requires St. Iohn hath told us twice together in his first Epistle and third Chapter to wit our being pure as he is pure v. 3. and our being Righteous as he is Righteous v. 7. And our Saviour to the same purpose having mustred up his Precepts with the several Promises annext makes a kind of a Corollarie or rather Abridgment of the whole not at all with a command that we be happy as God is happy but with an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be ye perfect as he is perfect Thus as briefly and yet as fully as I could possibly contrive I have shew'd the chiefest end of our blessed Saviour's coming hither and his principal Business when he was here It was not only as a Saviour to propose Promises to our Faith nor only as a Teacher to fiill our heads with new knowledge but as a Soveraign and a Prince as St. Peter calls him to exact obedience to his Commands And to place it without dispute He made it part of his business when he was here to let us know why he came hither For as he tells us in one place enough to keep us from despair that he came not to destroy mens lives but to save them so he tells us in another enough to keep us from presumption that he came not to destroy the Law but to save and preserve That also and that in each sense of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not by fulfilling it only but by filling it up too For thô nothing could be completer than the Law Moral in it self yet did he fill up those vacuities which Moses left in his Delivery From all which it follows do what we can that Unless our Righteousness shall exceed the Righteousness of the Iews we shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven For can there be any thing more agreeable to the judgment of common Sense I had almost said of Carnality it self than that where God hath afforded a greater Stock he should expect a greater Increase that where he hath strengthened the Shoulders he should in proportion increase the Burden And that as he hath shrunk up the Mosaical Law so he should also extend the Moral Of Moses we know that he had a Vail upon his Promises as well as upon his Face and was as obscure upon Mount Nebo as before he had been upon Mount Sinai Whereas our Antitype of Moses hath been graciously pleas'd to uncover Both. The Iews beheld Christ as in a Glass but we in comparison face to face They walk't by Twilight but we by the Sun in his Meridian They were us'd like little Children but we like Men. They had a Sensible
empty Mormo to Them whose Faculties are possess 't with a spirit of slumber being benumn'd by those foolish and hurtful Lusts which drown the Soul in Misery and Perdition Some are either so intangled with worldly Cares or else so transported with carnal Pleasures they do so hunger after some sins and so thirst after others and are so satisfied in the misery of injoying God's Anger by being at a full agreement with Sin and Hell that they are still too much diverted by offering Sacrifice to their Senses to be able to reflect or to look before them Either they do not at all remember in the midst of their Injoyments that for all these things God will bring them to Iudgment or if some times they do they straight contrive how to forget it And if nothing else will either Wine or Women or Sleep or Musick or all these together will put it out of their Remembrance Prosperity is a weapon which hardly one in Ten Thousand hath ever known how to wield No not Solomon the wise in a state of Grace no nor Adam the uncorrupt in a state of Innocence no nor Lucifer the Beatified in a state of Glory They that have so much Peace without as to beget a stupefaction call'd Peace within who live at ease in their Possessions and have a great Friendship with the World will be rather lifted up like the men of Ephraim or fall a kicking like Iesurun or stretch themselves upon their Couches and drink Wine in Bowls like the wantons in Zion of whom we read in the Prophet Amos than let it enter into their Thoughts That the Feet of those Darlings do lead to Death and that their Hands take hold of Hell They will be otherways employ'd than in contriving how to stand in the Day of wrath or in studying what to do that they may be sav'd It concerns us therefore to pray with the Poenitent Emperour Mauritius That God will use us as he did here the frighted Iailour of Philippi even terrifie and scare us out of our carnal Security into which our successes are apt to cast us and awaken us into a sense of the great Concernment of our Souls That he will fetch us unto Himself although it be by the sharpest and dreadful'st Methods That he will use us as severely as once he did Nebuchadnezzar even drive us from the Comforts of Human Society and Converse And give us our Dwelling with the Beasts of the Field That he will make us eat Grass as an Herd of Oxen and let our Bodies be wet with the Dew of Heaven until we come to consider as well as know That the most high God ruleth in the Kingdoms of men And that the great year of Recompence will shortly come when he will put a vast difference between the Wheat and the Chaff taking the one into his Garner and burning up the other with Fire unquenchable If after all his fair warnings both by his Prophets and by his Rod after his shaking the very Foundations both of a Kingdom and of a Church as here he shook Those of the Jailour's Prison And now if after his shooting at us not only with his venom'd but invisible Arrow the Plague of Pestilence we are not quicken'd into a sense of our Sin and Misery It is but high time to pray for what we most of all deprecate That to the end we our selves may be some way better'd He will make a much worse thing happen to us That He will make us as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Dung and Refuse of the Earth That he will load us at once with Disgrace and Torment whilst from the Pleasures and the Plenty he reduces us to the Beggary and Byles of Iob. That he will do to us in Mercy what St. Paul decreed in Iustice to his Incestuous Corinthian even deliver us up to Satan for the Destruction of the Flesh that our Spirits may be saved in the Day of the Lord Iesus That finding This to be a cruel and an inhospitable World we may live in it as Pilgrims and Sojourners on the Earth That our weariness of This may make us long and look out for a better Country That being brought to the Extremity of lying with Lazarus and the Dogs at the Rich man's Door we may be thereby instructed if not compell'd to cast about how we may lodge also with Lazarus in Abraham's Bosom This I say is our Interest and so it should be our option Therefore our wish and our Contrivance and by Consequence our Prayer That if we cannot be brought to God but by the Buffettings of Satan nor be made in love with Heaven without a Foretast of Hell which hath been to most Patients the wholsom'st Med'cin that then he will make our very Torments a means of Bliss that he will make our very Destroyer become an Instrument of our Safety and even give us up to Satan to deliver us from him That he will bless us with the Miseries of a sinful World and wean us utterly from the Flesh by making it loathsom to our Remembrance For That God who at the first commanded Light out of Darkness and an Harmony of Creatures out of an indigested Chaos can by the same creative Power so over-rule and dispose of our three Grand Enemies the World the Flesh and the Devil as to make them three Antidotes against the Venom of Themselves To give an Instance in each of These The terrible Buffettings and Roarings of the Lyon or the Dragon that is the Devil are made an excellent kind of Antidote against the serpentine Wiles and Allurements of him The many Deceiptfulnesses and Frauds and cruel Usages of the World do make the fittest Prophylactick against its Vanities and its Pomps The natural rottenness and stench and noysom Diseases of the Flesh become the best 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 against its Lusts. Just as the Bitings of the Scorpion are said to be cured by the skin or as the Fire of the Chymist in Spirits of Wine is most anodynous and asswaging to whosoever hath been burned or scalded with it Or as the Root Mandihoca though of it self a rank Poyson does with no greater praeparation than that of its being well press't afford a Meal to make Bread for many great Nations in America And shall we not pray that by any means be they never so pungent by any Method be it never so sharp we may be made to perform our Vow in Baptism by forsaking the Devil and all his works the Pomps and Vanities of the World with the sinful Lusts of the Flesh If hardly any thing but Shipwracks will make us pray we are deeply concern'd to pray for Shipwracks If we are grown so Atheistical as not to cry out to God and the Lord Iesus Christ but in a Fit of the Strangury or the Stone well may we pray for such Fits as St. Basil once did for a Relapse into his
with Silas in soothing up the poor Iailour and sowing Pillows under his Elbowes which is no better than to dawb with untemper'd Morter to lead their Convert into a Paradise wherein there lurks both an old and a cunning Serpent A Serpent apt to persuade him and by the help of this Text That though there are in the Gospel which is the Garden of God a great many sorts of forbidden fruit yet 't is so far from being deadly that 't is not dangerous to taste it as the best of God's Children have ever done so long as he can eat of the Tree of Faith too which is not only better tasted but also wholsomer by far than the Tree of Knowledge by being grafted on the stock of the Tree of Life What I say might be the Motive which induced Paul and Silas to give this Answer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Believe and be sav'd Is there more than This needful or is there not If any thing more than this is needful for the attainment of Salvation why then did They conceal it and that from one who even thirsted after a full Draught of Knowledge What was the All he was to do that he might be sav'd Or if This is so sufficient that nothing more than this is needful what Necessity is there of preaching or of learning any thing else For as when it was said by our Blessed Saviour It is easier for a Camel to pass the Eye of a Needle than for a Rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven his Disciples ask't presently Who then can be sav'd so when to One that had inquired what he must do that he might be sav'd no other Answer was given by Paul and Silas than that he must believe in the Lord Iesus Christ It may be ask't with as good reason who then can be damn'd For thus we see the way to Heaven is not only made Broader but less incumber'd than That to Hell The Flock of Christ is made a great and a numerous Flock So as The Kingdom of Heaven is but improperly compar'd unto a Pearl of great Price which a Merchant sold all that he had to purchase since one may have it for a Believing in the Lord Iesus Christ. All which being Absurdities and very profanely inconsistent with the Veracity of our Saviour may seem to speak Paul and Silas to be a Couple of gross Casuists for having given the Jailour's Quaere so lame and partial a Resolution But This again is an Absurdity as little allowable as the former For besides that All Scripture is of Divine Inspiration and Paul and Silas in particular had been acknowledged by The Daemoniack in the 17th Verse of this Chapter to be The Servants of the most high God who shew unto us the way of Salvation The Text which now lyes before us may be justified by a Parallel out of our Saviour's own Mouth For having been asked by the People who flock't about him at Capernaum what they should do that they might work the work of God John 6. 28. This reply'd our blessed Lord is the work of God That ye BELIEVE on Him whom He hath sent v. 29. In so much that to obviate and to satisfie all Objections we must not quarrel or suspect but meekly study to understand and explain the Text. Which I shall first attempt to do by a full Division and after That not by a curious but by a pertinent and useful Tractation of it § 5. First to Divide the Text aright and so as that it may contain an Explication of its Importance we must view and review it in its double relation to the Context I mean in its Dependance on the words going before and its Cohaerence with the two Verses which do immediately follow after The words before are an Inquiry touching the Thing of all the World which is to every man living of greatest moment even the Necessary Means of his being sav'd This is the Ground and the Occasion and Introduction to the Text. The Text it self is an obscure because a short Resolution of That Inquiry And the two Verses coming after do very happily though briefly and so indeed the less plainly expound it to us The Inquiry was made by the frighted Iailour of Philippi The Resolution is given by Paul and Silas The Exposition is St. Luke's to whom we also owe the Narrative and the Contexture of the whole The Text abstractively consider'd does afford at first view but a single Act and a single Object Yet in relation to the Context each of these is twofold one whereof is express'd and the other imply'd First the Object here express'd is in sensu composito The Lord Iesus Christ. And this is Objectum formale Quod. It is not Christ without Iesus nor is it Iesus without The Lord. For That were the gross and common Fallacy A benè conjunctis ad malè divisa which yet the Flesh of most Professors is apt to impose upon their spirits He is in all his Three Offices to be the Object of our Belief And in his Three special Titles his Threefold Office is here included His Prophetical in the first his Priestly in the second and his Kingly in the third If Salvation is the end and if we aspire to have it also the event of our Belief we must impartially believe in the whole Messias Not as Iesus only a Saviour no nor only as Christ a King but undividedly and at once as the Lord Iesus Christ. This is the Object of our Faith which is here express'd Next the Word of God preach'd is the object of our Faith which is here imply'd And as the men of the Schools do love to word it This is Fidei objectum formale Quo. For as Faith cometh by Hearing and Hearing by the Word of God which Word cannot be heard without a Preacher so no sooner was it said by Paul and Silas that the Jailour must believe in the Lord Iesus Christ but in the next breath it follows They spake unto him the WORD of God v. 32. They had in vain told him he must had they not taught him how he might And therefore they did not only possess him with the necessity of his believing But in tenderness to his Soul they straight afforded him the means too They did not train up their Convert like the Catechists of Rome only to believe as the Church believes that is to say by a blind and implicit Faith making Ignorance and Credulity the only Parents of Devotion But they built up his Faith on the Foundation of the Scriptures That by the knowledge of some Praemisses which he might easily comprehend he might attain to a Belief of what was yet Incomprehensible To beget in him a solid and a well-grounded Faith such as whereof he might be able to give a rational Accompt they both exhorted him to believe in and also preached to him the WORD of the Lord Jesus Christ the object of our Faith which
Vengeance on Them that know not God and that obey not the Gospel of Iesus Christ Or if thou canst not think undauntedly upon the opening of the Books out of which thou must be judged and that from this consideration that the Father judgeth no Man but hath committed all Iudgment unto the Son I say if thou hast not attained to This Thou dost not perfectly believe in the Lord Iesus Christ Dost not fully lay hold on his golden Scepter Dost not receive him as a Saviour by whose Blood thou art cleansed from all thy sins Dost not look upon Christ as an Elder Brother or behave thy self as one having the spirit of Adoption Dost not behold him in his High-Priesthood after the Order of Melchisedech and all for want of that Eye of Faith by help of which with St. Stephen Thou mightst see the Heavens opened and Iesus sitting at the right hand of God ever making Intercession with groanings not to be uttered and rendring his Father propitious to thee § 19. I will not say Thou shalt be damn'd if thou arrivest not exactly at this Perfection because I know there are Degrees of Salvisick Grace in proportion to the Degrees of the Beatisick Glory And though thou art not of Their Magnitude who shall shine forth as the Sun in the Kingdom of their Father Matth. 13. 43. yet Thou mayst possibly be of Theirs who are to shine as the stars for ever and ever Dan. 12. 3. But when I consider how great a stress is laid by God in the New Testament upon the Habit of Believing in the Lord Iesus Christ And weigh the stress of those things that are laid upon it with all the Requisites in Scripture that hold it up I cannot in faithfulness to my Text or in Iustice and Charity to my Readers say less than This That whosoever they are amongst us who are solicitous with the Iailour to know the Minimum quod sic of a Christian's Duty and how much they must do that they may be sav'd If they do not so assent to the veracity of a Saviour so depend upon his Power and his Propensity to save them so submit unto his Pleasure and so conform unto his Praecepts and on the Grounds before mention'd so apply unto Themselves their Saviour's Merits and Mediation as that in lieu of forsaking Christ to serve The Flesh and the Devil They do forsake them both at once for the Service of Christ And reckon their Happiness even on Earth to consist in those Pleasures which Minds the most uncorrupted do most approve of such as are The Love of Christ The Satisfaction of an unblameable and a well-ordered life The Testimonial of a Pure and so a Peaceable Conscience The finding out of God's Will revealed to them in his Word The generous Pleasure of abstaining from all sorts of false and forbidden Pleasures A real Carelesness and Contempt of all the Vanities of this World and A well-grounded Expectation of all the Glories in the next so as no kind of outward or temporal Sufferings can deprive them of their inward and spiritual Ioys but still they hold fast their Confidence and the Rejoycing of the hope firm unto the End I say if Christians rest satisfied with less than This I cannot say that their Election is yet so sure in it self as the Apostle St. Peter shews how to make it Nor can I say They do believe in the Lord Iesus Christ so as to answer the whole Design of Paul and Silas in the Text or so as that I can assure them they shall be sav'd § 20. Why then should we suffer our Eyes to sleep or the Temples of our Heads to take any rest 'till we are owners of such a Faith as will infallibly serve our turn That is such a Faith as a man may live by such a Faith as by which we may be sure to please God or at least without which it is impossible to please him For however it is the free and the sole Gift of God yet 't is for us not to resist it but rather to give it a good Reception and to retain it when it is given not to squander it away or to keep it useless which is expressed by our receiving the Grace of God in vain 2 Cor. 6. 1. Nay farther yet it is for us by diligent search into the Scriptures and constant practice of Self-denials and Importunity added to Prayer and by watching thereunto with all Perseverance not only to receive and to retain the Grace of God but over and above to abound more and more 1 Thess 4. 1. That is to say we must employ and improve our Talent not hide it under a Bushel of worldly Cares or smother it in a Bed of unlawful Pleasures And seeing 't is God that worketh in us both to will and to do of his good Pleasure we as Labourers with God are bound to work out our Faith in the very same sense in which we are to work out our own Salvation Philip. 2. 12. never ceasing to make a Progress from Faith to Faith 'till we attain unto The Evidence of Things not seen and the Substance of Things hoped for even a Practical and a Cordial and an Habitual Belief in the Lord Jesus Christ Not as a Prophet only to teach us Nor as a Prince only to rule us But as an Advocate and a Priest too who is incessantly procuring and pouring his Benefits upon us To whom accordingly with the Father in the Unity of the Spirit let us evermore ascribe as is ever due Blessing Glory Honour and Power from this Time forwards for evermore AN IMPROVEMENT OF THE INQUIRY Taken from the Mouth of A Iewish Convert AND Containing in its Parts A Resolution unto it self AN IMPROVEMENT OF THE INQUIRY c. MARK X. 17. And when he was gone forth into the way there came one running and kneeled to him and asked him Good Master what shall I do that I may inherit Eternal Life BEHOLD the only great Scruple to be discussed and resolv'd the only Necessary Quaestion to be proposed and laid to heart by all that live in these Sceptical and Disputative Times Wherein there is hardly perhaps a Family much less a Parish much less a City or a Town in which the shape of mens Iudgments and by consequence of their Souls is not almost as various as that of Faces For though the most of men are travelling to the same Iourneys End yet it is saith Boêthius diverso tramite they love to walk towards it in several Paths Happiness is a Thing which the worst men aym at But they discover by their Inquiries what variety of ways they take to miss it with how much Industry and Expence with how much Carelesness and Care too they do not only arrive at this to have their Labour for their Pains but also purchase to themselves a most costly Ruin at once a most pudendous and most
Fortunes are our Conversation will be above 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. we shall behave our selves as men who are free of God's City Our Hearts will evermore be There unless our Treasure is somewhere else If the Kingdom of Heaven is that Pearl of great Price to which our Lord in his Parable thought fit to liken it And if we are those Merchants that traffick for it we cannot choose but be busy in our Inquiries after the Price still resolving upon the Purchase at any Rate that can be ask't and ever asking what we shall give or as here what we shall do that we may any ways inherit Eternal Life So it follows again on the other side That if we are commonly looking downwards and behave our selves here as men at home as if we did not intend any farther Iourney If the Burden of our Inquiries is such as This What shall we do to live long upon the Earth and not see the Grave or what shall we do to escape going to Heaven 'till such time as we are pass't the pleasant Injoyments of the Earth how shall we put the evil Day afar off how shall we be saved without Repentance or repent without Amendment or amend no more than will serve our turn what shall we do to be good enough and yet no better than needs we must what shall we do to serve two Masters and reconcile the two Kingdoms of God and Mammon and so confute what is said by our blessed Saviour in the Sixteenth of St. Luke what for a Religion wherein to live with most pleasure and one to dye in with greatest safety what shall we do to live the Life of the sensual'st Epicure and yet at last dye the Death of the strictest Saint If I say our Affections are clinging thus unto the Earth It is an absolute Demonstration that all our Treasure is here below and that we are men of the present world in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds For our Saviour's famous Rule is at once of universal and endless Truth Wheresoever the Carkass is there the Eagles will be gathered together wheresoever our Treasure is there our Hearts will be also And whither our Hearts are gone before the Case is evident and clear our Tongues and our Actions will follow after § 7. Now since these are the Inquiries of several Seekers to wit of Them who do affect to dwell here and of them that look out for a better Country that is an heavenly And since we may judge by their Inquiries to which kind of Master they do belong to God or Mammon 'T is plain the Lesson or the Use we are to take from it is This that when we find our selves beset with a twofold evil the one of Sin and the other of Affliction in so much as we know not which way to turn there being on the right hand a fear of Beggery or Disgrace and on the left hand a fear of Hell when I say we are reduced to such an hard pinch of our Affairs we must not carnally cast about and tacitly say within our selves what shall we do to keep our Livelyhoods or what shall we do to hold fast our Lives But what shall we do to keep a good Conscience and to hold fast our Integrity And since 't is nobler to be led by the hope of a Reward than to be frighted into our Duties by the fear of being punish't if we neglect them let us not ask like the Children of Hagar in the spirit of Bondage which is unto fear what shall we do that we may not inherit a Death Aeternal But as the Children of Sarah in the spirit of Adoption which is unto hope what shall we do that we may inherit Aeternal Life Which Life being hid with Christ in God as St. Paul speaks to the Colossians for God's sake whither should we go either to seek it when it is absent or to find it when it is hid or to secure it when it is found unless to Him who hath the words of Eternal Life that is the words which are the means by which alone we may attain to Eternal Life The words which teach us how to know it the words which tell us where to seek it the words which shew us how to find it the words which afford us those Rules and Precepts by our conformity unto which we cannot but take it into possession There is no other Name to make us Inheritors of Eternity but only the Name of our Lord Iesus Christ Acts 4. 12. And considering what is said by our blessed Saviour That This and this only is Life Eternal to know the only true God with a practical knowledge and Iesus Christ whom he hath sent John 17. 2. we should religiously resolve not to know any thing else Not I mean in comparison of Iesus Christ and him crucified nor yet to any other end than to serve and assist us in that one knowledge Look what carking and caring any Covetous man useth to get his wealth look what industry and labour an Ambitious man useth to get his Honour look what vigilance and solicitude any Amorous man useth to get his Idol the same solicitude and diligence is each Religious man to use for the getting of an Interest in Iesus Christ. Which gives me a passage from the second to the third Observable I proposed from the Nature and Quality of the young man's Inquiry to the condition of the Oracle inquired of As he sought for nothing less than Eternal Life so did he seek it from Him alone who is the way to that Life and the Life it self He did not go to take Advice from the Witch of Endor for the madness of Saul had made him wiser or more at least in his wits than to knock at Hell-door for the way to Heaven Nor did he ask of Apollo Pythius or go to Iupiter Ammon to be inform'd about the way to Eternal Life for all the Oracles of the Heathen were put to silence by our Messias as Plutarch and others of their own great Writers have well observ'd and should they speak never so loudly he very well knew they could not teach him Nor did he go to Aaron's Ephod to ask the Urim and Thummim about the means of his Salvation for he knew that That Oracle was now grown Dimm and that in case it had been legible it could not help him Nor did he betake himself to Moses the Iewish Law-giver much less to the Scribes the learned Interpreters of the Law for he found Mysterious Moses had still a Veil upon his Face which the Scribes and Pharisees were not able to Remove much less durst he go to the Law it self for a Relief there being nothing more plain than that the Law worketh wrath Those Tables of Stone are as the Hones or the Grindstones at which the Sting of Death is whetted and made more sharp For as the sting of Death is Sin so
does there speak touching proportionable Temptations such as are not above our strength and are not for the staggering but for the trial of our Faith Now the Trial of our Faith worketh Patience and Patience breeds Hope and Hope maketh not ashamed Again The Trial of our Faith shall be found unto praise and honour and glory at the blessed Appearance of Iesus Christ. If Christ himself had not been tempted with all the Kingdoms of the Earth and the Glory of them yea and afterwards too with Disgrace and Torment and Death it self How then could he have led Captivity Captive but for Injuries and Pains where were our Fortitude and Patience were it not for all sorts of forbidden Fruit where were Continence and Sobriety and all other Abstinencies from Evil were it not for Wealth and Plenty where were Munificence and Works of Mercy where the Victories of Meekness and Moderation if there were no such thing as Glory and worldly Greatness Yea but for Danger Destruction and Death it self how should we come by our Immortality Our Saviour therefore when he compar'd a rich man's Entrance into Heaven with the Entrance of a Camel through the Eye of a Needle did not speak of a natural but of a moral Impossibility For wealthy Abraham went to Heaven as well as poor forsaken Lazarus And therefore St. Mark does very fitly not only translate but explain St. Matthew saying How hard not how Impossible Nor for them that have Riches but for them that trust in them to enter into the Kingdom of God And this may competently serve to keep the Richest out of Despair § 6. Yet even This Alleviation may serve to keep them from Praesumption and make them humble because 't is hard to have Riches and not to trust in them Nor is there any one Thing that I am able at least to think of throughout the Gospel against which we are admonish'd praepar'd and arm'd with greater store either of explicit or implicit warnings When an ingenuous young Ruler whom Jesus lov'd came to inquire after Eternity and after the Means of its Attainment there was not any thing but his Possessions which seem'd to stand betwixt Him and Heaven For when his Oracle had told him He must sell all he had and distribute unto the Poor he was sad at that saying and went away grieved So great and real is the misery of too much Happiness upon Earth Had he been worth but two Mites he would no doubt have parted with them as the poor Widow did for a Treasure in Heaven And That was promis'd by our Saviour in the very same Breath in which he was exhorted to sell all he had But however such a Praecept could not be possibly so heavy as not to be made exceeding light by such a Promise as was annext Yet such a dangerous thing it is to have the Friendship of this World by injoying all the Pleasures which Power and Plenty can purchase for us that the Treasure in Heaven was but of cold signification and he was sad at That Saying that he must sell all he had Eternal Happiness in Reversion was but a Melancholick thing when only promised on condition of being merciful to the Poor The Expression of St. Luke is short and pithy on that Occasion He was very sorrowful for he was very Rich. And from That Single Instance our Lord took occasion to say in General and of All How hardly shall they that have Riches enter into the Kingdom of God Let the Persons be who they will Great and Rich or Rich only Rich and Prodigal or Covetous yet in case they Have Riches their Case is difficult They may be sav'd but very hardly Possibly they may but with much ado With very much strugling and striving to enter in at the strait Gate A man of great Bulk may possibly though hardly be able to pass at a little Door by a great deal of squeezing and compression and coarctation of himself perhaps by rubbing off his Flesh and by bruising some of his Bones And so a Camel may enter through the Eye of a Needle But then the Beast must be burnt to Ashes or cut at least into shreds and fitters that one shred may enter before another and all may pass in the Conclusion A very cold degree of Comfort not to be in any likelyhood but in a bare Possibility of being sav'd § 8. It is enough to deterr us from being grieved at the loss or overglad in the Injoyment of worldly Goods That the good things of this World are apt to be Enemies to all that 's Good They are often Enemies to Preaching for the Deceitfulness of Riches choaks the Word and makes the Hearer become unfruitful Matth. 13. 22. They are usual Enemies to Praying for you ask and receive not because ye ask amiss that ye may consume it upon your Lusts James 4. 2. They are common Enemies to Loyalty and upright dealing for Iudas being Christ's Cash-keeper did quickly find his very Office became his Tempter He did not stab but sell his Master Nor that out of malice but love of mony And when the Husbandmen of the Vineyard conspir'd to murder their Landlord's Heir It was to this end alone That the Inheritance might be Theirs Mark 12. 7. Again the things of this World are general Enemies to Religion to Religion in its practical and chiefest part whose Truth and Purity does stand in This That we keep our selves unspotted from the World that is to say from the Wealth and Friendship from the Luxuries and the Lusts and the Glories of it Iames 1. 27. Briefly they are Enemies to the Eternal Salvation of Soul and Body For they that will be rich fall into Temptation and a Snare into very many foolish and hurtful Lusts which drown the Soul in Destruction and Perdition 1 Tim. 6. 9. Nor was it sure without Cause that our Saviour made Dives the Repraesentative of the Damn'd A man of Quality and Fortune highly befriended by the World cloath'd in Purple and fine Linnen and faring sumptuously every day Which was so far from being a Narrative of any Particular man's Case that I could never read of any whose name was Dives much less that there was such in the time of Lazarus Nor was Lazarus there meant of any Begger in particular who lay full of Sores at the Rich man's Gate But all was spoken in a Parable And that as 't were on purpose to let us know what kind of Voiagers more especially are bound for Heaven and for Hell and with what sorts of People they Both are aptest to be stock't to wit with poor Lazars and wealthy Gluttons Those Inhabitants of Heaven as These of Hell Again it teaches us how frequent and usual 't is for every man to have his Portion of Pain and Pleasure either in This or another Life His good things here and his evil things hereafter or his evil things now and his
we are glued in our Affections to the things here below we think the World to be a Great and a Glorious thing so the higher we fly above it the more contemptibly Little 't is natural for it to appear And therefore § 17. Secondly let us consider That as the way whereby to escape the glorious Dangers of which I speak is to sequester our Affections from the Things of this World and to take wing towards a Better so that our Flight may be the higher we are to take some ready Course whereby to make our selves light For however it is natural for Birds to fly yet the most they can do is but to flutter if they are laden with thick Clay a Phrase by which the Prophet Habakkuk describeth Mony and denounceth a Woe to them that load themselves with it The reason of which is very obvious For notwithstanding it is natural for the spirit of man to fly upwards yet what in one Case is natural may be impossible in an other A man may fly just as soon with a weight of Lead at his Feet as with a Burden of Silver upon his Back The lightest Birds commonly do fly the highest And considering 't is a Duty for a man so to buy as if he were never to possess To deny his dear self and to take up Christ's Cross and to follow Him it seems to follow thereupon that He who hath least of this World and the least to do in it is probably the fittest for That great Duty Though 't was not meerly for being poor that Lazarus was carried to Abraham's Bosom yet 't was That that his Poverty dispos'd him for And St. Peter said fitly touching Himself and his Condisciples Lo we have left All and followed Thee Because they could not follow Christ and carry all they had with them For every Follower of Christ has a very narrow way wherein to walk and a very strait Gate whereat to enter So that the Body of a Christian is Load enough unto the Soul and therefore many more Impediments may well be spar'd Our Bodies saith St. Paul are but Earthen Vessels but Dust and Ashes saith Abraham Gen. 20. 27. And sure the way to keep our selves unspotted from the World is not to bury our selves alive even by adding Earth to Earth Ashes to Ashes Dust to Dust. That being the way of our being buried not in sure and certain Hope but in sure and certain Fear of a Resurrection For when the Minions of this World who are dead whilst they live shall by the just Judgment of God live again when they are dead too and shall be summon'd out of their Graves as Malefactors out of a Dungeon they will say to the Mountains fall on us and to the Hills cover us that is they will desire to be once more buried Now to prevent so sad a Rising we are to Rise whilst we are here from the Death I mean of Sin and from the Grave of Carnality And that we may rise the more nimbly we must be Levis Armaturae must not lay upon our selves too great a load of thick Clay which commonly brings with it another load whether it be of worldly Cares or of Carnal Pleasures Whatsoever most Christians may think of This 't was sadly consider'd by many Heathens of which I shall but instance in four or five Diogenes was a poor but yet a very great Man because his Poverty was his choice and he was one who did not want but contemn the Gayeties of the World How did he fly above the Vices and Follies of it by stripping himself of its Impediments and by imping the wings of his brave Ambition 'T was his Ambition to be at Liberty not to give Hostages to Fortune to live a life disingaged from things below him He found that one Tub was enough to lye in and one wooden Dish enough to drink in and was resolved that his Housholdstuff should hold proportion with his House Yea even That he thought too much for its being somewhat more than was strictly needful And therefore he brake his wooden Dish upon his first consideration That the Hollow of his Hand had made it needless Now I the rather choose to instance in this remarkable Philosopher because I know him very much censur'd and think him as little understood For that which is taken by a Proverb to be the Cynicalness and sowrness was thought by diverse ancient Authors the lovely Nobleness of his Temper His choice of Poverty was the result of his very deep Knowledge and Contemplation Nature and Industry had both conspir'd to his Perfections of which it was not the least that he knew the whole World and always had it under his Feet too as having weigh'd it in a Ballance and found its lightness He had been sued to and courted by the Great Potentates of the Earth whose Prosperities stoop't down to receive the Honour of his Acceptance But what Solomon out of his Wisdom both infused and acquired acquir'd both by joious and sad experience the same Diogenes concluded I shall not dare to say how That All is vanity under the Sun Now we all know that Vanity is of extremely little weight if put in the Ballance of Diseretion and in the Ballance of the Sanctuary of none at all Nay the Psalmist concludes that Man himself is but Vanity who yet is very much the noblest of any Creature under the Sun And sure if every man is Vanity and the greater he is the greater Vanity and not only Vanity but Vexation of Spirit how could Godfrey Duke of Bulloin have done more prudently for himself than in refusing to accept a Crown of Gold where Christ Himself wore one of Thorns or why should any of Christ's Followers buy the Friendship of a Prince when Xenocrates an Heathen would not deign to sell His no not to Alexander Himself who would fain have bought it Why should a Christian affect Dominion when Atilius an Heathen made choice to leave it why should one of Christ's Disciples court and covet That Plenty which was despis'd by Fabricius an arrant Heathen Why should a Christian set his Heart upon the getting and leaving a vast Revenue to his Posterity when the Heathen man Socrates thought it a Charity to his Children to leave them none Not that he thought it a Breach of Charity to make Provision for his Family but that he durst not betray them to great Temptations As He himself had refused half the Kingdom of Samos when offer'd to him so was he willing that his Children should inherit his Temper and Frame of Mind He knew the Providence of God was the surest Patrimony And had been taught by his experience that Friends well got were the next great Treasure 'T was his Duty as a Father to leave his Children very well and by consequence in a condition not the richest but the most suitable and safest for them and therefore
and disquieted with his Condition In respect of the Things he seeks to mend his Condition by In respect of the Selfishness wherewith the Things are sought after by such a Person and in respect of the Times wherein to be Selfish is most absurd yea wherein to be Selfish is little less than Sacrilegious I shall but touch on these four and dwell on that which I take to be most material § 3. Who should the Seeker be but Baruch a man professing the true Religion yes and a zealous Assertor of it The Prophet Ieremy's own Disciple and his exact Amanuensis his individual Companion his faithful Friend and Fellow-labourer who writ and read the Roll of Prophecies against Ierusalem and Iudah in the Ears of all the People and all the Great men at Court and that with the most apparent hazard both of his Liberty and his Life And yet as good a man as he was or had been once in his Time the Things he now did seek after were not spiritual but carnal not belonging to the future but present life not Great in themselves but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Great in the Speakers Phraseology or the rude Vulgar's Estimation or only Great by way of comparison with things much less or Great in reference to the Season wherein it was a Great thing for any Servant of God to have Food and Rayment for a Ieremy or a Baruch not to be cast into the Dungeon not to be cut with the same Penknife or not to perish in the same Fire together with the dreadful Roll or Book of Prophecies which They had written Nor was it a little aggravation of Baruch's Guilt that he became a Self-seeker when being a man of a publick Character he should have been of a publick Mind he should have sacrificed his Private to Publick Interesses and Ends. When he foresaw that King Iehoiakim the Son of Good King Iosiah was not only to be kill'd but cruelly cast into the Streets exposed there as a Prey to Birds and Beasts without Burial when he foresaw that Zedekiah another Son of Good Iosiah should shortly after become the last King of Iudah That the Conquering King of Babylon should butcher his Sons before his Eyes and pluck his Eyes out of his Head and lastly binding him in Chains should carry him captive out of Ierusalem as an Hissing to his Enemies and an Astonishment to his Friends Then for Baruch to be seeking and to be seeking Great Things and to be seeking them for Himself too not for his Country-men or Country not for the Worship and House of God but for his despicable diminutive inconsiderable Self a little Drop of the Bucket a single Atom of the great Heap of Dust and Ashes in Iudaea for Men we know are no better This was the Acme and the Top of the Prophet Ieremy's Exprobration The Heathen Cato in Lucan was much more generous in his Sidera quis Mundúmq velit spectare cadentem Expers Ipse Metûs The Turkish Caab of Arabia who rather chose to dye of Thirst than to drink of That Water which his Compatriots all wanted was of much a more brave and a more noble Disposition Such were the gallant 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Alexander ab Alexandro who would never once indure to fare any better than their King Had the King lost a Limb by any accident whatsoever They would resolvedly lose the same Did the King happen to want an Eye They would pluck out one of their own And when the King came to dye They scorn'd to live but at the time of his Funeral threw themselves into the Fire Baruch in reason should have argued like brave Uriah and Eleazar who did abhor being at rest when better men than themselves were expos'd to Hardships They hated Self-praeservation in a kind of universal and general Deluge of Afflictions Shall such a man as I Baruch and in such a Season as This be seeking any thing for myself Shall I be guilty of being safe when 't is disloyalty to prosper Shall I be seeking Great Things when to be Great is a Dishonour a shameful thing to live at Ease and little less than a Sin to live Thus he ought to have reason'd thô thus he did not And see how God by way of Sarcasm does as good as bid Baruch put Himself into one Scale and all the publick Concerns of King and Kingdom into the other as it were asking if he looks to outweigh them All if his Life is more precious than Church and State if he expects as great a Privilege as was granted only by Miracle to Gideon's Fleece to be blessed and enrich't with the Dew of Heaven when all round about lyes dry and barren If he alone will be exempt from a compleat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from a National a Publick a Common Destruction and Desolation Behold says God to Baruch I will bring evil upon all Flesh even upon this whole Land And seekest Thou Great Things for thy self Seek them not § 4. Thus we see how the Reproof or the Exprobration being whetted into a Sharpness by four Respects does give a Vehemence and Force to the Prohibition I shall not add any thing more to what I have said touching the First but apply my self wholly to the Consideration of the Second which of it self will be sufficient to take up more Time than is now allow'd And in the Prosecuting of This 't is not my purpose to reflect upon any mens Persons of either Sort. Not on Them who seek Greatness they cannot find much less on Them who have been raised up to Greatness they never sought least of all upon Them who do inherit that Greatness they cannot help such as They never could have prevented nor can easily escape All I intend is a Dissuasive from That which I take to be the Ground of all our Seditions and Separations and Fermentations of Blood in the Body Politick from that Malignity and Envy wherewith the Men of low degree are wont to prosecute those above them from the Self-seeking and the Self-love attended commonly with the love of Revenge on others which makes a world of men careless of Publick Safety Careless of perishing Themselves like Nero with his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if all the Objects of their Envy may perish with them from that Avarice and Ambition and Malecontentedness in their Stations wherein Divine Providence is pleas'd to fix them From every one of These Plagues my present Dehortative or Dissuasive suggested to me by the Text is now intended thô most especially from the last as from the Root of those Factions and Schisms and Heresies which do at any time indanger the Common Peace yes and occasion the greatest Miseries which can possibly ever fall upon Church or State In order to the framing of This Dissuasive and for the making it effectual to such as need it I must consider those things which the World
he does not want whilst he regulates his Appetite and makes it adequate to his Condition yet because 't is not so easy for a man and his Poverty to be agreed in case his Poverty is so importunate as incessantly to pinch him with Cold and Hunger I therefore put a wide difference between not seeking Great Things for our selves and not providing what is enough 'T is not absolute Poverty I recommend from This Text such as Discalceats and Mendicants pretend to love but only Poverty in comparison That which either borders on or dwells within some few Doors of It. I speak of Poverty as oppos'd to those Great Things from the Seeking of which we are here dehorted For This does seem a more safe and more secure way to Happiness than Great Abundance because the less any one has above Food and Rayment the less he roves beyond the limits of what is competent and enough as I said before the less he has to care for and to give accompt of at the general Audit briefly the less he has to lose and to leave behind him not infallibly to his Friends but peradventure to his worst Enemies Not certainly to his Sons but perhaps to his Sequestrators nor for certain to his Daughters but possibly to the Artificers who shall make a Prey of them I say 't is a state of Mediocrity A Competency of Fortune attended still with a decent Thriftiness and Frugality as being That without which no Riches can be Great or if Great not sufficient which I commend from this Text as a Soveraign Medicine against the Itch. And that the worst kind of Itch to be imagin'd to wit the Itch of a man's Seeking Great Things for himself or very much Greater than are allotted him by the wise Providence of his Creator Auream quisquis Mediocritatem Diligit tutus caret obsoleti Sordibus Tecti caret invidendâ Sobrius Aulâ Of all the Secular Great Things from the Seeking of which we are here dehorted the least desirable I am sure if not the most tremendous are the Great and Rich Offices of Publick Government and Trust because They are the greatest Obstacles to That which does the most import us to wit The Government of our selves A Work so incumbent upon our selves next and immediately under God as that it cannot be wholly managed by any other man's Prudence how much soever it may be greater and more to be trusted than our own Besides that the Government of a man's Family althô not Great and the Government of his Estate althô but Little will take up more of his Time on which his Eternity does depend than he can very well part with from better Objects And for the governing of a man's Self All his Time is too little whether we look upon the hardness or profit of it To keep our Thoughts and our Affections our Appetites and our Wills within their due Bounds and Compass and well employ'd on those Objects to which of right they do belong is so difficult in the doing and yet so pleasant when it is done that I know not whether the Work or the Reward it brings with It is more important Hence an Overplus of Advancement is as distastful and as surfeiting to a moderate Mind as is an Excess of Meat and Drink either to a well-satisfi'd or tender Stomach And therefore as a man of a sober Appetite will expect to be excus'd by abler Drinkers than himself from taking in more than will do him good or more than his Body can well abide so we must pray to be excus'd or be contented if we are not by men of larger Appetites and stronger Ambitions than our own if we shall choose to be no greater in Wealth and Honour than in Desires to lessen our Burden if already lying upon us in proportion to the strength we have to bear it to have our Meat and our Drink as well as our Hunger and our Thirst exactly fitted to our Digestions § 11. 'T is true indeed there is a time when the Worlds Great Things such as Riches and Honour come uninvited and even grow upon their owners who neither seek nor care for them In which case 't is to be said Non in rebus vitium est sed in animis Possidentium Riches are innocent in their Increase if we set not our hearts upon them if we look upon them as things which are false and flying if we carry our selves towards them with so much Carelesness and Contempt as to be really poor in Spirit reaping the Benefit and the Blessing which any Lazarus can injoy without the Sting and the Disgrace without the Leprosie and the Ridiculousness which an ugly French Proverb and vitious men have found in it and none but They. It was a very gross Error in the ancient Apostolici as they were pleas'd to call Themselves to think it utterly unlawful for men to have Estates peculiar to them and that forsooth for this Reason because the Apostles and their first Followers had all things in common except their Wives 'T was to put Vertue upon the Rack and stretch her out like Procrustes beyond her just and full Stature to wit the Extremity of her Mean and therefore 't was with good reason that Epiphanius and others esteem'd Them Hereticks For as a man of great Age may receive the Kingdom of God as a little Child so may one of great Wealth as a very poor one It being the inward Disposition not the want of outward Affluence which makes a man poor enough to be regarded like The Virgin by God Himself Our Self-denials if we are Rich will make us voluntarily Poor and still the Richer for being such Nor only the Richer but Greater too For Magnus Ille est qui in divitiis est pauper says Lucius Seneca He is generous and great who keeps the Modesty and the Meekness of a very poor man in the midst of Plenty The like to which may be said on the other side He is indeed a great man who is as if he were Rich in the deepest Poverty as Rich in Comforts and Contentments and Serenities of Mind as if he were Owner of Both the Indies If our Riches decrease and our Desires decrease too still our Condition is the same and we must needs be as well as ever For Beatus est Ille qui vivit ut vult He who has all that he desires cannot be happier than he is whatever else may be added to him And This is that frame of Mind which the Text suggests to us This we are all to pant after and labour for with a comparative Contempt of the World without us And to This the smallest things are more conducible than the Greatest A little with acquiescence which was the Portion of Aglaus the poor Arcadian will not only make us happier but even Richer than * Umidius with all his Plenty For thô 't is a Postulate or a Principle not to be question'd in