By which I also gather that it was so universal so primitive a practice to baptize Infants that it was greater than all pretences to the contrary for it would much have conduced to the introducing his opinion against Grace and Original Sin if he had destroyed that practice which seemed so very much to have its greatest necessity from the doctrine he denied But against Pelagins and against all that follow the parts of his opinion it is of good use which S. Austin Prosper and Fulgentius argue If Infants are punished for Adam's sin then they are also guilty of it in some sence Nimis enim impium est hoc de Dei sentire 〈◊〉 quòd à praevaricatione liberos cum reis 〈◊〉 esse 〈◊〉 So Prosper Dispendia quae slentes nascendo testantur dicito quo merito sub 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 judice 〈◊〉 sinullum peccatum 〈◊〉 arrogentur said S. Austin For the guilt of it signifies nothing but the obligation to the punishment and he that feels the evil consequent to him the sin is imputed not as to all the same dishonour or moral accounts but to the more material to the natural account and in Holy Scripture the taking off the punishment is the pardon of the sin and in the same degree the punishment is abolished in the same God is appeased and then the person stands upright being reconciled to God by his grace Since therefore Infants have the punishment of sin it is certain the sin is imputed to them and therefore they need being reconciled to God by Christ and if so then when they are baptized into Christ's Death and into his Resurrection their sins are pardoned because the punishment is taken off the sting of natural death is taken away because God's anger is removed and they shall partake of Christ's Resurrection which because Baptism does signifie and consign they also are to be baptized To which also add this appendent Consideration That whatsoever the Sacraments do consign that also they do convey and minister they do it that is God by them does it lest we should think the Sacraments to be mere illusions and abusing us by deceitful ineffective signs and therefore to Infants the grace of a title to a Resurrection and Reconciliation to God by the death of Christ is conveyed because it signifies and consigns this to them more to the life and analogy of resemblance than Circumcision to the Infant sons of Israel I end this Consideration with the words of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Our birth by Baptism does cut off every unclean appendage of our natural birth and leads us to a celestial life And this in Children is therefore more necessary because the evil came upon them without their own act of reason and choice and therefore the grace and remedy ought not to stay the leisure of dull Nature and the formalities of the Civil Law 18. Fifthly The Baptism of Insants does to them the greatest part of that benefit which belongs to the remission of sins For Baptism is a state of Repentance and Pardon for ever This I suppose to be already proved to which I only add this Caution That the Pelagians to undervalue the necessity of Supervening grace affirmed that Baptism did minister to us Grace sufficient to live perfectly and without sin for ever Against this S. Jerome sharply declaims and affirms Baptismum praeterita donare peccata non suturam servare justitiam that is non statim justum facit omni plenum justitiâ as he expounds his meaning in another place Vetera peccata conscindit novas virtutes non tribuit dimittit à carcere dimisso si laboraverit praemia pollicetur Baptism does not so forgive future sins that we may do what we please or so as we need not labour and watch and fear perpetually and make use of God's grace to actuate our endeavours but puts us into a state of Pardon that is in a Covenant of Grace in which so long as we labour and repent and strive to do our duty so long our infirmities are pitied and our sins certain to be pardoned upon their certain conditions that is by virtue of it we are capable of Pardon and must work for it and may hope it And therefore Infants have a most certain capacity and proper disposition to Baptism for sin creeps before it can go and little undecencies are soon learned and malice is before their years and they can do mischief and irregularities betimes and though we know not when nor how far they are imputed in every month of their lives yet it is an admirable art of the Spirit of grace to put them into a state of Pardon that their remedy may at least be as soon as their necessity And therefore Tertullian and Gregory Nazianzen advised the Baptism of Children to be at three or four years of age meaning that they then begin to have little inadvertencies and hasty follies and actions so evil as did need a Lavatory But if Baptism hath an influence upon sins in the succeeding portion of our life then it is certain that their being presently innocent does not hinder and ought not to retard the Sacrament and therefore Tertullian's Quid festinat innocens aetas ad remissionem peccatorum What need Innocents hasten to the remission of sin is soon answered It is true they need not in respect of any actual sins for so they are innocent but in respect of the evils of their nature derived from their original and in respect of future sins in the whole state of their life it is necessary they be put into a state of Pardon before they sin because some sin early some sin later and therefore unless they be baptized so early as to prevent the first sins they may chance die in a sin to the pardon of which they have â—â—t derived no title from Christ. 19. Sixthly The next great effect of Baptism which Children can have is the Spir it of Sanctification and it they can be baptized with Water and the Spirit it will be sacriledge to rob them of so holy treasures And concerning this although it be with them as S. Paul says of Heirs The Heir so long as he is a child differeth nothing from a Servant though he be Lord of all and Children although they receive the Spirit of Promise and the Spirit of Grace yet in respect of actual exercise they differ not from them that have them not at all yet this hinders not but they may have them For as the reasonable Soul and all its Faculties are in Children Will and Understanding Passions and Powers of Attraction and Propulsion yet these Faculties do not operate or come ahead till time and art observation and experience have drawn them forth into action so may the Spirit of Grace the principle of Christian life be infused and yet lie without action till in its own day it is drawn forth For in every Christian there are three
concerning judgments or the administration of Justice that Judges and Magistrates should be appointed in every Place for the Order and Government of Civil Societies the determination of Causes and executing of Justice between Man and Man And that such there then were seems evident from the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which Job twice speaks of in one Chapter the judged iniquity which the Jewes expound and we truly render an iniquity to be punished by the Judges The seventh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 concerning the member of any live-creature that is as God expresses it in the Precept to Noah they might not eat the blood or the flesh with the life thereof Whether these Precepts were by any solemn and external promulgation particularly delivered to the Ante-deluvian Patriarchs as the Jewes seem to contend I will not say for my part I cannot but look upon them the last only excepted as a considerable part of Nature's Statute-law as comprizing the greater strokes and lineaments of those natural dictates that are imprinted upon the souls of Men. For what more comely and reasonable and more agreeable to the first notions of our minds than that we should worship and adore God alone as the Authour of our beings and the Fountain of our happiness and not derive the lustre of his incommunicable perfections upon any Creature that we should entertain great and honourable thoughts of God and such as become the Grandeur and Majesty of his being that we should abstain from doing any wrong or injury to another from invading his right violating his priviledges and much more from making any attempt upon his life the dearest blessing in this World that we should be just and fair in our transactions and do to all men as we would they should do to us that we should live chastely and temperately and not by wild and extravagant lusts and sensualities offend against the natural modesty of our minds that Order and Government should be maintained in the World Justice advanced and every Man secured in his just possessions And so suitable did these Laws seem to the reason and understandings of Men that the Jewes though the most zealous People under Heaven of their Legal Institutions received those Gentiles who observed them as Proselytes into their Church though they did not oblige themselves to Circumcision and the rest of the Mosaic Rites Nay in the first Age of Christianity when the great controversie arose between the Jewish and Gentile-Converts about the obligation of the Law of Moses as necessary to salvation the observation only of these Precepts at least a great part of them was imposed upon the Gentile-Converts as the best expedient to end the difference by the Apostolical Synod at Jerusalem 4. BUT though the Law of Nature was the common Law by which God then principally governed the World yet was not he wanting by Methods extraordinary to supply as occasion was the exigencies and necessities of his Church communicating his mind to them by Dreams and Visions and other ways of Revelation which we shall more particularly remarque when we come to the Mosaical Oeconomy Hence arose those positive Laws which we meet with in this period of the Church some whereof are more expresly recorded others more obscurely intimated Among those that are more plain and obvious two are especially considerable the prohibition sor not eating blood and the Precept of Circumcision the one given to Noah the other to Abraham The prohibition concerning blood is thus recorded every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you but flesh with the life thereof which is the blood thereof shall you not eat The blood is the vehiculum to carry the spirits as the Veins are the channels to convey the blood now the animal 〈◊〉 give vital heat and activity to every part and being let out the blood presently cools and the Creature dies Not flesh with the blood which is the life thereof that is not flesh while it is alive while the blood and the spirits are yet in it The mystery and signification whereof was no other than this that God would not have Men train'd up to arts of cruelty or whatever did but carry the colour and aspect of a merciless and a savage temper lest severity towards Beasts should degenerate into fierceness towards Men. It 's good to defend the out-guards and to stop the remotest ways that lead towards sin especially considering the violent propensions of humane nature to passion and revenge Men commence bloody and inhumane by degrees and little approaches in time render a thing in it self abhorrent not only familiar but delightful The Romans who at first entertained the People in the 〈◊〉 only with wild Beasts killing one another came afterwards wantonly to sport away the Lives of the Gladiators yea to cast Persons to be devoured by Bears and Lions for no other end than the divertisement and pleasure of the People He who can please himself in tearing and eating the Parts of a living Creature may in short time make no scruple to do violence to the Life of Man Besides eating blood naturally begets a savage temper makes the spirits rank and fiery and apt to be easily inflamed and blown up into choler and fierceness And that hereby God did design to bar out ferity and to secure mercy and gentleness is evident from what follows after and surely your blood of your lives will I require at the hand of every beast will I require it and at the hand of Man at the hand of every Man's brother will I require the life of man whoso sheddeth Man's blood by Man shall his blood be shed The life of a Beast might not be wantonly sacrificed to Mens humours therefore not Man 's the life of Man being so sacred and dear to God that if kill'd by a Beast the Beast it self was to dye for it if by man that man's life was to go for retaliation by man shall his blood be shed where by man we must necessarily understand the ordinary Judge and Magistrate or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Jewes call it the lower Judicature with respect to that Divine and Superiour Court the immediate judgment of God himself By which means God admirably provided for the safety and security of Man's life and for the order and welfare of humane society and it was no more than necessary the remembrance of the violence and oppression of the Nephilim or Giants before the Flood being yet fresh in memory and there was no doubt but such mighty Hunters men of robust bodies of barbarous and inhumane tempers would afterwards arise This Law against eating blood was afterwards renewed under the Mosaic Institution but with this peculiar signification for the life of the flesh is in the blood and I have given it to you upon the Altar to make an atonement for your souls for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul that is the blood might
History of CHRIST and his Apostles And if we cast our eyes upon it at this time How was the Gold become dim and the most fine Gold changed How miserably deformed was the face of the Church how strangely degenerated from its Primitive Institution whereof we shall observe some particular instances Their Temple though lately repaired and rebuilt by Herod and that with so much pomp and grandeur that Josephus who may justly be presumed partial to the honour of his own Nation says of it that it was the most admirable structure that was ever seen or heard of both for the preparation made for it the greatness and magnificence of the thing it self and the infinite expence and cost bestowed upon it as well as for the glory of that Divine worship that was performed in it yet was it infinitely short of that of Solomon besides that it had been often exposed to rudeness and violence Not to mention the horrible prophanations of Antiochus it had been of late invaded by Pompey who boldly ventured into the Sanctum Sanctorum and without any scruple curiously contemplated the mysteries of that place but suffered no injury to be offered to it After him came Crassus who to the others boldness added Sacrilege seizing what the others piety and modesty had spared plundering the Temple of its vast wealth and treasure Herod having procured the Kingdom besieged and took the City and the Temple and though to ingratiate himself with the People he endeavoured what in him lay to secure it from rapine and impicty and afterwards expended incredible Summes in its reparation yet did he not stick to make it truckle under his wicked policies and designs The more to indear himself to his Patrons at Rome he set up a Golden Eagle of a vast dimension the Arms of the Roman Empire over the great Gate of the Temple a thing so expresly contrary to the Law of Moses which forbids all Images and accounted so monstrous a prophanation of that holy place that while Herod lay a dying the People in a great tumult and uproar gathered together and pull'd it down A great part of it was become an Exchange and a Market the place where Men were to meet with God and to trade with Heaven was now turned into a Ware-house for Merchants and a Shop for Usurers and the House of Prayer into a Den of Thieves The worship formerly wont to be performed there with pious and devout affections was now shrunk into a meer shell and out-side they drew near to God with their mouths and honoured him with their lips but their hearts were 〈◊〉 from him Rites of humane invention had justled out those of Divine Institution and their very Prayers were made traps to catch the unwary People and to devour the Widow and the Fatherless Their Priesthood was so changed and altered that it retain'd little but its ancient Name the High-priests who by their Original Charter were lineally to succeed and to hold their place for life were become almost annual scarce a Year passing over wherein one was not thrust out and another put in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as 〈◊〉 notes out of their own Historian Nay which was far worse it was become not only annual but venal Herod exposing it to sale and scarce admitting any to the Sacerdotal Office who had not first sufficiently paid for his Patent and which was the natural consequence of that the place was filled with the resuse of the People Men of mean abilities and debauched manners who had neither parts nor piety to recommend them he being the best and the fittest man that offered most Nay into so strange a degeneracy were they fallen in this matter that Josephus reports that one Phannias was elected High-priest not only a rustick and illiterate fellow not only not of the Sacerdotal Line but so intolerably stupid and ignorant that when they came to acquaint him he knew not what the High-Priesthood meant And not content to be imposed upon and tyrannized over by a Forreign Power they fell a quarrelling among themselves and mutually prey'd upon one another the High-priests falling out with the inferiour Orders and both Parties going with an armed retinue after them ready to clash and fight where-ever they met the High-priest sending his Servants to fetch away the Tithes due to the inferiour Priests insomuch that many of the poorest of them were famished for want of necessary food 19. THEIR Law which had been delivered with so much majesty and magnificence and for which they themselves pretended so great a reverence they had miserably corrupted and depraved the moral part of it especially and that two ways First by gross and absurd interpretations which the Teachers of those times had put upon it The Scribes and Pharisees who ruled the Chair in the Jewish Church had by false and corrupt glosses debased the majesty and purity of the Law and made it to serve the purposes of an evil life they had taught the People that the Law required no more than external righteousness that if there was but a visible conformity of the life they needed not be sollicitous about the government of their minds or the regular conduct of their thoughts or passions that so Men did but carry themselves fair to the eye of the World it was no great matter how things went in the secret and unseen retirements of the Soul nay that a punctual observance of some external Precepts of the Law would compensate and quit scores with God for the neglect or violation of the rest They told Men that when the Law forbad murder so they did not actually kill another and sheath their Sword in their Brother's bowels it was well enough Men were not restrained from furious and intemperate passions they might be angry yea though by peevish and uncomely speeches they betray'd the rancor and malice of their minds They confessed the Law made it adultery actually to embrace the bosom of a stranger but would not have it extend to wanton thoughts and unchast desires or that it was adultery for a man to lust after a Woman and to commit folly with her in his heart they told them that in all oaths and vows if they did but perform what they had sworn to God the Law took no further notice of it when as every vain and unnecessary oath all customary and trifling use of the name of God was forbidden by it They made them believe that it was lawful for them to proceed by the rigorous Law of retaliation to exact their own to the utmost and to right and revenge themselves when as the Law requires a tender compassionate and benevolent temper of mind and is so far from owning the rigorous punctilio's of revenge that it obliges to meekness and patience to forgiveness and charity and which is the very height of charity not only to pardon but to love and befriend our greatest enemies quite contrary to
and perfection whereof he designed should be brought in by Christ. And how admirably did God herein condescend to the temper and humor of that people for being of a more rough and childish disposition apt to be taken with gaudy and sensible objects by the external and pompous institutions of the Ceremonial Dispensation he prepared them for better things as children are brought on by things accommodate to their weak capacities The Church was then an heir under age and was to be trained up in such a way as agreed best with its Infant-temper till it came to be of a more ripe manly age able to digest Evangelical mysteries and then the cover and the veil was taken off and things made to appear in their own form and shape 7. HENCE in the next place appears our happiness above them that we are redeemed from those many severe and burdensom impositions wherewith they were clogg'd and are now obliged only to a more easie and reasonable service That the Law was a very grievous and 〈◊〉 Dispensation is evident to any that considers how much it consisted of carnal ordinances costly duties chargeable sacrifices and innumerable little Rites and Ceremonies Under that state they were bound to undergo yea even new-born Infants the bloudy and painful 〈◊〉 of Circumcision to abstain from many sorts of food useful and pleasant to man's life to keep multitudes of solemn and stated times new Moons and Ceremonial Sabbaths to take long and tedious journeys to Jerusalem to offer their sacrifices at the Temple to observe daily washings and purifications to use infinite care and caution in every place for if by chance they did but touch an unclean thing besides their present confinement it put them to the expences of a sacrifice with hundreds more troublesome and costly observances required of them A cruel bondage heavy burdens and grievous to be born under the weight whereof good men did then groan and earnestly breath after the time of reformation the very Apostles complained that it was a yoke upon their necks which neither their Fathers nor they were able to bear But this yoke is taken off from our shoulders and the way open into the liberties of the children of God The Law bore a heavy hand over them as children in their minority we are got from under the rod and lash of its tutorage and Pedagogie and are no more subject to the severity of its commands to the exact punctilio's and numerousness of its impositions Our Lord has removed that low and troublesome Religion and has brought in a more manly and rational way of worship more suitable to the perfections of God and more accommodate to the reason and understandings of men A Religion incomparably the wisest and the best that ever took place in the World God did not settle the Religion of the Jews and their way of worship because good and excellent in it self but for its suitableness to the temper of that people Happy we whom the Gospel has freed from those intolerable observances to which they were obliged and has taught us to serve God in a better way more 〈◊〉 and acceptable more humane and natural and in which we are helped forwards by greater aids of Divine assistence than were afforded under that Dispensation All which conspire to render our way smooth and plain Take my yoke upon you for my yoke is easie and my burden is light 8. THIRDLY the Dispensation of the Gospel is founded upon more noble and excellent promises A better Covenant established upon better promises And better promises they are both for the nature and clearness of their revelation They were of a more sublime and excellent nature as being promises of spiritual and eternal things such as immediately concerned the perfection and happiness of mankind grace peace pardon and eternal life The Law strictly considered as a particular Covenant with the Jews at Mount Sinai had no other promises but of temporal blessings plenty and prosperity and the happiness of this life This was all that appeared above-ground and that was expresly held forth in that transaction whatever might otherwise by due inferences and proportions of reason be deduced from it Now this was a great defect in that Dispensation it being by this means considering the nature and disposition of that people and the use they would make of it apt to intangle and debase the minds of men and to arrest their thoughts and desires in the pursuit of more sublime and better things I do not say but that under the Old Testament there were promises of spiritual things and of eternal happiness as appears from 〈◊〉 Psalms and some passages in the Books of the Prophets But then these though they were under the Law yet they were not of the Law that is did not properly belong to it as a legal Covenant God in every age of the Jewish Church raising up some extraordinary persons who preached notions to the people above the common standard of that Dispensation and who spoke things more plainly by how much nearer they approached the times of the Messiah But under the Christian Oeconomy the promises are evidently more pure and spiritual not a temporal Canaan external prosperity or pardon of ceremonial uncleanness but remission of sins reconciliation with God and everlasting life are proposed and offered to us Not but that in some measure temporal blessings are promised to us as well as them only with this difference to them earthly blessings were pledges of spiritual to us spiritual blessings are ensurances of temporal so far as the Divine wisdom sees fit for us Nor are they better in themselves than they are clearly discovered and revealed to us Whatever spiritual blessings were proposed under the former state were obscure and dark and very few of the people understood them But to us the veil is taken off and we behold the glory of the Lord with open face especially the things that relate to another World for this is the promise that he hath promised us even Eternal Life Hence our Lord is said to have brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel Which he may be justly said to have done inasmuch as he has given the greatest certainty and the clearest account of that state He hath given us the greatest assurance and certainty of the thing that there is such a state The happiness of the other World was a notion not so firmly agreed upon either amongst Jews or Gentiles Among the Jews it was peremptorily denied by the Sadducees a considerable Sect in that Church which we can hardly suppose they would have done had it been clearly propounded in the Law of Moses And among the Heathens the most sober and considering persons did at some times at least doubt of it witness that confession of Socrates himself the wisest and best man that ever was in the Heathen World who when he came to plead his cause before his Judges and
an uncertain hill and the way to it had been upon the waters upon which no spirit but that of Contradiction and Discord did ever move for the man should have tended to an end of an uncertain dwelling and walked to it by ways not discernible and arrived thither by chance which because it is irregular would have discomposed the pleasures of a Christian Hope as the very disputing hath already destroyed Charity and disunited the continuity of Faith and in the consequent there would be no Vertue and no Felicity But God who never loved that Man should be too ambitiously busie in imitating his Wisedom and Man lost Paradise for it is most desirous we should imitate his Goodness and transcribe copies of those excellent Emanations from his Holiness whereby as he communicates himself to us in Mercies so he propounds himself imitable by us in Graces And in order to this God hath described our way plain certain and determined and although he was pleased to leave us indetermined in the Questions of exteriour Communion yet he put it past all question that we are bound to be Charitable He hath placed the Question of the state of Separation in the dark in hidden and undiscerned regions but he hath opened the windows of Heaven and given great light to us teaching how we are to demean our selves in the state of Conjunction Concerning the Salvation of Heathens he was not pleased to give us account but he hath clearly described the duty of Christians and tells upon what terms alone we shall be saved And although the not inquiring into the ways of God and the strict rules of practice have been instrumental to the preserving them free from the serpentine enfoldings and labyrinths of Dispute yet God also with a great design of mercy hath writ his Commandments in so large characters and engraven them in such Tables that no man can want the Records nor yet skill to read the hand-writing upon this wall if he understands what he understands that is what is placed in his own spirit For God was therefore desirous that humane nature should be perfected with moral not intellectual Excellencies because these only are of use and compliance with our present state and conjunction If God had given to Eagles an appetite to swim or to the Elephant strong desires to fly he would have ordered that an abode in the Sea and the Air respectively should have been proportionable to their manner of living for so God hath done to Man fitting him with such Excellencies which are useful to him in his ways and progress to Perfection A man hath great use and need of Justice and all the instances of Morality serve his natural and political ends he cannot live without them and be happy but the filling the rooms of the Understanding with aiery and ineffective Notions is just such an Excellency as it is in a Man to imitate the voice of Birds at his very best the Nightingale shall excel him and it is of no use to that End which God designed him in the first intentions of creation In pursuance of this consideration I have chosen to serve the purposes of Religion by doing assistence to that part of Theologie which is wholly practical that which makes us wiser therefore because it makes us 〈◊〉 And truly my Lord it is enough to weary the spirit of a Disputer that he shall argue till he hath lost his voice and his time and sometimes the Question too and yet no man shall be of his mind more than was before How few turn Lutherans or Calvinists or Roman Catholicks from the Religion either of their Country or Interest Possibly two or three weak or interested phantastick and easie prejudicate and effeminate understandings pass from Church to Church upon grounds as weak as those for which formerly they did dissent and the same Arguments are good or bad as exteriour accidents or interiour appetites shall determine I deny not but for great causes some Opinions are to be quitted but when I consider how few do forsake any and when any do oftentimes they chuse the wrong side and they that take the righter do it so by contingency and the advantage also is so little I believe that the triumphant persons have but small reason to please themselves in gaining Proselytes since their purchase is so small and as inconsiderable to their triumph as it is unprofitable to them who change for the worse or for the better upon unworthy motives In all this there is nothing certain nothing noble But he that follows the work of God that is labours to gain Souls not to a Sect and a Subdivision but to the Christian Religion that is to the Faith and Obedience of the Lord JESUS hath a promise to be assisted and rewarded and all those that go to Heaven are the purchase of such undertakings the fruit of such culture and labours for it is only a holy life that lands us there And now my Lord I have told you my reasons I shall not be ashamed to say that I am weary and toiled with rowing up and down in the seas of Questions which the Interests of Christendom have commenced and in many Propositions of which I am heartily perswaded I am not certain that I am not deceived and I find that men are most confident of those Articles which they can so little prove that they never made Questions of them But I am most certain that by living in the Religion and fear of God in Obedience to the King in the Charities and duties of Communion with my Spiritual Guides in Justice and Love with all the world in their several proportions I shall not fail of that End which is perfective of humane nature and which will never be obtained by Disputing Here therefore when I had fixed my thoughts upon sad apprehensions that God was removing our Candlestick for why should be not when men themselves put the Light out and pull the Stars from their Orbs so hastening the day of God's Judgment I was desirous to put a portion of the holy fire into a Repository which might help to re-enkindle the Incense when it shall please God Religion shall return and all his Servants sing In convertendo captivitatem Sion with a voice of Eucharist But now my Lord although the results and issues of my retirements and study do naturally run towards You and carry no excuse for their forwardness but the confidence that your Goodness rejects no emanation of a great affection yet in this Address I am apt to promise to my self a fair interpretation because I bring you an instrument and auxiliaries to that Devotion whereby we believe you are dear to God and know that you are to good men And if these little sparks of holy fire which I have heaped together do not give life to your prepared and already-enkindled Spirit yet they will sometimes help to entertain a Thought to actuate a Passion to imploy and hallow
his leisure either we disrepute the infinity of his Wisdom or give clear demonstration of our own vanity 2. When God descended to earth he chose to be born in the Suburbs and retirement of a small Town but he was pleased to die at Jerusalem the Metropolis of Judaea Which chides our shame and pride who are willing to publish our gayeties in Piazza's and the corners of the streets of most populous places but our defects and the instruments of our humiliation we carry into desarts and cover with the night and hide them under ground thinking no secrecy dark enough to hide our shame nor any theatre large enough to behold our pompous vanities for so we make provisions for Pride and take great care to exclude Humility 3. When the Holy Virgin now perceived that the expectation of the Nations was arrived at the very doors of revelation and entrance into the World she brought forth the Holy Jesus who like Light through transparent glass past through or a ripe Pomegranate from a fruitful tree fell to the earth without doing violence to its Nurse and Parent She had no ministers to attend but Angels and neither her Poverty nor her Piety would permit her to provide other Nurses but her self did the offices of a tender and pious Parent She kissed him and worshipped him and thanked him that he would be born of her and she suckled him and bound him in her arms and swadling-bands and when she had 〈◊〉 to God her first scene of joy and Eucharist she softly laid him in the manger till her desires and his own necessities called her to take him and to rock him softly in her arms and from this deportment she read a lecture of Piety and maternal care which Mothers should perform toward their children when they are born not to neglect any of that duty which nature and maternal piety requires 4. Jesus was pleased to be born of a poor Mother in a poor place in a cold winter's night far from home amongst strangers with all the circumstances of humility and poverty And no man will have cause to complain of his course Robe if he remembers the swadling-clothes of this Holy Child nor to be disquieted at his hard Bed when he considers Jesus laid in a manger nor to be discontented at his thin Table when he calls to mind the King of Heaven and Earth was fed with a little breast-milk But since the eternal wisdom of the Father who knew to chuse the good and refuse the evil did chuse a life of Poverty it gives us demonstration that Riches and Honors those idols of the World's esteem are so far from creating true felicities that they are not of themselves eligible in the number of good things however no man is to be ashamed of innocent Poverty of which many wise men make Vows and of which the Holy Jesus made election and his Apostles after him made publick profession And if any man will chuse and delight in the affluence of temporal good things suffering himself to be transported with caitive affections in the pleasures of every day he may well make a question whether he shall speed as well hereafter since God's usual method is that they only who follow Christ here shall be with him for ever 5. The Condition of the person 〈◊〉 was born is here of greatest consideration For he that cried in the Manger that suck'd the paps of a Woman that hath exposed himself to Poverty and a world of inconveniences is the Son of the living God of the same substance with his Father begotten before all Ages before the Morning-stars he is GOD eternal He is also by reason of the personal Union of the Divinity with his Humane nature the Son of God not by Adoption as good Men and beatified Angels are but by an extraordinary and miraculous Generation He is the Heir of his Father's glories and possessions not by succession for his Father cannot die but by an equality of communication He is the express image of his Father's person according to both Natures the miracle and excess of his Godhead being as upon wax imprinted upon all the capacities of his Humanity And after all this he is our Saviour that to our duties of wonder and adoration we may add the affections of love and union as himself besides his being admirable in himself is become profitable to us Verè Verbum hoc est abbreviatum saith the Prophet The eternal Word of the Father is shortned to the dimensions of an infant 6. Here then are concentred the prodigles of Greatness and Goodness of Wisdom and Charity of Meekness and Humility and march all the way in mysterie and incomprehensible mixtures if we consider him in the bosome of his Father where he is seated by the postures of Love and essential Felicity and in the Manger where Love also placed him and an infinite desire to communicate his Felicities to us As he is God his Throne is in the Heaven and he fills all things by his immensity as he is Man he is circumscribed by an uneasie Cradle and cries in a Stable As he is God he is seated upon a super-exalted Throne as Man exposed to the lowest estate of uneasiness and need As God clothed in a robe of Glory at the same instant when you may behold and wonder at his Humanity wrapped in cheap and unworthy Cradle-bands As God he is incircled with millions of Angels as Man in the company of Beasts As God he is the eternal Word of the Father Eternal sustained by himself all-sufficient and without need and yet he submitted himself to a condition imperfect inglorious indigent and necessitous And this consideration is apt and natural to produce great affections of love duty and obedience desires of union and conformity to his sacred Person Life Actions and Laws that we resolve all our thoughts and finally determine all our reason and our passions and capacities upon that saying of St. Paul He that loves not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be accursed 7. Upon the consideration of these Glories if a pious soul shall upon the supports of Faith and Love enter into the Stable where this great King was born and with affections behold every member of the Holy Body and thence pass into the Soul of Jesus we may see a scheme of holy Meditations enough to entertain all the degrees of our love and of our understanding and make the mysterie of the Nativity as fruitful of holy thoughts as it was of Blessings to us And it may serve instead of a description of the Person of Jesus conveyed to us in imperfect and Apocryphal schemes If we could behold his sacred Feet with those affections which the Holy Virgin did we have transmitted to us those Mysteries in story which she had first in part by spiritual and divine infused light and afterwards by observation Those holy Feet tender and unable to support his sacred Body should bear him over
affections and with the pleasures and entertainments of desires is the way of the more passionate and imperfect not in a man's power to chuse or to procure but comes by a thousand chances meeting with a soft nature credulous or weak easie or ignorant softned with fears or invited by forward desires 9. Those that did live amidst the fervours of the primitive Charity and were warmed by their fires grew inflamed by contact and vicinity to such burning and shining lights And they therefore grew to high degrees of Piety because then every man made judgment of his own actions by the proportions which he saw before him and believed all descents from those greater examples to be so many degrees from the Rule And he that lives in a College of devout persons will compare his own actions with the Devotion and customes of that Society and not with the remisness of persons he hears of in story but what he sees and lives with But if we live in an Age of Indevotion we think our selves well assoiled if we be warmer than their Ice every thing which is above our example being eminent and conspicuous though it be but like the light of a Gloworm or the sparkling of a Diamond yet if it be in the midst of darkness it is a goodly beauty This I call the way of serving God by desires and affections and this is altered by example by publick manners by external works by the assignment of 〈◊〉 by designation of conventions for prayer by periods and revolutions of times of duty by hours and solemnities so that a man shall owe his Piety to these chances which although they are graces of God and instruments of Devotion yet they are not always in our power and therefore they are but accidental ministeries of a good life and the 〈◊〉 constant or durable But when the principle of our Piety is a conformity of our Understanding to God's Laws when we are instructed what to do and therefore do it because we are satisfied it is most excellent to obey God this will support our Piety against objections lead it on in despight of disadvantages this chuses God with Reason and is not determined from without and as it is in some degree necessary for all times so it is the greatest security against the change of Laws and Princes and Religions and Ages when all the incentives of affection and exteriour determinations of our Piety shall cease and perhaps all external offices and the daily sacrifice and Piety it self shall fail from the face of the Land then the obedience founded in the Understanding is the only lasting strength is left us to make retreat to and to secure our conditions Thus from the composition of the Will and Affections with our exteriour acts of obedience to God our Obedience is made willing swift and chearful but from the composition of the Understanding our Obedience becomes strong sincere and persevering and this is that which S. Paul calls our reasonable service 10. Fourthly To which if we add that our Obedience be universal we have all the qualifications which make the duty to be pious and prudent The meaning is that we obey God in all his Sanctions though the matter be in common account small and inconsiderable and give no indulgence to our selves to recede from the Rule in any matter whatsoever For the veriest minute of Obedience is worth our attention as being by God esteemed the trial of our Obedience in a greater affair He that is unjust in a little will be unjust in a greater said our Blessed Saviour And since to God all matter is alike and no more accrues to him in an Hecatomb than in a piece of gumm in an Ascetick severity than in a secular life God regards not the matter of a precept but the Obedience which in all instances is the same and he that will prevaricate when the matter is 〈◊〉 and by consequence the temptations to it weak and impotent and soon confuted will think he may better be excused when the temptations are violent and importunate as it commonly happens in affairs of greater importance He that will lie to save sixpence will not stick at it when a thousand pound is the purchase and possibly there is more contempt and despite done to the Divine authority when we disobey it in such particulars wherein the Obedience is most easie and the temptations less troublesome I do not say there is more injustice or more malice in a small Disobedience than in a greater but there is either more contempt or more negligence and dissolution of discipline than in the other 11. And it is no small temptation of the Devil soliciting of us not to be curious of scruples and grains nor to disturb our peace for lighter Disobediences persuading us that something must be indulged to publick manners something to the civilities of society something to nature and to the approaches of our passions and the motions of our first desires but that we be not over-righteous And true it is that sometimes such surreptions and smaller undecencies are therefore pardoned and lessened almost to a nullity because they dwell in the confines of things lawful and honest and are not so notorious as to be separated from permissions by any publick certain and universal cognisance and therefore may pass upon a good man sometimes without observation But it is a temptation when we think of neglecting them by a predetermined incuriousness upon pretence they are small But this must be reduced to more regular Conclusions 12. First Although smaller Disobediences expressed in slight mis-becoming actions when they come by surprise and sudden invasion are through the mercies of God dashed in the very approach their bills of accusation are thrown out and they are not esteemed as competent instruments of separation from God's love yet when a smaller sin comes by design and is acted with knowledge and deliberation for then it is properly an act of Disobedience Malitia supplet defectum aetatis The malice of the agent heightens the smalness of the act and makes up the iniquity To drink liberally once and something more freely than the strict rules of Christian sobriety and temperance permit is pardoned the easier when without deliberation and by surprise the person was abused who intended not to transgress a minute but by little and little was mistaken in his proportions but if a man by design shall estimate his draughts and his good fellowship and shall resolve upon a little intemperance thinking because it is not very much it is therefore none at all that man hath mistaken himself into a crime and although a little wound upon the finger is very curable yet the smallest prick upon the heart is mortal So is a design and purpose of the smallest Disobedience in its formality as malicious and destructive as in its matter it was pardonable and excusable 13. Secondly Although every lesser Disobedience when it comes singly
favourable And it is considerable that nothing is worse than Death but Damnation or something that partakes of that in some of its worst ingredients such as is a lasting Torment or a daily great misery in some other kind And therefore since no humane Law can bind a man to a worse thing than Death if Obedience brings me to death I cannot be worse when I disobey it and I am not so bad if the penalty of death be not expressed And so for other penalties in their own proportions This Discourse is also to be understood concerning the Laws of Peace not of War not onely because every disobedience in War may be punished with death according as the reason may chance but also because little things may be of great and dangerous consequence But in Peace it is observable that there is no humane positive superinduced Law but by the practice of all the world which because the 〈◊〉 of the Prince is certainly included in it is the surest interpretation it is dispensed withall by ordinary necessities by reason of lesser inconveniences and common accidents thus the not saying of our Office daily is excused by the study of Divinity the publishing the banns of Matrimony by an ordinary incommodity the Fasting-days of the Church by a little sickness or a journey and therefore much rather if my Estate and most of all if my Life be in danger with it and to say that in these cases there is no interpretative permission to omit the particular action is to accuse the Laws and the Law-giver the one of unreasonableness the other of uncharitableness 22. Fourthly These Considerations are upon the execution of the duty but even towards Man our obedience must have a mixture of the Will and choice like as our injunction of obedience to the Divine Command With good will doing service saith the Apostle for it is impossible to secure the duty of inferiours but by conscience and good will unless provision could be made against all their secret arts and concealments and escapings which as no providence can foresee so no diligence can cure It is but an eye-service whatsoever is compelled and involuntary nothing rules a man in private but God and his own desires and they give Laws in a Wilderness and accuse in a Cloister and do execution in a Closet if there be any prevarication 23. Fifthly But obedience to humane Laws goes no farther we are not bound to obey with a direct and particular act of Understanding as in all Divine Sanctions for so long as our Superiours are fallible though it be highly necessary we conform our wills to their innocent Laws yet it is not a duty we should think the Laws most prudent or convenient because all Laws are not so but it may concern the interest of humility and self-denial to 〈◊〉 subject to an inconvenient so it be not a sinful Command for so we must chuse an affliction when God offers it and give God thanks for it and yet we may cry under the smart of it and call to God for ease and remedy And yet it were well if inferiours would not be too busie in disputing the prudence of their Governours and the convenience of their Constitutions Whether they be sins or no in the execution and to our particulars we are concern'd to look to I say as to our particulars for an action may be a sin in the Prince commanding it and yet innocent in the person executing as in the case of unjust Wars in which the Subject who cannot ought not to be a Judge yet must be a Minister and it is notorious in the case of executing an unjust sentence in which not the Executioner but the Judge is only the unjust person and he that serves his Prince in an unjust War is but the executioner of an unjust sentence But what-ever goes farther does but undervalue the person slight the Government and unloose the golden cords of Discipline For we are not intrusted in providing for degrees so we secure the kind and condition of our actions And since God having derived rays and beams of Majesty and transmitted it in parts upon several states of men hath fixed humane authority and dominion in the golden candlestick of Understanding he that shall question the prudence of his Governour or the wisdom of his Sanction does unclasp the golden rings that tie the purple upon the Prince's shoulder he tempts himself with a reason to disobey and extinguish the light of Majesty by overturning the candlestick and hiding the opinion of his wisdom and understanding And let me say this He that is confident of his own understanding and reasonable powers and who is more than he that thinks himself wiser than the Laws needs no other Devil in the neighbourhood no tempter but himself to pride and vanity which are the natural parents of Disobedience 24. But a man's Disobedience never seems so reasonable as when the Subject is forbidden to do an act of Piety commanded indeed in the general but uncommanded in certain circumstances And forward Piety and assiduous Devotion a great and undiscreet Mortifier is often tempted to think no Authority can restrain the fervours and distempers of zeal in such holy Exercises and yet it is very often as necessary to restrain the indiscretions of a forward person as to excite the remissness of the cold and frozen Such persons were the Sarabaites spoken of by 〈◊〉 who were greater labourers and stricter mortifiers than the Religious in Families and Colledges and yet they endured no Superiour nor Laws But such customs as these are Humiliation without Humility humbling the body and exalting the spirit or indeed Sacrifices and no Obedience It was an argument of the great wisdom of the Fathers of the 〈◊〉 when they heard of the prodigious Severities exercised by 〈◊〉 Stylites upon himself they sent one of the Religious to him with power to enquire what was his manner of living and what warrant he had for such a rigorous undertaking giving in charge to command him to give it over and to live in a community with them and according to the common institution of those Religious families The Messenger did so and immediately 〈◊〉 removed his foot from his Pillar with a purpose to descend but the other according to his Commission called to him to stay telling him his station and severity was from God And he that in so great a Piety was humble and obedient did not undertake that Strictness out of singularity nor did it transport him to vanity for that he had received from the Fathers to make judgment of the man and of his institution whereas if upon pretence of the great Holiness of that course he had refused the command the spirit of the person was to be declared caitive and imprudent and the man 〈◊〉 from his troublesom and ostentous vanity 25. Our Fasts our Prayers our Watchings our Intentions of duty our frequent Communions and
die but if ye through the Spirit do mortifie the deeds of the body ye shall live This first Mortification is the way of life if it continues but its continuance is not fecured till we are advanced towards life by one degree more of this Death For this condition is a state of a daily and dangerous warfare and many inrodes are made by sin and many times hurt is done and booty carried off for he that is but thus far mortified although his dwelling be within the Kingdom of Grace yet it is in the borders of it and hath a dangerous neighbourhood If we mean to be safe we must remove into the heart of the Land or carry the war farther off 6. Secondly We must not only be strangers here but we must be dead too dead unto the World that is we must not only deny our Vices but our Passions not only contradict the direct immediate Perswasion to a sin but also cross the Inclination to it So long as our Appetites are high and full we shall never have peace or safety but the dangers and insecurities of a full War and a potent Enemy we are always disputing the Question ever strugling for life but when our Passions are killed when our desires are little and low then Grace reigns then our life is hid with Christ in God then we have fewer interruptions in the way of Righteousness then we are not so apt to be surprised by sudden eruptions and transportation of Passions and our Piety it self is more prudent and reasonable chosen with a freer election discerned with clearer understanding hath more in it of Judgment than of Fancy and is more spiritual and Angelical He that is apt to be angry though he be habitually careful and full of observation that he sin not may at some time or other be surprised when his guards are undiligent and without actual expectation of an enemy but if his Anger be dead in him and the inclination lessened to the indisferency and gentleness of a Child the man dwells safe because of the impotency of his Enemy or that he is reduced to Obedience or hath taken conditions of peace He that hath refused to consent to actions of Uncleanness to which he was strongly tempted hath won a victory by sine force God hath blessed him well but an opportunity may betray him instantly and the sin may be in upon him unawares unless also his desires be killed he is betrayed by a party within David was a holy person but he was surprised by the sight of Bathsheba for his freer use of permitted beds had kept the fire alive which was apt to be put into a flame when so fair a beauty reflected through his eyes But Joseph was a Virgin and kept under all his inclinations to looser thoughts opportunity and command and violence and beauty did make no breach upon his spirit 7. He that is in the first state of Pilgrimage does not mutiny against his Superiors nor publish their faults nor envy their dignities but he that is dead to the world sees no fault that they have and when he hears an objection he buries it in an excuse and rejoyces in the dignity of their persons Every degree of Mortification endures reproof without murmur but he that is quite dead to the world and to his own will feels no regret against it and hath no secret thoughts of trouble and unwillingness to the suffering save only that he is sorry he deserv'd it For so a dead body resists not your violence changes not its posture you plac'd it in strikes not his striker is not moved by your words nor provoked by your scorn nor is troubled when you shrink with horror at the sight of it only it will hold the head downward in all its situations unless it be hindred by violence And a mortified spirit is such without indignation against scorn without revenge against injuries without murmuring at low offices not impatient in troubles indifferent in all accidents neither transported with joy nor deprest with sorrow and is humble in all his thoughts And thus he that is dead saith the Apostle is justified from sins And this is properly a state of life in which by the grace of Jesus we are restored to a condition of order and interiour beauty in our Faculties our actions are made moderate and humane our spirits are even and our understandings undisturbed 8. For Passions of the sensitive Soul are like an Exnalation hot and dry born up from the earth upon the wings of a cloud and detained by violence out of its place causing thunders and making eruptions into lightning and sudden fires There is a Tempest in the Soul of a passionate man and though every wind does not shake the earth nor rend trees up by the roots yet we call it violent and ill weather if it only makes a 〈◊〉 and is harmless And it is an inordination in the spirit of a man when his Passions are tumultuous and mighty though they do not determine directly upon a sin they discompose his peace and disturb his spirit and make it like troubled waters in which no man can see his own figure and just 〈◊〉 portions and therefore by being less a man cannot be so much a Christian in the midst 〈◊〉 so great indispositions For although the Cause may hallow the Passion and if a man be very angry for God's cause it is Zeal not Fury yet the Cause cannot secure the Person from violence transportation and inconvenience When Elisha was consulted by three Kings concerning the success of their present Expedition he grew so angry against idolatrous soram and was carried on to so great degrees of disturbance that when for Jehosaphat's sake he was content to enquire of the Lord he called for a minstrel who by his harmony might re-compose his disunited and troubled spirit that so he might be apter sor divination And sometimes this zeal goes besides the intention of the man and beyond the degrees of prudent or lawful and ingages in a sin though at first it was Zeal for Religion For so it happened in Moses at the waters of Massah and Meribah he spake foolishly and yet it was when he was zealous for God and extremely careful of the people's interest For his Passion he was hindred from entring into the Land of Promise And we also if we be not moderate and well-tempered even in our 〈◊〉 for God may like Moses break the Tables of the Law and throw them out of our hands with zeal to have them preserved for Passion violently snatches at the Conclusion but is inconsiderate and incurious concerning the Premises The summ and purpose of this Discourse is that saying of our Blessed Saviour He that will be my Disciple must deny himself that is not only desires that are sinful but desires that are his own pursuances of his own affections and violent motions though to things not evil or in themselves
Man if they pass through an even and an indifferent life towards the issues of an ordinary and necessary course they are little and within command but if they pass upon an end or aim of difficulty or ambition they duplicate and grow to a 〈◊〉 and we have seen the even and temperate lives of indifferent persons continue in many degrees of Innocence but the Temptation of busie designs is too great even for the best of dispositions 7. But these Temptations are crasse and material and soon discernible it will require some greater observation to arm against such as are more spiritual and immaterial For he hath Apples to cousen Children and Gold for Men the Kingdoms of the World for the Ambition of Princes and the Vanities of the World for the Intemperate he hath Discourses and fair-spoken Principles to abuse the pretenders to Reason and he hath common Prejudices for the more vulgar understandings Amongst these I chuse to consider such as are by way of Principle or Proposition 8. The first great Principle of Temptation I shall note is a general mistake which excuses very many of our crimes upon pretence of Infirmity calling all those sins to which by natural disposition we are inclined though by carelesness and evil customs they are heightned to a habit by the name of Sins of infirmity to which men suppose they have reason and title to pretend If when they have committed a crime their Conscience checks them and they are troubled and during the interval and abatement of the heats of desire resolve against it and commit it readily at the next opportunity then they cry out against the weakness of their Nature and think as long as this body of death is about them it must be thus and that this condition may stand with the state of Grace And then the Sins shall return periodically like the revolutions of a Quartan Ague well and ill for ever till Death surprizes the mistaker This is a Patron of sins and makes the Temptation prevalent by an authentick instrument and they pretend the words of S. Paul For the good that I would that I do not but the evil that I would not that I do For there is a law in my members 〈◊〉 against the law of my mind bringing me into captivity to the law of Sin And thus the 〈◊〉 of Sin is mistaken for a state of Grace and the imperfections of the Law are miscalled the affections and necessities of Nature that they might seem to be incurable and the persons apt for an excuse therefore because for Nature there is no absolute cure But that these words of S. Paul may not become a 〈◊〉 of death and instruments of a temptation to us it is observable that the Apostle by a siction of person as is usual with him speaks of himself not as in the state of Regeneration under the Gospel but under the 〈◊〉 obscurities insufficiencies and imperfections of the Law which indeed he there contends to have been a Rule good and holy apt to remonstrate our misery because by its prohibitions and limits given to natural desires it made actions before indifferent now to be sins it added many curses to the breakers of it and by an 〈◊〉 of contrariety it made us more desirous of what was now unlawful but it was a Covenant in which our Nature was restrained but not helped it was provoked but not sweetly assisted our Understandings were instructed but our Wills not sanctified and there were no suppletories of Repentance every greater sin was like the fall of an Angel irreparable by any mystery or express recorded or enjoyned Now of a man under this Govenant he describes the condition to be such that he understands his Duty but by the infirmities of Nature he is certain to fall and by the helps of the Law not strengthened against it nor restored after it and therefore he calls himself under that notion a miserable man sold under sin not doing according to the rules of the Law or the dictates of his Reason but by the unaltered misery of his Nature certain to prevaricate But the person described here is not S. Paul is not any justified person not so much as a Christian but one who is under a state of direct opposition to the state of Grace as will manifestly appear if we observe the antithesis from S. Paul's own characters For the Man here named is such as in whom sin wrought all concupiscence in whom sin lived and slew him so that he was dead in trespasses and sins and although he did delight in the Law after his inwardman that is his understanding had intellectual complacencies and satisfactions which afterwards he calls serving the Law of God with his mind that is in the first dispositions and preparations of his spirit yet he could act nothing for the law in his members did inslave him and brought him into captivity to the law of sin so that this person was full of actual and effective lusts he was a slave to sin and dead in trespasses But the state of a regenerate person is such as to have 〈◊〉 the flesh with the affections and lusts in whom sin did not reign not only in the mind but even also not in the mortal body over whom sin had no dominion in whom the old man was crucified and the body of sin was destroyed and sin not at all served And to make the antithesis yet clearer in the very beginning of the next Chapter the Apostle saith that the spirit of life in Christ Jesus had made him free from the law of sin and death under which law he complained immediately before he was sold and killed to shew the person was not the same in these so different and contradictory representments No man in the state of Grace can say The evil that I would not that I do if by evil he means any evil that is habitual or in its own nature deadly 9. So that now let no man pretend an inevitable necessity to sin for if ever it comes to a custom or to a great violation though but in a single act it is a condition of Carnality not of spiritual life and those are not the infirmities of Nature but the weaknesses of Grace that make us sin so frequently which the Apostle truly affirms to the same purpose The flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh and these are contrary the one to the other so that ye cannot or that ye do not do the things that ye would This disability proceeds from the strength of the flesh and weakness of the spirit For he adds But if ye be led by the Spirit ye are not under the Law saying plainly that the state of such a combate and disability of doing good is a state of a man under the Law or in the flesh which he accounts all one but every man that is sanctified
confession and undertaking a holy life and therefore in Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are conjoyned in the significations as they are in the mystery it is a giving up our names to Christ and it is part of the foundation or the first Principles of the Religion as appears in S. Paul's Catechism it is so the first thing that it is for babes and Neophytes in which they are matriculated and adopted into the house of their Father and taken into the hands of their Mother Upon this account Baptism is called in antiquity 〈◊〉 janua porta Gratiae primus introitus Sanctorum adaeternam Dei Ecclesiae consuetudinem The gate of the Church the door of Grace the first entrance of the Saints to an eternal conversation with God and the Church Sacramentum initiationis intrantium Christianismum investituram S. Bernard calls it The Sacrament of initiation and the investiture of them that enter into the Religion And the person so entring is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one of the Religion or a Proselyte and Convert and one added to the number of the Church in imitation of that of S. Luke 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God added to the Church those that should be saved just as the Church does to this day and for ever baptizing Infants and Catechuments 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they are added to the Church that they may be added to the Lord and the number of the Inhabitants of Heaven 15. Secondly The next step beyond this is Adoption into the Convenant which is an immediate consequent of the first Presentation this being the first act of man that the first act of God And this is called by S. Paul a being baptized in one spirit into one body that is we are made capable of the Communion of Saints the blessings of the faithful the priviledges of the Church by this we are as S. Luke calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ordained or disposed put into the order of Eternal Life being made members of the mystical Body under Christ our Head 16. Thirdly And therefore Baptism is a new birth by which we enter into the new world the new Creation the blessings and spiritualities of the Kingdom and this is the expression which our Saviour himself used Nicodemus Unless a man be born of Water and the Spirit and it is by S. Paul called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the laver of Regeneration for now we begin to be reckoned in new Census or account God is become our Father Christ our elder Brother the Spirit the earnest of our Inheritance the Church our Mother our food is the body and bloud of our Lord Faith is our learning Religion our employment and our whole life is spiritual and Heaven the object of our Hopes and the mighty price of our high Calling And from this time forward we have a new principle put into us the Spirit of Grace which besides our Soul and body is a principle of action of one nature and shall with them enter into the portion of our Inheritance And therefore the Primitive Christians who consigned all their affairs and goods and writings with some marks of their Lord usually writing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Jesus Christ the Son of God our Saviour made it an abbreviature by writing only the Capitals thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Heathens in mockery and derision made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies a Fish and they used it for Christ as a name of reproach but the Christians owned the name and turned it into a pious Metaphor and were content that they should enjoy their pleasure in the Acrostich but upon that occasion Tertullian speaks pertinently to this Article Nos pisciculi sccundùm 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nostrum Jesum Christum in aqua nascimur Christ whom you call a Fish we knowledge to be our Lord and Saviour and we if you please are the little fishes for we are born in water thence we derive our spiritual life And because from henceforward we are a new Creation the Church uses to assign new relations to the Catechumens Spiritual Fathers and Susceptors and at their entrance into Baptism the Christians and Jewish Proselytes did use to cancel all secular affections to their temporal relatives Nec quicquam priùs 〈◊〉 quà m contemnere Deos exuere patriam parentes liberos fratres vilia habere said Tacitus of the Christians which was true in the sence only that Christ said He that doth not hate father or mother for my sake is not worthy of me that is he that doth not hate them praeme rather than forsake me forsake them is unworthy of me 17. Fourthly In Baptism all our sins are pardoned according to the words of a Prophet I will sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness The Catechumen descends into the Font a Sinner he arises purified he goes down the son of Death he comes up the son of the Resurrection he enters in the son of Folly and prevarication he returns the son of Reconciliation he stoops down the child of Wrath and ascends the heir of Mercy he was the child of the Devil and now he is the servant and the son of God They are the words of Venerable Bede concerning this Mystery And this was ingeniously signified by that Greek inscription upon a Font which is so prettily contriv'd that the words may be read after the Greek or after the Hebrew manner and be exactly the same 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lord wash my sin and not my face only And so it is intended and promised Arise and be baptized and wash away thy sins and call on the Name of the Lord said Ananias to Saul for Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it that he might sanctifie and cleanse it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with the washing of water in the word that is Baptism in the Christian Religion and therefore Tertullian calls Baptism lavacrum compendiatum a compendious Laver that is an intire cleansing the Soul in that one action justly and rightly performed In the rehearsal of which Doctrine it was not an unpleasant Etymology that 〈◊〉 Sinaita gave of Baptism 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in which our sins are thrown off and they fall like leeches when they are full of bloud and water or like the chains from S. Peter's hands at the presence of the Angel Baptism is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an intire full forgiveness of sins so that they shall never be called again to scrutiny Omnia Daemonis armae His merguntur aquis quibus ille renascitur Infans Qui captivus erat The captivity of the Soul is taken away by the bloud of Redemption and the fiery darts of the Devil are quenched by these salutary waters and what the flames of Hell are expiating or punishing to eternal
our Redemption he adds Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Who gave himself for us to this very purpose that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purifie unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works Purifying a people peculiar to himself is cleansing it in the Laver of Regeneration and appropriating it to himself in the rites of Admission and Profession Which plainly designs the first consignation of our Redemption to be in Baptism and that Christ there cleansing his Church from every spot or wrinkle made a Covenant with us that we should renounce all our sins and he should cleanse them all and then that we should abide in that state Which is also very explicitely set down by the same Apostle in that divine and mysterious Epistle to the Romans How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death Well what then Therefore we are buried with him by Baptism into his death that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father even so we also should walk in newness of life That 's the end and mysteriousness of Baptism it is a consignation into the Death of Christ and we die with him that once that is die to sin that we may for ever after live the life of righteousness Knowing this that our old man is crucified with him that the body of sin might be destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin that is from the day of our Baptism to the day of our death And therefore God who knows the weaknesses on our part and yet the strictness and necessity of conserving Baptismal grace by the Covenant Evangelical hath appointed the auxiliaries of the Holy Spirit to be ministred to all baptized people in the holy Rite of Confirmation that it might be made possible to be done by Divine aids which is necessary to be done by the Divine Commandments 10. And this might not be improperly said to be the meaning of those words of our Blessed Saviour He that speaks a word against the Son of man it shall be forgiven him but he that speaks a word against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven him That is those sins which were committed in Infidelity before we became Disciples of the Holy Jesus are to be remitted in Baptism and our first profession of the Religion but the sins committed after Baptism and Confirmation in which we receive the Holy Ghost and by which the Holy Spirit is grieved are to be accounted for with more severity And therefore the Primitive Church understanding our obligations according to this discourse admitted not any to holy Orders who had lapsed and fallen into any sin of which she could take cognisance that is such who had not kept the integrity of their Baptism but sins committed before Baptism were no impediments to the susception of Orders because they were absolutely extinguished in Baptism This is the nature of the Covenant we made in Baptism that 's the grace of the Gospel and the effect of Faith and Repentance and it is expected we should so remain For it is nowhere expressed to be the mercy and intention of the Covenant Evangelical that this Redemption should be any more than once or that Repentance which is in order to it can be renewed to the same or so great purposes and present effects 11. But after we are once reconciled in Baptism and put intirely into God's favour when we have once been redeemed if we then fall away into sin we must expect God's dealing with us in another manner and to other purposes Never must we expect to be so again justified and upon such terms as formerly the best days of our Repentance are interrupted not that God will never forgive them that sin after Baptism and recover by Repentance but that Restitution by repentance after Baptism is another thing than the first Redemption No such intire clear and integral determinate and presential effects of Repentance but an imperfect little growing uncertain and hazardous Reconciliation a Repentance that is always in production a Renovation by parts a Pardon that is revocable a Salvation to be wrought by fear and trembling all our remanent life must be in bitterness our hopes allayed with fears our meat attempered with Coloquintida and death is in the pot as our best actions are imperfect so our greatest Graces are but possibilities and aptnesses to a Reconcilement and all our life we are working our selves into that condition we had in Baptism and lost by our relapse As the habit lessens so does the guilt as our Vertues are imperfect so is the Pardon and because our Piety may be interrupted our state is uncertain till our possibilities of sin are ceased till our fight is finished and the victory therefore made sure because there is no more fight And it is remarkable that S. Peter gives counsel to live holily in pursuance of our redemption of our calling and of our escaping from that corruption that is in the world through Lust lest we lose the benefit of our purgation to which by way of antithesis he opposes this Wherefore the rather give diligence to make your calling and election sure And if ye do these things ye shall never fall Meaning by the perpetuating our state of Baptism and first Repentance we shall never fall but be in a sure estate our calling and election shall be sure But not if we fall if we forget we were purged from our old sins if we forfeit our calling we have also made our election unsure movable and disputable 12. So that now the hopes of lapsed sinners relie upon another bottom And as in Moses's Law there was no revelation of Repentance but yet the Jews had hopes in God and were taught the succours of Repentance by the Homilies of the Prophets and other accessory notices So in the Gospel the Covenant was established upon Faith and Repentance but it was consigned in Baptism and was verifiable onely in the integrity of a following holy life according to the measures of a man not perfect but sincere not faultless but heartily endeavoured but yet the mercies of God in pardoning sinners lapsed after Baptism was declared to us by collateral and indirect occasions by the Sermons of the Apostles and the Commentaries of Apostolical persons who understood the meaning of the Spirit and the purposes of the Divine mercy and those other significations of his will which the blessed Jesus left upon record in other parts of his Testament as in Codicills annexed besides the precise Testament it self And it is certain if in the Covenant of Grace there be the same involution of an after-Repentance as there is of present Pardon upon past Repentance and future Sanctity it is impossible to
proportions several degrees of punishment in the other world which he apportions to the degrees of death which had ever been among the Jews viz. the Sword Stoning to death which were punishments legal and judicial and the Burning infants in the Valley of Hinnom which was a barbarous and superstitious custome used formerly by their Fathers in imitation of the Phoenician accursed rites 35. The remedies against Anger which are prescribed by Masters of spiritual life are partly taken from rules of Prudence partly from Piety and more precise rules of Religion In Prudence 1. Do not easily entertain or at all encourage or willingly hear or promptly believe Tale-bearers and reporters of other mens faults for oftentimes we are set on fire by an ignis 〈◊〉 a false flame and an empty story 2. Live with peaceable people if thou canst 3. Be not inquisitive into the misdemeanours of others or the reports which are made of you 4. Find out reasons of excuse to alleviate and lessen the ignorances of a friend or carelesnesses of a servant 5. Observe what object is aptest to inflame thee and by special arts of fortification stop up the avenues to that part If Losses if Contempt if Incivilities if Slander still make it the greatest part of your imployment to subdue the impotency of that Passion that is more apt to raise tempests 6. Extirpate petty curiosities of Apparel Lodging Diet and learn to be indifferent in circumstances and if you be apt to be transported with such little things do some great thing that shall cut off their frequent intervening 7. Do not multiply secular cares and troublesome negotiations which have variety of conversation with several humours of men and accidents of things but frame to thy self a life simple as thou canst and free from all affectations 8. Sweeten thy temper and allay the violence of thy spirit with some convenient natural temperate and medicinal solaces for some dispositions we have seen inflamed into Anger and often assaulted by Peevishness through immoderate fasting and inconvenient austerities 9. A gentle answer is an excellent Remora to the progresses of Anger whether in thy self or others For Anger is like the waves of a troubled sea when it is corrected with a soft reply as with a little strand it retires and leaves nothing behind it but froth and shells no permanent mischief 10. Silence is an excellent art and that was the advice which S. Isaac an old religious person in the Primitive Church is reported to have followed to suppress his Anger within his breast and use what means he could there to strangle it but never permitting it to go forth in language Anger and Lust being like fire which if you enclose suffering it to have no emission it perishes and dies but give it the smallest vent and it rages to a consumption of all it reaches And this advice is coincident with the general rule which is prescribed in all temptations that Anger be suppressed in its cradle and first assaults 11. Lastly let every man be careful that in his Repentance or in his Zeal or his Religion he be as dispassionate and free from Anger as is possible lest Anger pass upon him in a reflex act which was rejected in the direct Some mortifiers in their contestation against Anger or any evil or troublesome principle are like Criers of Assizes who calling for silence make the greatest noise they are extremely angry when they are fighting against the habit or violent inclinations to Anger 36. But in the way of more strict Religion it is advised that he who would cure his Anger should pray often It is S. Austin's counsel to the Bishop Auxilius that like the Apostles in a storm we should awaken Christ and call to him for aid lest we shipwreck in so violent 〈◊〉 and impetuous disturbances 2. Propound to thy self the example of Meek and Patient persons remembring always that there is a family of Meek Saints of which Moses is the Precedent a family of Patient Saints under the conduct of Job every one in the mountain of the Lord shall be gathered to his own Tribe to his own Family in the great day of Jubilee and the Angry shall perish with the effects of Anger and peevish persons shall be vexed with the disquietness of an eternal worm and sting of a vexatious Conscience if they suffer here the transportations and saddest effects of an unmortified habitual and prevailing anger 3. Above all things endeavour to be humble to think of thy self as thou deservest that is meanly and unworthily and in reason it is to be presumed thou wilt be more patient of wrong quiet under affronts and injuries susceptive of inconveniences and apt to entertain all adversities as instruments of Humiliation deleteries of Vice corrections of undecent Passions and instruments of Vertue 4. All the Reason and all the Relations and all the Necessities of mankind are daily arguments against the violences and inordinations of Anger For he that would not have his Reason confounded or his discourse useless or his family be a den of Lions he that would not have his Marriage a daily duel or his Society troublesome or his Friendship formidable or his Feasts bitter he that delights not to have his Discipline cruel or his Government tyrannical or his Disputations violent or his Civilities unmannerly or his Charity be a rudeness or himself brutish as a Bear or peevish as a Fly or miserable upon every accident and in all the changes of his life must mortifie his Anger For it concerns us as much as Peace and Wisdome and Nobleness and Charity and Felicity are worth to be at peace in our breasts and to be pleased with all God's Providence and to be in charity with every thing and with every man 37. Thou shalt not commit Adultery These two Commandments are immediate to each other and of the greatest cognation for Anger and Lust work upon one subject and the same fervours of bloud which make men revengeful will also make men unchast But the prohibition is repeated in the words of the old Commandment so it was said to them of old which was not only a prohibition of the violation of the rights of Marriage but was even among the Jews extended to signifie all mixture of sexes not matrimonial For Adultery in Scripture is sometimes used to signifie Fornication and Fornication for Adultery as it is expressed in the permissions of Divorce in the case of Fornication and by Moses's Law Fornication also was forbidden and it was hated also and reproved in the natural But it is very probable that this Precept was restrained only to the instance of Adultery in the proper sense that is violation of Marriage for Moses did in other annexes of the Law forbid Fornication And as a blow or wound was not esteemed in Moses's Law a breach of the sixth Commandment so neither was any thing but Adultery esteemed a violation of the
material and circumstantiate actions of Piety For these have great powers and influences even in Nature to restore health and preserve our lives Witness the sweet sleeps of temperate persons and their constant appetite which Timotheus the son of Conon observed when he dieted in Plato's Academy with severe and moderated diet They that sup with Plato are well the next day Witness the symmetry of passions in meek men their freedome from the violence of inraged and passionate indispositions the admirable harmony and sweetness of content which dwells in the retirements of a holy Conscience to which if we add those joys which they only understand truly who feel them inwardly the joys of the Holy Ghost the content and joys which are attending upon the lives of holy persons are most likely to make them long and healthful For now we live saith S. Paul if ye stand fast in the Lord. It would prolong S. Paul's life to see his ghostly children persevere in holiness and if we understood the joys of it it would do much greater advantage to our selves But if we consider a spiritual life abstractedly and in it self Piety produces our life not by a natural efficiency but by Divine benediction God gives a healthy and a long life as a reward and blessing to crown our Piety even before the sons of men For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the Earth but they that be cursed of him shall be cut off So that this whole matter is principally to be referred to the act of God either by ways of nature or by instruments of special providence rewarding Piety with a long life And we shall more fully apprehend this if upon the grounds of Scripture Reason and Experience we weigh the contrary Wickedness is the way to shorten our days 19. Sin brought Death in first and yet Man lived almost a thousand years But he sinned more and then Death came nearer to him for when all the World was first drowned in wickedness and then in water God cut him shorter by one half and five hundred years was his ordinary period And Man sinned still and had strange imaginations and built towers in the air and then about Peleg's time God cut him shorter by one half yet two hundred and odd years was his determination And yet the generations of the World returned not unanimously to God and God cut him off another half yet and reduced him to one hundred and twenty years And by Moses's time one half of the final remanent portion was pared away reducing him to threescore years and ten so that unless it be by special dispensation men live not beyond that term or thereabout But if God had gone on still in the same method and shortned our days as we multiplied our sins we should have been but as an Ephemeron Man should have lived the life of a Fly or a Gourd the morning should have seen his birth his life have been the term of a day and the evening must have provided him of a shroud But God seeing Man's thoughts were onely evil continually he was resolved no longer so to strive with him nor destroy the kinde but punish individuals onely and single persons and if they sinned or if they did obey regularly their life should be proportionable This God set down for his rule Evil shall 〈◊〉 the wicked person and He that keepeth the Commandments keepeth his own Soul but he that despiseth his own ways shall die 20. But that we may speak more exactly in this Probleme we must observe that in Scripture three general causes of natural death are assigned Nature Providence and Chance By these three I onely mean the several manners of Divine influence and operation For God only predetermines and what is changed in the following events by Divine permission to this God and Man in their several manners do cooperate The saying of David concerning Saul with admirable Philosophy describes the three ways of ending Man's life David said furthermore As the LORD liveth the LORD shall smite him or his day shall come to die or he shall descend into battel and perish The first is special Providence The second means the term of Nature The third is that which in our want of words we call Chance or Accident but is in effect nothing else but another manner of the Divine Providence That in all these Sin does interrupt and retrench our lives is the undertaking of the following periods 21. First In Nature Sin is a cause of dyscrasies and distempers making our bodies healthless and our days few For although God hath prefixed a period to Nature by an universal and antecedent determination and that naturally every man that lives temperately and by no supervening accident is interrupted shall arrive thither yet because the greatest part of our lives is governed by will and understanding and there are temptations to Intemperance and to violations of our health the period of Nature is so distinct a thing from the period of our person that few men attain to that which God had fixed by his first law and 〈◊〉 purpose but end their days with folly and in a period which God appointed 〈◊〉 with anger and a determination secondary consequent and accidental And therefore says David Health is far from the 〈◊〉 for they regard not thy statutes And to this purpose is that saying of Abenezra He that is united to God the Fountain of Life his Soul being improved by Grace communicates to the Body an establishment of its radical moisture and natural heat to make it more healthful that so it may be more instrumental to the spiritual operations and productions of the Soul and it self be preserved in perfect constitution Now how this blessing is contradicted by the impious life of a wicked person is easie to be understood if we consider that from drunken Surfeits come Dissolution of members Head-achs Apoplexies dangerous Falls Fracture of bones Drenchings and dilution of the brain Inslammation of the liver Crudities of the stomach and thousands more which Solomen sums up in general terms Who hath woe who hath sorrow who hath redness of eyes they that tarry long at the 〈◊〉 I shall not need to instance in the sad and uncleanly consequents of Lusts the wounds and accidental deaths which are occasioned by Jealousies by Vanity by Peevishness vain Reputation and Animosities by Melancholy and the despair of evil Consciences and yet these are abundant argument that when God so permits a man to run his course of Nature that himself does not intervene by an extraordinary 〈◊〉 or any special acts of providence but only gives his ordinary assistence to natural causes a very great part of men make their natural period shorter and by sin make their days miserable and few 22. Secondly Oftentimes Providence intervenes and makes the way shorter God for the iniquity of man not suffering Nature to take her course but stopping
of the West now use being indicative and declaratory of a present Pardon is for the very form sake not to be used to Death bed Penitents after a vicious life because if any thing more be intended in the form than a Prayer the truth of the affirmation may be questioned and an Ecclesiastical person hath no authority to say to such a man I absolve thee but if no more be intended but a Prayer it is better to use a mere Prayer and common form of address than such words which may countenance unsecure confidences evil purposes and worse lives 14. Thirdly If the Devil tempts a sick person who hath lived well to Presumption and that he seems full of Confidence and without trouble the care that is then to be taken is to consider the Disease and to state the Question right For at some instants and periods God visits the spirit of a man and sends the immission of a bright ray into him and some good men have been so used to apprehensions of the Divine mercy that they have an habitual chearfulness of spirit and hopes of Salvation Saint Hierome reports that Hilarion in a Death-bed agony felt some tremblings of heart till reflecting upon his course of life he found comforts springing from thence by a proper emanation and departed chearfully and Hezekiah represented to God in Prayer the integrity of his life and made it the instrument of his hope And nothing of this is to be calied Presumption provided it be in persons of eminent Sanctity and great experience old Disciples and the more perfect Christians But because such persons are but seldome and rare if the same Confidence be observed in persons of common imperfection and an ordinary life it is to be corrected and allayed with consideration of the Divine Severity and Justice and with the strict requisites of a holy life with the deceit of a man 's own heart with consideration and general remembrances of secret sins and that the most perfect state of life hath very great needs of mercy and if the righteous scarcely be saved where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear And the spirit of the man is to be promoted and helped in the encrease of Contrition as being the proper deletery to cure the extravagancies of a forward and intemperate spirit 15. But there is a Presumption commenced upon opinion relying either upon a perswasion of single Predestination or else which is worse upon imaginary securities that Heaven is to be purchased upon conditions easier than a Day 's labour and that an evil life may be reconciled to Heaven by the intervening of little or single acts of Piety or Repentance If either of them both have actually produced ill life to which they are apt or apt to be abused the persons are miserable in their condition and cannot be absolutely remedied by going about to cure the Presumption that was the cause of all but now it is the least thing to be considered his whole state is corrupted and men will not by any discourses or spiritual arts used on their Death-beds be put into a state of Grace because then is no time to change the state and there is no mutation then but by single actions from good to better a dying man may proceed but not from the state of Reprobation to the life of Grace And yet it is good charity to unloose the bonds of Satan whereby the man is bound and led captive at his will to take off the Presumption by destroying the cause and then let the work of Grace be set as forward as it can and leave the event to God for nothing else is left possible to be done But if the sick man be of a good life and yet have a degree of Confidence beyond his Vertue upon the phancie of Predestination it is not then a time to rescind his opinion by a direct opposition but let him be drawn off from the consideration of it by such discourses as are apt to make him humble and penitent for they are the most apt instruments to secure the condition of the man and attemper his spirit These are the great Temptations incident to the last scene of our lives and are therefore more particularly suggested by the Tempter because they have in them something contrary to the universal effect of a holy life and are designs to interpose between the end of the journey and the reception of the crown and therefore it concerns every man who is in a capacity of receiving the end of his Faith the Salvation of his Soul to lay up in the course of his life something against this great day of expence that he may be better fortified with the armour of the Spirit against these last assaults of the Devil that he may not shipwreck in the haven 16. Eschewing evil is but the one half of our work we must also do good And now in the few remanent days or hours of our life there are certain exercises of Religion which have a special relation to this state and are therefore of great concernment to be done that we may make our condition as certain as we can and our portion of Glory greater and our Pardon surer and our Love to increase and that our former omissions and breaches be repaired with a condition in some measure proportionable to those great hopes which we then are going to possess And first Let the sick person in the beginning of his sickness and in every change and great accident of it make acts of Resignation to God and intirely submit himself to the Divine will remembring that Sickness may to men properly disposed do the work of God and produce the effect of the Spirit and promote the interest of his Soul as well as Health and oftentimes better as being in it self and by the grace of God apt to make us confess our own impotency and dependencies and to understand our needs of mercy and the continual influences and supports of Heaven to withdraw our appetites from things below to correct the vanities and insolencies of an impertinent spirit to abate the extravagancies of the flesh to put our carnal lusts into fetters and disability to remember us of our state of pilgrimage that this is our way and our stage of trouble and banishment and that Heaven is our Countrey for so Sickness is the trial of our Patience a fire to purge us an instructer to teach us a bridle to restrain us and a state inferring great necessities of union and adhesions unto God And as upon these grounds we have the same reason to accept sickness at the hands of God as to receive Physick from a Physician so it is argument of excellent Grace to give God hearty thanks in our Disease and to accept it chearfully and with spiritual joy 17. Some persons create to themselves excuses of discontent and quarrel not with the pain but the ill consequents of Sickness It makes them troublesome to
Had we the Ancient Commentaries of Hegesippus Clemens Alexandrinus his Institutions Africanus his Chronography and some others the Reader might expect more intire and particular relations But alas these are long since perish'd and little besides the names of them transmitted to us Nor should we have had most of that little that is left us had not the commendable care and industry of Eusebius preserv'd it to us And if he complain'd in his time when those Writings were extant that towards the composing of his History he had only some few particular accounts here and there left by the Ancients of their times what cause have we to complain when even those little portions have been ravish'd from us So that he that would build a work of this nature must look upon himself as condemn'd to a kind of Egyptian Task to make Brick without Straw at least to pick it up where he can find it though after all it amounts to a very slender parcel Which as it greatly hinders the beauty and completeness of the structure so does it exceedingly multiply the labour and difficulty For by this means I have been forc'd to gather up those little fragments of Antiquity that lie dispers'd in the Writings of the Ancients thrown some into this corner and others into that which I have at length put together like the pieces of a broken Statue that it might have at least some kind of resemblance of the person whom it designs to represent HAD I thought good to have traded in idle and frivolous Authors Abdias Babylonius the Passions of Peter and Paul Joachim Perionius Peter de Natalibus and such like I might have presented the Reader with a larger not a better account But besides the averseness of my nature to falshoods and trifles especially in matters wherein the honour of the Christian Religion is concern'd I knew the World to be wiser at this time of day than to be imposed upon by Pious frauds and cheated with Ecclesiastical Romances and Legendary Reports For this reason I have more fully and particularly insisted upon the Lives of the two first Apostles so great a part of them being secur'd by an unquestionable Authority and have presented the larger portions of the Sacred History many times to very minute circumstances of action And I presume the wise and judicious Reader will not blame me for chusing rather to enlarge upon a story which I knew to be infallibly true than to treat him with those which there was cause enough to conclude to be certainly false THE Reader will easily discern that the Authors I make use of are not all of the same rank and size Some of them are Divinely inspir'd whose Authority is Sacred and their reports rendred not only credible but unquestionable by that infallible and unerring Spirit that presided over them Others such of whose faith and testimony especially in matters of fact there is no just cause to doubt I mean the genuine Writings of the Ancient Fathers or those which though unduly assign'd to this or that particular Father are yet generally allowed to be Ancient and their credit not to be despis'd because their proper Parent is not certainly known Next these come the Writers of the middle and later Ages of the Church who though below the former in point of credit have yet some particular advantages that recommend them to us Such I account Symeon Metaphrastes Nicephorus Callistus the Menaea and Menologies of the Greek Church c. wherein though we meet with many vain and improbable stories yet may we also rationally expect some real and substantial accounts of things especially seeing they had the advantage of many Ancient and Ecclesiastick Writings extant in their times which to us are utterly lost Though even these too I have never called in but in the want of more Ancient and Authentick Writers As for others if any passages occur either in themselves of doubtful and suspected credit or borrowed from spurious and uncertain Authors they are always introduced or dismissed with some kind of censure or remark that the most easie and credulous Reader may know what to trust to and not fear being secretly surpriz'd into a belief of doubtful and fabulous reports And now after all I am sufficiently sensible how lank and thin this Account is nor can the Reader be less satisfied with it than I am my self and I have only this piece of justice and charity to beg of him that he would suspend his censure till he has taken a little pains to enquire into the state of the Times and Things I Write of And then however he may challenge my prudence in undertaking it he will not I hope see reason to charge me with want of care and faithfulness in the pursuance of it THE CONTENTS THE Introduction The Life of S. Peter SECT I. Of S. Peter from his Birth till his first coming to Christ. Page 1. SECT II. Of S. Peter from his first coming to Christ till his being call'd to be a Disciple p. 6. SECT III. Of S. Peter from his Election to the Apostolate till the confession which he made of Christ. p. 8. SECT IV. Of S. Peter from the time of his Confession till our Lord's last Passeover p. 11. SECT V. Of S. Peter from the last Passeover till the Death of Christ. p. 15. SECT VI. Of S. Peter from Christ's Resurrection till his Ascension p. 19. SECT VII S. Peter's Acts from our Lord's Ascension till the dispersion of the Church p. 22. SECT VIII Of S. Peter's Acts from the dispersion of the Church at Jerusalem till his contest with S. Paul at Antioch p. 28. SECT IX Of S. Peter's Acts from the End of the Sacred story till his Martyrdom p. 33. SECT X. The Character of his Person and Temper and an account of his Writings p. 37. SECT XI An Enquiry into S. Peter's going to Rome p. 41. The Life of S. Paul SECT I. Of S. Paul from his Birth till his Conversion Pag. 45. SECT II. Of S. Paul from his Conversion till the Council at Jerusalem p. 50. SECT III. Of S. Paul from the time of the Synod at Jerusalem till his departure from Athens P. 55. SECT IV. Of S. Paul's Acts at Corinth and Ephesus p. 62. SECT V. S. Paul's Acts from his departure from Ephesus till his Arraignment before Felix p. 67. SECT VI. Of S. Paul from his first Trial before Felix till his coming to Rome p. 72. SECT VII S. Paul's Acts from his coming to Rome till his Martyrdom p. 76. SECT VIII The description of his Person and Temper together with an account of his Writings p. 82. SECT IX The principal Controversies that exercised the Church in his time p. 88. The Life of S. Andrew P. 99. The Life of S. James the Great P. 105. The Life of S. John P. 113. The Life of S. Philip. P. 123. The Life of S. Bartholomew P. 127. The Life of S. Matthew P. 131. The Life of S.
darkness 4. HERE it was that the Blessed Jesus laboured under the bitterest Agony that could fall upon humane Nature which the holy Story describes by words sufficiently expressive of the higest grief and sorrow he was afraid sorrowful and very heavy yea his Soul was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 exceeding sorrowful and that even unto death he was fore amazed and very heavy he was troubled 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his Soul was shaken with a vehement commotion yea he was in an Agony a word by which the Greeks are wont to represent the greatest conflicts and anxieties The effect of all which was that he prayed more earnestly offering up prayers and supplications with strong cries and tears as the Apostle expounds it and sweat as it were great drops of bloud falling to the ground What this bloudy sweat was and how far natural or extraordinary I am not now concerned to enquire Certain it is it was a plain evidence of the most intense grief and sadness for if an extreme fear or trouble will many times cast us into a cold sweat how great must be the commotion and conflict of our Saviour's mind which could force open the pores of his body lock'd up by the coldness of the night and make not drops of sweat but great drops or as the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies clods of bloud to issue from them While our Lord was thus contending with these Ante-Passions the three Apostles whom he had left at some distance from him being tired out with watching and disposed by the silence of the Night were fallen fast asleep Our Lord who had made three several addresses unto Heaven that if it might consist with his Father's will this bitter Cup might pass from him expressing herein the harmless and innocent desires of humane Nature which always studies its own preservation between each of them came to visit the Apostles and calling to Peter asked him Whether they could not watch with him one hour advising them to watch and pray that they enter'd not into temptation adding this Argument That the spirit indeed was willing but that the flesh was weak and that therefore there was the more need that they should stand upon their guard Observe here the incomparable sweetness the generous candor of our blessed Saviour to pass so charitable a censure upon an action from whence malice and ill-nature might have drawn monsters and prodigies and have represented it black as the shades of darkness The request which our Lord made to these Apostles was infinitely reasonable to watch with him in this bitter Agony their company at least being some refreshment to one under such sad fatal circumstances and this but for a little time one hour it would soon be over and then they might freely consult their own ease and safety 'T was their dear Lord and Master whom they now were to attend upon ready to lay down his life for them sweating already under the first skirmishes of his sufferings and expecting every moment when all the powers of darkness would fall upon him But all these considerations were drown'd in a profound security the men were fast asleep and though often awakened and told of it regarded it not as if nothing but ease and softness had been then to be dream'd of An action that look'd like the most prodigious ingratitude and the highest unconcernedness for their Lord and Master and which one would have thought had argued a very great coldness and indifferency of affection towards him But he would not set it upon the Tenters nor stretch it to what it might easily have been drawn to he imputes it not to their unthankfulness or want of affection nor to their carelesness of what became of him but merely to their infirmity and the weakness of their bodily temper himself making the excuse when they could make none for themselves the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak Hereby teaching us to put the most candid and favourable construction upon those actions of others which are capable of various interpretations and rather with the Bee to suck honey than with the Spider to draw poison from them His last Prayer being ended he came to them and told them with a gentle rebuke That now they might sleep on if they pleased that the hour was at hand that he should be betrayed and delivered into the hands of men 5. WHILE he was thus discoursing to them a Band of Souldiers sent from the High Priests with the Traitor Judas to conduct and direct them rush'd into the Garden and seised upon him which when the Apostles saw they asked him whether they should attempt his rescue Peter whose ungovernable zeal put him upon all dangerous undertakings without staying for an answer drew his Sword and espying one more busie than the rest in laying hold upon our Saviour which was Malchus who though carrying Kingship in his name was but Servant to the High Priest struck at him with an intention to dispatch him but God over-ruling the stroak it only cut off his right Ear. Our Lord liked not this wild and unwarrantable zeal and therefore intreated their patience whilest he miraculously healed the Wound And turning to Peter bad him put up his Sword again told him that they who unwarrantably use the Sword should themselves perish by it that there was no need of these violent and extravagant courses that if he had a mind to be rid of his Keepers he could ask his Father who would presently send more than twelve Legions of Angels to his rescue and deliverance But he must drink the Cup which his Father had put into his hand for how else should the Scriptures be fulfilled which had expresly foretold That these things must be Whereupon all the Apostles forsook him and fled from him and they who before in their promises were as bold as Lions now it came to it like fearful and timorous Hares ran away from him Peter and John though staying last with him yet followed the same way with the rest preferring their own safety before the concernments of their Master 6. NO sooner was he apprehended by the Souldiers and brought out of the Garden but he was immediately posted from one Tribunal to another brought first to Annas then carried to Caiaphas where the Jewish Sanhedrim met together in order to his Trial and Condemnation Peter having a little recovered himself and gotten loose from his fears probably encouraged by his Companion S. John returns back to seek his Master And finding them leading him to the High Priest's Hall followed afar off to see what would be the event and issue But coming to the Door could get no admittance till one of the Disciples who was acquainted there went out and perswaded the Servant who kept the Door to let him in Being let into the Hall where the Servants and Officers stood round the Fire Peter also came thither to warm himself where being espied by the
not the Christians nay some even of the Gentile Priests Governors of the popular Games and Sports earnestly disswaded him from it well knowing that the People were resolved if they could meet with him to throw him to the wild Beasts that were kept there for the disport and pleasure of the People And this doubtless he means when elsewhere he tells us that he fought with Beasts at Ephesus probably intending what the People designed though he did not actually suffer though the brutish rage the savage and inhumane manners of this People did sufficiently deserve that the censure and character should be fixed upon themselves 8. GREAT was the confusion of the Multitude the major-part not knowing the reason of the Concourse In which distraction Alexander a Jewish Convert being thrust forward by the Jewes to be questioned and examined about this matter he would accordingly have made his Apologie to the People intending no doubt to clear himself by casting the whole blame upon S. Paul This being very probably that Alexander the Copper-smith of whom our Apostle elsewhere complains that he did him much evil and greatly withstood his 〈◊〉 and whom he delivered over unto Satan for his Apostasie for blaspheming Christ and reproaching Christianity But the Multitude perceiving him to be a Jew and thereby suspecting him to be one of S. Paul's Associates began to raise an out-cry for near two Hours together wherein nothing could be heard but Great is Diana of the Ephesians The noise being a little over the Recorder a discreet and prudent Man came out and calmly told them That it was sufficiently known to all the World what a mighty honour and veneration the City of Ephesus had for the great Goddess Diana and the famous Image which fell from Heaven that therefore there needed not this stir to vindicate and assert it That they had seized Persons who were not guilty either of Sacriledge or Blasphemy towards their Goddess that if Demetrius and his Company had any just charge against them the Courts were sitting and they might prefer their Indictment or if the Controversie were about any other matter it might be referred to such a proper Judicature as the Law appoints for the determination of such cases That therefore they should do well to be quiet having done more already than they could answer if called in question as 't is like they would there being no cause sufficient to justifie that days riotous Assembly With which prudent discourse he appeased and dismissed the Multitude 9. IT was about this time that S. Paul heard of some disturbance in the Church at Corinth hatched and fomented by a pack of false heretical Teachers crept in among them who indeavoured to draw them into Parties and Factions by perswading one Party to be for Peter another for Paul a third for Apollos as if the main of Religion consisted in being of this or that Denomination or in a warm active zeal to decry and oppose whoever is not of our narrow Sect. 'T is a very weak and slender claim when a Man holds his Religion by no better a title than that he has joyned himself to this Man's Church or that Man's Congregation and is zealously earnest to maintain and promote it to be childishly and passionately clamorous for one Man's mode and way of administration or for some particular humour or opinion as if Religion lay in nice and curious disputes or in separating from our Brethren and not rather in righteousness peace and joy in the Holy Ghost By this means Schisms and Factions broke into the Corinthian Church whereby many wild and extravagant Opinions and some of them such as undermined the fundamental Articles of Christianity were planted and had taken root there As the envious Man never fishes more successfully than in troubled Waters To cure these Distempers S. Paul who had received an Account of all this by Letters which Apollos and some others had brought to him from the Church of Corinth writes his first Epistle to them Wherein he smartly reproves them for their Schisms and Parties conjures them to peace and unity corrects those gross corruptions that were introduced among them and particularly resolves those many cases and controversies wherein they had requested his advice and counsel Shortly after Apollos designing to go for Crete by him and Zenas S. Paul sends his Epistle to Titus whom he had made Bishop of that Island and had left there for the propagating of the Gospel Herein he fully instructs him in the execution of his Office how to carry himself and what directions he should give to others to all particular ranks and relations of men especially those who were to be advanced to places of Office and Authority in the Church 10. A LITTLE before S. Paul's departure from Ephesus we may not improbably suppose that Apollonius Tyaneus the famous Philosopher and Magician of the Heathen World a Man remarkable for the strictness of his manners and his sober and regular course of life but especially for the great Miracles said to have been done by him whom therefore the Heathens generally set up as the great Corrival of our Saviour though some of his own party and particularly Euphratus the Philosopher who lived with him at the same time at Rome accused him for doing his strange feats by Magick came to Ephesus The enemy of Mankind probably designing to obstruct the propagation of Christianity by setting up one who by the Arts of Magick might at least in the Vogue and estimation of the People equal or eclipse the Miracles of S. Paul Certain it is if we compare times and actions set down by the Writer of his Life we shall find that he came hither about the beginning of Nero's Reign and he particularly sets down the strange things that were done by him especially his clearing the City of a grievous Plague for which the People of Ephesus had him in such veneration that they erected a Statue to him as to a particular Deity and did divine honour to it But whether this was before S. Paul's going thence I will not take upon me to determine though it seems most probable to have been done afterwards SECT V. S. Paul's Acts from his departure from Ephesus till his Arraignment before Foelix S. Paul's journey into Macedonia His preaching as far as Illyricum and return into Greece His second 〈◊〉 to the Corinthians and what the design of it His first Epistle to Timothy His Epistle to the Romans whence written and with what design S. Paul's preaching at Troas and raising Eutychus His summoning the Asian Bishops to Myletus and pathetical discourse to them His stay at Caesarea with Philip the Deacon The Churches passionate disswading him from going to Jerusalem His coming to Jerusalem and compliance with the indifferent Rites of the Mosaick Law and why The tumults raised against him by the Jews and his rescue by the Roman Captain His asserting his Roman freedom His carriage
〈◊〉 compares him to a Bird in the Air that in a few years flew round the World Isidore the Pelusiot to a winged husbandman that flew from place to place to cultivate the World with the most excellent rules and institutions of life And while the other Apostles did as 't were chuse this or that particular Province as the main sphere of their ministry S. Paul over-ran the whole World to its utmost bounds and corners planting all places where he came with the Divine doctrines of the Gospel Nor in this course was he tired out with the dangers and difficulties that he met with the troubles and oppositions that were raised against him All which did but reflect the greater lustre upon his patience whereof indeed as Clement observes he became 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a most eminent pattern and exemplar enduring the biggest troubles and persecutions with a patience triumphant and unconquerable As will easily appear if we take but a survey of what trials and sufferings he underwent some part whereof are briefly summed up by himself In labours abundant in stripes above measure in prisons frequent in deaths oft thrice beaten with rods once stoned thrice suffered shipwrack a night and a day in the deep In journeyings often in perils of waters in perils of robbers in perils by his own Country-men in perils by the Heathen in perils in the City in perils in the Wilderness in perils in the Sea in perils among false Brethren in weariness in painfulness in watchings often in hunger and thirst in fastings often in cold and nakedness And besides these things that were without that which daily came upon him the care of all the Churches An account though very great yet far short of what he endured and wherein as 〈◊〉 observes he does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 modestly keep himself within his measures for had he taken the liberty fully to have enlarged himself he might have filled hundreds of Martyrologies with his sufferings A thousand times was his life at stake in every suffering he was a Martyr and what fell but in parcels upon others came all upon him while they skirmished only with single parties he had the whole Army of sufferings to contend with All which he generously underwent with a Soul as calm and serene as the morning-Sun no spite or rage no fury or storms could ruffle and discompose his spirit Nay those sufferings which would have broken the back of an ordinary patience did but make him rise up with the greater eagerness and resolution for the doing of his duty 7. HIS patience will yet further appear from the consideration of another the last of those vertues we shall take notice of in him his constancy and fidelity in the discharge of his place and in the profession of Religion Could the powers and policies of Men and Devils spite and oppositions torments and threatnings have been able to baffle him out of that Religion wherein he had engaged himself he must have sunk under them and left his station But his Soul was steel'd with a courage and resolution that was impenetrable and which no temptation either from hopes or fears could make any more impression upon than an arrow can that 's shot against a wall of marble He wanted not solicitation on either hand both from Jews and Gentiles and questionless might in some degree have made his own terms would he have been false to his trust and have quitted that way that was then every-where spoken against But alas these things weighed little with our Apostle who counted not 〈◊〉 life to be dear unto him so that he might finish his course with joy and the ministry which he had received of the Lord Jesus And therefore when under the sentence of death in his own apprehension could triumphingly say I have fought a good fight I have finished my course I have kept the Faith and so indeed he did kept it inviolably undauntedly to the last minute of his life The summ is He was a man in whom the Divine life did eminently manifest and display it self he lived piously and devoutly soberly and temperately justly and righteously carefull alway to keep a conscience void of offence both towards God and Men. This he tells us was his support under suffering this the foundation of his confidence towards God and his firm hopes of happiness in another World This is our rejoycing the testimony of our conscience that in simplicity and godly sincerity we have had our conversation in the World 8. IT is not the least instance of his care and fidelity in his office that he did not only preach and plant Christianity in all places whither he came but what he could not personally do he supplied by writing XIV Epistles he 〈◊〉 upon record by which he was not only instrumental in propagating Christian Religion at first but has been useful to the World ever since in all Ages of the Church We have all along in the History of his life taken particular notice of them in their due place and order We shall here only make some general observations and remarks upon them and that as to the stile and way wherein they are written their Order and the Subscriptions that are added to them For the Apostle's stile and manner of writing it is plain and simple and though not set off with the elaborate artifices and affected additionals of humane eloquence yet grave and majestical and that by the confession of his very enemies his Letters say they are weighty and powerful Nor are there wanting in them some strains of Rhetorick which sufficiently testifie his ability that way had he made it any part of his study and design Indeed S. Hierom is sometimes too rude and bold in his censures of S. Paul's stile and character He tells us that being an Hebrew of the Hebrews and admirably skill'd in the Language of his Nation he was greatly defective in the Greek Tongue though a late great Critick is of another mind affirming him to have been as well or better skill'd in Greek than in Hebrew or in Syriac wherein he could not sufficiently express his conceptions in a way becoming the majesty of his sence and the matter he delivered nor transmit the elegancy of his Native Tongue into another Language that hence he became obscure and intricate in his expressions guilty many times of solecisms and scarce tolerable syntax and that therefore 't was not his humility but the truth of the thing that made him say that he came not with the excellency of speech but in the power of God A censure from any other than S. Hierom that would have been justly wondred at but we know the liberty that he takes to censure any though the reverence due to so great an Apostle might one would think have challenged a more modest censure at his hands However elsewhere he cries him up as a great Master of composition
Divine Commission nor probably so much as heard any tidings of his appearance and especially being a Galilean and so of a more rustick and unyielding temper But it cannot be doubted but that he was admirably versed in the writings of Moses and the Prophets Metaphrastes assures us though how he came to know it otherwise than by conjecture I cannot imagine that from his childhood he had excellent education that he frequently read over Moses his Books and considered the Prophecies that related to our Saviour And was no question awakened with the general expectations that were then on foot among the Jews the date of the Prophetick Scriptures concerning the time of Christ's coming being now run out that the 〈◊〉 would immediately appear Add to this that the Divine grace did more immediately accompany the command of Christ to incline and dispose him to believe that this person was that very 〈◊〉 that was to come 3. NO sooner had Religion taken possession of his mind but like an active principle it began to 〈◊〉 and diffuse it self A way he goes and 〈◊〉 Nathanael a person of note and eminency acquaints him with the tidings of the new-found Messiah and conducts him to him So forward is a good man to draw and direct others in the same way to happiness with himself After his call to the Apostleship much is not recorded of him in the Holy story 'T was to him that our Saviour propounded the question What they should do for so much bread in the wilderness as would feed so vast a multitude to which he answered That so much was not easily to be had not considering that to feed two or twenty thousand are equally 〈◊〉 to Almighty Power when pleased to exert it self 'T was to him that the Gentile Proselytes that came up to the Passeover addressed themselves when desirous to see our Saviour a person of whom they had heard so loud a fame 'T was with him that our Lord had that discourse concerning himself a little before the last Paschal Supper The holy and compassionate Jesus had been fortifying their minds with fit considerations against his departure from them had told them that he was going to prepare room for them in the Mansions of the Blessed that he himself was the way the truth and the life and that no man could come to the Father but by him and that knowing him they both knew and had seen the Father Philip not duly understanding the force of our Saviour's reasonings begged of him that he would shew them the Father and then this would abundantly convince and satisfie them We can hardly suppose he should have such gross conceptions of the Deity as to imagine the Father vested with a corporeal and visible nature but Christ having told them that they had seen him and he knowing that God of old was wont frequently to appear in a visible shape he only desired that he would 〈◊〉 himself to them by some such appearance Our Lord gently reproved his ignorance that aster so long attendance upon his instructions he should not know that he was the Image of his Father the express characters of his infinite wisdom power and goodness appearing in him that he said and did nothing but by his Father's appointment which if they did not believe his miracles were a sufficient evidence That therefore such demands were unnecessary and impertinent and that it argued great weakness after more than three years education under his discipline and Institution to be so unskilful in those matters God expects improvement according to mens opportunities to be old 〈◊〉 ignorant in the School of Christ deserves both reproach and punishment 't is the character of very bad persons that they are ever learning but never come to the knowledge of the truth 4. IN the distribution of the several Regions of the World made by the Apostles though no mention be made by Origen or 〈◊〉 what part fell to our Apostle yet we are told by others that the Upper Asia was his Province the reason doubtless why he is said by many to have preached and planted Christianity in 〈◊〉 where he applied himself with an indefatigable diligence and industry to recover men out of the snare of the Devil to the embracing and acknowledgment of the truth By the constancy of his preaching and the efficacy of his Miracles he gained numerous Converts whom he baptized into the Christian Faith at once curing both Souls and Bodies their Souls of Error and Idolatry their Bodies of infirmities and distempers healing diseases dispossessing Daemons setling Churches and appointing them Guides and Ministers of Religion 5. HAVING for many years successfully managed his Apostolical Office in all those parts he came in the last periods of his life to Hierapolis in Phrygia a City rich and populous but answering its name in its Idolatrous Devotions Amongst the many vain and trifling Deities to whom they payed religious adoration was a Serpent or Dragon in memory no doubt of that infamous Act of Jupiter who in the shape of a Dragon insinuated himself into the embraces of Proserpina his own Daughter begot of Ceres and whom these phrygians chiefly worshipped as Clemens Alexandrinus tells us so little reason had Baronius to say that they worshipped no such God of a more prodigious bigness than the rest which they worshipped with great and solemn veneration S. Philip was troubled to see the people so wretchedly enslaved to error and therefore continually solicited Heaven till by prayer and calling upon the name of Christ he had procured the death or at least vanishing of this famed and beloved Serpent Which done he told them how unbecoming it was to give Divine honours to such odious creatures that God alone was to be worshipped as the great Parent of the World who had made man at first after his own glorious Image and when fallen from that innocent and happy state had sent his own Son into the World to redeem him who died and rose from the dead and shall come again at the last day to raise men out of their Graves and to sentence and reward them according to their works The success was that the people were ashamed of their fond Idolatry and many broke loose from their chains of darkness and ran over to Christianity Whereupon the great enemy of mankind betook himself to his old methods cruelty and persecution The Magistrates of the City seise the Apostle and having put him into prison caused him to be severely whip'd and scourg'd This preparatory cruelty passed he was led to execution and being bound was hanged up by the neck against a pillar though others tell us that he was crucified We are further told that at his execution the Earth began suddenly to quake and the ground whereon the people stood to sink under them which when they apprehended and bewailed as an evident act of Divine vengeance pursuing them for their sins it as
lances Baron Martyrolog Dec. 21 St. Thomas his Martyrdom Joh. 11. 16. Thomas which is called Didunus said unto his fellow-desciples Let us also goe that we may die with him The custom of the Jews to have both an Hebrew and a Roman name S. Thomas his name the same in Syriack and Greek His Country and Trade His call to the Apostleship His great affection to our Saviour Christ's discourse with him concerning the way to Eternal life His obstinate refusal to believe our Lord's Resurrection and the unreasonableness of his Infidelity Our Lord's convincing him by sensible demonstrations S. Thomas his deputing Thaddaeus to Abgarus of Edessa His Travels into Parthia Media Persia c. AEthiopia what and where situate His coming into India and the success of his Preaching there An account of his Acts in India from the relation of the Portugals at their first coming thither His converting the King of Malipur The manner of his Martyrdom by the Brachmans The Miracles said to be done at his Tomb. His Bones dug up by the Portugals A Cross and several Brass Tables with Inscriptions found there An account of the Indian or S. Thomas Christians their Number State Rites and way of life 1. IT was customary with the Jews when travelling into foreign Countries or familiarly conversing with the Greeks and Romans to assume to themselves a Greek or a Latin name of great affinity and sometimes of the very same signification with that of their own Country Thus our Lord was called Christ answering to his Hebrew title Mashiach or the 〈◊〉 Simon stiled Peter according to that of Cephas which our Lord put upon him Tabitha called 〈◊〉 both signifying a Goat Thus our S. Thomas according to the Syriack importance of his name had the title of Didymus which signifies a Twin Thomas which is called Didymus Accordingly the Syriack Version renders it 〈◊〉 which is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Thama that is a Twin The not understanding whereof imposed upon Nonnus the Greek Paraphrast who makes him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to have had two distinct names 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it being but the same name expressed in different Languages The History of the Gospel takes no particular notice either of the Country or Kindred of this Apostle That he was a Jew is certain and in all probability a Galilean He was born if we may believe Symeon Metaphrastes of very mean Parents who brought him up to the trade of Fishing but withall took care to give him a more useful education instructing him in the knowledge of the Scriptures whereby he learnt wisely to govern his life and manners He was together with the rest called to the Apostleship and not long after gave an eminent instance of his hearty willingness to undergo the saddest fate that might attend them For when the rest of the Apostles disswaded our Saviour from going into Judaea whither he was now resolved for the raising his dear Lazarus lately dead left the Jews should stone him as but a little before they had attempted it S. Thomas desires them not to hinder Christ's journey thither though it might cost their lives Let us also go that we may die with him probably concluding that instead of raising Lazarus from the dead they themselves should be sent with him to their own Graves So that he made up in pious affections what he seemed to want in the quickness and acumen of his understanding not readily apprehending some of our Lord's discourses nor over-forward to believe more than himself had seen When the holy Jesus a little before his fatal sufferings had been speaking to them of the joys of Heaven and had told them that he was going to prepare that they might follow him that they knew both the place whither he was going and the way thither Our Apostle replied that they knew not whither he went and much less the way that led to it To which our Lord returns this short but satisfactory answer That he was the true living way the person whom the Father had sent into the World to shew men the paths of Eternal life and that they could not miss of Heaven if they did but keep to that way which he had prescribed and chalked out before them 2. OUR Lord being dead 't is evident how much the Apostles were distracted between hopes and fears concerning his Resurrection not yet fully satisfied about it Which engaged him the sooner to hasten his appearance that by the sensible manifestations of himself he might put the case beyond all possibilities of dispute The very day whereon he arose he came into the house where they were while for fear of the Jews the doors were yet fast shut about them and gave them sufficient assurance that he was really risen from the dead At this meeting S. Thomas was absent having probably never recovered their company since their last dispersion in the Garden when every ones fears prompted him to consult his own safety At his return they told him that their Lord had appeared to them but he obstinately refused to give credit to what they said or to believe that it was he presuming it rather a phantasm or mere apparition unless he might see the very prints of the Nails and feel the wounds in his hands and sides A strange piece of infidelity Was this any more than what Moses and the Prophets had long since foretold had not our Lord frequently told them in plain terms that he must rise again the third day could he question the possibility of it who had so often seen him do the greatest miracles was it reasonable to reject the testimony of so many eye-witnesses ten to one against himself and of whose fidelity he was assured or could he think that either themselves should be deceived or that they would jest and trifle with him in so solemn and serious a matter A stubbornness that might have betrayed him into an eternal infidelity But our compassionate Saviour would not take the advantage of the mans refractory unbelief but on that day seven-night again came to them as they were solemnly met at their devotions and calling to Thomas bad him look upon his hands put his fingers into the prints of the Nails and thrust his hand into the hole of his side and satisfie his faith by a demonstration from sense The man was quickly convinced of his error and obstinacy confessing that he now acknowledged him to be his very Lord and Master a God omnipotent that was thus able to rescue himself from the powers of death Our Lord replied no more than that it was well he believed his own senses but that it was a more noble and commendable act of Faith to acquiesce in a rational evidence and to entertain the doctrines and relations of the Gospel upon such testimonies and assurances of the truth of things as will satisfie a wise and sober man though he did not
A circumstance the more considerable because spoken at the same time when Peter was in Council who produced no such intimation of his Authority Had the Champions of the Church of Rome but such a passage for Peter's judiciary Authority and Power it would no doubt have made a louder noise in the World than Thou art Peter or Feed my sheep 5. HE administred his Province with all possible care and industry omitting no part of a diligent and faithful Guide of Souls strengthning the weak informing the ignorant reducing the erroneous reproving the obstinate and by the constancy of his Preaching conquering the stubbornness of that perverse and refractory Generation that he had to deal with many of the nobler and the better sort being brought over to a compliance with the Christian Faith So careful so successful in his charge that he awakened the spite and malice of his Enemies to conspire his ruine a sort of Men of whom the Apostle has given too true a character that they please not God and are contrary to all men Vexed they were to see that S. Paul by appealing to Caesar had escaped their hands Malice is as greedy and insatiable as Hell it self and therefore now turn their revenge upon S. James which not being able to effect under Festus his Government they more effectually attempted under the Procuratorship of Albinus his Successor Ananus the Younger then High-Priest and of the Sect of the Sadducees 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Josephus speaking of this very passage of all others the most merciless and implacable Justicers resolving to dispatch him before the new Governor could arrive To this end a Council is hastily summoned and the Apostle with some others arraigned and condemned as Violators of the Law But that the thing might be carried in a more plausible and popular way they set the Scribes and Pharisees Crafts-masters in the arts of dissimulation at work to ensnare him who coming to him began by flattering insinuatious to set upon him They tell him that they all had a mighty confidence in him and that the whole Nation as well as they gave him the testimony of a most just man and one that was no respecter of Persons that therefore they desired he would correct the error and false Opinion which the People had of Jesus whom they looked upon as the Messiah and would take this opportunity of the universal confluence to the Paschal solemnity to set them right in their notions about these things and would to that end go up with them to the top of the Temple where he might be seen and heard by all Being advantageously placed upon a Pinnacle or Wing of the Temple they made this address to him Tell us O Justus whom we have all the reason in the World to believe that seeing the People are thus generally led away with the Doctrine of Jesus that was crucified tell us What is this Institution of the crucified Jesus To which the Apostle answered with an audible Voice Why do ye enquire of Jesus the Son of man he sits in Heaven on the right hand of the Majesty on high and will come again in the Clouds of Heaven The People below hearing it glorified the blessed Jesus and openly proclaimed Hosanna to the Son of David The Scribes and Pharisees perceived now that they had over-shot themselves and that instead of reclaiming they had confirmed the People in their Error that there was no way left but presently to dispatch him that by his sad fate others might be warned not to believe him Whereupon suddenly crying out that Justus himself was seduced and become an Impostor they threw him down from the Place where he stood Though bruised he was not killed by the fall but recovered so much strength as to get upon his Knees and Pray to Heaven for them Malice is of too bad a nature either to be pacified with kindness or satisfied with cruelty Jealousie is not more the rage of a Man than Malice is the rage of the Devil the very soul and spirit of the Apostate nature Little portions of revenge do but inflame it and serve to flesh it up into a fiercer violence Vexed that they had not done his work they fall afresh upon the poor remainders of his life and while he was yet at Prayer and that a Rechabite who stood by which says Epiphanius was Symeon his Kinsman and Successor stept in and intreated them to spare him a just and a righteous Man and who was then praying for them they began to load him with a showre of stones till one more mercifully cruel than the rest with a Fullers Club beat out his Brains Thus died this good Man in the XCVI Year of his Age and about XXIV Years after Christ's Ascension into Heaven as Epiphanius tells us being taken away to the great grief and regret of all good Men yea of all sober and just Persons even amongst the Jews themselves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Josephus himself confesses speaking of this matter He was buried says Gregory Bishop of Tours upon Mount Olivet in a Tomb which he had built for himself and wherein he had buried Zacharias and old Simeon which I am rather inclinable to believe than what Hegesippus reports that he was buried near the Temple in the place of his Martyrdom and that a Monument was there erected for him which remained a long time after For the Jews were not ordinarily wont to bury within the City much less so near the Temple and least of all would they suffer him whom as a Blasphemer and Impostor they had so lately put to death 6. HE was a Man of exemplary and extraordinary Piety and Devotion educated under the strictest Rules and Institutions of Religion a Priest as we may probably guess of the ancient Order of the Rechabites or rather as Epiphanius conjectures 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 according to the most ancient order and form of Priesthood when the Sacerdotal Office was the Prerogative of the first-born and such was S. James the Eldest Son of Joseph and thereby sanctified and set apart for it Though whether this way of Priesthood at any time held under the Mosaick dispensation we have no intimations in the holy story But however he came by it upon some such account it must be that he had a priviledge which the Ancicnts say was peculiar to him probably because more frequently made use of by him than by any others to enter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not into the Sancta Sanstorum or most holy of all but the Sanctuary or holy place whither the Priests of the Aaronical Order might come Prayer was his constant business and delight he seemed to live upon it and to trade in nothing but the frequent returns of converse with Heayen and was therefore wont to retire alone into the Temple to pray which he always performed kneeling and with the greatest reverence till by
galled with the iron at his heels and nailed even before his Crucifixion But this and the other accidents of his journey and their malice so crushed his wounded tender and virginal body that they were forced to lay the load upon a Cyrenian fearing that he should die with less shame and smart than they intended him But so he was pleased to take man unto his aid not only to represent his own need and the dolorousness of his Passion but to consign the duty unto man that we must enter into a 〈◊〉 of Christ's sufferings taking up the Cross of Martyrdom when God requires us enduring affronts being patient under affliction loving them that hate us and being benefactors to our enemies abstaining from sensual and intemperate delight forbidding to our selves lawful festivities and recreations of our weariness when we have an end of the spirit to serve upon the ruines of the bodie 's strength mortifying our desires breaking our own will not seeking our selves being entirely resigned to God These are the Cross and the Nails and the Spear and the Whip and all the instruments of a Christian's Passion And we may consider that every man in this world shall in some sence or other bear a Cross few men escape it and it is not well with them that do but they only bear it well that 〈◊〉 Christ and tread in his steps and bear it for his sake and walk as he walked and he that follows his own desires when he meets with a cross there as it is certain enough he will bears the cross of his Concupiscence and that hath no fellowship with the Cross of Christ. By the Precept of bearing the Cross we are not tied to pull evil upon our selves that we may imitate our Lord in nothing but in being afflicted or to personate the punitive exercises of Mortification and severe Abstinencies which were eminent in some Saints and to which they had special assistances as others had the gift of Chastity and for which they had special reason and as they apprehended some great necessities but it is required that we bear our own Cross so said our dearest Lord. For when the Cross of Christ is laid upon us and we are called to Martyrdom then it is our own because God made it to be our portion and when by the necessities of our spirit and the rebellion of our body we need exteriour mortifications and acts of self-denial then also it is our own cross because our needs have made it so and so it is when God sends us sickness or any other calamity what-ever is either an effect of our ghostly needs or the condition of our temporal estate it calls for our sufferance and patience and equanimity for therefore Christ hath suffered for us saith S. Peter leaving us an example that we should follow his steps who bore his Cross as long as he could and when he could no longer he murmured not but sank under it and then he was content to receive such aid not which he chose himself but such as was assigned him 3. Jesus was led out of the gates of Jerusalem that he might become the sacrifice for persons without the pale even for all the world And the daughters of Jerusalem followed him with pious tears till they came to Calvary a place difficult in the ascent eminent and apt for the publication of shame a hill of death and dead bones polluted and impure and there beheld him stript naked who cloaths the field with flowers and all the world with robes and the whole globe with the canopy of Heaven and so dress'd that now every circumstance was a triumph By his Disgrace he trampled upon our Pride by his Poverty and nakedness he triumphed over our Covetousness and love of riches and by his Pains chastised the Delicacies of our flesh and broke in pieces the fetters of Concupiscence For as soon as Adam was clothed he quitted Paradise and Jesus was made naked that he might bring us in again And we also must be despoil'd of all our exteriour adherencies that we may pass through the regions of duty and divine love to a society of blessed spirits and a clarified immortal and beatified estate 4. There they nailed Jesus with four nails fixed his Cross in the ground which with its fall into the place of its station gave infinite torture by so violent a concussion of the body of our Lord which rested upon nothing but four great wounds where he was designed to suffer a long and lingring torment For Crucifixion as it was an excellent pain sharp and passionate so it was not of quick effect towards taking away the life S. Andrew was two whole days upon the Cross and some Martyrs have upon the Cross been rather starved and devoured with birds than killed with the proper torment of the tree But Jesus took all his Passion with a voluntary susception God heightning it to the great degrees of torment supernaturally and he laid down his life voluntarily when his Father's wrath was totally appeased towards mankind 5. Some have phansied that Christ was pleased to take something from every condition of which Man ever was or shall be possessed taking Immunity from sin from Adam's state of Innocence Punishment and misery from the state of Adam fallen the fulness of Grace from the state of Renovation and perfect Contemplation of the Divinity and beatifick joys from the state of Comprehension and the blessedness of Heaven meaning that the Humanity of our Blessed Saviour did in the sharpest agony of his Passion behold the face of God and communicate in glory But I consider that although the two Natures of Christ were knit by a mysterious union into one Person yet the Natures still retain their incommunicable properties Christ as God is not subject to sufferings as a man he is the subject of miseries as God he is eternal as man mortal and commensurable by time as God the supreme Law-giver as man most humble and obedient to the Law and therefore that the Humane nature was united to the Divine it does not infer that it must in all instances partake of the Divine felicities which in God are essential to man communicated without necessity and by an arbitrary dispensation Add to this that some vertues and excellencies were in the Soul of Christ which could not consist with the state of glorified and beatified persons such as are Humility Poverty of spirit Hope Holy desires all which having their seat in the Soul suppose even in the supremest 〈◊〉 a state of pilgrimage that is a condition which is imperfect and in order to something beyond its present For therefore Christ ought to suffer saith our Blessed Lord himself and so enter into his glory And S. Paul affirms that we see Jesus made a little lower than the Angels for the suffering of death 〈◊〉 with glory and honour And again Christ humbled himself and became obedient unto
death even the death of the Cross Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him and given him a Name above every name Thus his present life was a state of merit and work and as a reward of it he was crowned with glory and immortality his Name was exalted his Kingdom glorified he was made the Lord of all the Creatures the first-fruits of the Resurrection the exemplar of glory and the Prince and Head of the Catholick Church and because this was his recompence and the fruits of his Humility and Obedience it is certain it was not a necessary consequence and a natural efflux of the personal union of the Godhead with the Humanity This I discourse to this purpose that we may not in our esteem lessen the suffering of our dearest Lord by thinking he had the supports of actual Glory in the midst of all his Sufferings For there is no one minute or ray of Glory but its fruition does outweigh and make us insensible of the greatest calamities and the spirit of pain which can be extracted from all the infelicities of this world True it is that the greatest beauties in this world are receptive of an allay of sorrow and nothing can have pleasure in all capacities The most beautious feathers of the birds of Paradise the Estrich or the Peacock if put into our throat are not there so pleasant as to the eye But the beatifick joys of the least glory of Heaven take away all pain wipe away all tears from our eyes and it is not possible that at the same instant the Soul of Jesus should be ravished with Glory and yet abated with pains grievous and 〈◊〉 On the other side some say that the Soul of Jesus upon the Cross suffered the pains of Hell and all the torments of the damned and that without such sufferings it is not imaginable he should pay the price which God's wrath should demand of us But the same that reproves the one does also reprehend the other for the Hope that was the support of the Soul of Jesus as it confesses an imperfection that is not consistent with the state of Glory so it excludes the Despair that is the torment proper to accursed souls Our dearest Lord suffered the whole condition of Humanity Sin only excepted and freed us from Hell with suffering those sad pains and merited Heaven for his own Humanity as the Head and all faithful people as the Members of his mystical Body And therefore his life here was only a state of pilgrimage not at all trimmed with beatifick glories Much less was he ever in the state of Hell or upon the Cross felt the formal misery and spirit of torment which is the 〈◊〉 of damned spirits because it was impossible Christ should despair and without Despair it is impossible there should be a Hell But this is highly probable that in the intension of degrees and present anguish the Soul of our Lord might feel a greater load of wrath than is incumbent in every instant upon perishing souls For all the sadness which may be imagined to be in Hell consists in acts produced from principles that cannot surpass the force of humane or Angelical nature but the pain which our Blessed Lord endured for the expiation of our sins was an issue of an united and concentred anger was received into the heart of God and Man and was commensurate to the whole latitude of the Grace Patience and Charity of the Word incarnate The Crucisixion Mark 15 25. Erat autem Hora tertia crucifixerunt eum Mark 15 25. And is was the third houre they crucified him The takeing down from the Cross. Luk. 23 50 And there was a man named Ioseph a Counsellour he was a good man a lust y e same had not consented to y e counsell deed of them 52. This man went unto Pilate begged y e Body of Iesus 53 And he took it down wrapped it in linen layd it in a Sepulehre that was hewn in stone wherein never man before was layd 6. And now behold the Priest and the Sacrifice of all the world laid upon the Altar of the Cross bleeding and tortured and dying to reconcile his Father to us and he was arrayed with ornaments more glorious than the robes of Aaron The Crown of Thorns was his Mitre the Cross his Pastoral staffe the Nails piercing his hands were in stead of Rings the ancient ornament of Priests and his flesh rased and checker'd with blew and bloud in stead of the parti-coloured Robe But as this object calls for our Devotion our Love and Eucharist to our dearest Lord so it must needs irreconcile us to Sin which in the eye of all the world brought so great shame and pain and amazement upon the Son of God when he only became engaged by a charitable substitution of himself in our place and therefore we are assured by the demonstration of sense and experience it will bring death and all imaginable miseries as the just expresses of God's indignation and hatred for to this we may apply the words of our Lord in the prediction of miseries to Jerusalem If this be done in the green tree what shall be done in the dry For it is certain Christ infinitely pleased his Father even by becoming the person made 〈◊〉 in estimate of Law and yet so great Charity of our Lord and the so great love and pleasure of his Father exempted him not from suffering pains intolerable and much less shall those escape who provoke and displease God and despise so great Salvation which the Holy Jesus hath wrought with the expence of bloud and so precious a life 7. But here we see a great representation and testimony of the Divine Justice who was so angry with sin who had so severely threatned it who does so essentially hate it that he would not spare his only Son when he became a conjunct person relative to the guilt by undertaking the charges of our Nature For although God hath set down in holy Scripture the order of his Justice and the manner of its manifestation that one Soul shall not perish for the sins of another yet this is meant for Justice and for Mercy too that is he will not curse the Son for the Father's fault or in any relation whatsoever substitute one person for another to make him involuntarily guilty But when this shall be desired by a person that cannot finally perish and does a mercy to the exempt persons and is a voluntary act of the suscipient and shall in the event also redound to an infinite good it is no deflection from the Divine Justice to excuse many by the affliction of one who also for that very suffering shall have infinite compensation We see that for the sin of Cham all his posterity were accursed the Subjects of David died with the Plague because their Prince numbred the people Idolatry is punished in the children of the fourth generation