them most and endear obedience If you will obey ye shall eat the good things of the land Ye shall possesse a rich countrey ye shall triumph over your enemies ye shall have numerous families blessed children rich granaries over-running wine-presses for God knew the cognation of most of them was so dear between their affections and the good things of this world that if they did not obey in hope of that they did need and fancy and love and see and feel it was not to be expected they should quit their affections for a secret in another world whither before they come they must die and lose all desire and all capacities of enjoyment But this designe of God which was bare-faced in the dayes of the law is now in the Gospel interwoven secretly but yet plain enough to be discovered by an eye of faith and reason into every vertue and temporal advantage is a great ingredient in the constitution of every Christian grace for so the richest tissue dazles the beholders eye when the Sun reflects upon the mettal the silver and the gold weaved into phantastiâ— imagery or a wealthy plainnesse but the rich wire and shining filaments are wrought upon cheaper silk the spoil of worms and flies so is the imbroidery of our vertue the glories of the spirit dwell upon the face and vestment upon the fringes and the borders and there we see the Beril and the Onyx the Jasper and the sardyx order and perfection love and peace and joy mortification of the passions and ravishment of the will adherencies to God and imitation of Christ reception and entertainment of the Holy Ghost and longings after heaven humility and chastity temperance and sobriety these make the frame of the garment the cloaths of the soul that it may not be found naked in the day of the Lords visitation but through these rich materials a thrid of silk is drawn some compliance with worms and weaker creatures something that shall please our bowels and make the lower man tâ— rejoyce they are wrought upon secular content and material satisfactions and now we cannot be happy unlesse we be â—ious and the religion of a Christian is the greatest security and the most certain instrument of making a man rich and pleased and healthful and wise and beloved in the whole world I shall now remark onely two or three instances for the main body of this truth I have other where represented 1. The whole religion of a Christian as it relates to others is nothing but justice and mercy certain parents of peace and benefit and upon this supposition what evil can come to a just and a merciful to a necessary and useful person For the first permission of evil was upon the stock of injustice He that kills may be killed and he that does injury may be mischieved he that invades another mans right must venture the losse of his own and when I put my Brother to his defence he may chance drive the evil so far from himself that it may reach me Laws and â—udges private publick judicatures wars and tribunals axes and wheels were made not for the righteous but for the unjust and all that whole order of things and persons would be uselesse if men did do as they would willingly suffer 2. And because there is no evil that can befal a just man unlesse it comes by injury and violence our religion hath also made as good provisions against that too as the nature of the thing will suffer for by patience we are reconciled to the sufferance and by hope and faith we see a certain consequent reward and by praying for the persecuting man we are oured of all the evil of the minde the envy and the fretfulnesse that uses to gall the troubled and resisting man and when we turn all the passion into charity and God turns all the suffering into reward there remains nothing that is very formidable So that our religion obliges us to such duties which prevent all evils that happen justly to men and in our religion no man can suffer as a malefactor if he follows the religion truely and for the evils that are unavoidable and come by violence the graces of this discipline turne them into vertues and rewards and make them that in their event they are desirable and in the suffering they are very tolerable 3. But then when we consider that the religion of a Christian consists in doing good to all men that it is made up of mercies and friendships of friendly conventions and assemblies of Saints that all are to do good works for necessary uses that is to be able to be beneficial to the publick and not to be burthensome to any where it can be avoided what can be wished to man in relation to others and what can be more beneficial to themselves then that they be such whom other men will value for their interest such whom the publick does need such whom Princes and Nobles ought to esteem and all men can make use of according to their several conditions that they are so well provided for that unlesse a persecution disables them they cannot onely maintain themselves but oblige others to their charity This is a temporal good which all wise men reckon as part of that felicity which recompences all the labours of their day and sweetens the sleep of their night and places them in that circle of neighbour-hood and amity where men are most valued and most secure 4. To this we may adde this material consideration That al those graces which oblige us to do good to others are nothing else but certain instruments of doing advantage to our selves It is a huge noblenesse of charity to give alms not onely to our Brother but for him It is the Christian sacrifice like that of Job who made oblations for his sons when they feasted each other fearing lest they had sinned against God and if I give almes and fast and pray in behalf of my prince or my Patron my friend or my children I do a combination of holy actions which are of all things that I can do the most effectual intercession for him whom I so recommend but then observe the art of this and what a plot is laid by the divine mercy to secure blessing to to our selves That I am a person fit to intercede and pray for him must suppose me a gracious person one whom God rather will accept so that before I be fit to pray and interpose for him I must first become dear to God and my charity can do him no good for whose interest I gave it but by making me first acceptable to God that so he may the rather hear me and when I fast it is first an act of repentance for my self before it can be an instrument of impetration for him And thus I do my Brother a single benefit by doing my self a double one and it is also so ordered that when I pray for a
to nothing if he had but withdrawn the miracles and the Almightinesse of his power If God had taken his arm from under him man had perished but it was therefore a greater evil when God laid his arm upon him and against him and seemed to support him that he might be longer killing him In the midst of these sadnesses God remembered his own creature and pitied it and by his mercy rescued him from the hand of his power and the sword of his justice and the guilt of his punishment and the disorder of his sin and placed him in that order of good things where he ought to have stood It was mercy that preserved the noblest of Gods creatures here below he who stood condemned and undone under all the other attributes of God was onely saved and rescued by his mercy that it may be evident that Gods mercy is above all his works and above all ours greater then the creation and greater then our sins as is his Majesty so is his mercy that is without measures and without rules sitting in heaven and filling all the world calling for a duty that he may give a blessing making man that he may save him punishing him that he may preserve him and Gods justice bowed down to his mercy and all his power passed into mercy and his omniscience converted into care and watchfulnesse into providence and observation for mans avail and Heaven gave its influence for man and rained showers for our food and drink and the Attributes and Acts of God sat at the foot of mercy and all that mercy descended upon the head of man For so the light of the world in the morning of the creation was spread abroad like a curtain and dwelt no where but filled the expansum with a dissemination great as the unfoldings of the airs looser garment or the wilder fringes of the fire without knots or order or combination but God gathered the beams in his hand and united them into a globe of fire and all the light of the world became the body of the Sun and he lent some to his weaker sister that walks in the night and guides a traveller and teaches him to distinguish a house from a river or a rock from a plain field so is the mercy of God a vast expansum and a huge Ocean from eternall ages it dwelt round about the throne of God and it filled all that infinite distance and space that hath no measures but the will of God untill God desiring to communicate that excellency and make it relative created Angels that he might have persons capable of huge gifts and man who he knew would need forgivenesse for so the Angels our elder Brothers dwelt for ever in the house of their Father and never brake his commandements but we the younger like prodigals forsook our fathers house and went into a strange countrey and followed stranger courses and spent the portion of our nature and forfeited all our title to the family and came to need another portion for ever since the fall of Adam who like an unfortunate man spent all that a wretched man could need or a happy man could have our life is repentance and forgivenesse is all our portion and though Angels were objects of Gods bounty yet man onely is in proper speaking the object of his mercy And the mercy which dwelt in an infinite circle became confin'd to a little ring and dwelt here below and here shall dwell below till it hath carried all Gods portion up to heaven where it shall reigne and glory upon our crowned heads for ever and ever But for him that considers Gods mercies and dwels a while in that depth it is hard not to talk wildly and without art and order of discoursings Saint Peter talked he knew not what when he entered into a cloud with Jesus upon mount Tabor though it passed over him like the little curtains that ride upon the North-winde and passe between the Sun and us And when we converse with a light greater then the Sun and tast a sweetnesse more delicious then the dew of heaven and in our thoughts entertain the ravishments and harmony of that atonement which reconciles God to man and man to felicity it will be more easily pardoned if we should be like persons that admire much and say but little and indeed we can best confesse the glories of the Lord by dazeled eyes and a stammering tongue and a heart overcharged with the miracles of this infinity For so those little drops that run over though they be not much in themselves yet they tell that the vessell was full and could expresse the greatnesse of the shower no otherwise but by spilling and inartificiall expressions and runnings over But because I have undertaken to tell the drops of the Ocean and to span the measures of eternity I must do it by the great lines of revelation and experience and tell concerning Gods mercy as we do concerning God himself that he is that great fountain of which we all drink and the great rock of which we all eat and on which we all dwell and under whose shadow we all are refreshed Gods mercy is all this and we can onely draw great lines of it and reckon the constellations of our hemisphere instead of telling the number of the stars we onely can reckon what we feel and what we live by And though there be in every one of these lines of life enough to ingage us for ever to do God service and to give him praises yet it is certain there are very many mercies of God upon us and toward us and concerning us which we neither feel nor see nor understand as yet but yet we are blessed by them and are preserved and secured and we shall then know them when we come to give God thanks in the festivities of an eternall sabbath But that I may confine my discourse into order since the subject of it cannot I consider 1. That mercy being an emanation of the Divine goodnesse upon us and supposes us and found us miserable In this account concerning the mercies of God I must not reckon the miracles and graces of the creation or any thing of the nature of man nor tell how great an endearment God passed upon us that he made us men capable of felicity apted with rare instruments of discourse and reason passions and desires notices of sense and reflections upon that sense that we have not the deformity of a Crocodile nor the motion of a Worm nor the hunger of a Wolf nor the wildenesse of a Tigre nor the birth of Vipers nor the life of flies nor the death of serpents Our excellent bodies and usefull faculties the upright motion and the tenacious hand the fair appetites and proportioned satisfactions our speech and our perceptions our acts of life the rare invention of letters and the use of writing and speaking at distance the intervals of rest and labour either of which if
they were perpetual would be intolerable the needs of nature and the provisions of providence sleep and businesse refreshments of the body and entertainment of the soul these are to be reckoned as acts of bounty rather then mercy God gave us these when he made us and before we needed mercy these were portions of our nature or provided to supply our consequent necessities but when we forfeited all Gods favour by our sins then that they were continued or restored to us became a mercy and therefore ought to be reckoned upon this new account for it was a rare mercy that we were suffered to live at all or that the Anger of God did permit to us one blessing that he did punish us so gently But when the rack is changed into an ax and the ax into an imprisonment and the imprisonment changed into an enlargement and the enlargement into an entertainment in the family and this entertainment passes on to an adoption these are steps of a mighty favour and perfect redemption from our sin and the returning back our own goods is a gift and a perfect donative sweetned by the apprehensions of the calamity from whence every lesser punishment began to free us and thus it was that God punished us and visited the sin of Adam upon his posterity He threatned we should die and so we did but not so as we deserved we waited for death and stood sentenced and are daily summoned by sicknesses and uneasinesse and every day is a new reprieve and brings a new favour certain as the revolution of the Sun upon that day and at last when we must die by the irreversible decree that death is changed into a sleep and that sleep is in the bosom of Christ and there dwels all peace and security and it shall passe forth into glories and felicities We looked for a Judge and behold a Saviour we feared an accuser and behold an Advocate we sate down in sorrow and rise in joy we leaned upon Rhubarb and Aloes and our aprons were made of the sharp leaves of Indian fig-trees and so we fed and so were clothed But the Rhubarb proved medicinal and the rough leaf of the tree brought its fruit wrapped up in its foldings and round about our dwellings was planted a hedge of thornes and bundles of thistles the Aconite and the Briony the Night-shade and the Poppy and at the root of these grew the healing Plantain which rising up into a talnesse by the friendly invitation of a heavenly influence turn'd about the tree of the crosse and cured the wounds of the thorns and the curse of the thistles and the malediction of man and the wrath of God Si sio irascitur quomodo convivatur If God be thus kinde when he is Angry what is he when he feasts us with caresses of his more tender Kindnesse All that God restored to us after the forfeiture of Adam grew to be a double Kindnesse for it became the expression of a bounty which knew not how to repent a graciousnesse that was not to be altered though we were and that was it which we needed That 's the first generall all the bounties of the creation became mercies to us when God continued them to us and restored them after they were forfeit 2. But as a circle begins every where and ends no where so do the mercies of God after all this huge progresse now it began anew God is good and gracious and God is ready to forgive Now that he had once more made us capable of mercies God had what he desired and what he could rejoyce in something upon which he might pour forth his mercies and by the way this I shall observe for I cannot but speak without art when I speak of that which hath no measure God made us capable of one sort of his mercies and we made our selves capable of another God is good and gracious that is desirous to give great gifts and of this God made us receptive first by giving us naturall possibilities that is by giving those gifts he made us capable of more and next by restoring us to his favour that he might not by our provocations be hindered from raining down his mercies But God is also ready to forgive and of this kinde of mercy we made our selves capable even by not deserving it Our sin made way for his grace and our infirmities called upon his pity and because we sinned we became miserable and because we were miserable we became pitiable and this opened the other treasure of his mercy that because our sin abounds his grace may superabound In this method we must confine our thoughts 1. Giving 2. Forgiving Thou Lord art good and ready to forgive plenteous in mercy to all them that call upon thee 3. Gods mercies or the mercies of his giving came first upon us by mending of our nature For the ignorance we fell into is instructed and better learned in spirituall notices then Adams morning knowledge in Paradise our appetites are made subordinate to the spirit and the liberty of our wills is improved having the liberty of the sons of God and Christ hath done us more grace and advantage then we lost in Adam and as man lost Paradise and got Heaven so he lost the integrity of the first and got the perfection of the second Adam his living soul is changed into a quickning spirit our discerning faculties are filled with the spirit of faith and our passions and desires are entertained with hope and our election is sanctified with charity and his first life of a temporall possession is passed into a better a life of spirituall expectations and though our first parent was forbidden it yet we live of the fruits of the tree of life But I instance in two great things in which humane nature is greatly advanced and passed on to greater perfections The first is that besides body and soul which was the summe totall of Adams constitution God hath superadded to us a third principle the beginner of a better life I mean the Spirit so that now man hath a spiritual and celestial nature breathed into him and the old man that is the old constitution is the least part and in its proper operations is dead or dying but the new man is that which gives denomination life motion and proper actions to a Christian and that is renewed in us day by day But secondly Humane nature is so highly exalted and mended by that mercy which God sent immediately upon the fall of Adam the promise of Christ that when he did come and actuate the purposes of this mission and ascended up into heaven he carried humane nature above the seats of Angels to the place whither Lucifer the son of the morning aspir'd to ascend but in his attempt fell into hell For so said the Prophet the son of the morning said I will ascend into heaven and sit in the sides of the North that is the throne of
gives demonstration of his huge easinesse to redeem us from that intolerable evil that is equally consequent to the indulging to one or to twenty sinful habits 2. Gods readinesse to pardon appears in this that he pardons before we ask for he that bids us alk for pardon hath in designe and purpose done the thing already for what is wanting on his part in whose onely power it is to give pardon and in whose desire it is that we should be pardoned and who commands us to lay hold upon the offer he hath done all that belongs to God that is all that concerns the pardon there it lies ready it is recorded in the book of life it wants nothing but being exemplified and taken forth and the Holy spirit stands ready to consigne and passe the privy signet that we may exhibit it to devils and evil men when they tempt us to despair or sin 3. Nay God is so ready in his mercy that he did pardon us even before he redeemed us for what is the secret of the mysterie that the eternal Son of God should take upon him our nature and die our death and suffer for our sins and do our work and enable us to do our own he that did this is God he who thought it no robbery to be equal with God he came to satisfie himself to pay to himself the price for his own creature and when he did this for us that he might pardon us was he at that instant angry with us was this an effect of his anger or of his love that God sent his Son to work our pardon and salvation Indeed we were angry with God at enmity with the the Prince of life but he was reconciled to us so far as that he then did the greatest thing in the world for us for nothing could be greater then that God the Son of God should die for us here was reconciliation before pardon and God that came to die for us did love us first before he came this was hasty love But it went further yet 4. God pardoned us before we sinned and when he foresaw our sin even mine and yours he sent his son to die for us ouâ— pardon was wrought and effected by Christs death above 1600 years ago and for the sins of to morrow and the infirmities of the next day Christ is already dead already risen from the dead and does now make intercession and atonement And this is not onely a favour to us who were born in the due time of the Gospel but to all mankinde since Adam For God who is infinitely patient in his justice was not at all patient in his mercy he forbears to strike and punish us but he would not forbear to provide cure for us and remedy for as if God could not stay from redeeming us he â—romised the Redeemer to Adam in the beginning of the worlds sin Christ was the lamb slain from the begining of the world and the covenant of the Gospel though it was not made with man yet it was from the beginning performed by God as to his part as to the ministration of pardon The seed of the woman was set up against the dragon as soon as ever the Tempter had won his first battle and though God laid his hand and drew a vail of types and secresy before the manifestation of his mercies yet he did the work of redemption and saved us by the covenant of faith and the righteousnesse of believing and the mercies of repentance the graces of pardon and the blood of the slain lamb even from the fall of Adam to this very day and will do till Christs second coming Adam fell by his folly and did not perform the covenant of one little work a work of a single abstinence but he was restored by faith in the seed of the woman and of this righteousnesse Noah was a preacher and by faith Enoch was traslated and by faith a remnant was saved at the flood and to Abraham this was imputed for righteousnesse and to all the Patriarks and to all the righteous judges and holy Prophets and Saints of the old Testament even while they were obliged so far as the words of their covenant were expressed to the law of works their pardon was sealed kept with in the vail within the curtains of the sanctuary and they saw it not then but they feel it ever since and this was a great excellency of the Divine mercy unto them God had mercy on all mankinde before Christs manifestation even beyond the mercies of their covenant they were saved as we are by the seed of the woman by God incarnate by the lamb slain from the beginning of the world not by works for we all failed of them that is not by an exact obedience but by faith working by love by sincere hearty endeavours believing God and relying upon his infinite mercy revealed in part and now fully manifest by the great instrument and means of that mercy Jesus Christ. So that here is pardon before we asked it pardon before Christs coming pardon before redemption and pardon before we sinned what greater readinesse to forgive us can be imagined yes there is one degree more yet and that will prevent a mistake in this 5. For God so pardoned us once that we should need no more pardon he pardons us by turning every one of us away from our iniquities that 's the purpose of Christ that he might safely pardon us before we sinned and we might not sin upon the confidence of pardon he pardoned us not onely upon condition we would sin no more but he took away our sin cured our cursed inclinations instructed our understanding rectified our will fortified us against temptations and now every man whom he pardons he also sanctifies and he is born of God and he must not will not cannot sin so long as the seed of God remains within him so long as his pardon continues This is the consummation of pardon For if God had so pardoned us as onely to take away our evils which are past we should have needed a second Saviour and a redeemer for every month and new pardons perpetually But our blessed Redeemer hath taken away our sin not onely the guilt of our old but our inclinations to new sins he makes us like himself and commands us to live so that we shall not need a second pardon that is a second state of pardon for we are but once baptized into Christs death and that death was one and our redemption but one and our covenant the same and as long as we continue within the covenant we are still within the power and comprehensions of the first pardon 6. And yet there is a necessity of having one degree of pardon more beyond all this For although we do not abjure our covenant and renounce Christ and extinguish the spirit yet we resist him and we grieve him and we go off from the holinesse of the
The foolish exchange fol. 224. 237. Matth. 16. ver 26. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul Sermon 20 21. 22. The Serpent and the Dove or a discourse of Christian Prudence fol. 251. 263. 274. Matth. 10. latter part of ver 16. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmlesse as doves Sermon 23. 24. Of Christian simplicity 289. 301. Matth. 10. latter part of ver 16. And harmlesse as doves Sermon 25. 26. 27. The miracles of the Divine Mercy fol. 313. 327. 340. Psal. 86. 5. For thou Lord art good and ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy to all them that call upon thee A Funerall Sermon preached at the Obsequies of the Right Honourable the Countesse of Carbery fol. 357. 2 Sam. 14. 14. For we must needs die and are as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up again neither doth God respect any person yet doth he devise means that his banished be not expelled from him A Discourse of the Divine Institution necessity sacrednesse and separation of the Office Ministeriall Sermon I. VVHITSVNDAY OF THE SPIRIT OF GRACE 8. Romans v. 9. 10. But ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his * And if Christ be in you the body is dead because of sin but the Spirit is life because of righteousnesse THe day in which the Church commemorates the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles was the first beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This was the first day that the Religion was professed now the Apostles first openâ—d their commission and read it to all the people The Lord gave his Spirit or the Lord gave his word and great was the company of the Preachers For so I make bold to render that prophesie of David Christ was the word of God verbum aeternum but the Spirit was the word of God verbum Patefactum Christ was the word manifested in the flesh the Spirit was the word manifested to flesh and set in dominion over and in hostility against the flesh The Gospel and the Spirit are the same thing not in substance but the manifestation of the Spirit is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and because he was this day manifested the Gospel was this day first preached and it became a law to us called the law of the Spirit of life that is a law taught us by the Spirit leading us to life eternal But the Gospel is called the Spirit 1. Because it contains in it such glorious mysteries which were revealed by the immediate inspirations of the Spirit not onely in the matter it self but also in the manner and powers to apprehend them For what power of humane understanding could have found out the incarnation of a God that two natures a finite and an infinite could have been concentred into one hypostasis or person that a virgin should be a Mother that dead men should live again that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the ashes of dissolved bones should become bright as the Sun blessed as Angels swift in motion as thought clear as the purest Noone that God should so love us as to be willing to be reconcil'd to us and yet that himself must dye that he might pardon us that Gods most Holy Son should give us his body to eat and his bloud to crown our chalices and his Spirit to sanctifie our souls to turn our bodies into temperance our souls into mindes our mindes into Spirit our Spirit into glory that he who can give us all things who is Lord of Men and Angels and King of all the Creatures should pray to God for us without intermission that he who reigns over all the world should at the day of judgement give up the Kingdom to God the Father and yet after this resignation himself and we with him should for ever reign the more gloriously that we should be justified by Faith in Christ and that charity should be a part of faith and that both should work as acts of duty and as acts of relation that God should Crown the imperfect endeavours of his Saints with glory and that a humane act should be rewarded with an eternal inheritance that the wicked for the transient pleasure of a few minutes should be tormented with an absolute eternity of pains that the waters of baptisme when they are hallowed by the Spirit shall purge the soul from sin and that the Spirit of a man shall be nourished with the consecrated and mysterious elements and that any such nourishment should bring a man up to heaven and after all this that all Christian People all that will be saved must be partakers of the Divine nature of the Nature the infinite nature of God and must dwell in Christ and Christ must dwell in them and they must be in the Spirit and the Spirit must be for ever in them these are articles of so mysterious a Philosophy that we could have inferred them from no premises discours'd them upon the stock of no naturall or scientificall principles nothing but God and Gods spirit could have taught them to us and therefore the Gospel is Spiritus patefactus the manifestation of the Spirit ad aedificationem as the Apostle calls it for edification and building us up to be a Holy Temple to the Lord. 2. But when we had been taught all these mysterious articles we could not by any humane power have understood them unlesse the Spirit of God had given us a new light and created in us a new capacity and made us to be a new creature of another definition Animalis homo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is as S. Jude expounds the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the animal or the naturall man the man that hath not the Spirit cannot discern the things of God for they are spiritually discerned that is not to be understood but by the light proceeding from the Sun of righteousnesse and by that eye whose bird is the Holy Dove whose Candle is the Gospel Scio incapacem te sacramenti Impie Non posse coecis mentibus mysterium Haurire nostrum nil diurnum nox capit He that shall discourse Euclids elements to a swine or preach as Venerable Bede's story reports of him to a rock or talk Metaphysicks to a Bore will as much prevail upon his assembly as S. Peter and S. Paul could do upon uncircumcised hearts and ears upon the indisposed Greeks and prejudicate Jews An Ox will relish the tender flesh of Kids with as much gust and appetite as an unspirituall and unsanctified man will do the discourses of Angels or of an Apostle if he should come to preach the secrets of the Gospel And we finde it true by a sad experience How many times doth God
that period they had the whole wealth of the earth before them they need not fight for empires or places for their cattle to grase in they lived long and felt no want no slavery no tyrannie no war and the evils that happened were single personal and natural and no violences were then done but they were like those things which the law calls rare contingencies for which as the law can now take no care and make no provisions so then there was no law but men lived free and rich and long and they exercised no vertues but natural and knew no felicity but natural and so long their prosperity was just as was their vertue because it was a natural instrument towards all that which they knew of happinesse * But this publick easinesse and quiet the world turned into sin and unlesse God did compel men to do themselves good they would undoe themselves and then God broke in upon them with a flood and destroyed that generation that he might begin the government of the world upon a new stock and binde vertue upon mens spirits by new bands endeared to them by new hopes and fears Then God made new laws and gave to Princes the power of the sword and men might be punshed to death in certain cases and mans life was shortened and slavery was brought into the world and the state of servants and then war began and evils multiplied upon the face of the earth in which it is naturally certain that they that are most violent and injurious prevailed upon the weaker and more innocent and every tyranny that began from Nimrod to this day and every usurper was a peculiar argument to shew that God began to teach the world vertue by suffering and that therefore he suffered Tyrannies and usurpations to be in the world and to be prosperous and the rights of men to be snatched away from the owners that the world might be established in potent and setled governments and the sufferers be taught al the passive vertues of the soul. For so God brings good out of evil turning Tyranny into the benefits of Government and violence into vertue and sufferings into rewards and this was the second change of the world personal miseries were brought in upon Adam and his posterity as a punishment of sin in the first period and in the second publick evils were brought in by tyrants and usurpers and God suffered them as the first elements of vertue men being just newly put to schoole to infant sufferings But all this was not much Christs line was not yet drawn forth it began not to appear in what family the King of sufferings should descend till Abrahams time and therefore till then there were no greater sufferings then what I have now reckoned But when Abrahams family was chosen from among the many nations and began to belong to God by a special right and he was designed to be the Father of the Messias then God found out a new way to trie him even with a sound affliction commanding him to offer his beloved Isaac but this was accepted and being intended by Abraham was not intended by God for this was a type of Christ and therefore was also but a type of sufferings excepting the sufferings of the old periods and the sufferings of nature and accident we see no change made for a long while after but God having established a law in Abrahams family did build it upon promises of health and peace and victory and plenty and riches and so long as they did not prevaricate the law of their God so long they were prosperous but God kept a remnant of Cananites in the land like a rod held over them to vex or to chastise them into obedience in which while they persevered nothing could hurt them and that saying of David needs no other sence but the letter of its own expression I have been young and now am old and yet saw I never the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging their bread The godly generally were prosperous and a good cause seldome had an ill end and a good man never died an ill death till the law had spent a great part of its time and it descended towards its declension and period But that the great prince of sufferings might not appear upon his stage of tragedies without some forerunners of sorrow God was pleased to choose out some good men and honour them by making them to become little images of suffering Isaiah Jeremy and Zachary were martyrs of the law but these were single deaths Shadrac Meshec and Abednego were thrown into a burning furnace and Daniel into a den of lions and Susanna was accused for adultery but these were but little arâ—ests of the prosperity of the Godly as the time drew neerer that Christ should be manifest so the sufferings grew bigger and more numerous and Antiochus raised up a sharp persecution in the time of the Maccabees in which many passed through the red sea of blood into the bosome of Abraham then Christ came and that was the third period in which the changed method of Gods providence was perfected for Christ was to do his great work by sufferings by sufferings was to enter into blessednesse by his passion he was made prince of the Catholickchurch and as our Head was so must the members be God made the same covenant with us that he did with his most holy Son Christ obtaind no better conditions for us then for himself that was not to be looked for the servant must not be above his master it is well if he be as his Master if the world persecuted him they will also persecute us and from the dayes of John the Baptist the kingdome of Heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force not the violent doers but the sufferers of violence for though the old law was established in the promises of temporal prosperity yet the gospel is founded in temporal adversity It is directly a covenant of sufferings and sorrows for now the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God that 's the sence and designe of the text and I intend it as a direct antinomy to the common perswasion of tyrannous carnal and vicious men who reckon nothing good out what is prosperous for though that proposition had many degrees of truth in the beginning of the law yet the case is now altered God hath established its contradictory and now every good man must look for persecution and every good cause must expect to thrive by the sufferings and patience of holy persons and as men do well and suffer evil so they are dear to God and whom he loves most he afflicts most and does this with a designe of the greatest mercy in the world 1. Then the state of the Gospel is a state of sufferings not of temporal prosperities this was foretold by the prophets a fountain shall go out of the house of the Lord
that be all their hopes then we may with a sad spirit and a soul of pity inquire into the Question of the Text Where shall the ungodly and sinner appear Even there where Gods face shall never shine where there shall be fire and no light where there shall be no Angels but what are many thousands yeers ago turned into Devils whereno good man shall ever dwell and from whence the evil and the accursed shall never be dismissed O my God let my soul never come into their counsels nor lie down in their sorrows Sermon XII THE MERCY OF THE DIVINE IVDGMENTS OR Gods Method in curing Sinners 2. Romanes 4. Despisest thou the riches of his goodnesse and forbearance and long-suffering not knowing that the goodnesse of God leadeth thee to repentance FRom the beginning of Time till now all effluxes which have come from God have been nothing but emanations of his goodnesse clothed in variety of circumstances He made man with no other designe then that man should be happy and by receiving derivations from his fountain of mercy might reflect glory to him And therefore God making man for his own glory made also a paradise for mans use and did him good to invite him to do himself a greater for God gave forth demonstrations of his power by instances of mercy and he who might have made ten thousand worlds of wonder and prodigy and created man with faculties able onely to stare upon and admire those miracles of mightinesse did choose to instance his power in the effusions of mercy that at the same instant he might represent himself desireable and adorable in all the capacities of amability that is as excellent in himself and profitable to us For as the Sun sends forth a benigne and gentle influence on the seed of Plants that it may invite forth the active and plastick power from its recesse and secresie that by rising into the tallnesse and dimensions of a tree it may still receive a greater and more refreshing influence from its foster-father the prince of all the bodies of light and in all these emanations the Sun its self receives no advantage but the honour of doing benefits so doth the Almighty Father of all the creatures He at first sends forth his blessings upon us that we by using them aright should make our selves capable of greater while the giving glory to God and doing homage to him are nothing for his advantage but onely for ours our duties towards him being like vapours ascending from the earth not at all to refresh the region of the clouds but to return back in a fruitfull and refreshing shower And God created us not that we can increase his felicity but that he might have a subject receptive of felicity from him thus he causes us to be born that we may be capable of his blessings he causes us to be baptized that we may have a title to the glorious promises Evangelicall he gives us his Son that we may be rescued from hell and when we constraine him to use harsh courses towards us it is also in mercy he smites us to cure a disease he sends us sicknesse to procure our health and as if God were all mercy he his mercifull in his first designe in all his instruments in the way and in the end of the journey and does not onely shew the riches of his goodnesse to them that do well but to all men that they may do well he is good to make us good he does us benefits to make us happy and if we by despising such gracious rayes of light and heat stop their progresse and interrupt their designe the losse is not Gods but ours we shall be the miserable and accursed people This is the sense and paraphrase of my Text. Despisest thou the riches of his goodnesse c. Thou dost not know that is thou considerest not that it is for further benefit that God does thee this the goodnesse of God is not a designe to serve his own ends upon thee but thine upon him The goodnesse of God leadeth thee to repentance Here then is Gods method of curing man-kind 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 First goodnesse or inviting us to him by sugred words by the placid arguments of temporall favour and the propositions of excellent promises Secondly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 at the same time although God is provoked every day yet he does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he tolerates our stubbornnesse he forbears to punish and when he does begin to strike takes his hand off and gives us truce and respite For so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies laxamentum and inducias too Thirdly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 still a long putting off and deferring his finall destroying anger by using all meanes to force us to repentance and this especially by the way of judgements these being the last reserves of the Divine mercy and how ever we esteem it is the greatest instance of the divine long sufferance that is in the world After these instruments we may consider the end the strand upon which these land us the purpose of this variety of these laborious and admirable arts with which God so studies and contrives the happinesse and salvation of man it is onely that man may be brought by these meanes unto repentance and by repentance may be brought to eternall life This is the treasure of the Divine goodnesse the great and admirable efflux of the eternal beneficence the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the riches of his goodnesse which whosoever despises despises himself and the great interest of his own felicity he shall die in his impenitence and perish in his folly 1. The first great instrument that God chooses to bring us to him is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 profit or benefit and this must needs be first for those instruments whereby we have a being are so great mercies that besides that they are such which give us the capacities of all other mercies they are the advances of us in the greatest instances of promotion in the world For from nothing to something is an infinite space and a man must have a measure of infinite passed upon him Before he can perceive himself to be either happy or miserable he is not able to give God thanks for one blessing untill he hath received many But then God intends we should enter upon his service at the beginning of our dayes because even then he is before-hand with us and hath already given us great instances of his goodnesse What a prodigy of favour is it to us that he hath passed by so many formes of his creatures and hath not set us down in the rank of any of them till we came to be paulò minores angelis a little lower then the angels and yet from the meanest of them God can perfect his own praise The deeps and the snows the hail and the rain the birds of the air and the fishes of the sea they can and do glorifie
God and give him praise in their capacity and yet he gave them no speech no reason no immortall spirit or capacity of eternall blessednesse but he hath distinguished us from them by the absolute issues of his predestination and hath given us a lasting and eternall spirit excellent organs of perception and wonderfull instruments of expression that we may joyn in consort with the morning star and bear a part in the Chorus with the Angels of light to sing Alleluiah to the great Father of men and Angels But was it not a huge chain of mercies that we were not strangled in the regions of our own naturall impurities but were sustained by the breath of God from perishing in the womb where God formed us in secreto terrae told our bones and kept the order of nature and the miracles of creation and we lived upon that which in the next minute after we were born would strangle us if it were not removed but then God took care of us and his hands of providence clothed us and fed us But why do I reckon the mercies of production which in every minute of our being are alike and continued and are miracles in all senses but that they are common and usuall I onely desire you to remember that God made all the works of his hands to serve him and indeed this mercy of creating us such as we are was not to lead us to repentance but was a designe of innocence he intended we should serve him as the Sun and the Moon do as fire and water do never to prevaricate the laws he fixed to us that we might have needed no repentance But since we did degenerate and being by God made better and more noble creatures then all the inhabitants of the air the water and the earth besides we made our selves baser and more ignoble then any For no dog crocodile or swine was ever Gods enemy as we made our selves yet then from thence forward God began his work of leading us to repentance by the riches of his goodnesse He causeth us to be born of Christian parents under whom we were taught the mysteriousnesse of its goodnesse and designes for the redemption of man And by the designe of which religion repentance was taught to mankind and an excellent law given for distinction of good and evil and this is a blessing which though possibly we do not often put into our eucharisticall Letanies to give God thanks for yet if we sadly consider what had become of us if we had been born under the dominion of a Turkish Lord or in America where no Christians do inhabite where they worship the Devil where witches are their priests their prophets their phisitians and their Oracles can we choose but apprehend a visible notorious necessity of perishing in those sins which we then should not have understood by the glasse of a divine law to have declined nor by a revelation have been taught to repent of But since the best of men does in the midst of all the great advantages of lawes and examples and promises and threatnings do many things he ought to be ashamed of and needs to repent of we can understand the riches of the Divine goodnesse best by considering that the very designe of our birth and education in the Christian religion is that we may recover of and cure our follies by the antidote of repentance which is preached to us as a doctrine and propounded as a favour which was put into a law and purchased for us by a great expence which God does not more command to us as a duty then he gives us a blessing For now that we shall not perish for our first follies but be admitted to new conditions to be repaired by second thoughts to have our infirmities excused and our sins forgiven our habits lessened and our malice cured after we were wounded and sick and dead and buried and in the possession of the Devil this was such a blessing so great riches of the Divine goodnesse that as it was taught to no religion but the Christian revealed by no law-giver but Christ so it was a favour greater then ever God gave to the Angels and Devils for although God was rich in the effusion of his goodnesse towards them yet they were not admitted to the condition of second thoughts Christ never shed one drop of blood for them his goodnesse did not lead them to repentance but to us it was that he made this largesse of his goodnesse to us to whom he made himself a brother and sucked the paps of our mother he paid the scores of our sin and shame and death onely that we might be admitted to repent and that this repentance might be effectuall to the great purposes of felicity and salvation And if we would consider this sadly it might make us better to understand our madnesse and folly in refusing to repent That is to be sorrowfull and to leave all our sins and to make amends by a holy life For that we might be admitted and suffered to do so God was fain to pour forth all the riches of his goodnesse It cost our deerest Lord the price of his deerest blood many a thousand groans millions of prayers and sighes and at this instant he is praying for our repentance nay he hath prayed for our repentance these 1600. yeers incessantly night and day and shall do so till doomes-day He sits at the right hand of God making intercession for us And that we may know what he prayes for he hath sent us Embassadours to declare the purpose of all his designe for Saint Paul saith We are Embassadours for Christ as though he did beseech you by us we pray you in Christs stead to be reconciled to God The purpose of our Embassy and Ministery is a prosecution of the mercies of God and the work of Redemption and the intercession and mediation of Christ It is the work of atonement and reconciliation that God designed and Christ died for and still prayes for and we preach for and you all must labour for And therefore here consider if it be not infinite impiety to despise the riches of such a goodnesse which at so great a charge with such infinite labour and deep mysterious arts invites us to repentance that is to such a thing which could not be granted to us unlesse Christ should die to purchase it such a glorious favour that is the issue of Christs prayers in heaven and of all his labours his sorrows and his sufferings on earth if we refuse to repent now we do not so much refuse to do our own duty as to accept of a reward it is the greatest and the dearest blessing that ever God gave to Men that they may repent and therefore to deny it or to delay it is to refuse health brought us by the skill and industry of the Physitian it is to refuse liberty indulged to us by our gracious Lord and certainly we had reason
to take it very ill if at a great expence we should purchase a pardon for a servant and he out of a peevish pride or negligence shall refuse it the scorne payes it self the folly is its own scourge and sets down in an inglorious ruine After the enumeration of these glories these prodigies of mercies loving kindnesses of Christs dying for us and interceding for us and merely that we may repent and be saved I shall lesse need to instance those other particularities wherby God continues as by so many arguments of kindnesse to sweeten our natures and make them malleable to the precepts of love and obedience the twinne daughters of holy repentance but the poorest person amongst us besides the blessing and graces already reckoned hath enough about him and the accidents of every day to shame him into repentance Does not God send his angels to keep thee in all thy wayes are not they ministring spirits sent forth to wait upon thee as thy guard art not thou kept from drowing from fracture of bones from madnesse from deformities by the riches of the divine goodnesse Tell the joynts of thy body dost thou want a finger and if thou doest not understand how great a blessing that is do but remember how ill thou canst spare the use of it when thou hast but a thorn in it The very privative blessings the blessings of immunity safeguard and integrity which we all enjoy deserve a thanksgiving of a whole life If God should send a cancer upon thy face or a wolf into thy brest he if should spread a crust of leprosie upon thy skin what wouldest thou give to be but as now thou art wouldest thou not repent of thy sins upon that condition which is the greater blessing to be kept from them or to be cured of them and why therfore shall not this greater blessing lead thee to repentance why do we not so aptly promise repentance when we are sick upon the condition to be made well and yet perpetually forget it when we are well as if health never were a blessing but when we have it not rather I fear the reason is when we are sick we promised to repent because then we cannot sin the sins of our former life but in health our appetites return to their capacity and in all the way we despise the riches of the divine goodnesse which preserves us from such evils which would be full of horror and amazement if they should happen to us Hath God made any of you all chapfallen are you affrighted with spectars and â—llusions of the spirits of darknesse how many earthquakes have you been in how many dayes have any of you wanted bread how many nights have you been without sleep are any of you distracted of your senses and if God gives you meat and drink health and sleep proper seasons of the year intire senses and an useful understanding what a great unworthynesse it is to be unthankful to so good a God so benigne a Father so gracious a Lord All the evils and basenesse of the world can shew nothing baser and more unworthy then ingratitude and therefore it was not unreasonably said of Aristottle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 prosperity makes a man love God supposing men to have so much humanity left in them as to love him from whom they have received so many favours And Hippocrates said that although poor men use to murmur against God yet rich men will be offering sacrifice to their Diety whose beneficiaries they are Now since the riches of the divine goodnesse are so poured out upon the meanest of us all if we shal refuse to repent which is a condition so reasonable that God requiers it onely for our sake and that it may end in our felicity we do our selves despite to be unthankful to God that is we become miserable by making our selves basely criminal And if any man with whom God hath used no other method but of his sweetnesse and the effusion of mercies brings no other fruits but the apples of Sodom in return for all his culture and labours God wil cut off that unprofitable branch that with Sodom it may suffer the flames of everlasting burning 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If here we have good things and a continual shower of blessings to soften our stony hearts and we shall remain obdurat against those sermons of mercy which God makes us every day there will come a time when this shall be upbraided to us that we had not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a thankful minde but made God to sowe his seed upon the sand or upon the stones without increase or restitution It was a sad alarum which God sent to David by Nathan to upbraid his ingratitude I anointed thee king over Israel I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul I gave thee thy masters house and wives into thy bosom and the house of Israel and Judah and if this had been too little I would have given thee such and such things wherefore hast thou despised the name of the Lord but how infinitely more can God say to all of us then all this came to he hath anointed us kings and priests in the royal priâ—sthood of Christianity he hath given us his holy spirit to be our guide his angels to be our protectors his creatures for our food and raiment he hath delivered us from the hands of Sathan hath conquered death for us hath taken the sting out and made it harmlesse and medicinal and proclaimed us heires of heaven coheires with the eternal Jesus and if after all this we despise the commandment of the Lord and defer and neglect our repentance what shame is great enough what miseries are sharp enough what hell painful enough for such horrid ingratitude Saint Lewis the King having sent â—vo Bishop of Chartres on an embassy the Bishop met a woman on the way grave sad Phantastick malancholy with fire in one hand and water in the other he asked what those symbols ment she answered my purpose is with fire to burn Paradise and with my water to quench the flames of hell that men may serve God without the incentives of hope and fear purely for the love of God But this woman began at the wrong end the love of God is not produced in us after we have contracted evil habits til God with his fan in his hand hath throughly purged the floore till he hath cast out all the devils and swept the house with the instrument of hope and fear and with the atchieuments and efficacy of mercies and judgements But then since God may truely say to us as of old to his rebellious people Am I a dry tree to the house of Israel that is do I bring them no fruit do they serve me for nought and he expects not our duty till first we feel his goodnesse we are now infinitely inexcusable to throw away so great
your danger with a sober spirit the fear of it would have half killed you If he had but told you how often God had sent out his Warrants to the exterminating Angel and our Blessed Saviour by his intercession hath obtained a reprieve that he might have the content of rejoycing at thy conversion and repentance If you had known from him the secrets of that providence which governs us in secret and how many thousand times the Devil would have done thee hurt and how often himself as a ministring spirit of Gods goodnesse and forbearance did interpose and abate or divert a mischief which was falling on thy head it must needs cover thy head with a cloud of shame and blushing at that ingratitude and that folly that neither will give God thanks nor secure thy own well being Hadst thou never any dangerous fall in thy intemperance then God shewed thee thy danger and that he was angry at thy sin but yet did so pity thy person that he would forbear thee a little longer else that fall had been into thy grave When thy gluttony gave thee a surfet and God gave thee a remedy his meaning then was that thy gluttony rather should be cured then thy surfet that repentance should have been thy remedy and abstinence and fasting should be thy cure Did ever thy proud or revengefull spirit engage the upon a Duell or a vexatious Law-suit and God brought thee off with life or peace his purpose then was that his mercy should teach thee charity and he that cannot read the purposes of God written with the finger of judgement for as yet his whole hand is not laid on either is consigned to eternall ruine because God will no more endeavour his cure or if his mercy still continues and goes on in long-suffering it shall be by such vexatious instruments such causticks and corrosives such tormenting and desperate medicaments such which in the very cure will soundly punish thy folly and ingratitude For deceive not your selves Gods mercy cannot be made a patron for any mans impiety the purpose of it is to bring us to repentance and God will do it by the mercies of his mercies or by the mercies of his judgements he will either break our hearts into a thousand fragments of contrition or break our bones in the ruines of the grave and hell And since God rejoyces in his mercy above all his works he will be most impatient that we shall despise that in which he most delights and in which we have the greatest reason to delight the riches of that goodnesse which is essentiall and part of his glory and is communicated to us to bring us to repentance that we may partake of that goodnesse and behold that glory Sermon XIII The mercies of the Divine Judgements Part II. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 long-suffering in this one word are contained all the treasures of the Divine goodnesse here is the length and extension of his mercy pertrahit spiritum super nos Dominus so the Syrian Interpreter reads Luk. 18. 7. God holds his breath He retains his anger within him lest it should come forth and blast us and here is also much of the Divine justice For although God suffers long yet he does not let us alone he forbears to destroy us but not to punish us and in both he by many accidents gives probation of his power according to the prayer of the Wise man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Thou art mercifull towards us all because thou canst do all things and thou passedst by the sins of men that they may repent And that God shall support our spirit and preserve our patience and nourish our hope and correct our stubbornnesse and mortifie our pride and bring us to him whether we will or no by such gracious violences and mercifull judgements which he uses towards us as his last remedies is not onely the demonstration of a mighty mercy but of an almighty power So hard a thing it is to make us leave our follies and become wise that were not the mercies of God an effective pity and clothed in all the way of its progresse with mightinesse and power every sinner should perish irrevocably But this is the fiery triall the last purgatory fire which God uses to burn the thistles and purifie the drosse When the gentle influence of a Sun-beam will not wither them nor the weeding hook of a short affliction cut them out then God comes with fire to burn us with the ax laid to the root of the tree but then observe that when we are under this state of cure we are so neer destruction that the same instrument that God uses for remedy to us is also prepared to destroy us the fire is as apt to burn us to ashes as to cleansing when we are so overgrown and the ax as instrumentall to cut us down for fewell as to square us for building in Gods temple and therefore when it comes thus far it will be hard discerning what the purpose of the ax is and whether the fire means to burn we shall know it by the change wrought upon our selves For what Plato said concerning his dream of Purgatory is true here Quicunque non purgatus migrat ad inferos jacebit in luto quicunque verò mitratus illuc accesserit habitabit cum Deis He that dies in his impurities shall lie in it for ever but he that descends to his grave purged and mitred that is having quitted his vices superinduens justitiam being clothed with righteousnesse shall dwell in light and immortality It is sad that we put God to such extremities and as it happens in long diseases those which Physitians use for the last remedies seldom prevail and when consumptive persons come to have their heads shaven they do not often escape So it is when we put God to his last remedies God indeed hath the glory of his patience and his long-suffering but we seldom have the benefit and the use of it For if when our sin was young and our strength more active and our habits lesse and vertue not so much a stranger to us we suffered sin to prevail upon us to grow stronger then the ruins of our spirit and to lesson us into the state of sicknesse and disability in the midst of all those remedies which God used to our beginning diseases much more desperate is our recovery when our disease is stronger and our faculties weaker when our sins raigne in us and our thoughts of vertue are not alive However although I say this and it is highly considerable to the purpose that we never suffered things to come to this extremity yet if it be upon us we must do as well as we can But then we are to look upon it as a designe of Gods last mercy beyond which if we protract our repentance our condition is desperately miserable The whole state of which mercy we understand by the parable of the King reckoning
men to go on in sins and punishes them not it is not a mercy it is not a forbearance it is a hardning them a consigning them to ruine and reprobation and themselves give the best argument to prove it for they continue in their sin they multiply their iniquity and every day grow more enemy to God and that is no mercy that increases their hostility and enmity with God A prosperous iniquity is the most unprosperous condition in the whole world when he slew them that sought him and turned them early and enquired after God but as long as they prevailed upon their enemies then they forgat that God was their strength and the high God was their redeemer It was well observed by the Persian Embassadour of old when he was telling the King a sad story of the overthrow of all his army by the Athenians he addes this of his own that the day before the sight the young Persian gallants being confident they should destroy their enemies were drinking drunk and railing at the timerousnesse and fears of religion and against all their Gods saying there were no such things and that all things came by chance industry nothing by the providence of the supreme power But the next day when they had fought unprosperously and flying from their enemies who were eager in their pursuit they came to the river strymon which was so frozen that their boats could not lanch and yet it began to thaw so that they feared the ice would not bear them Then you should see the bold gallants that the day before said there was no God most timorously and superstitiously fall upon their faces and begged of God that the river strymon might bear them over from their enemies What wisdom and Philosophy and perpetual experience and revelation and promises and blessings cannot do a mighty fear can it can allay the confidences of a bold lust and an imperious sin and soften our spirit into the lownesse of a Childe our revenge into the charity of prayers our impudence into the blushings of a chidden girle and therefore God hath taken a course proportionable for he is not so unmercifully merciful as to give milk to an infirm lust and hatch the egge to the bignesse of a cocatrice and therefore observe how it is that Gods mercy prevailes over all his works it is even then when nothing can be discerned but his judgements For as when a famin had been in Israel in the dayes of Ahab for three years and a half when the angry prophet Elijah met the King and presently a great winde arose and the dust blew into the eyes of them that walked abroad and the face of the heavens was black and all tempest yet then the prophet was the most gentle and God began to forgive and the heavens were more beautiful then when the Sun puts on the brightest ornaments of a bridegrome going from his chambers of the east so it is in the Oeconomy of the divine mercy when God makes our faces black and the windes blow so loud till the cordage cracks and our gay fortunes split and our houses are dressed with Cypresse and yew and the mourners go about the streets this is nothing but the pompa misericordiae this is the funeral of oursins dressed indeed with emblems of mourning and proclaimed with sad accents of death but the sight is refreshing as the beauties of the field which God hath blessed and the sounds are healthful as the noise of a physitian This is that riddle spoken of in the psalme Calix in manu Dom vini meri plenus misto the pure impure the mingled unmingled cup for it is a cup in which God hath poured much of his severity and anger and yet it is pure and unmingled for it is all mercy and so the riddle is resolved and our cup is full and made more wholsome lymphatum crescit dulcescit laedere nescit it is some justice and yet it is all mercy the very justice of God being an act of mercy a forbearance of the man or the nation and the punishing the sin Thus it was in the case of the children of Israel when they ran after the bleating of the idolatrous calves Moses prayed passionately and God heard his prayer and forgave their sin upon them And this was Davids observation of the manner of Gods mercy to them Thou wast a God and forgavest them though thou tookest veangeance of their inventions for Gods mercy is given to us by parts and to certain purposes sometimes God onely so forgives us that he does not cut us off in the sin but yet layes on a heavy load of judgements so he did to his people when he sent them to schoole under the discipline of 70 years captivity somtimes he makes a judgement lesse and forgives in respect of the degree of the infliction he strikes more gently and whereas God had designed it may be the death of thy self or thy neerest relative he is content to take the life of a childe and so he did to David when he forbore him the Lord hath taken away thy sin thou shalt not die neverthelesse the childe that is born unto thee that shall die sometimes he puts the evil off to a further day as he did in the case of Ahab and Hezekiah to the first he brought the evil upon his house and to the second he brought the evil upon his kingdom in his sons dayes God forgiving onely so as to respite the evil that they should have peace in their own dayes And thus when we have committed a sin against God which hath highly provoked him to anger even upon our repentance we are not sure to be forgiven so as we understand forgivenes that is to hear no more of it never to be called to an account but we are happy if God so forgives us as not to throw us into the insufferable flames of hell though he smite us still we groan for our misery till we chatter like a swallow as Davids expression is and though David was an excellent penitent yet after he had lost the childe begotten of Bathsheba and God had told him he had forgiven him yet he raised up his darling son against him and forced him to an inglorious flight and his son lay with his Fathers concubins in the face of all Israel so that when we are forgiven yet it is ten to one but GOD will make us to smart and roar for our sinnes for the very disquietnesse of our souls For if we sin and ask God forgivenesse and then are quiet we feele so little inconvenience in the trade that we may more easily be tempted to make a trade of it indeed I wish to God that for every sin we have committed we should heartily cry God mercy and leave it and judge our selves for it to prevent Gods anger but when we have done all that we commonly call repentance and when possibly God hath forgiven us to some
lose it for the pleasure the sottish beastly pleasure of a night I need not say we lose our soul to save our lives for though that was our blessed Saviours instance of the great unreasonablenesse of men who by saving their lives lose them that is in the great account of Dooms-day though this I say be extreamly unreasonable yet there is something to be pretended in the bargain nothing to excuse him with God but something in the accounts of timerous men but to lose our souls with swearing that unprofitable dishonourable and unpleasant vice to lose our souls with disobedience or rebellion a vice that brings a curse and danger all the way in this life To lose our souls with drunkennesse a vice which is painfull and sickly in the very acting it which hastens our damnation by shortning our lives are instances fit to be put in the stories of fools and mad-men and all vice is a degree of the same unreasonablenesse the most splendid temptation being nothing but a prety well weaved fallacy a meer trick a sophisme and a cheating and abusing the understanding but that which I consider here is that it is an affront and contradiction to the wisdom of God that we should so slight and undervalue a soul in which our interest is so concerned a soul which he who made it and who delighted not to see it lost did account a fit purchase to be made by the exchange of his Son the eternal Son of God To which also I adde this additionall account that a soul is so greatly valued by God that we are not to venture the losse of it to save all the world For therefore whosoever should commit a sin to save kingdoms from perishing or if the case could be put that all the good men and good causes and good things in this world were to be destroyed by Tyranny and it were in our power by perjury to save all these that doing this sin would be so farre from hallowing the crime that it were to offer to God a sacrifice of what he most hates and to serve him with swines blood and the rescuing all these from a Tyrant or a hangman could not be pleasing to God upon those termes because a soul is lost by it which is in it self a greater losse and misery then all the evils in the world put together can out-ballance and a losse of that thing for which Christ gave his blood a price Persecutions and temporal death in holy men and in a just cause are but seeming evils and therefore not to be bought off with the losse of a soul which is a real but an intolerable calamity And if God for his own sake would not have all the world saved by sin that is by the hazarding of a soul we should do well for our own sakes not to lose a soul for trifles for things that make us here to be miserable and even here also to be ashamed 3. But it may be some natures or some understandings care not for all this therefore I proceed to the third and most material consideration as to us and I consider what it is to lose a soul which Hierocles thus explicates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 An immortall substance can die not by ceasing to be but by losing all being well by becomming miserable And it is remarkable when our blessed Saviour gave us caution that we should not fear them that can kill the body onely but fear him he sayes not that can kill the soul But 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 him that is able to destroy the body and soul in hell which word signifieth not death but tortures For some have chosen death for sanctuary and fled to it to avoid intolerable shame to give a period to the sence of a sharp grief or to cure the earthquakes of fear and the damned perishing souls shall wish for death with a desire impatient as their calamity But this shall be denied them because death were a deliverance a mercy and a pleasure of which these miserable persons must despair of for ever I shall not need to represent to your considerations those expressions of Scripture which the Holy Ghost hath set down to represent to our capacities the greatnesse of this perishing choosing such circumstances of character as were then usuall in the world and which are dreadful to our understanding as any thing Hell fire is the common expression for the Eastern nations accounted burnings the greatest of their miserable punishments and burning malefactours was frequent brimstone and fire to Saint John Revel 14. 10. calls the state of punishment prepared for the Devil and all his servants he adding the circumstance of brimstone for by this time the Devil had taught the world more ingenious pains and himself was new escaped out of boiling oil and brimstone and such bituminous matter and the Spirit of God knew right well the worst expression was not bad enough 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so our blessed Saviour calls it the outer darknesse that is not onely an abjection from the beatifick regions where God and his Angels and his Saints dwell for ever but then there is a positive state of misery expressed by darknesses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as two Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Jude call it The blacknesse of darknesse for ever In which although it is certain that God whose Justice there rules will inflict but just so much as our sins deserve and not superadde degrees of undeserved misery as he does to the Saints of glory for God gives to blessed souls in heaven more infinitely more then all their good works could possibly deserve and therefore their glory is infinitely bigger glory then the pains of hell are great pains yet because Gods Justice in hell rules alone without the allayes and sweeter abatements of mercy they shall have pure and unmingled misery no pleasant thought to refresh their wearinesse no comfort in an other accident to alleviate their pressures no waters to cool their flames but because when there is a great calamity upon a man every such man thinks himself the most miserable and though there are great degrees of pain in hell yet there are none perceived by him that thinks he suffers the greatest It follows that every man that loses his soul in this darknesse is miserable beyond all those expressions which the tortures of this world could furnish to the Writers of holy Scripture But I shall choose to represent this consideration in that expression of our blessed Saviour Mark the 9. the 44. verse which himself took out of the Prophet Esay the 66. verse the 24. Where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched this is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 spoken of by Daniel the Prophet for although this expression was a prediction of that horrid calamity and abscision of the Jewish Nation when God poured out a full vial of his wrath upon the crucifiers of his Son and that this which was
restrained by an imperfect feared shame so long as they think there is a reserve of reputation which they may secure then they can be with all the furious declamations of the world when themselves are represented ugly and odious full of shame and actually punished with the worst of temporâ—â—â— evils beyond which he fears not here to suffer and from whence because he knows it will be hard for him to be redeemed by an afterâ—game of reputation it makes him desperate and incorrigible bâ— fraternall correption A zealous man hath not done his duty when he calls his brother drunkard and beast and he may better do it by telling him he is a man and sealed with Gods Spirit and honoured with the title of a Christian and is or ought to be reputed as a discreet person by his friends and a governour of a family or a guide in his countrey or an example to many and that it is huge pity so many excellent things should be sullied and allayed with what is so much below all this Then a reprover does his duty when he is severe against the vice and charitable to the man and carefull of his reputation and sorry for his reall dishonour and observant of his circumstances and watchfull to surprize his affections and resolutions there where they are most tender and most tenable and men will not be in love with vertue whither they are forced with rudenesse and incivilities but they love to dwell there whither they are invited friendly and where they are treated civilly and feasted liberally and lead by the hand and the eye to honour and felicity 6. It is a duty of Christian prudence not to suffer our souls to walk alone unguarded unguided and more single then in other actions and interests of our lives which are of lesse concernment Vae soli singulari said the Wise man Wo to him that is alone and if we consider how much God hath done to secure our souls and after all that how many wayes there are for a mans soul to miscarry we should think it very necessary to call to a spirituall man to take us by the hand to walk in the wayes of God and to lead us in all the regions of duty and thorow the labyrinths of danger For God who best loves and best knows how to value our souls set a price no lesse upon it then the life-blood of his Holy Son he hath treated it with variety of usages according as the world had new guises and new necessities he abates it with punishment to make us avoid greater he shortned our life that we might live for ever he turns sicknesse into vertue he brings good out of evil he turns enmities to advantages our very sins into repentances and stricter walking he defeats all the follies of men and all the arts of the Devil and layes snares and uses violence to secure our obedience he sends Prophets and Priests to invite us and to threaten us to felicities he restrains us with lawes and he bridles us with honour and shame reputation and society friends and foes he layes hold on us by the instruments of all the passions he is enough to fill our love he satisfies our hope he affrights us with fear he gives us part of our reward in hand and entertains all our faculties with the promises of an infinite and glorious portion he curbs our affections he directs our wills he instructs our understandings with Scriptures with perpetuall Sermons with good books with frequent discourses with particular observations and great experience with accidents and judgements with rare events of providence and miracles he sends his Angels to be our guard and to place us in opportunities of vertue and to take us off from ill company and places of danger to set us neer to good example he gives us his holy Spirit and he becomes to us a principle of a mighty grace descending upon us in great variety and undiscerned events besides all those parts of it which men have reduced to a method and an art and after all this he forgives us infinite irregularities and spares us every day and still expects and passes by and waits all our dayes still watching to do us good and to save that soul which he knowes is so precious one of the chiefest of the works of God and an image of divinity Now from all these arts and mercies of God besides that we have infinite reason to adore his goodnesse we have also a demonstration that we ought to do all that possibly we can and extend all our faculties and watch all our opportunities and take in all assistances to secure the interest of our soul for which God is pleased to take such care and use so many arts for its security If it were not highly worth it God would not do it If it were not all of it necessary God would not do it But if it be worth it and all of it be necessary why should we not labour in order to this great end If it be worth so much to God it is so much more to us for if we perish his felicity is undisturbed but we are undone infinitely undone It is therefore worth taking in a spirituall guide so far we are gone But because we are in the question of prudence we must consider whether it be necessary to do so For every man thinks himself wise enough as to the conduct of his soul and managing of his eternal interest and divinity is every mans trade and the Scriptures speak our own language and the commandments are few and plain and the laws are the measure of justice and if I say my prayers and pay my debts my duty is soon summed up and thus we usually make our accounts for eternity and at this rate onely take care for heaven but let a man be questioned for a portion of his estate or have his life shaken with diseases then it will not be enough to employ one agent or to send for a good woman to minister a potion of the juices of her country garden but the ablest Lawyers and the skilfullest Physitians the advice of friends and huge caution and diligent attendances and a curious watching concerning all the accidents and little passages of our disease and truly a mans life and health is worth all that and much more and in many cases it needs it all But then is the soul the onely safe and the onely trifling thing about us Are not there a thousand dangers and ten thousand difficulties and innumerable possibilities of a misadventure Are not all the congregations in the world divided in their doctrines and all of them call their own way necessary and most of them call all the rest damnable we had need of a wise instructor and a prudent choice at our first entrance and election of our side and when we are well in the matter of Faith for its object and jnstitution all the evils of my self and
all the evils of the Church and all the good that happens to evil men every day of danger the periods of sicknesse and the day of death are dayes of tempest and storm and our faith wil suffer shipwrack unlesse it be strong and supported and directed But who shall guide the vessel when a stormy passion or a violent imagination transports the man who shall awaken his reason and charm his passion into slumber instruction How shal a man make his fears confident and allay his confidence with fear and make the allay with just proportions and steere evenly between the extremes or call upon his sleeping purposes or actuate his choices or binde him to reason in all the wandrings and ignorances in his passion and mistakes For suppose the man of great skil and great learning in the wayes of religion yet if he be abused by accident or by his own will who shall then judge his cases of conscience and awaken his duty and renew his holy principle and actuate his spiritual powers For Physitians that prescribe to others do not minister to themselves in cases of danger and violent sicknesses and in matter of distemperature we shall not finde that books alone will do all the work of a spiritual Physitian more then of a natural I will not go about to increase the dangers and difficulties of the soul to represent the assistance of a spiritual man to be necessary But of this I am sure our not understanding and our not considering our soul make us first to neglect and then many times to lose it But is not every man an unequal judge in his own case and therefore the wisdom of God and the laws hath appointed tribunals and Judges and arbitrators and that men are partial in the matter of souls it is infinitely certain because amongst those milions of souls that perish not one in ten thousand but believes himself in a good condition and all sects of Christians think they are in the right and few are patient to enquire whether they be or no then adde to this that the Questions of souls being clothed with circumstances of matter and particular contingency are or may be infinite and most men are so infortunate that they have so intangled their cases of conscience that there where they have done something good it may be they have mingled half a dozen evils and when interests are confounded and governments altered and power strives with right and insensibly passes into right and duty to God would fain be reconciled with duty to our relatives will it not be more then necessary that we should have some one that we may enquire of after the way to heaven which is now made intricate by our follies and inevitable accidents But by what instrument shall men alone and in their own cases be able to discern the spirit of truth from the spirit of illusion just confidence from presumption fear from pusillanimity are not all the things and assistances in the world little enough to defend us against pleasure and pain the two great fountains of temptation is it not harder to cure a lust then to cure a feaver and are not the deceptions and follies of men and the arts of the Devil and inticements of the world the deceptions of a mans own heart and the evils of sin more evil and more numerous then the sicknesses and diseases of any one man and if a man perishes in his soul is it not infinitely more sad then if he could rise from his grave and die a thousand deaths over Thus we are advanced a second step in this prudential motive God used many arts to secure our souls interest and there is infinite dangers and infinite wayes of miscarriage in the souls interest and therefore there is great necessity God should do all those mercies of security and that we should do all the under-ministeries we can in this great work But what advantage shall we receive by a spiritual Guide much every way For this is the way that God hath appointed who in every age hath sent a succession of spiritual persons whose office is to minister in holy things and to be stewards of Gods houshold shepherds of the flock dispensers of the mysteries under mediators and ministers of prayer preachers of the law expounders of questions monitors of duty conveiances of blessings and that which is a good discourse in the mouth of another man is from them an ordinance of God and besides its natural efficacy and perswasion it prevails by the way of blessing by the reverence of his person by divine institution by the excellency of order by the advantages of opinion and assistances of reputation by the influence of the spirit who is the president of such ministeries and who is appointed to all Christians according to the despensation that is appointed to them to the people in their obedience and frequenting of the ordinance to the Priest in his ministery and publick and privat offices To which also I adde this consideration that as the Holy Sacraments are hugely effective to spiritual purposes not onely because they convey a blessing to the worthy suscipients but because men cannot be worthy suscipients unlesse they do many excellent acts of vertue in order to a previous disposition so that in the whole conjunction and transaction of affaires there is good done by way of proper efficacy and divine blessing so it is in following the conduct of a spiritual man and consulting with him in the matter of our souls we cannot do it unless we consider our souls and make religion our businesse and examine our present state and consider concerning our danger and watch and designe for our advantages which things of themselves wil set a man much forwarder in the way of Godlinesse besides thath naturally every man will lesse dare to act a sin for which he knows he shall feel a present shame in his discoveries made to the spiritual Guide the man that is made the witnesse of his conversation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Holy men ought to know all things from God and that relate to God in order to the conduct of souls and there is nothing to be said against this if we do not suffer the devil in this affaire to abuse us as he does many people in their opinions teaching men to suspect there is a designe and a snake under the plantain But so may they suspect Kings when they command obedience or the Levites when they read the law of tithes or Parents when they teach their children temperance or Tutors when they watch their charge However it is better to venture the worst of the designe then to lose the best of the assistance and he that guides himself hath much work and much danger but he that is under the conduct of another his work is easy little and secure it is nothing but diligence and obedience and though it be a hard thing to rule well yet
our religion can charme the passion and enable the spirit to entertain and master a sorrow and when we have such rare supplies out of the store-houses of reason and religion we have lesse reason to use these arts and little deviees which are arguments of an infirmity as great as is the charity and therefore we are to keep our selves strictly to the foregoing measures Let every man speak the truth to his neighbour putting away lying for we are members one of another and be as harmlesse as doves saith our blessed Saviour in my text which contain the whole duty concerning the matter of truth and sincerity in both which places truth and simplicity are founded upon justice and charity and therefore wherever a lie is in any sense against justice and wrongs any thing of a man his judgement and his reason his right or his liberty it is expresly forbidden in the Christian religion what cases we can truly suppose to be besides these the law forbids not and therefore it is lawful to say that to my self which I believe not for what innocent purpose I please and to all those over whose understanding I have or ought to have right These cases are intricate enough and therefore I shall return plainly to presse the doctrine of simplicity which ought to be so sacred that a man ought to do nothing indirectly which it is not lawful to own to receive no advantage by the sin of another which I should account dishonest if the action were my own for whatsoever disputes may be concerning the lawfulnesse of pretending craftily in some rare and contingent cases yet it is on all hands condemned that my craft should do injury to my brother I remember that when some greedy and indigent people forged a will of Lucius Minutius Basilius and joyned M. Crassus and Q. Hortensius in the inheritance that their power for their own interest might secure the others share they suspecting the thing to be a forgery yet being not principals and actors in the contrivance alieni facinoris munus culum non repudiaverunt refused not to receive a present made them by anothers crime but so they entred upon a moiety of the estate and the biggest share of the dishonour we must not be crafty to anothers injury so much as by giving countenance to the wrong for Tortoises and the Estrich hatch their egges with their looks onely and some have designes which a dissembling face or an acted gesture can produce but as a man may commit adultery with his eye so with his eye also he may tell a lie and steal with one finger and do injury collaterally and yet designe it with a direct intuition upon which he looks with his face over his shoulder and by whatsoever instrument my neighbour may be abused by the same instrument I sin if I do designe it antecedently or fal upon it together with something else or rejoyce in it when it is done 7. One thing more I am to adde that it is not lawful to tell a lie in jest It was a vertue noted in Aristides and Epaminondes that they would not lie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not in sport and as Christian simplicity forbids all lying in matter of interest and serious rights so there is an appendix to this precept forbidding to lie in mirth for of every idle word a man shall speak he shall give account in the day of judgment and such are the jestings which S. Paul reckons amongst things uncomly But amongst these fables apologues parables or figures of Rhetorick and any artificial instrument of instruction or innocent pleasure are not to be reckoned But he that without any end of charity or institution shall tell lies onely to become ridiculous in himself or mock another hath set some thing upon his doomsday book which must be taken off by water or by fire that is by repentance or a judgement Nothing is easier then simplicity and ingenuity it is open and ready without trouble and artificial cares fit for communities and the proper vertue of men the necessary appendage of useful speech without which language were given to men as nails and teeth to Lions for nothing but to do mischief it is a rare instrument of institution and a certain token of courage the companion of goodnesse and a noble minde the preserver of friendship the band of society the security of merchants and the blessing of trade it prevents infinite of quarrels and appeals to Judges and suffers none of the evils of Jealousie men by simplicity converse as do the Angels they do their own work and secure their proper interest and serve the publick and do glory to God But hypocrites and liars and dissemblers spread darknesse over the face of affaires and make men like the blinde to walk softly and timorously and crafty men like the close aire suck that which is open and devour its portion and destroy its liberty and it is the guise of devils and the dishonour of the soul and the canker of society and the enemy of justice and truth and peace of wealth and honour of courage and merchandise He is a good man with whom a blind man may safely converse dignus quicum in tenebris mices to whom in respect of his fair treatings the darknesse and light are both alike But he that bears light upon the face and a dark heart is like him that transforms himself into an Angel of light when he means to do most mischief Remember this onely that false colours laid upon the face besmear the skin and durty it but they neither make a beauty nor mend it Apocal 22. 15. For without shall be dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and Murderers and idolaters and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie Sermon XXV THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY Psalm 86. 5 For thou Lord art good and ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy to all them that call upon thee MAN having destroyed that which God delighted in that is the beauty of his soul fell into an evil portion and being seized upon by the divine justice grew miserable and condemned to an incurable sorrow Poor Adam being banished and undone went and lived a sad life in the mountains of India and turned his face and his prayers towards Paradise thither he sent his sighes to that place he directed his devotions there was his heart now and his felicity sometimes had been but he knew not how to return thither for God was his enemy and by many of his attributes opposed himself against him Gods power was armed against him and poor man whom a fly or a fish could kill was assaulted and beaten with a sword of fire in the hand of a Cherubim Gods eye watched him his omniscience was mans accuser his severity was the Judge his justice the executioner It was a mighty calamity that man was to undergo when he that made him armed himself against his creature which would have died or turned
our nature or an appendage to it for whereas our constitution is weak our souls apt to diminution and impedite faculties our bodies to mutilation and imperfection to blindnesse and crookednesse to stammering and sorrows to baldnesse and deformity to evil conditions and accidents of body and to passions and sadnesse of spirit God hath in his infinite mercy provided for every condition rare suppletories of comfort and usefulnesse to make recompence and sometimes with an overrunning proportion for those natural defects which were apt to make our persons otherwise contemptible and our conditions intolerable God gives to blinde men better memories For upon this account it is that Rufinus makes mention of Didymus of Alexandria who being blinde was blessed with a rare attention and singular memory and by prayer and hearing and meditating and discoursing came to be one of the most excellent Divines of that whole age And it was more remarkable in Nicasius Machliniensis who being blockish at his book in his first childhood fell into accidental blindnesse and from thence continually grew to so quick an apprehension and so tenacious a memory that he became the wonder of his contemporaries and was chosen Rector of the College at Mechlin and was made licentiate of Theology at Lovaine and Doctor of both the laws at Colein living and dying in great reputation for his rare parts and excellent learning At the same rate also God deals with men in other instances want of children he recompences with freedom from care and whatsoever evil happens to the body is therefore most commonly single and unaccompanied because God accepts that evil as the punishment of the sin of the man or the instrument of his vertue or his security and is reckoned as a sufficient cure or a sufficient Antidote God hath laid laid a severe law upon all women thâ—â— in sorrow they shall bring forth children yet God hath so attempeâ—ed that sorrow that they think themselves more accursed if they want that sorrow and they have reason to rejoyce in that state the trouble of which is alleviated by a promise that they shall be saved in bearing children He that wants one eye hath the force and vigorousnesse of both united in that which is left him and when ever any man is afflicted with sorrow his reason and his religion himself and all his friends persons that are civil and persons that are obliged run into comfort him and he may if he will observe wisely finde so many circumstances of ease and remission so many designes of providence and studied favours such contrivances of collateral advantage and certain reserves of substantial and proper comforâ— that in the whole sum of affaires it often happens that a single crosse is a double blessing that even in a temporal sense it is better to go to the house of mourning then of joyes and festival egressions Is not the affliction of â—overty better then the prosperity of a great and tempting fortune does not wisdom dwell in a mean estate and a low spirit retired thoughts and under a sad roof and is it not generally true that sicknesse it self is appayed with religion and holy thoughts with pious resolutions and penitential prayers with returns to God and to sober councels and if this be true that God sends sorrow to cure sin and affliction be the hand-maid to grace it is also certain that every sad contingency in nature is doubly recompenced with the advantages of religion besides those intervening refreshments which support the spirit and refresh its instruments I shall need to instance but once more in this particular God hath sent no greater evil into the world then that in the sweat of our brows we shall eat our bread and in the difficulty and agony in the sorrows and contention of our souls we shall work out our salvation But see how in the first of these God hath out done his own anger and defeated the purposes of his wrath by the inundation of his mercy for this labour and sweat of our brows is so far from being a curse that without it our very bread would not be so great a blessing It is not labour that makes the Garlick and the pulse the Sycamore and the Cresses the cheese of the Goats and the butter of the sheep to be savoury and pleasant as the flesh of the Roe-buck or the milk of the Kine the marrow of Oxen or the thighs of birds If it were not for labour men neither could eat so much nor relish so pleasantly nor sleep so soundly nor be so healthful nor so useful so strong nor so patient so noble or so untempted and as God hath made us beholding to labour for the purchase of many good things so the thing it self ows to labour many degrees of its worth and value and therefore I need not reckon that besides these advantages the mercies of God have found out proper and natural remedies for labour Nights to cure the sweat of the day sleep to ease our watchfulnesse rest to alleviate our burdens and dayes of religion to procure our rest and things are so ordered that labour is become a duty and an act of many vertues and is not so apt to turne into a sin as is its contrary and is therefore necessary not onely because we need it for making provisions of our life but even to ease the labour of our rest there being no greater tediousnesse of spirit in the world then want of imployment and an unactive life and the lasie man is not onely unprofitable but also accursed and he groans under the load of his time which yet passes over the active man light as a dreame or the feathers of a bird while the disimployed is a desease and like a long sleeplesse night to himself and a load unto his country And therefore although in this particular God hath been so merciful in this infliction that from the sharpnesse of the curse a very great part of mankinde are freed and there are myriads of people good and bad who do not eat their bread in the sweat of their brows yet this is but an overrunning and an excesse of the divine mercy God did more for us then we did absolutely need for he hath disposed of the circumstances of this curse that mans affections are so reconciled to it that they desire it and are delighted in it and so the Anger of God is ended in loving Kindnesse and the drop of water is lost in the full chalice of the wine and the curse is gone out into a multiplied blessing But then for the other part of the severe law and laborious imposition that we must work out our spiritual interest with the labours of our spirit seems to most men to be so intolerable that rather then passe under it they quit their hopes of heaven and passe into the portion of Devils and what can there be to alleviate this sorrow that a man shall be perpetually sollicited with an
impure tempter and shall carry a flame within him and all the world is on fire round about him and every thing brings fuel to the flame and full tables are a snare and empty tables are collateral servants to a lust and help to blow the fire and kindle the heap of prepared temptations and yet a man must not at all tast of the forbidden fruit and he must not desire what he cannot choose but desire and he must not enjoy whatsoever he does violently covet and must never satisfy his appetite in the most violent importunities but must therefore deny himself because to do so is extremely troublesome this seems to be an art of torture and a devise to punish man with the spirit of agony and a restlesse vexation But this also hath in it a great ingredient of mercy or rather is nothing else but a heap of mercy in its intire constitution For if it were not for this we had nothing of our own to present to God nothing proportionable to the great rewards of heaven but either all men or no man must go thither for nothing can distinguish man from man in order to beatitude but choice and election and nothing can enoble the choice but love and nothing can exercise love but difficulty and nothing can make that difficulty but the contradiction of our appetite and the crossing of our natural affections and therefore whenever any of you is tempted violently or grow weary in your spirits with resisting the petulancy of temptation you may be cured if you will please but to remember and rejoyce that now you have something of your own to give to God something that he will be pleased to accept something that he hath given thee that thou mayest give it him for our mony and our time our dayes of feasting and our dayes of sorrow our discourse and our acts of praise our prayers and our songs our vows and our offerings our worshippings and prostrations and whatsoever else can be accounted in the sum of our religion are onely accepted according as they bear along with them portions of our wil and choice of love and appendant difficulty Laetius est quoties magno tibi constat honestum So that whoever can complain that he serves God with pains and mortifications he is troubled because there is a distinction of things such as we call vertue and vice reward and punishment and if he will not suffer God to distinguish the first he will certainly confound the latter and his portion shall be blacknesse without variety and punishment shall be his reward 6. As an appendage to this instance of divine mercy we are to account that not onely in nature but in contingency and emergent events of providence God makes compensation to us for all the evils of chance and hostilities of accident brings good out of evil which is that solemn triumph which mercy makes over justice when it rides upon a cloud and crowns its darknesse with a robe of glorious light God indeed suffered Joseph to be sold a bondslave into Egypt but then it was that God intended to crown and reward his chastity for by that means he brought him to a fair condition of dwelling and there gave him a noble trial he had a brave contention and he was a conqueror Then God sent him to prison but still that was mercy it was to make way to bring him to Pharaohs court and God brought famine upon Canaan and troubled all the souls of Jacobs family and there was a plot laid for another mercy this was to bring them to see and partake of Josephs glory and then God brought a great evil upon their posterity and they groaned under task-masters but this God changed into the miracles of his mercy and suffered them to be afflicted that he might do ten miracles for their sakes and proclaim to all the world how dear they were to God And was not the greatest good to mankinde brought forth from the greatest treason that ever was committed the redemption of the world from the fact of Judas God loving to defeat the malice of man and the arts of the Devil by rare emergencies and stratagems of mercy It is a sad calamity to see a kingdom spoiled and a church afflicted the Priests slain with the sword and the blood of Nobles mingled with cheaper sand religion made a cause of trouble and the best men most cruelly persecuted Government confounded and laws ashamed Judges decreeing causes in fear and covetousnesse and the ministers of holy things setting themselves against all that is sacred and setting fire upon the fields and turning in little foxes on purpose to destroy the vineyards and what shall make recompence for this heap of sorrows when ever God shall send such swords of fire even the mercies of God which then will be made publick when we shall hear such afflicted people sing Inconvertendo captivitatem Sion with the voice of joy and festival eucharist among such as keep holy day and when peace shall become sweeter and dwell the longer and in the mean time it serves religion and the affliction shall try the children of God and God shall crown them and men shall grow wiser and more holy and leave their petty interstes and take sanctuary in holy living and be taught temperance by their want and patience by their suffering and charity by their persecution and shall better understand the duty of their relations and at last the secret worm that lay at the root of the plant shall be drawn forth and quite extinguished For so have I known a luxuriant Vine swell into irregular twigs and bold excrescencies and spend it self in leaves and little rings and affoord but trifling clusters to the wine-presse and a faint return to his heart which longed to be refreshed with a full vintage But when the Lord of the vine had caused the dressers to cut the wilder plant and made it bleed it grew temperate in its vain expense of uselesse leaves and knotted into fair and juicy bunches and made accounts of that losse of blood by the return of fruit So is an afflicted Province cured of its surfets and punished for its sins and bleeds for its long riot and is left ungoverned for its disobedience and chastised for its wantonnesse and when the sword hath let forth the corrupted blood and the fire hath purged the rest then it enters into the double joyes of restitution and gives God thanks for his rod and confesses the mercies of the Lord in making the smoke be changed into fire and the cloud into a perfume the sword into a staffe and his anger into mercy Had not David suffered more if he had suffered lesse and had he not been miserable unlesse he had been afflicted he understood it well when he said It is good for me that I have been afflicted He that was rival to Crassus when he stood candidate to command the Legions in the Parthians warre was
person for whom God will not hear me yet then he will hear me for my self though I say nothing in my own behalf and our prayers are like Jonathans arrows if they fall short yet they return my friend or my friendship to me or if they go home they secure him whom they pray for and I have not onely the comfort of rejoycing with him but the honour and the reward of procuring him a joy and certain it is that a charitable prayer for another can never want what it asks or instead of it a greater blessing The good man that saw his poor brother troubled because he had nothing to present for an offering at the Holy communion when all knew themselves obliged to do kindnesse for Christs poor members with which themselves were incorporated with so mysterious union and gave him mony that he might present for the good of his soul as other Christians did had not onely the reward of almes but of religion too and that offering was well husbanded for it did benefit to two souls for as I sin when I make another sin so if I help him to do a good I am a sharer in the gains of his talent and he shall not have the lesse but I shall be rewarded upon his stock And this was it which David rejoyced in Particâ—ps sum omnium timentium te I am a partner a companion of all them that fear thee I share in their profits If I do but rejoyce at every grace of God which I see in my Brother I shall be rewarded â—or that grace and we need not envy the excellency of another It becomes mine as well as his and if I do rejoyce I shall have â—ause to rejoyce so excellent so full so artificial is the mercy of God in making and seeking and finding all occasions to do us good 5. The very charity and love and mercy that is commanded in our religion is in it self a great excellency not onely in order to heaven but to the comforts of the earth too such without which a man is not capable of a blessing or a comfort he that sent charity and friendships into the world intended charity to be as relative as justice to do its effect both upon the loving and the beloved person It is a reward and a blessing to a kinde Father when his children do well and every degree of prudent love which 〈◊〉 bears to them is an endearment of his joy and he that loves them not but looks upon them as burdens of necessity and â—oads to his fortune loses those many rejoycings and the pleasâ—â—es of kindnesse which they feast withal who love to divide their fortunes amongst them because they have already divided out large and equal portions of their heart I have instanced in this relation but it is true in all the excellency of friendship and every man rejoyces twice when he hath a partner of his joy A friend shares my sorrow and makes it but a moiâ—ty but he swells my joy and makes it double For so two chanels divide the river and lessen it into rivulets and make it foordable and apt to be drunk up at the first revels of the Sirian star but two torches do not divide but increase the flame and though my tears are the sooner dryed up when they run upon my friends cheeks in the furrows of compassion yet when my flame hath kindled his lamp we unite the glories and make them radiant like the golden Candle-sticks that burn before the throne of God because they shine by numbers by unions and confederations of light and joy And now upon this account which is already so great I need not reckon concerning the collateral issues and little streams of comfort which God hath made to issue from that religion to which God hath obliged us such as are mutual comforts visiting sick people instructing the ignorant and so becoming better instructed and fortified and comforted our selves by the instruments of our Brothers ease and advantages the glories of converting souls of rescuing a sinner from hell of a miserable man from the grave the honour and noblenesse of being a good man the noble confidence and the bravery of innocence the ease of patience the quiet of contentednesse the rest of peacefulnesse the worthinesse of forgiving others the greatnesse of spirit that is in despising riches and the sweetnesse of spirit that is in meeknesse and humility these are Christian graces in every sense favours of God and issues of his bounty his mercy but al that Ishal now observe further concerning them is this that God hath made these necessary he hath obliged us to have them under pain of damnation he hath made it so sure to us to become happy even in this world that if we will not he hath threatened to destroy us which is not a desire or aptnesse to do us an evil but an art to make it impossible that we should For God hath so ordered it that we cannot perish unlesse we desire it our selves and unlesse we will do our selves a mischief on purpose to get hell we are secured of heaven and there is not in the nature of things any way that can more infallibly do the work of felicity upon creatures that can choose then to make that which they should naturally choose be spiritually their duty and that he will make them happy hereafter if they will suffer him to make them happy here But hardly stand another throng of mercies that must be considered by us and God must be glorified in them for they are such as are intended to preserve to us all this felicity 9. God that he might secure our duty and our present and consequent felicity hath tied us with golden chaines and bound us not onely with the bracelets of love and the deliciousnesse of hope but with the ruder cords of fear and reverence even with all the innumerable parts of a restraining grace For it is a huge aggravation of humane calamity to consider that after a man hath been instructed in the love and advantages of his Religion and knows it to be the way of honour and felicity and that to prevaricate his holy sanctions is certain death and disgrace to eternal ages yet that some men shall despise their religion others shall be very weary of its laws and cal the commandments a burden and too many with a perfect choice shall delight in death and the wayes that lead thither and they choose mony infinitely and to rule over their Brother by al means to be revenged extremely and to prevail by wrong and to do all that they can and please themselves in all that they desire and love it fondly and be restlesse in all things but where they perish if God should not interpose by the arts of a miraculous and merciful grace and put a bridle in the mouth of our lusts and chastise the sea of our follies by some heaps of sand or
mercy which hath no cause but it self no measure of its emanation but our misery no natural limit but eternity no beginning but God no object but man no reason but an essential and an unalterable goodnesse no variety but our necessity and capacity no change but new instances of its own nature no ending or repentance but our absolute and obstinate refusall to entertain it 11. Lastly All the mercies of God are concentred in that which is all the felicity of man and God is so great a lover of souls that he provides securities and fair conditions for them even against all our reason and hopes our expectations and weak discoursings The particulars I shall remark are these 1. Gods mercy prevails over the malice and ignorances the weaknesseâ— and follies of men so that in the convention and assemblies of hereticks as the word is usually understood for erring and mistaken people although their doctrines are such that if men should live according to their proper and naturall consequences they would live impiously yet in every one of these there are persons so innocently and invincibly mistaken and who mean nothing but truth while in the simplicity of their heart they talk nothing but error that in the defiance and contradiction of their own doctrines they â—â—ve according to its contradictory He that beleeves contrition alone with confession to a Priest is enough to expiate ten thousand sins is furnished with an excuse easie enough to quit himself from the troubles of a holy life and he that hath a great many cheap wayes of buying off his penances for a little money even for the greatest sins is taught a way not to fear the doing of an act for which he must repent since repentance is a duty so soon so certainly and so easily performed But these are notâ—â—ious doctrines in the Roman Church and yet God so loves the souls of his creatures that many men who trust to these doctrines in their discourses dare not rely upon them in their lives But while they talk as if they did not need to live strictly many of them live so strictly as if they did not beleeve so foolishly He that tels that antecedently God hath to all humane choice decreed man to heaven or to hell takes away from man all care of the way because they beleeve that he that infallibly decreed that end hath unalterably appointed the means and some men that talk thus wildly live soberly and are over-wrought in their understanding by some secret art of God that man may not perish in his ignorance but be assisted in his choice and saved by the Divine mercies And there is no sect of men but are furnished with antidotes and little excuses to cure the venom of their doctrine and therefore although the adherent and constituent poison is notorious and therefore to be declined yet because it is collaterally cured and over-poured by the torrent and wisdom of Gods mercies the men are to be taken into the Quire that we may all joyn in giving of God praise for the operation of his hands 2. I said formerly that there are many secret and undiscerned mercies by which men live and of which men can give no account till they come to give God thanks at their publication and of this sort is that mercy which God reserves for the souls of many millions of men and women concerning whom we have no hopes if we account concerning them by the usuall proportions of revelation and Christian commandements and yet we are taught to hope some strange good things concerning them by the analogy and generall rules of the Divine mercy For what shall become of ignorant Christians people that live in wildnesses and places more desert then a primitive hermitage people that are baptized and taught to go to Church it may be once a yeer people that can get no more knowledge they know not where to have it nor how to desire it and yet that an eternity of pains shall be consequent to such an ignorance is unlike the mercy of God and yet that they should be in any dispositions towards an eternity of intellectuall joyes is no where set down in the leaves of revelation and when the Jews grew rebellious or a silly woman of the daughters of Abraham was tempted and sinned and punished with death we usually talk as if that death passed on to a worse but yet we may arrest our thoughts upon the Divine mercies and consider that it is reasonable to expect from the Divine goodnesse that no greater forfeiture be taken upon a law then was expressed in its sanction and publication He that makes a law and bindes it with the penalty of stripes we say he intends not to afflict the disobedient with scorpions and axes and it had been hugely necessary that God had scar'd the Jews from their sins by threatning the pains of hell to them that disobeyed if he intended to inflict it for although many men would have ventured the future since they are not affrighted with the present and visible evil yet some persons would have had more Philosophical and spiritual apprehensions then others and have been infallibly cured in all their temptations with the fear of an eternall pain and however whether they had or no yet since it cannot be understood how it consists with the Divine justice to exact a pain bigger then he threatned greater then he gave warning of so we are sure it is a great way off from Gods mercy to do so He that usually imposes lesse and is loth to inflict any and very often forgives it all is hugely distant from exacting an eternall punishment when the most that he threatned and gave notice of was but a temporall The effect of this consideration I would have to be this that we may publikely worship this mercy of God which is kept in secret and that we be not too forward in sentencing all Heathens and prevaricating Jews to the eternall pains of hell but hope that they have a portion in the secrets of the Divine mercy where also unlesse many of us have some little portions deposited our condition will be very uncertain and sometimes most miserable God knows best how intolerably accursed a thing it is to perish in the eternall flames of hell and therefore he is not easie to inflict it and if the â—oyes of heaven be too great to be expected upon too easie termes certainly the pains of the damned are infinitely too big to passe lightly upon persons who cannot help themselves and who iâ— they were helped with clearer revelations would have avoided it But as in these things we must not pry into the secrets of the Divine Oeconomy being sure whether it be so or no it is most just even as it is so we may expect to see the glories of the Divine mercy made publike in unexpected instances at the great day of manifestation And indeed our dead many times go forth from our hands very
of the Catholike Church and every person within its bosom who are the body of him that rules over all the world and commands them as he chooses 2. But that which is next to this and not much unlike the designe of this wonderfull mercy is that all the actions of religion though mingled with circumstances of differing and sometimes of contradictory relations are so concentred in God their proper centre and conducted in such certain and pure channels of reason and rule that no one duty does contradict another and it can never be necessary for any man in any case to sin They that bound themselves by an oath to kill Paul were not environed with the sad necessities of murder on one side and vow-breach on the other so that if they did murder him they were man-slayers if they did not they were perjured for God had made provision for this case that no unlawful oath should passe an obligation He that hath given his faith in unlawfull confederation against his Prince is not girded with a fatall necessity of breach of trust on one side or breach of allegeance on the other for in this also God hath secured the case of conscience by forbidding any man to make an unlawfull promise and upon a stronger degree of the same reason by forbidding him to keep it in case he hath made it He that doubts whether it be lawfull to keep the Sunday holy must not do it during that doubt because whatsoever is not of faith is sin But yet Gods mercy hath taken care to break this snare in sunder so that he may neither sin against the commandement nor against his conscience for he is bound to lay aside his errour and be better instructed till when the scene of his sin lies in something that hath influence upon his understanding not in the omission of the fact No man can serve two Masters but therefore he must hate the one and cleave to the other But then if we consider what infinite contradiction there is in sin and that the great long suffering of God is expressed in this that God suffered the contradiction of sinners we shall feel the mercy of God in the peace of our consciences and the unity of religion so long as we do the work of God It is a huge affront to a covetous man that he is the further off from fulnesse by having great heaps vast revenues and that his thirst increases by having that which should quench it and that the more he shall need to be satisfied the lesse he shall dare to do it and that he shall refuse to drink because he is dry that he dyes if he tasts and languishes if he does not and at the same time he is full and empty bursting with a plethory and consumed with hunger drowned with rivers of oyle and wine and yet dry as the Arabian sands but then the contradiction is multiplyed and the labyrinths more amazed when prodigality waits upon another curse and covetousnesse heaps up that prodigality may scatter abroad then distractions are infinite and a man hath two Devils to serve of contradictory designes and both of them exactâ—â—g obedience more unreasonably then the Egyptian task-masters then there is no rest no end of labours no satisfaction of purposes no method of things but they begin where they should end and begin again and never passe forth to content or reason or quietnesse or possession But the duty of a Christian is easie in a persecution it is clear under a Tyranny it is evident in despite of heresy it is one in the midst of schisme it is determined amongst infinite disputes being like a rock in the sea which is beaten with the tide and washed with retiring waters and encompassed with mists and appears in several figures but it alwayes dips its foot in the same bottom and remaines the same in calms and storms and survives the revolution of ten thousand tides and there shall dwell till time and tides shall be no more so is our duty uniform and constant open and notorious variously represented but in the same manner exacted and in the interest of our souls God hath not exposed us to uncertainty or the variety of any thing that can change and it is by the grace and mercy of God put into the power of every Christian to do that which God through Jesus Christ will accept to salvation and neither men nor Devils shall hinder it unlesse we list our selves 3. After all this we may sit down and reckon by great sums and conjugations of his gracious gifts and tell the minuts of eternity by the number of the Divine mercies God hath given his laws to rule us his word to instruct us his spirit to guide us his Angels to protect us his ministers to exhort us he revealed all our duty and he hath concealed whatsoever can hinder us he hath affrighted our follies with feare of death and engaged our watchfulnesse by its secret coming he hath exercised our faith by keeping private the state of souls departed and yet hath confirmed our faith by a promise of a resurrection and entertained our hope by some general significations of the state of interval His mercies make contemptible means instrumental to great purposes and a small herb the remedy of the greatest diseases he impedes the Devils rage and infatuates his counsels he diverts his malice and defeats his purposes he bindes him in the chaine of darknesse and gives him no power over the children of light he suffers him to walk in solitary places and yet fetters him that he cannot disturb the sleep of a childe he hath given him mighty power yet a young maiden that resists him shall make him flee away he hath given him a vast knowledge and yet an ignorant man can confute him with the twelve articles of his creed he gave him power over the winds and made him Prince of the air and yet the breath of a holy prayer can drive him as far as the utmost sea and he hath so restrained him that except it be by faith we know not whether there be any Devils yea or no for we never heard his noises nor have seen his affrighting shapes This is that great Principle of all the felicity we hope for and of all the means thither and of all the skill and all the strengths we haue to use those means he hath made great variety of conditions and yet hath made all necessary and all mutual helpers and by some instruments and in some respects they are all equal in order to felicity to content and final and intermedial satisfactions He gave us part of our reward in hand that he might enable us to work for more he taught the world arts for use arts for entertainment of all our faculties and all our dispositions he gives eternal gifts for temporal services and gives us whatsoever we want for asking and commands us to ask and theatens us if we will
covenant and return again and very often step aside and need this great pardon to be perpetually applyed and renewed and to this purpose that we may not have a possible need without a certain remedy the Holy Jesus the Author and finisher of our faith and pardon sits in heaven in a perpetual advocation for us that this pardon once wrought may be for ever applyed to every emergent need and every tumor of pride and every broken heart and every disturbed conscience and upon every true and sincere return of a hearty repentance And now upon this title no more degrees can be added it is already greater and was before all our needs and was greater then the old covenaut and beyond the revelations and did in Adams youth antidate the Gospel turning the publike miseries by secret grace into eternall glories But now upon other circumstances it is remarkable and excellent and swels like an hydropick cloud when it is fed with the breath of the morning tide till it fills the bosome of heaven and descends in dews and gentle showers to water and refresh the earth 7. God is so ready to forgive that himself works our dispositions towards it and either must in some degree pardon us before we are capable of pardon by his grace making way for his mercy or else we can never hope for pardon For unlesse God by his preventing grace should first work the first part of our pardon even without any dispositions of our own to receive it we could not desire a pardon nor hope for it nor work towards it nor ask it nor receive it This giving of preventing grace is a mercy of forgivenesse contrary to that severity by which some desperate persons are given over to a reprobate sense that is a leaving of men to themselves so that they cannot pray effectually nor desire holily nor repent truly nor receive any of those mercies which God designed so plenteously and the Son of God purchased so dearly for us When God sends a plague of warre upon a land in all the accounts of religion and expectations of reason the way to obtain our peace is to leave our sins for which the warre was sent upon us as the messenger of wrath and without this we are like to perish in the judgement But then consider what a sad condition we are in warre mends but few but spoils multitudes it legitimates rapine and authorizes murder and these crimes must be ministred to by their lesser relatives by covetousnesse and anger and pride and revenge and heats of blood and wilder liberty and all the evil that can be supposed to come from or run to such cursed causes of mischief But then if the punishment increases the sin by what instrument can the punishment be removed How shall we be pardoned and eased when our remedies are converted into causes of the sicknesse and our antidotes are poison Here there is a plain necessity of Gods preventing grace and if there be but a necessity of it that is enough to ascertain us we shall have it But unlesse God should begin to pardon us first for nothing and against our own dispositions we see there is no help in us nor for us If we be not smitten we are undone if we are smitten we perish and as young Damarchus said of his Love when he was made master of his wish Salvus sum quia pereo si non peream plane inteream we may say of some of Gods judgements We perish when we are safe because our sins are not smitten and if they be then we are worse undone because we grow worse for being miserable but we can be relieved onely by a free mercy for pardon is the way to pardon and when God gives us our peny then we can work for another and a gift is the way to a grace and all that we can do towards it is but to take it in Gods method and this must needs be a great forwardnesse of forgivenesse when Gods mercy gives the pardon and the way to finde it and the hand to receive it and the eye to search it and the heart to desire it being busie and effective as Elijah's fire which intending to convert the sacrifice into its own more spirituall nature of flames and purified substances stood in the neighbourhood of the fuell and called forth all its enemies and licked up the hindering moisture and the water of the trenches and made the Altar send forth a phantastick smoke before the sacrifice was enkindled So is the preventing grace of God it does all the work of our souls and makes its own way and invites it self and prepares its own lodging and makes its own entertainment it gives us precepts and makes us able to keep them it enables our faculties and excites our desires it provokes us to pray and sanctifies our heart in prayer and makes our prayer go forth to act and the act does make the desire valid and the desire does make the act certain and persevering and both of them are the works of God for more is received into the soul from without the soul then does proceed from within the soul It is more for the soul to be moved and disposed then to work when that is done as the passage from death to life is greater then from life to action especially since the action is owing to that cause that put in the first principle of life These are the great degrees of Gods forwardnesse and readinesse to forgive for the expression of which no language is sufficient but Gods own words describing mercy in all those dimensions which can signifie to us its greatnesse and infinity His mercy is great his mercies are many his mercy reacheth unto the heavens it fils heaven and earth it is above all his works it endureth for ever God pitieth as a Father doth his children nay he is our Father and the same also is the Father of mercy and the God of all comfort So that mercy and we have the same relation and well it may be so for we live and die together for as to man onely God shews the mercy of forgivenesse so if God takes away his mercy man shall be no more no more capable of felicity or of any thing that is perfective of his condition or his person But as God preserves man by his mercy so his mercy hath all its operations upon man and returns to its own centre and incircumscription and infinity unlesse it issues forth upon us And therefore besides the former great lines of the mercy of forgivenesse there is another chain which but to produce and tell its links is to open a cabinet of Jewels where every stone is as bright as a star and every star is great as the Sun and shines for ever unlesse we shut our eyes or draw the vail of obstinate and finall sins 1. God is long-suffering that is long before he be angry and yet God is provoked every day by
be partakers of the first resurrection that is from sin to grace from the death of vitious habits to the vigour life and efficacy of an habituall righteousnesse For as it hapned to those persons in the New Testament now mentioned to them I say in the literall sense Blessed are they that have part in the first resurrection upon them the second death shall have no power meaning that they who by the power of Christ and his holy Spirit were raised to life again were holy and blessed souls and such who were written in the book of God and that this grace happened to no wicked and vitious person so it is most true in the spirituall and intended sense You onely that serve God in a holy life you who are not dead in trespasses and sins you who serve God with an early diligence and an unwearied industry and a holy religion you and you onely shall come to life eternall you onely shall be called from death to life the rest of mankind shall never live again but passe from death to death from one death to another to a worse from the death of the body to the eternall death of body and soul and therefore in the Apostles Creed there is no mention made of the resurrection of wicked persons but of the resurrection of the body to everlasting life The wicked indeed shall be haled forth from their graves from their everlasting prisons where in chains of darknesse they are kept unto the judgement of the great day But this therefore cannot be called in sensu favoris a resurrection but the solennities of the eternall death It is nothing but a new capacity of dying again such a dying as cannot signifie rest but where death means nothing but an intolerable and never ceasing calamity and therefore these words of my Text are otherwise to be understood of the wicked otherwise of the godly The wicked are spilt like water and shall never be gathered up again no not in the gatherings of eternity They shall be put into vessels of wrath and set upon the flames of hell but that is not a gathering but a scattering from the face and presence of God But the godly also come under the sense of these words They descend into their graves and shall no more be reckoned among the living they have no concernment in all that is done under the Sun Agamemnon hath no more to do with the Turks armies invading and possessing that part of Greece where he reigned then had the Hippocentaur who never had a beeing and Cicero hath no more interest in the present evils of Christendome then we have to do with his boasted discovery of Catilines conspiracie What is it to me that Rome was taken by the Gauls and what is it now to Camillus if different religions be tolerated amongst us These things that now happen concern the living and they are made the scenes of our duty or danger respectively and when our wives are dead and sleep in charnel houses they are not troubled when we laugh loudly at the songs sung at the next marriage feast nor do they envy when another snatches away the gleanings of their husbands passion It is true they envy not and they lie in a bosome where there can be no murmure and they that are consigned to Kingdoms and to the feast of the marriage-supper of the Lamb the glorious and eternall Bride-groom of holy souls they cannot think our marriages here our lighter laughings and vain rejoycings considerable as to them And yet there is a relation continued still Aristotle said that to affirm the dead take no thought for the good of the living is a disparagement to the laws of that friendship which in their state of separation they cannot be tempted to rescind And the Church hath taught in generall that they pray for us they recommend to God the state of all their Relatives in the union of the intercession that our blessed Lord makes for them and us and Saint Ambrose gave some things in charge to his dying brother Satyrus that he should do for him in the other world he gave it him I say when he was dying not when he was dead And certain it is that though our dead friends affection to us is not to be estimated according to our low conceptions yet it is not lesse but much more then ever it was it is greater in degree and of another kind But then we should do well also to remember that in this world we are something besides flesh and blood that we may not without violent necessities run into new relations but preserve the affections we bear to our dead when they were alive We must not so live as if they were perished but so as pressing forward to the most intimate participation of the communion of Saints And we also have some wayes to expresse this relation and to bear a part in this communion by actions of intercourse with them and yet proper to our state such as are strictly performing the will of the dead providing for and tenderly and wisely educating their children paying their debts imitating their good example preserving their memories privately and publikely keeping their memorials and desiring of God with hearty and constant prayer that God would give them a joyfull resurrection and a mercifull judgement for so S. Paul prayed in behalf of Onesiphorus that God would shew them mercy in that day that fearfull and yet much to be desired day in which the most righteous person hath need of much mercy and pity and shall find it Now these instances of duty shew that the relation remains still and though the Relict of a man or woman hath liberty to contract new relations yet I do not finde they have liberty to cast off the old as if there were no such thing as immortality of souls Remember that we shall converse together again let us therefore never do any thing of reference to them which we shall be ashamed of in the day when all secrets shall be discovered and that we shall meet again in the presence of God In the mean time God watcheth concerning all their interest and he will in his time both discover and recompense For though as to us they are like water spilt yet to God they are as water fallen into the sea safe and united in his comprehension and inclosures But we are not yet passed the consideration of the sentence This descending to the grave is the lot of all men neither doth God respect the person of any man The rich is not protected for favour nor the poor for pity the old man is not reverenced for his age nor the infant regarded for his tendernesse youth and beauty learning and prudence wit and strength lie down equally in the dishonours of the grave All men and all natures and all persons resist the addresses and solennities of death and strive to preserve a miserable and an unpleasant life and yet they all
strangely and carelesly without prayers without Sacraments without consideration without counsel and without comfort and to dresse the souls of our dear people to so saâ— a parting is an imployment we therefore omit not alwayes because we are negligent but because the work is sad and allay the affections of the world with those melancholy circumstances but iâ— God did not in his mercies make secret and equivalent provisions for them and take care of his redeemed ones we might unhappily meet them in a sad eternity and without remedy weep together and groan for ever But God hath provided better things for them that they without us that is without our assistances shall be made perfect Sermon XXVII The Miracles of the Divine Mercy Part III. THere are very many more orders and conjugations of mercies but because the numbers of them naturally tend to their own greatnesse that is to have no measure I must reckon but a few more and them also without order for that they do descend upon us we see and feel but by what order of things or causes is as undiscerned as the head of Nilus or a sudden remembrance of a long neglected and forgotten proposition 1. But upon this account it is that good men have observed that the providence of God is so great a provider for holy living and does so certainly minister to religion that nature and chance the order of the world and the influences of heaven are taught to serve the ends of the Spirit of God and the spirit of a man I do not speak of the miracles that God hath in the severall periods of the world wrought for the establishing his lawes and confirming his promises and securing our obedience though that was all the way the overflowing and miracles of mercy as well as power but that which I consider is that besides the extraordinary emanations of the Divine power upon the first and most solemn occasions of an institution and the first beginnings of a religion such as were the wonders God did in Egypt and in the wildernesse preparatory to the sanction of that law and the first covenant and the miracles wrought by Christ and his Apostles for the founding and the building up the religion of the Gospel and the new covenant God does also do things wonderfull and miraculous for the promoting the ordinary and lesse solemn actions of our piety and to assist and accompany them in a constant and regular succession It was a strange variety of naturall efficacies that Manna should sâ—nk in 24. hours if gathered upon Wednesday and Thursday and that it should last till 48. hours if gathered upon the Even of the Sabbath and that it should last many hundreds of yeers when placed in the Sanctuary by the ministery of the high Priest but so it was in the Jews religion and Manna pleased every palate and it filled all appetites and the same measure was a different proportion it was much and it was little as if nature that it might serve religion had been taught some measures of infinity which is every where and no where filling all things and circumscribed with nothing measured by one Omer and doing the work of two like the crowns of Kings fitting the browes of Nimrod and the most mighty Warriour and yet not too large for the temples of an infant Prince And not onely is it thus in nature but in contingencies and acts depending upon the choice of men for God having commanded the sons of Israel to go up to Jerusalem to worship thrice every yeer and to leave their borders to be guarded by women and children and sick persons in the neighbourhood of diligent and spitefull enemies yet God so disposed of their hearts and opportunities that they never entered the land when the people were at their solemnity untill they desecrated their rites by doing at their Passeover the greatest sin and treason in the world till at Easter they crucified the Lord of life and glory they were secure in Jerusalem and in their borders but when they had destroyed religion by this act God took away their security and Titus besieged the City at the feast of Easter that the more might perish in the deluge of the Divine indignation To this observation the Jews adde that in Jerusalem no man ever had a fall that came thither to worship that at their solemn festivals there was reception in the Town for all the inhabitants of the land concerning which although I cannot affirm any thing yet this is certain that no godly person among all the tribes of Israel was ever a begger but all the variety of humane chances were over-ruled to the purposes of providence and providence was measured by the ends of the religion and the religion which promised them plenty performed the promise till the Nation and the religion too began to decline that it might give place to a better ministery and a more excellent dispensation of the things of the world But when Christian religion was planted and had taken root and had filled all lands then all the nature of things the whole creation became servant to the kingdom of grace and the Head of the religion is also the Head of the creatures and ministers all the things of the world in order to the Spirit of grace and now Angels are ministring spirits sent forth to minister for the good of them that fear the Lord and all the violences of men and things of nature and choice are forced into subjection and lowest ministeries and to cooperate as with an united designe to verifie all the promises of the Gospel and to secure and advantage all the children of the kingdom and now he that is made poor by chance or persecution is made rich by religion and he that hath nothing yet possesses all things and sorrow it self is the greatest comfort not only because it ministers to vertue but because it self is one as in the case of repentance and death ministers to life and bondage is freedom and losse is gain and our enemies are our friends and every thing turns into religion and religion turns into felicity and all manner of advantages But that I may not need to enumerate any more particulars in this observation certain it is that Angels of light and darknesse all the influences of heaven and the fruits and productions of the earth the stars and the elements the secret things that lie in the bowels of the Sea and the entrails of the earth the single effects of all efficients and the conjunction of all causes all events foreseen and all rare contingencies every thing of chance and every thing of choice is so much a servant to him whos 's greatest desire and great interest is by all means to save our souls that we are thereby made sure that all the whole creation shall be made to bend in all the flexures of its nature and accidents that it may minister to religion to the good