else this is their Attrition and this is their enough for salvation A sigh of the penitent a word of the Priest makes all clean and induces an absolute pureness Thus some of the Ancients went too far They would pardon no sin after Baptism These new Men go not far enough They pardon all too easily Old Physicians thought all hurts in the heart presently mortal These new Physitians can pare off some of the heart and give it to Idolatry for so they say that the worship due to God may be given to a creature so it be not Tanquam Deo as that the Creature is thereby professed to be God and yet they confess that that worship which they give to the creature is idolatry but not that Idolatry say they which is forbidden in the commandment which is that that Creature so worshipped with the worship due to God be also believed to be God and so truely I believe it will be hard to finde any Idolatry in the world That they that worship any thing in representation of God do believe advisedly that representation to be very God But the true reason why no hurt received in the heart can be healed is quia palpitat because it is in perpetual motion If the heart lay still as other parts do so that medicinal helps might be applied to it and admitted by it there were more hope Therefore when we lay such a weight upon the heart as may settle it fix it give it a reposedness and acquiescence though it do receive some wounds though it be touched with some tentations it may be cured But is there any such weight as should so settle the heart the soul of Man This love of Pureness is that weight August Amor est pondus animae sicut gravitas Corporis As the weight of my body makes that steady so this love of Pureness is the weight and the ballast of my soul and this weight stays the palpitation the variation the deviation of the heart upon other objects which variation frustrates all endeavors to cure it The love of this pureness is both the ballast and the frait to carry thee steadily and richly too through all storms and tempests spiritual and temporal in this life to the everlasting Jerusalem If you be come to this love this love of pureness of heart never to lock up your door till you have carried out your dust never to shut your eyes at night till you have swept your conscience and cast your foulness into that infinite sea of the blood of Christ Jesus which can contract no foulness by it never to open your eyes in the morning but that you look out to glorifie God in the rising of the Sun and in his other creatures and in the peace and safety of your house and family and the health of your children and servants But especially to look inward and consider whether you have not that night mingled poyson with Gods Physick whether you have not mingled sloth and laziness in that which God gave you for rest and refreshing whether you have not mingled licentiousness in that which God gave you for a remedy against fornication And then when you shall have found that sin hath been awake in you even when your bodies were asleep be sure you cast not the Spirit of God into a sleep in you when your bodies are awake but that you proceed vigilantly in your several wayes with a fore-knowledge that there is every where coluber in via A Snake in the way in every way that you can take in every course of life in every calling there is some of the seed of the old Serpent presents it self And then if by Gods infallible word explicated in his Church Psal 119.104 which is Lucerna pedibus vestris The word is the light but the Church is the Lanthorne 2 Sam. 22.29 it presents and preserves that light unto you and though it be said Lucerna Dominus Apoc. 21.23 Thou O Lord art my light God himself And Lucerna Agnus The Lamb Christ himself is your light And lucerna mandatum Prov. 6.23 John 5.35 The commandments of God are your light yet it is also said of Iohn Baptist Lucerna ardens he was a burning and a shining light The Ministry of the Gospel in the Church is your light If by the benefit of this light you consider every step you make weigh every action you undertake this is that love of Pureness that Pondus animae the setling of the heart that keeps it from evaporating upon transitory things and settles it so as that it becomes capable of that cure which God in his Church in the Absolution of sins and seals of Reconciliation exhibits to it To recollect and contract that which hath been said This pureness is not a purifying pureness to correct and reform those things that appertain not to us nor it is not such a purified pureness as makes us Canonize our selves and think others Reprobates for all this is no pureness at all neither is it the true pureness if it be not in the heart for outward good works not done to good ends are impure nor is this pureness of heart acquired by any other means then by discharging the heart in a detestation of former habits and a sedulous watchfulness in preventing future attempts nor can this pureness of heart though by these means attain'd to be preserved but by this noble and incorruptible affection of Love that puts a true value upon it and therefore prefers it above all other things And this was the first of the two marks which we found to be upon that person that should be capable of the Kings friendship He that loveth pureness of heart And the other is that he have by honest industry fitted himself in some way to be of use to the publike delivered in that phrase Grace of lips He that loveth pureness of heart There 's his honesty for the Grace of his lips There 's his sufficiency The King shall be his friend There 's his reward his preferment Gratia labiorum Ordinarily in Scriptures where this word lips is not taken naturally literally narrowly for that part of the body but transferred to a figurative and larger sense either it signifies speaking onely as in Solomon As righteous lips are the delight of Kings and the King loveth him that speaketh right things That is Him in whose Counsels Prov. 16.13 and in whose relations he may confide and rely or else it is enlarged to all manner of expressing a mans ability to do service to that State in which God hath made his station and by lips and fruits of lips is well understood the fruit of all his good labors and endeavors And so may those words be well interpreted With the fruit of a mans mouth shall his belly be satisfied and with the encrease of his lips shall he be filled 18.20 That is his honest labors in a lawful calling shall
affected not to be entendred to wear those things which God hath made objects and subjects of affections that which St. Paul places in the bottome and lees Rom. 1.30 and dregs of all the sins of the Jews to be without natural affections this distemper this ill complexion this ill nature of the soul is under the first part of this curse if any man love not for he that loves not knows not God for God is love But this curse determins not upon that neither is it principally directed upon that not loving for as we say in the schools Amor est primus actus voluntatis the first thing that the will of man does is to affect to choose to love something and it is scarce possible to find any mans will so idle so barren as that it hath produced no act at all and therefore the first act being love scarce any man can be found that doth not love something But the curses extends yea is principally intended upon him that loves not Christ Jesus though he love the creature and orderly enough yea though he love God as a great and incomprehensible power yet if he love not Christ Jesus if he acknowledg not that all that passes between God and him is in and for Christ Jesus let him be accursed for all his love Now there are but two that can be loved God and the Creature and of the creatures that must necessarily be best loved which is neerest us which we understand best and reflect most upon and that 's our selves for for the love of other creatures it is but a secondary love if we lâ—â—e God we love them for his sake if we love our selves we love them for our sakes Now to love our selves is only allowable only proper to God himself for this love is a desire that all honor and praise and glory should be attributed to ones self and it can be only proper to God to desire that To love our selves then is the greatest treason we can commit against God and all love of the creatures determines in the love of our selves for though sometimes we may say that we love them better than our selves and though we give so good that is indeed so ill testimony that we do so that we neglect our selves both our religion and our discretion for their sakes whom we pretend to love yet all this is but a secondary love and with relation still to our selves and our own contentments for is this love which we bear to other creatures within that definition of love Velle bonum amato to wish that which we love happy doth any ambitious man love honor or office therefore because he thinks that title or that place should receive a dignity by his having it or an excellency by his executing it doth any covetous man love a house or horse therefore because he thinks that house or horse should be happy in such a Master or such Rider doth any licentious man covet or solicite a woman therefore because he thinks it a happiness to her to have such a servant No it is only himself that is within the difinition vult bonum sibi he wishes well as he mistakes it to himself and he is content that the slavery and dishonor and ruin of others should contribute to make up his imaginary happiness August O dementiam nescientem amare homines humaniter what a perverse madness is it to love a creature and not as a creature that is with all the adjuncts and circumstances and qualities of a creature of which the principal is that that love raise us to the contemplation of the Creator for if it be so we may love our selves as we are the Images of God and so we may love other men as they are the Images of us and our nature yea as they are members of the same body for omnes homines una humanitas all men make up but one mankind and so we love other creatures as we all meet in our Creator in whom Princes and Subjects Angels and men and wormes are fellow servants Si malè amaveris tunc odisti If thou hast lov'd thy self August or any body else principally or so that when thou dost any act of love thou canst not say to thine own conscience I do this for Gods sake and for his glory if thou hast loved so thou hast hated thy self and him whom thou hast loved and God whom thou shouldest love Si bonè oderis saies the same Father If thou hast hated as thou shouldst hate if thou hast hated thine own internal tentations and the outward solicitations of others Amasti then thou hast expressed a manifold act of love of love to thy God and love to his Image thy self and love to thine Image that man whom thy virtue and thy example hath declined and kept from offending his and thy God And as this affection love doth belong to God principally that is rather then to any thing else so doth it also principally another way that is rather then any affection else for the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom but the love of God is the consummation that is the marriage and union of thy soul and thy Saviour But can we love God when we will do we not find that in the love of some other things or some courses of life of some waies in our actions and of some particular persons that we would fain love them cannot when we can object nothing against it when we can multiply arguments why we should love them yet we cannot but it is not so towards God every man may love him that will but can every man have this will this desire certainly we cannot begin this love except God love us first we cannot love him but God doth love us all so well from the beginning as that every man may see the fault was in the perversness of his own will that he did not love God better If we look for the root of this love it is in the Father for though the death of Christ be towards us as a root as a cause of our love and of the acceptableness of it yet Augst Meritum Christi est affectum amoris Dei erga nos the death of Christ was but an effect of the love of God towards us So God loved the world that he gave his Son if he had not lov'd us first we had never had his Son here is the root then the love of the Father and the tree the merit of the Son except there be fruit too love in us to them again both root and tree will wither in us howsoever they grew in God I have loved thee with an everlasting love Jer. 31.3 saies God therfore with mercy I have drawn thee if therefore we do not perceive that we are drawn to lov again by this lov 't is not an everlasting lov that shines upon us All the sunshine all the glory of this life
his alleigance induces an addition of punishment upon the devil himself Consider a little further our wretchedness in this prodigality we think those Laws barbarous and inhumane which permit the sute of men in debt for the satisfaction of Creditors but we sell our selves and grow the farther in debt by being sold we are sold and to even rate our debts and to aggravate our condemnation We find in the history of the Muscovits that it is an ordinary detainder amongst them to sell themselves and their posterity into everlasting bondage for hot drink In one winter a wretched man will drink himself and his posterity into perpetual slavery But we sell our selves not for drink but for thirst we are sory when our appetite too soon decaies and we would fain sin more than we do At what a high rate did the blessed Martyrs sell their bodies They built up Gods Church with their blood They sowed his field and prepared his harvest with their blood they got heaven for their bodies and we give bodies souls for hell In a right inventary every man that ascends to a true value of himself considers it thus First His Soul then His life after his fame and good name And lastly his goods and estate for thus their own nature hath ranked them and thus they are as in nature so ordinarily in legal consideration preferred before one another But for our souls because we know not how they came into us we care not how they go out because if I aske a Philosopher whither my soul came in by propagation from my parents or by an immediate infusion from God perchance he cannot tell so I think a divine can no more tell me whither when my soul goes out of me it be likely to turn on the right or on the left hand if I continue in this course of sin And then for the second thing in this inventary Life the Devil himself said true skin for skin and all that a man hath will he give for his life Indeed we do not easily give away our lives expresly and at once but we do very easily suffer our selves to be cousened of our lives we pour in death in drink and we call that health we know our life to be but a span and yet we can wash away one inche in ryot we can burn away one inch in lust we can bleed away one inch in quarrels we have not an inch for every sin and if we do not pour out our lives yet we drop them away For the third peece of our self our fame and reputation who had not rather be thought an usurer then a beggar who had not rather be the object of envy by being great than of scorn and contempt by being poor upon any conditions And for the last of all which is our goods Seneca though our coveteousness appears most in the love of them in that lowest thing of all Adeo omnia homini cariora seipso so much does every man think every inferiour thing better than himself than his fame than his body than his soul which is a most perverse undervaluing of himself and a damnable humility yet even with these goods also as highly as he values them a man will past if to fuell and foment and maintain that sin that he delights in that which is the most precious our souls we undervalue most and that which we do esteem most though naturally it should be lowest our estate we are content to wast and dissipate for our sins And whereas the Heathens needed laws to restrain them from an expensive and wastful worship of their Gods every man was so apt to exceed in sacrifices and such other religious duties til that law Deus frugi Colunto Let men be thrifty moderate in religious expenses was enacted which law was a kind of mortmain and inhibition That every man might not bestow what he would upon the service of those Gods we have turned our prodigality the other way upon the devil whom we have made Haeredem in esse and our sole executor and sacrificed soul and life and fame and fortune all the gifts of God and God himself by making his religion and his Sacraments and the profession of his name in an hypocriticall use of them to be the devils instruments to draw us the easilyer and hold us the faster and what prodigality can be conceived to exceed this in which we do not onely mispend our selves Nihil but mispend our God The other point in this exprobration is that as we have prodigally sold our selves so we have inconsiderately sold our selves for nothing we have in our bargain diseases and we have poverty and we have unsensibleness of our miseries but diseases are but privations of health and poverty but a privation of wealth and unsensibleness but a privation of tenderness of Conscience all are privations and privations are nothing if a man had got nothing by a bargain but repentance he would think and justly he had got little but if thou hadst repentance in this bargain thy bargain were the better if thou couldst come to think thy bargain bad it were a good bargain but the height of the misery is in this that one of those nothings for which we have sold our selves is a stupidity an unsensibleness of our own wretchedness The Laws do annull and make void fraudulent conveyances and then the laws presume fraud in the conveyance if at least half the value of the thing be not given now if the whole world be not worth one soul who can say that he hath half his value it were not meerly nothing if considering that inventary which we spoke of before we had the worse for the better that were but an ill exchange but yet it were not nothing If we had bodies for our souls it were not meerly nothing but we finde that sin that sells our souls decays and withers our bodies our bodies grow incapable of that sin unable to commit that sin which we sold our souls for If we had fame and reputation for out bodies it were not nothing but we see that Heretiques that give their bodies to the fire are by the very law infamous and they are infamous in every mans apprehension If we had worldly goods for loss of fame and of our good name yet still it were not nothing but we see that witches who are infamous persons for the most part live in extreme beggery too So that the exprobration is just we have sold our selves for nothing and however the ordinary murmuring may be true in other things that all things are grown dearer our souls are still cheap enough which at first were all sold in gross for perchance an Apple and are now retailed every day for nothing Joseph was sold underfoot by his brethren but it is hard to say for how much some Copies have that he was sold for 20 pieces and some for 25 and some for 30 and S. Ambrose and S.
heare not because God speaks not loud enough but because we stop our eares nor that neyther for wee doe hear but because we do not hearken then nor consider no nor that neyther but because we doe not answere nor cooperate nor assist God in doing that which he hath made us able to doe by his grace towards our own Salvation For not to judge De iis qui foris sunt of those whom God hath left fot any thing we know in the darke and without meanes of Salvation because without manifestation of Christ we are Christians incorporated in Christ in his Church and thereby by that Title we have a new Creation and are new creatures and as wee shall have a new Jerusalem hereafter so we have a new Paradise already which is the Christian Church In this Paradise saith St. Augustine Quatuor Evangelia ligna fructifera In the books of the Gospell as they grow and as they are suplicated in the Church growes every Tree pleasant for the sight and good for meat And there sayes that Father lignum vitae Christus Christ Jesus himself as he is taught hee that gives life to all our actions and even so our faith it self which faith qualifies and dignifies those actions And then sayes from the Scriptures in the Church is the Tree of Life for it is he As Christ alone in this Paradise that is the christian Church is this Tree of life so lignum scientiae boni mali The Tree of knowledg of Good and Evill is Proprium voluntatis arbitrium the good use of our own Will after God hath enlightned us in this Paradise in the Christian Church and so restor'd our dead will again by his Grace precedent and subsequent and concommitant for without such Grace and such succession of Grace our Will is so far unable to pre-dispose it selfe to any good as that nec scipso homo nisi perniciose uti potest sayes he still we have no interest in our selves no power to doe any thing of or with our selves but to our destruction Miserable man a Toad is a bag of Poyson and a Spider is a blister of Poyson and yet a Toad and a Spider cannot poyson themselves Man hath a dram of poyson originall-Sin in an invisible corner we know not where and he cannot choose but poyson himselfe and all his actions with that we are so far from being able to begin without Grace as then where we have the first Grace we cannot proceed to the use of that without more But yet sayes Saint Augustine The Will of a Christian so rectified and so assisted the lignum scientiae the Tree of knowledge and he shall be the worse for knowing if he live not according to that knowledg we were all wrapped up in the first Adam all Mankind and we are wrapped up in the second Adam in Christ all Mankinde too but not in both alike for we are so in the first Adam as that we inherit death from him and incurre death whether we will or no before any consent of ours be actually given to any Sin we are the children of wrath and of death but we are not so in the second Adam as that we are made possessors of eternall life without the concurrence of our own Will not that our will payes one penny towards this purchase but our own will may forfeit it it cannot adopt us but it may disinherit us Now by being planted in this Paradise and received into the Christian Church we are the adopted sons of God and therefore as it is in Christ who is the naturall Son of God Qui non nascitur desinit as Origen expresses it He was not born once and no more but hath a continual because an eternall generation and is as much begotten to day as he was 100. 1000. 1000 millions of generations passed so since we are the generation and of-spring of God since Grace is our Father that Parent that begets all goodness in us In similitudine ejus sayes Origen conformable to the Pattern Christ himself Qui non nascitur desinit who hath a continuall generation Generemur Domino per singulos intellectus singula opera in all the acts of our understanding and in a ready concurrence of our Will let us every day every minute feele this new generation of spirituall children for it is a miserable short life to have been borne when the glasse was turned and dyed before it was run out to have conceived some good Motions at the beginning and to have given over all purpose of practise at the end of a Sermon Let us present our own will as a mother to the father of light and the father of life and the father of love that we may be willing to conceive by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost and not resist his working upon our Soules but with the obedience of the blessed Virgin may say Ecce ancilla Behold the seruant of the Lord fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum Be it done unto me according to thy Word I will not stop mine eares to thy Word my heart shall not doubt of thy word my life shall expresse my having heard and harkened to thy word that word which is the Gospell that Gospell which is peace to my Conscience and reconciliation to my God and Salvation to my Soul for hearing is but the conception meditation is but the quickning purposing is but the byrth but practising is the growth of this blessed childe Fidelis The Gospell then that which is the Gospell to thee that is the assurance of the peace of Conscience is grounded in sermone upon the word not upon imaginations of thine owne not upon fancies of others nor pretended inspirations nor obtruded Miracles but upon the word and not upon a suspicious and questionable not upon an uncertain or variable word but upon this that is fidelis sermo This is a faithfull saying It is true that this Apostle seemes to use this phrase of speech as an earnest asseveration and a band for divers truths in other places He saies sometimes This is a true saying and This is a faithfull saying when he does not meane that it is the word of God but only intends to induce a morall certitude when he would have good credit to be given to that which followes he uses to say so fidelis sermo it is a true it is a faithfull saying But in all those other places where he uses this phrase he speaks only of some particular duties or of some particular point of Religion but here he speaks of the whole body of Divinity of the whol Gospell That Christ is come to save Sinners and therefore more may be intended by this phrase here then in other places When hee speaks of that particular point The Resurrection he uses this phrase It is a true saying If we be dead with him we shall also live with him 2 Tim. 2.11 when he would invite men to godlinesse
kindled Num. 11.15 there and only their doth Moses attribute even to God himself the feminine sex and speaks to God in the original language as if he should have call'd him Deam Iratam an angry she God all that is good then either in the love of man or woman is in this love for he is expressed in both sexes man and woman and all that can be ill in the love of either sex is purged away for the man is no other man then Christ Jesus and the woman no other woman then wisdom her self even the uncreated wisdom of God himself Now all this is but one person the person that professes love who is the other who is the beloved of Christ is not so easily discern'd in the love between persons in this world and of this world we are often deceived with outward signs we often mis-call and mis-judg civil respects and mutual courtesies and a delight in one anothers conversation and such other indifferent things as only malignity and curiosity and self-guiltiness makes to be misinterpretable we often call these love but neither amongst our selves much less between Christ and our selves are these outward appearances alwaies signs of love This person then this beloved soul is not every one to whom Christ sends a loving message or writs too for his letters his Scriptures are directed to all not every one he wishes well to and swears that he does so for so he doth to all As I live saith the Lord I would not the death of a Sinner not every one that he sends jewels and presents to for they are often snares to corrupt as well as arguments of love not though he admit them to his table and supper for even there the Devil entred into Judas with a sop not though he receive them to a kiss for even with that familarity Judas betrayed him not though he betroth himself as he did to the Jews Osc 2.14 sponsabo te mihi in aeternum not though he make jointures in pacto salis in a covenant of salt an everlasting covenant not though he have communicated his name to them which is an act of marriage for to how many hath he said ego dixit Dii estis I have said you are Gods and yet they have been reprobates not all these outward things amount so far as to make us discern who is this beloved person for himself saies of the Israelites to whom he had made all these demonstrations of love yet after for their abominations devorc'd himself from them I have forsaken mine house Jer. 12.7 I have left mine own heritage I have given the dearly beloved of my soul into the hands of her enemies To conclude this person beloved of Christ is only that soul that loves Christ but that belongs to the third branch of this first part which is the mutual love The Affection but first having found the person we are to consider the affection it self the love of this text it is an observation of Origens that though these three words Amor Dilectio and Charitas love and affection and good will be all of one signification in the sctiptures yet saies he wheresoever there is danger of representing to the fancy a lascivious and carnal love the scripture forbears the word love and uses either affection or good will and where there is no such danger the scripture comes directly to this word love of which Origens examples are that when Isaac bent his affections upon Rebecca and Jacob upon Rachel in both places it is dilexit and not amavit Cant 5.8 and when it is said in the Cant. I charge you Daughters of Jerusalem to tell my well-beloved it is not to tel him that she was in love but to tell him quod vulneratae charitatis sum that I am wounded with an affection good will towards him but in this book of Pro. in all the passages between Christ and the beloved soul there is evermore a free use of this word Amor love because it is even in the first apprehension a pure a chast and an undefiled love Eloquia Dominis casta sayes David All the words of the Lord and all their words that love the Lord all discourses all that is spoken to or from the soul is all full of chast love and of the love of chastity Now though this love of Christ to our souls be too large to shut up or comprehend in any definition yet if we content our selves with the definition of the Schools Amare est velle alicui quod bonum est love is nothing but a desire that they whom we love should be happy we may easily discern the advantage and profit which we have by this love in the Text when he that wishes us this good by loving us is author of all good himself and may give us as much as pleases him without impairing his own infinite treasure He loves us as his ancient inheritance as the first amongst his creatures in the creation of the world which he created for us He loves us more as his purchase whom he hath bought with his blood for even man takes most pleasure in things of his own getting But he loves us most for our improvement when by his ploughing up of our hearts and the dew of his grace and the seed of his word we come to give greaâ—â—r cent in the fruit of sanctification than before And since he loves â—s thus and that in him this love is velle bonum a desire that his beloved should be happy what soul amongst us shall doubt that when God hath such an abundant and infinite treasure as the merit and passion of Christ Jesus sufficient to save millions of worlds and yet many millions in this world all the heathen excluded from any interest therein when God hath a kingdome so large as that nothing limits it and yet he hath banished many natural subjects thereof even those legions of Angels which were created in it and are fallen from it what soul amongst us shall doubt but that he that hath thus much and loves thus much will not deny her a portion in the blood of Christ or a room in the kingdome of heaven No soul can doubt it except it have been a witness to it self and be so still that it love not Christ Jesus for that 's a condition necessary And that is the third branch to which we are come now in our order that this love be mutuall I love them c. If any man loves not our Lord Jesus let him be accursed Mutual saies the Apostle Now the first part of this curse is upon the indisposition to love he that loves not at all is first accursed That stupid inconsideration which passes on drowsilie and negligently upon Gods creatures that sullen indifferency in ones disposition to love one thing no more than another not to value not to chuse not to prefer that stoniness that in humanity not to be
but die and we must die And Edamus bibamus cras moriemur Let us eat and drink and take our pleasure and make our profits for to morrow we shall die and so were cut off by the hand of God some even in their robberies in half-empty houses and in their drunkenness in voluptuous and riotous houses and in their lusts and wantonness in licentious houses and so took in infection and death like Judas's sop death dipt and soaked in sin Men whose lust carried them into the jaws of infection in lewd houses and seeking one sore perished with another men whose rapine and covetousness broke into houses and seeking the Wardrobes of others found their own winding-sheet in the infection of that house where they stole their own death men who sought no other way to divert sadness but strong drink in riotous houses and there drank up Davids cup of Malediction the cup of Condemned men of death in the infection of that place For these men that died in their sins that sinned in their dying that sought and hunted after death so sinfully we have little comfort of such men in the phrase of this Text They were dead for they are dead still As Moses said of the Egyptians I am afraid we may say of these men We shall see them no more for ever But God will give us the comfort of this phrase in the next House Domus nostra This next House is Domus nostra our Dwelling-House our Habitation our Family and there They were dead they were but by Gods goodness they are not If this savor of death have been the savor of life unto us if this heavy weight of Gods hand upon us have awakened us to a narrower survey and a better discharge of our duties towards all the parts of our Families we may say to our comforts and his glory There was a son dead in disobedience and murmuring there was a daughter dead in a dangerous easiness of conversation there was a servant dead in the practice of deceit and falsifying there was but the Lord hath breath'd a new life into us the Lord hath made even his tempest a refreshing and putrefaction a perfume unto us The same measure of wind that blows out a candle kindles a fire this correction that hath hardned some hath entendred and mollified us and howsoever there were dead sons and dead daughters and dead servants this holy sense of Gods Judgements shall not only preserve for the future that we shall admit no more such dead limbs into our Family but even give to them who were in these kindes formerly dead a new life a blessed resurrection from all their sinful habits by the power of his grace though reached to them with a bloody hand and in a bitter cup in this heavy calamity and as Christ said of himself they shall say in him I was dead but am alive and by that grace of God I am that I am The same comfort also shall we have in this phrase of the Text in our third House the third House is not Domus nostra Domus nos but Domus nos not the House we inhabit but the House we carry not that House which is our House but that House which is our selves There also They were dead they were but are not For beloved we told you before in our former survey of these several Houses That our first-born for still ye remember they were the first-born of Egypt that induce all this application Our first-born in this House in our selves is our Zeal not meerly and generally our Religion but our zeal to our Religion For Religion in general is natural to us the natural man hath naturally some sense of God and some inclination to worship that Power whom he conceives to be God and this Worship is Religion But then the first thing that this general pious affection produces in us is Zeal which is an exaltation of Religion Primus actus voluntatis est Amor Philosophers and Divines agree in that That the will of man cannot be idle and the first act that the will of man produces is Love for till it love something prefer and chuse something till it would have something it is not a Will neither can it turn upon any object before God So that this first and general and natural love of God is not begotten in my soul nor produced by my soul but created and infus'd with my soul and as my soul there is no soul that knows she is a soul without such a general sense of the love of God But to love God above all to love him with all my faculties this exaltation of this religious love of God is the first-born of Religion and this is Zeal Religion which is the Worship of that Power which I call God does but make me a man the natural man hath that Religion but that which makes me a Father and gives me an off-spring a first-born that 's Zeal By Religion I am an Adam but by Zeal I am an Abel produced out of that Adam Now if we consider times not long since past there was scarce one house scarce one of us in whom this first-born this Zeal was not dead Discretion is the ballast of our Ship that carries us steady but Zeal is the very Fraight the Cargason the Merchandise it self which enriches us in the land of the living and this was our case we were all come to esteem our Ballast more then our Fraight our Discretion more then our Zeal we had more care to please great men then God more consideration of an imaginary change of times then of unchangeable eternity it self And as in storms it falls out often that men cast their Wares and their Fraights over-board but never their Ballast so as soon as we thought we saw a storm in point of Religion we cast off our Zeal our Fraight and stuck to our Ballast our Discretion and thought it sufficient to sail on smoothly and steadily and calmly and discreetly in the world and with the time though not so directly to the right Haven So our first-born in this House in our selves our Zeal was dead It was there 's the comfortable word of our Text. But now now that God hath taken his fan into his hand and sifted his Church now that God hath put us into a straight and crooked Limbeck passed us through narrow and difficult trials and set us upon a hot fire and drawn us to a more precious substance and nature then before now that God hath given our Zeal a new concoction a new refining a new inanimation by this fire of tribulation let us embrace and nurse up this new resurrection of this Zeal which his own Spirit hath begot and produced in us and return to God with a whole and entire soul without dividing or scattering our affections upon other objects and in the sincerity of the true Religion without inclinations in our selves to induce and without inclinableness
wherewith this inestimable pureness is to be embraced love He that loveth pureness of heart Love in Divinity is such an attribute or such a notion as designs to us one person in the Trinity and that person who communicates and applies to us Amor. the other two persons that is The Holy Ghost So that as there is no power but with relation to the Father nor wisdom but with relation to the Son so there should be no love but in the Holy Ghost from whom comes this pureness of heart and consequently the love of it necessarily For the love of this pureness is part of this pureness it self and no man hath it except he love it All love which is placed upon lower things admits satiety but this love of this pureness always grows always proceeds It does not onely file off the rust of our hearts in purging us of old habits but proceeds to a daily polishing of the heart in an exact watchfulness and brings us to that brightness Augustine Ut ipse videas faciem in corde alii videant cor in facie That thou maist see thy face in thy heart and the world may see thy heart in thy face indeed that to both both heart and face may be all one Thou shalt be a Looking-glass to thy self and to others too Mulieres The highest degree of other love is the love of woman Which love when it is rightly placed upon one woman it is dignified by the Apostle with the highest comparison Ephes 5.25 Husbands love your wives as Christ loved his Church And God himself forbad not that this love should be great enough to change natural affection Gen. 2.24 Relinquet patrem for this a man shall leave his Father yea to change nature it self caro una two shall be one Accordingly David expresses himself so in commemoration of Jonathan 2 Sam. 1.26 Thy love to me was wonderful passing the love of women A love above that love is wonderful Now this love between man and woman doth so much confess a satiety as that if a woman think to hold a man long she provides her self some other capacity some other title then meerly as she is a woman Her wit and her conversation must continue this love and she must be a wife a helper else meerly as a woman this love must necessarily have intermissions And therefore St. Jerome notes a custom of his time Jerome perchance prophetically enough of our times too that to uphold an unlawful love and make it continue they used to call one another Friend and Sister and Cousen Ut etiam peccatis induant nomina caritatis that they might apparel ill affections in good names and those names of natural and civil love might carry on and continue a work which otherwise would sooner have withered In Parables and in Mythology and in the application of Fables this affection of love for the often change of subjects is described to have wings whereas the true nature of a good love such as the love of this Text is a constant union But our love of earthly things is not so good as to be volatilis apt to fly for it is always groveling upon the earth and earthly objects As in spiritual fornications the Idols are said to have ears and hear not and eyes and see not so in this idolatrous love of the Creature love hath wings and flies not it flies not upward it never ascends to the contemplation of the Creator in the Creature The Poets afford us but one Man that in his love flew so high as the Moon Endymion loved the Moon The sphear of our loves is sublunary upon things naturally inferior to our selves Let none of this be so mistaken as though women were thought improper for divine or for civil conversation For they have the same soul and of their good using the faculties of that soul the Ecclesiastick story and the Martyrologies give us abundant examples of great things done and suffered by women for the advancement of Gods glory But yet as when the woman was taken out of man God caused a heavy sleep to fall upon man Gen. 2.22 and he slept so doth the Devil cast a heavy sleep upon him too When the woman is so received into man again as that she possesses him fills him transports him I know the Fathers are frequent in comparing and paralleling Eve the Mother of Man and Mary the Mother of God But God forbid any should say That the Virgin Mary concurred to our good so as Eve did to our ruine It is said truly That as by one man sin entred and death Rom. 5.12 so by one man entred life It may be said That by one woman sin entred and death and that rather then by the man for 1 Tim. 2.14 Adam was not deceived but the woman being deceived was in the transgression But it cannot be said in that sense or that manner that by one woman innocence entred and life The Virgin Mary had not the same interest in our salvation as Eve had in our destruction nothing that she did entred into that treasure that ransom that redeemed us She more then any other woman and many other blessed women since have done many things for the advancing of the glory of God and imitation of others so that they are not unfit for spiritual conversation nor for the civil offices of friendship neither where both tentation at home and scandal abroad may truly be avoided I know St. Jerome in that case despised all scandal and all malicious mis-interpretations of his purpose therein rather then give over perswading the Lady Paula to come from Rome to him and live at Jerusalem But I know not so well that he did well in so doing A familiar and assiduous conversation with women will hardly be without tentation and scandal St. Jerome himself apprehended that scandal tenderly and expresses it passionately Sceleratum me putant omnibus peccatis obrutum The world takes me for a vicious man more sceleratum for a wicked a facinorous man for this and obrutum surrounded overflowed with all sins Versipellem lubricum mendacem satanae arte decipientem They take me to be a slippery fellow a turn-coat from my professed austerity a Lyar an Impostor a Deceiver yet though he discerned this scandal and this inconvenience in it he makes shift to ease himself in this Nihil aliud mihi objicitur nisi sexus meus They charge me with nothing but my sex that I am a man Et hoc nunquam objicitur nisi cum Hierosolymam Paula proficiscitur nor that neither but because this Lady follows me to Jerusalem He proceeds farther That till he came acquainted in Paulas house at Rome Omnium penè judicio summo sacerdotio dignus decernebar every man thought me fit to be Pope every man thought reverently of him till he used her house St. Jerome would fain have corrected their mis-interpretations and slackned the
Serpent was wiser then any beast It is so still Satan is wiser then any man in natural and in Civil knowledge 'T is true he is a Lyon too but he was a Serpent first and did us more harm as a Serpent then as a Lyon But now as Christ Jesus hath nail'd his hand-writing which he had against us to the Cross and thereby cancelled his evidence so in his descent to hell and subsequent acts of his glorification he hath burnt his Library annihilated his wisdom in giving us a wisdome above his craft he hath shin'd in our hearts by the knowledge of his Gospel Measure not thou therefore the growth and forwardness of thy Child by how soon he could speak or go how soon he could contract with a man or discourse with a woman but how soon he became sensible of that great contract which he had made with Almighty God in his Baptism how soon he was able to discharge those sureties which undertook for him then by receiving his confirmation in the Church how soon he became to discern the Lords Spirit in the preaching of his Word and to discern the Lords body in the Administration of the Sacrament A Christian Child must grow as Christ when be was a Child in wisdom and in stature Luc. 2. first in wisdom then in stature Many have been taller at sixteen then ever Christ was but not any so learned at sixty as he when he disputed at twelve He grew in favour says that Text with God and man first with God then with man Bring up your children in the knowledge and love of God and good and great men will know and love them too It is a good definition of ill love that St. Chrysost gives that it is Animae vacantis passio a passion of an empty soul of an idle mind For fill a man with business and he hath no room for such love It will fit the love of God too so far as that that love must be in anima vocante at first when the soul is empty disencumbred from other studies disengaged in other affections then to take in the knowledge and the love of God for Amari nisi nota possunt says St. August truely however we may slumber our selves with an opinion of loving God certainly we do not we cannot love him till we know him and therefore hear and read and meditate and confer and use all means whereby thou mayst increase in knowledge If ye know these things happy are ye if ye do them says Christ you are not happy till you do them that 's true but ye can never do them till ye know them Zeal furthers our salvation but it must be Secundum scientiam Zeal according to knowledge Works further our salvation but not works done in our sleep stupidly casually nor erroniously but upon such grounds as fall within our knowledge to be good Faith most of all furthers and advances our salvation but a man cannot believe that which he does not know Conscience includes science it is knowledge and more but it is that first It is as we express it in the School Syllogismus practicus I have a good Conscience in having done well but I did that upon a former knowledge that that ought to be done God hath shined in our hearts to give us the light of knowledge that was the first and then of the knowledge of the glory of God that is our second term in this first acceptation of the Word The light of the knowledge of the glory of this world Gloria Dei is a good and a great peece of learning To know that all the glory of man is as the flower of grass that even the glory 1 Pet. 1.24 and all the glory of man of all mankind is but a flower and but as a flower somewhat less then the Proto-type then the Original then the flower it self and all this but as the flower of grass neither no very beautiful flower to the eye no very fragrant flower to the smell To know that for the glory of Moab Auferetur Esai 16.24 it shall be contemned consumed and for the glory of Jacob it self Attenuabitur It shall be extenuated 17. â—4 that the glory of Gods enemies shall be brought to nothing and the glory of his servants shall be brought low in this word To know how near nothing how meer nothing all the glory of this world is is a good a great degree of learning It is a Book of an old Edition to put you upon the consideration what great and glorious men have lost their glory in this world Give me leave to present to you a new Book a new consideration not how others have lost but consider onely how you have got that glory which you have in this world consider advisedly and confess ingeniously whether you have not known many men more industrious then ever you were and yet never attained to the glory of your Wealth Many wiser then ever you were and yet never attained to your place in the Government of State and valianter then ever you were that never came to have your command in the Wars Consider then how poor a thing the glory of this world is not onely as it may be so lost as many have lost it but as it may be so got as you have got it Seneca Nullum indifferens gloriosum says that Moral man In that which is so obvious as that any man may compass it truly this can be no glory But this is not fully the knowledge of the glory of this Text though this Moral knowledge of the glory of this world conduce to the knowledge of this place which is the glory of God yet not of the Majestical and inaccessible glory of the Essence or Attributes of God of inscrutable points of Divinity for scrutator Majestatis opprimetur a gloria Prov. 25.27 as St. Hiero and all those three Rabbins whose Commentaries we have upon that Book read that place He that searches too far into the secrets of God shall be dazled confounded by that glory But here Gloria Dei is indeed Gloria Deo the glory of God is the glorifying of God it is as St. Ambro. expresses it Notitia cum laude the glory of God is the taking knowledge that all that comes comes from God and then the glorifying of God for whatsoever comes And this is a heavenly art a divine knowledge that if God send a pestilence amongst us we Come not to say it was a great fruit year and therefore there must follow a plague in reason That if God swallow up an invincible Navy we come to say There was a storm and there must follow a scattering in reason That if God discover a Mine we come not to say there was a false Brother that writ a Letter and there must follow a discovery in reason but remember still that though in Davids Psalms there be Psalms of Prayer and Psalms of Praise