utmost that they understood if so be that there were no Treason to discolour it and they that did inflict all this appear but Christian Dioclesians and stand at that sad Day in the train of the Persecutions on the same hand O then those Fires which these Boutefeus called for and kindled shall blaze out into everlasting burnings And now it may seem strange that they who most of all pretend the Spirit of Christ are yet of the most distant temper in the World from that of Gospel always endeavouring to do that which our Saviour here checks his Disciples for proposing and did threaten Peter for attempting There are among our selves that seem to live by Inspiration that look and speak as in the frame of the Gospel as if every motion were impulse from Heaven and yet as if Christ had fulfilled his promise to them without Metaphor baptized them with the Holy Ghost and fire onely that they might kindle fire and the unction of the Spirit did but add Oyl to those flames as if the cloven Tongues of fire in which the Spirit did descend were made to be the Emblems of Division and to call for fire these mens life their garb their very piety is faction they pray rebel and murder and all by the Spirit 'T is true indeed they plead now what we seem to say that they should not be persecuted for not being satisfied in their Conscience so they mince their breaking of the Laws for which they suffer But do these know themselves what manner of Spirit they are of or are we bound not to remember when they had the Power how they persecuted all that would not do at once against their King their Conscience and the Law And we do thus far know what Spirit they are of and if they have not yet repented of all that then it is plain if they can get an opportunity they will do it again nay they must by their Spirit think themselves obliged to do it But these are not all those that above all the World pretend to the Infallible assistance of the Spirit our Church is bold in her Offices of this day to say do turn Religion into Rebellion she said it more severely heretofore and the attempts of this day warrant the saying when not like our Disciples that would call for fire from Heaven on the Village that rejected Christ these will raise up fire from Hell to consume their own Prince and his Progeny the whole line of Royalty the Church and Nation also in their Representative and all this onely for refusing him that calls himself Christ's Vicar There are I must confess among them that renounce the practice and say 't was the device onely of some few desperate male-contents wicked Catholiques and design'd by the Devil And they will allow their Father Garnett to have had no other guilt but that he did not discover it having received it in Confession And this gives me occasion to propose a story to your patience and conjectures Not long before the time of this Attempt a Priest of the Society of Jesus in a Book he publish'd does propose this case of Conscience Whether a Priest may make use of what he hath learn'd in Confession to avert great impendent mischiefs to the Government as for Example One confesses that himself or some other had laid Gunpowder and other things under such an House and if they be not taken thence the House will be burnt the Prince must perish all that pass throughout the City will be either certainly destroy'd or in great peril and resolves it thus 'T is the most probable and safe Opinion and the more suitable to Religion and to that reverence which is due to the Sacrament of Confession that it is not lawful to make use of this his knowledg to that end That his Holiness Clement the 8. had just before by a Bull sent to the Superiours of the Regulars commanded most studiously to beware they make not use of any thing which they come to know by Confession to the benefit of the secular Government He adds that in cases of Confession the Priest must not reveal though death be threatned to him but may say he knows it not nor ever heard it quia reverà non scit nec audivit ut homo seu pars reipub Yea he may swear all this if he but mentally reserve so as to tell you 'T is Del Rio in 6th Book of his Mag. dis 1. Cap. Sec. 2. It seems 't is safer to break all the Obligations to Allegiance and to truth his duty and his Oaths the Princes and Gods bonds than the Seal of Confession But I did not mention this to let you see the kindness these men have to Princes and their Government I shall avoid producing any the Opinions of particular persons howsoever horrid in my arguments this day but I onely ask whether it be not very probable this instance was the thing to be attempted on this day Whether the resolution was not publish'd the Pope's Bull if not made yet produc'd at least to caution any Priest that should receive it in Confession and should be so honest as to abhor the Fact yet from betraying it and hindring the Execution of it If it were the case this was not then any rash attempt of some few desperate malecontents but a long contrivance and of many heads and its taking its effect was the great care of their Church Well they are even with us yet and lay as horrid Projects to the charge of Protestants Among our other Controversies this is one whether are the worse Subjects bloody sayings are produc'd from Authors on both sides yea there is the Image of both Churches Babel and Jerusalem drawn by a Catholique Pen and then you may be sure all Babel's divisions and confusions make the draught of ours and are said to be the issue of the Protestant Doctrines Whereas such things are countenanc'd by some particular Authors of their Church were never own'd by any publique Act or Doctrine of a general Council to which they provoke us I must confess our Calendar can shew a thirtieth of January as well as a fifth of November There are indeed that say the Romanists hatch'd that days guilt and challenge any man to call them to account for saying so But whether so or not which Churches Doctrines such things are more suited to I will now put to trial that we may know what Spirit each is of And I will try it by the publique Acts and most establish'd Doctrines of the Churches and here undertake to shew the Church of England most expresly does declare against all practices against the Prince for the cause of Religion But the Romish in those acts wherein she hath most reason to expect infallibility of Spirit also in the publique Acts of the Church representative in General Councils does abett the doing them not onely for Religion but for the cause of Holy
account of Christ or of Religion is most inconsistent with the Spirit of the Gospel For it was the Spirit of Elias who destroyed those whom the Magistrate did send that Christ opposes here the Spirit of the Gospel to in this severe rebuke ye know not what manner of Spirit ye are of The other warm Apostle meets a greater check in the like case S. Peter's zeal that they say made him chief of the Apostles as it made him promptest to confess the Lord so it did heat him to be readiest to defend him as fiery to use his Sword as his Tongue for his Master But his Master will not let a Sword be drawn in his own cause put up again thy Sword into his place The God of our Religion will not be defended by Treason and from Murder by the wounding of another nor will his Religion suffer a Sword out of the sheath against the Power of the Magistrate no not in behalf of Christ himself but goes beyond its proper bounds to threaten things that are not Gospel punishments even excision in this life to them that do attempt it They that take the Sword shall perish with the Sword Here the Gospel becomes Law and turns zealot for the Magistrate though persecuting Christ himself Our Saviour does not think it sharp enough to tell S. Peter that he did not know what Spirit he was of for when this Disciple would have kept these sufferings from his Master onely by his counsel he replies to him get thee behind me Satan He was then of that manner of Spirit therefore now that he does so much worse when he attempts to keep them from him with a Sword and drawn against the Power as if Christ did not know how to word what Spirit such attempts did savour of he does not check and rebuke now but threaten and denounce And 't is obvious to observe that this same Peter who would needs be fighting for his Master in few hours with most cursed imprecations forswears him And so irregular illegal violences for Religion usually flame out into direct opposition to that they are so zealous for fly in the face of that Religion they pretend to strive for to let us see they do not rise from Divine Zeal and from true Piety but from Hypocrisie Ambition Revenge or Interest and that warm shine that kindles there pretended Angels of Light is but a flash of Hell a glory about a fiend Therefore afterwards none was more forward than S. Peter was to press submission to the Magistrate though most unjustly persecuting for Religion talks of no Fire but the fiery trial then in Epist. 1. Cap. iv and If ye suffer for the Name of Christ the Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you he knows what manner of Spirit such are of When they are in the place of Dragons then the Holy Ghost and God is with them when the darkness of the shadow of death is on their Souls even then the Spirit of glory resteth on them Accordingly the after-Fathers urge the same not onely towards Heathen Emperours but relaps'd Hereticks and Apostates As Julian and Constantius Valens Valentinian and upon the same account S. Ambrose says Spiritus Sanctus id locutus est in vobis Rogamus Auguste non Pugnamus The Holy Spirit spake these words in you we beg O Valentinian we oppose not And S. Greg. Nazianzen says to do so was the Christian Law most excellently ordained by the Spirit of God who knew best to temper his Law with the mixture of what is profitable to us and honest in it self They knew what manner of Spirit that of Christianity was It does assume no power to inflict it self 'T is not commission'd to plant it self with violence or destroy those that refuse or oppose it It wages War indeed with Vices not with men And in the Camp of our Religion as once in Israel there is no Sword found but with Saul and Jonathan his Son onely the Princes Sword Our Spirit is the Dove no Bird of prey that nor indeed of gall or passion If Christian Religion be to be writ in Blood 't is in that of its own confessors onely if mens false Opinions make no parties nor mischiefs in the State we are not to make them Martyrs to their false Opinions and if they be not so happy as to be Orthodox send them down to Hell directly tear out one anothers Souls to tear out that which we think an Errour Sure they must not root out smutted Corn that must not root out Poppy we may let that which is a little blasted grow if we must let the Tares and Darnel grow The Soldiers would not crucifie Christ's Coat nor make a rent there where they could find no seam But now men strive so for the Coat that they do rent his Flesh to catch it and to gain an inclosure of the name of Christians tear all other members from the Body of Christ care not to sacrifice a Nation to a supposed Errour will attempt to purge away what they call dross in a Furnace of consuming flame The Christian Spirit 's fiery Tongues must kindle no such heats but his effusions call'd Rivers came to quench such fires Effusions that were mistaken sor new wine indeed but never look'd like Blood Nor are they that retain to this Spirit those that have him call'd down on them in their Consecration impowered for such uses When Christ sent his Disciples to convert the World Behold saith he I send you forth as Lambs among Wolves And sure that does not sound like giving a Commission to tear and worry those that would not come into the Flock The Sheep were not by that impowered to devour the Wolves Our Lords directions to his Apostles when a City would not receive their Doctrine was shake off the dust of your feet let nothing of theirs cleave to you have no more to do with them cast off the very dust that setled on your Sandals as you pass'd their Streets And surely then we must be far from animating to give ruin to and seize the Sword the Scepter and the Thrones of Kings if they refuse to receive Christ or his Kingdom or his Reformation or his Vicar If I must not have the dust of any such upon my feet I must not have their Land in my possession their Crowns on my head their Wealth in my Coffers their Blood upon my hands nor their Souls upon my Sword It will be ill appearing so when we come to give an account how we have executed our Commission and shall be ask'd did I send you to inflict the Cross or preach it to save mens Souls or to destroy their lives yea and Souls too And when in those Myriads of Souls that have perish'd in the desolations which such occasions have wrought their Blood shall cry from under the Altar as being sacrific'd to that Duty and Religion which was the
lives and so prepar'd themselves for Baptism on Easter Eve for that was their most solemn time as Tertullian do's assure us in the 2d Century just when that death and passion into which they were baptiz'd was celebrated Diem Baptismo solenniorem Pascha praestat cum Passio Domini in qua tinguimur odimpleta est And that they did prepare for it with watchings fastings weepings and all rigid mortifying discipline and before him Justin M. And they had in the Greek Church their forty daies for these severities and a while too in the Roman in St Hierom's time and Pope Siricius it was so but quickly sunk into this single weeks performances But in all those times they had their scrutinies their strict examinations to try whether their performances were real and sincere So nice and so severe a thing they thought it to become a Christian. The man was to be mortifi'd and die into the very name But now God knows as for the former discipline for Penitents one Church hath lost it and the other hath debaucht it into Pageantry and taught it to countenance and bolster mens continuance in Sin and minister to vice So for the other discipline too if that did import that Baptism hath such engagements in it men in every Church live now as if they either never had been Christian'd or had never known or had perfectly forgot the obligations of that Sacrament the thing which St Paul reproves here by his question Know you not c. And which therefore 't is impossible there can be a more proper time to call to your Remembrance then this is before you are to celebrate that death you were baptiz'd into Now to inform such he disputes here very closely The sum is this They that are dead to Sin cannot live any longer in it Now as Christs Death was a death to Sin for in that he died he died unto Sin once v. 10. i. e. there was an efficacy in that death of his to put an end to all the powers of Sin which being so it was impossible he could dye more then once but must be alive always afterwards to God So in like manner whoever is baptiz'd he is baptiz'd into the likeness of that death v. 5. namely into a death to Sin inasmuch as by solemn profession and express undertaking he do's die to it for he renounces it and if he answer that his undertaking do's so really and really as Christ died once so as to live always afterwards to God engaging himself to keep Gods holy will and commandments and to walk in the same all the days of his life So that the words suggest these things to be discours'd of 1. Christs death was a death to Sin 2ly They that are baptiz'd are baptiz'd into that death namely into a death to Sin 3ly They that are baptiz'd into that death are to die as Christ did i. e. to die to Sin once so as to live always afterwards to God 1. Christs death was a death to Sin i. e. there was an efficacy in Christs death to put an end to all the powers of Sin And here I mean not that extrinsic efficacy of his death as it confirm'd the Covenant of the Gospel whose rewards and punishments engage us against all those powers nor as his blood did also purchase grace whereby we are enabled to resist them but the direct influence of that death tends to destroy all the power that the Devil World or Flesh had either to command us or condemn us The Scripture tells us that by Death he destroy'd him that had the power of Death i. e. the Devil Heb. 2. 14. Christ tells us he hath overcome the world for us John 16. 23. and St Paul says by his Cross the World is crucify'd to us and assures us that God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and a Sacrifice for Sin condemned Sin in the flesh that the Righteousness of the Law might be fulfill'd in us Rom. 8. 3. Which place discovers how all was effected namely as he was a Sacrifice for Sin and that not only as that Sacrifice did consecrate him to and install him in a power to pardon Sins upon Repentance and so whomsoever by vertue of that motive he took off from serving Sin from them he took away the guilt of it but as that Sacrifice did take away the guilt of Sin from us by bearing it in his own body on the tree the direct consequence of which as to its tendency and efficacy is that we being dead to sin might live to righteousness And in both these manners by his stripes we are healed I do not mean to entertain you with the controversy that there is on the account of these two Schemes concerning the effects and uses of the death of Christ. Only I cannot choose but wonder why it should be said to be unjust in God to lay upon him the iniquity of us all so as that he bore death as the punishment due to sin by making satisfaction for us Sinners For I would gladly know to whom the wrong were don in this that makes the injustice and on whose part it was unjust not on his part that made the satisfaction sure For whether it be wrong to force an innocent person without his consent to suffer for the guilty I shall not dispute But here Christ gave himself for us Tit. 2. 14. and had power to do so John 10. 18. And having power to lay down his life and power to take it up again if he had so much love and pity for lost mankind as to lay it down for three days to prevent their everlasting death and misery no justice certainly nay no self-love forbids this Much less was there wrong don to them for whom the satisfaction was made unless eternal redemtion and eternal blessedness purchas'd at such dear rates with such infinite kindness be accounted injuries Nor yet was it unjust in him that did receive it for none charge it upon that account That death which all confess Christ did justly submit to God most justly might accept since he could so dispose it as not only by it to work the Salvation of those whom it was undertaken for but also the advancement of his humane Nature that did undergo it to the highest pitch of glory to all power in heaven and earth Phil. 2. 9. and withal thereby declare his own Righteousness Rom. 3. 26. and work the honor also of his other glorious attributes And therefore if there had bin no injustice as they say altho Sin had bin pardon'd without any Satisfaction much less could the receiving this be a wrong to him Indeed it seems as if there had bin no right don him by it because he furnisht all that makes the satisfaction and he could not receive it therefore since he gave the value to it And 't is most true in compensation of rights of real possessions and
Law And we shall find a reason for this way of working in that prayer of the same King David Help me O Lord my God O save me according to thy mercies that they may know that this is thy hand and that thou Lord hast don it When our distresses are beyond the succors of means power and counsels if deliverance come we must needs know 't is from above The Prophet speaks of men as apt to sacrifice to their net and burn incense to their drag with which they catch ascribing their successes to themselves But when the Apostles use their net all night and can take nothing then if one upon the shore whom they know not bid them cast in and they do catch strait one of them crieth out it is the Lord. When out of a desperate condition of affairs we see hope drawn we know it is the day spring from on high Whatever several of the late discoverers of the Popish conspiracy may have said or don to disparage their evidence and the credit of what they testify or men Popishly affected have contriv'd to make it be disbeliev'd yet surely while the trial and the letters of the late apostate busy Factor for the party remain upon record it will be manifest as the light that there was a practice and endeavor to subvert the present establishment in Church and State and introduce the superstition and tyranny of Rome among us And that God will be further gracious in the sending forth his light to discover and to disappoint their dire attemts there is ground to hope because it always was the ordinary method of his working making the day of Extremity the day of Salvation 1. In the Jewish Church and Nation And here I shall not mention their deliverance from the Egyptian bondage tho it be a demonstration of my Proposition but name that from the designs of Haman who had satisfied the King their Laws and their Religion and their Worship differ'd from those of all people 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Josephus and that were still occasions to embroile the State that if he would give order they should be destroi'd he would bring 10000 talents near two millions of our mony into the Exchequer whereupon the King allows him to make what declarations he shall please against them and signs an Edict to his Governors and his Lieutenants for the massacring the whole Nation which might easily be don the Jews then being in captivity and mixt among them Mordecay adviseth Ester to present her self before the King remonstrate the injustice of the fact that being death to do she would decline it but as one acquainted with Gods methods Mordecai does answer her think not with thy self that thou shalt escape in the Kings house more then all the Jews for if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place here is a pregnant instance of the assurance of my text but thou and thy fathers house shall be destroi'd And who knoweth whether thou art come to the Kingdom for such a time as this Hereupon she and her Nation fast and pray and she adventures and God gives her favor with the King and he reverses all and the whole Nation on that very day it was to perish is secur'd and the design returns upon their heads that plotted it on all their Enimies I need name no more but there is one pregnant one on which there lies an imputation from great men I mean when throout that Nation their Religion was so persecuted that it was almost extinct false Heathen worship planted in its place possessed the Temple and the Sanctuary and all was profan'd by Antiochus Epiphanes the state so lively propheci'd of by the Prophet Daniel Now when it was thus there was so universal a defection as already had subverted the whole Government Religion and almost the whole Nation God stirs up the Spirit of the Maccabbees on that day three years that all was profan'd ' was again purified and they deliver'd I instance so least that which Grotius satih that nothing can defend that action of the Maccabbees besides extreme certain necessity and what our Thorndike saith 't is manifest the Arms which they took up against their lawful Soveraign are by God approv'd and their Faith commended Hebr. 11. least these should misguide men it may be seasonable to declare that it is plain Antiochus Epiphanes altho he call that land his Kingdom was not then their rightful King for after Alexanders death the first that got possession of it was the King of Egypt It was after violently taken indeed from him by the King of Syria the Jews gave up themselves to the protection of Antiochus the Great but he gave it in dowry to the King of Egypt with his daughter so parted with all right whatever right the Kings of Syria could be suppos'd to have Antiochus Epiphanes had none of that as being not a lawful King of any place usurping from his Nephew the right Heir and with all injurious angry violence when he was driven out of Egypt the attaques Jerusalem and enters it and sets up all the Heathen Exercises and Religion and forbids Gods Worship ravages and spoils and murders all refusers till the Maccabbees oppos'd his fury and till Judas three years after as I said restor'd all having fought against a violent Aggressor not his rightful Prince and he is by Grotius made the very man that typ'd out Christ and was seen by the Prophet in Isaiah 63. Who is he that cometh from Edom with dyed garments from Bozra to which he makes Judas Maccabeus answer I that defend Gods Worship and the true Religion against Antiochus and all his power and to save my People cast my self upon extremest hazards Once more when Caius Emperor of Rome had sent Petronius into Syria charging him to make war on the Jews and by all utmost force to make thew condescend to let his image the statue of himself I mean be set up in their Temple at Jerusalem the Jews when he came into Syria to their Country met him several thousands several times with supplications and entreaties to divert him if they could from doing it But he declaring his Commission to them let them see it was not possible for him to contradict the Emperor and they declar'd also since he durst not transgress the commands of the Emperor he must not think it strange if they durst not transgress Almighty Gods command resolving to endure whatever should be inflicted on the rather then violate that Doing this often and in multitudes Petronius askt them whether they did mean on that account to fight with Caesar and make war against him they repli'd they would not fight but they could die on that account and prostrating themselves and offering their naked throats shew'd their readiness to entertain their death and this for
commandment begets sin but how it makes sin condemning begets death and therefore I believe they are mistaken who expound sin taking occasion by the commandment wrought in me all manner of concupiscence as if it meant the Law onely prohibiting but not quelling sin in me the more it was restrain'd the more it wrought all manner of concupiscence in me especially since there was no punishment assign'd to that sin in the Law it took advantage thence more powerfully to engage me in the pursuit of all my lusts since thence I might have hop't without any fear of punishment to pursue them For this seems perfectly to thwart his aim which was to shew us how the Law wrought condemnation and inflicted death by threatning it It seems to mean I had not onely not known sin to be so dangerous but I had not known some things to be sins and by consequence condemning things but by the Law particularly I had not known concupiscence to be so had not the Law said thou shalt not covet The next words do not seem intended to declare how the Commandment work sin that being brought in by the by as it were thus but sin the corruption of my nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 had wrought in me all manner of concupiscence all actual lusts and wickednesses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 got advantage over me or strength against me by the Law which he there proves for without the law sin is dead not as to stirring in us by its sinful motions sure corruption would not fail to do that and more if there were no check but dead had no strength nor power to condemn me For it follows when the commandment came sin reviv'd got strength to do that and I died was sentenc'd to death by it and the commandment which was ordain'd to life could I have obey'd it I found to be unto death by condemning me to death for my transgression of it For sin by the Commandment 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 getting advantage over me slew me not onely made me liable to death but by its guilt envenoming that death for the sting of death is sin which that it is and how it is so is the second thing I am to speak to Sin is the sting of death which I could make appear two manner of ways in relation to two senses that may be given to the words both pertinent and the one but the Anticipation of the other The first is this Sin is the sting of death 't is Sin makes the thoughts of death pungent and stinging the wicked man cannot think of his last dying day without horrors the onely imagination of a sickness stings him because he is conscious to himself of sin and he knows that that after Death cometh the Judgment and he dares not think of beholding the face of his Judg with his guilt upon him To prove this to you I shall not need to fetch any heathen Testimonies that call the Conscience of Sin a whip a sting a goad a lancing knife things that gash and prick and gall and fret all words of all kinds of terrifying punishment but if there be any gross customary Sinner that now hears me I shall need no other way of proof but by appealing to his own conscience whether when he comes hot from his iniquity he dares entertain the thought of dying And why not Alas he is too deep in arrears to venture upon account with so impartial a Judg books must be laid open if he come there the closet curtain sins nay the bosom villanies must be displaied and every one receive his doom he hath heard that all the refuge of a deplored Sinner at that great and terrible Day of the Lord is but to fly unto the Mountains to cover him and to the Rocks to hide him A wretched hope for how shall the Hills hide him whose iniquities are like Mountains or how shall the rocks cover him whose rebellions are like the great deep as the Scripture words it To such a person Death and Judgment are words of too dangerous a sense and it 's easier for him as many do to resolve there is no such thing as one of them than to think of them and go merrily on in sinning For tell me what is the design of that variety of iniquities in which thou dost ingulf thy self that circle of sins wherein one relieves and succeeds another Sure by such a perpetuity of diversified delights to stave off those severer thoughts which if there were an intermission of sinning or a nauseating of one sin for want of variety would creep in the noise of our riots is not to please the ear but to drown the barking of our consciences When the Sinner's candle is put out if weariness in wickedness do not at once close up his eyes and thoughts if the dark solitary night do but suggest some melancholly thoughts into him how do's he tumble up and down as if he thought to role away from his imagination and he do's ransack his fancy and call up the memory of his past sins about him to entertain himself with all and keep out the torturing remembrance of that sad Day which the Scripture calls putting far from them the evil day for the truth is he dares not give it place least it should happen to him as to a man upon a pointed precipice as himself is indeed situated to whom the apprehension would be as mortal as the danger and he would tumble down for fear of falling So here his sin adds such sharps to the imagination of death that he dares not entertain the thought And if Sin be such a sting in the onely thought of death that the mere remembrance of it is insupportable the use is very natural by the frequent calling of death to mind to stop the current of sin For if the wicked cannot endure to think of death he that does think on it cannot well go on to be wicked Remember thy latter end and thou shalt not do amiss I would give this counsel Think thou art to die while doing it The original of the Turks Turbant which was but by continual wearing of his winding sheet by wrapping his head in his grave-cloaths to have always a shrowd and death upon his thoughts and the Philosophers defining their wisdom to be but contemplatio mortis are not such pregnant inforcers of this use as this practical apprehension of it The man that liv'd among the Tombs tho he had a legion of Devils in him yet when he saw Jesus afar off he ran and worshipped him Mark 5. 6. The sight of graves and conversation with monuments will make even Demoniacks Religious and is so far from thrusting Praiers out of the Liturgy of Burial that it brings the very Devils on their knees But there is yet another and a fuller sense of these words which St Paul repeats out of the LXX translation of Hosea 13. 14. tho not verbatim for there insteed of 〈◊〉
which makes Death a miserable condition as it is the sting of the Serpent that makes him a poysonous creature so it is that which makes Death destructive For were Death the expiration of that little spark in the moving of our heart and if our spirit utterly vanisht as the soft air and were it as the Atheist in the Wise man says we are born at all adventure and shall be hereafter as tho we had never bin Death would be so far from all sting that it would be perfect rest and the end of troubles but Sin makes it onely the beginning of sorrows it changes the very nature of death by making that which seems to be the cessation of sensible function to be the very original of the sensibility of torments Then the Sinner doth begin indeed to feel when he dies Death were but the term of a miserable life did not Sin make it the birth of a more miserable life or death I know not whether to call it for it is of so strange a nature that the very uniting of a Sinner's body and soul which is the onely thing we call life God calls death Rev. 22. 13 14. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it and death and hell or the grave deliver'd up the dead which were in them that is the bodies to be joyn'd to the souls and they were judg'd every man according to their works and in that case all are cast into the lake of fire this is the second death Sin makes Resurrection to be dying and it must needs be so because as afflictions are in this life call'd death as St Paul saith in Deaths often so much more then may those torments of hell be call'd death So that in that death that Sin engages to it is necessary to live always that we may for ever die and it must be so because this makes us liable to the eternal indignation of the offended God which we were not capable of suffering were it not a death of this nature This is indeed death with a sting in it and it is the sense of this approaching that wounds the dying soul when it do's at once call to mind the wickedness of its past life and the wrath that do's await it when he recollects how sinful he hath bin and withall how hateful sin is to God so hateful that it was easier for God to send his Son to suffer death than to suffer sin to go unpunish'd then his own expectations sting and stab his very soul for if God did thus use his own Son how will he use me that have both sinn'd and trod under foot the death of that Son by going on wilfully in my sins Would you then my Brethren find out a way to make death easy and familiar to you you must pull out this sting The Jews say if Adam had continued righteous he should not have died but after a long happy life God would have taken up his soul to him with a kiss which they call osculum pacis he would have receiv'd that spirit which with his mouth he did inspire a kiss of taking leave here to meet in Heaven Wouldst thou have thy death to be the same thing 'T is but becoming righteous with the righteousness of Christ thro whom we have this Victory here in the Text the other part I am to speak to who giveth us the victory thro Jesus Christ our Lords where we have those that are partakers of the Victory and the means thro Jesus Christ our Lord and as to both these this I shall demonstrate over all those enimies in order who the us and how the Victory is gotten First the Law Now that Christ hath redeem'd us from the curse of the Law is said expresly and that by his being made a curse for us Gal. 3. 13. and what that curse of the Law was is set down in the tenth verse cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the Law to do them which no man besides Christ did ever or can do and consequently all mankind lay under that same dreadful curse obnoxious to the wrath of God and the effects of everlasting indignation but Christ by undergoing that curse and by that means satisfying that strict Law procur'd an easier to be set us upon gentler terms not perfect and unsinning strict obedience which was impossible but instead thereof the Law of Faith obsequious Faith that works by love endeavors honestly and heartily and where it fails repents that is grieves and amends and perseveres in doing so For as St Paul assures us we are not under the Law but under Grace Rom. 6. 14. tho we be under the directions of it the duty of it is most indispensable vertue always yet we are not under those strict terms of it according to the tenor of that curse but in a state of favor under terms of grace where there is mercy pardon to be had upon repentance thro faith and where there is encouragement and aid to work that faith and that amendment in us And thus far the Victory accrues to all mankind for all that will accept these terms of this remedying Law of grace the other killing strict Law hath no power over them For the Gospel was commanded to be preach'd to and its terms offer'd every creature under heaven all mankind a victory this that could not be obtain'd but by Christ's bloud the grace and favor of these easier terms for our obedience valued equal with his life for to take of this curse cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do it these strict terms he himself was made a curse and 't will be certainly a most unkind return if that which he thought worth the dying for to get us we shall not think worth the accepting slight these blessed terms and do not care unless we can be free from all necessity of an endeavor freed from vertue too as well as Law But secondly the Law being as we have shew'd it is the strength of Sin in giving it a power to condemn us that Law being taken off that power also cannot but be taken off from Sin and by that means the great strengths of that Enimy defeated Accordingly St Paul do's tell the Romans c. 6. v. 14. Sin shall not have dominion over you that is it shall not have by vertue of the Law a power to condemn you for you are not under the Law but under grace are in that state where men are not condemn'd for every gross or heinous sin altho too long continued in but there is pardon to be had for them that will but faithfully endeavor to amend turn from their sins return to Christ receive him and his pardon and where there is also help to do this 't is a true state of grace so that unless men will resolve to force their own
it does require is very obvious Lord is a word of power and autority it requires service and obedience Nothing more frequent in the Prophets than when they have from God severely worded their commands to add this sanction I am the Lord and as applied to Christ St Paul does say I serve the Lord Christ. A servant is the necessary relative to a Lord and truly doing what he doth command was the use he assigned of all that power he had given him teaching them to observe whatever I have commanded And truly if those Scriptures be remembred which secure his Autority thus let us know that Power was the reward of his sufferings and he endured them partly for the Title 's sake therefore says as much and Heb. 12. 2. For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of God did all this that he might gain that place or if that be not plain enough then this is most express Rom. 14. 9. For to this end Christ both died and rose and revived that he might be Lord both of the dead and the living Verse 8. That whether we live we live unto the Lord and whether we die we die unto the Lord that is that both our life might be consecrated to him our lives spent on his service and our deaths be at his command and this was part of the end of his death And then I appeal to your own hearts for what end think you he did so desire and obtain this power Do you think when he was set at the right hand of God he was exalted onely to a name that by all those sufferings he did acquire but a bare title to be call'd Lord of Lords as he is call'd Rev. 19. 16. but neither to look after our obedience nor indeed to set us any law to obey as some would have it Was this power so dear to him as that he would suffer all those torments to compass it and yet when he hath it that it should be so little regarded by him as to suffer us to neglect contemn it to go on in a continued course of disobedience to all his precepts to rebel against his Power never submit our appetites to it but let every lording passion fly in his face every lust defy his Autority let us be proud against that Lord be higher than our duties and all the temper of virtues and let every ebullition of our proud wrath trample on a statute back'd with hell-fire yea and so believe that his death should procure us an impunity in doing this What a wretched mistake is this to think his bloud which purchased him a power to command us should purchase us a leave to disobey him This is to make Christ's bloud divided against it self and to make it spill and dash it self That we should go on in a course of iniquity or allow our selves some peevish vices and stop our own consciences and a Preacher's mouth with saying Christ died for us when as 't is clear he died that he might be Lord that is that we might live and dy to him do both at his command and canst thou think that that death will excuse thee for not obeying which was undertaken for that very end that thou mightest obey him Christ died to be thy Lord and thou wilt have that death a plea for thee when thou obeyest sin and the Devil his greatest Enimies His Cross was his very Ensign and Standard against these Enimies his Passion was his grappling with them and his death his Victory And yet thou dost again submit to their authority becomest a subject to their power and settest them Lord over thee and fetchest the justification of this thy defection from that death and victory and that is the same thing as to make them of no autority nor power yea the captivity and ruin of those Enimies to be the reason of thy obeying them to excuse thy disservice to Christ by saying he is thy Lord and for thy rebellion and waging war with him pretend thou dost it under his own standard No certainly his Title claims Obedience and does assure thee thou must serve This is the first thing what thou must do The second what thou maist expect from it is easily discover'd that is wages For he will recompence every man according to his deeds Rom. 2. 6. To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honor and immortality eternal life v. 7. And glory honor and peace to every man that doth good v. 10. For he is the Lord of glory the Prince of peace and Lord of life the Scripture saith in a word to sum up both what his Title doth require and what we may expect from it it saith Service and it saith Wages and both are set down in that to the Heb. 5. 9. He is the Author of eternal salvation to all them that obey him and both here are applied to him who does in earnest owne the relation to this Title and can say in truth My Lord the next part and first of the applying what it does require Service as it is the assuring of performance My Lord. And truly had we not entred any voluntary obligation and had we not contracted formally to take him for our Lord and not onely owned all that the relation does import to be due from us but engaged also to render it yet he is to us both 1. By an Original right he made us and there is not a workman in the world hath so much right to require the uses of his own handy-work to dispose of that same utensil which himself shap'd or fram'd as the Lord hath to require our service Did I perchance furnish the Lord with some materials for my self or did I find any piece towards my making contribute any least thing to my being then let me claim somthing for my share in my self and by the rule of fellowship with God have some use of my self to my self and as to that let him not be my Lord. But there is no such thing he called me into being out of the infinite resistance of vacuity and nothing He gave me body soul and every power and faculty and he upholds every motion and inclination of those faculties and gives me opportunities and objects for them There is no considerability of any thing within me is from my self but entirely owes its being from his store and comes from the Almighty and then what least imaginable pretence or plea can I have why every motion and inclination both of soul and body should not be bound to look towards his service and every action and thought acknowledge him My Lord. And 2. By purchased Title He did redeem us from the service of those cruel Lords Sin and the Devil whose service is unreasonable and unmanly slavery and whose wages is eternal ruin and he bought the right and title to our service
his Body and his Bloud is he himself Therefore thou didst receive him as verily as thou didst those and if the Sacramental food be thine then Christ is thine and thou maist say my God My Brethren it was the Bloud of Christ that purchased all the glorious mercies of the Gospel all the blessed expectations of a Christian that was the price of all the joys of Heaven that reconciled God to us bought us an interest in him and the happy enjoyments of himself for us and then if in the Sacrament Christ do give me his bloud when I can shew God that bring him the price of the remission of my sins the value of those glories even the bloud of Jesus come with the purchase-money in my hands that bought my interest in God cannot I say those are mine my Heaven and my God Yea when I can say O Lord Christ whom I have undertaken to obey my God whom I have vowed to serve and worship thou art even my flesh for there I ate thy flesh and thou becamest flesh of my flesh Thou art the portion of my cup when thy very bloud doth fill full my cup and so thou art my flesh and my bloud then surely I may say with Thomas here my Lord and my God O Holy and Eternal Savior who art made both Lord and Christ and by thy Resurrection didst manifest the Omnipotency of thy person the truth of thy Promises and open a way to the everlasting glory and salvation which thou hast prepared for them that give themselves up to serve and worship thee their Lord and God pour down that blessed influence of this thy Resurrection on our hearts in raising us from the death of sin to the life of Righteousness Be thou our Lord and Christ ruling us by thy laws saving us by thy grace and by thy Spirit applying the mercies of thy death and so making us partakers of thy Resurrection therein turning us from our iniquities hereafter in raising us to Glory O Lord we have this day made a Covenant of this with thee and signed the Articles of it in the bloud of our God swore to them at the Altar give us grace we beseech thee to use the strictest care and watchfulness in our endeavors to perform with thee Regard not how we have in times past onely mock'd thee sacredly in these performances O let it from this day be otherwise We have bin onely on a stage of Religion when we are at our devoutest performances and having turn'd our backs unto the Church turn'd them also to our duty put off the vizards of Religion and we untired our selves of all our Piety almost as soon as the exercises of it were don and howsoever we tied our selves our froward wills have bin too strong for all our obligations and burst out of them broke all thy bonds asunder and cast away thy cords from us altho we tied them with all things that were most solemn and most sacred vows and oaths and tied them before the body of our crucified Lord and Savior with the body and bloud of Christ in our hands as if we had no other desires no other cares that should do us good than as we were careful to keep those resolutions and vows and yet O Lord we did let them instantly loosen and slack pass by and fail Yea we did break them wilfully and would not be held in by thine or our own bonds O Lord if thou look upon us in this guilt sure thou wilt have no more to do with us such false and perjured vow-breakers But O look upon us in thine own bloud which thou hast bid us pour out still to establish and renew our Covenant with thee and let this Covenant wherein we have now taken thee to be our Lord and God and taken thee who art so in us remain inviolable be there then with thy Power and Autority subdue our hearts and our desires and bring them under the obedience of thy laws Thou that art God Almighty that didst conquer Death and Satan bring it to pass that none of them prevail against thee now in our Souls where thou art but use thy strength O Lord to drive their power thence that thy servants and thy people may not be enslaved to corruption and ruin nor thy Enimy gain souls from thee which thou hast purchased with thy bloud that we having attain'd thee for our Lord and God may claim the privileges of thy People here have the watches and cares and securities that thou laiest out upon thy Treasures and the Jewels of thy Crown and by thy body and thy bloud being made one with thee and thou being ours all things may be ours thy grace here and thy joys hereafter thy Spirit may be ours and thy Heaven ours and we in thee and thou in us may all enjoy thy Kingdom Power and Glory for ever SERMON XIII THE BELIEVERS CONCERN to pray for Faith Mark 9. 24. Lord I believe help thou my Vnbelief WHICH are the words of a poor parent passionately earnest and afflicted sadly for his child that from his infancy had bin tormented miserably by a Devil for which having sought help every way but finding none no not from Christ's Disciples at last he repairs to him himself beseeching him to have compassion on him and if he were able to relieve him To whom Christ replies that if he could believe then he could work the miracle and help his child all things being possible to be don for him that could believe but nothing otherwise whereupon strait way the father of the child cried out and said with tears Lord I believe help thou my unbelief In which words we have first the necessary Qualification that is to make all that had ever heard of Christ capable of having any benefit from Christ that is belief in him I believe And since Christ hath made this qualification absolutely necessary and by consequence must be suppos'd to have provided means sufficient to work in us that belief that he requires so peremtorily we shall then In the second place enquire how it comes to pass that they so often fail that men do either not believe or their Faith is so weak that much unbelief do's mix with it as in our Confessor here in the Text who tho he did profess he did believe yet withal acknowledges his unbelief And thirdly to prevent and remedy all that here is discovered whither we are to betake our selves for help and where alone 't is possible to find it and that is Christ himself who alone is able to repair in us whatever degree of true belief is wanting in us Lord help thou my unbelief and how he do's repair it And fourthly when it is repair'd to that due height what that degree is can make us capable of those benefits which he hath promis'd to bestow on true Believers and whether such believers can say with our man here I believe yet say too Help my unbelief First of
Mankind it broke through all the oppositions of corrupted Nature and deprav'd Habits nor could all the Devils arts who then govern'd the World stifle or quench the Light of Reason which through all that darkness did discover such deformity in Vice such strict agreement betwixt that which we call Virtue and a rational Creature that they accounted it and truly the essential duty of his nature he that was wicked was reputed false to his own being as great an aberration from and contradiction to Nature as an Animal that were insensible or as cold fire In this all the most distant Factions conspir'd in despite of Principles The Stoick who by fettering all Events all Consultations and Designs in the lines of inexorable Destiny does seem to make all Virtue worthless all endeavours towards it useless yet requires it with as strict necessity as his Fate prescribes with his reasons are as ineluctable as her Laws Nay he does seem to break his Adamantine Chain to make way for this Chain of Virtues though his Jupiter were bound by that yet for the sake of these he leaves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our appetites and actions in our power 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that so there may be place for doing well while it is in our choice and we are free to do it And on the other side the greatest enemies to their necessity and to choice too the Sect that made all actions and things in the whole World to be not effects of any Agent that intended them but meerly sports of Chance and matter who taught that their own souls were but the concretion of some Atoms casually met together without any direction and to no end yet the great Master of it in his Ethicks would not suffer any of this blind Contingency to have to do in Humane actions regulating them by strictest Rules and Laws and in plain contradiction to his Tenents from which our Age derives the most of their impiety although he held there was no God look'd on nor after-life attended none that did see or would reward or punish any of his actions yet requires highest Virtue yea and liv'd such too they say In a word many of them rais'd Morality to such a pitch as if it had arriv'd at the same heights from whence our Christian Revelation did pretend to come And there is nothing so peculiar to Christs Doctrine in the points of Morality but you may find it recommended by the Heathen as a thing which no external obligation did impose but the Law of their making did prescribe which they read in themselves and Christian Morality is but a fairer and more perfect Copy of the impressions of Reason on our Soul clear'd from the blurs and defects which they had been tainted with but Naturales Tabulae Natures Decalogue wrote by the Finger of the Lord So that to quarrel with Christ for requiring it is the same thing as to be angry with our Saviour because the nature of the Fire is such as does require that it should burn Nay many of them were so sensible of the unhappy state of their Corruption found so great pressures in themselves from the weights of their vicious inclinations discerned so perfect an antipathy betwixt their being and their actions that when with all the arts of Reason and the practice of their Philosophy they could not ease themselves they went to Sorcery and Magick for a Cure receiv'd Catharticks and a discipline of purity from Hell the Region of uncleanness the Devil making them believe he would assist in casting out himself Such were the stress the restlesness the groans the cry of Nature to be rid of its impurity These poor Souls were mistaken in their Method but if the Devil by those worships of his which they were us'd to had not stop'd the avenues sure one would judg they had prepar'd the way for Christianity there being no obstuction to it nothing that can hinder its acceptance but the low esteem and aversation of Virtue For if men believe the Moral truths they have no reason in the world to doubt the Supernatural these being intended for the most part as encouragements to those other as God's last attempts to kindle in us love of Virtue by such strong incentives that that wherein Philosophy was ignorant and the Law weak as having neither Promises nor Terrors equal to the force of our Corruptions that the Gospel might effect as having both to the utmost possibility of Divine Contrivance Now this requires us to believe those Supernaturals mostly for this reason by believing them to make us perform what it enjoyns And it is apparent that because men would not do this therefore they will not believe those Shew me but any one that is sincere and strict in Christian duties that does doubt the Principles if there be such an one be cannot doubt them long not onely for Christ's Promise sake If any man will do my Will he shall know of the Doctrine whether it be of God he will soon know that Doctrine is from God that does prescribe such Godlike lives nor onely for the Churches judgment which did make Synesius a Christian Bishop before he did believe the Resurrection upon that confidence they had of him by reason of his Piety But in reason why should he that does embrace the Piety disbelieve that which was propos'd to his belief only to urge him to embrace only to crown that Piety Indeed he that accounts his Vices but sleight tricks of wit or folly onely pleasant satisfactions to the desires of his Nature for he understands no nature but his carnal one he hath no reason to believe there was a Passion of the Son of God by making him a Sacrifice for sin so to condemn sin in the flesh is not prepar'd to think that there is an Eternal weight of Indignation due and ready for it He that hath but mean thoughts of Virtue counts it onely pedantry or as it were the Flatus of the Mind making the Soul Hypocondriack it is impossible that he should think God was Incarnated and died to teach it by his Doctrine and Example and to purchase graces to enable us to live it or that there is a Resurrection to reward it a Trinity engag'd in working out Salvation for it I must confess I would believe that men persuade themselves that the reason of their disbelief is onely this that these things are not testified sufficiently because I find the Man in Hell would have one sent to his Brethren from the Dead to testifie unto them of that place of Torments Luke xvi 28. as if those Truths did want witnessing But this is not because enough hath not been done for their conviction in the truth of Christ's Religion for there is hardly any thing besides in the whole World that men believe but they believe upon less grounds The whole World was convinc'd in such a manner as that millions chose to die rather than not confess it
that he was laid hold on by these sufferings the Epistle to the Hebrews does evince 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Chrysostome in that Way he pursued me till he catch'd me his Agony was but his strife to overtake me his Sweat the issue of his Race When he came down from Godhead in his Incarnation he pursued us then into our nature he laid hold of our Flesh and followed us from Heaven to the lowest parts of the Earth But when he went thus to his Cross here he pursued us then into our guilts he laid hold of our sins and took them up and bore them on the Tree then he descended into Hell to follow us This as it was formally done once for all so in its virtue influence and bless'd effects 't is still in doing as to thee and me and all of us and the approaching season is to represent it so Now sure we need no motives to prepare the way for him who runs that he may obtain our Salvation who though he laboured under such a dismal burden yet still presses on to catch us so to rescue us from sin and Hell If he think fit and can endure to strive thus I will make all ready and stand fair to have my guilt seized from me and to be laid hold on for my Blessedness to be the Prize the Crown of all Christ's Agonies that which he thinks worthy with so much strugling to contend for Now the same Preparation is required here that made way for his other coming that is Repentance in one word a disposition and sincere desire of heart to part with every evil and corrupt affection to quit every sin Sin lying in the way made it so dreadful God laid upon him the iniquity of us all and that weight threw him prostrate on the Earth and sunk him into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And yet if any were more galling 't was the weight of those that were clog'd with Impenitence this was more heavy more afflictive to him than his Cross. To bewail this and the issues of it he left off to consider his own Sufferings and required others also to do so Weep not for me weep for your selves And sure it was for want of such Tears to dilute and temper his sad Potion that his Cup was so amazing to him It was for this the Angel that came from Gods presence to comfort him left him still in Agonies could not do it because the joyes and comforts of that presence are at Sinners that Repent Luke xv 10. And God himself in Hoseah seeing Ephraim would not reform cries out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Consolatio abscondita est ab oculis meis Comfort is hidden from mine Eyes so the LXX also Now they that refuse to do themselves this Honour that the Angel could not do to comfort their God in his Agony how will he ease himself on them How will he laugh at their Calamity be comforted in their Destruction at his coming as a King in Executions the next Way that we must prepare and my last Part. A Progress this I confess that is not usual to our King nor is according to the Method of his Government God call'd it his strange Work under the Law and much more is it so under the Gospel when he Governs by the Law of Faith For Faith being the evidence of things not seen shews us Rewards and Punishments not present but at distance out of sight in the World to come to keep us in our Duty And then why should the Ax be now laid to the root of the Tree when as there is to be an universal Conflagration where every Tree that beareth not good Fruit shall be cast in And upon this we see events do not discriminate deservings things happen to the good and bad alike we may have seen the wicked in great Power spreading himself like a green Bay-tree like a triumphal Garland as he were all Ensign of Victory all verdant spreading Conquest Yea and when the Ax is at the root of the Tree we know not whether it designs it for the Temple or the Kitchen to make a Fire or to make a God The Day that cometh shall declare all when the delay both of Rewards and Punishments shall be compensated with interest And it does scarce seem equal to inflict them twice But yet O Lord in days when Scoffers appear that walk after their own lusts and say where is the promise of his coming For except that the Fathers fell asleep some men are dead and others risen in their place all things else continue as they were from the beginning there always were vicissitudes of Flourish and Decay in every Nation and in these things there are no footsteps of a Providence or Judgment In days when men resist and deny thy Hand because they do not feel it and since thy Judgments are removed out of their sight defie Thee too and dash thy self out of the World in such days 't is but just that thou shouldst come to their conviction and confute them with thy Judgments into Ruine And truly since it must be horrid provocation that makes him come beyond the compass of his Covenant to Revenge the Executions are mostly very fatal as if they were what they seem to prevent the last Day and the final Doom upon such Nations For to the Jews they look as if they had fulfilled all that the Prophecy was mistaken to foretel and were as irreversible and utter as the Sentence of the Day of Judgment Now to prepare for such Approaches of the Lord our King there is one onely means that is resolving Fealty and Allegiance to him and that not formal onely or but idle Homage but renouncing all Confederacy with his Enemies Sin and the Devil and serving him with all the heart and all the strength For he is that King in the 19. of S. Luke who did not onely cause his contumacious Enemies such as would not have him to reign over them to be slain before him v. 27. making his way over their Necks whose Hearts he could not set up his Throne in not did onely cause those Servants who were so far from preparing his Way that upon confidence he delay'd his coming they smote their fellow Servants and did eat and drink with the drunken were unjust to others and indulg'd themselves in all licentious living cause them to be cut asunder and to have their portion in the Region of weeping where these intemperate should have onely tears to drink and for their Riots onely gnashing of teeth Teeth ready to revenge their former Luxuries on themselves gnashing as to devour one another Matth. xxiv 48. But he is that King too that Executed Sloth as well as Treason in Matth. xxv 30. who having given one a Talent trusted him with abilities of doing service in the station he had put him in which for his not endeavouring to do though he corrupted not his faculties
Boy seeing all this and drown'd in Tears would not be comforted by them who promised him all friendly usage but he desired rather to go Die with his Father than live with such wicked people Being reprehended for that Speech Would you know said he why I said it Because I saw you when you had fill'd your Bellies praise your God with hands lift up and yet for all that like Hypocrites never care for making restitution of what you have stollen but be you sure that after Death you shall feel the rigorous Chastisement of the Lord Almighty The Captain admiring would needs persuade him to be a Christian Whereunto earnestly beholding him he answered I understand not what you mean declare it first and you shall know my mind And being told by them of the blessed Authour and the purity of our Religion what God did to Redeem us from our sins and what holy Laws he hath left us With Eyes and Hands lift up he weeping said Blessed be thy Power O Lord that permits such people to live on the Earth that speak so well of Thee and yet so ill observe thy Law as these blinded Miscreants do who think that Robbing and Preaching are things that can be acceptable to thee And so return'd to his Tears and obstinacy To see the strictness of the Christians Obligations and the loosness of their Lives to see their Practices dash against their Professions 'T is such a thing as makes them be the Scorn of honest Heathen Children And is this all that men are required to prepare the way of the Lord for Is this all he can do after so many Centuries of the abode of him and his Religion among us While there is no more of his influence appears I must suspect he is not here the Lord is not among us but is gone And certainly if it be possible to drive him out if there be any Art of doing that we have Professors of that Mystery and the Drolls are they That men should sin against him by transgressing of his Laws is no wonder for there is invitation to it in the Blood That some did count him an Impostor is not strange they had not met it may be with means of Conviction or were prepossest with prejudice but while men own his Person and Religion to have a God onely to make them sport as it hath no temptation so it hath no measures of its guilt Atheism is an honest refuge from this Vice it being much more sober and rational to think there is no God than 't is to make a mock of him whom they profess to be so This is indeed to prepare his way to his Cross for so the Jews and Soldiers did they put a Scepter in his hand onely to take it out and smite him with his Scepter they bowed the knee and cry'd Hail King and so humbly spit in his Face and they put a Crown but 't was of Thorns on his Head thus they Worship'd him in scorn and Crucify'd him with his Dignities And so we serve Religion When we would have a Scene of Mirth that must be put in a ridiculous disguise to laugh at the Son of God must enter Travesty and our Discourse is nothing but the Gospel in Burlesque And is it not time for him to retire But O prepare not this path for him to go away in The Heathens thought it much more possible to Chain their Deity than to be safe if he were gone Any the strangest contradiction is more easie than Security without him Now if you but make up S. Peter's Chain that will hold your God sure Add to Faith that 's the first Link that unites us to him Vertue and to Vertue Temperance and the other Graces nam'd there If he were going yet Return unto me and I will return unto you saith the Lord If you do but prepare to meet him in the Duties of this Season you are sure to find him at his Cross and if we do but lay hold on him there and by the mortifications of a true Repentance partake in his Death He that is the Way and the Life will through that dust and ashes from that Death make a way for us to his Eternal Life To which c. The Eighth SERMON Preached at WHITE-HALL October 9. 1664. 1 JOHN V. 4. This is the Victory which overcometh the World even our Faith THese Words though they explicitly make onely one single Proposition yet they imply several First That the State of Christianity is a state of Warfare He that is born of God must fight we see for he must overcome which is the Second In this War he must not satisfie himself with being on his Guard defensive looking to secure himself but he must Assault and Conquer nothing else will serve his turn but Victory Thirdly The Enemy which he must have no Peace with but must vanquish is the World Fourthly Faith is sufficient forces to assist him in his Conquest Fifthly Faith where it is rightly made use of is a certain Victory But I shall not handle these in Thefi thus but for the more practical treating of them shall make and answer three Enquiries First What the way is that the World does wage War in where its Strength lies and how it manages that force so as to get advantage over men and how it does improve each such advantage till it gets a perfect Conquest Secondly What the strengths of Faith are how it charges breaks the forces of the World and does enable the Believer to overcome Thirdly How far the Believer must pursue his Conquest what must be the measures of his Victory that he may know how to vanquish it so as that the World may not rebel again not do like Joash smite three times then leave but Smite until he make an end of danger Having answered these I shall endeavour to apply all to our selves Now for the better handling of the first of these I must shew you how the Will of Man may be attaqued and taken To which purpose I observe that whatsoever liberty there is in humane choice yet every appetite seems in some sense determin'd in its tendencies to fix on that which appears simply best for it for that instant which it chooseth in I do not say that whensoever Reason peremptorily concludes a thing is best that the Will is determined instantly to that for by a too unhappy evidence we know that if the lower Soul does but becken the Will another way she can suspend and stop her prosecutions and too oft finds cause to go along with that against the dictates of the Mind But this I say that in her last Executive Determinations she always tends to that which hath the fairest and most vigorous appearances of being best for her at that present time If it seem strange how since the Understanding can account the certain expectations of an happy everlastingness much better for the present than a momentany worldly
likeness of his death by being made conformable to that in crucifying of our sins we are inoculated as it were and both together ingraffed in into the Cross and so there is deriv'd to us the vertue of that Stem that Root of Expiation and Atonement and by this insertion being as the same S. Paul says Phil. iii. 9. found in him we have his Righteousness That poor Soul that does throw himself down in the strict humiliations of Repentance at the footstool of the Cross and there beholds his Saviour dying for him and that is himself by Penitence incorporated into him graffed into his Death and planted in his very Passion as Origen and Thomas interpret He may take confidence to say Behold Lord if the satisfactions of thy Eternal Justice be acceptable to thee if the blood of God that is offer'd up without spot be a well-pleasing Sacrifice look down at once on thy Messiah and on my poor Soul turn not thy face from me for whatever my guilts are I have an equal Sacrifice those are my satisfactions and that blood my Offering the Passion and propitiation of the Cross are 〈◊〉 I am Crucified with Christ. We have gone through all the Parts all the Considerations of this Expression and have no more now to take notice of but this that all of them must go together that they never are fulfill'd asunder but he only whom the efficacy of the Cross of Christ hath wrought on to the Crucifying of sin he onely hath the satisfactions of the Cross imputed to him he is planted with ingraffed into Christ For if any man be i◠Christ he is a new creature old things are done away 2 Cor. v. 17. Whosoever is not such he hath no interest in the Jesus of that day He may perchance in some one of those easie Saviours which these times afford wherein Opinions call'd holy or a sanctify'd Faction give such interests and to be in a party is to be in Christ or else he may depend upon that Christ that may be had with meer Dependance that is ours if we persuade our selves he is so Now sure he that is persuaded he is Christ's is either truly so persuaded or else falsly if but falsly that will not advantage him for God will never save a man for believing a lye but that he should truly be persuaded so without this Duty is impossible for he that is Christ's hath crucified the Flesh with the Affections and Lusts therefore by good Logick he that hath not crucified them is not Christ's and evidently whosoever is not crucified at all he is not crucified with Christ. And sure I need not put you in remembrance that the man in whom sin reigns and whensoever his Lusts and Passions bid him go he goeth or come he cometh or do this he doeth it that the body of sin is not crucified in him that which were nailed and fetter'd on the Cross and slain there could not command and rule him so Or if sins dominion be not so absolute but God hath got some footing so as that his Law hath power in the man's mind so as to make him make resistances against his sin and he dislikes it but alas commits it still yet what he does allows not but returns to do it at the next Temptation afterwards would fain be good yet does not find how to perform something governs in his members leading that Law in his mind into captivity to the law of sin this man although he hath the body of death yet 't is not crucified and slain for it does live and exercise the greatest tyranny upon him forces him to serve and to obey against his mind it overcomes his own heart and all inclinations to good and conquers God within him Till men have left off the custom of the works of sin and all gross deeds of the flesh it were as vain to prove they are not crucified as that he is alive that walks and eats Those works they are the fruits of the flesh the off-spring of its lusts and were that crucified and we by likeness to Christ's death planted into the Cross we could no more produce them than that dead Tree the Cross could bear fruit or than a Carcass could have heat to generate the Grave become a Womb or the dust bring forth Secondly Yea more they perform not the outward actions of life who have but the image of death on them and a man asleep works not yet is alive his fancy and his inwards work and if sin be onely kept from breaking out and men commit not gross deeds of the flesh but yet indulge to these things in imagination and the heart cherish them in phansie and design and wish onely restrain the practice or indulge to spiritual wickednesses you may as well say that a man is dead because he does not walk abroad because he keeps within doors and lives only in his Closet or his Bed Chamber as say that sin is crucified which while it stirs but in the heart it is not dead Thirdly Once more we part from all acquaintance with the dead the Corps of one that had the same Soul with us howsoever we may have some throes of grief to leave it yet we put it from us we admit it to no more embraces but if 't were the loathsom Carcass of a Villain Traytor that was Executed we turn from the sight as from a Fiend it is a detestable and accursed spectacle And so he that hath put his Body of sin to death would have great aversations to it yea how dear soever it had been he would no more endure the least acquaintance with it than he would go seek for his old conversations in the Chambers of Death he would shun the sight of any the most bosom custom as he would the Ghost of his dead Friend he would abandon it as a most ghastly dreadful spectacle he would also bury these his dead out of his sight Thus he must needs be dispos'd that hath crucified his Old man And they that are thus dead with Christ shall also live with him yea those that are thus crucified with him he hath already rais'd up together and hath made them sit together in Heavenly places in Christ Jesus There already in their cause and in their right and pledge and there hereafter in effect and full enjoyment The Tenth SERMON Preached at CHRIST-CHURCH IN OXFORD Novemb. 5. 1665. LUKE IX 55. Ye know not what manner of Spirit ye are of THE state of that great Controversie which the words suppose between the Jews and the Samaritans as it then stood seems briefly thus Those that were planted in the Regions of Samaria by Salmaneser however great Idolaters at first having admitted in a while the God of Israel among their Gods and after having an High Priest of Aaron's Line a Temple too built on that place where Abraham and the Fathers of the Hebrews friends of God did chuse to offer Sacrifice and on that
very place where God himself enjoyn'd the Law and all the Blessings of it to be publish'd to the People on Mount Gerizim which therefore seem to have pretences to vye with Mount Zion for there also the Lord commanded the Blessing An Altar too saith Benjamin in his Itinerary made of the same stones that God commanded to be taken out of Jordan and set up for a memorial of his Peoples passage through it And besides all this having the Law of Moses too when they had all these pretensions to the God of Israel they clave to him alone and wholly threw off their Idolatry So Epiphanius does affirm expresly And their Countrey being as Josephus says the receptacle of all discontented fugitive Jews a great part of it too planted with them by Alexander they espoused the Worship of the Jews and came to differ very little either in the Doctrine or the practice of Religion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 having all things as it were the very same the only distance seems to be betwixt their Temples 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 just as the Woman states it to our Saviour Joh. iv Our Fathers Worshipped in this Mountain but ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to Worship So that if we audit the account of the Samaritan guilt they separated from the place of Worship which God had appointed and set up another in a word they were Schismaticks Whether this be such a guilt as should make those terms equivalent He is a Samaritan and hath a Devil I shall not say but it is such as makes our Saviour say somewhat exclusively Salvation is of the Jews All the Blessings and Salvations of the Law did indeed hover on Mount Gerizim were given thence that was the place of them but they were cut away when Schism came The Church is not a place of blessing when 't is built against the Church The Altar hath no Horns to lay hold on for refuge but to push and gore onely when it is set up against the Altar And Gerizim is Ebal when it stands in competition with Mount Zion Well this onely thing does breed the greatest distances imaginable in the Nations nothing more divides than Separation and Schism and then these Samaritans as all Separatists do grew such Opiniastres and so violent in their way as to deny humanity to those that would not join with them they would not grant the Civilities of Passage to one that intended for Jerusalem to Worship They refuse it to our Saviour here because his Face was thitherward ver 53. A Schismatick will reject a Christ if his Face be fromward their new Establishment if he but look towards the Antient Worship At this the Sons of Zebedee are offended zealous for their Master as being most particularly concern'd in him two of his nearest intimates and their zeal would needs break out into flame And why not a rudeness to Elijah was reveng'd by him with Fire from Heaven which consumed twice fifty Soldiers and their Captains though they came to do the King's Command And shall these hated Schismaticks be rude to Thee and reject the Messiah and yet go unpunished Lord shall we command fire to come down from Heaven to consume them even as Elias did Which our Saviour answers with this sharp rebuke Ye know not what manner of Spirit ye are of Not to divide but to explain my Text and so instead of parts present you with some Subjects of Discourse By Spirit here is meant that disposition and complexure of Christian Piety and Vertues that course and Method of Religion which the Spirit does prescribe to Christ's Disciples and does guide them in or in a word the temper of the Gospel is so called And this in opposition to the Law the difference of these being express'd by a diverse manner of Spirit the one is called Spirit of Bondage the other Spirit of Adoption so here Ye know not of what Spirit ye are ye do not judg aright if you believe the temper of the Gospel is like that of the Law The course that I prescribe to my Disciples differs much from that of Prophets under the Old Testament you must be guided by another Spirit than Elijah's was in calling for Fire if my Spirit dwell in you For I came not to destroy mens lives on any such account In this sense it affords these Propositions First To destroy Mens lives or other temporal rights on this account meerly because they are Apostates Schismaticks or otherwise reject the true Religion or Christ himself is inconsistent with the temper of the Gospel This is that which Christ reproves here telling them that would do so Ye know not what manner of Spirit ye are of Secondly Because the Spirit of Elias which the Gospel Christian Spirit here is set in opposition to oppos'd the Magistrate destroy'd those that came commission'd from the Prince and Christ designedly does say ye must not do now what Elias did therefore to attempt upon or against the Magistrate on the account of Christ or of Religion is inconsistent with the Spirit of the Gospel First Of the first that to destroy mens lives c. But here I must observe that since these fiery Disciples that did give occasion for our Saviours rebuke here were no Magistrates nor did Christ himself that gave the rebuke assume but renounce openly all such Authority therefore no observation grounded on these words can controul the Magistrates just Power in punishing Offences done against his Laws although pretences of Religion and Conscience give colour to those offences the Gospel does diminish no rights of the secular Powers Now Supreme Magistrates though as such they have no right to judg in Articles of Faith to define what is true Religion what not for then the Pagan Princes who had never heard of Christ and yet are as much Magistrates as any would have right to judg what Doctrines Christ delivered down to be believed But certainly when Christ Commission'd his Faith to run through all the World not onely independently from all the Powers of it but in perfect opposition to them they can have no right to judg in that which whatsoever they shall Judg we are alike bound to receive the Faith of Christ without any the least difference to their judgment But though they have no right to judg of this they have Authority to determine what Faith shall have the priviledges of their State and what shall not which shall be publiquely profess'd and which they will inhibit with Penalties For sure the Priviledges of the State and power of Penalties are the proper rights of the Supreme Power and therefore none but that can judg and determine of them In a word since it is most evident that the tranquillity of a State does depend upon nothing more than the profession and priviledging of Religion it follows that those Powers to whose Judgment and Decrees the care and
Church First If the Church of Rome have reason to expect infallible assistance of the Spirit in any case it is as much in Canonizing of a Saint as in any other it being as unhappy to determine a false Object for Religious Worship to their Church as a false Article of Faith there is as much need that there should be an infallible proposal of the one as other for when she does Decree by the Authority of the Omnipotent God such a one is a Saint receiv'd in Glory and so renders him the Object of their Worship if he should chance to be a Reprobate to cause the People to fall prostrate to the Shrine of one that 's damn'd and call his flames to warm Gods Altar and the Votaries breast to make the whole Church worship one that is in Hell is liable to greater aggravations of impiety than an erroneous Opinion in very many of their points of Faith can be But it is known their Church hath Canoniz'd one of this Nation Becket who though he was indeed illegally and barbarously Murthered yet 't is not the Suffering but the Cause that makes the Martyr now he did not fall a Sacrifice for his Religion but was slain because he did disturb the State by suspending all the Bishops that upheld the Kings just cause against him so that neither King nor State could live in peace for him for opposing also those Laws which himself had sworn to Laws that were not onely truly Sovereign Rights but are maintain'd even unto this day as Priviledges by the Gallican Church and they not branded for so doing In a word he was slain for those actions which his own Bishops condemned him for as a perjur'd man and a Traytor And for persisting in them to the death he was Sainted Now whatever the estate of this man be in the next World I meddle not with that Yet for Disobedience and Rebellion to place one in Heaven whence for those things Lucifer did fall does seem to shew what Spirit they are of that Canonize such Saints For the Church to pray to Christ that by the wounds of this Saint he would remit their sins does express what rate their Church does set upon the merits of resisting Princes and disturbing States in the behalf of Holy Church When such actions make men fit to be joynt purchasers with Christ in the Redemption of the World But when the French Histories say 't was disputed long after in Paris whether he were Damn'd or Sav'd that the Church in her publique Offices should pray to go thither where he is gone to have his Society though it express their most infallible assurance of the condition of those men who for their sakes resist the Secular Powers yet O my Soul enter not thou into their counsels in this world neither say a Confederacy to whom they say a Confederacy much less pray to be in their Society who by resisting S. Paul says do receive unto themselves Damnation Secondly It is notorious that in their first General Council at Lyons Anno 1245. the Emperour Frederick the second by the Sentence of the Pope and the whole Council after long deliberation and producing several Arguments which they say are not sleight but effectual to prove the suspicion of Heresie is depriv'd of his Empire all his Subjects are absolv'd from their Oath of Allegiance and by Apostolical Authority forbidden to obey him Therefore that such things may be done in the cases of Religion hath the Authority of a General Council 't was that Council that Decreed Red Hats to Cardinals Hats red it seems not onely with the Royal Purple but with the Blood of Kings and of Royalty it self Thirdly I should have urged the well known Canon of the General Council of Lateran the greatest their Church ever boasted of which says That if the temporal Lord shall neglect to purge his Territories from such as the Church there declares Hereticks he shall be Excommunicated by the Metropolitan and if he do not mend within a year complained of to the Pope that so he may declare his Subjects absolv'd from their Allegiance and expose his Lands to be seiz'd by Catholicks who shall exterminate the Hereticks saving the right of the chief Lord Provided he give no impediment to this But the same law shall be observed to those that have no chief Lords that is who are themselves Supream This I should urge but that some say that penal Statutes which are leges odiosae tantum disponunt quantum loquuntur Therefore this Canon since it does not name Kings it does not they say concern them although 't is plain it do sufficiently enough But that there may be therefore no evasion Fourthly In the General Council of Constance that part of it I mean that is approv'd by their whole Church The Pope and Council joyn together in commanding all Arch-Bishops Bishops and Inquisitors to pronounce all such Excommunicate as are declared Hereticks in such and such Articles and that of Transubstantiation half-Communion and the Pope's Supremacy are among them or that favour ot defend them or that Communicate with them in publique or in private whether in sacred Offices or otherwise etiamsi Patriarchali Archiepiscopali Episcopali Regali Reginali Ducali aut aliâ quâvis Ecclesiasticâ aut mundanâ proefulgeant dignitate And Commands them also to proceed to Interdicts and deprivation of Dignities and Goods and whatsoever other Penalties vias modos Thus that Council though it took away the Peoples right to the Blood of Christ denying them the Cup in the Sacrament gave them in exchange the Blood of their own Kings making them a right to that And that they extend the force of these Canons to the most absolute Princes even to him that pleads exemption most to the King of France is plain because when Sixtus the fifth thundred out his Bulls against the then King of Navarre afterwards King Henry the fourth of France and the Prince of Conde depriving them not onely of their Lands and Dignities but their Succession also to the Crown of France absolving their Subjects from their Oaths forbidding them to obey them he declared he did it to them as to relapsed Hereticks favourers and defenders of them and as such fal'n under the Censures of the Canons of the Church Now there are no other Canons that do take in Kings but these which can touch him for that of Boniface the eighth which says the Pope hath power to judg all temporal Powers is declared not to extend to France Cap. meruit de priviledg in extravag communibus Thus by the publique Acts of their Church and by the Canons of their General Councils we have found in causes of Religion Deprivation of Princes Wars and Bloodshed and the other consequent Miseries are establish'd Rebellion encouraged by a Law And if Rebellion be as the sin of Witchcraft then we know what manner of Spirit they are of that do
reasonably think would be to libel your judgment and the prefixing your Name to it and this mean address would look rather like revenge than homage or obedience If I did not know that low performances are due to the transcendency of such a subject as I then discours'd upon and such a Patron as I now Dedicate to So I lie prostrate under my great Arguments here insufficiency is Art and Rhetorick And the truth is My Lord it was not this which made me so sollicitous to avoid your injunctions but apprehensions of the unusefulness of the Discourse it self When God's most signal methods of all sorts do not seem to have wrought much conviction when neither our own dismal guilts nor miseries nor most express miracles of deliverance have made us sensible but after the equally stupendous Thirtieth of January and Twenty Ninth of May and the black time that interven'd we are still the same perverse untractable people when luxury is the retribution made for plenty license for liberty and Atheism for Religion whil'st miracles of mercy are acknowledged only by prodigies of ingrateful disobedience And on the other side when factious humours swell against all Laws as they would either over-flow those mounds or make them yield and give way to them when Declarations and Decrees which infallible when they came only from a party of a part of a Parliament are neither of force nor esteem when they have all solemnity and obligation that just and full authority can give alas what hopes of doing any thing can a weak Harangue entertain But My Lord since you are pleas'd to Command I give up both it and my understanding to Your Lordship and the weaker the Discourse is so much the more pregnant testimony is it of the obsequiousness of My Lord Your Lordships most devoted and most humble Servant RICH. ALLESTRY SERMON XVII AT HAMPTON-COURT May 29. 1662. HOSEA III. 5. Afterward shall the Children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God and David their King and shall fear the Lord and his goodness HE has said in the words before that the Children of Israel shall abide many days without a King and without a Prince without a Sacrifice and without an Image or Altar and without an Ephod and without Teraphim Now when they shall have been for many years in such a state of helpless desolation shall have no King under whose shadow they their Laws and Rights might hope for shelter no Prince to guard them from the sad calamities of wild confusion or usurping violence shall have no exercises of Religion to allay and soften those calamities and give them comfort in the bearing of them no Altar to lay hold on for security against them or to stretch out their hands towards for deprecation of them no nor a God to put an end to this sad state nor any means of direction what to do under it no Ephod to ask Counsel at nor yet the pageantry the fallacy of these no Teraphim for Ephods nor Image for a God the same destruction having seized these and their worshippers the people and their Idols going into Captivity together and the only true God having forsaken them Now when the Prophet had denounc'd this state of Woe which was to dwell with them so long as that their very expectations of deliverance should be dying having continued threescore years and ten a longer and more wearisome age of patience then life he then proceeds to sweeten all by telling them of a return and what things they shall do in it and they are three First Seek the Lord their God apply themselves to his Worship and Obedience and cleave to him for so the word is rendred 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lev. 19. 23. and Jeremy repeating this c. 30. 9. words it shall serve the Lord their God and David their King Which is the second thing they were to do As the Ecclesiastical state was to be setled so the secular too upon its just foundations Religion and Loyalty both running in their ancient current Thirdly They shall fear the Lord and his goodness Not only tremble before him who is the Lord that did exert his power in their destruction but shall much more revere his goodness that did flow out in such plentiful miraculous expresses of deliverance Now these being not only prophecy what in that juncture they would do nor only duties what they were to do but also counsels and directions immediately from God what they were best to do the only prudent and safe course according to the policies of heaven the direct view of these particulars in reference to that state of theirs is not an unconcerning prospect at this season which is the Anniversary of an equal return and therefore I shall lay them so before you and the reflection on them in our practice shall make the application 1. They shall seek the Lord their God is my first part and the Lord 's prime direction for the repairing of a broken Nation Neither indeed can any other course be taken for 'till we have found him while he does hide his face nothing but darkness dwells upon the land or if any light do break out 't is but the kindlings of his anger So he expresses Deut. 31. 17. Thâ—â— people will forsake me and break my Covenant then my anger shall be kindled against them and I will forsake them and hide my face from them and they shall be devoured and many evils and troubles shall befall them so that they will say in that day Are not these evils come upon us because our God is not amongst us This absence is only another word for desclation Be thou instructed O Jerusalem saith God by Jeremy c. 6. 8. lest my soul depart from thee and I make thee desolate a land not inhabited As if without him there were nothing else but solitude in Cities and in Courts and all were desart where he does not dwell Yea there is something beyond desolation Hos. 9. 11 12. As for Ephraim their glory shall flee away like a bird from the birth and from the womb and from the Conception though they bring up their Children yet I will bereve them that there shall not be a man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yea wo also to them when I depart from them And it must needs be so for let our state be never so calamitous if God be not departed there is comfort in it and a deliverer at hand If we are in the place of Dragons his presence will make heaven there and although we be covered with the shadow of death if the light of his Countenance break in we are in glory and the brightness of that will soon damp and shine out the fiery Trial. But if the Lord depart then there is no redemption possible God hath forsaken him persecute him and take him for there is none to deliver him Psal. 71. 11. But if there were deliverance some other way yet the want of God's
people of Israel If ye do wickedly ye shall be destroyed both you and your King There are other sins besides Rebellion and Treason that murder Kings and Governments Those that support their Ills by their dependencies and use great shadows for a shelter to rapacity oppression or licences or any crying wickedness those prove Traitors to Majesty and themselves strike at the root of that under which they took covert fell that and crush themselves National vices have all Treason in them and every combination in such sins is a Conspiracy If universal practice palliate them we do not see their stain in may be think them slight but their complexion is purple Common blood is not deep enough to colour them they die themselves in that that 's sacred Nay these do seem to spread contagion to God as if they would not let the Lord be holy nor suffer that to be which he swore by his holyness should be For the Psalmist cries out Where are thy old loving kindnesses which thou swarest unto David But sure some of God's Oaths will stand if not those of his kindness those will by which he swears the ruine of such sinners and God that is holy will be sanctified in judgment upon them Yea upon more then the offenders for the guilty themselves are not a sacrifice equal to such piacular ofences Innocent Majesty must bleed for them too If you do wickedly you shall be destroy'd both you and your King Thus when God would remove Judah out of his sight good Josiah must fall and the same makes them be to seek David their King But how David their King when 't was Zorobabel For with Theodoret and others I conclude he must be meant the first literal importance of the words It was the custom of most Nations from some great eminent prince to name all the Succession so at once to suggest his Excellencies to his followers and to make his glory live Now without doubt David was Heroe enough for this and his valour alone sufficient to ground the like practice upon And though we do not find that done yet we do find his piety and his uprightness made the standard by which that of his Successors is meted Of one 't is said he walked in the ways of David his Father of another he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord but not like unto David his Father And because David went aside and was upright with an Exceptation once therefore it is said The Lord was with Jehoshaphat because he walked in the first ways of his Father David But besides this his very name is given to two Zorobabel and the Messiah both which were to be the restorers of their people The one from Sin and Hell to re-establish the Kingdom of heaven it self the other to deliver his people from Babel and to repair a broken Nation and demolish'd Temple And for this work God bids them seek David their King The ways from Babel to Jerusalem from the Confusion of a people to a City that is at unity in it self the City of God where he appears in perfect beauty and where the throne of the house of David is must be the first ways of David In those he walk'd to Sion and did invest his people in God's promises the whole land of Canaan In those Zorobabel brought them back to that land and Sion And in these our Messiah leads us to Mount Sion that is above to the celestial Jerusalem does build an universal Church and Heaven it self And all that have the like to do must walk in those first ways fulfil that part of David and must Copy Christ. Such the repairers of great breaches must be These are the ways to settle Thrones the only ways in which we may find the goodness of the Lord which to fear is the third direction and my last part They shall fear the Lord and his goodness 3. That Israel who came but now out of the furnace should fear the Lord whose wrath did kindle it whose justice they had found such a consuming fire as to make the Temple it self a Sacrifice and the whole Nation a burnt-offering is reasonable to expect But when his goodness had repair'd all this to require them to fear that does seem hard That that goodness which when it is once apprehended does commit a rape upon our faculties and being tasted melts the heart and causes dissolution of soul through swoons of complacency that this should be received with dread and trembling is most strange Indeed the Psalmist says There is mercy with God that he may be feared for where there not we should grow desperate But how to fear those mercies is not easie 'T is true when God made his goodness pass fore Moses shewed him the glory of it as he says in those moâ—â— comfortable Attributes the sight of which is beatifick Vision Exod. 34. 6 c. The Lord the Lord God merciful and gracious long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth keeping mercy for thousands forgiving iniquity transgression and sin if that which follows there be part of it and that will by no means clear the guilty visiting the iniquity of the Fathers upon the Children unto the third or fourth Generation if this be one ray of the glory of goodness if it dart out such beams alas 't is as devouring as the lake of fire his very goodness stabs whole successions at once and the guilty may tremble at it for themselves and their posterity But if those words do mean as we translate those very words Jer. 46. 28. I will not leave thee altogether unpunish'd yet will not utterly cut off not make a full end of the guilty when I visit Iniquities upon the Children but will leave them a remnant still then there is nothing dreadful in it but those very visitations have kindness in them and his rod comforts and this issue of his goodness also is not terrible but lovely To fear God's goodness therefore is to revere it to entertain it with a pious astonishment acknowledging themselves unworthy of the crums of it especially not daring to provoke it by surfeiting or by presuming on it or by abusing it to serve ill ends or any other than God sent it for those of piety and obedience Not to comply with which is to defeat God's kindness and the designs of it If when they sought the Lord he was found of them and came to his dwelling place only to be forc'd thence again by their abominations if when his goodness had restor'd all to them they had David their King but to conspire against an Altar onely to pollute and a Temple to separate from as Manasses the Priest Sanballat's son in-in-law with his accomplices did do this were both to affront and to renounce that goodness which above all things they must dread the doing For if this be offended too ruine is irreversible there is no other