his Body and his Bloud is he himself Therefore thou didst receive him as verily as thou didst those and if the Sacramental food be thine then Christ is thine and thou maist say my God My Brethren it was the Bloud of Christ that purchased all the glorious mercies of the Gospel all the blessed expectations of a Christian that was the price of all the joys of Heaven that reconciled God to us bought us an interest in him and the happy enjoyments of himself for us and then if in the Sacrament Christ do give me his bloud when I can shew God that bring him the price of the remission of my sins the value of those glories even the bloud of Jesus come with the purchase-money in my hands that bought my interest in God cannot I say those are mine my Heaven and my God Yea when I can say O Lord Christ whom I have undertaken to obey my God whom I have vowed to serve and worship thou art even my flesh for there I ate thy flesh and thou becamest flesh of my flesh Thou art the portion of my cup when thy very bloud doth fill full my cup and so thou art my flesh and my bloud then surely I may say with Thomas here my Lord and my God O Holy and Eternal Savior who art made both Lord and Christ and by thy Resurrection didst manifest the Omnipotency of thy person the truth of thy Promises and open a way to the everlasting glory and salvation which thou hast prepared for them that give themselves up to serve and worship thee their Lord and God pour down that blessed influence of this thy Resurrection on our hearts in raising us from the death of sin to the life of Righteousness Be thou our Lord and Christ ruling us by thy laws saving us by thy grace and by thy Spirit applying the mercies of thy death and so making us partakers of thy Resurrection therein turning us from our iniquities hereafter in raising us to Glory O Lord we have this day made a Covenant of this with thee and signed the Articles of it in the bloud of our God swore to them at the Altar give us grace we beseech thee to use the strictest care and watchfulness in our endeavors to perform with thee Regard not how we have in times past onely mock'd thee sacredly in these performances O let it from this day be otherwise We have bin onely on a stage of Religion when we are at our devoutest performances and having turn'd our backs unto the Church turn'd them also to our duty put off the vizards of Religion and we untired our selves of all our Piety almost as soon as the exercises of it were don and howsoever we tied our selves our froward wills have bin too strong for all our obligations and burst out of them broke all thy bonds asunder and cast away thy cords from us altho we tied them with all things that were most solemn and most sacred vows and oaths and tied them before the body of our crucified Lord and Savior with the body and bloud of Christ in our hands as if we had no other desires no other cares that should do us good than as we were careful to keep those resolutions and vows and yet O Lord we did let them instantly loosen and slack pass by and fail Yea we did break them wilfully and would not be held in by thine or our own bonds O Lord if thou look upon us in this guilt sure thou wilt have no more to do with us such false and perjured vow-breakers But O look upon us in thine own bloud which thou hast bid us pour out still to establish and renew our Covenant with thee and let this Covenant wherein we have now taken thee to be our Lord and God and taken thee who art so in us remain inviolable be there then with thy Power and Autority subdue our hearts and our desires and bring them under the obedience of thy laws Thou that art God Almighty that didst conquer Death and Satan bring it to pass that none of them prevail against thee now in our Souls where thou art but use thy strength O Lord to drive their power thence that thy servants and thy people may not be enslaved to corruption and ruin nor thy Enimy gain souls from thee which thou hast purchased with thy bloud that we having attain'd thee for our Lord and God may claim the privileges of thy People here have the watches and cares and securities that thou laiest out upon thy Treasures and the Jewels of thy Crown and by thy body and thy bloud being made one with thee and thou being ours all things may be ours thy grace here and thy joys hereafter thy Spirit may be ours and thy Heaven ours and we in thee and thou in us may all enjoy thy Kingdom Power and Glory for ever SERMON XIII THE BELIEVERS CONCERN to pray for Faith Mark 9. 24. Lord I believe help thou my Vnbelief WHICH are the words of a poor parent passionately earnest and afflicted sadly for his child that from his infancy had bin tormented miserably by a Devil for which having sought help every way but finding none no not from Christ's Disciples at last he repairs to him himself beseeching him to have compassion on him and if he were able to relieve him To whom Christ replies that if he could believe then he could work the miracle and help his child all things being possible to be don for him that could believe but nothing otherwise whereupon strait way the father of the child cried out and said with tears Lord I believe help thou my unbelief In which words we have first the necessary Qualification that is to make all that had ever heard of Christ capable of having any benefit from Christ that is belief in him I believe And since Christ hath made this qualification absolutely necessary and by consequence must be suppos'd to have provided means sufficient to work in us that belief that he requires so peremtorily we shall then In the second place enquire how it comes to pass that they so often fail that men do either not believe or their Faith is so weak that much unbelief do's mix with it as in our Confessor here in the Text who tho he did profess he did believe yet withal acknowledges his unbelief And thirdly to prevent and remedy all that here is discovered whither we are to betake our selves for help and where alone 't is possible to find it and that is Christ himself who alone is able to repair in us whatever degree of true belief is wanting in us Lord help thou my unbelief and how he do's repair it And fourthly when it is repair'd to that due height what that degree is can make us capable of those benefits which he hath promis'd to bestow on true Believers and whether such believers can say with our man here I believe yet say too Help my unbelief First of
iniquities The sweats of soul under the sense of the burden of sin the labors of mortifying the flesh and crucifying the affections of putting the body of sin to death will justify this sense The new Birth also hath its pangs and the Child of God as he is not engendred by weak purposes faint resolutions so neither is he brought forth in a sigh or wish of mercy there is a labor in it In this expression you may see the nature of repentance the dawnings and first flashes of that Catholic Duty 't is not that easy thing to change my mind onely and begin to believe That that is not the best course I have hitherto trod in the way of Sinners not the safest and most pleasant path tho few of us will believe that neither is it that easy wish I would I had not don this act for when the pleasure 's gon and dead the memory of it is so unsatisfying if not loathsom that a man can hardly not wish it Nor yet is it that easy desire of mercy that saying Lord Lord. The Penitent they are the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here they are such as even faint under a sense of the horror of their sins whose hearts are broken and wounded with that heavy galling weight of them If I should gather up the racks and tortures the Occultum quatiente animo tortore flagellum that self whip in the dark rooms and recesses of our thoughts conscience dealing with us by the discipline of mad men as knowing the sinner is not onely Solomons fool and Davids man without understanding but even St Pauls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mad-man the tacita sudant praecordia culpa which a Heathen can reckon up to us And add to these the Scripture expressions the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the pains of travel the labor of a woman in child-birth the agony of the Cross and the pangs of death the word repentance would bear them all and they would let us see that the Penitent is truly one that labors under a very heavy burden and so is invited here by our Savior Come Thirdly those that labor and are heavy laden may signify such as groan under a burden of afflictions and look upon them not as chastisements onely but inflictions and are even wearied and affrighted by them Thus those judgments which God did by his Prophets threaten to the Nations are in those Prophets called the burden of those Nations and the cross and calamities are often called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the labor in the Text 1 Tim. 4. 10. and generally all the troubles and difficulties of this life Rev. 14. 13. of which death is there made the rescue And I need make no application of this interpretation the words labor and heavy laden do in these daies sufficiently apply themselves I shall onely tell you that the whole sense of those words sum'd up make thus much Those that are heavy burdened with sins and the punishment of those sins afflictions and groan under the sense of both of them laboring earnestly to be rid and be delivered from both these are bid to come to Christ which is the invitation and what it means I am secondly to shew Come unto me And first in general the word used 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Come is not onely a word of exhortation but of great encouragement also in the doing so often used Come and let us kill him and then the inheritance shall be ours and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Come ye unto the wedding And indeed such is needful to the persons here spoken to the laboring heavy laden for them to take a journey if there be not the encouragement of some great advantage it will not sound like an invitation but an infliction and therefore our Savior besides the rest he promises used animating words even in the very call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Therefore the whole invitation come unto me tho it be used in the Gospel and may very well signify come to me as to a Teacher and Instructer so Nicodemus is said to come to Christ and they are said to come to the light as that which was to reveal yea and that place in Isaiah 55. 3. whither our Savior do's much reflect when he useth this expression seems to import but so Encline your ear and come unto me hear c. yea and may so signify in this place the words going before being all things are given me of my father and no man knoweth the father but the son and he to whom the son will reveal him it then follows come to me as if he should say therefore if you desire to be instructed in the way to life come to me and tho you do labor under the load of many sins yet I will shew you a way how you shall find ease and rest and that way follows in the next verse take my yoke upon you and learn of me and ye shall be sure to find rest this is very natural yet because to give you rest is more than to shew you a way to it and so may seem a promise and a reward very apportioned to the duty rest to coming therefore it is most probable that come doth not onely signify come to me to learn your duty but that the come should be it self a duty and so I shall consider it and the expression come to me does in the Gospel signify a twofold duty 1. It signifies to obey and serve Thus very often most expresly in the Epistle to the Hebrews to come to God is to serve and worship him c. 11. 6. For he that cometh to God must believe that God is and that he is a rewarder of them that seek him and c. 7. 25. He is able to save them that come to God by him that serve God as he commandeth and enableth c. 10. 1. The sacrifices which they offered year by year could not make the comers thereunto perfect could not perfectly cleanse them that served God by them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the 22d verse there Let us come with a true heart worship him with unfeigned piety and obedience And the sense will be fully clear from the expressions that relate to it Seek the Lord draw near to him and then come to him To seek him is to enter upon such a course of life by which his favor is to be obtain'd and what it is you will see Isaiah 55. where when he had bid them come to him that they may do that he bids them seek him v. 6 7. Seek the Lord while he may be found let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let them return unto the Lord. Deut. 4. 29 30. But if from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God thou shalt find him if thou seek him with all thine heart and with all thy soul if thou turn to the Lord thy God and shalt be obedient
see him as he is add this Every man that hath this hope purifieth himself as he is pure doth righteousness in the words following and so is righteous even as he is righteous But that we may know what King David means by beholding Gods face in Righteousness we must know that first by Righteousness is meant uprightness and sincerity of a religious holy virtuous life and as for the beholding of Gods face we may take notice that altho God saith he spoke to Moses face to face yet he tells the same Moses that he cannot see his face and live Exod. 33. 11 10. so that Davids beholding of his face is not seeing him as he did hope to do when he did awake up after Gods likeness but 1. As for God to lift up the light of his countenance Psalm 4. 6. and to make his face to shine upon a man Psalm 31. 16. is to be favorable to him and to hide Psalm 30. 7. or turn away his face 2 Chron. 30. 9. is to withdraw his favor and to be displeased so also to seek his face 1 Chron. 16. 11. is to endeavor to obtain his kindness and accordingly to see or behold his face is to be in his favor to be in a state of enjoying it But besides this also 2. As those that are said to behold the face of Kings are those that minister about them do them service of the nearest admission and that stand in their presence and are ready still to execute whatever they command So 2 King 25. 19. and he took five men of those that saw the King's face of those that serv'd him in ordinary and so very often Ester 1. 14. c. And as secondly the Angels that are ministring Spirits sent forth by God to minister perpetually are said to see the face of God always Matt. 18. 10. so when David says of God thou settest me before thy face Psalm 41. 12. the Jews expound set me that he might serve minister unto him for that is to stand before the face of one 1 Kings 1. 2 4. and c. 10. 8. and c. 17. 1. c. as he had said dost appoint me for thy service and by consequence to see his face or to behold his presence is to wait upon him in all duty and obedience to his commands whom they attend accordingly to walk before him or walk with him in his presence is to serve him constantly with all uprightness Gen. 17. 1. and to please him Heb. 11. 5. cum Gen. 5. 24. But particularly in the acts of Worship and Religion his House the place that 's dedicated to his Worship being call'd his Court his presence Psalm 95. 2. and 100. 2 4. because he sate upon and spoke from the Mercy-seat Exod. 25. 22. Numb 7. 89. and the Ark is therefore his presence and his face those that serve there are said to minister before him in his presence those that come there to appear before him Psalm 42. 2. those that pray to seek his face 2 Chron. 7. 14. and to intreat the face of the Lord 1 Kings 13. 6. and our King David did desire one thing of the Lord which says he I will require even that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord Psalm 27. 4. So that to behold God's face in righteousness here does signify all this I will serve thee truly faithfully attend thy commands and wait upon thee in a constant diligent performance of my duty live as always in thy presence holily and righteously especially in attendance on thy Worship when I come to seek thy face to put my self before thee in thy presence and so doing I make no doubt but that thou wilt lift up the light of thy countenance upon me and I shall behold thy face to shine upon thy servant And indeed that this is the means and that there is no other way to arrive at this state is not difficult to prove for the righteous Lord loveth righteousness saith the same David Psalm 11. 7. his countenance will behold the thing that is just whereas without this no man shall see the Lord and thereupon the Prophet Micah after strict inquiry in the peoples name what they were to do that they might find God's face look pleasingly upon them and see his favorable countenance wherewithall shall I come before the Lord and how myself before the most High God Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings with calves of a year old Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams If his favor be to be bought tho at the greatest price 't will be abvisable to give it and the dearest purchase would be a reasonable one Or shall I give ten thousand rivers of oyl thereby to make his face to shine and look upon me with a chearfull countenance This sure were to be don Or farther yet shall I give my first-born for my transgression or the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul Time was indeed when men would do that offer up their tender infants in the fire to Moloch to preserve themselves from those sins of the other Tophet as if the burnt child were to expiate the foul heats that begat it I know not whether men believe now such transgressions can deserve so severe atonements that a sin of theirs is valuable at the life of their own first-born tho they take upon them to profess the faith that they were valued at the life of the first-born of God however there our Prophet shapes this answer to that question wherewithall shall I come before the Lord He hath shewed thee O man what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God And truly if we come before the Lord to behold his presence in the duties of Religion we must see his face in Righteousness otherwise he will either turn away his Face or else our praiers will but call his frowns upon us and indanger us to perish at the rebuke of his countenance The Prophet Isaiah speaking as from God to that vainglorious nation of the Jews saith c. 1. v. 12 c. When ye come to appear before me who hath required this at your hand to tread my courts Bring no more vain oblations incense is an abomination to me it is iniquity even your solemn meetings Sabboths and your appointed feasts my soul hateth they are a trouble unto me I am weary to bear them And when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you yea when ye make many praiers I will not hear Wash ye make ye clean put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes cease to do evil learn to do well seek judgment right the oppressed c. And surely if men do not put away the evil of their doings from them when they come before his face how lowd
it now unto thy Governor will he be pleased with thee or accept thy person makes use of the like climax and gradation as if he had said Had thy obedience to thy Ruler no more care nor endeavor in it had thy services to thy Lord no more devotion nor zeal were thy performances to thy Governor so slight and so regardless so full of supine negligence to say nothing of transgression and contemt were thy presentments to thy Prince so unhandsom slubber'd heedless so unchosen unprepared so trivial would they be content with them And must I No surely Cursed be the deceiver verse 14. that mocks me with his imperfect lame sick services with outsides of attendance yea with irreverence with casting of my words behind him with polluted offerings for I am a great King saith the Lord. But afterwards in case of an higher affront he breaks into an higher resentment c. 3. 8. Will a man rob God This is such a thing as the Lord's Rhetoric could lay no greater aggravation on it than by asking the question whether any man could heat himself into such a mad impiety and not be confounded at the thought of such an enterprise to abuse his God Now such an obligation of obedience to the Lord Christ he owns that does acknowledge him his God this it requires Now as to what the Title does import by way of promise here to be the God of any body signifies to be their Almighty Benefactor him from whom that person may expect and shall receive all good things that the power of a God includes So it is clear it does when God proclaims himself the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob and says that is his name and his memorial to all generations Exod. 3. 15 16. From whence our Savior concludes Matt. 22. 31 32. that Abraham and the other must have a life after this for otherwise how is he yet their God How can he be a Benefactor to the dead And in the tenor of the Covenant where it is past it means I will bestow upon them all the mercies of the Covenant So in the Old that place of Deut. 26. 16 17 18 19. so in the New Heb. 8. 10 12. where 't is explained I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more So that my God does mean first he that I vow all worship and service to and secondly he from whom I claim and challenge all those glorious things that are contracted for us in Christ's Covenant the happy issues of the whole chain of methods that he works for us the designed mercies of his Predestination and the privileges that he calls us to the comfortable condition in which his Justification does instate us the graces of his Sanctification and the incomprehensible blessedness of his Glorification yea and all the preservations and mercies of this life all these are challenged in this Thou art my God For so Jer. 31. 33 34. which is repeated in the Heb. 8. 10 11 12. whatever both parts do contract for man's duty and God's promises is all sum'd up in this I will be their God and they shall be my people By which words also he assures them all deliverances from evil and enstates upon them the securings of his Providence both to themselves and their posterity And if God mean all this when he does say I will be their God then man he vows and claims all this when he does say my God Now let us see how this days performance does both these First how it vows and swears all duty worship and service all that Christ requires by his Covenant I have already shewn so that that part is don onely we may take notice Whose belly is his God in St Pauls words Phil. 3. 19. the man who does mind nothing but his sensual appeties and notwithstanding Christ's commands contrives all satisfactions for that and enjoys them that either casts the body of Christ into a stomach filled with late surfet and drowns his bloud in such intemperate draughts as are yet unrepented of or else within a few days after overlaies that body with some riot or spews that bloud out in the overflowings of his woful draughts These whatsoever they have don to day cannot yet say my God not onely because they so defy his Worship which they vowed but because they set up an Anti-God against him and while they vow upon their knees he is their God yet at that same time they adore their appetites Nor if Covetousness or rather inordinate lusting as the word bears be Idolatry as St Paul oft expresses and surely without taking in the Heathen uncleanesses in Religion and it is ill for some persons of these days that they had not the luck to be born Heathens that so they might have bin unclean devoutly committed in obedience to their Gods presented their bodies living sacrifices to be kindled by the flames of lust and whose whoredoms were their pieties for many live now as if they did not onely wish but almost think so But abating this there is sure more Idolatry in the courthips and the practice of that sin than any other There is no other thing does cast a man into such base degenerate and unworthy submissions to atchieve or to cover his transgression lower than any thing but the unclean commission it self Now if this be Idolatry the lustful person hath an Idol and then he cannot say to Christ my God And thus they in whom the God of this world hath blinded their mind in St Pauls words 2 Cor. 4. 4. they who serve Satan by going on in any vitious custom of the World or in a word they that disobey Christ for this God of the World this Prince of the power of the air the Spirit that works in the Children of disobedience Ephes. 2. 2. they cannot say to Christ my God tho they bow at his Altar they obey the Devil and he will not be a partner together with the Devil So that every one of these is perjur'd when he says my God much less can he plead the claim my God the last sense Now in that sense My God does challenge as a right and a peculiar all the Blessings temporal Spiritual and Eternal all that the promises of Christ do offer or that the hopes and expectations of a Christian fly at all these I told you God included when he said I will be their God and therefore all these he does truly challenge that can say my God It is an huge Confidence that a poor soul may take when he can go to God as David does Psalm 119. 94. I am thine save me secure thine own O Lord or else it will be thy loss what I shall suffer For I am thine vindicate thine own right let neither Sin nor Devil rob thee of thy own peculiar Behold I commit thine own charge with thee and then take care of that
Miracles but to assist our Worldliness Ambitions and Lusts to be our opportunities of Vice and provocation of him And being thus affronted and refused his Enemy preferr'd not this God but Barrabas any the vilest thing for Friend rather than Christ must he not needs be more our Enemy than heretofore And if he be that question will concern us Are we stronger than God It should behove us not to fall out with him till we are See how he does prepare himself for the Encounter Wisd. v. Taking his Jealousie for Armour putting on Justice severe and vindicative Justice as a Breastplate and his Wrath sharpening as a Sword and arming all the Creatures for Auxiliaries Alas when Omnipotence does express it self as scarcely strong enough for Execution but Almightiness will be armed also for Vengeance will assume Weapons call in Aids for fury who shall stand it Will our Friends think you keep it off us and secure us did we consider how uneasie God accounts himself till he begin the Storm while he keeps off his Plagues from overrunning such a Land we would expect them every moment and they must come Ah says he I will ease me of mine Adversaries and avenge me of mine Enemies and then in what condition are we if God can have no ease but in our ruine if he does hunger and thirst after it go to his Vengeance as to a Feast And if you read the 25th Chapter of Isaiah you will find there a rich Bill of Fare which his Revenge upon his Enemies does make view the sixth Verse He that enjoys his morsels that lays out his Contrivances and studies on his Dishes so as if he meant to cram his Soul let him know what delight soever he finds when he hath spoiled the Elements of their Inhabitants to furnish his own Belly and not content with Natures Delicacies neither hath given them forc'd Fatnesses changing the very flesh into a marrow suppling the Bones almost into that Oyl that they were made to keep all â—his delight the Lord by his expressions does seem to take in his dread Executions on his Enemies a sinful People And if the vicious Friendships of the World have so much more attractive than Christ's love and favour and the happy consequences of it as to counterpoise all the danger of such enmity you may joyn hands with them But if His be the safer and more advantageous then hearken to his Propositions and beseechings for He does beg it of you As he treated this reconciliation in his Blood so he does in Petitions too For saith S. Paul We are Ambassadours for Christ as if God did beseech you by us we pray you in Christ's stead Be you reconciled and then be Generous towards your GOD and Saviour and having brought him as it were upon his knees reduc'd him to entreaties be friends and condescend to him and your own Happiness If He be for you take no care then who can be against you His Friendship will secure you not onely from your Enemies but from Hostility it self for when a man's ways please the Lord he will make even his Enemies to be at peace with him Prov. xvi 7. He will reconcile all but Vices And afterwards see what a blessed throng of Friends we shall be all initiated into Heb. xii 23. To an innumerable company of Angels to the general Assembly and Church of the First-born that are written in Heaven to God the Judg of all and to the Spirits of Just men made perfect and to Jesus the Mediatour of the new Covenant c. And of this blest Corona we our selves shall be a noble and a glorious part inflamed all with that mutual love that kindles Seraphims and that streams out into an heavenly glory filling that Region of immortal love and blessedness and being Friends that is made one with Father Son and Holy Ghost that Trinity of Love we shall enjoy what we do now desire to ascribe to them All Honour Glory Power Majesty and Dominion for evermore Amen The Fifth SERMON Preached at WHITE-HALL Third Wednesday in LENT EZECH XXXIII 11. Why will ye Dye THE Words are part of a Debate which God had with the sinful House of Israel in which there are three things offer themselves to be considered First The Sinners Fate and Choice He will Die That 's his End yea 't is his Resolution he will die Secondly Gods inquiry for the Ground of this he seems astonished at the Resolution and therefore reasons with them about this their so mad choice and questions Why will ye dye Which words are also Thirdly The debate of his Affections the reasoning of his Bowels and a most passionate Expostulation with them on account of that their Resolution Why will ye dye which as it is addrest by God directly to the House of Israel so it would fit a Nation perverse as that which mutinies against Miracles and Mercies is false to God Religion and their own Interests led by a Spirit of giddiness and frenzy unsteddy in all things but resolutions of Ruine that would tear open their old Wounds to let out Life and they will dye And though the Lord be pleased to work new prodigies of mercy for us and to say unto us in despite of all our Enemies both Forein and Domestick Live The use we make of all is onely to debauch the Miracles and make Gods Mercies help to fill the measure of our Judgments live as if we would try all the ways to Ruine and since God will thus deliver us from dangers we would call for them some other way But to prescribe to these is above the attempt of my endeavours May the blessed Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding the Spirit of Holiness and Peace and Order breath on their Counsels whom this is committed to I shall bend my Discourse to the Conviction of Sinners in particular and treat upon the words as if they had been spoke to us under the Gospel The first thing which my Text and God supposeth is the Sinners Fate and Choice He will dye Even the second Death for it is appointed for all men once to dye and then cometh the Judgment which shall sentence him to another death that is immortal in which he and his misery must live for ever that is he must die everlastingly Such is first his Fate That Sin and Death are of so near so complicated a relation as that though they were Twins the birth and Issue of one Womb and moment yet they are also one anothers Off-spring and beget each other while Sin bringeth forth Death as S. James saith and is the Parent of Perdition and yet the Man of Sin is the Son of Perdition as S. Paul saith and Iniquity is but destruction's birth onely itself derived And that this Death and Perdition is Eternal in the most sad sense of the word there are a thousand Texts that say This is the Message of God in the mouth and Blood
of God but we see Mercy triumph against Judgment in that very blood He could have shew'n his detestation of Sin otherwise even in the Sinners punishment and so demonstrated his holiness and justice but it was impossible that he should otherwise shew mercy at these rates by crucifying his Son who was himself that he might spare Sinners Meer pardon had bin no such kindness as to let us see that God would do all this and suffer so that he might pardon us So that mankind forgiven and in glory had not bin so great an evidence of his compassion nor in torments so great an evidence of his holiness and detestation of iniquity He had such compassion of us as inclin'd him to deliver up his Son to torment that he might shew mercy to us yet all that compassion tho his bowels yern'd so over us that he would shed his blood for us could not incline him to forgive Sin without such an instance of his detestation of it nor yet with it but to such as will forsake their Sins For how should he appear by those inflictions to detest Sin if he should accept the Sinner that amends not give his pardons and rewards to one that will not part with his iniquities To such Christs sufferings are the Copy of their expectations he do's let them see how he detests and will for ever plague Sin unrepented of who thus torments the imputation of it on the innocent the blessed Son of God So that Christs sufferings not only are a perfect vindication of the honor of Gods person and his Government as to Sins committed but the most astonishing caution against committing them that can be imagin'd With us the Law is satisfied by the offenders suffering somtimes in effigie if we execute his picture any thing that by the fright of the example helps to guard the Law from being broken But see here an example which to make cost God the life of his own Son which to make dreadful he provided all the Agonies imaginable to assure us he that spared not his own Son will not spare the guilty neither can the Sinner possibly be able to endure that to Eternity which his Son the Son of God sunk under presently 'T is not a satisfaction that will give us leave to enjoy our vices and atone for us a price that will buy off the guilt of all our Sins and let us have them The satisfaction of this infinite value looks at vindication of Gods Honor and his Laws and serves the ends of Government and assures the Sinner which amends not that he must for ever perish And thus this Sacrifice for Sin condemned Sin to death by his own death Which death that we would imitate we did engage in Baptism which brings me to the second thing Whosoever are baptiz'd into Christ Jesus are baptiz'd into his death i. e. that which the efficacy of his death did work to that by Baptism we did engage our selves to Now as to this 1. Christs death was as we have now seen undertaken for the death of Sin Now Baptism imports the undertaking the same thing it being as Oecumenius upon this place do's say a Baptism unto that death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Because when we are baptized we do most solemnly profess and undertake to die to Sin renounce the Devil c. and put upon our selves the strictest obligations in the world to do this That Baptism from its institution was administred with express engagements to this in the very form of it I could prove out of that office in all ages that have any extant of it in the rest out of express testimony of Fathers thro every one to the Apostles Which so universal practice makes St Hieroms Primas and others explication not seem strange when they expound that good profession Timothy profest before many witnesses 1 Tim. 6. 12. to be that in Baptism However 't is sufficient evidence that St Peter when he says that the Baptism that saves us is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the whether question in St Cyprian or the Answer in Tertullian or indeed the stipulation which is both of a good conscience towards God do's as much as say there was in Baptism an obligation entred in that form of Law that stipulation was with questions an answers to them For they were askt and they did answer Dost thou renounce I do renounce Dost thou forsake I do c. And he that at Sacrament says that he do's this with a good sincere and upright Conscience hath the Baptism that saves But the importance of the Rite may be best known from them that us'd it first and whence it was deriv'd even from the Jews who when they did initiate a Proselyte into their Covenant did it with that Ceremony in this manner when any man desired to be of their Religion and they had by several scrutinies examined what the motives were of his conversion what his aimes if they were hopes of any thing of this world they refus'd him least his conversion should die or change as quickly as his worldly hopes or desires But if they saw all reason to believe he was sincere then they expounded to him all the Commandments laid before him the difficulty in keeping them if this did not affright him they explain'd to him the mysteries of their faith and the Commandments again together with the punishments that were allotted to transgression the Rewards to them that did observe them After all which if the man continued stedfast in his purpose they circumcis'd him sprinkling his own blood on him as a ceremony to affright him into the Observance And one would think it were sufficient engagement to have sign'd his resolutions in his blood and seal'd to them with Circumcision as the Targum words it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and carried the impression of his promise in his flesh to his lifes end But as if Baptism had obligation beyond that and it hath most certainly with those that are baptiz'd into the death of Christ for there the blood of sprinkling is Christs blood the blood of God but with them also after they had don this to the man he was no sooner cur'd of the wound of his circumcision but they put him having by him three Witnesses into the water and as he was there in it read to him once again all the Commandments and if he did profess his resolutions still to keep them they baptiz'd him and he was admitted thus into their Covenant the Conditions and the Hopes of it And by Baptism they did admit the children also if the three Magistrates of the place would undertake for them they should be brought up in the Jews Religion And this lets us see 't is the assuming to keep Gods Commandments to give over sinning to die to that and to live to righteousness to all holiness and vertue And with what strength of obligation this was understood to be perform'd
the first voice of nature teacheth us the direct contrary And whosoever he be that is I will not say unjust to others but not kind friendly and apt to do good to them he that hath regard for onely self and mesures all by his own inclinations and interests is such a thing if nature onely judg of him as ought to have bin expos'd when he was born and to have no pity shew'd him when in teares and in his blood he cri'd for it he should be still abstain'd and seperated from as one whom Nature her self excommunicates as one who is no part of human society but the proper native and inhabitant of the desert But he that is unrighteous who by worng whether of violence or fraud or but of debt makes his own satisfactions that to serve his uses and occasions dares take or but detain from others what is due to them and supports his pomp and plenty with that which of right ought to cloth and feed others and so eats the bread and drinks the tears and may be blood of Creditors he that is so unmerciful as to be thus cruel tho Almighty God were silent even Nature would her self prosecute such a person with her out-cries as we do fire when 't is broke out and rages for he is all one fire also spreads and seises all it can come near whether mans or Gods house to make fuel for it self and to encrease its blaze so that the other should be lookt upon with the same dreads and abhorrency for he is the same disorder in the frame of Nature and in this the voice of Nature is the voice of God which is our other medium to discover what is natural Now since we have declar'd that natural vertue is in man the imitation of God is as it were the workings off of those forms of goodness that are in him and the lines and rules of it are but the lineaments of his perfection 〈◊〉 will be easy to evince that the rule for mercy is a most important law of Nature since the practice of it is so natural to God himself Now to prove this passing by all other methods of probation I shall content my self with that one declaration of himself he made when he proclaim'd himself the Lord the Lord God merciful and gracious long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth keeping mercy for thousands forgiving iniquity transgression and sin and that will by no means utterly cut off the guilty so I understand it out of Jer. 46. 28. will not make a full end a clear riddance of them when I visit God seems here to have taken flesh in his expressions e're he was incarnate that he might have words to phrase his goodness in and he had bowels of mercy before he was made man and yet all this he says are but the back parts of his goodnes Exod. 33. v. ult but that of it which we meet with in his dealings with the Sons of men as we see it à posteriori and in its effects here but the face and glory of it was so bright and dazeling that he tells his friend there Moses that 't was not possible for him to see it and live Yet now St Paul saith God hath given us the light of the knowledg of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ 2 Cor. 4. 6. Indeed there was Divinity of mercy and more too humanity was taken in that God Almighty might be able to bestow more then himself and all that he might shew compassion on us men It seems O Lord thou wilt have Mercy yea and Sacrifice too If thou require such an offering as the Sacrifice of thine own blood and of thine own Son that thou mightest have mercy on us and then let men dispute that vindicative justice is essential to God that sin and its punishment are annext by as unchangable necessity as Gods Attributes are to his being and that by the express exigence of his nature he no less necessarily executes it then the fire burns we may well be content it should be so when this strict necessity if such there were did but make way for was subservient to the ends of infinite Mercy and by that demonstrates that benignity compassion and forgiveness are much more the inclinations of his nature and if he intended man in any thing his image sure he did in mercy therefore do's our Savior charge us be yee merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful who as he had no other reason to create the world so 't is most certain that he had no other reason to redeem it That Oeconomy was intended as the means of mercy to poor Sinners in reducing them which is the Mercy my third observation speaks of which was this that of all acts of Mercy those are best and most well-pleasing in Gods sight which are emploi'd in the conversion of Sinners that was such for which our Savior is here pleading when he saith I will have Mercy But here I mean not such conversions as they are emploi'd about who compass sea and land not so much to convert men from the evil of their waies to the true real practice of Christianity as to convert them to their Church to which men would not go so fast but that by the debauch of all good Christian discipline there are such easy absolutions to be had tho men be not converted from their evil waies for it is impossible to find a Church or a Religion in the world which men may sin so hopefully and comfortably in as that of Rome as it now stands But these busy Agitators of conversion besides that they convert not men to Catholic Christianity but to a name and indeed faction have made Catholic a word of party if they should multiply we should soon find they would have Sacrifice not Mercy I do not mean their Host that Sacrificium incruentum bloody Sacrifices we know are a main part of their doctrine and their practice who have us'd to turn whole Nations into shambles for their Church's sake and make bonfires with burnt-offerings of their fellow Christians But waving these Conversions those the proposition speaks of are such as reduce Sinners from their evil doings to the universal faithful practice of all virtue and all piety Now of all acts of Mercy that those which endeavor this are best Nature herself would judg since they do aim at reinstating man the crown of all her workmanship in the integrity and rectitude of Nature which is his own true perfect state and is therefore the most proper and best for him as relating to that state But God who beyond that design'd to make man who had faln from his own nature to partake of the Divine Nature as St Peter saith 2. Pet. 1. 4. and in order to it call'd us to glory and vertue v. 3. cannot but account that kindness which endeavors the recovery of Sinners from corruption and misery to the state of vertue
give me leave to run into the snare who bids me cut my foot off rather then be taken sure he suppos'd we would be willing of our selves to divorce and tear our selves from the allurements and occasions who thought it unnecessary to prescribe such easy remedies as to avoid them and requires of us that when the allurements shall surprize or force themselves upon our senses we tear out the organ rather then yeild and be overcome Or he thought at least that altho the companions of my vices are grown dearer to me then mine own eies their converse more useful and more necessary to my satisfaction then my hand or foot is to me yet to pluck out cut off and cast all from me But were I proof against temtation and perfectly secure from the contagion of such conversation yet 't is Fourthly less excusable in respect to Gods concern then any other To sit and see vertue not onely violated and deflour'd with loose unclean discourses but like Thamar then thrust out of doors despis'd Religion scoft and turn'd in ridicule all that is Holy laugh'd at and profan'd and Gods Lawes vilifi'd his Word burlesqu'd and droll'd upon his Name blasphem'd and himself raill'd curst renounc't yea and deni'd a being and hearing this I do not say to find delight and entertainment in this sort of company for none but those that are of reprobate minds can do that possibly take pleasure in that which hath nothing in the world to recommend it but the boldness of the villany but to sit patient without any least sense of resentment as one that had not any least concern for God Almighty's honor or his being is ingratitude to such a bulk and brutishness of guilt as is beyond the power and art of aggravation or indeed expression It was not onely death by Gods Law to dishonor or blaspheme his Name but at the hearing it tho but in repetition by a Witness all the Jews that were in hearing were oblig'd to rent their garments as their Laws assure us in their Talmud Yea we find the Courtiers in Isaiah 36. 22. coming with their cloths rent to King Hezekiah to report the words of Rabshakeh an Alien who but in a message from his own King had spoken sleightly of their God and the High Preist whom it was forbid to in most cases in such did it And one would think that it should rent our hearts of which the other was but a Symbolic Ceremony and implied that duty To hear one slight tho but by inadvertency a person whom some one or other of the company hath the least relation or but any little obligation to requires that person by the laws of honor indispensably to call for reparation To touch the reputation of a Mistress or what 's worse and own'd to be so ought they say to be no otherwise then fatally resented and these are accounted such just causes of mens indignation that a man that 's unconcern'd will take it for a glory to be second in them and he that never had the honor to be drunk in the man's company will venture to be kill'd and to be damn'd for him in such a quarrel Therefore every man unless he do design to quarrel purposely does think himself bound to forbear offences of such kind in company where any one 's oblig'd in honor or by rules that men have set it to take notice of it Now tho it were prodigious insolence to urge in parallel to this that it should seem that God Almighty is not thought so much a friend to any none have such relation to him nor on any account have reason to be so concern'd for him or for his honor that men should forbear him in their company yet it seems dreadful after such plenties of his blessings Miracles of kindness in stupendous rescues and deliverances where to pass by all those Mercies that concern Eternity his temporal preservations have contested with our provocations and overcom them and so often that they have out numbred all our hours and all other numbers but our sins that these endearments should not yet be able to oblige us so far as to move us when we hear his Laws or his Religion or his Word and Name or himself dishonor'd to desire them to forbear that God that hath bin so kind to us or if that be judg'd unmannerly by the Sword-men yet at leastwise by uneasiness and by withdrawing to assure them that we cannot bear the hearing it God did once say in a severe threatning determination Those that honor me I will honor and they that despise me shall be lightly esteem'd Go ye and learn what that means consider I say and the Lord give you understanding in all things SERMON IV. Of Gods method in giving Deliverance Psalm 102. 13 14. Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Sion for the time to favor her yea the set time is come For thy servants take pleasure in her stones and favor the dust thereof According to the version us'd in the Liturgy Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Sion for it is time that thou have mercy upon her yea the time is come And why thy servants think upon her stones and it pitieth them to see her in the dust THE address of this text is not ordinary they use to be directed to men for their instruction and practice but this do's treat with God seems to prescribe to and appoint him and now not to excuse this by a plea that since men have bin deaf to all addresses from this place that have bin made unto them 't is time to change the method and seeing we cannot persuade men try if we can in that sense of St Paul's words persuade God but to say for our selves when human wisdom cannot find expedients for us and our distresses are beyond the succors of their power or their counsel 't is fit then to betake our selves to God to plead with the Lord and never let him rest and when the help of man is vain to to cry out O be thou our help and with holy confidence thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Sion Indeed addresses to God use to be made otherwise in a petitionary form at least and it would seem much more to become us if we humbly beg'd Arise O God have mercy upon Sion yet this here in the Text is such a form as does need nothing else but faith in the Petitioner to make it acceptable There is some difference in the reading of the latter verse the one version rendring for why thy servants think upon her stones and it pitieth them to see her in the dust the other thus for thy servants take pleasure in her stones and favor the dust thereof yet this is easily reconcil'd they think upon her stones indeed with sorrow for acknowledgments of their demerits which did call down this calamitous condition and being passionately thus affected with the sense of it they willingly receive contentedly
between will serve the turn but it must give a constant shine Devotion must be a fixt Light such as is not variable and turning and so this expression shews how we must purify as he is pure with kind I say not with degree For the Text does not mean that we should be as pure as he to aim at such a virtue were Rebellion and the hopes of such a Purity were Lucifers Ambition and would throw us down to Hell Neither yet pure as he is pure without any mixture of spot or stain For while we are made up of a mixt composition we shall never be so pure neither is any such exacted of us All the meaning is if we have hopes to be like God hereafter with glorious likeness we must endeavor also to be like him here and that is don by endeavoring after Purity forasmuch as God is pure Here is then an efficacious motive for us to labor after Purity it makes us like God To be a Child or a Son in Scripture is the same thing as to be like or do such works as the other does Ye are of your Father the Devil and his works ye do John 8. 44. and what in one place is said That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven in an other place is that ye may be like you Father For whatever the Children of a Natural Father be Gods Children must be like him or they are not his and the way to be so is but to labor after Holiness to be still amending by little and little daily cleansing out some sin or other he vouchsafes to call this purifying as he is pure he calls such a person like him and his Child But secondly whose Children are they and like whom who go on still in their courses of wickedness and if they do not grow daily worse as few there are that do not yet they never think of growing better if we should examin them by the expressions we have given And take them first to that of Light by which we saw a holy Conversation was stil'd we shall in that see the sad condition of a wicked person his life is all darkness that sore Plague of Egypt which three days made intolerable is still upon the Sinners Soul nothing but night about him And indeed nothing else befits his deeds of darkness as sins are call'd which how glorious and splendid soever they seem to him the onely modes and gallantry yet alas the splendor of them is but like the shine of lightning full of horror in it self and makes the darkness of the night also more irksom And what can these men that have no light whose deeds are all the deeds of night and darkness what can they expect but to be cast at last into utter darkness where there is onely weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth 2. If we take them to the other expression of White Raiment how will they whose open exemplary sins do strip them and expose them naked have reason to be asham'd and to cover themselves with their own confusion as with a cloâ—e How wretchedly stupid is the heart of this People that glory in their shame that count their sins the onely gaudy bravery when as poor souls they are miserable and poor and naked Rev. 3. 17. There was no such disgraceful thing as to have the uncomly parts of the body laid open to publick sight so Hanun us'd Davids Ambassadors whom he thought Spies 2 Sam. 10. 4. which was occasion enough for a war upon them And God expresses Isaiah 20. 4. He shall lead away the Egyptians Prisoners naked with their buttocks uncovered to the shame of Egypt And you may see what God threatens to adulterous Israel Isaiah 3. 16 c. and much more at large in Ezek. 16 and 23. that she might be laugh'd to scorn and had in derision and might be an infamous woman And in one place he threatens to discover her by throwing her cloths over her head Now I have shew'd you that Holiness is the onely Virginity and sin is the Souls whoredom and the expression that I have in hand tells you that Holiness is the onely garment and the openest of sinning is the Souls nakedness which if you put together you will see that a profane person an open sinner is the same scorn'd thing as a whore with her cloths over her head a bare strumpet acting naked lewdness in high ways with her unexpressible filthiness expos'd in publick to eyes and shame And is such a thing as this fit to go to God or to be a Spouse of Christ No his Bride must be arrai'd in fine white linnen that is the righteousness of the Saints and without holiness no one shall see him For he that hath that hope must purify himself as he is pure This Hope What Christian Hope is it is a patient and a comfortable expectation of the performance of all Gods Promises Patient expectation it is Rom. 8. 25. if we hope then do we with Patience wait for it Comfortable it must needs be because of the excellency of its object Gods Promises all the comfort of the Scriptures are the very ground of it Rom. 15. 4. That we thro patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope and it is therefore call'd Coloss. 1. 23. The hope of the Gospel Whatsoever mercy is included in the whole Gospel Remission of sins and everlasting Blessedness all those rich and precious mercies which that does propose and which God himself thought to be the most temting baits to allure us even all these our Hope does fly at You may find them every where scatter'd the Resurrection from the dead Acts 23. 6. I am accus'd of the hope and resurrection from the dead and c. 28. 20. For the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain Secondly Eternal Life Tit. 1. 2. In hope of Eternal Life which God that cannot lie promised before the world began Thirdly the Glory to come Rom. 5. 2. We rejoyce in hope of the Glory of God and Col. 1. 27. it is call'd the Hope of Glory Yea the being like God himself in the Text We know that when he shall appear we shall be like him and then it follows and he that hath this hope purifieth himself as he is pure as also Tit. 2. 13. That blessed hope the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ. All these the Christian does with joy and confidence expect Heb. 3. 6. And here you may see the price of your calling whatsoever good things God hath prepar'd for them that love him and they are such as neither eye hath seen nor ear heard neither can enter into the heart of man to comprehend Yea whatsoever good things he hath prepar'd for himself his own glories all these he hath set out to bait our hopes with these are a Christians most assured expectations Whosoever thou art that art a careful Soul
cannot hope yet will in despite of that knowledge hope and do notwithstanding all think to come to Heaven Certainly while a man goes on to sin to hope for mercy is presumtion in him and so another sin added to the rest yea 't is a disbelieving of Gods threatning an affronting him in his veracity an imputing falsehood to his menaces and a putting himself almost out of the possibility of repenting For he that do's hope for Salvation in the condition he is in hath no temtation at all to change his condition but is likely to go on confidently and hopingly to eternal perdition it were a mercy to such a person to be struck into despair that he may be taught the wretchedness of his condition and hurried out it in which as long as he does hope there 's no reason to expect that he should leave it but by becoming hopeless in it may be frighted from it and the gates of hell is the onely probable means to let that man into the way of heaven O the Christians Hope it is the hope of righteousness Gal. 5. 5. Nothing else but holiness and righteousness can give a man ground for it And certainly my Brethren it is such a Hope as would countervail the trouble and the pains of reforming our selves What will not a man undertake which he can but hope to go thro and is assur'd of a large recompence for doing and surely Heaven is worth the endeavouring after and that blessed Hope worth purifying our selves for For it was worth the death of the Son of God Christ was content to be crucified to compass it and cannot we be content to purify our selves for it Will you see what hope can perswade a man to do See Abraham to whom God promis'd onely the Land of Canaan and that not to be enjoied by himself nor by his Son but onely by the Posterity of Isaac his Son and his Promises were further off than Heaven yet after that before Isaac had any Posterity when he was but a child God commands him to go and sacrifice his Isaac and go to cut off all hopes of ever enjoying it yet against hope he believed in hope saith St Paul and he that had receiv'd the promises of God offer'd up his onely begotten Son Heb. 11. 17. i. e. having entertain'd and embrac'd the promise of a numerous seed and people that should spring from him and having no other Son but this from whom they should spring nor possibility in nature nor promise above nature that he should have any more children but a plain affirmation that this People to whom the Promises belong'd should come from Isaac yet having once truly hop'd that God would perform his promise he absolutely obei'd that command of Gods resolving to kill the Son on whom all those Promises depended And now my Brethren there is no such puzles in our Hope nor no such hard thing requir'd of us no Sons to be sacrific'd but onely a few vices no doubtful perplext promise of a Canaan onely but plain assured Heaven and then had we but the least degree of his hope as we have infinitely greater reason how would we sacrifice any thing to Christs command how would we offer up a lust and think a sin a good exchange for the hopes of Heaven and he that had this hope would certainly purify himself as he is pure It is but now the Church hath celebrated the Ascension of our Lord Christ and the great Proposal of the Angels Acts 1. 11. to all those Disciples that beheld him going up to Heaven and gaz'd after him so wishly was that they should see him come again Now the particular comfort of that coming so again is when he shall appear we shall be like him 1 John 3. 2. and the hopes of being so St John thought a sufficient motive to set every man on purifying and that himself for this lustration cannot be perform'd by Proxy and be remitted to another for even our Saviors Righteousness will not be imputed unto those who will have none besides he redeems and saves none but them whom he has sav'd from their sins Reveal O Blessed God some of thy Glory which thou hast prepar'd for them that love thee some of that blessed Hope of a Christian calling to our hearts that it may stir our desires and longings and heat them into hopes and that we having the hopes of seeing thee may purify and may escape that day of fire which shall melt the Heavens and purge those glorious bodies which are not pure in thy sight Behold O God we tremble with horror of thy dreadful Judgment The Angels are not clean in thy sight and the Seraphims cover their faces what then shall become of us vile filthy Sinners whose daily impurities have so defil'd both our souls and bodies that we are but one mass and heap of uncleaness Blessed God we know that as long as we continue such we cannot hope to see thee in mercy we know that if we repent not we shall all perish we know that if we live after the Flesh we shall die eternally we know that neither fornicators c. shall have any inheritance O let this knowledg apply it self to our hearts and consciences that the terrors of it may fright us from the vain hopes that we do cherish of being happy notwithstanding we go on in our sinful courses for alas those hopes will perish with us and that those terrors may so work on us to set upon amendment Cleanse and wash we pray thee all our impurities in the bloud of thy Son bury them in his grave never to rise hereafter and melt our hearts into repentant tears that so our hearts may become purer O thou that didst cleanse us with thy bloud baptize us with thy Holy Spirit and with fire that it may purge out our dross and filthiness and be an earnest to us of that glorious Purity which we shall have in Heaven seeing thee as thou art and becoming like thee where we shall sin no more but for ever serve and praise thee SERMON VIII OF THE HIDING PLACE From Indignation Isaiah 26. 20. Come my people enter thou into thy chambers and shut thy doors about thee hide thy self as it were for a little moment until the Indignation be overpast UPON the Eve as it were and the Vigils to the day of Indignation when we cannot but look upon it as ready to be pour'd out on us in a full stream when we see destruction make close approches to us work round about us and punishment like our sin lies at the very door ready either to enter in upon us or seize us if we offer to come out to offer at a way to prevent all this that should discover to you a safe retreat from those threats that pursue this Nation in general open a shelter from the present storm cannot chuse but be seasonable yet such a thing the Text do's venture at
soever their petitions cry for mercy and remission their crying sins will call as loud for vengeance such Worship sure cannot possibly be grateful to him we cannot think he will accept that which he nauseates like that which his soul hates and reward that which he cannot bear Indeed such Worshippers do plainly rally him in praying to him He that hath not faithfully endeavor'd to reform his manners what does he in his confessions but tell God Almighty solemnly that he is wicked but in truth he shall continue so as not at all as yet intending to be otherwise He that begs God not to lead him into temtation but goes on in impieties minds not the keeping of himself out of the opportunities of it but loves occasions and converses with the provocations plays upon the brink does all that is to make it unavoidable for him to sin mocks God in praying that he will not lead into temtation him that leads himself into it What use were it to him God should hear his praiers and not do that to him which he does to himself Or if he beseech God to grant for example he may live a sober life yet never purposing to fail one assignation not resolving to abate one meeting nor one draught he is so pleasant with Almighty God to wish if he wish any thing when he is praying that he may be as immoderate as ever but that God would keep him sober may have all the drink he went for but not the drunkenness this he desires God would preserve him from and yet it may be not that neither for that may be useful to him but however for the rest let him do as he did Now sure it is our interest God should not hear such praiers and therefore tho in all our actions we had need be carefull since God is always present yet we should especially in our Religious Worship semper enim praesentamus ostendimus nos quasi facie ad faciem cum Domino loquentes we present our selves to him and speak face to face with him Now if we lay not down our sins but bring our crimes thither with our Devotions and so make our very Worship an abomination to present our provocations to himself and to his face is such an affront that will not easily be pardon'd no if we will behold God's face we must do it in Righteousness Indeed the Psalmist's joyning these in the expression does insinuate that the onely hopefull means to make men be Religious not at their Devotions onely but in all their actions to live holy virtuous lives is to live always as before God's face I will behold thy presence in Righteousness He that in every thing he goes about would teach himself the custom to look up to behold God's face and see his eyes over him he would be carefull that there should be no unrighteousness in what he did King David was acquainted with the influence of this Psalm 119. 168. I have kept thy precepts and thy testimonies for all my ways are before thee Indeed the presence of whatever person we had reverence for to behold his face towards us inspecting our actions would make us wary and fearful of a vanity or folly much more of a gross action Martials Lucretia blusht says he laid his Epigrams aside when Brutus came in Brute recede leget but as soon as he was gon she took them up and read them Few vices hurry men with so impetuous a ferocity but they can check themselves before a virtuous grave person One of them that pretends to stings as sharp as any would send off a boy and tho it be as impudent a sin as any cannot suffer a spectator and then would I but consider always I were always in God's presence shut my eyes and see his face intent upon me marking not my actions onely but my purposes and deliberations I should start most certainly at the approaches of a sin and no more dare to close with it then a Cut-purse temted by an opportunity which he was going to make use of would proceed if he discern'd the Judg upon the bench beheld him saw his eye upon him watching him 't is such a guard this nothing can be greater or securer I have set God always before me says King David therefore I shall not fall Nor would this contemplation onely make us cautious but it would excite incourage our devotions if we saw our selves before him we would be humble and attent as people really concern'd they would be full of reverence and godly fear indeed we would be righteous just and upright in all our doings our whole conversation seeing who is present would not dare to be unclean or rude it would not be vain or uncomly in fine the business of our life would be to do that which is well pleasing in his sight perfecting holiness in the fear of God always looking up to him whose face is towards us This must needs raise all our affections and our aims and place them upon him on whom our eyes and thoughts are set especially if there be resolution in the use of this means most of all if the resolution have the courage of King David's in the Text a resolution which was taken up against the almost universal practice and the as great contradiction of the world which generally minds far different satisfactions But as for me I will behold both which considerations of the resolution and the courage of it I shall joyn in my last particular And indeed there 's nothing else but such a resolution that can set it self against the practice of the world will serve our turns for as Seneca says vice is but common madness and we see that very oft against their temper inclinations and their principles and the conviction of their heart and soul men will do vile and shamefull things because they will be mad if others be so it seems so difficult a thing to endure to be singular in any company And tho to be so singular I mean in any the advantages of this world either as to goods of mind of body or of fortune for the most part is more valued far than the advantages themselves we would inclose and be alone in every such thing and as if we thought an excellency lost its vertue if another had it 't is the rarity that takes with every body yet the advantages of Heaven and the real true goods of the mind Religion Piety and Virtue 't is far otherwise as to those there are none of those emulations in their practices and manners Be the the consequence never so dreadfull men will do and be as others 't is impossible to resist the tide of custom go against the torrent of a croud and multitude or bear the being singular And there are two great obstructions to it the solitude of singularity and the censures scoffings and disreputations that use to attend it For example that I instance not as well I might
or punishments are possible or likely certainly 't is most impossible there can be a temtation of force to invite men to Religion or to any virtue this method of proposal of such infinite after-recompences to our faith demonstrated by such Miracles to evince the power and their certainty being the most vigorous struggle of Divine Compassion towards man the utmost attemt of mercy which alone was hopeful since all others fail'd the tryal 't was his greatest strength apportion'd to the full-grown wickedness of the World At first in one thousand six hundred years from innocence the whole World was grown so bad that God could find out but one whole family to save alive he destroy'd the rest for warning to all future generations yet in less than a quarter of that time immediatly ensuing there was again onely one family that of Abraham which out of all the World he could think fit to take into his favor his care In whose Posterity altho he exercis'd them with strange prodigies of sufferings and reliefs and in the midst of Miracles renew'd his Law to them train'd them up in that by all arts of punishments and rewards kept them as it were in constant discipline with present visible returns of plagues and death for every act of disobedience so that the whole sacred History is nothing but a recurrent Tide of God's mercy and Israels provocations their sin and his punishing it When famin pestilence and war all the separations which might be expected from the furnace of affliction were utterly ineffectual and the People were so settled on their lees that all attempts to purify onely fretted and disturb'd and it was necessary to rack them from those lees and emty them from vessel to vessel so that the Nation was carried captive into Babylon Even this digestion of seventy years together had no more prosperous effect than the preceeding frustrate methods the return of the captivity brought also back the former disobedience and infidelity And when the fulness of time was come that the Messiah should appear and restore all things Matt. 17. 11. he came as the Baptist call'd it to a generation of vipers Matt. 3. 7. When the light shone in darkness the darkness comprehended it not When he came unto his own his own received him not John 1. 5 11. So that as St Luke expresses it When the Son of man came he did not find faith in the earth Where the fairest steps were made to belief 't was exceedingly faint and imperfect his very disciples were of little faith as our Savior Complains Matt. 6. 30. 8. 26. 14. 31. 16. 8. Nor was this frailty superseded in the more establish'd growth of Christianity Tho we hear in the book of Acts of multitudes of them that believed c. 4. 32. yet we hear also of some that oppos'd themselves contradicted and blasphemed c. 13. 45. others there were who made shipwrack of the faith 1 Tim. 1. 19. and of others that doubted and were wavering and weak in faith Rom. 14. And so it is to this day what St Paul said to the Corinthians 1 Epist. 3. 1 2. every Preacher of the Gospel has to say unto the greatest part of his flock I Brethren could not speak to you as unto spiritual but as unto carnal even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk and not with meat for hitherto ye were not able to bear it neither yet now are ye able The Christian flock more partakes of the folly and weakness of sheep than the innocence The faces of both tend to the earth intent on their pasture where they may range and feed with plenty and delight In the greatest part of Professors with their faith there is mix'd unbelief so as sometimes to preponderate for the most part to alloy and weaken it And here I promise not to prosecute those grounds of unbelief so far as to shew how they make men able to resist and conquer all Christ's methods how they work them up into the confidence of profest infidelity and Atheism that 's not my design but plainly and in brief to name some causes of it not in this or the other party or perswasion but in general even in minds not ill dispos'd but such as our Confessor here in the Text who tho he do's profess he did believe yet withal acknowledges his unbelief Lord help my unbelief Now tho it should be granted that the motives and the means of Christian Faith are of themselves sufficient to convince the minds of men that the Revelations of the Gospel are from God so far as that there can remain no place for any reasonable doubt or scruple nor by consequence plea for excusing them who give not up their faith to it yet notwithstanding all this evidence arising from those means and motives still many of the things to be believ'd are so inevident for they are Mysteries and are wrapt up in such obscurity that they astonish and affright apprehension and while the mind is swallowed up in the abyss of such dark contemplations whatever light strikes in from motives yet the mind is maz'd so that if it assent it cannot be without suspition and some fear and tremulously and difficulties often so distract the understanding that it cannot settle but is loose and wavering Now as in the contests that often happen in us betwixt the temporal interests and pleasures of this world and the eternal blessednesses of the next in those that are sincerely satisfied of the real infinite disproportion betwixt them yet if any present object that does flatter appetite with strong delight or other satisfaction chance but to surprise a man so far as that his present whole attention be engag'd upon it and it be not call'd off nor the will apply the understanding to consider and compare the other interests the everlasting ones and weigh them both together 't is certain he will yield against his conscience to satisfy his sinful inclination for to that his surpris'd appetite apply'd him that application did determine him there being no way to resist the forcible assaults of present things that strike the mind with vigor if the will some way excited do not frequently engage the understanding to contemplate on advert to with intenseness even with all its might those blessednesses which God's promises propose to our belief that so the mind by reason of its constant conversation with them may not fail to call them up on all occasions and bring them into the comparison and vie with any present thing that do's allure and then those will preponderate without fail So in the other Objects of our Faith the Mysteries and generally in all Objects whatsoever where the understanding do's not reach the nature so as to discern and look into the truth of them if there be arguments that make a fair shew and flatter natural reason by complying with its principles which opposes that truth and with their difficulties
crop your harvest and when God shall send forth his Reapers the Angels if they can find no returns of all God's cultivating you but all his husbandry his seedness and his pains too have bin lost upon you no increase but onely barreness your end is to be burnt or onely tares they are to be cast into a furnace of fire where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth Matt. 13. 42. And in like manner by the Parable of fruit trees John Baptist Bring forth fruits meet for repentance for the ax is laid to the root of the trees therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewen down and cast into the fire And David describing his blessed man Psalm 1. does it first by shewing he does not bring forth ill fruit But neither will that serve turn to hear and meditate and talk of the word of God and not to do it It is the very same thing as a wilderness upon the water side a dead barren tree upon the River's bank No his man is like a tree planted by the rivers of waters that brings forth his fruit in due season We are God's Vineyard Isaiah 5. and he tells us there what pains he hath bestow'd upon us v. 2. He fenced it and gathered out the stones thereof and planted it with the choicest Vines c. v. 4. What could have bin don more to my Vineyard that I have not don unto it Now if we do not bring forth grapes Go to saith God v. 5 6. I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard I will take away the hedg thereof and it shall be eaten up break down the wall thereof and it shall be trodden down And I will lay it wast it shall not be pruned nor digged but there shall come up briars and thorns I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it Yea God did not onely lay wast his Vineyard in that Isaiah 5. because it brought forth sower and wild fruit but our Savior in the Gospel curst a Fig-tree because it brought forth no fruit And indeed that barren Fig-tree was the onely thing upon the earth that ever Christ did curse all his Miracles were mercies but that An unfruitful Christian is such a thing a Savior hath no mercy for a mere negative virtue hath so little claim to Heaven that it cannot escape the curse of a Jesus And shall we apply this first to the conviction of their opinions who think if they lie under no gross customs if they be not tainted with any foul commissions they are then in a safe condition What if they forgive no wrong why they will do none and so who shall lay any thing to their charge Pardon they will not any minute offence because they avoid the wanting it from others and they will not hate nor malice tho they cannot have the bowels of of love no fellowship of Christian kindness they have no foul unclean heats nor no devout ones no ardencies of lust nor yet of zeal so they do not blaspheme God by daily oaths make no matter of worshipping him by daily Praiers and if his holy name be not in their execrations 't is well enough tho he be not in their Petitions No tho they go a little further and besides their doing no gross ills have great Professions of Religion they have all the leaves and foliage of a Christian they make a fair shell of Piety take abundance of pains to do all those things that are to stile them great Professors plenty of hearing and abundance of talking but no doing if you search the leaves you find no fruit no constant tenor of good works in every kind of Christian duty these are but too obvious stratagems of Satan and our deceitful hearts to make us satisfy our selves either with our condition tho our Piety look no further than to do no ill and the positive part of Religion be altogether unregarded by us or tho we have no more of it but the Profession O my Brethren as to these last remember that the curst Fig-tree had leaves had fair shew enough to bait our Savior's hunger and promise him refreshment and temt him out of the way to it and to the other hath God autority onely to forbid can he command nothing from us Are we content onely to abstain from something for his sake but will not do any thing for his nor Heaven's sake Is not his Worship as dear to him as our lusts are hurtful to him and hath he not as much reason to require that we should be devout and holy as that we should not be profance and filthy Can all his mercies all his rewards neither procure nor deserve more of us than onely not to serve the Devil Surely my Beloved both these sorts of Christians shall find that in the catalogue of sins to be accounted for omissions shall be reckon'd when our Savior comes to pass his sentence at the dreadful day of Judgment See the tenor of it Go ye cursed for when I was hungry ye gave me no meat 'T is not ye shall be damn'd because ye stript me and because ye starved me but because ye did not relieve me And 't is so in the other not bringing forth fruit not doing fills up the sentence of final malediction But the sadder conviction of this is for the practice of those that are nothing but commissions whose vice is positive men that cleanse themselves from holiness and go on daily perfecting filthiness If the man Matt. 25. that received the one Talent and laid it up safe in a Napkin and did no ill with yet because he did no good was therefore cast into utter darkness whither think you had he bin cast if he had made that Talent the instrument of his sin if like the Prodigal he had spent it upon harlots or upon excesses And whither shall they be doom'd who do so If it be not enough to abstain from sin what will become of them that do little else but act it If not to do pass sentence how will to commit condemn and if the half righteous shall not be saved where shall the ungodly and sinner appear If the tree with leaves that was green in foliage be curst shall not the dry and rotten one be burnt Alas for these men what a long stage of duty have they to go thro if they do intend in this life ever to be better who have not yet set forth have entred upon any part who have not cast off the works of darkness which yet when they have don they have but half they must put on the armor of light such too as will shine they must be fruitful and exemplary And this second quality is indeed the great design of this Text which hath more force in it than that of a single command for the verse is a conclusion following upon the three former He tells them that they are Salt
blasphemy and persecution tho 't was conscience guilts these of a bloudy and deep scarlet and this very conscientious man found cause to call himself the chief of Sinners v. 15. Howbeit secondly he tells us v. 16. for this cause I obtained mercy that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all long-suffering for a pattern to them that should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting that in me the worst of men might have example and encouragement to depend upon him for eternal mercies if they will but come in to him he was pleas'd to shew me mercy call me in the very flagrancy and execution of my crimes Whereupon as he says thirdly he not onely was not disobedient to the Heavenly Calling but as if by owning himself chief of Sinners he had set himself a standard for his service put upon himself an obligation to be chief of all Christ's Votaries he became more laborious in his duty than all others and particularly so sincere faithful resolute and constant as nothing could remove him neither opposition stop him nor temtation divert him Now it is this faithfulness this being honest-hearted to Almighty God 't is the firmness of this purpose to go thro with duty in a constant tenor of obedience in whatever circumstance we are plac'd whatever happens not to be allur'd nor frighted neither biass'd nor forc'd out of it with the consciencious pursuance of this resolution that particularly qualifies for this secure dependance upon God for success it does dispose a man for perfect resignation of himself and full assurance It was St Pauls case here for this I suffer saith he and indeed he liv'd almost in constant martyrdom yet all this does not in the least discourage me but by God's gracious assistance I will do my duty come what can come Now discerning himself thus resolv'd and thus assisted he concludes that he hath ground enough for trust for he that is thus faithful to him may trust on him then he says I know whom I have believed And that we may not think this is an instance solitary in the third of Daniel when Nebuchadnezzar told the three Children If ye worship not the Image I have set up ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands Shadrach Meshach and Abednego answered and said to the King O Nebuchadnezzar we are not careful to answer thee in this matter if it be so our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace and he will deliver us out of thine hand O King but if not i. e. but if he would not be it known unto thee O King that we will not serve thy Gods nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up The being conscious to themselves that they were thus resolv'd in earnest not to offend against the Lord but to obey how dear soever their obedience cost them and so casting themselves on him to do what he would with them gave them confidence made them know and say he would deliver them and so he did It is according to the measures of discerning the integrity and faithfulness of our own hearts that we assure our hearts before him as St John expresseth 1 Epist. 3. 19. and then tells us if our heart condemn us God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things v. 20. If we find not that sincerity within if any thing be false there if our conscience accuse us our own hearts condemn us 't is most certain God will do so too because he knows all those things of us that we can know of our selves But if we truly cannot charge that insincerity upon our selves we need not fear that God will charge us with the things we are not guilty of No surely as he there goes on Beloved if our heart condemn us not then have we confidence towards God v. 21. And this is the confidence that we have towards him that if we ask any thing according to his will he heareth us and if we know that he hears us whatever we ask we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him c. 5. 14 15. And whatsoever we ask we receive of him c. 3. 22. Thus by assuring their own hearts to God they know this have this confidence towards him i. e. have the trust and the dependance in the Text which in what cases it admits this strong assurance that is here exprest by the word know is my next inquiry I know Now by the last words it should seem as if in every case in every thing that he can want or does desire the person that is qualified so had a ground to trust with full assurance We know saith St John that whatsoever we ask we receive of him and accordingly in all the Spiritual needs of the Thessalonians both in particular and as the Church St Paul when he had blest them and praied for them thus The very God of peace sanctify you wholly and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ 1 Thess. 5. 23. adds in the 24thâ—erse Faithful is he that calleth you who also will do it And here in this Epistle of himself he says The Lord shall deliver me from every evil work and will preserve me unto his Heavenly Kingdom 2 Tim. 4. 18. Nor did good men want this confidence as to the things of this life for in times of publick consternation in the want of all things Habbakuk does thus assure himself c. 3. 16 17 18. When I heard my belly trembled my lips quiver'd at the voice rottenness entred into my bones when he cometh up unto the people he will invade them with his troops but in that state he adds Altho the Fig-tree shall not blossom neither shall fruit be in the Vines the labor of the Olive shall fail and the fields shall yield no meat the flock shall be cut off from the fold and there shall be no herd in the stalls yet I will rejoice in the Lord I will joy in the God of my salvation The exstasy of trust the rapture is too elegant and gay too high and full of transport to admit of any descant Holy Job went yet a little farther Tho he slay me yet will I trust in him c. 13. 15. In a word at once in whatsoever God hath promis'd there the Faithful Christian hath a right to trust I will not be so rude as to suppose my Auditors so unacquainted with the rich and precious Promises those Christian Treasures which God's Book is the Repository of that I should need to mind them of them and indeed to do it were to read a very great part of that Book 'T is sure in every case of every whether publick or particular real just concern whether in temporal spiritual or eternal things in some indeed
some men made this reliance or dependance trust or faith our whole condition of the Covenant But tho 't is true the Covenant does require some disposition in us that we also may be trusted for those that are not faithful to him cannot have faith in him for us he knows our needs he knows our hearts too and if they be false he sees it and the trust is broken on both sides such hearts cannot trust him for it is impossible that one can trust upon another if he know that other does discern that he is false to him for he knows that he is not in condition to be dealt with by the rules of trust Yet the sincere and honest-hearted person may cast all his care there Faith does his work and he knows well whom he hath believed The sum is this however grievous Sinner one hath bin if he return and with intire submission to God's will become faithful to him and assure his own heart towards him he may commit himself and all his Spiritual and Eternal interests with all assurance absolutely into his hands and his temporal so far as they shall be succesful in all cases except those wherein God sees it necessary for his more advantage to determin otherwise All his concerns too for Religion he may put into the same safe hands with all assurance for God will never destroy his own Religion if it do not change first vitiate and put out it self And in whatever Judgments God at any time shall bring upon the publick he may perfectly assâ—re himself that whatsoever happens shall be for good to him for how sad soever the necessity be he knows both it and how to remedy it and is able and hath said he will he is true and just and faithful in his promises it is his very Nature that he cannot change or fail him and how desperate soever his condition seem here that state is God's opportunity and that time his set time and depending on him is yet a further engagement to him Yet in all this I have said very little all these grounds for trust reliance the old Covenant afforded Thus far the Jew knew whom he had believ'd but sure the Christian knows more comfortably hath more cause to trust on God as on the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And certainly we may rely upon that Father that he will deny us nothing who denied ns not his son 'T is St Pauls argument Rom. 8. 32. He that spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all how shall he not with him also freely give us all things We may resign our selves into his hands that lov'd us at these rates and cannot but be confident as the Apostle was v. 38 39. that neither death nor life nor Angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which he hath to us in and thro Christ our Lord and Savior or shall hinder him from preserving and delivering us in and from the hopes and fears the terrors and allurements of them all the temtations that either fear of death or hope of life or malice of the Devil and his Angels or of Principalities or powers whether earthly Potentates or infernal or distresses present or to come or heights of honor or depths of disgrace may assault us with How can these hinder when sin could not hinder Or what possibly can separate when God chose to be divided as it were from his own Son rather than any thing should separate him from the love of man And then what may we not expect from this the Eternal Son of God who became one of us that so he himself suffering by being temted might be able to succour them that are temted Heb. 2. 18. Able to succour Sure he could have don it ere he took upon him weak flesh being God Almighty he was not less able when he was Omnipotent yet being when he was made man himself afflicted having the experience of our infirmities in all points temted like as we are he is enabled to be much more sensibly compassionate and toucht with the feeling of our weak condition which himself felt so the ability which he hath gain'd is the Omnipotency of kindness One would have thought indeed it had bin large enough before when to shew mercy to us seem'd more dear to him and more considerable than to enjoy Divinity when he emtied himself of this that he might be qualified for the other How infinitely willing then was he to be compassionate to us when he takes flesh to learn to be compassionate How desirous was he to succour us who lays down Heaven and glory above and life here below that he might be able to succour us To whom can we betake our selves for mercy with such confidence as him who made himself like one of us that he might be a merciful High-Priest to expiate and make reconciliation We that are the sheep of his pasture what hands can we possibly resign our Souls into with such assurance as to those of this Bishop and Shepherd of our Souls this good Shepherd who not onely seeks the lost sheep that is run away but who also lays down his life for his sheep 10. 15. And what may not his poor Church depend upon him for who purchased to himself his Church with his own bloud What design can he have to fail us possibly who would be crucified for us In a word if one that for us men and for our Salvation would come down from Heaven be incarnate and made man a man of sorrows and afflictions and would suffer want shame and reproches agonies a Cross a bitter passion and a cruel death for us and who is sat down on the right hand of Majesty and Power hath all power in Heaven and Earth the keys of Death and Hell in whom all the promises of God are yea and Amen faithful and true faithful to immutability Jesus Christ yesterday to day and the same for ever if I say he that is all this can be trusted we know whom we have believed And now I have no more to do but onely ask whether we are assur'd of any other whom on more or safer grounds we have or may believe I will upbraid none with that Irony which Eliphas insults on Job with c. 5. 1. Call now see if there be any that will answer thee and to which of the Saints wilt thou turn thee There are that do with all the evidence imaginable of a strong confidence and chearful hopes to speed in doing so pour out their needs their whole Souls to a fancied or it may be true Saint whom they have adopted as the object of their invocation which it seems they cannot do so feelingly with such a close and intimate dependance with such comfortable expectations upon Christ himself Now I would onely put the question of f
2 Tim. 3. 8. nor by a wretchless unconcerndness take up with slight appearances and receive a vulgar error for a sacred revelation and having mens persons in admiration Jude 16. believe as doctrines the devices or commandments of men Matt. 15. 9. not to consider what this celebrated Teacher or this Sect and Party say but make our resort to the Law and to the Testament what Law of God there is for or against this action For in this case it is most true There is one Law-giver who can save and destroy James 4. 12. and if sin be the transgression of a law 1 John 3. 4. it inevitably follows that where no law is there is no transgression Rom. 4. 15. And yet 't is strange to see how men amuse and embarras themselves in things that have no bottom or foundation in Scripture and in the mean time omit the weighty matters of the law judgement mercy and faith Thirdly if I have bin engag'd in any practices of which by the contrary practices of other sober rational men I see there may be reason if not to doubt yet to search into them then I 'le take the same course in order to the settling or the rectifying of my judgment and especially if any obligations to the contrary have got possession of me if obedience and meekness and peace of the State or Church or any sacred bond in a word if any commands of Superiors or engagements to them seem strong for the other side then nothing but clear Law of God or my Superiors shall fixe me Fourthly where things are not absolutely convincing on either side and there is no clear Law on neither or else so much like Law on both sides here as I must suspend if possible my action for these must needs make doubts so if I be necessitated to act on one side or other then if my conscience do mistake according to the degree of my diligence in examining so will be the degrees of my guilt If I have search't to my utmost and so offend out of an ignorance I could not overcome it is the constant doctrine of all that the mercy of our God by the tenure of the Gospel will not impute the error to a person otherwise of holy life but if there was a means of knowing that either heat or any other thing did hurry me from a sufficient consideration thereof according to my means so is my sin Abimelech had a competent ground to think that Sarah was not Abrahams wife when both herself and he had told him so and upon that he saies he took her to him in the integrity of his heart his conscience reasonably well-inform'd telling him that he might do it and yet God pâ—nisheth his hast he determin'd too speedily his desire was too quick did not proceed by those slow steps that a good careful conscience do's move with that will examin with all strictness where he discerns there will be gross sin on the other side The Jews had a strong prejudice against Christ's reformation of the Law by those so many promises of Scripture that their sacrifices should be eternal and when for many ages they had bin brought up in a Religion so own'd by God and were so harden'd in that Religion by all their Teachers 't was no wonder they rejected the Apostles preaching out of conscience of their own Religion Paul himself had don so and yet God gives them up to final induration for it because they had sufficient means of knowing Christ was sent by God to reform their Religion for have they not heard Rom. 10. 18. Thy diligence therefore shall alleviate the fault and where it is us'd in a good measure probably will not suffer the conscience to be long positive and peremtory in a mistake but at the most will let it only be a doubting conscience which how far 't is an evil eie and how we are to guide our selves out of that darkness it do's lead into we must now shew A doubting conscience may be either in things of very little moment and also where there is very little light to guide it and then we only call it scrupulous or else in things of consequence and of these we now treat and the Position is that he that acts according to a doubting conscience sins and this evil eie leads into utter darkness The Aphorism is a certain reveled pronunc't truth he that doubteth is damn'd if he eat Rom. 14. 23. However sacred the tribunal of conscience can be thought to be it must not stand in competition with the Throne of Almighty God and oblige us to do that which the Divine Command has interdicted or to leave that undon the doing of which he has expresly charg'd upon us It was thought to be a tyrannous hardship which the Egyptian task-masters put upon the Israelites that they should be beaten because they made not brick when they had no straw to make it with but it would seem a more tyrannous cruelty to punish them if they made and also to punish if they did not make it But so it is he who chuses to do that which his conscience suggests he ought to avoid as being ill and resolves to omit that which he judges or believes he ought to do as being good has all the inordination of mind that constitutes the most flagrant guilt he pursues evil and turns away from good apprehended to be such and so has that depravation of mind that constitutes a Devil But on the other side our opinions cannot alter the real natures of things nor will my belief that my act is laudable make it to be so any more than my fancy that Poisons are wholsome food will free them from their noxious venim and render them restoratives and cordials In like manner my adventuring on an action which I think is bad upon the cold reserve of a possibility that it may be otherwise involves the desperate resolution of doing it howsoever which differs very little from doing it tho I know it to be certainly unlawful But a doubting conscience admits of a counterpoise from a contrary doubt and there is fear of sin as on the one so also on the other part I am uncertain whether I may not do ill in acting and yet whether I may not do worse in forbearing or thus I am not sure that what I enterprize is lawful but yet I have no ground to believe it is unlawful Now from this exigent thus declared I might deduce resolutions in many cases of our life As 1. When there is no ground to build a certain judgment on of either side but it is only probable the thing is not sin and consequently I cannot be sure it is not yet if upon that probability I act this is clear different from the state of the doubting conscience for tho I may have some doubt 't is possible the thing may not be good yet having honestly examined it I have no reason to think it
8. which if after all the Husbandmans methods of Care and Art it brings forth only thorns and briars it is rejected by him he will bestow no more labour on it but can hardly forbear cursing such an ill piece of ground and its end is to be burnt So we after Gods Husbandry of Afflictions when the Plowers plowed upon our backs and made long furrows and the Iron teeth of Oppressors as it were harrowed us if we bring forth only the fruits of the Flesh we are rejected reprobated God will bestow no more Arts on us we are not far from his curse and there remains only a fearful looking for of Judgment and fiery Indignation If any did continue refractory to the Rod sinn'd under and against Judgment and did commit with an high hand even while the Lords hand was stretch'd out against them what shall reform what can express their guilt To have beheld that tragical iniquity we read of Lyons where when the City was so visited with the Pestilence that scarce any were free that the Dead without a figure buried their dead falling down one upon another each being at once a Carcass and a grave the Soldiers of the Cittadel would daily issue forth and deflour Virgins now giving up the ghost defile Matrons even already dead committing with the dust warming the grave with sinful heats and coupling with the Plague and Death would not this have seemed the Landskip of Hell to us when they suffer and sin together Yet when a Church and State were on their death-beds Gods Tokens on them visited with the treasures of his Plagues and our selves sinking in that our Ruin if any went a whoring after their own flesh still fulfilling the lusts thereof and in the midst of Deaths searching for sins what was this but to do the same things whose story does affright us while the actions please and in this case what method will be useful do we think our selves of that generous kind that will do nothing by compulsion but will for kindness and though we would not be chained yet we will be drawn to Vertue by the cords of Love and now God hath shewn mercy on us we will return him service out of gratitude Truly I make no question but most of us have promised some such things to God how if he would but save us from our Enemies that we might serve him without fear that we would do it in holiness and Righteousness before him And if he would restore his opportunities of Worship how we would use them Thus we did labour to tempt God and draw him in to have compassion and this was Ephraims Imagination just I heard Ephraim bemoaning himself saith the Prophet as a Bullock unaccustomed to the yoke turn thou me and I shall be turned turn my Captivity and I will turn my life But this was as a Bullock unaccustomed to the yoke that did not like the straitness and pressure of it and would promise any thing to get it off thought it more easie to reform than bear Affliction But is this hopeful think you The Soldiers of Lyons that would ravish Death and break into the Grave for Lust it may be would have been modest and retired from the fair Palaces that are prepared to tempt and entertain that Vice Cold and insensible of all those heats that Health and Beauty kindle but remember it was the taking off Gods hand that hardened Pharaohs heart and a release from punishment was his Reprobation And as for those that were humbled under the Rod and when God had retrench'd from their enjoyments did put restraints upon themselves gave over sinning I have a word of Caution for them that they examine well and take a care it be a ceasing from sin like that in the Text a dying to it that they no longer live the rest of their time in the flesh to the lusts of men For if this Old Man be only cold and stiff not mortified by the calm and sunshine of Peace likely to be warm'd into a recovery if thou owe all thy Innocence to thy Pressure wert only plunder'd of thy sins and thy Vertue and Poverty hand in hand as they were born so they will die together thy Vices and Revenues come in at once What is this but to invite new Desolations which God in kindness must send to take away the opportunities and foments of our ruining sins 'T is true when God has wrought such most astonishing miracles of mercy for us when he did make Calamity contribute to our Happiness when we were Shipwrackt to the Haven and the Shore when Ruins did advance us and we fell upwards it is an hopeful argument God would not do such mighty works on purpose to undo them we have good ground of confidence that he will preserve his own mercies and will not throw away the issues of his goodness in which his bounty hath so great an interest and share But yet if we debauch Salvation and make it serve our undoing if we order these opportunities of mercy so that they only help us to fill up the measure of our sins if we teach Gods long-suffering only to work out our eternal sufferings these Mercies will prove very cruel to us and far from giving any colour for our hopes When the Prodigal was received into his Fathers house and arms had a Ring put on him and the fatted Calf killed for him if he should strait have invited the companions of his former Riot to that fatted Calf and joyn'd his Harlot to him with that Ring he had deserved then to be disinherited both from his Fathers house and pitty who would have had no farther entertainment nor no bowels for him To prevent such a fate let us make no relapses but quite cease from sin which if we do not a little Logick will draw an unhappy inference from this Text if he that hath suffered hath ceast from sin then he that hath not ceast from sinning hath not suffered and then what is all this that we have felt and so lain under What is it if it be not suffering If this be but preparative then what is the full Potion the Cup of Indignation when all his Vials shall be poured into it If such have been the beginnings of sufferings what shall the issues be If the morning dew of the day of punishment have been so full of blood what shall the Storm and Tempest be the deluge and inundation of Fury Take heed of making God relapse 't is in your power to prevent it your Reformation will be his preservative and Antidote That is the way to keep all whole to settle Government and Religion both at once to establish the Kings Throne and Christs For notwithstanding mens pretensions these Thrones are not at all inconsistent For that there must be no King but Christ that there cannot be a Kingdom here of this World because there is a Kingdom that is not of this World is such
posture of receiving you to his embraces and his side opened not onely to shed Blood for you but to make you a passage to his very Heart Look on him offering up his Tears his Prayers and his Soul for Sin and in the midst of all projecting happiness to you as it were praying O my Father here I charge my self with all the guilt of those my Friends I thy onely Son God one with thee am content to suffer Torments that they all may be acquitted Here I lay down my Life that they may have eternal Life let me be Crucified so they be Glorified Which was the purchase and the gift of this his Passion to all his Friends even to those that do what he Commands which is the first Condition that entitles to his friendship and my next Part. Ye are my Friends if ye do what I command you I shall not urge that Great men upon Earth will not take any to their Friendship but upon these terms nor will I plead the reasonableness of this in Christ there being no cause why he should be a Friend to any that will daily disoblige him and dishonour him Nor will I press the whole Oeconomy of Scripture which says all the advantages Christ ever gave or meant us and all the acts of Friendship that he ever did for us were with this design He gave his grace that brings salvation to save us into an estate of sober Vertue Tit. ii ver 11 12. He gave himself also to Ransom us from our own evil doings and to redeem us into his Obedience Tit. ii ver 14. Without which no dependance on him will avail Matth. vii 21. He will own no acquaintance with nor services from them who have friendship with sin though they have cast out Devils in his Name if they retain their Vices though they do Miracles if they do wickedly he will bid them depart profess he never knew them ver 22 23. He will not let such have a bare relation to his Name nor have the friendship of a Title 2 Tim. ii 19. All his Rewards also that he will give are promised to none other but them that do what he commands Apoc. xxii 14. that is do Evangelically heartily and faithfully endeavour it and do this with all diligence exprest by words that import all strife imaginable as Running Wrestling Fighting Warring And persevere also by patient continuance in well-doing Rom. ii 7. and he hath nothing else but Vengeance for all others 2 Thes. i. 8. and we have neither Christ nor Gospel nor Religion but with these terms But I shall wave all this and bound my self within the present words Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his Life for his Friends Ye are my Friends if ye do what I command you When Christ is boasting of his love making comparisons and vying friendships with mankind nay more contriving heights and depths of Mercy such as Man hath no comprehension nor fathom for when he was preparing to do an act of compassion almost equal to his Divinity when he had resolutions of so much kindness as to give his life that he might shew kindness Yet could he not then find in his heart to offer or declare one jot of kindness to the men that will not do what he commands but in the midst of such Agonies of compassion he thought of nothing but infinite indignation and eternal vengeance to the disobedient I have but now given my Body and my Blood even to the Traitor Judas to one who is a Devil I am going to give my life even for my Enemies for the World But I will give no love to any have no friendship with any but the virtuous no though they be my own Disciples ye are my Friends ye my Companions and Apostles are my Friends onely on this condition if ye do what I command you And then is it not matter of Astonishment to see men fancy they have a right in all Christ's Actions and Sufferings presume upon his favour and their own happy condition though they do nothing or but very little towards this and the main of their life be disobedience as if all Christ's Commands appointed them to do no commands and Christianity were but a liberty from virtue To pass by those that do nothing but Evil that which the Devil does suggest or their flesh dictate and to consider the Demurer sort of Christians that pretend a respect to Christ and to Religion and see what they will do Why sometimes you may find them troubled at their Vices and themselves and those troubles breath out in Sighs and in warm wishes that they could do that which Christ prescribes to will is sometimes strongly present with them but to perform they know not how Alas Christ does not tell you that you are his Friends if you wish well to him and his Commands but he requires that you shall do them These are but vapours of a troubled Soul which howsoever they may chance rise warm catch a strong suddain heat breath up in flashing thoughts They are but Meteors little shooting flames that onely do catch fire and fall and die shew fair but they warm nothing And so these thoughts do never heat the Heart into Devotions and holy resolutions the fire is not strong nor does it live enough to melt and work away the filthinesses of the Soul No though they grow to aversations For you may find such men when wearied with the pursuit of their sins hating their customs and the engagements to the practice of them complaining thus I know 't is ill and 't is against my heart that I obey the motions of my passions or Lusts The incitations of my Appetite the usance of the World the Obligations of Civility or mistaken honour do indeed prevail upon me but 't is with great reluctancy of mind that I yield to them but I cannot avoid it There are not few that satisfie themselves with this condition Now sure Christ does not say Ye cannot be my Friends except you sin against me and against your Knowledg and your Consciences too 'T is strange that men should think the Heathen instance of a Witch that cryed Video meliora proboque Deteriora sequor I know and do approve of better things but cannot choose but follow these that are the worser strange that this Fury that had the Devil for Familiar should make Christ a friend that this should be the state of Gospel Saints and of Gods favourites 'T is possible some therefore go yet further to good purposes towards Obedience and have holy Intentions but this is not sufficient neither if to do his Commands be necessary for to purpose and intend to do them is not certainly to do them Yet where are any that do aim at doing any more and there is none of these but does presume upon his interest in Christ and satisfies himself and is secure Yet is it hard to find a ground of
that day appear against their Friends and Masters and prove their Adversaries to eternal Death Let others joy in Friends that Wine does get them such as have no qualification to endear them but this that they will not refuse to sin and to be sick with their Companions Men that do onely drink in their affections as full of friendship as of liquor and probably they do unload themselves of both at once part with their dearness and their drink together and alike I know not whether in be heats of mutual kindness that inflame these draughts and the desires of them so as if they did drink thirst but sure I am that these hot draughts begin the Lake of fire Let others please themselves in an affection that Carnality cements These are warm friendships I confess but Solomon will tell us whence they have their heat Her house saith he doth open into Hell and Brimstone kindles those libidinous flames There are strait bands fetters in those affections indeed for the same Wiseman says The Closets of that sinner are the Chambers of Death That none that go unto her return again or take hold of the paths of life it seems she is a friend that takes most irreversible dead hold she is not onely as insatiate but as inexotable as the Grave and the Eternal Chains of Fate are in those her Embraces But God keep us from making such strict Covenants with Death from being at friendship with Hell or in a word that I say all at once with any that are good Companions onely in sinâ—ing Such men having no virtue in themselves must needs hate it in others as being a reproach to them and therefore they are still besieging it using all arts and stratagems to undermine it and having nothing else to recommend them in mens affections but their managery of Vice no way to Merit but by serving iniquity they not onely comply with our own evil Inclinations that so they may be grateful and insinuate into us but they provoke too and inflame those tendencies that they may be more useful to us having no other means to work their ends And then such friends by the same reason must be false and treacherous and all that we declaim at and abhor in Enemies when that shall be the way to serve their ends because they have no Virtue to engage them to be otherwise And to be such is to be constant to their own designs their dispositions and usances These are the Pests of all Societies they speak and live infection and friendship with them is to couple with the Plague These do compleat and perfect what the Devil but began in Eden Nurse up Original sin chase inclination into appetite and habit suggest and raise desires and then feed them into Constitution and Nature In a word are a brood of those Serpents one of which was enough to destroy Paradise and Innocence 'T is true a man would think these were our Friends indeed that venture to Gehenna for us Alas they are but more familiar Devils work under Sathan to bring us to Torments and differ nothing from him but that they draw us into them and he inflicts them And when sinful contents come home in Ruine and pleasures die into Damnation then men will understand these treacherous loves and find such Friends are but projectours for the Devil then they will hate them as they do their own Damnation discerning these are but the kindnesses of Hell Nay it is possible I may slander that place in speaking so ill of it Dives will let us see there are affections of a kinder and more blessed strain in Hell Luke xvi from the twenty seventh Verse you find he did make truce with Torments that he might contrive and beg onely a message of Repentance for his Brethren he did not mind at all his own dire Agonies he minded so the reformation of his Friends Good God! when I reflect upon these pieties of the Damn'd together with the practices of those who have given their names in to Religion when I see Fiends in Hell do study how to make Men virtuous and Christians upon Earth with all their art debauch them into vice and ruine I cannot choose but pray Grant me such Friends as are in Hell Rather grant us all the Friendship in the Text. But then we must have none with any Vice Friendship with that engageth into Enmity with God and Christ I shew'd you And to pass over all those after-retributions of Vengeance Christ hath studied for his Enemies when he that now courts us to be our Friend and we will make our Adversary must be our Judg For were there none of this and should we look no further than this life yet sure we of this Nation know what it is to have God our Enemy who for so many years lay under such inflictions as had much of the character of his last execution they had the Blasphemies and the Confusion the dire Guilts and the black Calamities and almost the Despair and Irrecoverableness of those in Hell And though He be at Peace with us at present at least there is a Truce yet I beseech you in the presence and the fear of God to think in earnest whether the present provocations of this Nation do not equal those that twenty years ago engaged him into Arms against us and made him dash us so in pieces Whether those Actions of the Clergy be reformed that made the People to abhor their Function and their Service the Offerings and Ministers of the Lord and made God himself spew them out 'T were endless to go on the prophaneness to the loose impieties and the bold Atheisms of the Laity especially of the better sort in short what one degree or state or Sex is better Sure I am if we are not better we are worse beyond expression or recovery who have resisted every method and conquer'd all God's Arts of doing good upon us been too hard for his Judgments and his Mercies both 'T is true when we lay gasping under his severe Revenges we then pretended to be humbled begg'd to be reconciled and be at peace with him and vow'd to his Conditions promising obedience and aliened our selves from our old sins his Foes But then when Christ came to confirm this Amity came drest with all his Courtship brought all the invitations of Love along our Prince and our Religion our Church and State Righteousness and Peace and the Beauty of Holiness every thing that might make us be an Happy and a Pious Nation thus he did tempt and labour to engage that Friendship which we offered him and vowed to him And we no sooner seiz'd all this but we break resolutions as well as duty to get loose from him and laden with the spoyls of our defeated Saviour's goodness we joyn hands with his Enemies resume our old acquaintant-sins enrich and serve them with his Bounties make appear that we onely drew him in to work such
words but they do them not And if they flash in Hell against their Vices in torrents of threatning Scripture they concern themselves no more than they would in the story of a new Eruption of Mount Aetna or Vesuvius Yea they do quench the Spirit and his fires do not like the deaf Adder stop their ears against his whisperings and the charms of Heaven that were a weaker and less valiant guilt but are Religious in hearing them curious that they may be spoke with all advantages to make it harder not to yield and live that so they may express more resolution to perish and with more courage and solemnity may sin and dye Nay more when God hath found an Art to draw themselves into a League and Combination against their Vices bound them in Sacraments to Virtue made them enter a Covenant of Piety and seal it in the Blood of God and by that foederal Rite with hands lift up and seizing on Christ's Body and with holy Vows oblige themselves to the performances or to the Threats of Gospel which they see executed in that Sacrament before their eyes see there death is the wages of iniquity they shew themselves its damned consequences while they behold it tear Christ's Body spill his Blood and Crucifie the Son of God yet neither will this frightful spectacle nor their own ties hold them from sin and ruine they break these bonds asunder to get at them The Wiseman says that wicked men seek death and make a Covenant with it and so it seems But sure they are strange wilful men that seek it at Gods Table in the Bread of Life that will wade through an Ocean of mercy to get at Perdition and find it in the Blood of Christ will drink Damnation in the Cup of blessing men that poyson Salvation to themselves They that contract thus for Destruction and tye it to them at the Altar with such sacred Rites and Articles are sure resolv'd and love to dye Fourthly God had provided other Guards to secure men from sin and Death the Censures of the Church of which this Time was the great Season and the discipline of abstinence we now use is a piteous relique all that the World will bear it seem But as the Lord appointed them they were so close a fence that our Saviour calls them Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven as if they lock'd us in the Path of Piety and Life and we must pick or break all that the Key of Heaven can make fast burst Locks as well as Vows before we can get out have liberty to sin God having bounded in the Christians race as that among the Grecians was which had a River on one side and Swords points all along the other so that Destruction dwelt about it on the borders And God hath mounded ours with the River of Hell the Lake of Fire and with these spiritual Swords as S. Cyprian and S. Hierome call the Censures But yet a Mound too weak alas to stand the Resolution and assaults of Vices now adays which do not onely make great breaches in the Fence but have quite thrown it down and slighted it and the Church dares not set it up again should she attempt it they would scoff it down Men will endure no bar in the way to Perdition they will have liberty of Ruine will not be guarded from it so far from brooking Censures they will suffer no Reproof nor Admonition not suffer one word betwixt them and Death eternal But Fifthly Though we will not let Almighty God restrain us with his Censures yet he will do it with his Rod and set the sharp stakes of Affliction in our walk to keep us in thus he makes sins sometimes inflict themselves and then we straight resolve to break off from them and while we suffer shame and feel destruction in the Vice we shrink and uncling And now the Sinner would not dye especially if his Precipitance have thrown him to the confines of the grave and while he took his full careers of Vice the fury of his course did drive him to the ports of Ruine and Death seemed to make close and most astonishing approaches when standing on the brink of the Abyss he takes a prospect of the dismal state that must receive him and his Vices then he trembles and flyes his apprehensions swoon his Soul hath dying qualms caused as much by the Nausea of sin as by the fear of Hell he is in agonies of passion and of Prayer both against his former courses he never will come near them more and now sure God hath catch'd him and his will is wholly bent another way now he will live the new life if God will grant him any But alas have we never seen when God hath done this for him stretch'd out his Arm of Power hal'd him from the brow of the Pit and set him further off how he does turn and drive on furiously in the very same path that leads to the same Ruine and he recovers into death eternal And now this Will is grown too strong for the Almighties powerful methods and frustrates the whole Counsel of God for his Salvation neglects his Calls and Importunacies whereby he warns him to consult his safety to make use of Grace in time not to harden his heart against his own mercies and perish in despight of mercy And when he can reject Gods Graces and his Judgments thus defie his Conscience and his own Experience too there is but one thing left wherein this Resolution can shew its courage and that is Sixthly His own present Interests All which the Sinner can break through and despise to get at Death It is so usual to see any of the gross wasting Vices when it is once espoused murder the Reputation and all those great concerns that do depend upon a mans Esteem eat out his Wealth and Understanding make him pursue pernicious ways and Counsels besot him and enslave him fill his life with disquiet shame and neediness and the sad consequents of that Contempt and all that 's Miserable and unpitied in this Life and yet the sin with all these disadvantages is lovely not to be divorc'd nor torn off from him that I were vain should I attempt to prove a thing so obvious I shall give but one instance of the power of the Will the violence and fury of its inclinations to Ruine The man who for anothers inadvertency possibly such as their own rules of Honour will not judg affront yea sometimes without any shadow of a provocation meerly becaue he will be rude does that upon which they must call one another to account and to their last account indeed at Gods dread Judgment-seat whither when he hath sacrific'd two Families it may be all their hopes and comforts in this Life two Souls which cost the Blood of God having assaulted Death when it was arm'd and at his heart and charged Damnation to take Hell by Violence he comes with his own
satisfaction for we have our Rules and our proportions by which we rate and choose Reversions rather than Possessions and those of the other World exceed these beyond all the measures of proportion and the Understanding does inform impartially of this How then if the Will can let those go and take these it can be said always to choose the better for the present if it may be said to do so though it let those go then by what wash or Chymick Artifices does she blanch or paint these so as to make them look better for the present Now we may discover how these both may be if we onely reflect upon the manner of the actings of our own Souls Where the things that stand in competition for our choice are both of the same kind and have one common measure of their good or ill as for example are both painful or both profitable or delightful and no conâ—ideration of any other motive comes into the Ballance here the Will must needs choose the best refuse the worst For meerly out of aversation to pain to run into the stronger Pain avoid the less or out of Covetousness to refuse greater Wealth or for delights sake onely to prefer that which is less delightful are practical contradictions Where the Objects are of different kinds one for example profitable or delightful but not without sin and the other Vertuous and spiteful Reason taking Vertues part suggests the motives to it Gods Commands his Promises and Threats here though the inferiour faculties prostitute all their baits they cannot equal those proposals to the Will 't is true yet by their importunacies still pressing her goading her by their stings they can and do prevail with her to call the Understanding off from her attention to those other motives and employ the thoughts upon the present Object that does importune her so and which by the agitations it does cause within the sensual part puts the mind in disorder presently distracts the thoughts then seizes them so that the Understanding being now intent to this the better motives are let go and sink and then the onely ones in view are those of sense which straight the Will rushes into the imbraces of and the other being vanish'd and no better than appearing 't is plain in those she sixes on the best But if the mind will not be taken off but Conscience fly in the Man's Face and will not let him rest nor his Will fix why then in this unquietness of hers she sets the thoughts on work and will not let them fix till they find out some salvo that can satisfie Carnality and Conscience too that will let the Man have the sin and not deprive him of Gods Favour And if either application of Gods Decrees and Promises without Condition absolutely to himself and the assurances of Faith and trust will do it as we may know it will in some or if not that then if hopes of mercy resolutions of repenting afterwards and leaving off the sin as this does do with most then it is evident in choosing to obey his inclinations with such salvo the man chooseth that which does appear best for the present But if the mind unsatisfied with these and not daring to trust such rotten planks against the very face of storm object the uncertainty at least of these Principles and the unsafeness of those after-hopes not fit to be security against God's Threats and would convince the man that conscience of resisting a temptation and by that keeping himself free from the clutches of the Devil and the fears of Hell together with present assurance of God's favour are more satisfying at the present than the pleasures of the sin Yet those pleasant apprehensions of the Conscience of resisting re-encountering with the seeming impossibility of resisting alway that which presses so and will some time or other seize upon him and finding the temptation to have sharper stings than his Religious fears of things which are not present and of which he hath had no experience And besides he having never had any great sense of God's favour and rewards the Landskip of them is but dim and faint upon the mind like those representations blind men have of Beauty to whom if you discourse of exact features perfect harmony of colours of a graceful presence chearful air and a good mine and all those other know not what 's that being seen commit a Rape upon mens faculties yet his conceptions of them are but very dark who never hath had any notices of these but such as his Ears give and though the Understanding chance to be positive and resolute in its determinations concerning them yet still the apprehensions of them are not clear futurity which is one sort of distance making objects as all things afar off do look but confused and their Ideas not distinct nor bright or brisk therefore they move the Will but very coldly Whereas the other pleasure being known the apprehensions of it are more vigorous the draught is strong and lusty on the Fancy there is force in every line the very image of it lives and therefore is more efficacious and by that prevails that looking fairest and most tempting at that present so that from this experience of our selves in every sort of instance thus deduc'd the Will does seem always to fix on that which appears simply best for it for that instant which it chooseth in the man still takes what he likes better at that present and he likes better that which looks better for that present And things are made to look better by these Arts which I have shewed you This being now the temper and the disposition of the Will and such the method of her actings this is the thing the World makes use of here 's its strength namely in making things look better for the present Which how it manages so as thereby to get advantages upon us how it does improve each such advantage till it get a perfect Conquest I shall give you in few words by shewing you how the World gets first possession of our Souls and there raises in us passionate desires that expect present satisfaction which it hath at hand to serve them with which by these arts are made look better than any other expectations It was observ'd by the Philosopher most truly that a Child is born onely an Animal is to be Educated and brought up into a Man His reason is the birth of time and institution for a while nothing but sense does live in him Now all that while he is incapable of being affected with any other things but such as strike the senses things of this present World and by that means only such possess his mind and inclinations too the uses and advantages of every thing about him are those he is first sensible of and those alone and so the World does make the first impressions on our Souls it does prevent all other in our inclinations hath our first
most part and purchased by those very means My business is to pull it down from this great height and shew you how to triumph o're these Conquests which my Text says is done by Faith for this is the Victory that overcometh the World even our Faith Which how it does is my second next Enquiry It seems a prejudice to this Assertion of my Text that the great pretenders to Faith the men that lay the whole stress of their Everlasting Being on believing onely have been branded to be very Worldly and the Factions of Godliness were the mysteries and arts of Thriving as if their Faith laid hold indeed upon the Promises of this Life and if it overcame the World it was for them to seize and be possessors of But this is not the Victory my Text secures a Conquest for the Faith onely of Mahomet to make And while Christian Votaries do onely mind such Conquests and are candidates of Turcism do they not call it in and make way for their Sword and their Religion But the Faith that lays hold on Christ's Promises cannot consist with any such affections For since Christ's Promises are made onely to those that overcome all such desires and that do it to the end and none other can be safe It is impossible for him that does not overcome to trust upon those Promises and to apply them to himself by Faith For at once to believe I shall be saved and yet believe those sayings which affirm none such can be saved these are most inconsistent It being then as casie to make contradictions be at peace as Faith and Worldliness they cannot suffer one the other it follows He that hath this Faith in sincerity must needs overcome the World And to shew you in a word how it is done you need not but to consider that Faith is as S. Paul saith the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen Heb. xi 1. Which as the Syriack translates does say that Faith is such a certainty of those things that we hope for as if we actually had them and it is the revelation of those things that are not seen it hath so strong a confidence in God that the Believer assures himself of all Gods Promises and Threats as much as if they were in sight and though we see them through a glass but darkly yet we see them by it 1 Cor. xiii 12. it being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It represents the things of which we have no demonstration from Sense or humane reasoning as convincingly to the mind as if they were before our Eyes And it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the substance the subsistence and the very being of things that are not yet in being but in hope So that the Eye of Faith like that of God does see those things that are invisible and futurity is present to it Now by this alone it is of force to break the powers of the World which as we saw while the things of the other World were look'd upon as at a great distance afar off taking advantage of their absence storm'd the mind with present forces and had supplies at hand for fresh assaults so overcame it Whereas had the powers of the World to come been present now by Faith they are made so we see the other which are so inferiour that there is no more comparison than of immensity to a point a moment to Eternity could not stand before them 'T is too notorious that this is the case For should a man cry fire in the House how it had seiz'd the strengths of it were blotting out the glories of it in thick Smoak devouring all their shine in flame we would leave our Devotions our most eager pleasures to prevent this and no speed were swift enough to serve our cares and fears But though a Prophet of the Lord cry Tophet is prepared the pile thereof is Fire and much Wood and the Breath of the Lord like a stream of Brimstone kindling it and do this till his Lungs crack not one heart is mov'd nor brings a drop of tear to quench the flame because these fires are not present as the other neither have men any sense of them were they alike convincing alike present to the apprehension 't were impossible according to what we have demonstrated that the Will in her choices and her aversations where the Objects are of alike kind and have one common measure of their good and evil is determin'd to avoid or take that which appears the greatest always 't were I say impossible not to fly these which the Devils do believe and tremble at with greater dread wherever they appear Now a strong lively Faith must paint them out and shew them in each sin the World insnares into Neither would any of those rotten planks which while the Will does fluctuate betwixt her worldly inclinations and these fears and is toss'd about offer themselves as I declared to you for her to escape upon though she does dash her self upon God's Threats choosing the present sin such as the application of Decrees or Promises made absolutely to himself without any condition confidence in Gods Mercies hopes of Pardon none of these would be security to one that were convinc'd in earnest He that did believe and as it were discern that height which his ambition goads him to aspire to were upon the brink of the bottomless Pit whither when he arriv'd that very sin that tempts him with the glories of the prospect would then tumble him down headlong into that Abyss he would no more dare to ascend it by such false and guilty steps upon such hopes of mercy trusts on Promises or Decrees than he would dare to throw himself off from a Pinacle in confidence God was Almighty and Almerciful able enough and kind enough to stretch out his right hand and catch him in the fall or trusting to that Promise He will give his Angels charge concerning thee and in their hands they shall bear thee up lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone Or leaning upon any such Decree as makes the term of life immovable and fatal neither to be hastned or retarded none of these will make him mad enough to break his Neck neither would the same presumptions encourage him to cast away his Soul had he but equal apprehensions of the danger And it is plain all the temptations of the World and all these false encouragements cannot work upon a man when Death once looks him in the Face and the great Champions of Prophaneness are tame then not that God's Threatnings are more true or made more evident to sense or reason than they were before but their Faith is active and they apprehend more strongly then To see my self trampled upon by pride and malice or worse yet begging of him whom my blood it may be help'd to streams of plenty begging like Lazarus the portion of his
invade and use a force upon themselves and vanquish their own natures And sure we that are Christians and are so no farther than as we have this Faith here in the Text we must not count it hard we who have the Revelations and Example of the blessed Jesus all that he hath done to make it easie now saith he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Courage for I have overcome the World They are but broken forces we are to resist we have the Strengths of Heaven on our side and therefore sure we may adventure to encounter them and if we do begin to faint we have an Almighty Captain of Salvation and if we have but Faith to lay hold on him and be not false to our own selves but keep our hold if we be foiled Christ must be vanquish'd too and we may fear impossibilities as well When those poor Heathen march'd on naked had none of our Weapons to assault the VVorld or to defend themselves had neither Shield of Faith nor Helmet of Salvation no Sword of the Spirit the Word of God and yet master'd it in great degrees shall we that are harnessed turn our selves back in the day of Battel and confute this Scripture and make good that they do overcome the World most easily who never heard that Jesus was the Son of God 'T is not onely base for us to faint most who have most advantage but it is a contradiction for them to be overcome that have the Victory Now this is the Victory that overcometh the World even our Faith the Victory that overcomes both Worlds indeed it tramples upon this and lays hold upon that to come out-doing what S. Paul sings of it in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heb. xi His Heroes through Faith subdu'd earthly Kingdoms but by Faith we overthrow the Kingdom of the Prince and God of this World and the Kingdom too of the Almighty suffers violence from it and our Faith takes that by force forces even a right to it By it they stop'd the mouths of Lions in the Wilderness by it we stop that roaring Lion's mouth that compasses the Earth seeking whom he may devour by it they quench'd the violence of Fire we the Everlasting burnings by that Women received their dead raised to life again by it we shall rise to Immortality of Life and blessedness receive all that we do believe more than we can comprehend receive the end of our Faith the salvation of our Souls Which God of his Mercy state us all in for the sake of Jesus Christ the Author and the Finisher of our Faith and the Captain of our Salvation To whom with the Father c. The Ninth SERMON Preached at WHITE-HALL Sixth Wednesday in LENT 1664 5. GAL. II. 20. I am Crucified with Christ. THE Ancient Observation of this Time would justifie my Choice make the Text Seasonable in the most Severe sense it can put on when in their Exomologeses they ate onely the Bread of Sorrow and tears were their Drink day and night so as that in the Agonies of their Repentance they did Crucifie without a Meraphor and mortifie the Body of Flesh as well as Sin But it seems to have happened in our Sins as in our great Diseases men are grown more skilful and have found out much more grateful ways of Cure there is no need of going through a discipline of Torments a whole course of Medicinal Cruelty but they can heal at least palliate with more ease and speed Besides that Christianity is now of a more delicate and tender make and cannot bear austerities neither come I here to call for them or to provoke their Constitutions if they have found a softer and more pleasant way to Heaven on Gods Name let them walk in it onely in our walk we are now coming within ken of the Cross of Christ and we can bear commemorations of his Passion they make the closing Ceremony of this Season which was set aside on purpose by the preparations of Humiliation to fit us for the performances and expiations of that Day by Repentance to put off our Old Man the whole Body of Sin that we may hang it on his Cross as we go by That is the onely use of this time and the onely application of that Day Which I crave leave to shew you how to make at once And without this that Ceremony howsoever solemn will be meerly Pageantry not Worship the observation but dramatick and we shall have no part in the Atonement onely in the Scene of that days Tragedy rather than Sacrifice He onely Celebrates that Passion onely he partakes that Offering who can say with S. Paul I am Crucified with Christ. In which words we shall first endeavour to discover what this Person is Secondly What the Nature is of that Condition and estate which S. Paul does affirm here of that Person and that First In it self Crucified I am Crucified Secondly In its adjunct with Christ Which because it cannot signifie conjunction in time he is not now upon the Cross that I might say now I am Crucified with him nor when He was was I that I might say then I am Crucified with Christ but we shall find it hath other importances First it implies a likeness to Christ's Passion I am Crucified as he was so it means through the whole Rom. vi and the being crucified with Christ is what S. Paul elsewhere expresses by the being made conformable to his death Secondly It imports more even Communication and partaking with him in his Passion being planted together in the likeness of his death Rom. vi 5. and I am Crucified with Christ does mean I have a fellowship of his Sufferings as he words it Phil. iii. 10. Thirdly It means also a conjunction of causal Relation that there is a Vertue and Efficacy in the Cross of Christ to work the Sinner into Crucifying of his sin so the particle must needs import Ephes. ii 6. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he hath set us together with him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus Where we are neither in conformity nor fellowship but onely in our head and in our cause so I am Crucified with Christ does mean his Passion hath an influence to Crucifie and cause in me the death of Sin Of these in order and First what this Person is I say not who we know it was S. Paul but what and the reason of the Enquiry is because we find indeed elsewhere crucifying the Flesh with the Affections and Lusts required and we are also bid to mortifie our members that are on the Earth such as Fornication and Vncleanness Covetousness and the like But these are not I how am I mortified in these Is it because it may be they are grown so dear to me that I am Crucified in their destruction and long practice and acquaintance hath riveted them into my very heart Now the Wen we know though an excrescent tumour but an accessory bag of noxious humours yet if it lay
hold on any noble part take in some Nerve or Artery then he must cut the thread of Life that cuts it off So he must rent my heart indeed that tears my pleasures from me Life it self does seem to have so little salisfaction without them that it is a death to me to part with them Or else hath the Old Man no Soul is he all Flesh and hath Iniquity debas'd the whole of him so that his very Spirit is become Body of Sin so as that Wickedness should be our very Being be all one with us and I and my corruptions prove denominations of one importance signifie the very same so it is indeed Besides the carnal part that is sold under sin and consequently does deserve the Cross that punishment of Slaves the part also that is in the quite opposite extream that lusts against the flesh that must be made away Be ye 〈◊〉 ansform'd by the renewing of your mind Rom. xii 2. And if there be any sublimer and more deâ—â—â—cated past in that it must submit to the same Fate 〈…〉 in the spirit of your mind Ephes. iv 23. Corruption hath invaded that To 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the diviner ruling part is grown a slave to the Beast part of him it hath debauch'd its notions whereby it should discriminate good from evll so that now it can discern no natural difference between them but does measure both meerly by his present inclinations and concerns and the eternal Laws of Honesty are blotted our and principles of interest and irreligion rais'd there in the place and buttress'd by false reasonings and Discourses Now all these Fortresses of Vice that maintain and secure a man in sin must be demolish'd all such imaginations cast down and every high thing that exalteth it self against the knowledg of God and every thought brought into Captivity to the obedience of Christ That Spirit of the mind must be destroyed and we transformed into persons of new notions and reasonings But above all the remaining part of Man his own Will must be mortified which besides its natural 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by perverse inclinings to sollicitations of flesh is most corrupted and most dangerous in that which way soever it inclines it draws the whole Man after it If any thing in us be crucified in a Conformity to Christ it must be this for in that death wherein Christ offered up himself upon the Cross where although the Divine Nature gave the value 't was onely the Humane Nature made the Offering there it was the crucifying his own Will that above all other the ingredients made his Death a Sacrifice and the price of our Redemption God that had given him his Blood and Life might call for it again when and how he saw good and being due it was not properly a price that could be given him for sin but his free voluntary choice his being willing to endure the Agonies and Contempts of the Cross his stabbing his own natural desires with a resolute determination Not my will but thine be done This his own Will was his own Offering and such is ours if we be Crucified with Christ made conformable to his death if we present our selves a Sacrifice acceptable to the Lord for our will is not given up to him till it do perfectly comport with his but that it cannot do till we renounce our own desires till we have brought our selves to an indifference in outward things to such a resignation as she is storied to have had who being in her Sickness bid to choose whether she rather would have Health or Death made answer Vehementissimè desidero ut non facias voluntatem meam Domine this above all I desire that thou wilt not do my will I would have thee not do what I desire and would have So that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the whole of us the Spirit Soul and Flesh go to make up this Person and the body of Sin is the Old man entire I whole I am nothing but a mass of guilts my Senses are the bands of wickedness that procure for my evil inclinations my members are the weapons of unrighteousness my Body is a Body of Sin and Death and the affections of my Soul are Lusts its faculties are the powers of Sin yea and the Spirit of my mind that Breath of God is putrefied that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Angel-part of me is fall'n and turn'd Apostate and however I be partly Son of Man and partly Son of God yet I am wholly Child of Wrath and so fit to be Crucified Which calls me to the next Enquiry to the nature of the duty here intended I am Crucified What is design'd by it S. Paul does perfectly declare Rom. vi 6. Our old man is crucified with Christ that the body of Sin might be destroyed that we should no longer serve sin So that it means a through Repentance and abandoning of former evil Courses A Duty which there are few men but in some instants of their life think absolutely necessary and persuade themselves they do perform it At some time or other they are forc'd to recollect and grow displeas'd and angry at their sins and have some sad reflections on them beg for mercy and forgiveness and do think of leaving them and when they have return'd to them again they shake the head and chafe and curse at their own weakness and renew their purposes it may be and do this as oft as such a Season as this is or other like occasions suggest it to or move them And with this they satisfie themselves and hope if God do please to take them hence in some such muddy gloomy fit of their Repentance all 's well Now shall we call this being Crucified are there Racks and Tortures in this discipline hath a Spear prick'd them to the heart and no blood nor no water no tears gush out thence hath it made no issue for some hearty Sorrow to purle out Indeed I must confess the Scripture does sometimes word the performance of this Duty in expressions that are not so sower but of an easier importance as first put off the Old Man as if all were but Garment put it off I say not as they strip'd our Saviour in order to his Scourgings and his Cross but intimating to us what an easie thing it is to cast off Sin for them who do begin with it betimes before it get too close to the heart 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. saith Theophyl even as easie as putting off thy Cloaths and thy Repentance is but as thy Shift thy change of life like changing thy Apparel But alas for all the easiness which this expression hints where the sins also lie in the Attire as besides emulation pride vainglory great uncharitableness and inhumanity cruel injustice and oppression often do when many are undone through want of those dues which do furnish other men with the excesses of this
distance and the other present Nor are they to be made to vie since both conspire and both are best in different cases Besides our Saviour is not talking here of begetting Faith but making men repent and the whole meaning of the words is briefly this Thy Brethren being Jews have Moses and the Prophets those contain all the motives of Repentance Gods Commands his Promises and Threats even Heaven and Hell as themselves confess all these have been confirm'd already by great Miracles and as such have been long since received by the whole Jewish Church with so immovable an Opinion of the truth of them that there needs no new Miracle to give accession of credit to them And then what can one coming from the dead perswade new motives he can bring them none Man 's nature is not capable of any other kinds for he can act but from his affections or his Reason all which are baited to the height by those motives they have the Understanding and the Appetite whether it love or hate or hope or fear which set on work whatever we perform all these I say Heaven and Hell are Object for even to the utmost possibility of motion If he can bring no new ones those they have when they are once truly believ'd then they have all the vigour they can have belief being the application of those active motives to their work but all the strength to act being in those motives themselves all I mean in opposition to the miracle I know that there are other strengths of Grace but those do help as well the Miracle as Motive those have influence on the believing too by their exciting and assisting But this strength which may be common to both is not to be considered when one vies with the other What therefore shall he go for who can give no new motives nor strength to those they have If any should not be confirm'd enough in that which Moses and the Prophets say how shall they be convinc'd that this Ghost is of more credit than they were but if he should be so far heeded as to add new Confirmation to them yet if improbity hath been able to dead the force of the activity of all that Moses says although acknowledged with that veneration which the Jews receive Moses with whose credit they themselves do say no Miracle can be wrought so great as to be able to add to or diminish from why then that same improbity within a while will with more ease work off the force of this new Confirmation so that it will be vain Indeed 't is possible that the surprize of such a Miracle just as any other sudden and amazing accident may make a man consider what though he did afore believe yet he did not mind nor lay to heart yet when the astonishment of that is over the motives then are left to their own strength and can work onely by their own activity which we see hath been able to do nothing so that a Miracle at most can be but a more awful remembrancer Now sure to bring this to our selves we want none such nor do they prove much useful Occasions of astonishment and such fatal remembrancers have come and taken up their habitation in our Land and make approaches towards hover over every place Long Bills of mortality and sad knells and dreadful passing bells these are all messengers from the dead that come posting to us swift as Gods Arrows And one would think we should take notice of their message hear them when they pass so near us when they seem to call out to our selves when a thousand do fall besides us and ten thousand at our right hand wherefore should not an Army of such Carcasses become as moving as one Ghost should Lazarus come forth with all his sores they would not be so terrible as these carbuncles and ulcers of the Plague And the destroying Angel out of Heaven with his Sword drawn one would expect should be as efficacious as a Preacher out of Abrahams Bosom And yet men do not seem to hearken any more to these than they do to us when we either Preach or which they think much less when we read Scripture to them that is when they hear Moses and the Prophets Men have the same security as to their sins which they had in the freest times whatever fears possess them they are not the fears of God those that make men depart from evil none of those that fright into Repentance we have no Religious cares upon us now more than at other times but Vice as if that also had a Sanctuary under the Lords wings and might retire under his feathers to be safe dreads no Terrours of the Night nor Arrows of the Day but walks as open and as unconcern'd as ever And now should we behold a mad man on his death-bed spending his onely one remaining minute in execrations the paleness of a shrowd upon his face but Bloud and crimson Sins upon his tongue the frost of the Grave over all his parts but a lascivious heat in his discourse in fine one that had nothing left alive of him but his Iniquity would not an horrour seize you at that sight and the same frost possess you but to hear him and yet his madness is his excuse and his disease his Innocence Should we see one that had no other madness no other sickness but his sin do thus would it not be more horrid and is it not the same to see a Nation as it were upon its Death-bed visited with all the treasures of Gods Plagues his tokens on it and every place and man in fearful expectations and yet no allay of Vice Wickedness as outragious as ever while it is thus with what face can we beg of God to keep from us this Plague and grievous sickness when we do onely mean to make this use of such indulgence to cherish another Plague in our own hearts What can we say to prove it would not be a mercy to us to be suddenly cut off even in the midst of our iniquity when by our going on in sin in the midst of Destruction we make appear if he should let us live yet we would only live to finish our iniquities And longer time would have no other use but to fill up a greater measure of sin What answer do we make to all these Messengers of Death that come so thick about us what do we that may justifie Gods care in sending us so many warnings But 't is no Wonder if the onely neighbourhood of Death have not been able to prevail upon us have you not seen one whom his own iniquity or Gods immediate Hand hath by a Sickness or by some sad Accident cast to the very brink of Death so as the Grave seemed to begin to take possession of him and all his hopes sickned and di'd so that recovery from that condition may be well as 't is in Scripture often called a Rising have
with these break with Virtue when their interest cannot consist with it that these false hypocritical pretenders should be offended with the mean condition of this Child and of his followers in this World and with the poor spirited Principles of his Religion In sum they that upon these or any other grounds finally disbelieve or disobey him God design'd this Child to be a means of bringing sorer Punishments even to everlasting ruin upon such A black Decree this one would think He that had so much kindness for Mankind to give away the onely Son both of his Nature his Affections and his Bosom to them could he then design that Gift to be the Ruin of the greatest part of men This Child Simeon said but just before my Text is Gods Salvation which he had prepared before all people and does he now say God hath set him for their fall The Angels preached this was a Birth that brought glad tidings of great joy that should be to all people and is there so much comfort in destruction that most men should rejoyce at that which is ordained to be the great occasion of it to them But we have no reason to complain 'T is not unkind to deny Mercy to them that refuse the offers of it that will not accept Salvation when their God himself does come to bring it to them tenders it upon condition of accepting and amending Which if they despise and prefer Hell before Repentance chuse sin rather than Gods blessed retributions 't is but reason to deny them what they will not have and let them take their chosen Ruine to will their Judgment which they will themselves set and ordain Him to be that to them which themselves do ordain and make him to be to themselves So S. Peter says expresly He is a Stone of stumbling and a Rock of offence to them who being disobedient stumble at the Word whereunto they were appointed Disobedience where it is obdurate alters so the temper of our God that it makes Him who swears he would not have the Sinner die yet set out his Son to make such sinners fall into eternal Death Makes Judgment triumph over Mercy even in the Great contrivances and executions of that Mercy and while God was plotting an Incarnation for the everlasting Safety of Mankind prevails with him to decree Ruins by the means of that Salvation to Decree even in the midst of all those strivings of his Mercies that that Issue of his kindness should be for the fall of such as they Oh! let us consider whether they are likely to escape that which is set and ordain'd for them by God Whether they can hope for a Redemption when the only great Redeemer is appointed for the Instrument of their Destruction and God is so bent on their ruine that to purchase it he gives this Child his Son Yea when he did look down upon this Son in Agonies and on the Cross in the midst of that sad prospect yet the Ruine of such sinners which he there beheld in his Sons Bloud was a delight to him that also was a Sacrifice and a sacrifice of a sweet smell to him For S. Paul says We are unto God a sweet savour of Christ in them that perish because we are the savour of Death unto death to them As if their Brimstone did ascend like Incense shed a perfume up to God and their evrlasting burnings were his Altar-fires kindled his holocausts and he may well be pleased with it for he ordain'd it 'T is true indeed This Child riding as in Triumph in the midst of his Hosannas when he saw one City whose fall he was set for on this very account He was so far from being pleas'd with it that he wept over it in pity But alas that onely more declares the most deplored and desperate condition of such sinners Blessed Saviour hadst thou no Blood to shed for them nothing but Tears or didst thou weep to think they very Bloodshed does but make their guilt more crimson who refuse the mercy of that Bloodshed all the time that is offered Sad is their state that can find no pity in the Tears of God and remediless their Condition for whom all that the Son of God could do was to weep over them all that he did do for them was to be for their fall too sad a part indeed for festival Solemnity very improper for a Benedictus and Magnificat To celebrate the greatest act of kindness the Almighty could design onely by the miseries it did occasion to magnifie the vast descent of God from Heaven down to Earth onely by reason of the fall of Man into the lowest Hell of which that was the cause My Text hath better things in view The greatness of that fall does but add height to that Resurrection which He also is the cause of Behold this Child is set for the rising again of many My remaining Part. Rising again does not particularly and onely refer to the foregoing fall here in the Text which this Child did occasion as I shewed you but to the state wherein all Mankind both in its nature and its Customs lay ingulâ—'d the state of Ignorance and sin A state from which recovery is properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a resurrection and a reviving in this Life and so call'd in Scripture often as Ephes. v. 15. Wherefore he saith Awake thou that sleepest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and arise from the dead And Rom. vi 13. Yield not your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin but yield your selves unto God as those that are alive form the dead Now to raise us from the death of sin into the life of Righteousness by the amendment of our own lives to recover us into a state of Vertue is the thing this Child is said here to be set for This was that which God thought worth an Incarnation Neither was there any greater thing in the prospect of his everlasting Counsel when he did decree his Son into the World than that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He is set for this The Word was made Flesh to teach practise and persuade to Vertue To make men Reform their lives was valued at the price of a Person of the Trinity Piety and his Exinanition yea his Blood and Life were set at the same rates All of him given for our recovery The time would fail me if I should attempt onely to name the various methods he makes use of to effect this How this Child that was the brightness of his Fathers Glory came to lighten us shining in his Doctrine and Example How he sent more light The fiery Tongues Illuminations of the Holy Ghost to guide us in the ways of Piety How he suffered Agonies and Death for sin to appale and fright us from it How he Rose again to confirm Judgment to us to demonstrate the rewards of Immortality to them that will repent and leave their sins and everlasting Torments to those
that refuse this Grace Grace purchased with the Blood of God to enable them to repent and leave Besides all these the Arts and Mesnage of his Providence in preventing and following us by Mercies and by Judgments importuning us and timeing all his blessed Methods of Salvation to our most advantage Arts God knows too many if they serve us onely to resist and turn to wantonness and aggravation if we make no other use of Grace but this to sin against and overcome all Grace and make it bolster Vice by teaching it to be an encouragement to go on in it from some hopes we entertain by reason of this Child instead of doing that which he was set Decreed to make us do And really I would be glad to see this everlasting Counsel of the Lord had had some good effects some though never so little happy execution of this great Decree and that that which God ordain'd from all Eternity upon such glorious and magnificent terms were come to pass in any kind Now certainly there are no evident signs of any great recovery this Child hath wrought among us in the World that 's now call'd Christian. After those Omnipotent inforcives to a vertuous life which he did work out if we take a prospect of both Worlds it would be hard to know which were the Heathen and there would appear scarce any other notice of a Christ among us but that we blaspheme Him or deride Him Sure I am there are no Footsteps of him in the lives of the community of Men And I am certain that you cannot shew me any Heathen Age outgoing ours either in loosness and foul Effeminacies or in sordidness and base injustice or in frauds and falness or malignity hypocrisie or treachery or to name no more even in the lowest most ignoble disingenious sorts of Vice In fine men are now as Earthly Sensual yea and Devilish as when Sins and Devils were their Gods Yea I must needs say that those times of dark and Heathen Ignorance were in many men times of shining Vertue and the little spark of Light within them brake out through all obstructions into a glory of Goodness to the wonder and confusion of most Christians 'T is true we are pretty well reveng'd on them for setting us Examples so reproachful to us calling their Heroick Actions splendida peccata onely beauteous sins and well-fac'd wickednesses and we have a reason for it because they never heard of Christ whose Name and Merit 't is most certain is the onely thing that can give value and acceptance to mens best performances While on the other side we Christians comfort and secure our selves in our transgressions from this Child and form his Name But if this Child were set to raise us up from sin and to establish stronger arguments for a good life than the Heathen ever heard of more especial Divine engagements to Vertue then if their Vertues were because they never heard of these engagements to them sins what censure will be past upon their Actions that know all those engagements and despise them a sharper certainly unless to defie knowledg and provoke against all Divine Obligations all that God could lay shall prove more tolerable than to labour to obey without them without knowing why 'T is true they had not heard it may be of the Name than which there is no other Name under Heaven given unto men whereby they may be saved Yet they endeavoured in some measure to do that which He that owns that Name and wrought the Covenant of those Salvations does require We know that Name and have it call'd upon us and know too that he that names that Name that calls himself a Christian owns the being a retainer to the Holy Jesus must depart from iniquity otherwise it is no Name of Salvation to him yet we neve mind the doing that and then which hath the better Plea the Heathen's sure were better though he were not vertuous And if so give me leave to tell you how not onely this Child but this Resurrection too is for our fall In the first Chapter to the Romans we shall find those Heathens when they did neglect to follow the direction of that Light within them by which they were able to discover in some measure the invisible things of God when they did no longer care to retain God in their knowledg then they quickly left off to be Men And when they ceas'd to hearken to their Reason they soon fell into a reprobate sense What was it else to change God into stocks and stones and Worship into most abominable wickedness to make the Vilest creatures Deities and the foulest Actions Religion to turn a disease into a God and a sin into Devotion a stupidity which nothing else but Gods desertion and reasons too could have betrayed them to and made them guilty of And then if by how much greater Light and means we have resisted we shall be proportionably more vile in the consequents of doing so keep at equal rates of distance from those Heathens that the aggravations of our guilt stand at from theirs Whether alas are we like to fall 'T is an amazing reflection one would tremble to consider how the Christian World does seem to hasten into that condition which S. Paul does there decipher You would think that Chapter were our Character But that we have reason to expect we shall fall lower into much more vile affections than those Heathens did as having fal'n down from a greater height than they Consider whether men do not declare they like not to retain God in their thoughts when they endeavour to dispute and to deride him too out of the World 'T is true they have not set up any sins or monsters in their Temples yet as they did But if they can empty them of God and Christ and their Religion and make room we may imagine easily whose Votaries they will be that live as if they thought themselves unhappy that they had not liv'd in those good Pagan days when they might have sinned with devotion been most wickedly Religious and most God-like in unchastities and other Villanies I dare say none of our fine Gentlemen or our great Wits would have been Atheists or irreligious then Think whether those are not already in that reprobate sense S. Paul does speak of who have case off all discriminating notions of good or evil who say in their hearts and affirm openly there are none such in truth and nature It would appear they were if we should try by those effects verse 29 30 31. or by that essential signature vers 32. they not onely commit such things but have pleasure in them that do them which because they cannot have from those Commissions when they do not commit them therefore their debauched minds must be satisfied there is no evil in those doings and must reap the pleasure onely of such satisfactions That is have the satisfactions and pleasures onely
interpose to hinder it and hide the possibilities of mercy from their eyes that they may never see them nor recover What can then become of those for whom God does contrive that they shall not escape when instead of those bowels that did make him swear he would not have the sinner die but would have him return and live he puts on so much indignation at such Sinners as to take an order they shall not repent and take an order that they shall be damn'd And yet all this is onely to those men who being dull of hearing the suggestions of the Spirit and not willing to give entertainment to his holy motions grieve him so that they repell and drive him quite away and so by consequence onely make way for the Devil Whereas there are others that directly call him force him to them ravish and invade occasions to serve him Some there are that study how to disbelieve and with great labour and contrivance work out arguments and motives to persuade themselves to Atheism Others practise discipline and exercise themselves to be engag'd in Vice Some dress so as to lay baiâ—s snares to entrap Temptation that they may be sure it may not pass them Others feed high to invite and entertain the Tempter do all that is possible to make him come and to assure him that he must prevail when they have made it most impossible for themselves to stand and to resist Some there are indeed whom he does not overcome so easily but is put to compound with them takes them upon Articles for when he would ingage them to a sin to which he sees they have great inclinations with some fears he is fain to persuade them to repent when they have done to lay hold upon the present opportunity and not let the satisfaction escape them but be sorry after and amend For where these resolutions of Repentance usher in transgression there we may be sure it is the Devil that suggests those resolutions But if he can get admittance once thus by prevailing with a person to receive him upon purposes of after-Penitence he is sure to prosper still in his attempts upon the same condition For Repentance will wash out another sin if he commit it and so on And it is evident that by this very train he does draw most men on through the whole course of sin and life For never do they till they see themselves at the last stage begin repenting When they are to grapple with Death's forces then they are to set upon resisting of the Devil And when they are grown so weak that their whole Soul must be imployed to muster all its spirits all their strength but to beat off one little spot of phlegm that does besiege the avenues of breath the ports of life and sally at it and assault it once again and a third many times and yet with all the sury of its might cannot break through nor beat off that little clot of spittle when it is thus yet then are they to wrestle with and Conquer Principalities and Powers all the Rulers of the utter darkness pull down the strong holds of sin within cast down imaginations and every high thing that did exalt it self against the knowledg of God and bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ and with those feeble hands that they are scarcely able to lift up in a short wish or prayer they must do all this resist the Devil and take Heaven by force Now sure to put it off to such a fatal season is a purpose of a desperate concern In God's Name let us set upon the doing it while there is something left of Principle and vigor in us ere we have so griev'd Gods Spirit that he do resolve to leave us utterly and before the Devil have so broke us to his yoke that we become content and pleas'd to do his drudgery We deceive our selves if we think to do it with more ease when Constitution is grown weaker as if then Temptations would not be so â—rong For the Habits will be then confirm'd Vice grown Heroical and we wholly in the power of Satan dead and sensless under it not so much as stirring to get out But if we strive before he have us in his clutches we have an Enemy that can vanquish none but those who consent to and comply and confederate with him those that will be overcome So that if we resist he must be Conquer'd and Temptation must be conquer'd too for he will flie and then by consequence must cease to trouble and molest us This is the sure way to be rid of Temptations to put to flight the great Artificer and Prince of them subdue and overcome him and our selves And to him that overcometh thus Christ will grant to sit with him on his Throne as He also overcame and sate down with his Father on his Throne To which c. The Fourteenth SERMON Preached at WHITE-HALL Last Wednesday in LENT 1667 8. PHILIPP III. 18. For many walk of whom I have told you often and now tell you even weeping that they are the Enemies of the Cross of Christ. THough many by the Cross of Christ here understand any sort of Suffering for the sake of Christ or Religion it being usual with the Scripture to entitle Christ to every evil that befals a man for doing of his duty yet others looking on it properly as that on which Christ himself suffered by the Enemies of the Cross understand those that set themselves against the whole design and influence of Christ's death upon it Now to name that in few words the Cross of Christ not onely is one of the greatest Props on which our Faith of the whole Gospel leans which it establisheth the truth of as Christs Bloud shed upon it was the sanction of the Covenant on Gods part who by that federal Rite of shedding Bloud engag'd himself and we may certainly assure our selves he cannot fail to make good whatsoever he hath promised in that Covenant who would give the Bloud of his own only Son who was so holy and who was himself to Seal that Covenant and his Bloud is therefore called the Bloud of the Everlasting Covenant But besides this extrinsick influence of it all the blessed Mercies also of the Gospel are the Purchase of this Cross and all the main essential duties of the Gospel are not onely Doctrines of the Cross such as it directs and does inforce but the Cross also hath an immediate efficacy in the working of them in us For S. Paul saith by the Cross of Christ the World is Crucified to me and I unto the World On it the Flesh is also crucified with the Affections and Lusts And to say all that comprehensive Duty of the Gospel Self-denial is but another word for taking up the Cross And then as for the Mercies of the Gospel on the Cross the satisfaction for our sins was made the Price of
our Redemption paid and that effected There was wrought our Reconciliation with our God Lastly that was the consideration upon which Grace was bestowed whereby we are enabled to perform our duty With good reason therefore S. Paul calls the Gospel 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the word or Doctrine of the Cross so that the Enemies of the Cross of Christ are in a word the Enemies of Christianity and so the blessed Polycarpe in his Epistle to these same Philippians seems to understand it And they that walk as Enemies to it are such as do not onely hate the Duties of the Gospel those especially which the Cross directly does inforce but their course of life is order'd so as to break the very Frame and Power of Christianity they set themselves against all that Christ came to do upon and by the Cross resist and wage War with the Doctrines and by consequence oppose the mercies of it The words being thus explain'd I have no more to do but onely answer two Enquiries which they give occasion for The first is What sort of men those are that walk as Enemies to the Cross and wherein their hostility does express it self The second is What the danger and the sadness is of that condition that they should make S. Paul think it necessary frequently to warn them of it and to do it now with so much passion For many walk saith he of whom I have told you often and now tell you even weeping c. First for the first And here I shall not strive to give you in a perfect list of all that walk as Enemies to the Cross but shall take that which S. Paul hath made ready to my hands in the next words And first the Enemies which he brings up in the front are the Sensualists the Men whose God is their Belly Secondly They whose glory is in their shame Thirdly Who mind Earthly things to which as being their confederates and near Allyes I shall add Fourthly Those that he reckons up in the 1 Cor. i. the wise men of this World First The Sensualists That Men who diligently mind the serving of their appetite in Meats and Drinks that study and contrive its pleasure and with industry have learn'd and practise Arts of Luxury and in those have set up their delights that these should be accounted Enemies of the Cross of Christ there is but too much reason For their course of life is perfect opposition to that Cross and to the whole design of Christianity and to the very being of all Vertue For since Vertue is but moderation and restraint of Appetites and Passions and since sensuality indulges and does raise and heat them since the whole design of Christianity is to mortifie the deeds of the Body those our members upon earth that Body of Sin and Death and since Voluptuousness quickens pampers and does make them vigorous lastly since the Doctrines and the Influences of the Cross of Christ do aim at Crucifying the flesh with its Affections and Lusts and Luxuries do gorge and make them ramping sure the Enmity is too apparent to be prov'd It is the business of Religion to instruct and frame men into reasonable Creatures God himself chose to die upon the Cross that we might live like Men here and then afterwards die into Sons of God and become equal to the Angels He suffered on the Tree that we might be renewed into that constitution which the Tree of Knowledg did disorder and debauch Before Man aâ—e of that his lower Soul was in perfect subordination to his mind and every motion of his appetite did attend the dictates of his Reason and obey them with that resignation and ready willingness which our outward faculties do execute the Wills commands with then any thing however grateful to the senses was no otherwise desired than as it serv'd the regular and proper ends and uses of his making there was a rational harmony in all the tendencies of all his parts and that directed modulated by the rules and hand of God that made them In fine then Grace was Nature Vertue Constitution Now to reduce us to this state as near as possible is the business of Religion as it had been in some kind the attempt also of Philosophy But this it can in no degree effect but as it does again establish the subordination of the sensual to the reasonable part within us That is till by denying satisfactions to the Appetite which is now irregular and disorderly in its desires we have taught it how to want them and to be content without them and by that means have subdu'd its inclinations or by taking down the Body have abated of its powers and its provocations and where it is stubborn heady and rebellious there by cutting off provisions from the flesh and by sharp methods vanquish'd and reduc'd it into a condition of Obedience and whenever that is also necessary weakens so that insolent untam'd part of our selves that we make it lie fainting groveling at our feet these are the Doctrines of the Cross and this the method of its Discipline And withal by those rational and divine heavenly encouragements which above all Doctrines in the World our Christianity suggests and furnisheth with infinite advantage have so fortified the mind that it resumes its principality governs and carries on the lower Soul in its obedience to Duty easily without resistance as they say the higher Heaven moves the inferiour Orbs along with it although their proper tendencies are contrary At leastwise if impressions from without or inbred inclinations stir raise passions and mutinies yet the mind keeps so much power that they shall not beat it off and force it from its prosecutions of good nor shall unless by a surprize engage its consent in the pursuit of evil This is that which Religion aims at thus to make us men teach us to live according to our nature to put Reason in the Throne and vindicate the Spirit from the tyranny of its own Vassal flesh But sensuality is most perfect opposition to this whole design for it renverses that subordination without which there is no possibility of Vertue as I shew'd you and it puts that whether Lust or Passion in the Throne which either constitution conversation or whatever accident did give possession of our inclinations to And makes the strangest prodigy of Centaure where the Beast is uppermost and rides the man where the Beast is God indeed for the sensual man acknowledges no other God but his own belly so S. Paul does character him here And truly if we look on the attendances and careful services he gives it and how studiously and wholly he does consecrate himself to please it one would think it most impossible he should have any other God but if we number the drink-offerings and meat-offerings the whole Hecatombs he gives it and whereas other Deities had onely some peculiar appropriate Creatures for their Sacrifices how this Votary rifles
the practice of those men who minding Earthly things and all their wisdom lying as to them they therefore think themselves concern'd to represent the Doctrines of the Cross which does so contradict their wisdom as meer madness and the Cross it self as the Ensign of folly And accordingly they do treat it en ridicul and make the proper Doctrines of it the strict duties of Religion matter for their jests and bitter scoffs They character Religion as a worship that befits a God whose shape the Primitive persecutors painted Christ in Deus Onochaetes as if Christianity were proper Homage onely to an Asses person as Tertullian words it And the Votaries transform'd by this their service and made like the God they worship were what they were call'd then Asinarii creatures onely fit for burthen to bear what they magnifie a Cross and scorns No persecutions are so mortal as those that Murther the reputation of a thing or person not so much because when that is fallen once then they cannot hope to stand as because those murder after death and poison memory killing to immortality They were much more kind to Religion and more innocent that cloath'd the Christians in the skins of Bears and Tygers that so they might be worried into Martyrdom Than they that cloath their Christianity in fools Coat that so it may be laugh'd to death go out in ignominy and into contempt If to sport with things of sacred and Eternal consequence were to be forgiven yet to do it with the Cross of Christ Thus to set that out as foolishness which is the greatest mystery the Divine wisdom hath contriv'd to make mercy and truth meet together righteousness and peace kiss each other to make sin be punish'd yet the Sinner pardoned Thus to play and sin upon those dire expresses of Gods indignation against sin are things of such a sad and dangerous concern that S. Paul could not give a caution against them but with tears For many walk saith he of whom I have told you often and now tell you even weeping c. Which calls me to my last Consideration Indeed the Cross of Christ does represent Almighty God in so severe a shape and gives the lineaments of so fierce displeasures against sin as do exceed all comprehension There was a passion in Christs Prayer to prevent his Passion when he deprecated it with strong cries and tears yea when his whole body wept tears as of bloud to deprecate it and yet he cryed more dreadfully when he did suffer it The Nails that bor'd his Hands the Spear that pierc'd his Heart and made out-lets for his Bloud and Spirits did not wound him as that sting of death and torments sin did which made out-lets for God to forsake him and which drove away the Lord that was himself out of him Neither did his God forsake him only but his most Almighty attributes were engag'd against him Gods Holiness and Justice were resolv'd to make Christ an example of the sad demerit of Iniquity and his hatred of it Demerit so great as was valuable with the everlasting punishment of the World fal'n Angels and fal'n Men for to that did it make them liable Now that God might appear to hate it at the rate of its deservings it was very necessary that it should be punish'd if not by the execution of that sentence on Mankind as on the Devils yet by something that might be proportionable to it so to let us see the measures God abhors it by to what degrees the Lord is just and holy by those torments torments answerable to those attributes Now truly when we do reflect on this we cannot wonder if the Sinner be an enemy to the Cross and hate the prospect of it which does give him such a perfect copy of his expectations when our Saviours draught which he so trembled at shall be the everlasting portion of his Cup For if God did so plague the imputation of Iniquity how will he torment the wilful and impenitent commission of it But then when we consider those torments were the satisfaction for the sins of man methinks the Sinner should be otherwise affected to them Christ by bearing the Cross gave God such satisfaction as did move him in consideration thereof to dispence with that strict Law which having broken we were forfeit to eternal Death and to publish an act of Grace whereby he does admit all to pardon of sins past and to a right to everlasting Life that will believe on him forsake their sins and live true Christians He there appears the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the World for that he does as being a Lamb slain then he was our Sacrifice and that Cross the Altar And the humbled Sinner that repents for notwithstanding satisfaction God will not accept a Sinner that goes on by all those Agonies his holiness would not be justified if when he had forsaken and tormented his own Son for taking sin upon him he should yet receive into his favour and his Heaven Sinners that will not let go but will retain their sins but the penitent may plead this expiation Lo here I poor Soul prostrate at the footstool of the Cross lay hold upon the Altar here 's my Sacrifice on which my fins are to be charg'd and not on me although so foul I am I cannot pour out tears sufficient to cleanse me yet behold Lord and see if there ever were any Sorrow like the sorrow of thy Son wherewith thou didst afflict him for these sins of mine And here is Bloud also his Bloud to wash me in and that Bloud is within the Vail too now and that my Offering taken from the Cross up to thy Throne thou hast accepted it and canst not refuse it now my Advocate does plead it and claims for me the advantage of the Cross. Now that men should be Enemies to this and when they are forfeit to eternal Ruine hate that which is to redeem the forfeiture that they should trample on the Cross whereon their satisfactions were wrought tread down the Altar which they have but to lay hold on and be safe wage war with beat off and pursue a Lamb that Lamb of God that comes to take away their sins and make a spoil and slaughter of their Sacrifice hostilely spill upon the ground that Bloud that was appointed for their Bloud upon the Altar for their blood of sprinkling and was to appear in Heaven for them If men resolve to be on terms of Duel with their God and scorn that Satisfaction shall be made for them by any other way than by defiance and although their God do make the satisfactions for them to himself yet not endure it but chuse quarrel rather this is so perverse and fatal an hostility as no tears are sufficient to bewail But possibly men sleight these satisfactions because some terms are put upon them which they know not how to comport with the merits of the
and throwing great stones from his knâ—e as from an Engine say his followers which yet could not scare the Souldiers neither did the Roman Eagles which were true-bred fear those flames he spate but destroyed some millions of them Now 't is evident by the comparison of the several signs that Christ and this Barchocab wrought the onely reasons that gave efficacy to that sleight imposture and did make it over-power Christs mighty works was their earthly desires and affections which Christs severe Doctrines could not gratifie and therefore they receiving not the love of the truth but having pleasure in unrighteousness gave themselves up to delusions to believe a lie yet still those delusions went for reason with them Once more Tertullian challenging the Heathen says Produce before your judgment-seats some whom you will of those who are inspired by any of your Gods when gaping ore the Altar they have in its fumes according to their custom taken in the Deity 'till they are great with it ructando conantur while they are in travel with him as it were have belching throws that they burst almost 'till they are delivered of the inspiration while it is thus let but any Christian adjure them by the name of Christ and if the spirits that they are possest with do not presently confess that they are Devils ibidem illius Christiani procacissimi sanguinem fundite let the sawcy petulant Christian lose his life He speaks of this as a known frequent trial And Minutius Felix says their chiefest Gods have been forced out of their Votaries and acknowledged they were evil spirits Now here was reason and experience the miracle was so evident that Tertullian braging says do not believe it if your eyes and ears can suffer you and the reason was more pressing then the fact Nec enim Divinitas deputanda est quae fubdita esthomini it being most impossible that that should be a God which a man could rule and triumph over so imperiously manage him as with a bare command to force him from his hold and make him shame himself so villainously before both his adorers and his enemies as to say He was a Devil Yet the Heathens still found colours to do out all this conviction and their old acquaintance with their Gods together with the Custom of their vicious Worships had more force with them then miracle and reason And while the Christian dispossest their Deities he was himself turned out of all his own possessions and although he made their God confess himself a Devil yet still poor he was made to suffer as a malefactour And 't is not strange if men now stick as closely to their vices as those did to the Gods that patronized them and it be as hard to exorcise the Devil out of their affections and practices as it was then out of Heathen Votaries or Temples They are as fierce against the Christian Religion for their lusts sake as those for their Venus and the very same account that made those Heathen Customs or the lying wonders of false Christs or Pharaoh's Magicians sings be more persuasive then the other more real miracles namely because they sided with their inclinations and interests This very account makes little difficulties which Almighty God hath left in our Religion as he suffered signs and lying wonders heretofore for trials yea makes cavils mere exceptions pass for reasons most invincible be disputed urg'd with great concern and passion against all those methods of conviction which God hath afforded Christianity Now if this be to receive Religion as a little Child 't is with the frowardness of Children when they are displeas'd or ill at ease who resist and quarrel with the thing that is to make them well or please them and return the Parents cares to ease and quiet them with little outrages and vexing And do ye thus requite the Lord O foolish people and unwise Is not he thy Father that hath bought thee Hath he not made thee and established thee Ask thy Father and he will shew thee thy Elders and they will tell thee Deut. 32. 6 7. Now have Children any other way to know their Parents then to let their Father shew them and their Elders tell them Or should we cast off the relation and renounce all the obedience due to it because we are not sure of it our selves For ought we know those may not be our Parents we have only testimony for it Thus we serve our God on that account and yet Hath he not made thee and established thee As he began us so did he not nurse and bear us in his arms and carry us in all our weakness and difficulties 'till he brought us up to a full strength 'Till by a miraculous and signal providence he had establisht settled us and after all these cares bestowed upon us do we prove a generation of vipers onely such as do requite the bowels that did bear and nourish them by preying on them and consuming them Or like the of-spring of a Spider who when he hath spent himself with weaving nets and working of them into labyrinths to be the granaries and the defences of his brood to catch them prey and to secure them then the strongest of his young ones when he is by these his cares establisht and grown ripe to destroy makes those threads fatal to his parent which he spun out of his bowels to be thread of life to him And shall we be such Children to our Father that establisht us Make all his plenties turn to poison in us and invenome us against himself make his miraculous mercies furnish us for the abuse and provocation of him His blest Providence serve only to afford us arguments against it self help to confute it self because it hath so prospered doth still suffer us but after all this is he not thy Father that hath bought thee who to all his titles to us his endearing obligations notwithstanding our despites and provocations of them yet did give the life of his own Son to purchase o're again the same relation to us that we might have right to the inheritance of his Kingdom And then however we have hitherto affronted let us be content now to be bought and hir'd to receive that Kingdom of God as his Children for if Children then heirs heirs of God and joynt heirs with Christ who died to make us Kings and Priests to God and his Father To whom be glory c. A SERMON PREACH'D IN St PETER's WESTMINSTER ON SUNDAY January vi 1660. AT THE CONSECRATION OF THE Right Reverend Fathers in God GILBERT Lord Bishop of Bristol EDWARD Lord Bishop of Norwich NICHOLAS Lord Bishop of Hereford WILLIAM Lord Bishop of Glocester By RICHARD ALLESTRY D. D. Canon of Christ-Church in Oxford and one of His Majesties Chaplains LONDON Printed by John Playford in the Year 1683. Right Reverend Father in God GILBERT Lord Bishop of London and Dean of His Majesties Chappel
presence is an evil such as nothing in the whole world can make good The presence of an Angel in his stead does not When the Lord said to Israel I will not go up in the midst of thee but I will send an Angel with thee and drive out the Amorite the Hittite c. yet when the people heard these evil tidings they mournâ—d and man did put on his Ornaments Exod. 33. 4. Nay more I shall not speak a contradiction if I shall say that the most intimate presence of the Godhead does not supply God's absence and such a small withdrawing of himself as may consist with being united hypostatically was too much for him to bear who was Immanuel when he complained God was not with him I mean our Saviour on the Cross. He who although he did beseech against his cup with fervencies that did breath out in heats of bloody sweat with agonies of prayer yet when he fell down under it did chearfully submit to it saying Not my will but thy will be done yet when God hides himself he does expostulate with him crying out My God my God why hast thou forsaken me His God could no more forsake him than himself could be not himself And yet the apprehension of that which could not be was even insufferable to him to whom nothing could be insufferable He seems to feel a very contradiction while he but seems to feel the want of the Lord's presence Such is the sad importance of God's not being with us and this same instant tells us what drives him away 'T was sin that he withdrew from them Christ did but take on him our guilt and upon that the Lord forsook him God could no more endure to behold wickedness in him than the Sun could to see God suffer Iniquity eclips'd them both and sin did separate betwixt him and himself and made that person who was God cry out My God my God why hast thou forsaken me And it will do the same betwixt God and a people Isay. 59. 1 2. Behold the Lord's hand is not shortned that it cannot save nor his ear heavy that it cannot hear but your iniquities have separated between you and your God and your sins have hid his face from you that he will not hear His face is clothed with light we know but when Wickedness over-spreads a people those deeds of darkness put out the light of his Countenance His hand although it be not shortned yet it contracts and shuts it self not only to grasp and withhold his mercies from them but to smite Iniquity builds such a wall of separation as does shut out omnipresence and makes him who is every where not be with such a people not be in hearing of their needs for when their sins do cry no prayers can be hearkned to he will not hear you saith the Prophet And that gives us the very 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Lord's departure from a people and the manner of it He is taking away his peace and mercies from a Nation when he will hear no prayers for it and he declares that he will hear no prayers when he withdraws once from his house of prayer and makes his Offices to cease The place appointed for these Offices the Sanctuary he calls we know the Tabernacle of meeting that is where he would meet his votaries and hear and bless them calls it his house his dwelling place his Court presence and his throne And if so when he is not to be found in these when he no longer dwels nor meets in them we may be sure that he hath left the land The Psalmist when he does complain men had done evil in the Sanctuary the adversaries roared in the midst of the Congregations and set up their banners there for trophies they broke down all the carved work thereof with axes and hammers and had defiled the dwelling places of God's name even to the ground and burnt up all the houses of God in the land he does suppose that God was then departed when they had left him no abiding place And therefore cries out O God wherefore art thou absent from us so long Remember Sion where thou hast dwelt But 't is not only upon these Analogies I build this method of departure we shall finde exactly in Ezekiel's Vision of that case to which my Text referrs It begins ch 9. 3. And the glory of the God of Israel i. e. the shining cloud the token of his presence in the Sanctuary went up from the Cherub whereupon he was to the threshold of the house as going out and then vers 8. he does refuse to be entreated for the land After that ch 10. 18. the glory went from off the threshold to the midst of the City and ch 11. 23. it went from thence to the mountain without the City and so away And then nothing but desolation dwelt upon the land untill the Counsel of my Text was followed and they did seek the Lord their God For then the glory did return into the Sanctuary just as it went away as you may find it chap. 43. And having seen when and how God forsakes a people and for what that does direct us how to seek him and it is thus When men forsake those paths in which they did not only err and go astray but did walk contrary to God so that they did forsake each other and do return walk in his ways the ways of Commandments and return also to his Church and seek him in his house fall low before his footstool beg of him to meet in his tabernacle renew his worship and all invitations of him to return into his dwelling-place For sure as it is in vain to seek him but in his own ways nor can we hope to meet him but in his Tabernacle of meeting so also Scripture calls both these to seek the Lord and promises to both the finding him To the first Deut. 4. 29 30. If from thy tribulation thou shalt seek the Lord thy God thou shalt find him if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul if thou turn to the Lord thy God and shalt be obedient to his voice And the second Jer. 29. 12. speaking of this sad state to which my Text relates then shall ye call upon me and ye shall go and pray unto me and I will hearken unto you and I will be found of you saith the Lord and I will turn away your Captivity I could produce you instances of Asa making all his people swear to seek the Lord But because my Text speaks of David he shall be the great explication as he was the practice of this duty in both senses In the former 119. Psal. I have sought thy Commandments above Gold or precious stone more than that which does make and does adorn my Crown than that which furnishes all the necessities and all the pomps of Royalty And
people of Israel If ye do wickedly ye shall be destroyed both you and your King There are other sins besides Rebellion and Treason that murder Kings and Governments Those that support their Ills by their dependencies and use great shadows for a shelter to rapacity oppression or licences or any crying wickedness those prove Traitors to Majesty and themselves strike at the root of that under which they took covert fell that and crush themselves National vices have all Treason in them and every combination in such sins is a Conspiracy If universal practice palliate them we do not see their stain in may be think them slight but their complexion is purple Common blood is not deep enough to colour them they die themselves in that that 's sacred Nay these do seem to spread contagion to God as if they would not let the Lord be holy nor suffer that to be which he swore by his holyness should be For the Psalmist cries out Where are thy old loving kindnesses which thou swarest unto David But sure some of God's Oaths will stand if not those of his kindness those will by which he swears the ruine of such sinners and God that is holy will be sanctified in judgment upon them Yea upon more then the offenders for the guilty themselves are not a sacrifice equal to such piacular ofences Innocent Majesty must bleed for them too If you do wickedly you shall be destroy'd both you and your King Thus when God would remove Judah out of his sight good Josiah must fall and the same makes them be to seek David their King But how David their King when 't was Zorobabel For with Theodoret and others I conclude he must be meant the first literal importance of the words It was the custom of most Nations from some great eminent prince to name all the Succession so at once to suggest his Excellencies to his followers and to make his glory live Now without doubt David was Heroe enough for this and his valour alone sufficient to ground the like practice upon And though we do not find that done yet we do find his piety and his uprightness made the standard by which that of his Successors is meted Of one 't is said he walked in the ways of David his Father of another he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord but not like unto David his Father And because David went aside and was upright with an Exceptation once therefore it is said The Lord was with Jehoshaphat because he walked in the first ways of his Father David But besides this his very name is given to two Zorobabel and the Messiah both which were to be the restorers of their people The one from Sin and Hell to re-establish the Kingdom of heaven it self the other to deliver his people from Babel and to repair a broken Nation and demolish'd Temple And for this work God bids them seek David their King The ways from Babel to Jerusalem from the Confusion of a people to a City that is at unity in it self the City of God where he appears in perfect beauty and where the throne of the house of David is must be the first ways of David In those he walk'd to Sion and did invest his people in God's promises the whole land of Canaan In those Zorobabel brought them back to that land and Sion And in these our Messiah leads us to Mount Sion that is above to the celestial Jerusalem does build an universal Church and Heaven it self And all that have the like to do must walk in those first ways fulfil that part of David and must Copy Christ. Such the repairers of great breaches must be These are the ways to settle Thrones the only ways in which we may find the goodness of the Lord which to fear is the third direction and my last part They shall fear the Lord and his goodness 3. That Israel who came but now out of the furnace should fear the Lord whose wrath did kindle it whose justice they had found such a consuming fire as to make the Temple it self a Sacrifice and the whole Nation a burnt-offering is reasonable to expect But when his goodness had repair'd all this to require them to fear that does seem hard That that goodness which when it is once apprehended does commit a rape upon our faculties and being tasted melts the heart and causes dissolution of soul through swoons of complacency that this should be received with dread and trembling is most strange Indeed the Psalmist says There is mercy with God that he may be feared for where there not we should grow desperate But how to fear those mercies is not easie 'T is true when God made his goodness pass fore Moses shewed him the glory of it as he says in those moâ—â— comfortable Attributes the sight of which is beatifick Vision Exod. 34. 6 c. The Lord the Lord God merciful and gracious long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth keeping mercy for thousands forgiving iniquity transgression and sin if that which follows there be part of it and that will by no means clear the guilty visiting the iniquity of the Fathers upon the Children unto the third or fourth Generation if this be one ray of the glory of goodness if it dart out such beams alas 't is as devouring as the lake of fire his very goodness stabs whole successions at once and the guilty may tremble at it for themselves and their posterity But if those words do mean as we translate those very words Jer. 46. 28. I will not leave thee altogether unpunish'd yet will not utterly cut off not make a full end of the guilty when I visit Iniquities upon the Children but will leave them a remnant still then there is nothing dreadful in it but those very visitations have kindness in them and his rod comforts and this issue of his goodness also is not terrible but lovely To fear God's goodness therefore is to revere it to entertain it with a pious astonishment acknowledging themselves unworthy of the crums of it especially not daring to provoke it by surfeiting or by presuming on it or by abusing it to serve ill ends or any other than God sent it for those of piety and obedience Not to comply with which is to defeat God's kindness and the designs of it If when they sought the Lord he was found of them and came to his dwelling place only to be forc'd thence again by their abominations if when his goodness had restor'd all to them they had David their King but to conspire against an Altar onely to pollute and a Temple to separate from as Manasses the Priest Sanballat's son in-law with his accomplices did do this were both to affront and to renounce that goodness which above all things they must dread the doing For if this be offended too ruine is irreversible there is no other
70 times 7 times And 't is not easily provok't not apt for sudden violent heats instantly all one fire quick as lightning Such heats are from another passion which though sometimes they do but flash and die yet oft they have their Thunder-bolt and most what do fore-run a storm whereas the heats of Charity are calm as sun-shine such as do not consume but cherish For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the same verse Love is kind and gracious full of humanity This Vertue is a kind of universal friendship hath nothing of reserv'd morose or sour an humour that makes solitude in the midst of Society and makes men onely their own company their Rule and scope and such a person Aristotle says must be either a God who can enjoy nothing beside himself is his own blessed and immortal entertainment or a wild beast whose nature is unsociable because 't is savage whereas Love is a pious complaisance to all 't is condescention too for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the 5. v. does not think any thing unseemly how contemptible soever nor unworthy of him so he may do his Neighbour good he will debase himself to meanest Offices to work a real kindness Thus Christ because he lov'd his own knowing the Father had given all things into his hand he took a Towel and girded himself and put water in a Basin and washt his Disciples feest making the lowest act of servitude be his Expression and our Example That is but slender Charity that will keep state Heaven could not unite Majesty and Love But to exercise this God did descend from Glory into the extremity of Meanness 'T is Bowels that express compassion and tender kindness Now those we know of all parts of the Body are employed in the most low ignoble Offices and to such Love condescends where 't is true Again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it cover all the naked with a garment and the deformed the leprous Sinner with a covering too for Charity covers a multitude of sins hides his own wrong from his own eyes this Love too like that in the Poets cannot see yea covers all that is no fit for light suffers onely the graces to be naked near him and not to name all which you may find there 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ver 7 believeth all things however incompatible to love and to be wise have been accounted yet this Love is S. James his Wisdom that came down from Heaven Cap. 3. 17. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 interpret any thing to the most favourable sense and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 easie to â—â—persuaded still believes the best and where it cannot yet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hopes the best Affection while it lives cannot despair for then it must deposite its desires which are onely the warmth of Love and 'till it die cool not but if all do not answer hopes yet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he does wait for it is not discourag'd with relapses and the repetitions of injuries but still expects and suffers all the contradictions of spite and wrong Now if all these acts and the many other there are essential to Love and all be under Obligation and S. Paul says there they are so much Duty that without these performances all Faith and all Graces profit nothing the Preaching Rhetorick of Men and Angels would be nothing else but tinkling and working Miracles but shewing tricks It follows then these Acts must necessarily have a certain object there must be some body that we are bound to love thus And if that Object be or Neighbour as that is most sure 't is clear my Neighbours injury or hate or enmity to me cannot take off nor yet diminish in the least that Obligation I have to all those Acts but I must love him though he be mine enemy in every of those instances For it is plain his having wrong'd me does not make him cease to be my Neighbour nay more that enmity does formally dispose and qualifie my Neighbour for the Object of my love And many of its Acts cannot relate but to a man that injures me it must be in respect to provocations that love is said to cool into such a temper as is not easily provokt For men are not provokt with kindnesses I cannot suffer any thing but wrong nor suffer long except there be continuation and frequency of wrongs Nor is it possible I should forgive unless it be offences done against me And so for divers of the rest Now it were strange the enemy should supersede the obligation of the Duty which cannot be a Duty but in order to an Enemy that injury should give me a release from doing that which I can neverr have cause or occasion to do but in the case of injury that I should have leave not to obey the Command for that meer reason which alone maks it possible to obey it and which alone makes the Command Whereas indeed because I must needs love in these expresses therefore he must needs be my enemy whom I must love But if he be without all provocation very unjustly so if his hate be his sin so that he hath offended God too in it may I not then espouse Gods quarrel thus farr not to love his Enemy if I must mine own not to love the injurious the sinner Vice certainly is the most hateful thing that is and therefore it must needs render the subject not to be belov'd accordingly 't is said that the ungodly and his ungodliness are both alike hateful unto God Wis. 14. 9. and David does comply with God in this Psalm 139. Do not I hate them O Lord that hate thee yea I hate them with perfect hatred I count them mine enemies And when I reflect on mine under this Notion or if mine be such as set themselves against Religion and the peace and quietness of the Church am I bound to love them If so then I may be allow'd to do it with a little regret sure But yet if we consider how these in the Text are designated by that Appropriation your enemies which means those that hate you my Disciples those that in the last words of my Text will persecute you even for your being mine and yet those they are bid to love we may conclude in the next place we may not hate our enemies as Sinners Nor yet does enmity with God his Church or his Religion qualifie a person for our aversation or mischiefs I except here Apostacy and utter obduration in it a state that incapacitates for mercy and by consequence for love and kindness There is a sin which S. John would not say that we should pray for and the Church thought that there was such a sinner Iâ—dian but as to less degrees they that are suppos'd to persecute Disciples and in doing so persecute Christ himself may well be granted sinners enemies to God and Christianity but yet says he I say unto you love these your enemies Tertullian
understood this so and writing to the Governour of Carthage who threatned all the Christians of that Province with Excision that he might persuade him from his purpose thus began his Proposals We do not write as fearing for our selves or dreading any thing that we are like to suffer for we did enter our Religion on the condition of suffering we covenanted to endure and staked our lives when we began our profession but 't is for you we fear for you our enemies whom our Religion does command us to love and to do good to And though we must hate Vice and do our best to root out Infidelity and Atheism destroy Profaneness Irreligion and Heresie and Schism These are fit objects for the zeals of Hate and for the feavers of our Passion and if our enemies be such we may meetly endeavour they may have appropriate restraints yet not to exercise the Acts of Charity and kindness to them we have no allowance No sins can make it lawful for us to ruine or not to do good to the Sinners In fine the onely persons that the Jews pretended to have ground to hate were Enemies and Enemies indeed to their Religion the Idolatrous Gentile-world therefore that being now forbid to us there is not sort of men nor any man whom it is lawful for a Christian not to love and all the reasons urg'd here by our Saviour do prove that all mankind whether good or bad is the object of a Christians love Because God does good to all his methods of Mercies are universal he makes his Clouds drop fatness even upon them that consume the encrease on their Lusts and sacrifice it to their Riots making their belly be their God He gives abundance of his good things unto those that love them onely as they advantage Vanity and Sin and that turn Gods-store into provision for Vice and for Destruction He gives gold to them that make gold their Idol and bestows large portions of Earth on them that are Children of Hell and them who for the pleasures of that Earth despise his Heaven Yea the whole order of things does teach us this the Creatures do service to the whole kind they acknowledge the man and not the Countrey-man and Friend but alike the rich and poor the good and grateful the wicked and ungrateful too The Sun does not Collect his Rays and shed more day to gild the gaudy and gay person whose Cloaths and Jewels will reflect his light return him as much almost as he sends and vie brightness with him than he does to the poor dark sordid rags that even damp his beams He sheds the same unpall'd day even on those men that draw such streams of bloud as with their mists endeavour to put out or stain his shine The Ayr gives breath to them that putrifie it as well as those that send it out a Perfume Yea the Cretures of sense and perception do not yet discriminate their Lords but with that same indifference serve all The Oxe knows his Owner and the Ass his Master not his Religion not his Vertues and then as there is something in man as man which God is kind to somthing in man as man for which the Creatures serve so there is somthing in man as he is man which we must love and consequently we must love every man And 'till thou hast found one so much a Monster that no creature will fear or obey and such a one as God will shew no kindness to at all will not let his Sun shine or his Rain rain upon but while as others are in Goshen sets him in the storm and dark of Egypt 'till then I say thou hast not found a person whom thou mayst not love no though he be thine enemy in mind and thought indeed for if he Curse thee thou must bless and must do good to him which hates thee which are the particular expresses to the love in the Text the first of which is Bless them that Curse you BLess being here oppos'd to Curse must signifie wish well to them that wish you evil Though 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 also do import speak well of as that is oppos'd to railing 1. Pet. 3. 9. not rendring railing for railing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but contrariwise Blessing And both are the duty of this place which does intend that all sorts of loving words should be the Christians returns to the offences of the tongue whether by Curse or contumely And truly when I do consider how the other way the rendring like for like and giving him that does wish or speak evil as good language as he brings is so far from all shadow of compensation that there is really a loss of honour in those dismal imprecating words the anger that does belch them out does swell and stretch and rack the passion blushes at it self the malice drinks those spirits up which it lurks in and the envy that Snake sucks all the blood away leaves nothing but its own pale venom in the stead In a word the very Essence of impatience is vexation and fret and then that men should call that recompence for suffering which is it self a present agony and hath no prospect of any after good that they should satisfie themselves in that does make that bold assertion of the Romanist who says that those in Hell do will and love their being there not strange at all for indeed there is one and the same reason of both that in the paroxysm of a passion whensoever a man is seiz'd by an affection with violence as they in Hell are always and those that speak evil are for the present He does for that time love cherish and pursue the affection and in good earnest if so be that men can please themselves in the extreme impatience of a fruitless choler it looks like demonstration that the damn'd may please themselves in their damnation as to that part of it that which tears the Soul the rage of its own passions when they are loose and unmuzzel'd and the more because we have good reason to believe theirs are the very passions we are now upon Envy and Hate and Shame and they do vent themselves in the same manner too in Blasphemy and Curses and differ nothing but that their's are endless and then let such men please themselves in the returns of calumny and imprecations we will allow them the delights of Hell in doing so and they do tast those very onely satisfactions that the fiends do in their torments and much good may they do them 'T is true then what the Psalmist says that he who thus delights in Cursing it shall enter into his bowels like water and like Oyl into his bones like pleasure and refreshment like water to allay his passionate heats and Oyl to make him chearful after his vexation For so indeed the venting of his Curses seems to do but alas if to powre them out do make them enter into
come thence too quite discourag'd them broke all their confidence and faith they must have their Provisions and their Deity too nearer cry out for Flesh-pots and the Calf of Egypt that their meat and God too may be present And altho God always answer'd their complaints by satisfying of them miracle sustain'd them constantly yet as Moses told them Deut. 29. 2 3 4. Ye have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt unto Pharaoh and unto all his servants and unto all his land the great temtations which thine eyes have seen the signs and those great miracles yet ye had not an heart to understand and eyes to see and ears to hear unto this day they had no sense of them but what brute beasts were capable of having onely gaz'd as lookers on them did not mind consider and much less discern how great he was that wrought those wonders and how able ready and desirous to supply whatever they could need or he had promis'd and that whatsoever they might want 't was sure they should not want a miracle to furnish and by consequence had all obligation that could be imagin'd to believe in trust upon him and his promises But of this they were not sensible made no such reasonings but when ever any thing they had a mind to was not present or when any danger look'd upon them disbeliev'd and murmur'd still flew in his very face insomuch that God says Num. 14. 11. How long will this people provoke me and how long will it be ere they believe me Now after all those strong most operative ways of making faith they still persisting in their incredulity and most unreasonable and sensless doubtings not believing him is but consequent they would not hearken to him and be wrought on or perswaded by him but resisted his will always and as it must follow grew more and more stubborn and inflexible that is stiff-neck'd as God calls them having their hearts harden'd For it is the nature of things harden'd to be such intractables And being so to that degree that Miracles God's most effectual method could make no impression on them that he labor'd in vain with them he must needs abandon them and give them over as incorrigible and so having worn out all his methods and by consequence all his forbearance he swore they should not enter in Canaan and however he endur'd them to live fourty years their opportunity was dead and their day ended I might tell you how the same ill temper of that Nation looking after present earthly satisfactions consequently for a temporal Messiah made them disbelieve and hardned them against Christ's miracles and teachings but that former instance serves my turn and when St Paul proposes this Example to the Christians as a warning that they suffer not their day to pass them least they be shut out of their eternal rest their heavenly Canaan he expresly cautions them against the same two things that they fall not by the same ensample of unbelief Heb. 4. 11. and that their hearts be not hardened by the deceitfulness of sin Heb. 3. 13. Christ's Miracles if they did not make faith of his person and commission of the duties promises and threats of the Gospel to the Jews when present with them we may fear their efficacy may be fainter in men at this distance and if strong inclinations to the present howsoever sinful satisfactions of their appetites together with long practice and converse in them have got a great love to them 't is most certain that this will not suffer them to receive the love of the Gospel no not of its promises and blessednesses all which are so averse and opposite to those satisfactions and not loving it it is impossible they can be willing to give credit to it Yea those sensual affections blind the Understanding so that indeed it discerns not the truth of it and engage the heart so that it gives no great heed to it and then as Attention to it doth the belief of it must decay The man is onely such a stupid Auditor of what is recorded in Scripture as the Jews in the wilderness were Spectators of it without faith or reflection he considers not himself concern'd much in whatever it proposes whether by injunction threat or invitation whether it do promise blessedness or denounce judgment and so grows insensible of his condition as to either and then coming thus to have no sense of his condition therefore neither hath he any fear by reason of it i. e. so far his heart is hardned and so going on continuing in that state it is so perfectly And what that is Pharaoh can inform us 'T is such an heart as admits no compunction tho you let fly all God's arrows at it No respect to God what grounds soever of experienc'd goodness he have for it softens it if you beseech him on God's part he is not mov'd nor yields altho you threaten him if God invite him by prosperity and kindness he is ungrateful and he grows more dissolute but if he scourge him he grows either senseless or else furious and desperate shameless here fearless of hereafter of all humane things regardless of Divine contemtuous all past things are most perfectly past to him he remembers nothing of the good or evil so as to consider or make use of either and altho he throw away the present yet as if the future would never arrive altho you lay before him certain death and the ensuing two Eternities it is not possible to move him to provide for that Futurity And then when neither present past nor future can work any thing upon him how is it possible to change him Now 't is no wonder if God give him over when his state is thus unalterable Indeed as this condition when 't is grown thus irreversible makes the state of Hell here as to sinning so it seems to make the state of it hereafter as to suffering adding weight and in some sort Eternity to its torments for with the other grounds that shew it just for God to plague the little transient satisfactions of our sins with an immortal worm and everlasting burnings this also is one that the Sinner's appetite and resolution to sin is endless and as much as in him lies eternal and were he not cut off from the commission his iniquity would be immortal And it does appear so certainly when if God set him out a time for his Repentance and their Reconciliation and how great soever he have made his heaps if he do not seal up the sum with this hard-heartedness and persevering obstinacy if while there is yet any sand to run he will consider and take up then God will pass by all the rest and cancel the whole reckoning if yet he will refuse this mercy will go on to fill his Ephah and commits even while the life of his Repentance is breathing out its last while the possibilities of
mercy are upon their death-bed gasping the accepted time and the day of Salvation just ending there is no doubt his will his appetite and resolutions to it are immortal and 't is therefore also fit his worm should be so and there is no security against this but by laying hold upon the present for behold now is the day of Salvation the last thing I am to speak to I shall not press this from the common place of the uncertainty of this life of which whatever we have past as death possesses so the succeeding moments Judgment may lay hold of we are sure of nothing but the present But if we had not onely the assurances which constancy of health and strength of constitution give but a lease of years as Hezekiah had from God himself we have no assurance of the time of acceptance Many men tho they live fast furiously spend the stock of Nature sin yet with a much fiercer carrier as the horse in Jeremies expression rusheth into the battel and they spend the day of Salvation faster Men may deceive themselves by reckoning to repent hereafter We cannot conclude with reason we have space left for it while our life lasts since those opportunities are not always and perchance not frequently commensurate with the life or being of a profligate man or Nation and when they end together 't is not that their whole life or being was allotted to those opportunities but when these are forfeit or extinguisht God cuts off the other Thus indeed he did destroy the old World when the one hundred and twenty years for their repentance were expir'd and several men are cut down out of time as Job saith c. 22. 16. men that shall not live out half their days as David saith of the deceitful and the bloudy men that drink their own Bloud when they thirst for others men whose time for their acceptance went not out while their life lasted because when it went out God cut off their life But 't is not always so Not first in Nations four Generations filled the measure of the Amorites iniquity but five were past before destruction made approaches to them Judah had its sentence of excision in Manasses reign but its execution was suspended till the time of Zedekiah near a hundred years And again the things that belonged to the peace of Jerusalem were taken from them when they kill'd the Peace-maker their day of Salvation too was darkned at Christ's Crucifixion but the City liv'd yet fourty years Nor secondly in persons Pharaohs time was out at the sixth plague but God at once upheld and hardned him until the tenth was past And those six hundred thousand that were doom'd for murmuring were afterwards near fourty years in dying liv'd so long to rebel against more miracles Now all that time the state of all these whether men or Nations was irreversible as to the doom past upon them Did we know indeed our measure of iniquity how many crimes we wanted to fill up our Ephah make an end at once of sin and the day of Salvation also 't were no wonder if we did not think it necessary now to seize the opportunity having yet so many sins good But there are commissions of great bulk few of which will do it the men that sin post soon arrive at the end of the race that is set before them There are whose life is nothing else but perpetual variety of wickedness and they will quickly make up their account the constancy inflames the reckoning and the sum does advance mightily how know they but the next of any of these greater magnitudes may fill up the score To such now onely may be the accepted time However 1. They that whenever such considerations are suggested will not at that present even now resolve to attemt to break their sins off by repentance it is plain they are intangled in them love them so that they resolve expresly not to part with them yet tho they are made to consider by the course of all God's several workings for them and their own provokings that they may have wasted almost all the stock both of God's methods and their own opportunities and will venture doing it completely rather than forego their darling customs Now such a love to sin as it works induration as I shew'd you hardens mens hearts so it does betray it and evince they are in some degree so Such a resolution is sufficient not onely to provoke God to contract the measure and cut short the account Rom. 9. 28. but it self bids fair to fill it up The present therefore must be their accepted time and they do all that in them is to put out the day of Salvation who do thus put off from them this Now. 2. Of this that hath bin said whether Almighty God be now about to make the application either as to what concerns the Nation or particular persons is not may part to determine or debate It is not for us to know the times and seasons which the Father hath put in his own power Many seem indeed to have uncomfortable expectations great fears both as to the Nation and I must say they have reason we may justly fear those judgments which we have deserv'd most justly and provok'd most heinously wilfully impudently and great fears too as to Religion nor without good cause yet not because those men that earnestly desire a change talk of it as at hand with comfort False ungracious treacherous Sons to their poor Mother who do what they can to blast and weaken her that they may have color to forsake her But this they have talkt oft with great confidence and he that sits in Heaven always laught their confidence to scorn we hope he will do so to the world's end Sure I am there could be no fear of what they expect and wish so from comparison of the Religions or if we would answer our Religion by our living But there is great cause of fear we may provoke God to desert that reformation we deform so with our manners and put out the Worship we unhallow And inded a flood of Atheism and contemt of all Religion and Virtue or the having a Religion that is next to that itself looks like just dereliction of them who would not let God be in their thoughts nor Piety or Morality in their actions Now if this be so and by consequent these fears be reasonable just there can be no prevention but by closing now with the proposal of my Text by laying hold upon the present Any least forbearance may make our state irreversible and does certainly provoke God towards it whereas if now when God shews us the rod we would break off our sins reform our selves live up to our Religion there would be no cause to fear destruction since God's work were don whatever shall happen all would work together for the everlasting good of those that did so This if earnest
St Paul to such a one was that Saint crucified for thee that he should be more concerned for and more sensible of thy condition and that thou shouldest have a greater confidence of his good will than of his that did and suffer'd all that for thee that he might be merciful and faithful toucht with thy necessities that I mention not the rest of those qualifications that do make one fit to be relied upon 'T is to be fear'd such persons do not know well whom they have believ'd But I pass them There are that trust their being here to Policy and Prudence to their own contrivances that is trust to themselves and give credit onely to what interest or their ambition suggests and accordingly design ends and devise means weave plots spread their nets abroad with cords and lay snares and do all this with that confidence of success as if they did believe they were fulfilling Prophecies and mov'd by the directions of Heaven for many times they seem to do this in the fear of God and in subserviency to Religion but whatever fair pretences some of them may have to wash or color their intentions God you may be sure hath no hand there in those designs where his Commandments are broken Where you discern either as to particulars treachery or fraud or falseness undermining and supplanting to serve interests or pride or malice or revenge or as to publick interverting justice and the due course of Laws or mutiny sedition raising discontents and making breaches 't is not he on whom they have believ'd And did they but consider what they see perpetually how false interests are and how unstable high place how this tumbles men down headlong those change daily and altho men thrive so that they wash their steps with butter they are only so much more in slippery places where God also leaves them somtimes overturns them suddenly Or did they consider who the great Patrons of interest and ambition are Mammon the fomenter and encourager of almost all the mischiefs upon Earth and Lucifer that was discontent in Heaven had ambition to be greater there too mutinied and stirred sedition up against God and got by it to be chief of Devils onely Prince of Hell Did these designers but reflect on these things they would know then whom they have believ'd a deceitful world a false glistering light that mocks them and a treacherous malicious Devil that hath bin a Liar and a Murderer from the beginning I might ask the sensual person whether he that hearkens to the cravings of the one or other of his inclinations and is so perswaded overcome by their insinuations that whenever any of his appetites is high he thinks there is no joy that is like the satisfaction of that appetite and is mad till he have it yet hath found himself betraied fool'd cheated every time he serv'd it but still courts and embraces the false treacherous mischief and will not be disenchanted whether he considers whom he hath believ'd whether he knows that he lets his horse ride him and is guided animated by and believes the beast Once more whether he knows whom he hath believ'd that ownes being an Infidel any one of those that with great seeming gravity or wit and railery declares dissatisfaction at the proof of those things which the world for many hundred years continued so convinc'd of that they chose to die rather than say that they did not believe them when as for them good Souls they think they can believe nothing but upon demonstration yet if a man consider but the men themselves the method and the means of their conviction into that their unbelief he would find that themselves are always vicious and that they examin little but converse much and keep company with them that in the heat and confidence of drink and vice swear 't is impossible those things can be and rally them that give heed to or profess them and then themselves give easy credit to this and their own inclinations that would have them all impossible for it is their concern they are eternally unhappy if they be not so that we know whom they have believ'd their debaucht company and their evil inclinations and these stupid Infidels are the most credulous we see on the least grounds of any in the world It is not my emploiment at this time to make comparison betwixt the one and others grounds the several motives of belief and infidelity 't is plain Christ Judg'd the arguments and grounds of faith were so sufficient that he positively gives his charge thus Go and preach the Gospel to the whole world he that believeth is sav'd and he that believeth not is damn'd And if his threats are as inviolable as his promises 't will be but ill knowing him whom we would not believe the conviction will be very fatal when their unbelief will become vision And this gives me yet occasion to ask what temtation Sinners can have not to believe to be willing to come in to Christ and be sav'd They cannot chuse but see all others whom they have believ'd betraied them and will fail them all their satisfactions must go out their expectations die and perish and why will ye not take up here then why will ye die for ever Is your case think you desperate and have you gon too far to be receiv'd if you should turn Why our Saint here the person of the Text declares he was the chief of Sinners that obtain'd mercy for encouragement to all that would believe and turn and if you did but know whom he believ'd you must know one that went to meet the Prodigal in his return when he was yet far off that sought the lost sheep while he straied and ran away still till he found him and when he was gon so far that he could not return he carried him And will you neither be invited into life nor carried into it Why will ye die Can ye not help it Have your inclinations and customs think you so prevail'd upon you that to leave them looks impossible Then 't is plain you know not whom you have believ'd Is any thing impossible for him that is Almighty whose grace is sufficient Or can he command too hard things who enables to perform what he commands who as St Paul saith worketh in us both to will and to do if we will suffer him He never praied and tried in earnest watched endeavor'd and comported with God's workings that complains thus You cannot but believe indeed they are too hard while you hearken to the cravings of your lusts your customs and your inclinations but why will you believe them still Why will you die Is it not in fine worth while to strive against it but e'en go on with the stream abandon all consideration of concern for that life Indeed if that which God thought worth the concern of all his Attributes the contrivance of his Wisdom the assistances of his Almightiness the
invitations of his Promises the engagement of his Justice Truth and Faithfulness worth all the issues of his Goodness Mercy and Benignity worth the Incarnation Death and Passion of his Son worth Christ's Bloud to purchase worth the giving him all Power in Heaven and Earth exalting him to his own right hand a Prince and Savior to give us repentance and remission that we might be capable of that life and then to bestow it on us if this be not worth the while to strive for not in opposition to Hell eternal then indeed we know not whom we have believ'd Consider how it is this issue that such put it to a most fatal issue but the sure one of all those that will give credit to the suggestions of their flesh and this world Lord Christ we believe thee help our unbelief SERMON XVII THE CHILDREN OF THIS WORLD are wiser than the Children of Light Luke 16. 8. The Children of this world are in their Generation wiser than the Children of Light BY the Children of this World are meant those that look after and take care for onely the advantages and satisfactions of this World have no thought of or at most design for any other by the Children of Light all those that see farther into one to come and who look after that accordingly all Christians are called so 1 Thess. 5. 5. of whom howsoever some are more and some less Christian all yet are suppos'd to have bin visited by that day-spring from on high enlightned in some measure by the Gospel which brought Life and Immortality to light 2. Those former are said here in their generation in their own affairs of this World which alone they busy and concern themselves in or in their contrivance for their Age or time in this life to be wiser than those others Now Wisdom tho it import many offices and of highest concernment which have place in every serious action of our lives it weighs interests and obligations and considers circumstances which do somtimes make necessities and somtimes void them and which cannot all fall under Rules and Precepts and are therefore left to the decisions of Prudence which does judge of them and then accordingly direct and steer the actions yet these offices of Wisdom do not come directly into this comparison of our Savior It s main office in the general is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to consult and counsel well and rightly which acts since they cannot be emploi'd but about things that must be don in order to an end therefore 1. The Wise man always looks at and intends some end and 2. He pitches on such means as seem most useful and directly tending to that end yea 3. Since this Wisdom is not speculative but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is Ratio agibilium deals in things that must be don it therefore sets the man upon the use of those means in pursuit of that end it applies him to it and guides him in the execution and does all by Rules proper to each one of these Offices Now as to these three Offices of Wisdom we will try to find out how far and in what respect the Children of this World are wiser than the Children of Light the Worldling than the Christian than the most of them yea than the best and how this comes to pass that so if men will not be wrought upon by any Rules not by God's Precepts nor by means examples yet comparing themselves with themselves how much they fail of the observance of the Rules of Prudence that concern the next World in comparison of their observance of those very same Rules as to this World they may shame themselves into discretion and may learn to be a Rule and an Example to themselves which I must first enforce by that property of Wisdom which I mention'd in the first place that the wise man always looks at and intends some end I suppose this and I may well do so for the World allows the action that hath no end to be to no purpose vain and foolish Now the worldly man as such proposes as I told you to himself the satisfactions of this world either more particularly of some one kind or else all in general and the Child of Light so far as he is so designs especially the happiness of the world to come But then if in relation to their aims those men be wisest that propose the best end to themselves the Child of Light is as much wiser than the worldling as eternal Blessedness above is better than the little broken dying starts of satisfaction here below And truly 't is not in relation to their several ends in general that our Savior here compares them but the one saith he are wiser in their generation in their own concerns and that first in relation to their ends For the worldly man is intent upon his end his will is fixt to it and his affections all concenter in it We are most assur'd of this by the pains he takes to compass it all which are carried on and sweetned and made easy merely by his aims and expectation which his heart is therefore passionately set on for mens actions will be chearful vigorous and lively onely by those measures that the Soul breaths spirit into them If the will and outward faculties lookt several ways all his external motions would be force and violence not nature but since his pursuits are eager his affections are in them I should enter into an Abyss of matter and should find no end of the discourse should I attemt to shew this in the several states of men of this World in relation to their several inclinations to this World's advantages Some pour out and sell the bloud and souls both of their own and other Nations but to purchase some accession to their Territories to enlarge their bounds and glory And it is matter of astonishment how 't is possible that humane nature should attain to such a monstrous excess of barbarous bloudy villany to acquire their ends as Sylla and Marius practis'd Yet neither should men wonder and complain of these so much for every little great man that hath power would be enterprizing upon others outing and supplanting catching at more power cutting short diminishing the rights of others to extend their own and altho these Aggressors be not bloudy as the former which 't is possible they would be if they durst yet they are as unjust and false and they that are not able to do so much are not in a state to put a force on others force themselves break their own natures into soft compliances and servile attendances to reach their ends 'T is thus in all conditions the Soldier charges and storms fire and the Merchant storms the raging Sea and Tempests and if the man's heart be once bent on getting wealth he â—ells his meals his sleeps his sweat the whole emploiment of his life and his anxieties for that which onely