purposes yet it may be he punishes our sin when we least think of it that sin which we have long since forgotten It may be for the lust of thy youth thou hast a healthlesse old age an old religious person long agoe complained it was his case Quos nimis effraenes habui nunc vapulo renes Sic luitur juvenis culpa dolore senis It may be thy sore eyes are the punishment of thy intemperance seven years ago or God cuts thy dayes shorter and thou shalt die in a florid age or he raises up afflictions to thee in thine own house in thine own bowels or hath sent a gangren into thy estate or with any arrow out of his quiver he can wound thee and the arrow shall stick fast in thy flesh although God hath forgiven thy sin to many purposes Our blessed Saviour was heard in all that he prayed for said the Apostle and he prayed for the Jews that crucified him Father forgive them for they know not what they do and God did forgive that great sin but how far whereas it was just in God to deprive them of all possibility of receiving benefit from the death of Christ yet God admitted them to iâ— he gave them time and possibilities and helps and great advantages to bring them to repentance he did not presently shut them up in his final and eternal anger and yet he had finally resolved to destroy their city and nation and did so but forbore them forty years gave them al the helps of miracles and sermons apostolical to shame them and force them into sorrow for their fault And before any man can repent God hath forgiven the man in one degree of forgivenesse for he hath given him grace of repentance and taken from him that final anger of the spirit of reprobation and when a man hath repented no man can say that God hath forgiven him to all purposes but he hath reserves of anger to punish the sin to make the man affraid to sin any more and to represent that when any man hath sinned what ever he does afterwards he shall be miserable as long as he lives vexed with its adherencies and its neighbour-hood and evil consequence For as no man that hath sinned can during his life ever returne to an integral and perfect innocence so neither shall he be restored to a perfect peace but must alwayes watch and strive against his sinne and alwayes mourn and pray for its pardon and alwayes finde cause to hate it by knowing himself to be for ever in danger of enduring some grievous calamity even for those sinnes for which he hath truely repented him for which God hath in many gracious degrees passed his pardon this is the manner of the dispensation of the divine mercy in respect of particular persons and nations too But sometimes we finde a severer judgement happening upon a people and yet in that sad story Gods mercy sings the triumph which although it be much to Gods glory yet it is a sad story to sinning people 600000. sighting men besides women and children and decrepit persons came out of Egypt and God destroyed them all in the wildernesse except Caleb and Joshuah and there it was that Gods mercy prevailed over his justice that he did not destroy the nation but still preserved a succession to Jacob to possesse the promise God drowned all the world except eight persons his mercy there also prevailed over his justice that he preserved a remnant to mankinde his justice devoured all the world and his mercy which preserved but eight had the honour of the prevailing attribute God destroyed Sodom and the five cities of the plain and rescued but four from the flames of that sad burning and of the four lost one in the flight and yet his mercy prevailed over his justice because he did not destroy all And in these senses we are to understand the excellency of the divine mercy even when he smites when he rebukes us for sin when he makes our beauty to fail and our flesh to consume away like a moth fretting a garment yet then his mercy is the prevailing ingredient If his judgements be but sines set upon our heads accord-to the mercy of our old lawes Salvo contenemento so as to preserve our estates to continue our hopes and possibilities of heaven and all the other judgements can be nothing but mercies excellent instruments of grace arts to make us sober and wise to take off from our vanity to restrain our wildnesses which if they were left unbridled would set all the world on fire Gods judgements are like to censures of the Church in which a sinner is delivered over to Satan to be buffetted that the spirit may be saved the result of all this is that Gods mercies are not ought not cannot be instruments of confidence to sin because the very purpose of his mercy is to the contrary and the very manner of his Oeconomy and dispensation is such that Gods mercy goes along in complection and conjunction with his judgements the riches of his forbearance is this that he forbears to throw us into hell and sends the mercies of his rod to chide us unto repentance and the mercies of his rod to punish us for having sinned and that when we have sinned we may never think our selves secured nor ever be reconciled to such dangers and deadly poisons This this is the manner of the divine mercy Go now fond man and because God is merciful presume to sin as heaving grounds to hope that thou mayest sin and be safe all the way If this hope shall I call it or sordid flattery could be reasonable then the mercies of God would not leade us to repentance so unworthy are we in the sense and largenesse of a wide fortune and pleasant accident For impuâ—ity was never a good argument to make men to obey laws quotusqâ—isque reperitur qui impunitate proposita abstinere possit injurijs Impunitas est maxima peccandi illecebra said Cicero and therefore the wisdom of God hath so ordered the actions of the world that the most fruitful showres shall be wrapped up in a cover of black clouds that health shall be conveyed by bitter and ill tasted drugs that the temples of our bodies shall be purged by whips and that the cords of the whip shall be the cords of love to draw us from the intanglings of vanity and folly This is the long suffering of God the last remedy to our diseased souls and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Phalaris unlesse we be senselesse we shall be brought to sober courses by all those sad accidents and wholsome but ill tasting mercies which we feele in all the course and the â—â—ccession of the divine long sufferance The use of all the premises is that which Saint Paul expresses in the text that we do not despise all this and he onely despises not who serves the ends of God in all these designes of mercy
of an easie and honest sermon it is the sincere milk of the word and nourishes a mans soul though represented in its own naturall simplicity and there is hardly any Orator but you may finde occasion to praise something of him When Plato misliked the order and disposition of the Oration of Lysias yet he praised the good words and the elocution of the man Euripides was commended for his fulness Parmenides for his composition Phocilides for his easinesse Archilochus for his argument Sophocles for the unequalnesse of his stile So may men praise their Preacher he speaks pertinently or he contrives wittily or he speaks comely or the man is pious or charitable or he hath a good text or he speaks plainly or he is not tedious or if he be he is at least industrious or he is the messenger of God and that will not fail us and let us love him for that and we know those that love can easily commend any thing because they like every thing and they say fair men are like angels and the black are manly and the pale look like honey and the stars and the croâ—â— nosed are like the sons of Kings and if they be flat they are gentle and easie and if they be deformed they are humble and not to be despised because they have upon them the impresses of divinity and they are the sons of God He that despises his Preacher is a hearer of arts and learning not of the word of God and though when the word of God is set off with advantages and entertainments of the better faculties of our humanity it is more usefull and of more effect yet when the word of God is spoken truly though but read in plain language it will become the disciple of Jesus to love that man whom God sends and the publik order and the laws have imployed rather then to despise the weaknesse of him who delivers a mighty word Thus it is fit that men should be affected and imployed when they hear and read sermons comming hither not as into a theatre where men observe the gestures and noises of the people the brow and eyes of the most busie censurers and make parties and go aside with them that dislike every thing or else admire not the things but the persons But as to a sacrifice and as unto a school where vertue is taught and exercised and none come but such as put themselves under discipline and intend to grow wiser and more vertuous to appease their passion from violent to become smooth and even to have their faith established and their hope confirmed their charity enlarged They that are otherwise affected do not do their duty but if they be so minded as they ought I and all men of my imployment shall be secured against the tongues and faces of men who are ingeniosi in alieno libro wittie to abuse and undervalue another mans book And yet besides these spirituall arts already reckoned I have one security more for unlesse I deceive my self I intend the glory of God sincerely and the service of Jesus in this publication and therefore being I do not seek my self or my own reputation I shall not be troubled if they be lost in the voyces of busie people so that I be accepted of God and found of him in the day of the Lords visitation My Lord It was your charity and noblenesse that gave me opportunity to do this service little or great unto religion and whoever shall find any advantage to their soul by reading the following discourse if they know how to blesse God and to blesse all them that are Gods instruments in doing them benefit will I hope help to procure blessings to your Person and Family and say a holy prayer and name your Lordship in their Letanies and remember that at your own charges you have digged a well and placed cisterns in the high wayes that they may drink and be refreshed and their souls may blesse you My Lord I hope this even because I very much desire it and because you exceedingly deserve it and above all because God is good and gracious and loves to reward such a charity and such a religion as is yours by which you have imployed me in the service of God and in ministeries to your Family My Lord I am most heartily and for very many Dear obligations Your Lordships most obliged most humble and most affectionate servant TAYLOR Titles of the Sermons their Order Number and Texts SErmon 1. 2. Of the Spirit of Grace Folio 1. 12. Rom. 8. ver 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 Sermon 3. 4. The descending and entailed curse cut off fol. 27. 40. Exodus 20. part of the 5. verse I the Lord thy God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me 6. And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandements Sermon 5. 6. The invalidity of a late or death-bed repentance fol 52. 66. Jerem. 13. 16. Give glory to the Lord your God before he cause darknesse and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains and while ye look for light or lest while ye look for light he shall turn it into the shadow of death and make it grosse darknesse Sermon 7. 8. The deceitfulnesse of the heart fol. 80. 92. Jerem. 17. 9. The heart is deceitfull above all things and desperately wicked who can know it Sermon 9. 10. 11. The faith and patience of the Saints Or the righteous cause oppressed fol. 104. 119. 133. 1 Pet. 4. 17. For the time is come that judgement must begin at the house of God and if it first begin at us what shall the end be of them that obey not the Gospel of God 18. And if the righteous scarcely be saved where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear Sermon 12. 13. The mercy of the Divine judgements or Gods method in curing sinners fol. 146. 159. Romans 2. 4. Despisest thou the riches of his goodnesse and forbearance and long-suffering not knowing that the goodnesse of God leadeth thee to repentance Sermon 14. 15. Of groweth in grace with its proper instruments and signes fol. 172. 183 2 Pet. 3. 18. But grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ to whom be glory both now and for ever Amen Sermon 16. 17. Of groweth in sin or the severall states and degrees of sinners with the manner how they are to be treated fol. 197. 210. Jude Epist. ver 22 23. And of some have compassion making a difference * And others save with fear pulling them out of the fire Sermon 18. 19.
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
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
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
extraregular miracles besides the sufficiencie of Moses and the Prophets and the New Testament and thousands more which we cannot consider now But this we can when God sent an Angel to pour plagues upon the earth there were in their hands Phialae aureae golden phials for the death of men is precious and costly and it is an expence that God delights not in but they were Phials that is such vessels as out of them no great evil could come at once but it comes out with difficulty sobbing and troubled as it passes forth it comes thorow a narrow neck and the parts of it croud at the port to get forth and are stifled by each others neighbourhood and all strive to get out but few can passe as if God did nothing but threaten and draw his judgements to the mouth of the Phial with a full body and there made it stop it self The result of this consideration is that as we fear the Divine judgements so that we adore and love his goodnesse and let the golden chains of the Divine mercy tie us to a noble prosecution of our duty and the interests of religion For he is the worst of men whom Kindnesse cannot soften nor endearments oblige whom gratitude cannot tie faster then the bands of life and death He is an ill natur'd sinner if he will not comply with the sweetnesses of heaven and be civill to his Angel guardian or observant of his Patron God who made him and feeds him and keeps all his faculties and takes care of him and endures his follies and waits on him more tenderly then a Nurse more diligently then a Client who hath greater care of him then his father and whose bowels yern over him with more compassion then a mother who is bountifull beyond our needs and mercifull beyond our hopes and makes capacities in us to receive more Fear is stronger then death and Love is more prevalent then Fear and kindnesse is the greatest endearment of Love and yet to an ingenuous person gratitude is greater then all these and obliges to a solemn duty when love fails and fear is dull and unactive and death it self is despised but the man who is hardened against kindnesse and whose duty is not made alive with gratitude must be used like a slave and driven like an ox and inticed with goads and whips but must never enter into the inheritance of sons Let us take heed for Mercy is like a rainbowe which God set in the clouds to remember mankinde it shines here as long as it is not hindered but we must never look for it after it is night and it shines not in the other world if we refuse mercy here we shall have justice to eternity Sermon XXVIII A FVNERAL SERMON Preached at the Obsequies of the Right Honorable and most vertuous Lady The Lady FRANCES Countesse of CARBERY Who deceased October the 9 th 1650. at her House Golden-Grove in CARMARTHEN-SHIRE To the right Honorable and truly Noble RICHARD Lord VAVGHAN Earl of Carbery Baron of Emlim and Molinger Knight of the Honorable Order of the Bath My Lord I Am not ashamed to professe that I pay this part of service to your Lordship most unwillingly for it is a sad office to be the chief Minister in the house of mourning and to present an interested person with a branch of Cypresse and a bottle of tears And indeed my Lord it were more proportionable to your needs to bring something that might alleviate your sorrow thâ—â— to dresse the hearse of your Dear Lady and to furnish it with such circumstances that it may dwell with you and lie in your closet and make your prayers and your retirements more sad and full of weepings But because the Divine providence hath taken from you a person so excellent a woman fit to converse with Angels and Apostles with Saints and Martyrs give me leave to present you with her picture drawn in little and in water-colours sullied indeed with tears and the abrupt accents of a real and consonant sorrow but drawn with a faithful hand and taken from the life and indeed it were too great a losse to be deprived of her example and of her rule of the original and the copy too The age is very evil and deserved her not but because it is so evil it hath the more need to have such lives preserved in memory to instruct our piety or upbraid our wickednesse For now that God hath cut this tree of Paradise down from its seat of earth yet so the dead trunk may support a part of the declining Temple or at least serve to kindle the fire on the altar My Lord I pray God this heap of sorrow may swell your piety till it breaks into the greatest joyes of God and of religion and remember when you pay a tear upon the grave or to the memory of your Lady that dear and most excellent soul that you pay two more one of repentance for those things that may have caused this breach and another of joy for the mercies of God to your Dear departed Saint that he hath taken her into a place where she can weep no more My Lord I think I shall so long as I live that is so long as I am Your Lordships most humble Servant TAYLOR 2 Samuel 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 WHen our blessed Saviour and his Disciples viewed the Temple some one amongst them cryed out Magister aspice quales lapides Master behold what fair what great stones are here Christ made no other reply but foretold their dissolution and a world of sadnesse and sorrow which should bury that whole Nation when the teeming cloud of Gods displeasure should produce a storm which was the daughter of the biggest anger and the mother of the greatest calamitie which ever crushed any of the sons of Adam the time shall come that there shall not be left one stone upon another The whole Temple and the Religion the ceremonies ordained by God and the Nation beloved by God and the fabrick erected for the service of God shall run to their own period and lie down in their several graves Whatsoever had a beginning can also have am ending and it shall die unlesse it be daily watered with the puâ—â—s flowing from the fountain of life and refreshed with the dew of Heaven and the wells of God And therefore God had provided a tree in Paradise to have supported Adam in his artificial immortality Immortality was not in his nature but in the hands and arts in the favour and superadditions of God Man was alwaies the same mixture of heat and cold of drynesse and moisture ever the same weak thing apt to feel rebellion in the humors and to suffer the evils of a civil war in his body
either to take off the judgement or to change it into a blessing to take a way the rod or the smart and evil of it to convert the punishment into a meer naturall or humane chance and that chance to the opportunity of a vertue and that vertue to the occasion of a crown 2. It is of great use for the securing of families that every Master of a family order his life so that his piety and vertue be as communicative as is posible that is that he secure the religion of his whole family by a severe supravision and animadversion and by cutting off all those unprofitable and hurtful branches which load the tree and hinder the growth and stock disimprove the fruit revert evil juice to the very root it self Calvisius Sabinus laid out vast sums of mony upon his servants to stock his house with learned men and bought one that could recite all Homer by heart a second that was ready at Hesiod a third at Pindar and for every of the Lyricks one having this fancy that all that learning was his own what soever his servants knew made him so much the more skilful It was noted in the man for a rich and a prodigal folly but if he had chang'd his instance bought none but vertuous servants into his house he might better have reckoned his wealth upon their stock the piety of his family might have helped to blesse him and to have increased the treasure of the Masters vertue Every man that would either cut off the title of an old curse or secure a blessing upon a new stock must make vertue as large in the fountain as he can that it may the sooner water all his Relatives with fruitfulnesse and blessings And this was one of the things that God noted in Abraham and blessed his family for it and his posterity I know that Abraham will teach his sons to fear me When a man teaches his family to know and fear God then he scatters a blessing round about his habitation And this helps to illustrate the reason of the thing as well as to prove its certainty We hear it spoken in our books of Religion that the faith of the parents is imputed to their children to good purposes that a good husband sanctifies an ill wife a beleeving wife an unbeleeving husband and either of them makes the children to be sanctified else they were unclean and unholy that is the very designing children to the service of God is a sanctification of them and therefore S. Hierom cals Christian children Candidatos fidei Christianae and if this very designation of them makes them holy that is acceptable to God intitled to the promises partakers of the Covenant within the condition of sons much more shall it be effectual to greater blessings when the Parents take care that the children shall be actually pious full of sobriety full of religion then it becomes a holy house a chosen generation an elect family and then there can no evil happen to them but such which will bring them neerer to God that is no crosse but the crosse of Christ no misfortune but that which shall lead them to felicity and if any semblance of a curse happens in the generations it is but like the anathema of a sacrifice not an accursed but a devoted thing for so the sacrifice upon whose neck the Priests knife doth fall is so far from being accursed that it helps to get a blessing to all that joyn in the oblation so every misfortune that shal discompose the ease of a pious and religious family shall but make them sit to be presented unto God and the rod of God shall be like the branches of fig-trees bitter and sharp in themselves but productive of most delicious fruit no evil can curse the family whose stock is pious and whose branches are Holinesse unto the Lord. If any leaf or any boughs shall fall untimely God shall gather it up and place it in his Temple or at the foot of his throne and that family must needs be blessed whom infelicity it self cannot make accursed 3. If a curse be feared to descend upon a family for the fault of their Ancestors pious sons have yet another way to secure themselves to withdraw the curse from the family or themselves from the curse and that is by doing some very great illustrious act of piety an action in gradu heroico as Aristotle cals it an heroicall action If there should happen to be one Martyr in a family it would reconcile the whole kinred to God make him who is more inclined to mercy then to severity rather to be pleased with the Relatives of the Martyr then continue to be angry with the Nephews of a deceased sinner I cannot insist long upon this But you may see it proved by one great instance in the case of Phinehas who killed an unclean Prince turned the wrath of God from his people he was zealous for God and for his countreymen did an heroicall action of zeal Wherefore saith God Behold I give unto him my covenant of peace and he shall have it his seed after him even the covenant of an everlasting priesthood because he was zealous for his God made an atonement for the children of Israel Thus the sons of Rechab obtainâ—d the blessing of an enduring and blessed family because they were most strict religious observers of their fathers precept and kept it after his death abstained from wine for ever and no temptation could invite them to taste it for they had as great reverence to their fathers ashes as being children they had to his rod to his eyes Thus a man may turn the wrath of God from his family secure a blessing for posterity by doing some great noble acts of charity or a remarkable chastity like that of Joseph or an expensive an effectionate religion and love to Christ and his servants as Mary Magdalene did Such things as these which are extraordinary egressions and transvolations beyond the ordinary course of an even piety God loves to reward with an extraordinary favour and gives it testimony by an extraregular blessing One thing more I have to adde by way of advice and that is that all parents and fathers of families from whose loyns a blessing or a curse usually does descend be very carefull not onely generally in all the actions of their lives for that I have already pressed but particularly in the matter of repentance that they be curious that they finish it do it thorowly for there are certain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 leavings of repentance which makes that Gods anger is taken from us so imperfectly and although God for his sake who died for us will pardon a returning sinner bring him to heaven through tribulation a fiery triall yet when a man is weary of his sorrow his fastings are a load to him his sins are
riches to despise such a goodnesse However that we may see the greatnesse of this treasure of goodnesse God seldom leaves us thus for he sees be it spoken to the shame of our natures and the dishonour of our manners he sees that his mercies do not allure us do not make us thankful but as the Roman said felicitate corrumpimur we become worse for Gods mercy and think it will be alwayes holiday and are like the Christal of Arabia hardned not by cold but made crusty and stubborn by the warmth of the divine fire by its refreshments and mercies therefore to demonstrate that God is good indeed he continues his mercise still to us but in another instance he is merciful to us in punishing us that by such instruments we may be led to repentance which will scare us from sin he delivers us up to the paedagogy of the divine judgements and there begins the second part of Gods method intimated in the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or forbearance God begins his cure by causticks by incisions and instruments of vexation to try if the disease that will not yeild to the allectives of cordials and perfumes friction and baths may be forced out by deleteries scarifications and more salutary but least pleasing Physicke 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 forbearance it is called in the text which signifies laxamentum or inducias that is when the decrees of the divine judgements temporal are gone out either wholly to suspend the executio◠of them which is induciae or a reprieve or else when God hath struck once or twice he takes off his hand that is laxamentum an ease of remission of his judgment in both these although in judgement God remembers mercy yet we are under discipline we are brought into the paenitential chamber at least we are shewed the rod of God and if like Moses rod it turnes us into serpents and that we repent not but grow more Devils yet then it turnes into a rod again and finishes up the smiting or the first designed affliction But I consider it first in general the riches of the divine goodnesse is manifest in beginning this new method of curing us by severity and by a rod. And that you may not wonder that I expound this forbearance to be an act of mercy punishing I observe that besides that the word supposes the method changed and it is a mercy about judgements and their manner of execution it is also in the nature of the thing in the conjunction of circumstances and the designes of God a mercy when he threatens us or strike us into repentance We think that the way of blessings and prosperous accidents is the finer way of securing our duty and that when our heads are anointed our cups crowned and our tables full the very caresses of our spirits will best of all dance before the Ark and sing perpetual Anthemes to the honour of our Benefactor and Patron God and we are apt to dream that God will make his Saints raigne here as kings in a millenary kingdom and give them the riches and fortunes of this world that they may rule over men and sing psalms to God for ever But I remember what Xenophanes saies of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God is like to men neither in shape nor in counsel he knowes that his mercies confirm some and encourage more but they convert but few alone they lead men to dissolution of manners and forgetfulnesse of God rather then repentance not but that mercies are competent and apt instruments of grace if we would but because we are more dispersed in our spirits and by a prosperous accident are melted into joy and garishness and drawn off from the sobriety of recollection Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked Many are not able to suffer and endure prosperity it is like the light of the sun to a weak eye glorious indeed in it self but not proportioned to such an instrument Adam himself as the Rabbins say did not dwell one night in Paradise but was poisoned with prosperity with the beauty of his fair wife and a beauteous tree and Noah and Lot were both righteous and examplary the one to Sodom the other to the old world so long as they lived in a place in which they were obnoxious to the common suffering but as soon as the one of them had scaped from drowing and the other from burning and were put into security they fell into crimes which have dishonoured their memories for above thirty generations together the crimes of drunkennesse and incest wealth and a full fortune make men licenciously vitious tempting a man with power to act all that he can desire or designe vitiously Inde irae faciles Namque ut opes nimias mundo fortuna subacto Intulit et rebus mores cessere secundis Cultus gest are decoros vix nuribus rapuere mares totoque accersitur orbe Quo gens quaeque perit Lucan And let me observe to you that though there are in the new Testament many promises and provisions made for the poor in that very capacity they haveing a title to some certain circumstances and additionals of grace and blessing yet to rich men our blessed Saviour was pleased to make none at all but to leave them involved in general comprehensions and to have a title to the special promises onely by becomming poor in spirit and in preparation of minde though not in fortune and possession How ever it is hard for God to perswade us to this till we are taught it by a sad experience that those prosperities which we think will make us serve God cheerfully make us to serve the world and secular ends diligently and God not at all Repentance is a duty that best complies with affliction 〈◊〉 is a symbolical estate of the same complexion and constitution half the work of repentance is done by a sad accident our spirits are made sad our gayeties mortified our wildnesse corrected the water springs are ready to run over but if God should grant our desires and give to most men prosperity with a designe to lead them to repentance all his pompe and all his employment and all his affections and passions and all his circumstances are so many degrees of distance from the conditions and natures of repentance It was reported by Dio concerning Neros mother that she often wished that her Son might be Emperour and wished it with so great passion that upon that condition she cared not though her Son might kill her Her first wish and her second fear were both granted but when she began to fear that her Son did really designe to murder her she used all the art and instruments of diversion that a witty and a powerfull a timerous person and a woman could invent or apply Just so it is with us so we might have our wishes of prosperity we promise to undergo all the severities of repentance but when we are landed upon our desire then every degree of
satisfaction of those sensualities is a temptation against repentance for a man must have his affections weaned from those possessions before he can be reconciled to the possibilities of repentance And because God knowes this well and loves us better then we do our selves therefore he sends upon us the 1. scrolls of vengeance the hand writing upon the wall to denounce judgement against us for God is so highly resolved to bring us to repentance some way or other that if by his goodnesse he cannot shame us into it he will try if by his judgements he can scare us into it not that he strikes alwayes as soon as he hath sent his warrants out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Philo Thus God sent Jonas and denounced judgements against Niniveh but with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with the forbearance of forty dayes for the time of their escape if they would repent When Noah the great preacher of righteousnesse denounced the flood to all the world it was with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with the forbearance of 120. years and when the great extermination of the Jewish nation and their total deletion from being Gods people was foretold by Christ and decreed by God yet they had the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of forty years in which they were perpetually called to repentance These were reprieves and deferrings of the stroke But sometimes God strikes once and then forbeares and such are all those sadnesses which are lesse then death every sicknesse every losse every disgrace the death of friends and neerest relatives sudden discontents these are all of them the lowder calls of God to repentance but still instances of forbearance Indeed many times this forbearance makes men impudent it was so in the case of Pharaoh when God smote him and then forbore Pharaohs heart grew callous and insensible till God struck again and this was the meaning of these words of God I will harden the heart of pharaoh that is I wil forbear him smite him and then take the blow off Sic enim Deus induravit Pharaonis cor said Saint Basil For as water taken off from fire will sooner congeale and become icy then if it had not been attenuated by the heate so is the heart of some men when smitten by God it seemes soft and plyable but taken off from the fire of affliction it presently becomes horrid then stiff and then hard as a rock of Adamant or as the gates of death and hell But this is besides the purpose and intention of the Divine mercy this is an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a plain contradiction to the riches of Gods goodnesse this is to be evill because God is good to burn with flames because we are coold with water this is to put out the lamps of heaven or if we cannot do it to put our own eyes out least we should behold the fair beauty of the Lord and be enamoured of his goodnesse and repent and live O take heed of despising this goodnesse for this is one of Gods latest arts to save us he hath no way left beyond this but to punish us with a lasting judgement and a poinant affliction In the tomb of Terentia certain lamps burned under ground many ages together but as soon as ever they were brought into the aire and saw a bigger light they went out never to be reenkindled so long as we are in the retirements of sorrow of want of fear of sicknesse or of any sad accident we are burning and shining lamps but when God comes with his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with his forbearance and lifts us up from the gates of death and carries us abroad into the open aire that we converse with prosperity and temptation we go out in darknesse and we cannot be preserved in heat and light but by still dwelling in the regions of sorrow And if such be our weaknesses or our folly it concerns us to pray against such deliverances to be afraid of health to beg of God to continue a persecution and not to deny us the mercy of an affliction And do not we finde all this to be a great truth in our selves are we so great strangers to our own weaknesses and unworthinesse as not to remember when God scared us with judgements in the neighbourhood whence we lived in a great plague or if were ever in a storm or God had sent a sicknesse upon us then we may please to remember that repentance was our businesse that we designed mountains of piety renewed our holy purposes made vows and solemn sacraments to God to become penitent and obedient persons and we may also remember without much considering that assoon as God began to forbear us we would no longer forbear to sin but adde flame to flame a heap of sins to a treasure of wrath already too big being like Pharaoh or Herod or like the oxe and mule more hardy and callous for our stripes and melted in the fire and frozen harder in the cold worse for all our afflictions and the worse for all Gods judgements not bettered by his goodnesse nor mollified by his threatnings and what is there more left for God to do unto us He that is not won by the sence of Gods mercy can never finde any thing in God that shall convert him and he whom fear and sense of pain cannot mend can never finde any argument from himself that shall make him wise This is sad that nothing from without and nothing from within shall move us nothing in Heaven and nothing in Hell neither love nor fear gratitude to God nor preservation of our selves shall make us to repent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that shall be his final sentence He shall never escape that ruine from which the greatest art of God could not entice nor his terrour scare him he loved cursing therefore shall it happen to him he loved not blessing therefore shall it be far from him Let therefore every one of us take the account of our lives and read over the sermons that God hath made us besides thâ—â— sweet language of his mercy and his still voice from Heaven consider what voices of thunder you have heard and presently that noise ceased and God was heard in the still voice agaiâ— What dangers have any of you escaped were you ever assaâ—â—â—ed by the rudenesse of an ill natur'd man have you never had a dangerous fall and escaped it did none of you ever scape drowning and in a great danger saw the forbearance of God have you never been sick as your feared unto death or suppose none of these things hath happened hath not God threatned you all and forborne to smite you or smitten you and forborne to kill you that is evident But if you had been a Privado and of the Cabinet councel with your Angel Guardian that from him you might have known how many dangers you have escaped how often you have been neer a ruine so neer that if you had seen
with his servants that were in arrears to him One was brought to him which owed him ten thousand talents but forasmuch as he had not to pay his Lord commanded him to be sold and his wife and children and all that he had and payment to be made The man you see was under the arrest the sentence was passed upon him he was a condemned man but before the execution of it he fell down and worshipped and said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lord suffer me longer a while have patience with me and I will pay thee all This tells its meaning this is a long-sufferance by being a forbearance onely of execution of the last sentence a putting off damnation upon a longer triall of our emendation but in the mean time it implies no other ease but that together with his long-sufferance God may use all other severities and scourges to break our untamed spirits and to soften them with hammers so death be put off no matter else what hardship and loads of sufferance we have Hic ure hic seca ut in aeternum parcas so Saint Austin prayed Here O Lord cut me here burn me spare me not now that thou mayest spare me for ever And it is just like the mercy used to a mad man when he is kept in a dark room and tamed with whips it is a cruel mercy but such as his condition requires he can receive no other mercy all things else were cruelly unmercifull I remember what Bion observed wittily of the punishment inflicted upon the daughters of Danaeus whom the old Poets fained to be condemned in hell to fill a bottomlesse tub with water and to increase the pain as they fancied this water they were to carry in sieves and never to leave work till the tub were full It is well sayes he since their labour must be eternall that it is so gentle for it were more pains to carry their water in whole vessels and a sad burden to go loaden to a leaking tub with unfruitfull labours Just so is the condition of these persons upon whom a wrath is gone out it is a sad sentence but acted with a gentle instrument and since they are condemned to pay the scores of their sins with the sufferance of a load of judgements it is well they are such as will run quite thorough them and not stick upon them to eternity Omnes enim poenae non exterminantes sunt mediciâ—ales All punishments whatsoever which do not destroy us are intended to save us they are lancets which make a wound but to let forth the venome of our ulcers when God slue twenty three thousand of the Assyrians for their fornication that was a finall justice upon their persons and consigned them to a sad eternity for beyond such an infliction there was no remedy But when God sent lions to the Assyrian inhabitants of Samaria and the judgements drave them to inquire after the manner of the God of the land and they sent for Priests from Jerusalem to teach them how to worship the God of Israel that was a mercy and a judgement too the long forbearance of God who destroyed not at all the inhabitants lead the rest into repentance 1. And I must make this observation to you That when things come to this passe that God is forced to the last remedies of judgements this long-sufferance will little or nothing concern particular persons but nations and communities of men for those who are smitten with judgement if God takes his hands off again and so opens a way for their repentance by prolonging their time that comes under the second part of Gods method the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or forbearance but if he smites single persons with a small judgement that is a long-suffering not of him but towards others and God hath destroyed my neighbour to make me repent my neighbours time being expired and the date of his possibility determined For a mans death-bed is but an ill station for a penitent and a finall judgement is no good monitor to him to whom it is a severe executioner They that perished in the gain-saying of Corah were out of the conditions of repentance but the people that were affrighted with the neighbourhood of the judgement and the expresses of Gods anger manifested in such visible remonstrances they were the men called unto repentance But concerning whole nations or communities of men this long-sufferance is a Sermon of repentance loud clamorous and highly argumentative When God suffered the mutinies the affronts the basenesse and ingratitude the follies and relapses of the children of Israel who murmured against God ten times in the wildernesse God sent evil angels among them and fiery serpents and pestilence and fire from heaven and prodigies from the earth and a prevailing sword of the enemies and in all these accidents although some innocent persons felt the contingencies and variety of mortality yet those wicked persons who fell by the designe of Gods anger were made examples unto others and instances of Gods forbearance to the Nation and yet this forbearance was such that although God preserved the Nation in being and in title to the first promises yet all the particular persons that came from Egypt died in the wildernesse two onely excepted 2. And I desire you to observe this that you may truly estimate the arts of the Divine justice and mercy For all the world being one continuall and intire argument of the Divine mercy we are apt to abuse that mercy to vain confidences and presumption First mistaking the end as if Gods mercy would be indulgent to our sin to which it is the greatest enemy in the world for it is a certain truth that the mercy of God is as great an enemy to sin as his justice is and as Gods justice is made the hand-maid of his mercy to cure sin so it is the servant also and the instrument to avenge our despight and contempt of mercy and in all the way where a difference can be there justice is the lesse principall And it were a great signe of folly and a huge mistake to think our Lord and friends do us offices of kindnesse to make themselves more capable of affronts and that our fathers care over us and provisions for us can tempt us to disobey them The very purpose of all those emanations is that their love may return in duty and their providence be the parent of our prudence and their care be crowned with our piety and then we shall all be crowned and shall return like the yeer the ends into its own circle and the fathers and the children the benefactours and the beneficiary shall knit the wreath and binde each other in the eternall inclosures and circlings of immortality * but besides the men who presume to sin because of Gods mercy do mistake the very end and designe of Gods mercy they also mistake the Oeconomy of it and the manner of its ministration 3 For if God suffers
and intolerable and there is no soft counsels then to be entertained they are already in the fire but they may be saved for all that so great so infinite so miraculous is Gods mercy that he will not give a sinner over though the hairs of his head be singed with the flames of hell Gods desires of having us to be saved continue even when we begin to be damned even till we will not be saved and are gone beyond Gods method and all the revelations of his kindnesse And certainly that is a bold and a mighty sinner whose iniquity is sweld beyond all the bulk and heap of Gods revealed loving kindnesse If sin hath sweld beyond grace and superabounds over it that sin is gone beyond the measures of a man such a person is removed beyond all the malice of humane nature into the evil and spite of Devils and accursed spirits there is no greater sadnesse in the world then this God hath not appointed a remedy in the vast treasures of grace for some men and some sins they have sinned like the falling Angels and having over run the ordinary evil inclinations of their nature they are without the protection of the divine mercy and the conditions of that grace which was designed to save all the world was sufficient to have saved twenty This is a condition to be avoyded with the care of God and his Angels and all the whole industry of man In order to which end my purpose now is to remonstrate to you the several states of sin and death together with those remedies which God had proportioned out to them that we may observe the evils of the least and so avoid the intolerable mischiefs of the greater even of those sins which still are within the power and possibilities of recovery lest insensibly we fall into those sins and into those circumstances of person for which Christ never died which the Holy Ghost never means to cure and which the eternal God never will pardon for there are of this kinde more then commonly men imagine whilest they amuse their spirits with gaietyes and false principles till they have run into horrible impieties from whence they are not willing to withdraw their foot and God is resolved never to snatch and force them thence 1. Of some have compassion and these I shall reduce to four heads or orders of men and actions all which have their proper cure proportionable to their proper state gentle remedies to the lesser irregularities of the soul. The first are those that sin without observation of their particular state either because they are uninstructed in the special cases of conscience or because they do an evil against which there is no expresse commandment It is a sad calamity that there are so many milions of men and women that are entred into a state of sicknesse and danger and yet are made to believe they are in perfect health and they do actions concerning which they never made a question whether they were just or no nor were ever taught by what names to call them For while they observe that modesty is sometimes abused by a false name and called clownishnesse want of breeding and contentednesse and temperate living is suppressed to be want of courage and noble thoughts and severity of life is called imprudent and unsociable and simplicity and hearty honesty is counted foolish and unpolitick they are easily tempted to honour prodigality and foolish dissolution of their estates with the title of liberal and noble usages timorousnesse is called caution rashnesse is called quicknesse of spirit covetousnesse is fragality amorousnesse is society and gentile peevishnesse and anger is courage flattery is humane and courteous and under these false vails vertue slips away like truth from under the hand of theâ— that fight for her and leave vices dressed up withthe same imagâ—â—y and the fraud not discovered till the day of recompences when men are distinguished by their rewards But so men think they sleep freely when their spirits are loaden with a Lethargy and they call a hestick-feaver the vigour of a natural heat tell nature changes those lesse discerned states into the notorious images of death Very many men never consider whether they sin or no in 10000. of their actions every one of which is very disputable and do not think they are bound to consider these men are to be pitied and instructed they are to be called upon to use religion like a daily diet their consciences must be made tender and their Catechisme enlarged teach them and make them sensible and they are cured But the other in this place are more considerable Men sin without observation because their actions have no restraint of an expresse Commandment no letter of the law to condemn them by an expresse sentence And this happens when the crime is comprehended under a general notion without the instancing of particulars for if you search over all the Scripture you shall never finde incest named and marked with the black character of death and there are diveres sorts of uncleannesse to which Scripture therefore gives no name because she would have them have no being And it had been necessary that God should have described all particulars and all kindes if he had not given reason to man For so it is fit that a guide should point out every turning if he be to teach a childe or a fool to return under his fathers roof But he that bids us avoid intemperance for fear of a feaver supposes you to be sufficiently instructed that you may avoid the plague and when to look upon a woman with lust is condemned it will not be necessary to adde you must not do more when even the least is forbidden and when to uncover the nakednesse of Noah brought an universal plague upon the posterity of Cham it was not necessary that the law-giver should say you must not ascend to your fathers bed or draw the curtains from your sisters retirements When the Athenians forbad to transports figs from Athens there was no need to name the gardens of Alcibiades much lesse was it necessary to adde that Chabrias should send no plants to Sparta What so ever is comprised under the general notion and partakes of the common nature and the same iniquity needs no special prohibition unlesse we think we can mock God and elude his holy precepts with an absurd trick of mistaken Logick I am sure that will not save us harmlesse from a thunderbolt 2. Men sin without an expresse prohibition when they commit a thing that is like a forbidden evil And when Saint Paul had reckoned many works of the flesh he addes and such like all that have the same unreasonablenesse carnaâ—â—ty For thus poligamy is unlawful for if it be not lawful for a Christian to put away his wife and marry another unlesse for adultery much lesse may he keep a first and take a second when the first is not put away If a
in death upon all the world and one sin brought slavery upon the posterity of Cham and alwaâ—es fearing lest death surprize us in that one sin we shall by the grâ—â—e of God either not need or else easily perceive the effects and blessings of that compassion which God reserves in the secrets of his mercy for such persons whom his grace hath ordained and disposed with excellent dispositions unto life eternall These are the sorts of men which are to be used with compassion concerning whom we are to make a difference making a difference so sayes the Text and it is of high concernment that we should do so that we may relieve the infirmities of the men and relieve their sicknesses and transcribe the copy of the Diâ—â—ne mercy who loves not to quench the smoaking flax nor break 〈◊〉 bruised reed For although all sins are against Gods Commandements directly or by certain consequents by line or by analogy yet they are not all of the same tincture and mortality Nec vincit ratio tantundem ut peccet idemque Qui teneros caules alieni fregerit horti Vt qui nocturnus Diuûm sacra legerit He that robs a garden of Coleworts and carries away an armfull of Spinage does not deserve hell as he that steals the Chalice from the Church or betrayes a Prince and therefore men are distinguished accordingly Est inter Tanaim quiddam socerumque Viselli The Poet that Sejanus condemned for dishonouring the memory of Agamemnon was not an equall criminall with Cataline or Gracchus and Simon Magus and the Nicolaitans committed crimes which God hated more then the complying of S. Barnabas or the dissimulation of S. Peter and therefore God does treat these persons severally Some of these are restrained with a fit of sicknesse some with a great losse and in these there are degrees and some arrive at death And in this manner God scourged the Corinthians for their irreverent and disorderly receiving the Holy Sacrament For although even the least of the sins that I have discoursed of will lead to death eternall if their course be not interrupted and the disorder chastised yet because we do not stop their progresse instantly God many times does and visits us with proportionable judgements and so not onely checks the rivulet from swelling into rivers and a vastnesse but plainly tells us that although smaller crimes shall not be punished with equall severity as the greatest yet even in hell there are eternal rods as well as eternal scorpions and the smallest crime that we act with an infant-malice and manly deliberation shall be revenged with the lesser stroaks of wrath but yet with the infliction of a sad eternity But then that we also should make a difference is a precept concerning Church discipline and therefore not here proper to be considered but onely as it may concern our own particulars in the actions of repentance and our brethren in internal correction assit Regula quae poenas peccatis irroget aequas Nec seuticà dignum horribili sectere flagello Let us be sure that we neglect no sin but repent for every one and judge our selves for every one according to the proportion of the malice or the scandall or the danger And although in this there is no fear that we would be excessive yet when we are to reprove a brother we are sharp enough and either by pride or by animosity by the itch of government or the indignation of an angry minde we run beyond the gentlenesse of a Christian Monitor we must remember that by Christs law some are to be admonished privately some to be shamed and corrected publikely and beyond these there is an abscission or a cutting off from the communion of faithfull people A delivering over to Sathan And to this purpose is that old reading of the words of my Text which is still in some Copies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Reprove them sharply when they are convinced or separate by sentence But because this also is a designe of mercy acted with an instance of discipline it is a punishment of the flesh that the soul may be saved in the day of the Lord it means the same with the usuall reading and with the last words of the Text and teaches us our usage towards the worst of recoverable sinners Others save with fear pulling them out of the fire Some sins there are which in their own nature are damnable and some are such as will certainly bring a man to damnation the first are curable but with much danger the second are desperate and irrecoverable when a man is violently tempted and allured with an object that is proportionable and pleasant to his vigorous appetite and his unabated unmortified nature this man falls into death but yet we pity him as we pity a thief that robs for his necessity this man did not tempt himself but his spirit suffers violence and his reason is invaded and his infirmities are mighty and his aids not yet prevailing But when this single temptation hath prevailed for a single instance and leaves a relish upon the palate and this produces another and that also is fruitfull and swels into a family and kinred of sin that is it grows first into approbation then to a clear assent and an untroubled conscience thence into frequency from thence unto a custome and easinesse and a habit this man is fallen into the fire There are also some single acts of so great a malice that they must suppose a man habitually sinfull before he could arrive at that height of wickednesse No man begins his sinfull course with killing of his Father or his Prince and Simon Magus had preambulatory impieties he was covetous and ambitious long before he offered to buy the Holy Ghost Nemo repente fuit turpissimus and although such actions may have in them the malice and the mischief the disorder and the wrong the principle and the permanent effect of a habit and a long course of sin yet because they never or very seldom go alone but after the praedisposition of other hâ—â—shering crimes we shall not amisse comprise them under the name of habituall sins For such they are either formally or equivalently and if any man hath fallen into a sinfull habit into a course and order of sinning his case is little lesser then desperate but that little hope that is remanent hath its degree according to the infancy or the growth of the habit 1. For all sins lesse then habitual it is certain a pardon is ready to penitent persons that is to all that sin in ignorance or in infirmity by surprize or inadvertency in smaller instances or infrequent returns with involuntary actions or imperfect resolutions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Clemens in his Epistles Lift up your hands to Almighty God and pray him to be mercifull to you in all things when you sin unwillingly that is in which you sin with an imperfect choice for no man sins against his will directly
the obstinacy of the Jews and the folly of the Heathens and the rudenesse and infidelity of the Mahumetans and the negligence and vices of Christians and he that can behold no impurity is received in all places with perfumes of mushromes and garments spotted with the flesh and stained souls and the actions and issues of misbelief and an evil conscience and with accursed sins that he hates upon pretence of religion which he loves and he is made a party against himself by our voluntary mistakes and men continue ten yeers and 20. and 30. and 50. in a course of sinning and they grow old with the vices of their youth and yet God forbears to kill them and to consigne them over to an eternity of horrid pains still expecting that they should repent and be saved 2. Besides this long-sufferance and for-bearing with an unwearied patience God also excuses a sinner oftentimes and takes a little thing for an excuse so far as to move him to intermediall favours first and from thence to a finall pardon He passes by the sins of our youth with a huge easinesse to pardon if he be intreated and reconciled by the effective repentance of a vigorous manhood he takes ignorance for an excuse and in every degree of its being inevitable or innocent in its proper cause it is also inculpable and innocent in its proper effects though in their own natures criminal But I found mercy of the Lord because I did it in ignorance saith S. Paul he pities our infirmities and strikes off much of the account upon that stock the violence of a temptation and restlesnesse of its motion the perpetuity of its sollicitation the wearinesse of a mans spirit the state of sicknesse the necessity of secular affairs the publike customs of a people have all of them a power of pleading and prevailing towards some degrees of pardon and diminution before the throne of God 3. When God perceives himself forced to strike yet then he takes off his hand and repents him of the evil It is as if it were against him that any of his creatures should fall under the strokes of an exterminating fury 4. When he is forced to proceed he yet makes an end before he hath half done and is as glad of a pretence to pardon us or to strike lesse as if he himself had the deliverance and not we When Ahab had but humbled himself at the word of the Lord God was glad of it and went with the message to the Prophet himself saying Seest thou not how Ahab humbles himself What was the event of it I will not bring the evil in his dayes but in his sons dayes the evil shall come upon his house 5 God forgets our sin and puts it out of his remembrance that is he makes it as though it had never been he makes penitence to be as pure as innocence to all the effects of pardon and glory the memory of the sins shall not be upon record to be used to any after act of disadvantage and never shall return unlesse we force them out of their secret places by ingratitude and a new state of sinning 6. God sometimes gives pardon beyond all his revelations and declared will and provides suppletories of repentance even then when he cuts a man off from the time of repentance accepting a temporal death instead of an eternal that although the Divine anger might interrupt the growing of the fruits yet in some cases and to some persons the death and the very cutting off shall go no further but be instead of explicite and long repentances Thus it happened to Uzzah who was smitten for his zeal and died in severity for prevaricating the letter by earnestnesse of spirit to serve the whole religion Thus it was also in the case of the Corinthians that died a temporal death for their undecent circumstances in receiving the holy Sacrament Saint Paul who used it for an argument to threaten them into reverence went no further nor pressed the argument to a sadder issue then to die temporally But these suppletories are but seldom and they are also great troubles and ever without comfort and dispensed irregularly and that not in the case of habituall sins that we know of or very great sins but in single actions or instances of a lesse malignity and they are not to be relied upon because there is no rule concerning them but when they do happen they magnifie the infinitenesse of Gods mercy which is commensurate to all our needs and is not to be circumscribed by the limits of his own revelations 7. God pardons the greatest sinners and hath left them upon record and there is no instance in Scripture of the Divine forgivenesse but in such instances the misery of which was a fit instrument to speak aloud the glories of Gods mercies and gentlenesse and readinesse to forgive Such were S. Paul a persecutor and S. Peter that forswore his Master Mary Magdalene with seven Devils the thief upon the crosse Manasses an Idolater David a murderer and adulterer the Corinthian for incest the children of Israel for ten times rebelling against the Lord in the wildernesse with murmuring and infidelity and rebellion and schisme and a golden calf and open disobedience and above all I shall instance in the Pharisees among the Jews who had sinned against the Holy Ghost as our Blessed Saviour intimates and tels the particular viz in saying that the Spirit of God by which Christ did work was an evil spirit and afterward they crucified Christ so that two of the Persons of the most Holy Trinity were openly and solemnly defied and God had sent out a decree that they should be cut off yet 40. yeers time after all this was left for their repentance and they were called upon by arguments more perswasive and more excel lent in that 40. yeers then all the Nation had heard from their Prophets even from Samuel to Zecharias And Jonas thought he had reason on his side to refuse to go to threaten Nineveh he knew Gods tendernesse in destroying his creatures and he should be thought to be but a false Prophet and so it came to passe according to his belief Jonah prayed unto the Lord and said I praâ— thee Lord was not this my saying when I was yet in my countrey therefore I fled for I knew thou wert a gracious God and mercifull sâ—ew to anger and of great kindnesse and repentest thee of the evil He told before hand what the event would be and he had reason to know it God proclaimed it in a cloud before the face of all Israel and made it to be his Name Miscrator misericors Deus The Lord the Lord God mercifull and gracious c. You see the largenesse of this treasure but we can see no end for we have not yet looked upon the rare arts of conversionâ— nor that God leaves the naturall habit of vertues even after the acceptation is interrupted nor his working
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