her ruine might have saved her Country but in her case if she had perished they were likely to perish too But she is safer then in that for first she had hope out of the words of the Law out of the dignity of her place out of the Justice of the King out of the preparation which she had made by Prayer which Prayer Josephus either out of tradition or out of conjecture and likelihood Records to have been That God would make both her Language and her Beauty acceptable to the King that day Out of all these she had hope of good success and howsoever if she failed of her purpose she was under two Laws of which it was necessary to obey that which concerned the glory of God And therefore Daniels confidence and Daniels words became her well Behold our God is able to deliver me and he will deliver me but if he will not I must not forsake his honor nor abandon his service And therefore Si peream peream If I perish I perish It is not always a Christian resolution Si peream peream to say If I perish I perish I care not whether I perish or no To admit to invite to tempt tentations and occasions of sin and so to put our selves to the hazard of a spiritual perishing to give fire to concupiscencies with licentious Meditations either of sinful pleasures past or of that which we have then in our purpose and pursuit to fewel this fire with meats of curiosity and provocation to blow this fire with lascivious discourses and Letters and Protestations this admits no such condition Si pereas If thou perish but periisti thou art perished already thou didst then perish when thou didst so desperately cast thy self into the danger of perishing And as he that casts himself from a steeple doth not break his neck till he touch the ground but yet he is truly said to have killed himself when he threw himself towards the ground So in those preparations and invitations to sin we perish before we perish before we commit the act the sin it self We perished then when we opened our selves to the danger of the sin so also if a man will wring out not the Club out of Hercules hands but the sword out of Gods hands if a man will usurpe upon Gods jurisdiction and become a Magistrate to himself and revenge his own quarrels and in an inordinate defence of imaginary honor expose himself to danger in duel with a si peream peream If I perish I perish that is not onely true if he perish he perishes if he perish temporally he perishes spiritually too and goes out of the world loaded with that and with all his other sins but it is also true that if he perish not he perishes he comes back loaded both with the temporal and with the spiritual death both with the blood and with the damnation of that man who perished suddenly and without repentance by his sword To contract this and conclude all If a man have nothing in his contemplation but dignity and high place if he have not Vertue and Religion and a Conscience of having deserved well of his Countrey and the love of God and godly men for his sustentation and assurance but onely to tower up after dignity as a Hawk after a prey and think that he may boldly say as an impossible supposition Si peream peream If I perish I perish as though it were impossible he should perish he shall be subject to that derision of the King of Babylon Quomodo Cecidisti Esa 14.12 How art thou faln from Heaven O Lucifer thou son of the morning How art thou cast down to the ground that didst cast lots upon the Nations But that provident and religious Soul which proceeds in all her enterprises as Esther did in her preparations which first calls an assembly of all her Country-men that is them of the houshold of the Faithful the Congregation of Christs Church and the Communion of Saints and comes to participate the benefit of publick Prayers in his house inconvenient times and then doth the same in her own house within doors she and her maids that is she and all her senses and faculties This soul may also come to Esthers resolution to go in to the King though it be not according to the Law though that Law be That neither fornicator nor adulterer nor wanton nor thief nor drunkard nor covetous nor extortioner nor railer shall have access into the Kingdom of Heaven yet this soul thus prepared shall feel a comfortable assurance that this Law was made for servants and not for sons nor for the Spouse of Christ his Church and the living Members thereof and she may boldly say Si peream peream It is all one though I perish or as it is in the Original Vecasher quomodocunque peream whether I perish in my estimation and opinion with men whether I perish in my fortunes honor or health quomodocunque it is all one Heaven and earth shall pass away but Gods word shall not pass and we have both that word of God which shall never have end and that word of God which never had beginning His Word as it is his Promise his Scriptures and his Word as it is himself Christ Jesus for our assurance and security that that Law of denying sinners access and turning his face from them is not a perpetual not an irrevocable Law but that that himself says belongs to us For a little while have I forsaken thee but with great compassion will I gather thee for a moment in mine anger I hid my face from thee for a little season but with everlasting mercy have I had compassion on thee saith the Lord Christ thy Redeemer How riotously and voluptuously soever I have surfeited upon sin heretofore yet if I fast that fast now how disobedient soever I have been to my Superiors heretofore yet if I apply my self to a conscionable humility to them now howsoever if I have neglected necessary duties in my self or neglected them in my Family that either I have not been careful to give good example or not careful that they should do according to my example and by the way it is not only the Master of a house that hath the charge of a Family but every person every servant in the house that hath a body and a soul hath a house and a Family to look to and to answer for yet if I become careful now that both I I my self will and my whole house all my family shall serve the Lord If I be thus prepar'd thus dispos'd thus matur'd thus mellow'd thus suppled thus entendred to the admitting of any impressions from the hand of my God though there seem to be a general Law spread over all an universal War an universal Famine an universal Pestilence over the whole Nation yet I shall come either to an assurance that though there fall so many thousands on this and on that
Richmond this night and the joys of London at this place at this time in the morning and we shall finde Prophecy even in that saying of the Poet Nocte pluit tota showers of rain all night of weeping for our Soveraign and we would not be comforted because she was not Matth. 2.18 And yet redeunt spectacula manè the same hearts the same eyes the same hands were all directed upon recognitions and acclamations of her successor in the morning And when every one of you in the City were running up and down like Ants with their eggs bigger then themselves every man with his bags to seek where to hide them safely Almighty God shed down his Spirit of Unity and recollecting and reposedness and acquiescence upon you all In the death of that Queen unmatchable immitable in her sex that Queen worthy I will not say of Nestors years I will not say of Methusalems but worthy of Adams years if Adam had never faln in her death we were all under one common flood and depth of tears But the Spirit of God moved upon the face of that depth and God said Let there be light and there was light and God saw that that light was good God took pleasure and found a savor of rest in our peaceful chearfulness and in our joyful and confident apprehension of blessed days in his Government whom he had prepared at first and preserved so often for us Plinius ad Trajan As the Rule is true Cum de Malo principe posteri tacent manifestum est vilem facere praesentem when men dare not speak of the vices of a Prince that is dead it is certain that the Prince that is alive proceeds in the same vices so the inversion of the Rule is true too Cum de bono principe loquuntur when men may speak freely of the vertues of a dead Prince it is an evident argument that the present Prince practises the same vertues for if he did not he would not love to hear of them Of her we may say that which was well said and therefore it were pity it should not be once truly said for so it was not when it was first said to the Emperor Iulian nihil humile aut abjectum cogitavit quia novit de se semper loquendum she knew the world would talk of her after her death and therefore she did such things all her life were worthy to be talked of Of her glorious successor and our gracious Soveraign Plinus ad Trajan we may say Onerosum est succedere bono Principi It would have troubled any king but him to have come in succession and in comparison with such a Queen And in them both we may observe the unsearchableness of the ways of God of them both we may say Dominus fecit It is the Lord that hath done it Psal 118.23 and it is wonderful in our eyes First That a woman and a maid should have all the wars of Christendom in her contemplation and govern and ballance them all And then That a King born and bred in a warlike Nation and so accustomed to the sword as that it had been directed upon his own person in the strength of his age and in his Infancy in his Cradle in his mothers belly should yet have the blessed spirit of peace so abundantly in him as that by his Councils and his authority he should sheath all the swords of Christendom again De forti egressa dulcedo sweetness is come out of the strong Judg. 14.24 in a stranger manner then when Sampson said so in his riddle And howsoever another wise King found it true Anima saturata calcab it favum The person that is full despiseth honey Prov. 27.7 they that are glutted with the benefits of peace would faln change for a war yet the wisest King of all hath pronounced for our King Mat. 5.9 Beati pacifici Blessed are the peace-makers If subjects will not apprehend it with joy here the King himself shall joy hereafter for Therefore says that Gospel Therefore because he was a peace-maker he shall be called The childe of God 2 Tim. 2.12 Though then these two great Princes of whom the one con-regnat Christo reigns now with Christ the other reigns here over us vice Christi for Christ were near in blood yet thus were they nearest of kin quod uterque optimus That they were both better then any other and equal to one another Dignus alter eligi Plin. de Nerva Traja alter eligere That she was fittest in that fullness of years to be chosen and assum'd into heaven and he fittest as Saint Paul did because it was more behoofeful for his brethren to choose to stay upon earth for our protection and for our direction because as in all Princes it is vita principis perpetua censura There cannot be a more powerful increpation upon the subjects excesses then when they see the King deny himself those pleasures which they take As then this place where we all stand now Non Anticipavit was the Sanctuary whither we all resorted this day to receive the assurance of our safety in the proclamation of his undoubted title to this Kingdom so let it be our Altar now where we may sacrifice our humble thanks to God first that he always gave the King a just and a religious patience of not attempting a coming into this Kingdom till God emptied the throne here by translating that Queen to a throne more glorious Perchance he was not without tentations from other men to have done otherwise But Pacatus ad Theodos Ad Principatum per obsequ ium venit he came to be King by his obedience his obedience to the law of Nature and the laws of this Kingdom to which some other King would have disputed whether he should have obey'd or no. Cum omnia faceret imperare ut deberet nihil fecit ut imperaret All his Actions all that he did shew'd him fit for this Crown and yet he would do nothing to anticipate that Crown Next let us pour out our thanks to God Nen adulatus that in his entrance he was beholden to no by-religion The Papists could not make him place any hopes upon them nor the Puritans make him entertain any fears from them but his God and our God as he brought him via lactea by the sweet way of Peace that flows with milk and hony so he brought him via Regia by the direct and plain way without any deviation or descent into ignoble flatteries or servile humoring of any persons or factions Non occulte Which noble and Christian courage he expressed more manifestly when after that infamous powder treason the intended dissolution and conflagration of this state that plot that even amaz'd and astonished the Devil and seem'd a miracle even in hell that treason which whosoever wishes might be covered how is sorry that it was discovered
my Manners but occasionally and upon Emergencies this is a sickly complexion of the soul a dangerous impotencie and a shrewd and ill-presaging Crisis If Joshua had suspended his assent of serving the Lord till all his Neighbours and their Families all the Kings and Kingdoms about him had declar'd theirs the same way when would Joshua have come to that protestation I and my house will serve the Lord If Esther had forborn to press for an audience to the King in the behalf and for the life of her Nation till nothing could have been said against it when would Esther have come to that protestation I will go and if I perish I perish If one Milstone fell from the North-Pole and another from the South they would meet and they would rest in the Centre Nature would con-centre them Not to be able to con-centre those doubts which arise in my self in a resolution at last whether in Moral or in Religious Actions is rather a vertiginous giddiness then a wise circumspection or wariness When God prepar'd great Armies 1 Sam. 11.7 it is expressed always so Tanquam unus vir Israel went out as one man When God established his beloved David to be King 1 Chro. 12.38 it is expressed so Uno Corde He sent them out with one heart to make David king When God accelerated the propagation of his Church Act. 4.32 it is expressed so Una Anima The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one soul Since God makes Nations and Armies and Churches One heart let not us make one heart two in our selves a divided a distracted a perplexed an irresolved heart but in all cases let us be able to say to our selves This we should do God asks the heart a single heart an intire heart for whilst it is so God may have some hope of it But when it is a heart and a heart a heart for God and a Heart for Mammon howsoever it may seem to be even the odds will be on Mammons side against God because he presents Possessions and God but Reversions he the present and possessory things of this world God but the future and speratory things of the next So then the Cor nullum no heart Thoughtlesness Incogitancie Inconsideration and the Cor duplex the perplexed and irresolved and inconclusive heart do equally oppose this firmness and fixation of the heart which God loves and which we consider in this stem and stalk of Pythagoras his Symbolical Letter And so does that which we propos'd for the Third The Cor Vagum The Wandering the Wayfaring the Inconstant Heart Many times in our private Actions Cor Vagum and in the cribration and sifting of our Consciences for that 's the Sphere I move in and no higher we do overcome the first difficulty Inconsideration we consider seriously and sometimes the second Irresolution we resolve confidently but never the third Inconstancie if so far as to bring holy Resolutions into Actions yet never so far as to bring holy Actions into Habits That word which we read Deceitful The heart is deceitful above all things who can know it Jer. 17.9 is in the Original Gnacob and that is not onely Fraudulentum but Versipelle deceitful because it varies it self into divers forms so that it does not onely deceive others others finde not our heart the same towards them to day that it was yesterday but it deceives our selves we know not what nor where our heart will be hereafter Upon those words of Isaiah Redite prevaricatores ad Cor Return O sinner to thy heart Longe eos mittit says S. Gregory 46.8 God knows whither that sinner is sent that is sent to his own heart for Where is thy heart Thou mayst remember where it was yesterday at such an Office at such a Chamber But yesterdays affections are chang'd to day as to days will be to morrow They have despised my judgements so God complaines in Ezekiel 20.16 that is They are not mov'd with my punishments they call all natural accidents and then it follows They have polluted my sabbaths they are come to a more faint and dilute and indifferent way in their Religion Now what hath occasion'd this neglecting of Gods judgements and this diluteness and indifferency in the ways of Religion That that follows there Their hearts went after their Idols Went Whither Every whither for Hierom. Quot vitia tot recentes deos so many habitual Sins so many Idols And so every man hath some Idol some such Sin and then that Idol sends him to a further Idol that Sin to another for every Sin needs the assistance and countenance of another sin for disguise and palliation We are not constant in our Sins much less in our more holy Purposes We complain and justly of the Church of Rome that she would not have us receive in utraque in both kinds But alas who amongst us does receive in utraque so as that when he receives Bread and Wine he receives with a true sorrow for former and a true resolution against future sins Except the Lord of heaven create new hearts in us of our selves we have Cor nullum no heart all vanishes into Incogitancy Except the Lord of heaven con-centre our affections of our selves we have Cor Cor a cloven a divided heart a heart of Irresolution Except the Lord of heaven fix our Resolutions of our selves we have Cor vagum a various a wandering heart all smoaks into Inconstancie And all these three are Enemies to that firmness and fixation of the heart which God loves and we seek after But yet how variously soever the heart do wander and how little a while soever it stay upon one Object yet that that thy heart does stay upon Christ in this place calls thy Treasure for the words admit well that inversion Where your Treasure is there will your heart be also implies this Where your Heart is that is your Treasure And so we pass from this stem and stalk of Pythagoras his Symbolical Letter The firmness and fixation of the Heart to the Horns and Beams thereof A broader but on the left hand and in that the corruptible treasures of this world and a narrower but on the right hand and in that the everlasting Treasures of the next On both sides that that you fix your Heart upon is your Treasure For where your Heart is there is your Treasure also Thesaurus Literally primarily radically Thesaurus Treasure is no more but Depositum in Crastinum Provision for to morrow to shew how little a proportion a regulated minde and a contented heart may make a Treasure But we have enlarged the signification of these words Provision and To morrow for Provision must signifie all that can any way be compass'd and To morrow must signifie as long as there shall be a to morrow till time shall be no more But waving these infinite Extensions and Perpetuities is there any
8. and bearing of our sicknesses Or to be no richer or no more provident then so To sell all and give it away Luc. 12. and make a treasure in Heaven and all this for fear of Theeves and Rust and Canker and Moths here That which is not allowable in Courts of Justice in criminal Causes To hear Evidence against the King we will admit against God we will hear Evidence against God we will hear what mans reason can say in favor of the Delinquent why he should be condemned why God should punish the soul eternally for the momentany pleasures of the body Nay we suborn witnesses against God and we make Philosophy and Reason speak against Religion and against God though indeed Omne verum omni vero consentiens whatsoever is true in Philosophy is true in Divinity too howsoever we distort it and wrest it to the contrary We hear Witnesses and we suborn Witnesses against God and we do more we proceed by Recriminations and a cross Bill with a Quia Deus because God does as he does we may do as we do Because God does not punish Sinners we need not forbear sins whilst we sin strongly by oppressing others that are weaker or craftily by circumventing others that are simple This is but Leoninum and Vulpinum that tincture of the Lyon and of the Fox that brutal nature that is in us But when we come to sin upon reason and upon discourse upon Meditation and upon plot This is Humanum to become the Man of Sin to surrender that which is the Form and Essence of man Reason and understanding to the service of sin When we come to sin wisely and learnedly to sin logically by a Quia and an Ergo that Because God does thus we may do as we do we shall come to sin through all the Arts and all our knowledge To sin Grammatically to tie sins together in construction in a Syntaxis in a chaine and dependance and coherence upon one another And to sin Historically to sin over sins of other men again to sin by precedent and to practice that which we had read And we come to sin Rhetorically perswasively powerfully and as we have found examples for our sins in History so we become examples to others by our sins to lead and encourage them in theirs when we come to employ upon sin that which is the essence of man Reason and discourse we will also employ upon it those which are the properties of man onely which are To speak and to laugh we will come to speak and talk and to boast of our sins and at last to laugh and jest at our sins and as we have made sin a Recreation so we will make a jest of our condemnation And this is the dangerous slipperiness of sin to slide by Thoughts and Actions and Habits to contemptuous obduration Part II. Now amongst the manifold perversnesses and incongruities of this artificial sinning of sinning upon Reason upon a quia and an ergo of arguing a cause for our sin this is one That we never assigne the right cause we impute our sin to our Youth to our Constitution to our Complexion and so we make our sin our Nature we impute it to our Station to our Calling to our Course of life and so we make our sin our Occupation we impute it to Necessity to Perplexity that we must necessarily do that or a worse sin and so we make our sin our Direction We see the whole world is Ecclesia malignantium Psal 26.5 a Synagogue a Church of wicked men and we think it a Schismatical thing to separate our selves from that Church and we are loth to be excommunicated in that Church and so we apply our selves to that we do as they do with the wicked we are wicked and so we make our sin our Civility And though it be some degree of injustice to impute all our particular sins to the devil himself after a habit of sin hath made us spontaneos daemones Chrysost devils to our selves yet we do come too near an imputing our sins to God himself when we place such an impossibility in his Commandments as makes us lazie that because we cannot do all therefore we will do nothing or such a manifestation and infallibility in his Decree as makes us either secure or desperate and say The Decree hath sav'd me therefore I can take no harm or The Decree hath damn'd me therefore I can do no good No man can assigne a reason in the Sun why his body casts a shadow why all the place round about him is illumin'd by the Sun the reason is in the Sun but of his shadow there is no other reason but the grosness of his own body why there is any beam of light any spark of life in my soul he that is the Lord of light and life and would not have me die in darkness is the onely cause but of the shadow of death wherein I sit there is no cause but mine own corruption And this is the cause why I do sin but why I should sin there is none at all Yet in this Text the Sinner assignes a cause and it is Quia non mutationes Because they have no Changes God hath appointed that earth which he hath given to the sons of men to rest and stand still and that heaven which he reserves for those sons of men who are also the sons of God he hath appointed to stand still too All that is between heaven and earth is in perpetual motion and vicissitude but all that is appointed for man mans possession here mans reversion hereafter earth and heaven is appointed for rest and stands still and therefore God proceeds in his own way and declares his love most where there are fewest Changes This rest of heaven he hath expressed often by the name of a Kingdom as in that Petition Thy kingdom come And that rest which is to be derived upon us here in earth he expresses in the same phrase too when having presented to the children of Israel an Inventary and Catalogue of all his former blessings he concludes all includes all in this one Et prosperata es in regnum I have advanced thee to be a kingdom which form God hath not onely still preserv'd to us but hath also united Kingdoms together and to give us a stronger body and safer from all Changes whereas he hath made up other Kingdoms of Towns and Cities he hath made us a Kingdom of Kingdoms and given us as many Kingdoms to our Kingdom as he hath done Cities to some other Gods gracious purpose then to man being Rest and a contented Reposedness in the works of their several Callings and his purpose being declared upon us in the establishing and preserving of such a Kingdom as hath the best Body best united in it self and knit together and the best Legs to stand upon Peace and Plenty and the best Soul to inanimate and direct it Truth
their allegiance is complicated with their Religion then it is proper by such Laws to compel them to remain and continue in that Religion for in the Apostacy and Defection of such men the State hath a detriment as well as the Church and therefore the temporal sword may be drawn as well as the spiritual which is the case between those of the Romish perswasion and us their Laws work directly upon our Religion they draw blood meerly for that ours work directly upon their allegiance and punish only where pretence of Religion colours a Defection in allegiance But Christs end being meerly spiritual to constitute a Church Non venit Occurrere as he came not to meet man man was not so forward so he came not to compel man to deal upon any that was so backward for Venit vocare He came to call Now this calling implies a voice as well as a Word Veni vocare it is by the Word but nor by the Word read at home though that be a pious exercise nor by the word submitted to private interpretation but by the Word preached according to his Ordinance and under the Great Seal of his blessing upon his Ordinance So that preaching is this calling and therefore as if Christ do appear to any man in the power of a miracle or in a private inspiration yet he appears but in weakness as in an infancy till he speak till he bring a man to the hearing of his voice in a setled Church and in the Ordinance of preaching so how long soever Christ have dwelt in any State or any Church if he grow speechless he is departing if there be a discontinuing or slackning of preaching there is a danger of loosing Christ Adam was not made in Paradise but brought thither call'd thither the sons of Adam are not born in the Church but call'd thither by Baptism Non Nascimur sed re-nascimur Christiani August No man is born a Christian but call'd into that state by regeneration And therefore as the Consummation of our happiness is in that that we shall be call'd at last into the Kingdom of Glory in the Venite Benedicti Come ye blessed and enter into your Masters joy so is it a blessed Inchoation of that happiness that we are called into the Kingdom of Grace and made partakers of his Word and Sacraments and other Ordinances by the way And so you have his Action and Errand He came and came to call The next is the persons upon whom he works whom he calls Non Justos where we have first the Negative the Exclusive Non Justos Not the righteous In which Grego Nyssene is so tender G. Nyssen so compassionate so loath that this Negative should fall upon any man that any man should be excluded from possibility of salvation as that he carries it wholly upon Angels Christ took not the nature of Angels Christ came not to call Angels But this Exclusion falls upon men What men upon the righteous Who are they We have two Expositions both of Jesuites both good I mean the Expositions not the Jesuites they differ somewhat for though the Jesuites agree well enough too well in State-business in Courts how Kings shall be depos'd and how massacred how Kingdoms shall be deluded with Dispensations and how invaded with Forces they agree well enough yet in Schools and in Expositions Maldonat Mat. 18.12 they differ as well as others The first Maldonat he says That as in that parable where Christ says that the good shepherd left the ninety nine sheep that had kept their pastures and went to seek that one which was strayed he did not mean that there is but one sheep of a hundred that does go astray but that if that were the case he would go to seek that one so when Christ says here he came not to call the righteous he does not mean that there were any righteous but if the world were full of righteous men so that he might make up the number of his Elect and fill up the rooms of the fallen Angels out of them yet he would come to call sinners too Barradas The other Jesuite Barradas not altogether Barrabas he says Christ said Non Justos Not the righteous because if there had been any righteous he needed not to have come according to that of S. Aug. Si homo non periisset August filius hominis non venisset If Man had not fallen and lain irrecoverably under that fall the Son of God had not come to suffer the shame and the pain of the Cross so that they differ but in this If there had been any righteous Christ needed not to have come and though there had been righteous men yet he would have come but in this they and all agree Rom. 8.30 that there were none righteous None Why whom he predestinated those he called and were not they whom he predestinated and elected to salvation righteous Even the Elect themselves have not a constant righteousness in this world such a righteousness as does always denominate them so as that they can always say to their own conscience or so as the Church can always say of them This is a righteous man No nor so as that God who looks upon a sinner with the eyes of the Church and considers a sinner with the heart and sense of the Church and speaks of him with the tongue of the Church can say of him then when he is under unrepented sin This man is righteous howsoever if he look upon him in that Decree which lies in his bosom and by which he hath infallibly ordain'd him to salvation he may say so No man here though Elect hath an equal and constant righteousness nay no man hath any such righteousness of his own as can save him for howsoever it be made his by that Application or Imputation yet the righteousness that saves him is the very righteousness of Christ himself Hilarie S. Hilaries Question then hath a full Answer Erant quibus non erat necesse ut ventret Were there any that needed not Christs coming No there were none who then are these righteous we answer with S. Chrysost and S. Hiero. and S. Ambrose and all the stream of the Fathers They are Justi sua Justitia those who thought themselves righteous those who relyed upon their own righteousness those who mistook their righteousness as the Laodiceans did their riches they said They were rich and had need of nothing Apoc. 3.17 and they were wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked So these men being ignorant of Gods righteousness Rom. 10.3 and going about to establish a righteousness of their own have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God that is depend wholly upon the righteousness of Christ He calls it Suam their righteousness because they thought they had a righteousness of their own either in the faculties of Nature or in the exaltation of
these fires of God 23.16 his corrections harden but if these fires of his these denuntiations of his Judgments have overcome first my coldness and then my lukewarmness and made my heart soft for better impressions the work is well advanced but it is not all done for mettle may be soft and yet not fusil iron may be red hot and yet not apt to run into an other mold Therefore there is a liquefaction a melting a powering out of the heart such as Rahab speaks of Joshuahs spies 2.11 5.1 as soon as we heard how miraculously God had proceeded in your behalf in drying up Jurdan all our hearts melted within us and no man had any spirit left in him and when upon the consideration of Gods miraculous Judgments or mercies I come to such a melting and pouring out of my heart that there be no spirit that is none of my one spirit left in me when I have so exhausted so evacuated my self that is all confidence in my self that I come into the hands of my God as pliably as ductily as that first clod of earth of which he made me in Adam was in his hands in which clod of earth there was a kind of reluctation against Gods purpose this is a blessed nullification of the heart When I said to my self as the Apostle professed of himself I am nothing and then say to God 2 Cor. 12.11 Lord though I be nothing yet behold I present thee as much as thou hadst to make the whole world of O thou that madst the whole world of nothing make me that am nothing in my own eyes a new creature in Christ Jesus this is a blessed nullification a glorious annihillation of the heart So is there also a blessed nullification thereof in the contrition of the heart in the sense of my sins when as a sharp wind may have worn out a marble Statue or a continual spout worne out a marble Pavement so my holy tears made holy in his blood that gives them a tincture and my holy sighs made holy in that spirit that breaths them in me have worn out my marble heart that is the marbleness of my heart and emptied the room of that former heart and so given God a vacuity a new place to create a new heart in but when God hath thus created a new heart that is re-enabled me by his ordinance to some holy function then to put this heart to nothing to think nothing to consider nothing not to know our age but by the Church-book and not by any action done in the course of our lives for our God for our Prince for our Country for our Neighbour for our selves our selves are our Souls not to know the seasons of the year but by the fruits which we eat and not by observation of the publick and national blessings which he hath successively given us not to know religion but by the conveniency and the preferments to he had in this or in the other side to sit here and not to know if we be ask'd upon a surprize whether it were a prayer or a Sermon or an Antheme that we heard last this is such a nullification of the heart such an annihillation such an exinanition thereof as reflects upon God himself for Respuit datorem Turtullian qui datum deserit he that makes no use of a benefit despises the benefactor Pro. 10.13 and therefore a rod for his back Qui indiget corde that is without a heart without consideration what he should do nay what he does for this is the first enemy of this firmness and fixation of the heart without which we have no treasure and we have done with that Cor nullum and pass to the second Cor cor Cor duplex Cor duplex the double the divided the distracted heart which is not inconsideration but irresolution This irresolution this perplexity is intended in that comination from God The Lord shall give them a trembling heart Deut. 28.65 this is not that Cor nullum that melted heart in which there was no spirit left in them as in Joshuahs time but Cor pavidum a heart that should not know where to settle nor what to wish but as it follows there in the morning he shall say would God it were evening and in the evening would God it were morning and this is that which Salomon may have intended in his prayer 1 Reg. 3.9 Give thy servant an understanding heart Cor docile So St. Hierome reads it a heart able to conceive counsel for that 's a good disposition but it is not all for the original is lcb. shemeany that is Cor audiens a heart willing to hearken to counsel but all that is not all that is asked Solomon askes there a heart to discern between good and evil so that it is a prayer for the spirit of discretion of conclusion of resolution that God would give him a heart willing to receive counsel and a heart capable to conceive and digest counsel and a heart able to discern between counsel and counsel and to resolve conclude determine It were a strange ambitious patience in any man to be content to be rack'd every day in hope to be an inch or two taller at last so is it for me to think to be a dram or two wiser by harkning to all jealousies and doubts and distractions and perplexities that arise in my bosome or in my family which is the rack and torture of the soul A spirit of contradiction may be of use in the greatest Councellers because thereby matter may be brought into further debatement but a spirit of contradiction in mine own bosome to be able to conclude nothing resolve nothing determine nothing not in my religion not in my manners but occasionally and upon emergencies this is a sickly complexion of the Soul a dangerous impotency and a shrewd and ill presaging Crisis If Josuah had suspended his assent of serving the Lord till all his neighbours and their families all the Kings and Kingdomes about him had declared theirs the same way when would Josuah have come to that protestation I and my house will serve the Lord If Esther had forborn to presse for an audience to the King in the behalf and for the life of her Nation till nothing could have been said against it when would Esther have come to that protestation I will goe and if I perish I perish If one Milstone fell from the North-pole and another from the South they would meet and they would rest in the Center nature would con-center them not to be able to con-center those doubts which arise in my self in a resolution at last whether in morall or in religious actions is rather a vertiginous giddiness than a wise circumspection or wariness when God prepared great Armies it is expressed alwayes so Tanquam unus vir Israel went out as one man 1 Sam. 11.7 when God established his beloved David to
then whosoever wishes that it might be forgotten wishes that it had proceeded And therefore let our tongue cleave unto the roof our mouths if we do not confers his loving kindness before the Lord and his wonderful works before the Sons of men Then I say did his Majesty shew this Christian courage of his more manifestly when he sent the profession of his Religion The Apology of the Oath of Allegeance and his opinion of the Romane Antichrist in all languages to all Princes of Christendom By occasion of which Book though there have risen twenty Rabshakes who have rail'd against our God in railing against our Religion and twenty Shemeis who have raised against the person of his sacred Majesty for I may pronounce that the number of them who have bark'd and snarl'd at that book in writing is scarceless then fourty yet scarce one of them all hath undertaken the arguments of that book but either repeated and perchance enlarged those things which their own Authors had shovel'd together of that subject that is The Popes Temporal power or else they have bent themselves maliciously insolently sacrilegiously against the person to his Majesty and the Pope may be Antichrist still for any thing they have said to the contrary It belong'd only to him whom no earthly King may enter into comparison with John 17.12 the King of Heaven Christ Jesus to say Those that thou gavest me have I kept and none of them is lost And even in him in Christ Jesus himself that admitted one exception Judas the childe of perdition was lost Our King cannot say that none of his Subjects are fled to Rome but his vigilancy at home hath wrought so as that fewer are gone from our Universities thither in his then in former times and his Books abroad have wrought so that much greater and considerable persons are come to us then are gone from us I add that particular from our Universities because we see that since those men whom our Universities had bred and graduated before they went thither of which the number was great for many years of the Queens time are worne out amongst them and dead those whom they make up there whom they have had from their first youth there who have received all their Learning from their beggarly and fragmentary way of Dictates there and were never grounded in our Schools nor Universities have prov'd but weak maintainers or that cause compar'd with those men of the first times As Plato says of a particular natural body he that will cure an ill Eye must cure the Head he that will cure the Head must cure the Body and he that will cure the Body must cure the Soul that is must bring the Minde to a temperature a moderation an equanimity so in Civil Bodies in States Head and Eye and Body Prince and Council and People do all receive their health and welfare from the pureness of Religion And therefore as the chiefest of all I chose to insist upon that Blessing That God hath given us a Religious King and Religious out of his Understanding His other Virtues work upon several conditions of men by this Blessing the whole Body is blest And therefore not only they which have been salted with the salt of the Court as it is said of the Kings Servants but all that are salted with the salt of the Earth Ezra 4.24 Matth. 5.13 Mark 9.50 as Christ calls his Church his Apostles all that love to have salt in themselves and peace with one another all that are sensible of the Spiritual life and growth and good taste that they have by the Gospel are bound to praise him to magnifie him for ever that hath vouchsafed us a Religious King and Religious out of Understanding Many other happinesses are rooted in the love of the Subject and of his confidence in their love his very absence from us is an argument to us His continual abode with us hath been an argument of his love to us and this long Progress of his is an argument of his assurance of our loyalty to him It is an argument also of the good habitude and constitution to which he hath brought this State and how little harm they that wish ill to it are able to do Mamertinus Maximiano upon any advantage Hanc in vobis fiduciam pertimescunt This confidence of his makes his home-enemies more afraid then his Laws or his Train'd-Bands Et contemnise sentiunt cum relinquuntur When they are left to their own malignity and to do their worst they discern in that how despicable and contemptible a party they are Cum in interiora Imperii seceditis when the King may go so far from the heart of his Kingdom and the enemy be able to make no use of his absence this makes them see the desperateness of their vain imaginations He is not gone from us for a Noble part of this Body our Nation is gone with him and a Royal part of his Body stays with us Neither is the farthest place that he goes to any other then ours now when as the Roman Orator said Nunc demum juvat orbem terrarum spectare depictum Eumenius cum in illo nihil videmus alienum Now it is a comfort to look upon a Map of the World when we can see nothing in it that is not our own so we may say Now it is a pleasant sight to look upon a Map of this Island when it is all one As we had him at first and shall have him again from that Kingdom where the natural days are longer then ours are so may he have longer days with us then ever any of our Princes had and as he hath Immortalitatem propriam sibi filium sibi similem as it was said of Constantine a peculiar immortality not to die because he shall live in his Son so in the fulness of time and in the accomplishment of Gods purposes upon him may he have the happiness of the other Immortality and peacefully surrender all his Crowns in exchange of one a Crown of immortal glory which the Lord the righteous Judge lay up for him against that day To conclude all and to go the right way from things which we see to things which we see not by consideration of the King to the contemplation of God since God hath made us his Tenants of this World we are bound not only to pay our Rents spiritual duties and services towards him but we are bound to reparations too to contribute our help to society and such external duties as belong to the maintenance of this world in which Almighty God hath chosen to be glorified If we have these two Pureness of heart and Grace of lips then we do these two we pay our Rent and we keep the world in reparation and we shall pass through all those steps and gradations Ambros which St. Ambrose harmoniously melodiously expresses to be servi per timorem to be the servants of
must that does that did dye ever since it was made I carry a Soul nay a Soul carries me to such a perpetuity as no Saint no Angel God himself shall not survive me over-live me And lastly says he Terrenus sum Coelestis I have a Body but of Earth but yet of such Earth as God was the Potter to mold it God was the statuary to fashion it and then I have a Soul of which God was the Father he breath'd it into me and of which no matter can say I was the Mother for it proceeded of nothing Such a Mystery is man here but he is a Miracle hereafter I shall be still the same man and yet have another being And in this is that Miracle exalted that death who destroys me re-edifies me Mors veluti medium excogitata Cyril ut de integro restauraretur homo man was fallen and God took that way to raise him to throw him lower into the grave man was sick and God invented God studied Physick for him and strange Physick to recover him by death The first faciamus hominem the Creation of man was a thing incomprehensible in Nature but the Denuo nasci to be born again was stranger even to Nicodemus who knew the former the Creation Joh. 4.3 well enough But yet the Immutabimur is the greatest of all 1 Cor. 15.57 which St. Paul calls all to wonder at Behold I shew you a Mystery we shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed A Mystery which it Nicodemus had discern'd it would have put him to more wonder then the Denuo nasci to enter into his mothers womb as he speaks to enter into the Bowels of the Earth and lie there and lie dead there not nine months but many yeers and then to be born again and the first minute of that new Birth to be so perfect as that nothing can be better and so perfect as that he can never become worse that is that which makes all strange accidents to natural Bodies and Bodies Politike too Scientia all changes in man all revolutions of States easie and familiar to us I shall have another being and yet be the same man And in that state I shall have the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus Of which three things being now come to speak I am the less sorry and so may you be too if my voice be so sunk as that I be not heard for if I had all my time and all my strength and all your patience reserv'd till now what could I say that could become what that could have any proportion to this knowledge and this glory and this face of Christ Jesus there in the Kingdome of Heaven But yet be pleased to hear a word of each of these three words and first of Knowledge In the Attributes of God we consider his knowledge to be Principium agendi dirigens The first proposer and Director This should be done and then his Will to be Principium imperans the first Commander This shall be done and then his Power to be Principium exequens the first Performer This is done This should be done this shall be done this is done expresses to us the Knowledge the Will and the Power of God Now we shall be made partakers of the Divine Nature and the Knowledge and the Will and the Power of God shall be so far communicated to us there as that we shall know all that belongs to our happiness and we shall have a will to doe and a power to execute whatsoever conduces to that And for the knowledge of Angels that is not in them per essentiam for whosoever knows so as the Essence of the thing flows from him knows all things and that 's a knowledge proper to God only Neither doe the Angels know per species by those resultances and species which rise from the Object and pass through the Sense to the Understanding for that 's a deceiveable way both by the indisposition of the Organ sometimes and sometimes by the depravation of the Judgment and therefore as the first is too high this is too low a way for the Angels Some things the Angels do know by the dignity of their Nature by their Creation which we know not as we know many things which inserior Creatures do not and such things all the Angels good and bad know Some things they know by the Grace of their confirmation by which they have more given them then they had by Nature in their Creation and those things only the Angels that stood but all they do know Some things they know by Revelation when God is pleased to manifest them unto them and so some of the Angels know that which the rest though confirm'd doe not know By Creation they know as his Subjects by Confirmation they know as his servants by Revelation they know as his Councel Now Erimus sicut Angeli says Christ There we shall be as the Angels The knowledge which I have by Nature shall have no Clouds here it hath that which I have by Grace shall have no reluctation no resistance here it hath That which I have by Revelation shall have no suspition no jealousie here it hath sometimes it is hard to distinguish between a respiration from God and a suggestion from the Devil There our curiosity shall have this noble satisfaction we shall know how the Angels know by knowing as they know We shall not pass from Author to Author as in a Grammar School nor from Art to Art as in an University but as that General which Knighted his whole Army God shall Create us all Doctors in a minute That great Library those infinite Volumes of the Books of Creatures shall be taken away quite away no more Nature those reverend Manuscripts written with Gods own hand the Scriptures themselves shall be taken away quite away no more preaching no more reading of Scriptures and that great School-Mistress Experience and Observation shall be remov'd no new thing to be done and in an instant I shall know more then they all could reveal unto me I shall know not only as I know already that a Bee-hive that an Ant-hill is the same Book in Decimo sexto as a Kingdom is in Folio That a Flower that lives but a day is an abridgment of that King that lives out his threescore and ten yeers but I shall know too that all these Ants and Bees and Flowers and Kings and Kingdoms howsoever they may be Examples and Comparisons to one another yet they are all as nothing altogether nothing less then nothing infinitely less then nothing to that which shall then be the subject of my knowledge for it is the knowledge of the glory of God Gloria Dei Before in the former acceptation the glory of God was our glorifying of God here the glory of God is his glorifying of us there it was his receiving here it