the love of them both uniting them and him all in one indistinct essence distinguished into three distinct persons now the true reason why God is called charity is because he is goodnesse it self which is charity communicative and diffusive of it self 9. But this next shews clearly why St. John calls God Charity because he appeared so to be by sending his onely begotten Son into the world that we may live by him alluding to the like in his Gospel chap. 3. v. 19. who by Adam were all dead And this love he shewed us as an example for us to give our selves to him by again 10. For in this that is to say in our re-dilection or retaliation of love for love consisteth charity which can never be in us to God but reciprocal between God and us though in us to others it may be not mutual and de facto in very deed in God to us it was so when he loved us before we loved him for it was impossible we should have loved him before he loved us and therefore we are inabled to re-love him because his previous love to us inkindled our subsequent love to him Whence the Apostle sayes our charity doth not so much consist in that we love God as in that God loves us and makes us thereby able to re-love him because he sent his Son a propitiation for our sins St. Augustine sayes briefly and excellently well upon this place tract 9. God loved the impious to make them pious the unjust to make them just the sick to make them whole and why may not we adde he loved them that hated him to make them love him for sending his Son a Sacrifice for his utter enemies O how contrary is this to the course of the world which is to revenge our selves on those that love us not O how truly is it said of God Esay 55.8 9. My wayes are not like your wayes but exalted from them as high as heaven from earth yet S. Paul shews us we may follow God marching above us as high as heaven is from earth when Rom. 9. v. 2 he desired to be Anathema accursed to save the Jewes his persecutours and consequently his utter enemies 11. If is here a causal not a doubting or conditional particle as who should say because God hath thus loved us we must therefore love one another In like manner And was taken causally when Christ said to his disciples as in his Gospel Joh. 13. v. 14. I have washed your feet being your Lord and Master And you must wash one anothers feet that is to say because you must c. Hence learn to humble your selves to your fellow servants since I your Lord your God have humbled my self to you And we may note the deep art of this phrase in St. John who rather sayes admiring If God hath thus loved us then because God hath thus loved us c. to shew it doth not follow we can render equally to God we can love him as well as he can love us So it is not said therefore love him again but rather if God hath loved us and we must love one another as who should say since we cannot retaliate love for love to God let us at least love one another let us for his sake love our neighbours as our selves since he dyed equally for them as for us for as S. Matthew tells us Chap. 25. v. 40. what you did to the least of my brethren you did to me And indeed since God cannot personally want any thing that we are able to give him he hath afforded us this means to relieve him as wanting when we relieve the necessities of our neighbours So the sense of this verse is strong and even inforcing us to love one another Since God so unlike to us so much above us in perfection hath stooped so low as to love us how much more ought we that are all one like another to love each other since like naturally runs to like and naturally loves what is like unto it 12. This verse corroborates the explications of the former as saying though God be in himself Invisible yet if we love our neighbour God is by his Divine and indivisible vertue of charity united to us and made as it were one in and with us whereby our charity is rendered perfect nay even the Invisible God becomes as it were visible both in us by the visible charity we shew to others and in our neighbour whom we love as the visible image of the invisible Deity But we shall do well to see upon this occasion how these words are safely expounded God no man ever saw For which purpose turn to the exposition upon 2 Cor. 12.4 on Septuagesima Sunday declaring what S. Paul saw in his rapture but for present let us take it with the common sense of Expositours that no pure man ever in this world or in heaven can with corporal eyes see God his essence or divine nature though Cornelius à Lapide presumes to say Christ being both God and Man did see his own divinity whence neither Moyses nor St. Paul did thus see him and that sight the Blessed have of him in heaven is more by way of grace then of nature and this indeed more with the soules understanding then with the bodies eyes To conclude this verse a thing is then perfect when it consists intirely of all its parts and charity we know to be tripartite consisting of our love to God which alone is not perfect unlesse we love our neighbour also as we do our selves for these are both integral and essential parts of perfect charity And while we have charity thus perfected then though we see not God yet he both regards and abides in us by reason of this divine vertue of charity uniting God to all and all to God again Besides we perfect even the charity we love God with all when we extend it to our neighbour too since we cannot love one another for Gods sake but we must love God more then we did before Lastly when the text sayes his charity we may understand it as if truly the charity of God to us were perfected by our loving each other since while we do so God abideth in us and his charity is thereby perfected not so as to make it more in it self but to make it more in us and to appear also more to others which is a kind of perfection too and in particular charity is perfected by loving our enemies which being a love none but God hath taught us God in this hath appeared more perfect to us then in any thing else he ever did because he became a propitiation even for us that were all his enemies before his charity perfected in us made us his friends and him our Saviour and so finally gave him an opportunity who was in himself all perfection to receive in our esteems at least an addition to his innate perfection if not a new perfection by our
to do as it commands as holy Church by reading it commends The Gospel Luk. 6. v. 36. c. 36 Be ye therefore merciful as also your Father is merciful 37 Judge not and you shall not be judged Condemn not and you shall not be condemned Forgive and you shall be forgiven 38 Give and there shall be given to you good measure and pressed down and shaken together and running over shall they give into your bosome For with the same measure that you do mete it shall be measured to you again 39 And he said to them a similitude also Can the blind lead the blind doth not both fall into the ditch 40 The disciple is not above his master but every one shall be perfect if he be as his master 41 And why seest thou the mote in thy brothers eye but the beam that is in thine own eye thou considerest not 42 Or how canst thou say to thy Brother Brother let me cast out the moat out of thine eye thy self not seeing the beam in thine own eye Hypocrite cast first the beam out of thine own eye and then shalt thou see clearly to take forth the moat out of thy brothers eye The Explication 36. WE have seen how perfect charity was inculcated by St. John in this dayes Epistle now St. Luke begins his Gospel in a stile suitable thereunto when he recommends the love of our enemies under the notion of mercy And indeed when he bids us be merciful to one another as our heavenly Father is merciful what else can he point out unto us then the dilection of our enemies since God the Father his first mercy was shewn to none else but those that were his utter enemies mankind for whose redemption yet he sent his sacred Son a sacrifice and a propitiation for the whole masse of humane nature to shew the height of his perfection in this his act of mercy which was indeed so great that hence it is his mercy is said to have surpassed all his other works Psal 44.9 And that we do not mistake in expounding mercy here for love of our enemies we may avouch St. Matthew Chap. 5.43 who speaking to the same sense as St. Luke doth here though not in the same words brings in our Saviour saying You have heard that it is said thou shalt love thy neighbour and shalt hate thine enemie v. 44. But I say unto you Love your enemies do good to them that hate you and pray for your persecutours and those that calumniate you and v. 48. he concludes this subject thus Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect as who should say St. Lukes mercy here recommended is the dilection of our enemies and who so loves them is not onely merciful as God is mercifull but by that means is perfect also as God is perfect in such sense as the Expositours interpret St. Matthewes perfection and S. Lukes mercy which are here all one because love or mercy to our enemies is indeed the very height of perfection in us and so it is the greatest that ever did to us appear to be in God if yet any of his attributes can be one greater then another When therefore we are bid be mercifull or perfect as God is we are to understand it thus that Christians are to proceed further in perfection then all other people who though they received the precept of loving their enemies in the very law of Nature as we read Exod. 23.4 5. if thou meet thine enemies Oxe or Asse astray bring it home yet were so blind as not to practise indeed not to see it as appeared when the Scribes and Doctours of the Law delivered a Tradition quite opposite to this teaching as our Saviour sayes above Hate your enemies and for this reason to undeceive them and to shew the world their errour that had antiquated the law of nature in this particular God himself makes it a signal mark of his perfection and recommends it to us as the height of perfection in us above which he requires no more at our hands and for which he likens if not equalls us unto himself in perfection I say likens us because that is the true sense of this Text bidding us love our enemies perfectly and not slightly but with all our hearts as God loveth us who dyed for our sakes that were all his enemies and this perfection therefore is divine not humane in us because we may bear a kind of civill respect of love to our enemies and yet not love them perfectly as God loveth us whereby we onely attain to this divine perfection of mercy and love which likens us to God himself And though by the first 't is true we become Gods children in nature by the last we become his children in grace and so of regulated nature make our nature sayntified too which gives it the finishing and life-colour of perfection or similitude to God though when we are greatest Saints here our perfection is but initiated or begun since here we can at most but curb but tame concupiscence whereas in heaven it shall be extirpated quite and clean and then we shall be perfectly perfect as God is while our here beginnings shall be there finished by the burnish of Glory polishing the works of Grace wrought in our unpolisht natures 37. How excellently well doth this follow since we are alwayes apt to fall upon judging and condemning our enemies Yet it is not Judiciary but rash Judgment that is here forbidden since the former is the main vertue that supporteth government over all the world but the latter is a vice as much destroying order as it were to see the delinquent leap from the bar to the bench and in stead of standing to receive his own sentence from the mouth of Justice pronounce a peremptory sentence on his Judge for so shall all those be to us at the latter day whom we by our rash Judgements here condemn of any fault wherein they are not guilty Now the reason is because Judgment is an act of Jurisdiction not onely declaring but punishing of crimes and therefore restrained to some Magistrates onely not allowed to any that are meer subjects such as we all are to Almighty God and consequently none of us can lawfully sit as Judge over the actions of our neigbours no not the Priest himself out of his Confessionary or Tribunal Seat where the Penitent must be his own accuser too or else cannot be judged by the Priest The like is of condemning as of Judgement which seem to differ onely as the Judges declaration of the crime doth from the condemnation of the Criminal by the prolation of the sentence against him and assignation of him over to the punishment of the Law answerable to the Fact for which he is condemned But why it is said Judge not and you shall not be judged Condemn not and you shall not be condemned will not easily be understood for by this meanes no delinquent
be reall and not verball onely to be operative not idle or lazy for here the tongue is opposed to truth as dissimulation to sincerity and the word to the work as empty air to a purse full of money or as froth is to beer or wine To conclude hence we are taught further that we must not onely be effectually charitable but also we are bound to be affectionately so for it little avails to give alms unlesse we also love the poor whom we relieve and therefore love them because we relieve Christ in them and unlesse we give thus we sell our selves for popular applause by giving away our substance to purchase the empty air the shadows of vain commends and so lose a divine blessing as to the children of God to get a morall one as to be esteemed humane fathers of the world The Application 1. HItherto it hath appeared how exactly holy Church recommends unto us the practise of charity and truely this dayes Epistle confirms us in the same practise while it runnes wholly upon the subject of love so high that it seems to exceed even the last sundayes act of charity commanding then to love our enemies because now it exhorts us to do more then love them when v. 16. it invites to die for them also if need be which yet a true love of enemies involves as our Saviour did for us to shew his love unto us 2. And least we should pretend to love and not do it really see how the master of this Art S. John Evangelist in the last verse of this Epistle bids us take heed we do not feign the part we ought to act in earnest for he tells us 't is not enough to say we love unlesse we do it too no he obligeth us to love in deed to love in truth lest we seem to mock Almighty God by giving out we mean to act the best part of his sacred sonne his loving unto death those he pretended once to love according to that of the Evangelist Christ when he loved his people he loved them to his end that is he died for love of them 3. Hence we may safely say those are unworthy of the gift of love who have not in their hearts and eyes the holy fear of God as truely those can never have who dare to mock his sacred sonne by their dissembling love that is not reall No Christians no we are not yet in heaven where we cannot erre here we must carry fear before our eyes lest losing it we lose our labours too for without this holy fear we cannot work out our salvation nor can we hope to please his heavenly majesty unlesse we fear his power who is as well our Governour as our God and as we must love his Deity so we must fear his Government Whence it is holy Church most properly prayes to day as above The Gospel Luke 14. v. 16. c. 16. But he said to him A certain man made a great supper and called many 17. And he sent his servant at the houre of supper to say to the invited That they should come because now all things are ready 18. And they began all at once to make excuse The first said to him I have bought a farm and I must needâ— go forth and see it I pray thee hold me excused 19. And another said I have bought five yoke of Oxen and I go to prove them I pray thee hold me excused 20. And another said I have married a wife and therefore I cannot come 21. And the servant returning told these things unto his Lord. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant Go forth quickly into the streets and lanes of the city and the poor and feeble and blind and lame bring in hither 22. And the servant said Lord it is done as thou didst command and yet there is place 23. And the Lord said to the servant Go forth into the wayes and hedges and compell them to enter that my house may be filled 24. But I say to you that none of those men that were called shall taste of my supper The Explication 16. THis parable is almost the same that was mentioned Mat. 22.2 only there in a different way time and place as under the name of a dinner and here it is brought in under the name of a supper And there are divers senses made upon this supper Some call it a parable of the Incarnation life and death of Christ and thus S. Matthew seems to take it calling it a dinner as to the Church militant and a supper to the Church triumphant Others apply this parable unto the Blessed Sacrament and those make God the Father master of this feast his sacred Sonne the feast it self made of his blessed body and bloud and in favour of this opinion the holy Church at this time reads this Gospel as alluding to the flowing feast of Corpus Christi But yet for all that the literall sense of this Gospel alludes to the last supper of heavenly glory for that is the true supper which ends the laborious day time and begins eternall rest that never shall have end so though many may be cast out of doors after the dinner of the Church militant yet none can be cast out after they once enter to this triumphant supper And for that cause the most genuine sense of this place alludes as S. Gregory saith hom 36. to the society of eternall sweetnesse and glory Where note that great signifies here all the degrees of greatnesse such a supper as none could be greater either for the rarity of the dainties and banquets thereof or for the splendour and duration of it whereof S. Paul 1. Cor. 2. v. 9. sayes Eye hath not seen nor hath ear heard neither hath it ascended into the heart of man what things God hath prepared for them that love him And to this supper he called many by many are here understood no lesse then even all the Jews who were the true Church and people of God and were called by the Patriarchs and Prophets by John the Baptist by Christ himself while he lived amongst them 17. But by his servants whom he sent are properly meant the Apostles left by him to convert these Jews as well as other nations And by the bower of supper here mentioned is understood the resurrection of our Saviour for then and not till then were all things ready for this great supper of glory because then he brought with him from his grave a multitude of blessed souls who therefore were in Paradise as he promised the thief to be that very day he died because they were in his impassible presence that is to say when he was pleased to allow his body the benefit of all the gifts due to glorious bodies so though they were not in the finall place of eternall rest untill they did ascend with him to heaven yet they were set at the table of glory with him and were carried
of the holy Altar and the touch of all their Omnipotent Powers in the Sacrament of Confession See now Beloved how aptly we doe pray to Day to have the Right-hand of the Divine Majesty extended over our infirmity when the Preachers tell us by the touch of the Deity we are cured of all Diseases On the fourth Sunday after the EPIPHANY The Antiphon MAT. 8. ver 25. O Lord save us we perish Command and cause O God tranquilitie Vers Let my prayer c. Resp Even as Incense c. The Prayer O God who knowest us to be set in so great dangers that we cannot through humane frailty subsist grant unto us health of minde and body that what we suffer for our Sins thou helping us we may overcome The Illustration THe last Sundayes Prayer exhibited the horrour of sin unto us under the notion of diseases This of dangers which we finde so great and wherein we are so openly set that humane frailty considered wee are not able to subsist And therefore against these extrinsecall dangers we beg of God this day as an intrinsecall Protectrice health at least of body and of mind that since in punishment for our sins wee must suffer to be thus exposed to dangers we may be able Gods holy grace assisting us to overcome them This may suffice to render unto every soul the sense of this delicious prayer what remains will be to shew how apposite it is to the Epistle and Gospel of the day which Two are generally allowed to have a pious report to one another and consequently if the prayer be set to the tune of either it must agree with both by the undeniable rule of Schools When any two things are one and the same with a third they must both be so with one another but here the Prayer agrees cleerly enough with the Gospel therefore it cannot be discordant to the Epistle and indeed what more pat to the Gospel relating th Apostles dangers in a tempest at Sea than this prayer altogether deprecating dangers so the difficulty will be to make a harmony between the Epistle and it wherein there is no sillable of danger openly expressed and yet upon reflection we shall find regard enough to danger therein for first the grand Pellitorie the most potent repeller of all dangers meets us in the Van of this Epistle Love whereof S. Paul sayes It is the chaser of all fears out of doors and consequently must needs bee free from all dangers which ever inforce fears upon us timorous Leverets of corrupted nature but further see a prohibition palpable in our eyes in the next Verse of this Epistle Thou shalt not commit Adultery and prohibitions are ever opposites to dangers indeed preventers of them so 't is a sign the Epistle hath regard enough to those dangers which the Prayer deprecates but the last verse comes home to this sense telling us The love of our neighbour worketh no evill that is no danger for evils are the greatest of all other dangers therefore love is the best buckler against dangers in regard it is the fulnesse of the Law which is never made but to prevent the dangers we incurre by the prevarication thereof For to the Iust there is no Law put 1 Tim. 1.9 And thus wee see from first to last a totall exhausting of the Epistle and Gospel by the admirable Piety of this dayes Prayer The Epistle ROM 13. vers 8. c. 8. OWe no man any thing but that you love one another For he that loveth his neighbour hath fulfilled the Law 9. For Thou shalt not commit advoutry Thou shalt not kill Thou shalt not steal Thou shalt not bear false witness Thou shalt not covet and if there be any other Commandment it is comprized in this word Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self 10. The Love of thy neighbour worketh no evill Love therefore is the fulness of the Law The Explication 8. SOme misunderstand this place as if it did argue obligation to pay the debt of Love but that all other debts were with all speed to be payd whereas in very truth the sence of this place is quite otherwayes and imports as much as if the Apostle had said what other debts soever you are able to discharge yet never esteem your selfe quit from the debt of Love which you must alwayes owe unto your neighbour though you clear all other accounts debts or scores with him because when this debt in part is payd it inflames the reckoning for the part behind just as fire being blâ—wn or made use of doth more and more enkindle whereas if rak't up in the ashes it soon dies So the more we use charity the more we enkindle and increase it therefore the Apostle saies well that we can never be out of this debt to our neighbour since if we pay him the Love we owe unto him for this day to morrow we shall find our debt of Love inflamed and and grown greater by the very agitation of that divine fire which is the mutuall Love of one another To which purpose S. Augustine Epist 62. ad Coelestin hath an excellent saying SEMPER DEBEO CHARITATEM QUAE SOLA c. Love I must alwaies owe which of all debts though payd yet still keeps a man in bonds And againe CHARITATEM LIBENS REDDO c. I do willingly pay Love and as willingly take it in payment it is a thing which when received I count not my self fully satisfied nor when I repay it discharged Hence we may see how absurdly the Anabaptists and Trinitarians Heresy exploded by this Text all debts of Justice and onely required the debt of Love to stand due for if Charity oblige to doe ultroneous and voluntary good deeds how much more to do Justice but so perfect a payment of all debts is commanded by this place as we see the Apostle saies Who loveth his neighbour fulfilleth the Law because we cannot love him but we must love God for himself and man for God's sake as we love our selves 9. And to confute further the Heresy above mentioned see how this whole verse insists upon Acts of Justice to our neighbour rooted in the commanded Love to them aforesayd Whence some conceive the Apostle alludes onely to the law of the Second Table because here is no mention of any one of the three precepts belonging to the First Table importing our duty to God but S. Austin contends that the love of man being but subordinate to the love of God 1 John 4. v. 7. imports and includes both grounded on those words of S. John Children love one another repeated over and over againe to his friends and being asked why he did so he replied because it is the Precept of our Lord and if this alone be done it is sufficient For our love to God and man is like the lines drawn from the Center to their Circumference be the Center God the Circle man the Lines our affections see then how they
flow between these two extreames the more they approach to the Circle the wider they are but as they recede from the Circle the closer they go till at last they are all concentred in one point Almighty God and so made one heart and one soule amongst our selves hence we see that all the motion our affections have from man to God growes still more and more vigorous and more perfect So S. Austine concludes DILIGE ET FAC QUOD VIS. Love and do what thou please Tract 7. in Epist 1. S. John whereas the Apostle sayes if there be any other precept meaning of the Second Table for of the three belonging to the First Table and that of honouring our parents the first precept of the Second Table he had spoken before at large under the title of Superiour powers Princes and others ending that subject in these words To whom honour honour for that command is in these words Honour thy Father and Mother under which title are included Elders Betters Superiours especially Princes spoken of at large from the first verse of this Chapter to the end of the seventh ending as above to whom honour honour I say whereas the Apostle saies if there be any other Precept it is included in this word Love your neighbour as your selfe we are to note the Precept of love to our neighhour is bipartite as divided into two branches the first whereof is affirmative grounded on these words of S. Matth. Chap. 6. What you will have others doe to you doe you the same to them The second negative in that of Tobit Chap. 4. v. 16. What you hate to have another doe to you see you never do that to another not that this Precept commands an equality but onely a similitude of love to your neighbour with that you beare to your self that is to say as all you desire is honest good delectable to your selfe so desire the like to your neighbour not in equall proportion but in exact similitude distaste him not hurt him not rob him not as you desire he should not distaste hurt nor rob you so the allusion is to similitude not to equality 10. The reason of this is because the object of our love being good the effect thereof must be good also for as none can love evill for evills sake so none can love good for evills sake because true love both makes good the end and medium of its operation as who should say doe I finally ayme at good then good must be the medium leading thereunto so it being good to love our neighbour the operation of this good love cannot be a bad thing Therefore the Apostle concludes The fullnesse of the Law is Love that is to say if we love we fulfill the Law or as Tolet saies The scope or end of the Law is Love or as S. Augustine because love forceth a man to fulfill the Law hence we see Faith alone sufficeth not to satisfie the Law without Acts of Love how absurd is it then to say as hereticks do the Commandements are impossible to be kept when by onely love they are all fulfilled not that so perfect a love can here be hoped for as shall exempt us from veniall sinnes against the Law since such is onely reserved for the next world and performed in the state of Bliss but that we may forbeare mortall sin even in this life if we but love our neighbour as our selves and God appretiatively at least above all things that is to say not so well to love any thing but still to resolve we will rather leave to love it than for its sake cease to love God and surely thus all good Christians doe appretiatively Love God above all things The Application 1. WEll is Love said to be the fullnesse of the Law because the Law commands us nothing else but that we love So to love it to prevent the danger of the Law which is never broken but under paine of penalty Wherefore as last Sunday bids us fly sin as a disease this bids us fly it as a danger 2. Well is the danger of the Law expressed in these negative Commandements for prohibition is the best prevention of a mischief Hence we say forewarn'd and arm'd against all danger whatsoever as new we are especialyl against the dangerous temptations unto what is here prohibited 3. Well doth S. Paul conclude as he began exhorting us to love because love workes no evill now amongst evills danger is not the least and onely not to love is hugely dangerous since we are taught 1 John 3. vers 14. and 1 Cor. 16. v. 21. that he who loveth not remaines in death in the death of that sin he commits against the Law for lack of loving God above all things and his neighbour as himself Say now the Payer above and see how suitable it is to this Epistle The Gospel MAT. 8. v. 23. c. 23. ANd when he entered into the boate his disciples followed him 24. And loe a great tempest arose in the sea so that the boate was covered with waves but he slept 25. And they came to him and raised him saying Lord save us we perish 26. And he saith to them why are ye fearfull O ye of little faith Then rising up he commanded the windes and the sea and there ensued a great calme 27. Moreover the men marvelled saying what an one is this for the windes and the sea obey him The Explication 23. IT was his usuall custome to preach in a boate a little off from the shoare but here it seemes he took boat to avoid the multitude of people that followed him and so both to flie popular applause and to give occasion to this following miracle he took boat and put to Sea with his Disciples 24. Probably our Saviour himself raised this Tempest purposely First to shew he was Lord of all the world both sea and land the figure of which passage S. John in his Apoc. Chap. 10. v. 2. recounts telling how an Angell set his right foot upon the Sea and thereby commanded it at pleasure Secondly to inure his Disciples to tribulation as well at sea as land Thirdly to confirm his Disciples in their Faith of him and some others besides in the company and these may be all true reall causes of the tempest but figuratively wee may believe this Tempest to have been raised to shew the future persecution of the Church of Christ and of a devout soul in temptation and how as by his permission it comes so by his power it shall passe away even when it seemes most severe and when Almighty God seems as it were asleep and not to regard it till by the joynt prayer of the Church he be wakened and made propitious For Seneca himself sayes A mans life without temptation seems like a dead Sea so called for the stillness thereof as if there were no life in the water of it and indeed as in a storm at sea the best man aboard is
For as the Act of separated souls is necessarily unalterable like those of Angels so the last Act they had when they were united to their bodies remains eternally and is not unproperly said to be the same Act continued for all eternity and therefore free for ever because at first freely produced when the soul was in state of a viatour and out of that issued into the better state of an impatriated spirit nay though Purgatory intervene yet that remora alters not the nature or freedome of the Act because soules there retain their love to God wherewith they dyed however they suffer for former infirmities of their life past The Application 1. WHat may be to our special and present use in this Gospel is to observe that Holy Church culls it out as the most proper to the now flowing Feast of Pentecost though spoken by our Saviour to his Disciples before his Passion as appears ver 29. above but with intention they should then make memory and use thereof when they had received the holy Ghost as consequently we must do at the celebrating this Festivity The main scope of this Gospel is exhorting us to believe and love and telling us the sign of true love is to keep the word of God and that the effect of this love will be to draw down into our soules the Holy Trinity Father Son and holy Ghost as delighting to live in the hearts of those who love the Son of God and shew their love by keeping his holy word 2. But here is a special stile observable in this Gospel very profitable to be reflected on which is that our Saviour seems here only to relate or speak as v. 25. 26. and to leave it to the Holy Ghost to suggest and teach the true meaning of what he said as if it were a speech too profound for his Disciples to dive into without the help of the holy Ghost If then our B. Lord the wisdome of his eternal Father and consequently the best spokes-man in the world would not what ere he could speak so plain to his Apostles themselves as to be understood by them before the coming of the holy Ghost to explicate his meaning how absurdly shall it be done in those that are ignorant Lay-men to dare to understand or interpret holy writ 3. Hence we must infer that we are bound in the first place to believe the holy Ghost to be coequal God with the Father and the Son who sent him since none but God can be of Gods counsel and tell men the meaning of Gods holy word Again we must infer that it is the love of God who now must teach â—s the meaning of Gods holy word and that they are our Wills our Hearts which now must be instructed more then our understandings for these the wisdome of God our Saviour taught by the sight of Faith those the love of God the holy Ghost now teacheth by the fire of charity so that however Faith Rectifies yet it is charity must saintifie the soul how ever Christ Redeemed us yet he was pleased to send the holy Ghost to save us by his sayntifying grace and alas what had it availed us once to have been by God the Father Created once to have been by God the Son Redeemed if we were not more then once by God the holy Ghost sayntified as oft indeed as by sin we are made uncapable of the benefits of our Creation or Redemption Come therefore Holy Ghost come teaching come inamouring come comforting come sayntifying come saving Spirit into the open hearts thou hast of Christians ready to receive thee ready to be inkindled with the flames of thy most holy Love And Praying to day as above most fitly to the sense of this Holy Text. On Trinity Sunday THis Sunday is both the Octave of Pentecost and also the First Sunday after it therefore this week we have the Epistles Gospels and Prayers of two Sundayes for our entertainment and these both if I mistake not the most delightfull of any in the whole year The Antiphon Matth. 28. v. 19. THee God the Father unbegotten thee onely begotten Son thee Holy Ghost Comforter thee holy and undivided Trinity with all our heart and mouth we Confesse we Praise thee we Blesse thee to thee be Glory world without end Vers Blessed art thou O Lord in the firmament of heaven Resp Both praise-worthy and glorious for ever The Prayer ALmighty Everlasting God who hast granted to thy servants in confession of the true Faith to acknowledge the glory of the Eternal Trinity and in the power of Majesty to adore unity we beseech thee heartily that in the firmnesse of the same Faith we may ever be defended from all adversity The Illustration NOw the mysteries of our Redemption are compleat by the contribution of all the Three divine persons of the Blessed Trinity thereunto as of the Father sending his only Son to dye for us of the Son coming and actually dying for our sins and of the holy Ghost descending and sanctifying us with his holy grace to make us sin no more it is most necessary we should close up the said mysteries with a peculiar feast of the same Blessed Trinity and so put a glorious crown upon the work of our Redemption while we begin to work out our salvation from the first root thereof which is our Faith in the most Blessed and undivided Trinity a mystery so unheard of before Christ had taught it to the world that even to this day it is the hardest thing which can be told to men and the thing which the blessed Angels that behold it do not comprehend how the Divine Nature can be personally Trine which neverthelesse is essentially but One. In admiration whereof St. Paul in this dayes Epistle breaks out into a Triple Trinity of his expressing this Triunity saying O depth of the Riches of the wisdome and of the knowledge of God! Loe the first Who ever knew the sense of our Lord or who was ever of his Counsel or who gave first unto him and it shall be restored again Loe the second For of God by God and in God are all things Loe the last of his Triple expressions alluding all of them to the Blessed Trinity as by the Expositours of this Epistle we shall find and consequently must acknowledge it to be included in the Prayer above As also the Gospel is expressing how our B. Lord sent his mission of Apostles with commission to Baptize and teach all the world the mystery of this Blessed Trinity Father Son and Holy Ghost So we have this day the best of harmonies in the mystical musick of this book while we find all three parts of holy Churches service to day so neatly woven into one the Epistle Gospel and Prayer all singing forth the praises of the most Blessed and undivided Trinity Father Son and holy Ghost three Divine Persons and one onely God Hitherto the mysteries of our Redemption were all upon
never served but with a commemoration made thereof upon Trinity Sunday which it alwayes falls upon and whereunto with great reason it gives place in the publick Solemnity of holy Churches service neverthelesse we are not forbidden in our private devotions to make use of the comfort which this prayer adjusted to the Epistle and Gospel proper thereunto will afford us since the Gospel and the Prayer are both read to day by way of Commemoration of this first Sunday as above and since the whole Masse of this Sunday is said at the pleasure of the Priest no double feasts occurring between this and Thursday next which is the Feast of Corpus Christi and in regard there is a world of sweet devotion in the exposition both of this Epistle and Gospel I hope it will encourage all good Christians to read both what is written upon the Blessed Trinity and this Sunday too before next Sunday come since it is but this week of all the year that they will have so much to read and which if I mistake not will seem but little neither 't is all so sweet But because the task of reading will be double I shall abridge the glosse of the Prayer and suffice my self to shew the constant connexion between this and the other parts of holy Churches Service to day by summing up the Epistle and Gospel as both teaching perfect charity while they extend it to the love of our enemies and as being both abstracted in this prayer which after an humble acknowledgment of our own weaknesse confessing all our strength is from Almighty God without whom our mortall infirmity is of no ability petitions the assistance of his grace that in doing his commands we may please him hoth in will and work And truly all his commands are included in these two precepts of charity so much insisted on both in the Epistle and Gospel namely that of loving God above all things and our neighbours as our selves which then we shall do perfectly when we love our enemies because this love will make us indeed have no enemies at all and so be as little troubled at what injury other men can do us as we should be at our selves if by chance we were causes of our own mischiefs for though we might be disturbed a little thereat yet never so much as to loose our charity or to hate our selves nor consequently can we hate our enemies if we once arrive at the perfection of that commandment which bids us love our neighbours as our selves Which that we may do this is very aptly made the Churches Prayer to day begging Gods assisting grace that in doing his commands we may please him both in work and will in work by executing his commands compleatly and perfectly in will by doing them readily and cheerfully And it is worthy our remark that on the same Trinity Sunday where we have the deepest mystery of Faith recommended by holy Church we should have also the highest act of Charity inculcated unto us that so we might see the firmnesse of our Faith to day petitioned consisted in the operation of our Love according to the same Faith and that Christian perfection is never attained till we arrive unto perfect Charity which is the nerve that links together the members of the Churches mystical body and unites them all unto their head Christ Jesus as the sinewes of natural bodies knit together the members thereof So still we see our design of connexion between all the parts of Churches Service made good The Epistle 1 Joh. 4.8 c. 8 He that loveth not knoweth not God for God is Charity 9 In this hath the charity of God appeared in us because God hath sent his only-begotten Son into the world that we may live by him 10 In this is charity not as though we have loved him but because he hath loved us and sent his Son a propitiation for our sins 11 My dearest if God hath so loved us we also ought to love one another 12 God no man hath seen at any time If we love one another God abideth in us and his charity in us is perfected 13 In this we know that we abide in him and he in us because he of his Spirit hath given us 14 And we have seen and do testifie that the Father hath sent his Son the Saviour of the world 15 Whosoever shall confesse that Jesus is the Son of God God abideth in him and he in God 16 And we have known and have believed the charity which God hath in us God is charity and he that abideth in charity abideth in God and God in him 17 In this is charity perfected with us that we may have confidence in the day of Judgment because as he is we also are in the world 18 Fear is not in charity but perfect charity casteth out fear because fear hath painfulnesse And he that feareth is not perfect in charity 19 Let us therefore love God because God first hath loved us 20 If any man shall say that I love God and hateth his brother he is a lyer For he that loveth not his brother whom he seeth God whom he seeth not how can he love 21 And this Commandment we have from God that he which loveth God loveth also his Brother The Explication 8. St. John in this Epistle ver 7. had said every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God now he gives the reason thereof in this eighth verse proving the same à contrario as School-men say by an argument from the contrary assertion he that loveth not knoweth not God because God is charity or love not but that we may speculatively know God without loving him but practically or experimentally we cannot know him unlesse we actually love him For example all men know speculatively that honey is sweet but they know it practically only when they taste it And though the same argument holds in all Gods attributes as in his power in his wisdome c. since he is omnipotency and omniscience yet St. John argues thus onely upon his charity because the subject he now undertakes is the commends of Charity Again between lovers love is the main thing they delight in and much more is it so betwixt God and us for he doth not onely love us and so is our lover but is himself love nay if we say he is the love by which we love him too perhaps we shall not say amisse and S. John being wholly inamoured with the love of God breaks into the recommends of charity as the vertue himself was most excellent in and wherein he would have us most to excell So for the ground-work of what this Epistle is to dilate upon we see it begins thus God is charity both Essential and Notional Essential as it is the nature of the Deity Notional as it is distinguishing the persons and so signifies personally the holy Ghost who by love proceeding from the Father and the Son is called
fearing Judgment we fall into the errour of heretiâ—ks who presume they are certain of their salvation By fear therefore is here meant despair such as dejected consciences use to have whereas none such enters into those that have perfect charity Secondly he alludes to that fear which in Eccles 5 v. 5. we read of even for remitted sins be not without fear which yet a perfect lover needs not fear but this is said to imperfect lovers of God Thirdly he means servile fear such as makes us serve God meerly for fear of hell not filial fear for that is compatible with nay essential unto perfect love as we read Eccles 1.28 who is without fear namely filial cannot be justified because who ever truly loves is ever afraid to offend his beloved Fourthly this fear is worldly or humane such as men have to loose their estates or friends affections when to preserve these temporal trifles they hazard the losse of eternal blessings Fifthly this fear is scruple whereas perfect charity abandons all scruples and proceeds freely and frankly in her Actions according to that of St. Paul Rom. 8.15 You have not received the spirit of servitude again in fear but the spirit of adoption of sons wherein we cry Abba Father Lastly Charity banisheth all fear of punishment although it allowes fear of the fault that may deserve punishment for the soules in Purgatory are not troubled at their pains so much as they are to have deserved them by their faults which they are even willing to expiate so when he concludes this verse saying fear hath pain he means fear in these senses as above such as is said of war that the fear of war is worse then war it self and all fear which brings pain is opposite to charity that brings ease and content along with it not solicitude nor anxiety which shuts up mens hearts whereas perfect charity opens and dilates them 19. 20. 21. These three last verses are as it were recapitulatory and winding up the clew or threed of this amorous discourse which lead us into the delightful maze of love and hath brought us out again according as we heard in the exposition of the sixteenth verse adding here it is not only a counsel but a command from God that we love one another that we love our neighbour lest men should pretend it were enough to love God onely whereas indeed all the scope of St. John in this Epistle hath been to draw us to a love of one another by shewing how God hath loved us all without respect of persons and taught us to love even our enemies lest we should excuse our selves from that complement of perfect dilection which is a friendly loving of our enemies to shew we have no enemies at all but our own sins the onely things if we may so call them that we are or can be allowed not to love and indeed may perfectly hate them nay the more we do hate them the more we shall love our neighbours as finding we have no enemies of any but of our selves Note the Evangelist tells us we are lyers to say we love God if we love not our Brother because love is a passion leading us by the eye to the embracements of the objects that we see before our eyes if therefore a man looking upon God Almighties picture which himself hath made as he confesseth like himself and do not love that picture which he sees how can he love the prototype or original thereof God himself whom he sees not And truly the Logick of this discourse is convincing because love is first rooted in the object seen if therefore we do not love that object of God which we do see how can we without a blush be so impudent so irrational as to say we love the object which we do not see at all as well a blind man might tell us he sees and loves darknesse which is nothing but a privation of sight and light The Application 1. HAving now given for respect to the B. Trinity the religious preference this day to our first Act of Faith when according to the order of holy Churches services charity is held forth unto us as the chief vertue we are to exercise without intermission from hence forward untill Advent Sunday see now with how strong a flame of love the beloved disciple of our Lord opens his loving heart to day whilest his whole Epistle to us from the very first verse to the last is nothing else but a continual eruption of the burning charity within his loving breast O how necessary is it then for us to strike out of our flinty hearts some sparks of love at least to day who knowes but in time with frequent lesser acts we may at last produce the greatest that of love unto our enemies see how the eleventh verse above doth animate to this bidding us love each other as Christ hath loved us Alas what was there in us but enmity to him when he began to love us were we not all at that time children of wrath Search then beloved out to day the man or men you least affect nay those if any be that bear you hatred and so are brothers of wrath shew but a smiling countenance to them in testimony that you look upon them as Jesus lookt on you when least you loved him when most you hated him indeed then shall you best apply the present Text to your emolument 2. Do not say you hate dissimulation that you cannot smile on him you love not or on him that hateth you lest you seem base and abject minded lest you make your enemy insult the more to see you fawn upon him Fie fie beloved these are but the subtle arts of him that is our common enemy by these devices he deludes us into hell and robs us of our best inheritance this is to do as holy David sayes To search excuses for our sins 3. Say rather with St. Paul I can do all things in him that strengthens me say though this be against thy own corrupted nature yet it is most sutable to his who took upon him thy infirmity that he might help thee with his fortitude Hope then in heavens helping hand hope in the Holy Ghost hope in his holy Grace he came but lately with a magazin of Love to leave thee store enough to love thine enemies if thou canst not at the first both smile and love do thee but that and hope he will do this who can do more the holy Ghost I mean shew by the deed thou hast a wish at least to do it willingly that he may by his holy grace give thee a will to execute this hard command of his to love thine enemies as he hath loved thee frankly freely willingly Let no man say this is a good but not a proper counsel now When is it more proper Then when we pray as above that we may do it Then we best apply the Text to us when we apply our selves
us in the B. Sacrament as we must fear him under his severer name of our Judge if we now fail of such equall love unto him O happy Christians who at the same time when they are bid to fear Christ are taught to love Jesus and consequently their love and fear must be as equal as Christ Jesus is to Jesus Christ But the reason why we beg this equality of fear and love is because Christ doth never leave destitute of his government those whom he instructs in the solidity of his love that is Christ our Judge will sweetly rule us if he find we do solidly love him and we were last Sunday taught the solidity of that love did consist in loving God above all things and not only our neighbour but also our enemies as our selves which lesson was then given as a preparative to this Feast now flowing in the Octaves thereof and alluded unto in this prayer teaching us in brief what the Epistle and Gospel tell us more at large The first that who loves not ought to stand in fear of that death which he abides in by not loving Nay more so confident must our Love be that we must rather not fear to dye for our neighbour then we must dare not to love him and to this we are incited by the example of Christ whose love made him dye for us that were his enemies Again we are told this love must be real and true not verbal onely and that it cannot be so if we relieve not our neighbour in his necessity when we are able so to do This argues indeed that we are not left destitute by our Governour Christ Jesus who instructs us in this solidity of love from one end of the Epistle to the other And since it is the general consent of all Expositours that the Supper mentioned in this dayes Gospel is a figure of the Blessed Sacrament sure that is a mystery as full of solid love as is expressed in the Prayer above teaching us never to go unto this Supper without equal fear and love and so the Prayer stands excellently well adapted both to the Sunday to the Feast to the Epistle and to the Gospel of the day For if we can by saying this prayer fervently obtain the equal fear and love which it petitioneth assuredly in recompense thereof Almighty God will so govern us as we shall not for humane ends excuse our selves from our duties to his Divine Majesty but shall come so religiously to the Supper of the Sacrament here as we need not fear being shut out at the last Supper of eternall rest in glory which again the Expositours will have the Sacramentall Supper to be a signe of And thus as well every sense as every letter of this Gospel is included in this most admirable prayer of holy Church The Epistle 1 Joh. 3.13 c. 13 Marvell not Brethren if the world hate you 14 We know that we are translated from death to life because we love the Brethren He that loveth not abideth in death 15 Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer and you know that no murderer hath life everlasting abiding in himself 16 In this we have known the charity of God because he hath yielded his life for us and we ought to yield our lives for the Brethren 17 He that shall have the substance of the world and shall see his Brother hath need and shall shut his bowels from him how doth the charity of God abide in him 18 My little children let us not love in word nor in tongue but in deed and truth The Explication 13. THe Evangelist had in the precedent verses told us the difference between the children of God and those of the devil and how there was mortal enmity between the one and the other instancing in Cain killing his Brother Abel for no other cause then envy to him seeing the sacrifice of Abel was acceptable to God and his was not in regard Abel was a child of God and Cain a child of the devil and so no marvel if his offerings were not acceptable to God Almighty But the Apostle proceeds further and bids Christians not wonder if the world hate them because of their good deeds since for that reason Cain representing the malignancy of the world hated Abel who was a figure of a good Christian offering grateful sacrifice to God besides the Apostle here alludes to what he had said in his Gospel Chap. 15.18 If the world hate you know it hated me before it hated you and therefore here he concludes they should rather expect then wonder at it if they found the world did hate them since no Son can hope for love from him who hates his Father and the foregoing Verses of this Epistle were all upon our happy filiation with God But we may observe the causes remarkable why the wicked for those are understood by the world so called from the greater part thereof that are wicked indeed do hate those who are good The first is the dissimilitude betwixt vice and vertue which begets a hatred as similitude begets love and affection for we see all worldlings puffed up with pride and ambition contrariwise all good Christians are meek and humble The second is Envy for wicked men seeing they cannot arrive at purity and sanctity envy those who do attain thereunto The third because the good men do further reprehend the vices of the wicked as the holy Ghost doth inspire them in imitation of his example whose coming shall argue the world of sin as we heard John 15.8 The fourth because the world sees good men flye the company of the wicked The last because their affections are contrary one doating upon the world altogether the other wholly inamoured on Almighty God so they must needs be as opposite as two Contraries are as heat to cold as dry to moist and labour to overcome each other but with this difference that the good man labours the conversion of the bad the bad man indeavours the perversion of the good 14. The Apostle doth not here say we know by any divine Faith or certain knowledge as hereticks will needs interpret this place but onely by moral certitude we know that if we love one another for Gods sake we must needs love God much more and as by sin against him we dye so by love of him we detest sin and are by that meanes translated from the death of sin to the life of grace in this world and to the life of glory in the next So that all the certitude we have of this is the testimony of our own consciences telling us we are not guilty of any defect either in our love to God or to our neighbour Yet because St. Paul 1 Cor. 4. v. 4. no sooner said he was not guilty then he added yet in this I am not justified the Catholick Church teacheth our assurance of our being in the state of grace is onely moral not divine And three signes
there are of Justifying grace inhabiting within us The first if we perfectly hate sin The second if we mortifie the flesh The third if we have zeal to our neighbours good such as St. Paul had saying Who is sick and I am not distempered with him also 2 Cor. 11. insomuch that here St. John presumes to say he that loves not remaines in death that is if when he is bound to shew his love either to God or his neighbour he doth it not he remaines in death in the guilt at least of that past sin which he committed by omitting to do his duty when he was bound to do it out of which guilt since there is no going but by the help of grace therefore he is said to remain in death untill by an Act of love he revives from the death of that guilt which he remained in by not loving when he was bound to do it Nay the death of our body is but a shadow of death to that of our soules so the Apostle needs not scruple to say men living in sin remain in death because they are truly dead to grace and glory as long as they continue in their sin be they never so vigorouslâ— alive in body 15. He is a murderer of his own soul because as was said above he that loves not remains in death Where note not to love is esteemed to be as bad as to hate and consequently who hates his neighbour actually kills himself and in effect his neighbour too though not in Act not unlike him that coveting his neighours wife is an Adulterer in will though not in fact Yet others will have this hatred to be onely murder in disposition not reduced into act but who so loves danger shall perish in it and therefore to dally in such dispositions is to indanger at least perishing in them Let no man wonder the Apostle should say he that murdereth hath not life everlasting in him when he that is in this world freest from all sinne hath not here everlasting life abiding in him whence it follows by life everlasting is here understood that life of grace whereunto everlasting life and glory is due whereof none can have so much as a hope so long as he remains in hatred or murder as above 16. Not content to instance in lesse then the highest perfection the Apostle here tells us what is perfect charity perfect dilection to lay down our lives for our neighbours souls as Christ did his for ours But not so as we can loose our spirituall life to gain the like life to our neighbour no this is against the rule of charity which ever regards it self but reserving our spirituall we may loose our temporall lives to gain our neighbours souls And not onely may but are here exhorted thereunto if we say commanded the text will bear it in case we see our neighbours soul in danger unlesse we venture our lives And in some cases men may and are bound to hazzard at least their own to save anothers life as first a souldier may rather choose to die in the place then yield to his enemy the advantage of that ground his commander trusted him to defend the like is of a citizen in defense of the whole city for the part is not of equall regard with the whole so Samson did as we reade Judg. 16. who oppressed himself with the ruine of a house thereby to oppresse the Philistines also and to save the people of God from their captivity and though they are not many examples of obligation yet we have many of election shewing divers have died to save the life of their friend divers have rendered themselves captive to redeem others from bondage divers have lost their lives to preserve the chastity of others as esteeming the life of grace in their neighbour more pretious then that of nature in themselves 17. Having shewed in the precedent verse that we are bound in some cases to poure out our blouds for our neighbours no marvell if here it be concluded he cannot have charity who seeing his neighbour in necessity shuts up the bowels of his mercy from him and will not allow him any relief And yet because this is so usuall a thing therefore to confound those who have such stony hearts the Text compells them to the necessity of doing the lesser upon all occasions by shewing before they were obliged to a much greater act of charity upon some particular emergencies as who should say though it be hard to lay down your life for another yet it must be easie to lay down your purse or some equivalent relief if you will merit the name of a Christian and give proof by your acts of mercy that the authour of mercy is within you and that your self do live spiritually by relieving your neighbour corporally Whence most Divines hold a man is bound in conscience to give alms more or lesse and that not onely in extream but even in common reall necessities as of meat drink clothing housing or the like grounded in that of Eccles chap. 4. v. 1. Child defraud not the poor man of that Alms which is due unto him from thee for indeed the portion of the poor is in the rich mans hands and God gives riches to the end rich men may have the merit of poverty by giving their goods away and poor men the benefit of riches by what they receive out of the surplus of others And because it is too long for my present purpose to inlarge upon this point I referre the reader to the fourth book of Salvianus dedicated to the Catholick Church wherein he shews how great a sinne it is for Church-men to inrich their kindred with the Churches treasure and for rich persons of the world to starve Christ in the persons of the poor while they feast the devil in the excesses of the rich by leaving their estates to such as will not make at least pious uses thereof I do heartily therefore recommend this Authour to all those rich persons who find flesh and bloud prevail more in them then pietie to the poor for if I be not much mistaken they will thank me to have done this charity to them who thought perhaps they did not stand in need thereof but their minds may be other after reading the solid pietie of this learned Authour Salvianus upon this particular subject 18. Lo here the word is opposed to the work the tongue to truth as if we did want charity that onely gave good words to the poor without alms or as if they wanted truth who fed the poor with words of comfort onely when they were able truely to satisfie their hunger and would not Not but that he is truely charitable who instructing feeds the soul at least when he cannot feed his body but that to do both is the duty of a Christian when both may be done and where both are wanting So the meaning of this text is that our charity ought to
more then to undermine him and bring him within the compasse of high treason when I say we see this to be the drift of the Gospel on the Jews part and that our Saviour seeing the naughtiness of their thoughts asks them plainly why they play the hypocrites with him then I presume no man that can tell twenty will marvell to see this dayes Prayer beg fidelity and sincerity of heart in us Christians at least when we see the Pharisaick Jews are convinced of so grosse an infidelity and flattery even when they pretend forsooth a tenderness of conscience and when we hear our Saviour recommend the same fidelity which we petition for to day in commanding them faithfully to render that to Caesar which is Caesars and that to God which is Gods namely their pecuniary tribute to Caesar their religious sincerity to God and that especially when they pretend it as here the Pharisees did though they least intended it Let me therefore beloved beg it as a boon that you all say this Prayer to day with such sincerity of heart as may render it and you gratefull in God Almighties sight and hearing for then shall we pray most consonantly to what the Church doth preach to day and then shall we be sure such our petitions will be granted effectually which are made unto God faithfully and this assurance we have both from the Epistle Gospel and Prayer of this present Sunday A great content I confesse after the fear of so great a losse as we were like to be at for making good the grand design of our work which as yet comes fairly home when we might fear we had been farthest off The Epistle Phil. 1. v. 6. c. 6 We trust in God our Lord Jesus that he which hath begun in you a good work will perfect it unto the day of Christ Jesus 7 As it is reason for me this to think for you all for that I have you in heart and in my bands and in the defence and the confirmation of the Gospel all you to be partakers of my joy 8 For God is my witness how I covet you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ. 9 And this I pray that your charity may more and more abound in knowledge and in all understanding 10 That you may approve the better things that you may be sincere and without offence unto the day of Christ. 11 Replenished with the fruit of justice by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God The Explication 6. THe Apostle here speaks in the plural Number because he writes this Epistle as well in his companions name as his own in Timothies though afterwards himself being onely in Prison and not Timothy he speaks to them in his own person but directs his Epistle as from both to shew them that absent or present they are both of one mind The work he confides to have continued is their conversion By the day of Christ he means the day of Judgement which is that of his second coming the first being his birth-day 7. It is reason indeed for him to conside thus because as their conversion was by means of God his special grace so he presumes the same goodnesse of God will be continued which was begun in them and because he hopes their cooperation will not be wanting to persevere in the faith of Christ as it was not first to accept thereof Hence his charity makes him hope this of them with reason and his faith makes him presume the other of God towards them Yet not so that hence the Reformers can infer as they do out of this place that it is impossible for one who is once called by God and in grace ever to lose the same grace or vocation The Apostles words import no such thing onely a religious hope or confidence he hath they will indeed persevere as they have begun to love serve and honour Almighty God as his following words testifie in this Verse because he professeth here that he prayes continually for their perseverance which argues it is not a thing to be hoped but by endeavours and pains on our parts Nay Saint Paul so plainly speaks to this sense that he seems to say least their own endeavours towards this perseverance should not suffice he hath made it even his hearts desire besides and applies his personal sufferings to this end that God moved by his prayer and persecution may supply what is wanting in them towards perseverance by their own sole endeavours And it is Saint Augustines and the Churches doctrine indeed that justifying grace alone sufficeth not toward perseverance without new favours of more and more grace do inable us to persevere In the close of this verse the Apostle alludes to the hope he hath of Martyrdom for the defence of the faith of Christ against those who oppose it and the confirmation of it in those who have imbraced it And this he means by his joy whereof he prayes they may be made partakers 8. And that he doth thus pray he calls God to witness and doth this with such earnestnesse as if he were not himself happy enough to be in the bowels of Jesus Christ which is in his bosome in Heaven unlesse he might find these Philippians there also or as if his love to them and zeal of their salvations were such that he desired Jesus Christ should have them equally in his breast or bowels of affection with himself Both these senses this text will bear very well as also that by these words Saint Paul professeth he loves them so tenderly that he cannot expresse it otherwise then by saying it is even with the affection of Jesus Christ himself following Christ's instruction Joh. 13.34 Love one another as I have loved you 9. Here he prayeth for the superadded grace which above was said to be necessary to perseverance which is for their increase of charity where that abounds there is wanting neither knowledge of what is the true doctrine of the Church of Christ nor what is the true sense and meaning thereof since by this abundant charity we see the ignorant Apostles were so illuminated that they could and did penetrate into the genuine sense of the deepest mysteries of Christian faith and religion 10. This alludes to the sense as above in the former Verse that by their increase in love and charity they might be able to distinguish between the Apostles Christian and Simon Magus his Judaical and others heretical doctrine as finding that of Christianity the more powerfull and efficacious to salvation It seems by these words the Apostle thinks the pretended charity of hereticks is not sincere love and affection to God and their Neighbour but hath a mixture of hypocrisie in it and makes use of the name of Christ to cover the doctrine of those who indeed are opposite to him by saying this or that is Christ his doctrine which indeed is not so but proves upon a strict examine the sense and doctrine of
because they were commanded absolutely by the Patriarchs and Prophets being themselves servants of God though masters of the people who were indeed Lords of all Gods graces and favours since no nation shared thereof beside the Jews 2. The Apostle follows his example and proves there is no difference between a Lord under the command of Tutors and Governours and a meer servant since this Lord or heir is not all the while of his Minority to rule and command but to obey his stewards and governours who are then the Fathers and shall after be their young Pupills servants too and this time in those dayes of the old Law lasted till the heir was twenty five yeers of age 3. The Apostle here applyes this argument to himself formerly of the Jewish Religon and consequently an infant or little one in the line of those that are Gods true servants namely Christians serving God onely under the Alphabet of a religious Law that is under the letter or Elements of the world which were the old Law all the rule men had to serve God by and then saith the Apostle we were like little ones young lords and masters by birth-right of our Judaism yet nothing different from servants since we had that Law but as an Usher to bring us up and deliver us over to another much better indeed a most perfect Law of Grace whereunto the old Law was a meer type or figure a meer Element or Alphabet of a true Law Note by the Elements of the world are here understood the letter of the law given to the men of the world in those at least who were the select thereof the Jewes for if the world were here taken for other than the men thereof the Elements of the naturall world were to bee understood earth aire water and fire but since by the world is meant the people thereof therefore Element here stands for the letter of the old ceremoniall and servile Law whence the Apostle here useth the word of serving very aptly for there are three servings in this word related unto The First that of heathens serving their Idols as their Gods The second that of the Jews serving God by their impure creatures ordered unto Gods service The last that of Christians serving God by pure creatures not by Idols nor by bloudie sacrifices but by such as in Sacraments are sanctifyed and so are more than Jewish Elements of sanctity as the Rhemists Annotations have at large expressed though true it is many by the elements here understand also the festivall and solemn dayes moneths and yeares which the Jews very superstitiously observed and made themselves indeed not onely servants thereof but even slaves unto them and this because in the tenth verse of this Chapter S. Paul mentions their formalities upon these dayes moneths times and yeares 4. By the fulnesse of time is here literally understood that time when Christ by the authority of his Father sending him for that purpose came to abrogate the servile law of the Jews and to deliver us a more filiall law of love liberty and grace for then was the time of the old law filled up when it was no longer to remain when we were no more to bee under the Ushers and Tutors of Religion but under Christ himself the true Lord and master of the whole and specially of the Christian world That the Son of God sent unto us is here said to be made of a woman wants not a deep sense namely to shew he was not begotten nor conceived of his fathers seed but was made and framed wholly out of the pure substance and blood of his blessed mother the Virgin Mary where we are to note the word woman in this place doth not signifie any commixture or corruption which doth accompany the losse of virginity when maids passe from their virginal purity to the impurer state of corrupted woman but woman here signifies directly the sex or female kinde of man and so in that sense is competent even to a virgin who is also of the female Sex again he was said to be made of a woman to declare the falsity of the Valentinian and Anabaptistick heresies teaching Christ to have been made of some aeriall and not of an earthly substance as if he had brought his body ready made in the heavens out of some aeriall combinations into the womb of the virgin and had not received his flesh from her whereas the true Christian doctrine teacheth he was flesh of her flesh and bone of her bones He is further said to be made under the Law not that by right he was subject thereunto even as man because his person was divine by the union of his two natures making but one onely sacred and divine person so called from his principal his divine nature but that indeed he was pleased to subject himself to the law though of right he were above it and thus he vouchsafed also to undergo voluntarily the law of circumcision rather to take it honourably away than to subject us to so dishonourable a slavery as that of the Old Law was 5. This Verse reports to the former and makes that to be the cause why Christ subjected himself to the Law of servitude namely because by his so doing he might redeem those who truly were under the servile Law and that by this Redemption we might all receive the Adoption of Sons and by a new filiation become the children of Grace nay even Heirs of God and Coheires of Christ who were formerly bastards and slaves of the Devil whence Saint Bernard sayes well upon this place Therefore God became Man that Man might become God And we must further note here that this our happy Adoption which is made by the means of Grace doth not onely give us right to the Inheritance of God but to a participation even of the Divine Nature it self according to S. Paul Rom. 8. ver 15. where it was said we became True Sons of God by the holy Ghost communicating himself unto us and so making us true Children of Christ God and Man if any doubt of this truth let him read what Cornelius à Lapide excellently proves to this purpose upon the place of Saint Paul his Epistle above cited and what will be said more to this purpose on the eighth Sunday after Pentecost in this Book We are lastly to note that not onely the just who are now under the Law of Grace but even those just who were under the Law of Moses were also the Adopted Sons of God however the Apostle calls them here Servants and not Sons First because though they were the true Sons of God yet they were not in the state of liberty competent unto such Children Secondly because they had not their right to this inheritance or fâ—liation by vertue of the Law under which they lived but by a speciall prerogative of Grace and Faith infused into them of Christ his being to come and so they were rather belonging to
being the Messias the Son of God and this Wedding most probably was that of S. Simon one of the twelve Apostles though some think it was S. Iohn Evangelists because S. Augustine speaking of him sayes Our Lord called John from the fluctuating time of marriage which yet may as well bee interpreted from his marriageable age for that indeed is the fluctuating time of man when he ebbs and flows in carnall desires according to emergencies of temptations more importune at that age than at any other time of his life and truly S. John seems to have been the favourite of Christ rather by reason of his singular love to chastity than for any thing else so it is likely he never thought of marriage whence it is more probably conjectured that this was S. Simons wedding who upon the miracle wrought thereat of turning water into wine left his wife by consent and became an Apostle if yet he might not afterwards bee called to the Apostolate though married as S. Peter was The place of this wedding is said to be in Cana of Galilee to shew it was not that other Cana of Sidonis which also was in Galilee within the Tribe of Aser whereas this was within the Tribe of Zebulon three daies journey onely from Nazareth lying in lower Galilee and the other in the higher out of which latter place it was that the daughter of the Chananaean came whom our Saviour afterwards dispossessed of the Devill pittifully tormenting her Matth. 15. v. 22. And it stands with reason this should be the wedding of Simon Nephew to the mother of Iesus by marriage at least for he was the son of Cleophas a Chananaean brother to Ioseph the husband of the B. Virgin Mary since the text seems to say Iesus his mother was the principall guest and that for her sake Iesus was also called with his Disciples 2. As Cousin-Germane to the Bride-groom S. Simon but with speciall providence of God First to honour his kinsman with his presence next to countenance the Nuptials of poor people for these were no other that had but little wine to make good cheer withall since upon the fail thereof Christ miraculously made more as here the Gospel tels us Lastly that by this miracle he might confirm his Apostles in the belief of his being the Messias which wrought so far upon them as it is credible St. Simon left his Spouse to follow Christ though by the presence of Christ at his wedding the Sacrament of Matrimonie was highly honoured and made a sacred mysterie of the union between Christ and his Church to beat down the Tatian and Marcion Heresies holding it unlawfull to marry and by this example we find it not unfitting for Priests to be at Weddings modestly celebrated to put them in minde the bond of wedlock is a sacred thing and ought to be knit up with souls affecting God even in that state above the world As for the Disciples here present they were onely four at most namely Peter Andrew and Phillip not as yet purposely called to the Apostolate though in the Chapter above S. Iohn sayes Christ bade Peter follow him because this was onely a preparation to his after calling since from this Wedding Peter went to his trade again and was from thence purposely called by Christ upon his mount with the rest of the Apostles numbred up in the 6. of S. Luke v. 14 15 16 though it is likely Nathaniel a great devote of Christ was also here because Philip had with much zeal brought him to Christ as we said Ioh. 1. v. 47. who commended him for a true Israelite in whom there was no guile nor fraud and the other Disciple not named who went with Andrew to Christ from Iohn the Baptist 3. This Verse shewes Simon was a poor man since he could not provide wine enough for his wedding whereupon the B. Virgin his Aunt moved with the touch of humane honour to see her kinsmans Nuptials disparaged for want of Wine and knowing her sons power that as God he could doe all things as also believing his Time of shewing himself to be God was if not come yet at hand presumed to anticipate the time out of this humane respect by desiring him to prove his Deity upon this occasion of working his first miracle at her request to honour her husbands kindred and yet see how modestly she makes this motion by onely telling him openly They have no Wine as knowing he understood the rest of her meaning without more words 4 These are not words of rebuke to the B. Virgin as some conceive but rather of recalling her memory and bidding her reflect whither it be a thing for flesh and bloud to command or indeed expect that God for humane ends should shew his power of working a miracle sooner than of his own pleasure he had decreed as it seems this was sooner since Christ tells his Mother his hour was not yet come of declaring himself to be the Messias but in regard he found there was a piety mixed with this humane respect of the Virgin he dispenseth with the concomitant infirmty of humane nature as long as there is a motive directly calling upon his Deity which is that of piety whence some will have it that Christ onely expected till all the Wine was quite gone to the end the miracle might be more manifest when the after plenty of Wine should flow from the totall privation thereof And in this sense neither was the B. Virgin much preproperous nor Christ at all anteverting or preventing the time prefixed for the manifesting of his Deity since immediately after this last cup of Wine was gone and then the B. Virgin knowing happily by his all-reavealing aspect what would follow 5. She sayes to the Servants Doe whatseover he shall say to you without dispute for his word is sufficient to effect what ere he pleaseth to have done 6. The reason why speciall mention is made here of water-pots of Stone is because what was to be filled out of them might be manifestly known to be nothing but water since Wine was never put into such great vessels especially at such poor peoples feasts as these so finding those water-pots to run Wine the miracle might appear the greater and more manifest Though besides this the Text tells us here of the custome among the Jewes to have great Jarrs of water alwayes ready in case they had touched any unclean meat at the Table to wash their hands immediately and for this respect it is said These pots were according to the purification of the Jewes and these were vessels of such bulke as probably six of them containing each four gallons or thereabouts held as much as a large vessell of Wine to shew the miracle the more undoubted that such a quantity should be afforded them so suddenly who had not one drop left before 7. It seems therefore though these great vessels of water were brought in they were not filled but
Corn wants no inward cause of prospering but is outwardly hindred by being choaked or kept down with over growing bryars and thorns that hinder the rising thereof Now though our Saviour best knew how to explicate his own meaning and hath declared that by these Thornes he means Riches which prick the Soules of those that possesse them in their rising up to acts of love towards God and so force them down again to the love of earthly things yet Saint Gregory found this exposition so beyond his expectation of this Text that he admiring sayes If he had thus expounded it the world would not have believed him to attinge the true sense thereof as being possessed what they handle and hugge dayly sn their armes their wealth and riches cannot prick nor gall them yet now our Saviour sayes they doe so we must believe it and truly so it is for what more ordinary than to see the high and mighty men of the world mighty I mean in wealth abject and lowe in their growth upwards to Heaven to see them still pricking down their rising Souls and under the title of riches we may here understand honours pleasures pastimes of the vain licentious and idle people of the world whose own conscience tells them they doe ill in following such courses as yet they will not leave 8. 15. By the good ground is here understood a tender Conscience which makes a Religion of each action and so hearing Gods Word first labours to understand it then puts in execution the Doctrine thereof and thereby brings forth fruits of all sorts of Vertue and good Works nay brings forth indeed an hundred fold or more according to the proportion and measure of grace received from Almighty God but we are here to observe the reduplicative speech of a good and a very good heart that is to say a heart illuminated with Faith but working by Charity or as Albertus will have it Good by being free from Sin very good by being in all things conformabled to the Will of God or as Saint Bonaventure sayes Good by verity or rectitude in the understanding very good by rectitude in the affections or as Saint Augustine will have it Good by loving our neighbour as our selves very good by loving God above all things saying and they properly retaine the Word as the Blessed Virgin did and bring forth the fruit thereof in patience that is by bearing with unperturbed minds the perturbations of this world And though S. Luke do not mention the quantities of fruits produced yet S. Matthew chap. 13 ver 23. speaks of the Thirty fold the sixty fold and the hundred fold fruit of those who hear the Word of God as they ought to doe meaning it makes some good men others better others best of all according to the respective measures of dispositions in their Souls answerable to their severall proportions of Grace and co-operations therewith or if we will have these three-fold quantities all in one Soul then say we bring forth Thirty when we think well Sixty when we speak well an hundred fold when we do well or when we begin to be vertuous profit therein and at last attain to the perfection of vertue till we arrive at the top of all Vertues or when we observe not onely Gods Commandements but his Counsells too and at last his transcendent charity being ready to die his Martyrs in requitall of his dying our Saviour and so make degrees and steps in our own hearts up to Heaven as the Royall Prophet sayes he did Psal 83. Making Ascents in his heart by rising up towards Heaven from Vertue to Vertue The Application 1. THis Parable shewes how many wayes we may labour in vain by sowing the grounds we have plowed up and be still in danger lest the Devill reap what we have sown namely that beside the way When for company sake we goe to Church not for Devotion But to see and to be seen rather than to hear the VVord of God 2. That on the Rock when out of fear of Parents anger or the punishments of Magistrates we are forced to Church and hearing there the VVord must needs with open hearts receive it in being of it self sâ— forceable as to peirce the very stones but then because we hear it by compulsion every difficulty nature frames against Grace shuts up our hearts again and will not let it in to take good rooting there 3. That on the thorny ground when rich men hear the VVord of God for custome or for curiosity to recreate and not to edifie to censure rather than conâ—orm to what they hear No marvell thâ—n if to prevent the danger of our going to the Devills Chappell even in the Church of God Our holy Mother pray to Day as above for the best seeds-mans protection against so many dangers hoping by so praying to render our hearts such as the Gospell closeth with to Day On QUINQUAGESIMA Sunday The Antiphon LUKE 18. ver 40. ANd Jesus staying commanded the blinde man to be brought unto him what wilt thou that I do to thee O Lord that I may see and Jesus said to him Look up thy Faith hath made thee safe and he forthwith did see and followed magnifying God Vers Let my prayer c. Resp Even as Incense c. The Prayer O Lord we beseech thee hear clemently our Prayers and being loosened from the fetters of our sins keep us from all adversity The Illustration NO marvell if many of my friends told me here the common place of this Prayer would not easily be made particularly proper to our design of a sweet connexion between that prayer and the other parts of this days service for see in the Epistle charity in the Gospel faith insisted on whereas in the Prayer neither of these vertues are mentioned What remedy truly none but by applying mystically to our selves that now which was actually done when our Saviour lived and by remembring that as the propagation of faith amongst Infidels was the chief work of Christ so the conservation and augmentation of charity is the chief thing Christians have to doe for as Faith was the Basis or foundation of the Church whilest it was a building so charity must bee the covering and top thereof now it is built What wonder then while the Gospel tells us how Christ confirmed in his Disciples by the miracle upon the blinde the faith of his Deity That the Epistle exhorts us who need not God be praised any confirmation of our faith to an augmentation of our charity by seeing it laid to day before us in such lively colours as S. Paul hath drawn it in so that whilest holy Church tells us what Christ then did towrds the Jews by introducing faith among them with miracles we that now need no miracles should doe towards him by acts of love to the divine goodness that is to say labour to shew our loves to him as he did to beget faith in them but what
to day mixeth the Lay mans duty with that of the Priest to shew us that what in an eminent degree Christ taught his Apostles and consequently their successors the Pastors of Gods Church who by office have care of soules in some sort at least the layty was to imitate namely that heroicall or rather that divine Act of Faith which is required to Martyrdom For albeit the Priest be bound to many duties which do not oblige Lay people yet there is no man or woman whatsoever that is not rigorously bound to lay down life it selfe the deerest thing they have rather then deny their faith in Jesus Christ 2. Againe however the Lay-man is not bound to that perfection of charity and Justice which the Priest ought to have nor to excell in many other vertues essentially proper to the Priest as zeale of soules especially yet this dayes Epistle tels us that every Christian whatsoever stands obliged thus far to imitate the perfection of Jesus Christ himselfe as to preserve the proper vertues of the Paschall Feast sincerity and verity which is as much as to say some degree of saintity as was declared in the exposition of the Epistle upon Easter day and consequently if all be bound to saintity none are priviledg'd to sinne but every one is to avoid it as is told us in the second verse of this Epistle none is priviledg'd to beguile or defraud his neighbour for that is contrary to the Paschall sincerity and verity which all the Lambs of Christ are obliged unto 3. To conclude as all Christians are rigorously bound to a profession of the Faith of Christ with hazard of their lives so this Epistle instructs them all in that particular duty of suffering for Justice in testimony of their Faith and for that purpose layes before their eyes in what manner they are to suffer just as Jesus did following his steps therein Not reviling those that revile them not straying away for fear but like believing Lambs to follow their Pastor the Bishop of their soules their Jesus and their God to whom they are converted by their faith in him for whom they are to dye if need be as he hath dy'd for them and by his humble death hath raised them to the hopes of an eternall life and of everlasting joyes therein Which ever living comfort they Petition for to day emboldened thereunto by a pious memory of our Saviours death and Passion since from his Sepulchre as was said before flow all the hopefull streames of our eternall happinesse for the head and spring of Faith is our Saviours Resurrection from his grave The Gospel John 10. v. 11 c. 11 I am the good Pastor The good Pastor giveth his life for his sheep 12 But the hireling and he that is not the Pastor whose own the sheep are not seeth the wolfe comming and leaveth the sheep and flyeth and the wolfe raveneth and disperseth the sheep 13 And the hireling flyeth because he is an hireling And he hath no care of the sheep 14 I am the good Pastor and I know mine and mine know me 15 As the Father knoweth me and I know the Father and I yeeld my life for the sheep 16 And other sheep I have which are not of this fold them also I must bring and they shall heare my voyce and there shall be made one fold and one Pastor The Explication 11. GOod Pastor is here taken for most excellent prime or indeed onely Pastor as from whom all others derive that name because his death is reall life to his sheep whereas the death of other Pastors is 〈◊〉 a due sacrifice for the dyer and an example for the liver to follow rather then to flye from faith so that Christs life was not onely given us as an example but as a satisfaction for our sinnes 12. By Hireling here mystically understand those Priests who serve their Flock more for love of their Fleece then of the Sheep more for base gain then for souls salvation as who should say this very Act renders a man no true Pastour though by his place he be so yet literally by hireling is understood those that are not really true Pastours but usurpe the places of them Namely Hereticks who neither have Orders nor Mission and yet live upon Tythes as if they were truly intituled thereto for to such the souls of men do not truly belong however they take an usurped charge over them and those men commonly in time of persecution flinch steal themselves away and leave their sheep the souls they pretended right over unto the tyranny of the devouring wolfe the persecutor of Gods holy Church Note the true Pastour is said also to flye when he is silent and doth not rebuke his erring Flock by the Wolfe is understood Heresie or the Devil the father thereof ravening and snatching this man to luxury t'other to gluttony a third to murther and so disperseth them from the Flock and Fold of orderly Sheep making them wander till they fall into the pit that cryes Vae soli wo to the lonely 13. St. Gregory says the Name shews the Nature and so gives the cause by giving the Name for to be a hireling is cause enough to flye from danger since it argues he loves his hire better then his cure his profit better then his Office nor is he truly said to have care of his Sheep but of himself and therefore by his flying from his sheep he shews he had indeed no care of them 14. See the mark of a good Shepherd is to know his sheep and to have his sheep know him he knows their vertues to incourage them to more he knows their Vices to dehort them from the same and they know his Love and Doctrine to follow both since as his Love leads them freely so his Doctrine leads them safely again as a Pastour leads his sheep to new Pastures so must the Priest feed them with new Exhortations as the Pastour keeps the Wolfe from his Sheep so must the Priest his Souls from the temptation of sin and the Devil as the Pastour cherisheth his Lambs more then ordinarily so must the Priest cherish his children with frequent Catechisms and his new converts even as children as the Pastour cures the Diseases of his Sheep so must the Priest the Infirmities of his Souls Lastly as the true Shepherd will fight to Death rather then be beaten from his Flock so must the Priest in persecution dye rather then flye from his Parish and in case of Plague the Pastour is rather to run the hazard of it then to leave the people unprovided of Priests and in this case particularly the Pastours are bound ex officio by office to stay when Regulars that onely help ex charitate out of charity as it were may flye in point of danger if they please and that without sin 15. See how he follows this mutual knowledge comparing it to that wherewith God the Father knows his Son and that
must make that to be which we beg he must gives us grace since we are all one in Faith to be all of one minde in the operations of that belief which works by charity that knows not thine and mine but gives all to God and takes onely from his Holy Hand what he pleaseth to give back again Next we pray that we may love what God commands which in this case was to the Apostles that they might love to leave our Blessed Lord for so God had commanded That they might desire what he promised which was the coming of the holy Ghost That amongst worldly varieties there they might fix their hearts where onely true joys are to be had O! what a taking off their mindes was this even from himself whose departure was one of the worldly varieties he would not have to trouble them but that they should upon the loss of the happiness they had in his society fix their hearts on a greater happiness who but the holy Ghost could make this good upon the joys of heaven which are true joys indeed and this also shews we are still sliding down the Channel of the Resurrection too in this Prayer as hath been said Blessed God! how good art thou to man who hast made him a happiness greater then the company of thy sacred Son whom yet we know is God and man too the reason was his Humanity here did shade his Divinity but in heaven his Deity shall outshine his Humanity and so make us love man in him for Gods sake whereas here the Apostles did love God but for Christs sake as he was man and therefore this Prayer as it speaks the Apostles parts bids them fix their hearts upon true joys indeed those onely that are in heaven being greater then any they could have in the society of Jesus Christ himself so long as he was upon earth not that his Glory was less here then in heaven but that man is less capable to see God on earth then he shall be to see and enjoy him too when he comes to heaven and therefore hee ought not to fix his heart upon any content whatsoever upon earth but still to keep it moving towards a greater and a truer Joy And thus having made way for the Application of this Prayer unto our selves by seeing how in the Apostles sence we ought to say it let us close with our accustomed Application of it to the Epistle and Gospel of the day or rather of them both unto it which are as it were eminentially contained therein And first there is nothing so cleer as that it is a gift of God to make us thus resigned hence the Epistle breaks out into that acknowledgement saying every good and perfect gift is from above descending from the Father of Lights with whom there is no transmutation nor shadowing of alteration and who by his own sacred word hath ingrafted in us a filiation that makes us be a beginning of his creature that is willing by our resignation to be made through his holy Grace his better creature then by nature we are And so in brief to be those Saints which St. Iames in his Epistle sets before our eyes and consequently those which the Apostles were when our Saviour had prepared them for his departure from them and told them they were not inquisitive enough after the heavenly joys whilest they doted too much upon his Humane presence after he had made them believe it was expedient even for themselves that he left them and that the holy Ghost came to them in his stead to all those purposes that are recited in the Gospel following and to all which purposes we shall finde this Prayer availing us if in this sence we say it often and thereby take as in a little Cordial the whole substance of the Epistle and Gospel of this day The Epistle Iac. 1. v. 17 c. 17 Every best gift and every perfect gift is from above descending from the Father of Lights with whom is no transmutation nor shadowing of alteration 18 Voluntarily he bath begotten us by the word of Truth that we may be some beginning of his creature 19 You know my deerest Brethren And let every man be swift to hear but slow to speak and slow to anger 20 For the anger of man worketh not the justice of God 21 For the which thing casting away all uncleanness and abundance of malice in meekness receive the engraffed Word which is able to save your Souls The Explication 17. IT is prodigiously strange to see how much the Apostle here speaks in Little under these two terms of best gift and perfect gift for though the simple and literal meaning be that all which is good amongst men is given them from God and all which is bad amongst them comes from the Devil and from their own concupiscence yet there is a far deeper sence couched also here and first under best gift is understood not onely the goodness of the thing given but the excellent good will of the giver and even that being as good as the gift adds much to the value thereof for indeed as man hath nothing of his own to give so he hath no will of his own nor desire to give any thing that is good but even that good will is Gods and comes from God inspiring man to do good unto his neighbour but the sence is yet deeper by the reduplication of perfection upon the goodness of the donation or giving and of the gift given as who should say Gods gifts are not onely goodness in themselves by being communications of his infinite goodness to us but they are also most perfect both as their intrinsecal goodness makes them so and as their extrinsecal operations and effects do make us so likewise unto whom they are given since the end for which they are given is that man by means thereof may be perfect as Christ was perfect again many men give oftentimes that which obligeth others and yet is not either perfect in it self or properly their own to give neither of which can be wanting when God is the donation the gift the perfection and all that can be imaginable to render a gift or the donation of it good and perfect best indeed and most absolutely accomplished Again by all gifts are here understood those of Nature Grace and Glory whereof each is from God so immediately as none of them can flow from any other fountain since he is Natura naturans as Divines call him and we Natura naturata he is the Fountain Origin and first Principle of all Natures he is a simple and perfect Nature in and of himself so fecund or fertil as he is able to branch himself out into an infinity of other Natures which yet shall all be as distinct from his own Divine Nature as Creatures are from their Creator and from one another too But the very truth is the Apostle here reports to the two latter sorts of gifts namely
is indeed the highest article of our Faith the first and main principle of Christian Religion But to conclude this doctrine 20. See how the beginning of this verse tells besides this mystery what the Apostles were commanded to teach the world namely to do all whatsoever Christ commanded them to deliver as the Will of God that is to say as well to do good works as to believe aright and to professe that Faith which was preached unto them and how ever Luther and Calvin pretend the Church of Christ and the right administration of the Sacraments thereof and of the divine Services had failed for many hundred of years together before they arrogated to themselves a kind of new Apostolate forsooth yet it is from hence confidently asserted by the unanimous consent of all Catholick Doctours and Divines that there neither hath been hitherto nor ever shall be hereafter till the day of doom which is the consummation or end of the world any failure in the Church of Christ nor in Christ his perpetual assistance and presence with his ever visible Church insomuch that he is ever visibly present in his perpetual visible rulers of the Church and invisibly in his continual-assisting grace and hence it is evidently proved that albeit no successours of the Apostles had those ample prerogatives which they enjoyed yet their Ministery is so the same that the Apostles was as Christ is said even to perpetuate the Apostles in their successours and his presence with them in his presence with their followers and in his assisting them as constantly as he did assist their predecessours though perhaps not as amply nor as efficaciously at all times For how else can it be true that Christ said to his Apostles he would send them another Comforter that should assist them eternally not in their persons but in their successours to the worlds end For the same are the gifts of Christ and of the Holy Ghost as far forth as they are both one and the same God Nay more Christ is even visibly remaining with the Ministers of his Church in the holy Eucharist or B. Sacrament of the Altar his blessed body and bloud being exposed perpetually to the receiving and adoration of the people more he is visibly with us in his Priests who are his visible instruments to administer the Sacraments and offer sacrifice unto the sacred Deity for though the Priest be the instrumental yet Christ is the chief and principal Priest himself it being proper to him to be both Sacrifice and Sacrificant so as in seeing the accidents of bodies we are said consequently to see the things whose accidents we see in like manner by seeing the Sacramental species we may be said to see the Sacrament the body and bloud of Christ whose accidents they are after consecration though the same species before were the accidents of bread and wine To conclude we may as truly say Christ is visibly with his Church to the worlds end as we may say a mans soul is visibly in his body that is to say perceptibly so long as a man lives and hath motion for look what the soul is to the body the same Christ is to his Church so that as the soul is the bodies natural life Christ is the supernatural life of the soul believing in him and making her self by that belief a member of his Church for as the soul makes the body move so Christ makes his Church to do according to that of S. Paul Philipp 2. he worketh all in all according to the purpose of his own holy will and again he it is that gives a will to do good and a power to put that will in execution and to perfect by him what was undertaken for him as being to his honour and glory The Application 1. IT is no marvel that to day we hear inculcated to us an explicite act of Faith in the Front and body of this Gospel while Hope and Charity are onely recommended to us in the close thereof and that but implicitely neither notwithstanding as our design of piety is laid in this work Charity is the chief vertue to be practis'd from this day untill Advent This is I say no marvel the very name of the day requiring this preference to Faith and the nature of the Feast inforcing it besides for since the proper object of Love is Goodnesse seen or understood and since the Blessed Trinity is not here seen at all but by the light of Faith therefore all the understanding we can have of it on Earth is first to believe and next to love it according as the Gospel intimates where Jesus by the vertue of Plenipotentiality given him both in heaven and earth sends his Apostles first to Teach the whole world the mystery of the B. Trinity by Baptizing all Nations in the name of the Father Son and holy Ghost and thereby obliging them to believe explicitely these Three distinct Persons are all but one simple and single God whereas he bids the said Apostles here at least but implicitely to hope in and to love the sacred Trinity in as much as he commands their Teaching all Nations to observe all his Commandments whatsoever which yet are not observeable but for pure love of the commander and for pure hope of his recompencing our obedience unto his commands Who so reads the Gospel will soon see this to be the whole scope thereof 2. What then remaines for further application but that by an actual confessing this true Faith we actually glorifie the eternal Trinity and that in the Power of each Divine Persons sacred Majesty namely in the Power of the Father creating us in the Power of the Son redeeming us in the Power of the Holy Ghost sayntifying of us we adore the Unity of these Three Persons Deity since none but God can create none but God can redeem and none but God can sayntifie a soul 3. O Happy Christians who by firmly believing this to be their obligation to the sacred Trinity can neither want motive enough for Love of God nor ground enough for Hope that by this Act of Faith they shall be defended from all Adversity since the true victrix over all our enemies is as St. John tells us 1 Ep. c. 5. our Faith which overcomes the world and consequently all Adversity Say now the Prayer above and see how patt it is to what we here are taught On the first Sunday after Pentecost The Antiphon Luk. 6.37 JVdge not that you be not judged for in what Judgement you Judge you shall be Judged saith our Lord. Vers Let my prayer O Lord be directed Resp Even as Incense before thee The Prayer O God the strength of those that hope in thee be propitiously present to our prayers and because without thee mortal infirmity is of no ability grant the assistance of thy grace that in doing what thou dost command we may please thee both in will and work The Illustration ALbeit this Sunday is
therein Just thus it is with holy Churches preaching admit a million of people be assembled to one sole Preacher in the pulpit is his Sermon ever the worse because it dynts the soul of every hearer there and moves him so as if the Preacher knew the heart of every auditour he had whom yet he never saw in all his life nor knowes him now he sees him would any man condemn this Preacher No admire him rather and in him adore Almighty God who with one speech could touch the quick of every soul alive And so it is with holy Churches prayers the commoner they are the more peculiarly they touch each pious persons soul if rightly understood they seem to reach as far as all the preachers of the Church can scrue into a soul and farther too for who so sayes them with a zeal suitable to the Spirit whence they flow he like a river runs into the sea whence all the waters have their spring and is not lost although he beâ— not found but rather swells to be a sea of spirit while he falls out of his private devotions into the Ocean of the Churches prayer and sayes to himself Matt. 23.23 These things ought to be done and those things ought not to be omitted O Christians what a sovereign cure have we to day against the worst contagion in the Church the spirit of division of faction Say but this prayer devoutly read but the lessons of the other services of holy Church to day agreeable to this prayer and I shall hope to hear no more of faction in the Church of division in the house of the Holy Ghost of dissention among Roman Catholicks much lesse amongst the Priests of holy Church for in them it were a contagion worse then diabolical who as they are all Ministers of one onely God so should they all agree in one to guide the souls they are to govern in the spirit of peace and unity of love and charity which they shall never teach better then when they give example of it to their flocks The Epistle Ephes 4.1 1 I therefore prisoner in our Lord beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation in which you are called 2 With all humilitie and mildnesse with patience supporting one another in charity 3 Carefull to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace 4 One body and one spirit as you are called in one hope of your vocation 5 One Lord one Faith one Baptisme 6 One God and Father of all which is over all and by all and in us all 7 Who is blessed world without end Amen The Explication 1. THe cause why he beseecheth them is in regard they had the happinesse to be made of Gentiles Christians and so equall with the Jewes that were the chosen people of God He calls himself prisoner in our Lord because he was in prison for our Lord for teaching the faith of Christ Walking here is understood living Note the word Vocation is of speciall regard and so imports a speciall obligation they had to comply with their said vocation which was indeed their conversion from Gentilisme to Christianitie 2. This verse specifies the eminent marks of Christians from Gentiles the one proud harsh furious quarrelsome the other therefore humble milde patient loving that so it might appeare a religious change to come from one contrary to another Supporting each other imports bearing with each others infirmities In Charitie is to say by or with Charitie repending good for evil 3. By unitie of spirit is here meant unanimitie that is though in bodies divided yet in mind they should be one and make it their studie so to be thus to comply with the care thereof commended if not commanded also This verse is hugely against all schismaticall division in the Church receding from the common Doctrine to follow the fancies of private spirits By the word bond is understood removing private sense in point of religion for a bond imports a tie between parties and so abandons singularitie when it must binde many together in the peace of unanimitie 4. This verse is exhortatorie stirring up to be all as one body and one soul that as you are called to one hope of Heaven by this your vocation to Christianitie so you goe all thither as one man since the Church is properly called one civill man while all the Members of it are regulated by one Law of Christ by one holy Spirit And indeed Saint Paul useth a huge Art telling us we have all one hope namely Heaven thereby to make us tend all one way to the attaining thereof 5. One Lord Christ Jesus one Faith that which the Apostles preached one Baptisme that which is given in due matter and forme applied with due intention water accompanying these words I baptize thee in the Name of the Father and of the Sonne and of the Holy Ghost according as holy Church intendeth when this Sacrament is administred 6. In this verse the Apostle summes up all he said before As we have but one God who is our common Father so we must have but one spirit lest we degenerate from being his children who will own none but those that are one in him and one to one another all others are bastards and cannot be brothers because not begotten of him that knowes no division but consists of unitie and simplicitie No God is above all men by his Majestie and Deitie he is through all things by his power and efficacie in them penetrating and passing through them all as freely as we doe through the Aire in all things by his essence and being in us Christians by his grace which makes us be his children and by his glory which makes us be his heires Others understand by this triple division the Apostle means that God the Father is above us all by creation God the Sonne by redemption runs through us with the Sea of his passion God the Holy Ghost is in us all by his sanctifying grace The Application 1. SAint Paul being by his imprisonment separated from his Converts the Ephesians and desirous in litle to send them much counsell how they might walk worthy of the vocation in which they were called summes up here those virtues that are most necessary for new converted souls Humilitie as the foundation whereupon they must build their monuments of a blessed Eternitie in imitation of Almightie God who raised all the fabricke of humane salvation upon the Basis of his own abasement Mildnesse in testimony they were no more children of wrath and indignation but of their milde Redeemer and Saviour Jesus Christ A charitable Patience that is to say for love of God supporting bearing with one another as the onely means to keep themselves in favour with Almighty God whom they hourely much more exasperate then any man can do them And Unanimitie as the badge of perfect Christianitie testifying they are onely true lovers of one another who are right believers in Jesus Christ
once would let us know the dead child being a Jew represents the expiration of the Jewish Synagogue by the plantation of the Church of Christ For as this diseased Gentile fell sick when Jairus his child was born so the Gentiles fell to their brutish Idolatry figured by the Bloudy Flux when the Jewes were born to right belief in Abraham and therefore as Christ went to raise this child from death to life and by the way first healed the diseased woman so he came first to the Jewes yet the Gentiles received and believed in him before the Jewes whose conversion or being raised from the death of infidelity to the life of Faith is not to be till after all Gentiles are first reduced and then at last even the Jewes shall generally be converted This is the mystical sense of the present story prosecuted in these three verses onely we are to observe by this womans Faith that the Gentiles are of much more easie and entire belief then the Jewes besides this place gives a great ground for the Catholick doctrine of revering reliques since here the woman was cured by the onely touch of our Saviours garments hemm and Eusebius writes that she in memory of this favour shewed unto her made a coat like that of our Saviours and kept it religiously in her house and that diverse who were diseased went away from her perfectly cured upon the sole touch of this garments hemm also 23. 24. The musick our Saviour found here was onely such as usually in those dayes did accompany all burials Our Saviours saying the child is not dead did not deny but she was so for all that onely his meaning was she should live again and therefore he accounted her death but a sleep in the sight of God because her soul was not summoned to the barre of Judgement being to return and lead a longer life in this world though this saying of Christ might also import his modesty in not making difficult his works to get thereby popular applause However they knew and so did Christ the child was really dead to all humane power of recovery but that they might see death to God was but as sleep to nature since he that could out of nothing make all things could much more easily out of a dead body make a living creature and so as to God death and sleep are much alike in respect of privation of life whence it is frequent for Christ to call death obdormition or sleeping onely thus he did in Lazarus his case after he was four dayes buried Joh. 11.44 and thus you see here he doth in this present case of the dead child But as commonly men judge of all things by outward appearances and of other mens powers by comparing them to their own so here these mourners laugh at Christ for saying the dead child was onely asleep as who should say they held it impossible for him to revive her which argues they were sufficiently satisfied she was truly dead to all this world 25. 26. Note his bidding them depart when he sayes she is not dead argues that their diffidence in his power did not deserve the honour to be eye-witnesses of the miracle how it was done though afterwards they had proof enough it was most true and again it argues he was not seeking popular applause when he went in alone leaving the company without taking onely the child's parents and his disciples with him S. Mark sayes Peter James and John to shew it was not ultroneous fasting that conferred sanctity of which you heard before but a lively Faith and an ardent love to God wherewith his Apostles were endowed and so fit to be now witnesses of his and after workers of as great miracles themselves though they did not run the vain-glorious wayes of Pharisaical fasting or the like Note the Scripture phrase is here pathetical saying Christ held the childs hand in such sort probably as officers take hold of such as they arrest to carry away with them and so shew their power over them for thus our Saviour seemed to snatch the body of this child from death and to command her soul from entring into hell but to animate again the body thereby to shew he had perfect dominion over life and death And it seems the manner of this was extraordinary when the story of it ends by saying it was divulged all the countrey over for a famous miracle though St. Mark sayes Christ gave the girle to her parents bidding them say nothing Mar. 5.43 to shew his modesty and that he sought not the worlds applause but onely Gods honour and glory Yet their disobedience in this was not unseemly The Application 1. THis Gospel of the Jewes and Gentiles Infidelity is as we heard in the Explication made a whole Type of all Iniquity whatsoever and yet is most peculiarly proper to the Epistle inculcating so sincere a sayntity as above because as to that sayntity pardon of iniquity is necessary and this pardon is mystically represented in the raising Jairus his daughter from the brink of death which is the natural punishment of sinne so to the said sayntity there is also necessary a detestation of all affection to sin which detestation is also represented by the cure upon the woman sick of the Issue of bloud not unfitly likened to reiterated or accustomary sinne which argues a huge affection thereunto 2. What then more proper for Christians at the reading of this holy Text then first to procure an act of contrition for all guilt of sinne upon their soules and next to detest all affection to any sinne whatsoever especially to those which have been formerly to them accustomary for those are properly bonds which we have sealed to the devil while we hamper our selves with giving them up as our well advised acts of our yet most abominable wicked deeds 3. Say now beloved if our holy Mother have not fram'd a fitting Prayer when to this purpose she brings charity to day upon her knees preparing her self for the grand account she is next Sunday put in mind to make By petitioning as above an acquittance of her sinful debts by absolution from the guilt thereof and a cancelling of all her bonds to the devil by teating her affections to sin in pieces and planting her love from hence upon Almighty God above On the four and twentieth Sunday after Pentecost The Antiphon Matth. 24.34 AMen I say to you this Generation shall not passe untill all be done Heaven and Earth shall passe but my word shall not passe saith our Lord. Vers Let my prayer c. Resp Even as Incense c. The Prayer STirre up we beseech thee O Lord the wills of thy Faithful that they more diligently preparing the fruit of thy divine work may receive the greater remedies of thy mercy The Illustration WE are this day closing up the Ring of our devotion which we desire all the devotes of our sodality to wear in testimony they are of
proceeded by an Act of mutuall love between the Father and the Sonne but all confesse his procession to be from both while it is from the Father by the Sonne 14. True it is by the passion of our Saviour we are redeemed but if we ask what it is to be redeemed we cannot expresse it better then here the Apostle doth by calling it remission of sinnes for as by sinne we were made slaves to the devil so by remission thereof which we obtain by Christ his passion we are made children of God and are thus redeemed from the captivity of the devil not unlike to men freed from prison by their creditours remitting unto them their debts for which they clapt them up but we are in a more liberall way redeemed from the prison of hell that was our inheritance when Christ not we payes the debt and so it is most freely remitted to us since we neither did nor could pay it our selves The Application 1. BLessed S. Paul we have thee now in half a word the Colossians were as dear to thee as the Ephesians the Romans and all thy other Converts what thou didst write to one upon the news of their conversion by thy preaching thou dost in other terms but in the same spirit write to all the rest Again we know our holy mother the Church reads thy ancient lessons every day anew to us that we her children may be Christian Catholicks like thy happy Converts And to that purpose she brings our charity to day with thy Epistle home to her annuall journeys end as the best usher to lead her to this lifes end also and to the entrance into everlasting life that of eternall happinesse and glory 2. See how to day our holy Mother sets us all a preaching to our selves to this effect while she doth make us pray to God that he will raise up our affections to our own salvations Why Blessed Jesu is it come to that must we be courted to our own felicity can we be lesse then willing to be sav'd I dare not say it but I doubt it much And therefore holy Church I see petitions it lest we should vainly think we had advanced farre when God Almighty knows the many years that passe upon our heads are like so many labours lost and therefore at the end of every year 't is piety to think we do but then begin to wish we were but willing to be sav'd yet we must wish it faithfully sincerely earnestly and we must pray withall that God will graciously please to raise our wish to the perfection of a will at last that if we value not our selves we will not undervalue God Almighty who looks upon us as the apples of his eyes as the fruits of all his labours in creating preserving and governing the world and us in redeeming and saintifying of us for no other end but to save us at the last and that at so easie a rate as can be possible our onely cooperating with him to that happy end our onely being willing be should work in us that saintity we cannot work in our selves without him 3. To conclude the many books of controversie in the point of merit may be summ'd up all in this petition of the Churches Prayer to day so deep so copious so facund and so fecund withall is the spirit of the Holy Ghost couch'd in those teaching Prayers What is it else we say defending merit but that we must cooperate to our salvation but that the more we do cooperate the greater Saints we are but that the improvement we make of one grace procures us another greater then the former but that we so take in hand the work of our salvation as we do not think it is nor can be any work of ours but must be still the work of God in us though by us too whose onely part is to be pulling down the greater remedies of his Piety towards us by improving his lesser and to be drawing from him grace upon grace so fast untill by means thereof we render our selves a fruit of the work divine as ripe as grace can make us here ready then to be transplanted into heaven where yet the sunne of glory will mature us more so farre indeed as we shall never fear to be corrupted but shall hang upon the tree of everlasting life an ornament to the celestiall Paradise Say now the Prayer above and see how home it is to this construction in it self to this instruction of us by it if we say it in the sense above The Gospel Matth. 24.15 15 Therefore when you shall see the Abomination of desolation which was spoken of by Daniel the Prophet standing in the holy place he that readeth let him understand 16 Then they that are in Jewry let them flee to the mountains 17 And he that is on the house top let him not come down to take any thing out of his house 18 And he that is in the field let him not go back to take his coat 19 And wo to them that are with child and that give suck in those dayes 20 But pray that your flight be not in winter nor on the Sabboth 21 For there shall be then great tribulation such as hath not been from the beginning of the world untill now neither shall be 22 And unlesse those dayes had been shortened no flesh should be saved but for the Elect the dayes shall be shortned 23 Then if any man shall say unto you Lo here is Christ or there do not believe him 24 For there shall arise false Christs and false Prophets and shall shew great signes and wonders so that the Elect also if it be possible may be induced into errour 25 Lo I have foretold you 26 If therefore they shall say unto you Behold he is in the desert go ye not out behold in the closets believe it not 27 For as lightening cometh out of the East and appeareth even to the West so shall the Advent of the Son of man be 28 Wheresoever the body is thither shall the Eagles also be gathered together 29 And immediately after the tribulation of those dayes the Sun shall be darkened and the Moon shall not give her light and the Starres shall fall from heaven and the powers of heaven shall be moved 30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven and then shall all tribes of the earth bewaile and they shall see the Son of man comeing in the clouds of heaven with much power and majestie 31 And he shall send his Angels with a Trumpet and a great voyce and they shall gather together his Elect from the four winds from the furthest parts of heaven even to the ends thereof 32 And of the fig-tree learn a Parable when now the bough thereof is tender and the leaves come forth you know that Summer is nigh 33 So you also when you shall see these things know ye that it is nigh even at the