the advantages of Greatness what unequal levies of Legal payments what spightfull Sutes what Depopulations what Usuries what Violences abound every where The sighs the tears the blood of the poor pierce the Heavens and call for a fearfull retribution This is a sour Grape indeed and that makes God to wring his face in an angry detestation Drunkennesse is the next not so odious in the weaknesse of it as in the strength Oh wofull glory strong to drink Woe is me how is the World turned Beast What bouzing and quaffing and whiffing and healthing is there on every bench and what reeling and staggering in our streets What drinking by the Yard the Die the Douzen what forcing of pledges what quarrels for measure and form How is that become an excuse of villany which any villany might rather excuse I was drunk How hath this torrent yea this deluge of excesse in meats and drinks drowned the face of the Earth and risen many cubits above the highest Mountains of Religion and good Laws Yea would God I might not say that which I fear and shame and grieve to say that even some of them which square the Ark for others have been inwardly drowned and discovered their nakednesse That other inundation scoured the World this impures it and what but a Deluge of Fire can wash it from so abominable silthinesse Let no Popish Eaves-dropper now smile to think what advantage I give by so deep a censure of our own Profession Alas these sins know no difference of Religions Would God they themselves were not rather more deep in these foul enormities We extenuate not our guilt whatever we sin we condemn it as mortal they palliate wickednesse with the fair pretence of Veniality Shortly They accuse us we them God both But where am I How easie is it for a man to lose himself in the sins of the time It is not for me to have my habitation in these black Tents let me passe through them running Where can a man cast his eye not to see that which may vex his Soul Here Bribery and Corruption in the seats of Judicature there Perjuries at the Bar here Partiality and unjust Connivency in Magistrates there disorder in those that should be Teachers here Sacriledge in Patrons there Simoniacal contracts in unconscionable Levites here bloody Oaths and Execrations there scurril Prophanenesse here Cozening in bargains there breaking of Promises here perfidious Underminings there flattering Supparasitations here Pride in both Sexes but especially the weaker there Luxury and Wantonnesse here contempt of Gods Messengers there neglect of his Ordinances and violation of his Daies The time and my breath would sooner fail me then this wofull Bed-roll of wickednesse Yet alas were these the sins of Ignorance of Infirmity they might be more worthy of pity then hatred But oh the high hand of our presumptuous offences We draw iniquity with the strings of vanity up to the head up to the eare and shoot up these hatefull shafts against Heaven Did we sit in darknesse and the shadow of death as too many Pagan and Popish Regions do these works of darknesse would be lesse intolerable but now that the beams of the glorious Gospel have shined thus long thus bright in our faces Oh me what can we plead against our own confusion O Lord where shall we appear when thy very Mercies aggravate our Sins and thy Judgments How shouldst thou expect fruit from a Vineyard so chosen so husbanded and woe worth our wretchednesse that have thus repai'd thee Be confounded in thy self O my Soul be confounded to see these deplored retributions Are these grapes for a God Do ye thus requite the Lord O foolish people and unjust Hath he for this made us the mirrour of his Mercies to all the World that we should so shamefully turn his graces into wantonnesse Are these the fruits of his Choice his Fencing his Reforming his Planting his Watch-tower his Winepresse O Lord the great and dreadfull God keeping the covenants and mercies to them that love thee we have sinned and committed iniquity and have rebelled by departing from thy precepts and from thy Judgments O Lord righteousnesse belongeth to thee but unto us confusion of faces as at this day We know we acknowledge how just it may be with thee to pull up our Hedges to break down our Wall to root up our Vine to destroy and depopulate our Nation to make us the scorn and Proverb of all Generations But O our God Let thine anger and thy fury be turned away from thy Jerusalem thy holy mountain O Lord hear O Lord forgive O Lord hearken and doe Defer not for thine own sake O our God for thy City and thy people are called by thy Name But alas what speak I of not deferring to a God of mercy who is more forward to give then we to crave and more loath to strike then we to smart and when he must strike complains Why will ye die O house of Israel Let me rather turn this speech to our selves the delay is ours Yet it is not too late either for our return or his mercies The Decree is not to us gone forth till it be executed As yet our Hedge stands our Wall is firm our Vine grows These sharp monitions these touches of Judgment have been for our warning not for our ruine Who knows if he will not return and yet leave a Blessing behinde him Oh that we could turn unto him with all our heart with Fasting and with weeping and with mourning Oh that we could truly and effectually abandon all those abominable Sins that have stirred up the Anger of our God against us and in this our day this day of our solemn Humiliation renew the Vows of our holy and conscionable obedience Lord God it must be thou onely that must doe it Oh strike thou our flinty hearts with a sound remorse and melt them into tears of penitence for all our sins Convert us unto thee and we shall be converted Lord hear our Prayers and regard our tears and reform our Lives and remove thy Plagues and renew thy loving countenance and continue and adde to thine old mercies Lord affect us with thy favours humble us for our sins terrifie us with thy Judgments that so thou maist hold on thy favours and forgive our sins and remove thy Judgments even for the Son of thy Love Jesus Christ the righteous To whom c. Postscript SInce it seemed good to that Great Court to call this poor Sermon amongst others of greater worth into the publick light I have thus submitted to their pleasure And now for that they pleased to bid so high a rate as their Command for that mean piece I do willingly give this my other Statue into the bargain This work preceded some little in time that which it now follows in place not without good reason Authority sends forth that this Will and my Will hath learned ever to give place to Authoritie Besides my
it For as that Father elsewhere In thy sight shall none living be justified He said not no man but none living not Evangelists not Angels not Thrones not Dominions If thou shalt mark the iniquities even of thine Elect saith S. Bernard Who shall abide it To say now that our actual Justice which is imperfect through the admixtion of venial sins ceaseth not to be both true and in a sort perfect Justice is to say there may be an unjust Justice or a just Injustice that even muddie water is clear or a leprous face beautiful Besides all experience evinceth our wants For as it is S. Austin's true observation He that is renewed from day to day is not all renewed so much he must needs be in his old corruption And as he speaks to his Hierome of the degrees of Charity There is in some more in some less in some none at all but the fullest measure which can receive no encrease is not to be found in any man while he lives here and so long as it may be encreased surely that which is less then it ought is faulty from which faultiness it must needs follow that there is no just man upon earth which doeth good and sinneth not and thence in Gods sight shall none living be justified Thus he To the very last hour our Prayer must be Forgive us our trespasses Our very daily endeavour therefore of increasing our Renovation convinceth us sufficiently of Imperfection and the imperfection of our Regeneration convinceth the impossibility of Justification by such Inherent Righteousness In short therefore since this Doctrine of the Roman Church is both new and erroneous against Scripture and Reason we have justly refused to receive it into our Belief and for such refusal are unjustly ejected CHAP. VI. The Newness of the Doctrine of Merit MErit is next wherein the Council of Trent is no less peremptory If any man shall say that the good works of a man justified do not truely merit eternal life let him be Anathema It is easie for Errour to shroud it self under the ambiguitie of words The word Merit hath been of large use with the Ancients who would have abhorred the present sense with them it sounded no other then Obtaining or Impetration not as now earning in the way of condign wages as if there were an equalitie of due proportion betwixt our Works and Heaven without all respects of pact promise favour according to the bold Comment of Scotus Tolet Pererius Costerus Weston and the rest of that strain Far far was the gracious humility of the Ancient Saints from this so high a presumption Let S. Basil speak for his fellows Eternal rest remains for those who in this life have lawfully striven 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. not for the Merits of their deeds but of the grace of that most munificent God in which they have trusted Why did I name one when they all with full consent as Cassander witnesseth profess to repose themselves wholy upon the mere Mercie of God and Merit of Christ with an humble renunciation of all worthiness in their own works Yea that unpartial Author derives this Doctrine even through the lower Ages of the Schoolmen and later Writers Thomas of Aquine Durand Adrian de Trajecto afterwards Pope Clictoveus and delivers it for the voice of the then present Church And before him Thomas Waldensis the great Champion of Pope Martine against the miscalled Hereticks of his own name professes him the sounder Divine and truer Catholick which simply denies any such Merit and ascribes all to the mere Grace of God and the will of the giver What should I need to darken the aire with a cloud of witnesses their Gregory Ariminensis their Brugensis Marsilius Pighius Eckius Ferus Stella Faber Stapulensis Let their famous Preacher Royard shut up all Quid igitur is qui Merita praetendit c. Whosoever he be that pretends his Merits what doth he else but deserve hell by his Works Let Bellarmine's Tutissimum est c. ground it self upon S. Bernard's experimental resolution Periculosa habitatio est Perilous is their dwelling-place who trust in their own Merits perilous because ruinous All these and many more teach this not as their own Doctrine but as the Churches Either they and the Church whose voice they are are Hereticks with us or we Orthodox with them and they and we with the Ancients The Noveltie of this Romane Doctrine is accompanied with Errour against Scripture against Reason Sect. 2. Against Scripture THat God doth graciously accept and munificently recompence our good Works even with an incomprehensible Glory we doubt not we deny not but this either out of the riches of his Mercy or the justice of his Promise But that we can earn this at his hands out of the intrinsecal worthiness of our acts is a challenge too high for flesh and blood yea for the Angels of Heaven How direct is our Saviours instance of the servant come out of the field and commanded by his Master to attendance Doth he thank that Servant because he did the things that were commanded him I trow not So likewise ye when ye shall have done all things which are commanded you say We are unprofitable servants Unprofitable perhaps you will say in respect of meriting thanks not unprofitable in respect of meriting wages For to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace but of debt True therefore herein our case differeth from servants that we may not look for God's reward as of Debt but as of Grace By Grace are ye saved through Faith neither is it our earning but God's gift Both it cannot be For if by Grace then it is no more of Works even of the most Renewed otherwise Grace is no more Grace but if it be of Works then it is no more Grace otherwise Work should be no more Work Now not by works of Righteousness which we have done at our best but according to his Mercy he saveth us Were our Salvation of Works then should Eternal life be our wages but now The wages of sin is Death but the gift of God is Eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Sect. 3. Against Reason IN very Reason where all is of mere Duty there can be no Merit for how can we deserve reward by doing that which if we did not we should offend It is enough for him that is obliged to his task that his work is well taken Now all that we can possibly doe and more is most justly due unto God by the bond of our Creation of our Redemption by the charge of his Royal Law and that sweet Law of his Gospel Nay alas we are far from being able to compass so much as our duty In many things we sin all It is enough that in our Glory we cannot sin though their Faber Stapulensis would not yield so much and taxeth
Jerusalem which was troubled at the report of his Birth is Christ come and all tongues are so lock'd up that he which sent from Jerusalem to Bethleem to seek him findes him not who as to countermine Herod is come from Bethleem to Jerusalem Dangers that are aloof off and but possible may not hinder us from the duty of our devotion God saw it not yet time to let loose the fury of his adversaries whom he holds up like some eager mastives then onely lets goe when they shall most shame themselves and glorifie him Well might the Blessed Virgin have wrangled with the Law and challenged an immunity from all ceremonies of purification What should I need purging which did not conceive in sinne This is for those mothers whose births are unclean mine is from God which is Purity it self The Law of Moses reaches onely to those women which have conceived seed I conceived not this seed but the Holy Ghost in me The Law extends to the mothers of those sons which are under the Law mine is above it But as one that cared more for her peace then her priviledge and more desired to be free from offence then from labour and charge she dutifully fulfils the Law of that God whom she carried in her wombe and in her armes like the mother of him who though he knew the children of the Kingdome free yet would pay tribute unto Caesar like the mother of him whom it behoved to fulfill all righteousnesse And if she were so officious in ceremonies as not to admit of any excuse in the very circumstance of her obedience how much more strict was she in the main duties of morality That Soul is fit for the Spiritual conception of Christ that is conscionably scrupulous in observing all Gods Commandements whereas he hates all alliance to a negligent or froward heart The law of Purification proclaims our uncleannesse The mother is not allowed after her child-birth to come unto the Sanctuary or to touch any hallowed thing till her set time be expired What are we whose very birth infects the mother that bears us At last she comes to the Temple but with Sacrifices either a Lamb and a Pigeon or Turtle or in the meaner estate two Turtle-doves or young Pigeons whereof one is for a burnt-offering the other for a sin-offering the one for thanksgiving the other for expiation for expiation of a double sin of the mother that conceived of the childe that was conceived We are all born sinners and it is a just question whether we doe more infect the world or the world us They are gross flatterers of Nature that tell her she is clean If our lives had no sin we bring enough with us the very Infant that lives not to sin as Adam yet he sinned in Adam and is sinful in himself But oh the unspeakable mercy of our God! we provide the sin he provides the remedy Behold an expiation welnear as early as our sin the blood of a young lamb or dove yea rather the blood of Him whose innocence was represented by both cleanseth us presently from our filthiness First went Circumcision then came the Sacrifice that by two holy acts that which was naturally unholy might be hallowed unto God Under the Gospel our Baptism hath the force of both it does away our corruption by the water of the Spirit it applies to us the sacrifice of Christs blood whereby we are cleansed Oh that we could magnifie this goodness of our God which hath not left our very infancy without redresse but hath provided helps whereby we may be delivered from the danger of our hereditary evils Such is the favourable respect of our wise God that he would not have us undoe our selves with devotion the service he requires of us is ruled by our abilities Every poor mother was not able to bring a lamb for her offering there was none so poor but might procure a pair of turtles or pigeons These doth God both prescribe and accept from poorer hands no lesse then the beasts of a thousand mountains He looks for somewhat of every one not of every one alike Since it is he that makes differences of abilities to whom it were as easie to make all rich his mercy will make no difference in the acceptation The truth and heartiness of obedience is that which he will crown in his meanest servants A mite from the poor Widow is more worth to him then the talents of the wealthy After all the presents of those Eastern worshippers who intended rather homage then ditation the Blessed Virgin comes in the form of poverty with her two doves unto God she could not without some charge lie all this while at Bethleem she could not without charge travel from Bethleem to Jerusalem Her Offering confesseth her penury The best are not ever the wealthiest Who can despise any one for want when the mother of Christ was not rich enough to bring a Lamb for her Purification We may be as happy in russet as in tissue While the Blessed Virgin brought her Son into the Temple with that pair of doves here were more doves then a pair They for whose sake that offering was brought were more doves then the doves that were brought for that offering Her Son for whom she brought that dove to be sacrificed was that sacrifice which the dove represented There was nothing in him but perfection of innocence and the oblation of him is that whereby all mothers and sons are fully purified Since in our selves we cannot be innocent happy are we if we can have the spotless Dove sacrificed for us to make us innocent in him The Blessed Virgin had more business in the Temple then her own she came as to purifie her self so to present her Son Every male that first opened the womb was holy unto the Lord. He that was the Son of God by eternal Generation before time and by miraculous Conception in time was also by common course of Nature consecrate unto God It is fit the holy Mother should present God with his own Her first-born was the first-born of all creatures It was he whose Temple it was that he was presented in to whom all the first-born of all creatures were consecrated by whom they were accepted and now is he brought in his Mothers arms to his own house and as Man is presented to himself as God If Moses had never written Law of God's special propriety in the first-born this Son of God's Essence and Love had taken possession of the Temple His right had been a perfect Law to himself Now his obedience to that Law which himself had given doth no lesse call him thither then the challenge of his peculiar interest He that was the Lord of all creatures ever since he struck the first-born of the Egyptians requires the first male of all creatures both man and beast to be dedicated to him wherein God caused a miraculous event to second Nature which seems to challenge
this Jesus a power to apply his merits and obedience we are no whit the safer no whit the better only we are so much the wiser to understand who shall condemn us This piece of the clause was spoken like a Saint Jesus the Son of the most high God the other piece like a Devil What have I to doe with thee If the disclamation were universall the latter words would impugne the former for whiles he confesses Jesus to be the Son of the most high God he withall confesses his own inevitable subjection Wherefore would he beseech if he were not obnoxious He cannot he dare not say What hast thou to doe with me but What have I to doe with thee Others indeed I have vexed thee I fear In respect then of any violence of any personal provocation What have I to doe with thee And dost thou ask O thou evil spirit what hast thou to doe with Christ whiles thou vexest a servant of Christ Hast thou thy name from knowledge and yet so mistakest him whom thou confessest as if nothing could be done to him but what immediately concerns his own person Hear that great and just Judge sentencing upon his dreadfull Tribunal Inasmuch as thou didst it unto one of these little ones thou didst it unto me It is an idle misprision to sever the sense of an injury done to any of the Members from the Head He that had humility enough to kneel to the Son of God hath boldnesse enough to expostulate Art thou come to torment us before our time Whether it were that Satan who useth to enjoy the torment of sinners whose musick it is to hear our shrieks and gnashings held it no small piece of his torment to be restrained in the exercise of his tyranny or whether the very presence of Christ were his rack for the guilty spirit projecteth terrible things and cannot behold the Judge or the executioner without a renovation of horrour or whether that as himself professeth he were now in a fearfull expectation of being commanded down into the deep for a further degree of actual torment which he thus deprecates There are tortures appointed to the very spiritual natures of evil Angels Men that are led by Sense have easily granted the body subject to torment who yet have not so readily conceived this incident to a spiritual substance The Holy Ghost hath not thought it fit to acquaint us with the particular manner of these invisible acts rather willing that we should herein fear then enquire But as all matters of Faith though they cannot be proved by Reason for that they are in a higher sphere yet afford an answer able to stop the mouth of all Reason that dares bark against them since truth cannot be opposite to it self so this of the sufferings of Spirits There is therefore both an intentional torment incident to Spirits and a reall For as in Blessedness the good Spirits finde themselves joyned unto the chief good and hereupon feel a perfect love of God and unspeakable joy in him and rest in themselves so contrarily the evil Spirits perceive themselves eternally excluded from the presence of God and see themselves setled in a wofull darkness and from the sense of this separation arises an horrour not to be expressed not to be conceived How many men have we known to torment themselves with their own thoughts There needs no other gibbet then that which their troubled spirit hath erected in their own heart And if some pains begin at the Body and from thence afflict the Soul in a copartnership of grief yet others arise immediately from the Soul and draw the Body into a participation of misery Why may we not therefore conceive mere and separate Spirits capable of such an inward excruciation Besides which I hear the Judge of men and Angels say Goe ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels I hear the Prophet say Tophet is prepared of old If with fear and without curiosity we may look upon those flames why may we not attribute a spiritual nature to that more then natural fire In the end of the world the Elements shall be dissolved by fire and if the pure quintessential matter of the skie and the element of fire it self shall be dissolved by fire then that last fire shall be of another nature then that which it consumeth What hinders then but that the Omnipotent God hath from eternity created a fire of another nature proportionable even to Spiritual essences Or why may we not distinguish of fire as it is it self a bodily creature and as it is an instrument of Gods justice so working not by any material virtue or power of its own but by a certain height of supernatural efficacy to which it is exalted by the Omnipotence of that supreme and righteous Judge Or lastly why may we not conceive that though Spirits have nothing material in their nature which that fire should work upon yet by the judgement of the Almighty Arbiter of the world justly willing their torment they may be made most sensible of pain and by the obedible submission of their created nature wrought upon immediately by their appointed tortures besides the very horrour which ariseth from the place whereto they are everlastingly confined For if the incorporeal Spirits of living men may be held in a lothed or painful body and conceive sorrow to be so imprisoned why may we not as easily yield that the evil spirits of Angels or men may be held in those direfull flames and much more abhor therein to continue for ever Tremble rather O my Soul at the thought of this wofull condition of the evil Angels who for one onely act of Apostasie from God are thus perpetually tormented whereas we sinfull wretches multiply many and presumptuous offences against the Majesty of our God And withall admire and magnifie that infinite Mercy to the miserable generation of man which after this holy severity of justice to the revolted Angels so graciously forbears our hainous iniquities and both suffers us to be free for the time from these hellish torments and gives us opportunity of a perfect freedome from them for ever Praise the Lord O my Soul and all that is within me praise his holy Name who forgiveth all thy sins and healeth all thine infirmities who redeemeth thy life from destruction and crowneth thee with mercy and compassions There is no time wherein the evil spirits are not tormented there is a time wherein they exspect to be tormented yet more Art thou come to torment us before our time They knew that the last Assises are the prefixed terme of their full execution which they also understood to be not yet come For though they knew not when the Day of Judgement should be a point concealed from the glorious Angels of Heaven yet they knew when it should not be and therefore they say Before the time Even the very evil spirits confesse and fearfully attend a set
he that put it into the heart of his Gracious Servant to command a Ninive-like Humiliation What pithie what passionate Prayers were injoined to his disconsolate Church With what holy eagernesse did we devour those Fasts How well were we pleased with the austerity of that pious Penitence What loud cries did beat on all sides at the gates of Heaven and with what inexspectable unconceivable mercy were they answered How suddenly were those many thousands brought down to one poor unity not a number Other evils were wont to come on horseback to goe away on foot this mortality did not post but flie away Methought like unto the great ice it sunk at once Only so many are stricken as may hold us awfull and so few as may leave us thankfull Oh how soon is our Fasting and mourning turned into Laughter and joy How boldly do we now throng into this House of God and fearlesly mix our breaths in a common Devotion This is the Lord 's doing and it is marvailous in our eyes O thou that hearest the prayer to thee shall all flesh come And let all flesh come to thee with the voice of Praise and Thanksgiving It might have been just with thee O God to have swept us away in the common destruction what are we better then our brethren Thou hast let us live that we may praise thee It might have been just with thee to have inlarged the commission of thy killing Angel and to have rooted out this sinfull people from under Heaven But in the midst of judgment thou hast remembred mercy Our sins have not made thee forget to be gracious nor have shut up thy loving kindnesse in displeasure Thou hast wounded us and thou hast healed us again thou hast delivered us and been mercifull to our sins for thy names sake Oh that we could duly praise thy Name in the great Congregation Oh that our tongues our hearts our lives might blesse and glorifie thee that so thou mayest take pleasure to perfect this great work of our full deliverance and to make this Nation a dear example of thy Mercy of Peace Victory Prosperity to all the world In the mean time let us call all our fellow-creatures to help us bear a part in the Praise of our God Let the Heavens the Stars the winds the waters the dews the frosts the nights the dayes let the Earth and Sea the mountains wells trees fishes fouls beasts let men let Saints let Angels blesse the Lord praise him and magnifie him for ever Blessed blessed for ever be the Lord who loadeth us daily with benefits even the God of our Salvation to whom belong the issues from death Oh blessed be the Lord God of Israel who only doth wondrous things and blessed be his glorious Name for ever and ever and let all the earth be filled with his glory Amen Amen One of the SERMONS Preached at Westminster on the day of the Publick Fast April 5. 1628. TO The Lords of the High Court of Parliament and by their appointment published by the B. of EXCESTER Esay 5. vers 4 5. What could have been done more to my Vineyard that I have not done in it Wherefore when I looked that it should bring forth grapes brought it forth wilde grapes And now goe to I will tell you what I will doe to my Vineyard I will take away the hedge thereof IT is a piece of a Song for so it is called Vers 1. Alas what should Songs doe to an heavy heart Prov. 25. 20. or Musick in a day of Mourning Howling and lamentation is fitter for this occasion Surely as we do sometimes weep for joy so do we sing also for sorrow Thus also doth the Prophet here If it be a Song it is a Dump Esay's Lacrymae fit for that Sheminith gravis symphonia as Tremelius turns it which some sad Psalms were set unto Both the Ditty and the Tune are dolefull There are in it three passionate strains Favours Wrongs Revenge Blessings Sins Judgements Favours and Blessings from God to Israel Sins which are the highest Wrongs from Israel to God Judgments by way of Revenge from God to Israel And each of those follow upon other God begins with Favours to his people they answer him with their Sins he replies upon them with Judgments and all of these are in their height The Favours of God are such as he asks What could be more The Sins are aggravated by those Favours what worse then wilde Grapes and disappointment And the Judgments must be aggravated to the proportion of their Sins what worse then the Hedge taken away the Wall broken the Vineyard trodden down and eaten up Let us follow the steps of God and his Prophet in all these and when we have passed these in Israel let us seek to them at home What should I need to crave attention the businesse is both Gods and our own God and we begin with Favours Favours not mean and ordinary not expressed in a right-down affirmation but in an expostulatory and self-convincing Question What could have been done more to my Vineyard that I have not done to it Every word is a new obligation That Israel is a Vineyard is no small favour of God that it is God's Vineyard is yet more that it is God's Vineyard so exquisitely cultivated as nothing more could be either added or desired is most of all Israel is no vast Desart no wilde Forest no moorish Fen no barren Heath no thornie Thicket but a Vineyard a Soile of use and fruit Look where you will in God's Book ye shall never finde any lively member of Gods Church compared to any but a fruitfull tree Not to a tall Cypresse the Embleme of unprofitable Honour nor to a smooth Ash the Embleme of unprofitable Prelacie that doth nothing but bear Keyes nor to a double-coloured Poplar the Embleme of Dissimulation nor to a well-shaded Plane that hath nothing but Form nor to a hollow Maple nor to a trembling Aspe nor to a prickly Thorn shortly not to any Plant whatsoever whose fruit is not usefull and beneficial Hear this then ye goodly Cedars strong Elmes fast-growing Willows sappy Sycomores and all the rest of the fruitlesse trees of the earth I mean all fashionable and barren Professors whatsoever ye may shoot up in height ye may spread far shade well shew fair but what are ye good for Ye may be fit for the Forest Ditches Hedg-rows of the world ye are not for the true saving soil of God's Israel that is a Vineyard there is place for none but Vines and true Vines are fruitfull He that abideth in me bringeth forth much fruit saith our Saviour John 15. 5. And of all fruits what is comparable to that of the Vine Let the Vine it self speak in Jonathan's Parable Jud. 9. 13. Should I leave my Wine which cheareth God and man How is this God cheared with Wine It is an high Hyperbole yet seconded by the God of truth I will
of these Birds every where at home I appeal your eyes your ears would to God they would convince me of a slander But what of all this now The power of Godlinesse is denied by wicked men How then what is their case Surely inexplicably unconceivably fearfull The wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodlinesse saith the Apostle How revealed say you wherein differ they from their neighbours unlesse it be perhaps in better fare no gripes in their Conscience no afflictions in their life no bands in their death Impunitas ausum ausus excessum parit as Bernard Their impunity makes them bold their boldness outragious Alas wretched Souls The world hath nothing more wofull then a Sinners welfare It is for slaughter that this Ox is fatned Ease slayeth the simple and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them Prov. 1. 32. This bracteata felicitas which they injoy here is but as Carpets spread over the mouth of Hell For if they deny the power of Godliness the God of power shall be sure to deny them Depart from me ye workers of iniquity I know you not There cannot be a worse doom then Depart from me that is depart from peace from blessedness from life from hope from possibility of being any other then eternally exquisitely miserable Qui te non habet Domine Deus totum perdidit He who hath not thee O Lord God hath lost all as Bernard truly Dying is but departing but this departing is the worst dying dying in Soul ever dying so as if there be an Ite depart there must needs be a maledicti depart ye cursed cursed that ever they were born who live to die everlastingly For this departure this curse ends in that fire which can never never end Oh the deplorable condition of those damned Souls that have slighted the power of Godliness what tears can be enough to bewail their everlasting burnings what heart can bleed enough at the thought of those tortures which they can neither suffer nor avoid Hold but your finger for one minute in the weak flame of a farthing Candle can flesh and blood indure it With what horror then must we needs think of Body and Soul frying endlesly in that infernal Tophet Oh think of this ye that forget God and contemn Godlinesse with what confusion shall ye look upon the frowns of an angry God rejecting you the ugly and mercilesse Fiends snatching you to your torments the flames of Hell flashing up to meet you with what horror shall ye feel the gnawing of your guilty Consciences and hear that hellish shreeking and weeping and wailing and gnashing It is a pain to mention these woes it is more then death to feel them Perhorrescite minas formidate supplicia as Chrysostome Certainly my beloved if wicked sinners did truly apprehend an Hell there would be more danger of their despair and distraction then of their security It is the Devil's policy like a Raven first to pull out the eyes of those that are dead in their sins that they may not see their imminent damnation But for us tell me ye that hear me this day are ye Christians in earnest or are ye not If ye be not what doe ye here If ye be there is an hell in your Creed Ye do not lesse believe there is an Hell for the godlesse then an Earth for men a Firmament for Stars an Heaven for Saints a God in Heaven and if ye do thus firmly believe it cast but your eyes aside upon that fiery gulf and sin if ye dare Ye love your selves well enough to avoid a known pain we know there are Stocks and Bride-wells and Gaols and Dungeons and Racks and Gibbets for malefactors and our very feare keeps us innocent were your hearts equally assured of those Hellish torments ye could not ye durst not continue in those sins for which they are prepared But what an unpleasing and unseasonable subject am I fallen upon to speak of Hell in a Christian Court the embleme of Heaven Let me answer for my self with devout Bernard Sic mihi contingat semper be are amicos terrendo salubriter non adulando fallaciter Let me thus ever blesse my friends with wholesome frights rather then with plausible soothings Sumenda sunt amara salubria saith Saint Austin Bitter wholsome is a safe receipt for a Christian and what is more bitter or more wholsome then this thought The way not to feel an Hell is to see it to fear it I fear we are all generally defective this way we do not retire our selves enough into the Chamber of Meditation and think sadly of the things of another world Our Self-love puts off this torment notwithstanding our willing sins with David's plague non appropinquabit It shall not come nigh thee If we do not make a league with Hell and Death yet with our selves against them Fallit peccatum falsâ dulcedine as Saint Austin Sin deceives us with a false pleasure The pleasure of the world is like rhat Colchian honey whereof Xenophon's souldiers no sooner tasted then they were miserably distempered those that took little were drunk those that took more were mad those that took most were dead thus are we either intoxicated or infatuated or kil'd out-right with this deceitfull world that we are not sensible of our just fears at the best we are besotted with our stupid security that we are not affected with our danger Woe is me the impenitent resolved sinner is already faln into the mouth of Hell and hangs there but by a slender twig of his momentany life when that hold fails he falls down headlong into that pit of horrour and desolation Oh ye my dear brethren so many as love your Souls have mercy upon your selves Call aloud out of the deeps of your sins to that compassionate Saviour that he will give you the hand of Faith to lay hold upon the hand of his mercy and plenteous redemption and pull you out of that otherwise-irrecoverable destruction else ye are gone ye are gone for ever Two things as Bernard borrows of Saint Gregory make a man both good and safe To repent of evil To abstain from evil Would ye escape the wrath of God the fire of Hell Oh wash you clean and keep you so There is no Laver for you but your own teares and the blood of your Saviour Bathe your Souls in both of these and be secure Consider how many are dying now which would give a world for one hour to repent in Oh be ye carefull then to improve your free and quiet hours in a serious and hearty contrition for your sins say to God with the Psalmist Deliver me from the evilman that is from my self as that Father construes it And for the sequel in stead of the denying the power of Godlinesse resolve to deny your selves to deny all ungodlinesse and worldly lusts and to live soberly righteously and godly in this present world that having felt and approved the power
determine that the onely formal cause of our Justification is God's Justice not by which he himself is Just but by which he makes us just wherewith being endowed by him we are renewed in the Spirit of our mindes and are not onely reputed but are made truely just receiving every man his own measure of Justice which the Holy Ghost divides to him according to each mans predisposition of himself and cooperation And withall they denounce a flat Anathema to all those who dare to say that we are formally justified by Christs Righteousness or by the sole imputation of that Righteousness or by the sole remission of our sins and not by our inherent Grace diffused in our hearts by the holy Ghost Which terms they have so craftily laid together as if they would cast an aspersion upon their Adversaries of separating the necessity of Sanctification from the pretended Justification by Faith wherein all our words and writings will abundantly clear us before God and men That there is an inherent Justice in us is no less certain then that it is wrought in us by the Holy Ghost For God doth not justifie the wicked man as such but of wicked makes him good not by mere acceptation but by a real change whiles he Justifies him whom he Sanctifies These two acts of Mercie are inseparable But this Justice being wrought in us by the Holy Spirit according to the modell of our weak receit and not according to the full power of the infinite agent is not so perfect as that it can bear us out before the Tribunal of God It must be onely under the garment of our elder Brother that we dare come in for a Blessing His Righteousness made ours by Faith is that whereby we are justified in the sight of God This Doctrine is that which is blasted with a Tridentine curse Heat now the History of this Doctrine of Justification related by their Andrew Vega de Justif lib. 7. cap. 24. Magnafuit c. Some Ages since saith he there was a great concertation amongst Divines what should be the formal cause of our Justification Some thought it to be no created Justice infused into man but onely the favour and merciful acceptation of God In which opinion the Master of Sentences is thought by some to have been Others whose opinion is more common and probable held it to be some created quality informing the Souls of the Just This Opinion was allowed in the Council of Vienna and the School-Doctors after the Master of Sentences delivered this not as probable onely but as certain Afterwards when some defended the opposite part to be more probable it seemed good to the holy Synod of Trent thus to determine it So as till the late Council of Trent by the confession of Vega himself this Opinion was maintained as probable onely not as of Faith Yea I adde by his leave the contrary was till then most current It is not the Logick of this Point we strive for it is not the Grammar it is the Divinity What is that whereby we stand acquitted before the Righteous Judge whether our inherent Justice or Christs imputed Justice apprehended by Faith The Divines of Trent are for the former all Antiquity with us for the latter A just Volume would scarce contain the pregnant Testimonies of the Fathers to this purpose Saint Chrysostome tels us it is the wonder of Gods Mercy that he who hath sinned confesseth is pardoned secured and suddenly appears Just Just but how The Cross took away the Curse saith he most sweetly Faith brought in Righteousness and Righteousness drew on the Grace of the Spirit Saint Ambrose tels us that our carnal infirmity blemisheth our works but that uprightness of our Faith covers our errours and obtains our pardon And professeth that he will glory not for that he is Righteous but for that he is Redeemed nor for that he is void of sins but for that his sins are forgiven him Saint Jerome tells us then we are just when we confess our selves sinners and that our Righteousness stands not in any Merit of ours but in the mere Mercy of God and that the acknowledgement of our imperfection is the imperfect perfection of the Just Saint Gregory tells us that our Just Advocate shall defend us Righteous in his Judgement because we know and accuse our selves unrighteous and that our confidence must not be in our acts but in our Advocate But the sweet and passionate speeches of Saint Austin and S. Bernard would fill a book alone neither can any Reformed Divine either more disparage our inherent Righteousness or more magnifie and challenge the imputed It shall suffice us to give a taste of both We have all therefore Brethren received of his fulness of the fulness of his Mercy of the abundance of his Goodness have we received What Remission of sins that we might be justified by Faith and what more Grace for Grace that is for this Grace wherein we live by Faith we shall receive another saith that Divinest of the Fathers And soon after All that are from sinful Adam are sinners all that are justified by Christ are just not in themselves but in him for in themselves if ye ask after them they are Adam in him they are Christs And elsewhere Rejoice in the Lord and be glad O ye Righteous O wicked O proud men that rejoice in your selves now believing in him who justifieth the wicked your Faith is imputed to you for Righteousness Rejoice in the Lord why Because now ye are just And whence are ye just Not by your own Merits but by his Grace Whence are ye just Because ye are justified Who shall lay anything to the charge of Gods Elect It sufficeth me for all Righteousness that I have that God propitious to me against whom onely I have sinned All that he hath decreed not to impute unto me is as if it had not been Not to sin is Gods Justice mans Justice is Gods indulgence saith devout Bernard How pregnant is that famous Profession of his And if the mercies of the Lord be from everlasting and to everlasting I will also sing the mercies of the Lord everlastingly What shall I sing of mine own righteousness No Lord I will remember thy Righteousness alone for that is mine too Thou art made unto me of God Righteousness should I fear that it will not serve us both It is no short Cloak that it should not cover twain Thy Righteousness is Righteousness for ever and what is longer then Eternity Behold thy large and everlasting mercy will largely cover both thee and me at once in me it covers a multitude of sins in thee Lord what can it cover but the treasures of Pitie the riches of Bountie Thus he What should I need to draw down this Truth through the times of Anselme Lombard Bonaventure Gerson The Manual of Christian Religion set forth in the
a Woman nor so look upon him as a Son that she should not regard him as a God He was so obedient to her as a Mother that withall she must obey him as her God That part which he took from her shall observe her she must observe that nature which came from above and made her both a Woman and a Mother Matter of miracle concerned the Godhead only Supernatural things were above the sphere of fleshly relation If now the Blessed Virgin will be prescribing either time or form unto Divine acts O woman what have I to doe with thee my hour is not come In all bodily actions his style was O Mother in spirituall and heavenly O Woman Neither is it for us in the holy affairs of God to know any faces yea if we have known Christ heretofore according to the flesh henceforth know we him so no more O Blessed Virgin if in that heavenly glory wherein thou art thou canst take notice of these earthly things with what indignation dost thou look upon the presumptuous superstition of vain men whose suits make thee more then a solicitor of Divine favours Thy Humanity is not lost in thy Motherhood nor in thy Glory The respects of Nature reach not so high as Heaven It is far from thee to abide that honour which is stolne from thy Redeemer There is a Marriage whereto we are invited yea wherein we are already interessed not as the Guests onely but as the Bride in which there shall be no want of the wine of gladnesse It is marvel if in these earthly banquets there be not some lack In thy presence O Saviour there is fulnesse of joy and at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore Blessed are they that are called to the marriage-supper of the Lamb. Even in that rough answer doth the Blessed Virgin descry cause of hope If his hour were not yet come it was therefore coming when the exspectation of the guests and the necessity of the occasion had made fit room for the Miracle it shall come forth and challenge their wonder Faithfully therefore and observantly doth she turn her speech from her Son to the Waiters Whatsoever he saith unto you doe it How well doth it beseem the Mother of Christ to agree with his Father in Heaven whose voice from Heaven said This is my well-beloved Son hear him She that said of her self Be it unto me according to thy word saies unto others Whatsoever he saith to you doe it This is the way to have Miracles wrought in us obedience to his Word The power of Christ did not stand upon their officiousnesse he could have wrought wonders in spite of them but their perverse refusall of his commands might have made them uncapable of the favour of a miraculous action He that can when he will convince the obstinate will not grace the disobedient He that could work without us or against us will not work for us but by us This very poor house was furnished with many and large vessels for outward purification as if sin had dwelt upon the skin that superstitious people sought Holiness in frequent washings Even this rinsing fouled them with the uncleannesse of a traditional will-worship It is the Soul which needs scowring and nothing can wash that but the blood which they desperately wished upon themselves and their children for guilt not for expiation Purge thou us O Lord with hyssop and we shall be clean wash us and we shall be whiter then snow The Waiters could not but think strange of so unseasonable a command Fill the water pots It is wine that we want what do we goe to fetch water Doth this Holy man mean thus to quench our Feast and cool our stomacks If there be no remedy we could have sought this supply unbidden Yet so far hath the charge of Christs Mother prevailed that in stead of carrying flagons of wine to the table they goe to fetch pails-full of water from the Cisterns It is no pleading of unlikelihoods against the command of an Almighty power He that could have created wine immediately in those vessels will rather turn water into wine In all the course of his Miracles I do never finde him making ought of nothing all his great works are grounded upon former existences He multiplied the bread he changed the water he restored the withered limmes he raised the dead and still wrought upon that which was and did not make that which was not What doth he in the ordinary way of nature but turn the watery juice that arises up from the root into wine He will only do this now suddenly and at once which he doth usually by sensible degrees It is ever duly observed by the Son of God not to doe more miracle then he needs How liberal are the provisions of Christ If he had turned but one of those vessels it had been a just proof of his power and perhaps that quantity had served the present necessity now he furnisheth them with so much wine as would have served an hundred and fifty guests for an intire Feast Even the measure magnifies at once both his power and mercy The munificent hand of God regards not our need only but our honest affluence It is our sin and our shame if we turn his favour into wantonness There must be first a filling ere there be a drawing out Thus in our vessels the first care must be of our receit the next of our expence God would have us Cisterns not Channels Our Saviour would not be his own taster but he sends the first draught to the Governour of the Feast He knew his own power they did not Neither would he bear witness of himself but fetch it out of others mouths They that knew not the original of that wine yet praised the taste Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine and when men have well drunk then that which is worse but thou hast kept the good wine untill now The same bounty that expressed it self in the quantity of the Wine shews it self no lesse in the excellence Nothing can fall from that Divine hand not exquisite That liberality hated to provide crab-wine for his guests It was fit that the miraculous effects of Christ which came from his immediate hand should be more perfect then the natural O Blessed Saviour how delicate is that new Wine which we shall one day drink with thee in thy Fathers Kingdome Thou shalt turn this water of our earthly affliction into that Wine of gladnesse wherewith our Souls shall be satiate for ever Make haste O my Beloved and be thou like to a Roe or to a young Hart upon the Mountain of Spices The good Centurion Even the bloody trade of War yielded worthy Clients to Christ This Roman Captain had learned to believe in that Jesus whom many Jews despised No Nation no trade can shut out a good heart from God If he were a forreiner for birth yet he was a domestick in
miserable and not feel it to feel and not regard it to regard and yet to smother it Concealment doth not remedy but aggravate sorrow That with the counsel of not weeping therefore she might see cause of not weeping his Hand seconds his Tongue He arrests the Coffin and frees the Prisoner Young man I say unto thee Arise The Lord of life and death speaks with command No finite power could have said so without presumption or with success That is the voice that shall one day call up our vanished bodies from those Elements into which they are resolved and raise them out of their dust Neither sea nor death nor hell can offer to detain their dead when he charges them to be delivered Incredulous nature what dost thou shrink at the possibility of a Resurrection when the God of Nature undertakes it It is no more hard for that almighty Word which gave being unto all things to say Let them be repaired then Let them be made I do not see our Saviour stretching himself upon the dead corps as Elias and Elisha upon the sons of the Sunamite and Sareptan nor kneeling down and praying by the Bier as Peter did to Dorcas but I hear him so speaking to the dead as if he were alive and so speaking to the dead that by the word he makes him alive I say unto thee Arise Death hath no power to bid that man lye still whom the Son of God bids Arise Immediatly he that was dead sate up So at the sound of the last Trumpet by the power of the same voice we shall arise out of the dust and stand up glorious This mortall shall put on immortality this corruptible incorruption This body shall not be buried but sown and at our day shall therefore spring up with a plentiful increase of glory How comfortless how desperate should be our lying down if it were not for this assurance of rising And now behold lest our weak faith should stagger at the assent to so great a difficulty he hath already by what he hath done given us tastes of what he will do The power that can raise one man can raise a thousand a million a world no power can raise one man but that which is infinite and that which is infinite admits of no limitation Under the Old Testament God raised one by Elias another by Elisha living a third by Elisha dead By the hand of the Mediator of the New Testament he raised here the son of the Widow the daughter of Jairus Lazarus and in attendance of his own Resurrection he made a gaol-delivery of holy prisoners at Jerusalem He raises the daughter of Jairus from her bed this Widows son from his Coffin Lazarus from his grave the dead Saints of Jerusalem from their rottenness that it might appear no degree of death can hinder the efficacie of his overruling command He that keeps the keys of Death cannot onely make way for himself through the common Hall and outer-rooms but through the inwardest and most reserved closets of darkness Methinks I see this young man who was thus miraculously awaked from his deadly sleep wiping and rubbing those eyes that had been shut up in death and descending from the Bier wrapping his winding-sheet about his loyns cast himself down in a passionate thankfulness at the feet of his Almighty restorer adoring that Divine power which had commanded his Soul back again to her forsaken lodging and though I hear not what he said yet I dare say they were words of praise and wonder which his returned Soul first uttered It was the mother whom our Saviour pittied in this act not the son who now forced from his quiet rest must twice pass through the gates of death As for her sake therefore he was raised so to her hands was he delivered that she might acknowledge that soul given to her not to the possessor Who cannot feel the amazement and ecstasie of joy that was in this revived mother when her son now salutes her from out of another world and both receives and gives gratulations of his new life How suddenly were all the tears of that mournful train dried up with a joyful astonishment How soon is that funeral banquet turned into a new Birth-day feast What striving was here to salute the late carcase of their returned neighbour What awful and admiring looks were cast upon that Lord of life who seeming homely was approved Omnipotent How gladly did every tongue celebrate both the work and the Author A great Prophet is raised up amongst us and God hath visited his people A Prophet was the highest name they could find for him whom they saw like themselves in shape above themselves in power They were not yet acquainted with God manifested in the flesh This Miracle might well have assured them of more then a Prophet but he that raised the dead man from the Bier would not suddenly raise these dead hearts from the grave of Infidelity They shall see reason enough to know that the Prophet who was raised up to them was the God that now visited them and at last should doe as much for them as he had done for the young man raise them from death to life from dust to glory The Rulers Son cured THe bounty of God so exceedeth man's that there is a contrarietie in the exercise of it We shut our hands because we opened them God therefore opens his because he hath opened them God's mercies are as comfortable in their issue as in themselves Seldom ever do blessings go alone where our Saviour supplied the Bridegroom's wine there he heals the Rulers son He had not in all these coasts of Galilee done any Miracle but here To him that hath shall be given We do not finde Christ oft attended with Nobilitie here he is It was some great Peer or some noted Courtier that was now a suitor to him for his dying son Earthly Greatness is no defence against Afflictions We men forbear the Mightie Disease and Death know no faces of Lords or Monarchs Could these be bribed they would be too rich Why should we grudge not to be privileged when we see there is no spare of the greatest This Noble Ruler listens after Christ's return into Galilee The most eminent amongst men will be glad to hearken after Christ in their necessity Happy was it for him that his son was sick he had not else been acquainted with his Saviour his Soul had continued sick of ignorance and unbelief Why else doth our good God send us pain losses opposition but that he may be sought to Are we afflicted whither should we goe but to Cana to seek Christ whither but to the Cana of Heaven where our water of sorrow is turned to the wine of gladness to that omnipotent Physician who healeth all our infirmities that we may once say It is good for me that I was afflicted It was about a dayes journey from Capernaum to Cana Thence hither did this Courtier come for
us of the Devil and his Angels Messengers are inferiour to those that send them The seven Devils that entered into the swept and garnished house were worse then the former Neither can Principalities and Powers and Governours and Princes of the darkness of this World design others then several ranks of evil Angels There can be no being without some kind of order there can be no order in parity If we look up into Heaven there is The King of Gods The Lord of Lords higher then the highest If to the earth there are Monarchs Kings Princes Peeres people If we look down to Hell there is the Prince of Devils They labour for Confusion that call for Parity What should the Church doe with such a for me as is not exempliied in Heaven in Earth in Hell One Devil according to their supposition may be used to cast out another How far the command of one spirit over another may extend it is a secret of infernal state too deep for the inquiry of men The thing it self is apparent upon compact and precontracted composition one gives way to other for the common advantage As we see in the Common-wealth of Cheaters and Cut-purses one doth the fact another is feed to bring it out and to procure restitution both are of the trade both conspire to the fraud the actor falls not out with the revealer but divides with him that cunning spoil One malicious miscreant sets the Devil on work to the inflicting of disease or death another upon agreement for a further spiritual gain takes him off There is a Devil in both And if there seem more bodily favour there is no less spiritual danger in the latter In the one Satan wins the agent the suitor in the other It will be no cause of discord in Hell that one Devil gives ease to the body which another tormented that both may triumph in the gain of a Soul Oh God that any creature which bears thine Image should not abhorre to be beholding to the powers of Hell for aid for advice Is is not because there is not a God in Israel that men goe to inquire of the God of Ekron Can men be so sottish to think that the vowed enemie of their Souls can offer them a bait without an hook What evil is there in the City which the Lord hath not done what is there which he cannot as easily redress He wounds he heals again And if he will not It is the Lord let him doe what seems good in his eyes If he do not deliver us he will crown our faithfulness in a patient perseverance The wounds of God are better then the salves of Satan Was it possible that the wit of Envy could devise so high a slander Beelzebub was a God of the heathen therefore herein they accuse him for an Idolater Beelzebub was a Devil to the Jewes therefore they accuse him for a conjurer Beelzebub was the chief of Devils therefore they accuse him for on Arch-exorcist for the worst kinde of Magician Some professors of this black Art though their work be devilish yet they pretend to doe it in the name of Jesus and will presumptuously seem to doe that by command which is secretly transacted by agreement The Scribes accuse Christ of a direct compact with the Devil and suppose both a league and familiarity which by the Law of Moses in the very hand of a Saul was no other then deadly Yea so deep doth this wound reach that our Saviour searching it to the bottome findes no less in it then the sin against the Holy Ghost inferring hereupon that dreadful sentence of the irremissibleness of that sin unto death And if this horrible crimination were cast upon thee O Saviour in whom the Prince of this world found nothing what wonder is it if we thy sinful servants be branded on all sides with evil tongues Yea which is yet more how plain is it that these men forced their tongue to speak this slander against their own heart Else this Blasphemy had been onely against the Son of man not against the Holy Ghost but now that the searcher of hearts findes it to be no less then against the Blessed Spirit of God the spight must needs be obstinate their malice doth wilfully cross their conscience Envie never regards how true but how mischievous So it may gall or kill it cares little whether with truth or falshood For us Blessed are we when men revile us and say all manner of evil of us for the name of Chirst For them What reward shall be given to thee thou false tongue Even sharp arrows with hot burning coales yea those very coales of hell from which thou wert inkindled There was yet a third sort that went a mid-way betwixt wonder and censure These were not so malicious as to impute the miracle to a Satanical operation they confess it good but not enough and therefore urge Christ to a further proof Though thou hast cast out this dumb Devil yet this is no sufficient argument of thy Divine power We have yet seen nothing from thee like those antient Miracles of the times of our fore-fathers Joshuah caused the Sun to stand still Elias brought fire down from heaven Samuel astonish'd the people with thunder and rain in the midst of harvest If thou wouldst command our belief doe somewhat like to these The casting out of a Devil shews thee to have some power over Hell shew us now that thou hast no less power over Heaven There is a kinde of unreasonableness of desire and insatiableness in infidelity it never knows when it hath evidence enough This which the Jews overlooked was a more irrefragable demonstration of Divinity then that which they desired A Devil was more then a Meteor or a parcel of an element to cast out a Devil by command more then to command fire from Heaven Infidelity ever loves to be her own carver No son can be more like a father then these Jews to their progenitours in the desart that there might be no fear of degenerating into good they also of old tempted God in the Wilderness First they are weary of the Egyptian bondage and are ready to fall out with God and Moses for their stay in those fornaces By ten miraculous Plagues they are freed and going out of those confines the Egyptians follow them the Sea is before them now they are more afflicted with their liberty then their servitude The Sea yields way the Egyptians are drowned and now that they are safe on the other shore they tempt the Providence of God for water The Rock yields it them then no less for bread and meat God sends them Manna and Quailes they cry out of the food of Angels Their present enemies in the way are vanquished they whine at the men of measures in the heart of Canaan Nothing from God but Mercy nothing from them but Temptations Their true brood both in nature and in sin had abundant proofs of the
Messiah if curing the blinde lame diseased deaf dumb ejecting Devils over-ruling the elements raising the dead could have been sufficient yet still they must have a signe from Heaven and shut up in the stile of the Tempter If thou be the Christ The gracious heart is credulous Even where it sees not it believes and where it sees but a little it believes a great deal Neither doth it presume to prescribe unto God what and how he shall work but takes what it finds and unmovably rests in what it takes Any miracle no miracle serves enough for their assent who have built their Faith upon the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Matthew called THE number of the Apostles was not yet full One room is left void for a future occupant Who can but expect that it is reserved for some eminent person and behold Matthew the Publican is the man Oh the strange election of Christ Those other Disciples whose calling is recorded were from the Fisher-boat this from the Toll-booth They were unlettered this infamous The condition was not in it self sinfull but as the Taxes which the Romans imposed on God's free people were odious so the Collectors the Farmers of them abominable Besides that it was hard to hold that seat without oppression without exaction One that best knew it branded it with poling and sycophancy And now behold a griping Publican called to the Family to the Apostleship to the Secretaryship of God Who can despair in the conscience of his unworthiness when he sees this pattern of the free bounty of him that calleth us Merits do not carry it in the gracious election of God but his mere favour There sate Matthew the Publican busie in his Counting-house reckoning up the sums of his Rentals taking up his arrerages and wrangling for denied duties and did so little think of a Saviour that he did not so much as look at his passage but Jesus as he passed by saw a man sitting at the receit of custome named Matthew As if this prospect had been sudden and casual Jesus saw him in passing by O Saviour before the world was thou sawest that man sitting there thou sawest thine own passage thou sawest his call in thy passage and now thou goest purposely that way that thou mightest see and call Nothing can be hid from that piercing eye one glance whereof hath discerned a Disciple in the cloaths of a Publican That habit that shop of extortion cannot conceal from thee a vessel of election In all forms thou knowest thine own and in thine own time shalt fetch them out of the disguises of their soul sins or unfit conditions What sawest thou O Saviour in that Publican that might either allure thine eye or not offend it What but an hateful trade an evil eye a gripple hand bloudy tables heaps of spoil Yet now thou saidest Follow me Thou that saidst once to Jerusalem Thy birth and nativity is of the land of Canaan Thy father was an Amorite thy mother an Hittite Thy navel was not cut neither wert thou washed in water to supple thee thou wast not salted at all thou wast not swadled at all None eye pitied thee but thou wast cast out in the open fields to the loathing of thy person in the day that thou wast born And when I Passed by thee and saw thee polluted in thine own blood I said unto thee Live yea I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood Live Now also when thou passedst by and sawest Matthew sitting at the receit of custome saidst to him Follow me The life of this Publican was so much worse then the birth of that forlorn Amorite as Follow me was more then Live What canst thou see in us O God but ugly deformities horrible sins despicable miseries yet doth it please thy mercy to say unto us both Live and Follow me The just man is the first accuser of himself whom do we hear to blazon the shame of Matthew but his own mouth Matthew the Evangelist tels us of Matthew the Publican His fellows call him Levi as willing to lay their finger upon the spot of his unpleasing profession himself will not smother nor blanch it a whit but publishes it to all the world in a thankful recognition of the mercy that called him as liking well that his baseness should serve for a fit foile to set off the glorious lustre of his Grace by whom he was elected What matters it how vile we are O God so thy glory may arise in our abasement That word was enough Follow me spoken by the same tongue that said to the corps at Nain Young man I say to thee Arise He that said at first Let there be light sayes now Follow me That power sweetly inclines which could forcibly command the force is not more unresistible then the inclination When the Sun shines upon the Ice-icles can they chuse but melt and fall When it looks into a dungeon can the place chuse but be enlightned Do we see the Jet drawing up straws to it the Load-stone iron and do we marvel if the Omnipotent Saviour by the influence of his Grace attract the heart of a Publican He arose and followed him We are all naturally averse from thee O God do thou but bid us Follow thee draw us by thy powerful word and we shall run after thee Alas thou speakest and we sit still thou speakest by thine outward Word to our eare and we stir not Speak thou by the secret and effectual word of thy Spirit to our heart the world cannot hold us down Satan cannot stop our way we shall arise and follow thee It was not a more busie then gainful trade that Matthew abandoned to follow Christ into poverty and now he cast away his Counters and struck his Tallies and crossed his books and contemned his heaps of cash in comparison of that better treasure which he foresaw lye open in that happy attendance If any commodity be valued of us too dear to be parted with for Christ we are more fit to be Publicans then Disciples Our Saviour invites Matthew to a Discipleship Matthew invites him to a Feast The joy of his call makes him begin his abdication of the world in a banquet Here was not a more chearful thankfulness in the inviter then a gracious humility in the guest The new servant bids his Master the Publican his Saviour and is honoured with so blessed a presence I do not finde where Jesus was ever bidden to any table and refused If a Pharisee if a Publican invited him he made not dainty to goe Not for the pleasure of the dishes what was that to him who began his work in a whole Lent of dayes But as it was his meat and drink to doe the will of his Father for the benefit of so winning a conversation If he sate with sinners he converted them if with converts he confirmed and instructed them if with the poor he fed them if with the rich in
substance he made them richer in grace At whose board did he ever sit and left not his host a gainer The poor Bridegroom entertains him and hath his water-pots fill'd with Wine Simon the Pharisee entertains him and hath his table honoured with the publick remission of a penitent sinner with the heavenly doctrine of remission Zachaeus entertains him Salvation came that day to his house with the Author of it That presence made the Publican a Son of Abraham Matthew is recompensed for his feast with an Apostleship Martha and Mary entertain him and besides Divine instruction receive their Brother from the dead O Saviour whether thou feast us or we feast thee in both of them is Blessedness Where a Publican is the Feast-master it is no marvel if the guests be Publicans and sinners Whether they came alone out of the hope of that mercy which they saw their fellow had found or whether Matthew invited them to be partners of that plentiful grace whereof he had tasted I inquire not Publicans and sinners will flock together the one hateful for their trade the other for their vicious life Common contempt hath wrought them to an unanimity and sends them to seek mutual comfort in that society which all others held loathsome and contagious Moderate correction humbleth and shameth the offender whereas a cruel severity makes men desperate and drives them to those courses whereby they are more dangerously infected How many have gone into the prison faulty and returned flagitious If Publicans were not sinners they were no whit beholden to their neighbours What a table-full was here The Son of God beset with Publicans and sinners O happy Publicans and sinners that had found out their Saviour O merciful Saviour that disdained not Publicans and sinners What sinner can fear to kneel before thee when he sees Publicans and sinners sit with thee Who can fear to be despised of thy meekness and mercy which didst not abhorre to converse with the outcasts of men Thou didst not despise the Thief confessing upon the Cross nor the sinner weeping upon thy feet nor the Canaanite crying to thee in the way nor the blushing Adulteress nor the odious Publican nor the forswearing Disciple nor the persecutor of Disciples nor thine own executioners how can we be unwelcome to thee if we come with tears in our eyes faith in our hearts restitution in our hands O Saviour our breasts are too oft shut upon thee thy bosome is ever open to us We are as great sinners as the consorts of these Publicans why should we despair of a room at thy Table The squint-eyed Pharisees look a-cross at all the actions of Christ where they should have admired his Mercy they cavil at his Holinesle They said to his Disciples Why eateth your Master with Publicans and sinners They durst not say thus to the Master whose answer they knew would soon have convinced them This winde they hoped might shake the weak faith of the Disciples They speak where they may be most likely to hurt All the crue of Satanical instruments have learnt this craft of their old Tutor in Paradise We cannot reverence that man whom we think unholy Christ had lost the hearts of his followers if they had entertained the least suspicion of his impurity which the murmure of these envious Pharisees would fain insinuate He cannot be worthy to be followed that is unclean He cannot but be unclean that eateth with Publicans and sinners Proud and foolish Pharisees ye fast whiles Christ eateth ye fast in your houses whiles Christ eateth in other mens ye fast with your own whiles Christ feasts with sinners but if ye fast in pride while Christ eats in humility if ye fast at home for merit or popularity while Christ feasts with sinners for compassion for edification for conversion your fast is unclean his feast is holy ye shall have your portion with hypocrites when those Publicans and sinners shall be glorious When these censurers thought the Disciples had offended they speak not to them but to their Master Why doe thy Disciples that which is not lawfull now when they thought Christ offended they speak not to him but to the Disciples Thus like true make-bates they goe about to make a breach in the family of Christ by setting off the one from the other The quick eye of our Saviour hath soon espied the pack of their fraud and therefore he takes the words out of the mouthes of his Disciples into his own They had spoke of Christ to the Disciples Christ answers for the Disciples concerning himself The whole need not the Physician but the sick According to the two qualities of pride scorn and over-weening these insolent Pharisees over-rated their own holinesse contemned the noted unholinesse of others As if themselves were not tainted with secret sins as if others could not be cleansed by repentance The searcher of hearts meets with their arrogance and findes those justiciaries sinfull those sinners just The spiritual Physician findes the sicknesse of those sinners wholsome the health of those Pharisees desperate that wholsome because it calls for the help of the Physician this desperate because it needs not Every soul is sick those most that feel it not Those that feel it complain those that complain have cure those that feel it not shall finde themselves dying ere they can wish to recover O blessed Physician by Whose stripes we are healed by whose death we live happy are they that are under thy hands sick as of sin so of sorrow for sin It is as unpossible they should die as it is unpossible for thee to want either skill or power or mercy Sin hath made us sick unto death make thou us but as sick of our sins we are as safe as thou art gracious Christ among the Gergesens or Legion and the Gadarene Herd I Do not any where finde so furious a Demoniack as amongst the Gergesens Satan is most tyrannous where he is obeyed most Christ no sooner sailed over the lake then he was met with two possessed Gadarenes The extreme rage of the one hath drowned the mention of the other Yet in the midst of all that cruelty of the evil spirit there was sometimes a remission if not an intermission of vexation If oft-times Satan caught him then sometimes in the same violence he caught him not It was no thank to that malignant one who as he was indefatigable in his executions so unmeasurable in his malice but to the mercifull over-ruling of God who in a gracious respect to the weakness of his poor creatures limits the spightfull attempts of that immortal enemy and takes off this Mastive whiles we may take breath He who in his justice gives way to some onsets of Satan in his mercy restrains them so regarding our deservings that withall he regards our strength If way should be given to that malicious spirit we could not subsist no violent thing can endure and if Satan might have his will we should
day of universal Sessions They believe lesse then Devils that either doubt of or deny that day of finall retribution Oh the wonderfull mercy of our God that both to wicked men and spirits respites the utmost of their torment He might upon the first instant of the fall of Angels have inflicted on them the highest extremity of his vengeance He might upon the first sins of our youth yea of our nature have swept us away and given us our portion in that fierie lake He staies a time for both though with this difference of mercy to us men that here not onely is a delay but may be an utter prevention of punishment which to the evil spirits is altogether impossible They do suffer they must suffer and though they have now deserved to suffer all they must yet they must once suffer more then they do Yet so doth this evil spirit expostulate that he sues I beseech thee torment me not The world is well changed since Satan's first onset upon Christ Then he could say If thou be the Son of God now Jesu the Son of the most high God then All these will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me now I beseech thee torment me not The same power when he lists can change the note of the Tempter to us How happy are we that have such a Redeemer as can command the Devils to their chains Oh consider this ye lawlesse sinners that have said Let us break his bonds and cast his cords from us However the Almighty suffers you for a judgement to have free scope to evil and ye can now impotently resist the revealed will of your Creator yet the time shall come when ye shall see the very masters whom ye have served the powers of darkness unable to avoid the revenges of God How much lesse shall man strive with his Maker man whose breath is in his nostrils whose house is clay whose foundation is the dust Nature teaches every creature to wish a freedome from pain The foulest spirits cannot but love themselves and this love must needs produce a deprecation of evil Yet what a thing is this to hear the Devil at his prayers I beseech thee torment me not Devotion is not guilty of this but fear There is no grace in the suit of Devils but nature no respect of Glory to their Creator but their own ease They cannot pray against sin but against torment for sin What news is it now to hear the profanest mouth in extremity imploring the Sacred Name of God when the Devils do so The worst of all creatures hates punishment and can say Lead me not into pain onely the good heart can say Lead me not into temptation If we can as heartily pray against sin for the avoiding of displeasure as against punishment when we have displeased there is true Grace in the Soul Indeed if we could fervently pray against Sin we should not need to pray against Punishment which is no other then the inseparable shadow of that body but if we have not laboured against our Sins in vain do we pray against Punishment God must be just and the wages of sin is death It pleased our Holy Saviour not only to let fall words of command upon this spirit but to interchange some speeches with him All Christ's actions are not for example It was the errour of our Grandmother to hold chat with Satan That God who knows the craft of that old Serpent and our weak simplicity hath charged us not to enquire of an evil spirit Surely if the Disciples returning to Jacob's Well wondred to see Christ talk with a woman well may we wonder to see him talking with an unclean Spirit Let it be no presumption O Saviour to ask upon what grounds thou didst this wherein we may not follow thee We know that sin was excepted in thy conformity of thy self to us we know there was no guile found in thy mouth no possibility of taint in thy nature in thine actions neither is it hard to conceive how the same thing may be done by thee without sin which we cannot but sin in doing There is a vast difference in the intention in the Agent For on the one side thou didst not ask the name of the spirit as one that knew not and would learn by inquiring but that by the confession of that mischief which thou pleasedst to suffer the grace of the Cure might be the more conspicuous the more glorious So on the other God and man might doe that safely which mere man cannot doe without danger Thou mightest touch the Leprosie and not be legally unclean because thou touchedst it to heal it didst not touch it with possibility of infection So mightest thou who by reason of the perfection of thy Divine nature wert uncapable of any stain by the interlocution with Satan safely conferre with him whom corrupt man pre-disposed to the danger of such a parlee may not meddle with without sin because not without perill It is for none but God to hold discourse with Satan Our surest way is to have as little to doe with that Evil one as we may and if he shall offer to maintain conference with us by his secret Tentations to turn our speech unto our God with the Archangel The Lord rebuke thee Satan It was the presupposition of him that knew it that not onely men but spirits have names This then he asks not out of an ignorance or curiosity nothing could be hid from him who calleth the Stars and all the hoasts of Heaven by their names but out of a just respect to the glory of the Miracle he was working whereto the notice of the name would not a little avail For if without inquiry or confession our Saviour had ejected this evil spirit it had passed for the single dispossession of one onely Devil whereas now it appears there was a combination and hellish champertie in these powers of darknesse which were all forced to vaile unto that Almighty command Before the Devil had spoken singularly of himself What have I to doe with thee and I beseech thee torment me not Our Saviour yet knowing that there was a multitude of Devils lurking in that breast who dissembled their presence wrests it out of the Spirit by this interrogation What is thy name Now can those wicked ones no longer hide themselves He that asked the question forced the answer My name is Legion The author of discord hath borrowed a name of war from that military order of discipline by which the Jews were subdued doth the Devil fetch his denomination They were many yet they say My name not Our name though many they speak as one they act as one in this possession There is a marvellous accordance even betwixt evil spirits That Kingdome is not divided for then it could not stand I wonder not that wicked men do so conspire in evil that there is such unanimity in the broachers and abettors of errors
his O Saviour when we look into those sacred Acts and monuments of thine we finde many a life which thou preservedst from perishing some that had perished by thee recalled never any by thee destroyed Only one poor fig-tree as the reall Emblem of thy severity to the unfruitfull was blasted and withered by thy curse But to man how ever favourable and indulgent wert thou So repelled as thou wert so reviled so persecuted laid for sold betrayed apprehended arraigned condemned crucified yet what one man didst thou strike dead for these hainous indignities Yea when one of thine enemies lost but an eare in that ill quarrell thou gavest that eare to him who came to take life from thee I finde some whom thou didst scourge and correct as the sacrilegious money-changers none whom thou killedst Not that thou either lovest not or requirest not the duly-severe execution of justice Whose sword is it that Princes bear but thine Offenders must smart and bleed This is a just sequel but not the intention of thy coming thy will not thy drift Good Princes make wholesome Laws for the well-ordering of their people there is no authority without due coercion The violation of these good Laws is followed with death whose end was preservation life order and this not so much for revenge of an offence past as for prevention of future mischief How can we then enough love and praise thy mercy O thou preserver of men How should we imitate thy saving and beneficent disposition towards mankinde as knowing the more we can help to save the nearer we come to thee that camest to save all and the more destructive we are the more we resemble him who is Abaddon a murtherer from the beginning The Ten Lepers THE Samaritanes were tainted not with Schism but Heresie but Paganism our Saviour yet blaks them not but makes use of the way as it lies and bestows upon them the curtesie of some Miracles Some kind of commerce is lawfull even with those without Terms of intirenesse and leagues of inward amity are here unfit unwarrantable dangerous but civil respects and wise uses of them for our convenience or necessity need not must not be forborn Ten Lepers are here met those that are excluded from all other society seek the company of each other Fellowship is that we all naturally affct though even in Leprosie Ever Lepers will flock to their fellows where shall we finde one spiritual Leper alone Drunkards profane persons Hereticks will be sure to consort with their matches Why should not Gods Saints delight in an holy communion Why is it not our chief joy to assemble in good Jews and Samaritanes could not abide one another yet here in Leprosie they accord here was one Samaritane Leper with the Jewish community of passion hath made them friends whom even Religion disjoyned What virtue there is in misery that can unite even the most estranged hearts I seek not mystery in the number These Ten are met together and all meet Christ not casually but upon due deliberation they purposely waited for this opportunity No marvell if they thought no attendance long to be delivered from so loathsome and miserable a disease Great Naaman could be glad to come from Syria to Judaea in hope of leaving that hatefull guest behinde him We are all sensible enough of our bodily infirmities Oh that we could be equally weary of the sicknesses and deformities of our better part Surely our spiritual maladies are no lesse then mortal if they be not healed neither can they heal alone These men had died Lepers if they had not met with Christ Oh Saviour give us grace to seek thee and patience to wait for thee and then we know thou wilt finde us and we remedy Where do these Lepers attend for Christ but in a village and that not in the street of it but in the entrance in the passage to it The Cities the Towns were not for them the Law of God had shut them out from all frequence from all conversation Care of safety and fear of infection was motive enough to make their neighbours observant of this piece of the Law It is not the body only that is herein respected by the God of Spirits Those that are spiritually contagious must be still and ever avoided they must be separated from us we must be separated from them they from us by just censures or if that be neglected we from them by a voluntary declination of their familiar conversation Besides the benefit of our safety wickednesse would soon be ashamed of it self if it were not for the incouragement of companions Solitarinesse is the fittest antidote for spiritual infection It were happy for the wicked man if he could be separated from himself These Lepers that came to seek Christ yet finding him they stand afar off whether for reverence or for security God had enacted this distance It was their charge if they were occasioned to passe through the streets to cry out I am unclean It was no lesse then their duty to proclaim their own infectiousnesse there was not danger only but sin in their approach How happy were it if in those wherein there is more peril there were more remotenesse lesse silence O God we are all Lepers to thee overspred with the loathsome scurf of our own corruptions It becomes us well in the conscience of our shame and vileness to stand afar off We cannot be too awfull of thee too much ashamed of our selves Yet these men though they be far off in the distance of place yet they are near in respect of the acceptance of their Prayer The Lord is near unto all that call upon him in truth O Saviour whiles we are far off from thee thou art near unto us Never dost thou come so close to us as when in an holy bashfulnesse we stand furthest off Justly dost thou exspect we should be at once bold and bashfull How boldly should we come to the throne of Grace in respect of the grace of that throne how fearfully in respect of the awfulness of the Majesty of that throne and that unworthiness which we bring with us into that dreadfull presence He that stands near may whisper but he that stands afar off must cry aloud so did these Lepers Yet not so much distance as passion strained their throats That which can give voice to the Dumb can much more give loudness to the Vocal All cried together these ten voices were united in one sound that their conjoined forces might expugn that Gracious eare Had every man spoken singly for himself this had made no noise neither yet any shew of a servent importunity Now as they were all affected with one common disease so they all set out their throats together and though Jews and Samaritanes agree in one joynt supplication Even where there are ten tongues the word is but one that the condescent may be universal When we would obtain common favours we may not content our selves
thou wouldst not then be a Judge yet thou wilt once be Thou wouldst not in thy first coming judge the sins of men thou wilt come to judge them in thy second The time shall come when upon that just and glorious Tribunal thou shalt judge every man according to his works That we may not one day hear thee say Goe ye cursed let us now hear thee say Goe sin no more The thankfull Penitent ONE while I finde Christ invited by a Publican now by a Pharisee Whereever he went he made better chear then he found in an happy exchange of spiritual repast for bodily Who knows not the Pharisees to have been the proud enemies of Christ men over-conceited of themselves contemptuous of others severe in show Hypocrites in deed strict Sectaries insolent Justiciaries Yet here one of them invites Christ and that in good earnest The man was not like his fellows captious not ceremonious had he been of their stamp the omission of washing the feet had been mortall No profession hath not yielded some good Nicodemus and Gamaliel were of the same strain Neither is it for nothing that the Evangelist having branded this Sect for despising the counsell of God against themselves presently subjoyns this history of Simon the Pharisee as an exempt man O Saviour thou canst finde out good Pharisees good Publicans yea a good Thief upon the Crosse and that thou maiest finde thou canst make them so At the best yet he was a Pharisee whose table thou here refusedst not So didst thou in wisdome and mercy attemper thy self as to become all things to all men that thou mightest win some Thy harbenger was rough as in cloaths so in disposition professedly harsh and austere thy self wert milde and sociable So it was fit for both He was a preacher of Penance thou the author of comfort and Salvation He made way for Grace thou gavest it Thou hast bidden us to follow thy self not thy fore-runner That then which Politicks and time-servers doe for earthly advantages we will doe for spiritual frame our selves to all companies not in evil but in good yea in indifferent things What wonder is it that thou who cam'st down from Heaven to frame thy self to our nature shouldst whiles thou wert on earth frame thy self to the several dispositions of men Catch not at this O ye licentious Hypocrites men of all hours that can eat with gluttons drink with drunkards sing with ribalds scoffe with profane scorners and yet talk holily with the religious as if ye had hence any colour of your changeable conformity to all fashions Our Saviour never sinn'd for any man's sake though for our sakes he was sociable that he might keep us from sinning Can ye so converse with leud good fellows as that ye represse their sins redresse their exorbitances win them to God now ye walk in the steps of him that stuck not to sit down in the Pharisees house There sate the Saviour and Behold a woman in the City that was a sinner I marvell not that she is led in with a note of wonder wonder both on her part and on Christs That any sinner that a sensual sinner obdured in a notorious trade of evil should voluntarily out of a true remorse for her leudness seek to a Saviour it is worthy of an accent of admiration The noise of the Gospel is common but where is the power of it it hath store of hearers but few Converts Yet were there no wonder in her if it were not with reference to the power and mercy of Christ his power that thus drew the sinner his mercy that received her O Saviour I wonder at her but I blesse thee for her by whose only Grace she was both moved and accepted A sinner Alas who was not who is not so Not only in many things we sin all but in all things we all let fall many sins Had there been a woman not a sinner it had been beyond wonder One man there was that was not a sinner even he that was more then man that God and Man who was the refuge of this sinner but never woman that sinned not Yet he said not a Woman that had sinned but that was a sinner An action doth not give denomination but a trade Even the wise Charity of Christians much more the mercy of God can distinguish between sins of infirmity and practice of sin and esteem us not by a transient act but by a permanent condition The woman was noted for a luxurious and incontinent life What a deal of variety there is of sins That which faileth cannot be numbred Every sin continued deserves to brand the Soul with this style Here one is pickt out from the rest she is not noted for Murder for Theft for Idolatry only her Lust makes her a woman that was a sinner Other Vices use not to give the owner this title although they should be more hainous then it Wantons may flatter themselves in the indifferency or slightness of this offence their Souls shall need no other conveiance to Hell then this which cannot be so pleasing to Nature as it is hatefull to God who so speaks of it as if there were no sins but it a Woman that was a sinner She was a sinner now she is not her very presence argues her change Had she been still in her old trade she would no more have indured the sight of Christ then that Devil did which cried out Art thou come to torment me Her eyes had been lamps and fires of Lust not fountains of tears her hairs had been nets to catch foolish lovers not a towell for her Saviour's feet yet still she carries the name of what she was a scar still remains after the wound healed Simon will be ever the Leper and Matthew the Publican How carefully should we avoid those actions which may ever stain us What a difference there is betwixt the carriage and proceedings of God and men The mercy of God as it calleth those things that are not as if they were so it calleth those things that were as if they were not I will remember your iniquities no more As some skilfull Chirurgion so sets the bone or heals the sore that it cannot be seen where the complaint was Man's word is that which is done cannot be undone but the omnipotent goodness of God doth as it were undoe our once-committed sins Take away my iniquity and thou shalt finde none What we were in our selves we are not to him since he hath changed us from our selves O God why should we be niggardly where thou art liberal why should we be reading those lines which thou hast not onely crossed but quite blotted yea wiped out It is a good word she was a sinner To be wicked is odious to God Angels Saints men to have been so is blessed and glorious I rejoice to look back and see my Egyptians lying dead upon the shore that I may praise the Author of my deliverance and
she was not conceiving as well thou mightest were not this woman a Convert she would never have offered her self into this presence Her modesty and her tears bewray her change and if she be changed why is the censured for what she is not Lastly how strong did it savour of the leven of thy profession that thou supposest were she what she was that it could not stand with the knowledge and holinesse of a Prophet to admit of her least touch yea of her presence Whereas on the one side outward conversation in it self makes no man unclean or holy but according to the disposition of the patient on the other such was the purity and perfection of this thy glorious guest that it was not possibly infectible nor any way obnoxious to the danger of others sin He that said once Who touched me in regard of virtue issuing from him never said Whom have I touched in regard of any contagion incident to him We sinfull creatures in whom the Prince of this world findes too much may easily be tainted with other mens sins He who came to take away the sins of the world was uncapable of pollution by sin Had the woman then been still a sinner thy censure of Christ was proud and unjust The Pharisee spake but it was within himself and now behold Jesus answering said What we think we speak to our hearts and we speak to God and he equally hears as if it came out of our mouths Thoughts are not free Could men know and convince them they would be no lesse liable to censure then if they came forth clothed with words God who hears them judges of them accordingly So here the heart of Simon speaks Jesus answers Jesus answers him but with a Parable He answers many a thought with Judgment the blasphemy of the heart the murder of the heart the adultery of the heart are answered by him with reall vengeance For Simon our Saviour saw his errour was either out of simple ignorance or weak mistaking where he saw no malice then it is enough to answer with a gentle conviction The convictive answer of Christ is by way of Parable The wisdome of God knows how to circumvent us for our gain and can speak that pleasingly by a prudent circumlocution which right-down would not be digested Had our Saviour said in plain terms Simon whether dost thou or this sinner love me more the Pharisee could not for shame but have stood upon his reputation and in a scorn of the comparison have protested his exceeding respects to Christ Now ere he is aware he is fetcht in to give sentence against himself for her whom he condemned O Saviour thou hast made us fishers of men how should we learn of thee so to bait our hooks that they may be most likely to take Thou the great housholder of thy Church hast provided victuals for thy family thou hast appointed us to dresse them if we do not so cook them as that they may fit the palats to which they are intended we do both lose our labour and thy cost The Parable is of two Debtors to one Creditor the one owed a lesser sum the other a greater both are forgiven It was not the purpose of him that propounded it that we should stick in the bark God is our Creditor our sins our Debts we are all Debtors but one more deep then another No man can pay this Debt alone satisfaction is not possible only remission can discharge us God doth in mercy forgive as well the greatest as the least sins Our love to God is proportionable to the sense of our remission So then the Pharisee cannot chuse but confesse that the more and greater the sin is the greater mercy in the forgivenesse and the more mercy in the forgiver the greater obligation and more love in the forgiven Truth from whose mouth soever it falls is worth taking up Our Saviour praises the true judgment of a Pharisee It is an injurious indiscretion in those who are so prejudiced against the persons that they reject the truth He that would not quench the smoaking flax incourages even the least good As the carefull Chirurgion strokes the arme ere he strikes the vein so did Christ here ere he convinces the Pharisee of his want of love he graceth him with a fair approbation of his judgment Yet the while turning both his face and his speech to the poor Penitent as one that cared more for a true humiliation for sin then for a false pretence of respect and innocence With what a dejected and abashed countenance with what earth-fixed eyes do we imagine the poor woman stood when she saw her Saviour direct his face and words to her She that durst but stand behinde him and steal the falling of some teares upon his feet with what a blushing astonishment doth she behold his sidereall countenance cast upon her Whiles his eye was turned towards this Penitent his speech was turned to the Pharisee concerning that Penitent by him mistaken Seest thou this Woman He who before had said If this man were a Prophet he would have known what manner of Woman this is now heares Seest thou this Woman Simon saw but her outside Jesus lets him see that he saw her heart and will thus convince the Pharisee that he is more then a Prophet who knew not her conversation only but her Soul The Pharisee that went all by appearance shall by her deportment see the proof of her good disposition it shall happily shame him to hear the comparison of the wants of his own entertainments with the abundance of hers It is strange that any of this formall Sect should be defective in their Lotions Simon had not given water to so great a guest she washes his feet with her teares By how much the water of the eye was more precious then the water of the earth so much was the respect and courtesie of this Penitent above the neglected office of the Pharisee What use was there of a Towell where was no water She that made a fountain of her eyes made precious napary of her hair that better flax shamed the linen in the Pharisees chest A kisse of the cheek had wont to be pledge of the welcome of their guests Simon neglects to make himself thus happy she redoubles the kisses of her humble thankfulnesse upon the blessed feet of her Saviour The Pharisee omits ordinary oyle for the head she supplies the most precious and fragrant oyle to his feet Now the Pharisee reades his own taxation in her praise and begins to envy where he had scorned It is our fault O Saviour if we mistake thee We are ready to think so thou have the substance of good usage thou regardest not the complements and ceremonies whereas now we see thee to have both meat and welcome in the Pharisees house and yet hear thee glance at his neglect of washing kissing anointing Doubtlesse omission of due circumstances in thy
do they foam and gnash whom he hath drawn to an impatient repining at God's afflictive hand How do they pine away who hourly decay and languish in Grace Oh the lamentable condition of sinfull Souls so much more dangerous by how much lesse felt But all this while what part hath the Moon in this mans misery How comes the name of that goodly Planet in question Certainly these diseases of the brain follow much the course of this queen of moisture That power which she hath in humors is drawn to the advantage of the malicious spirit her predominancy is abused to his despight whether it were for the better opportunity of his vexation or whether for the drawing of envy and discredit upon so noble a creature It is no news with that subtle enemie to fasten his effects upon those secondary causes which he usurps to his own purposes Whatever be the means he is the tormentor Much wisdome needs to disstinguish betwixt the evil spirit abusing the good creature and the good creature abused by the evil spirit He that knew all things asks questions How long hath he been so Not to inform himself That Devil could have done nothing without the knowledge without the leave of the God of Spirits but that by the confession of the Parent he might lay forth the wofull condition of the childe that the thank and glory of the Cure might be so much greater as the complaint was more grievous He answered From a childe O God how I adore the depth of thy wise and just and powerfull dispensation Thou that couldst say I have loved Jacob and Esau have I hated ere the children had done good or evil thoughtest also good ere this Childe could be capable of good or evil to yield him over to the power of that Evil one What need I ask for any other reason then that which is the rule of all Justice thy Will Yet even these weak eyes can see the just grounds of thine actions That childe though an Israelite was conceived and born in that sin which both could and did give Satan an interest in him Besides the actual sins of the Parents deserved this revenge upon that piece of themselves Rather O God let me magnific this Mercy that we and our s escape this Judgment then question thy Justice that some escape not How just might it have been with thee that we who have given way to Satan in our sins should have way and scope given to Satan over us in our punishments It is thy praise that any of us are free it is no quarrell that some suffer Do I wonder to see Satans bodily possession of this yong man from a childe when I see his spiritual possession of every son of Adam from a longer date not from a childe but from the womb yea in it Why should not Satan possesse his own we are all by nature the sons of wrath It is time for us to renounce him in Baptism whose we are till we be regenerate He hath right to us in our first birth our new birth acquits us from him and cuts off all his claim How miserable are they that have nothing but Nature Better had it been to have been unborn then not to be born again And if this poor soul from an infant were thus miserably handled having done none actual evil how just cause have we to fear the like Judgments who by many foul offences have deserved to draw this executioner upon us O my Soul thou hast not room enough for thankfulnesse to that good God who hath not delivered thee up to that malignant Spirit The distressed Father sits not still neglects not means I brought him to thy Disciples Doubtlesse the man came first to seek for Christ himself finding him absent he makes suit to the Disciples To whom should we have recourse in all our spirituall complaints but to the agents and messengers of God The noise of the like cures had surely brought this man with much confidence to crave their succour and now how cold was he at the heart when he found that his hopes were frustrate They could not cast him out No doubt the Disciples tried their best they laid their wonted charge upon this dumb spirit but all in vain They that could come with joy and triumph to their Master and say The Devils are subject to us finde now themselves matched with a stubborn and refractory spirit Their way was hitherto smooth and fair they met with no rub till now And now surely the father of the Demoniack was not more troubled at this event then themselves How could they chuse but fear lest their Master had with himself withdrawn that spiritual power which they had formerly exercised Needs must their heart fail them with their successe The man complained not of their impotence it were fondly injurious to accuse them for that which they could not doe had the want been in their will they had well deserved a querulous language it was no fault to want power Only he complains of the stubbornnesse and laments the invinciblenesse of that evil spirit I should wrong you O ye blessed Followers of Christ if I should say that as Israel when Moses was gone up into the Mount lost their belief with their guide so that ye missing your Master who was now ascended up to his Tabor were to seek for your Faith Rather the Wisdome of God saw reason to check your over-assured forwardnesse and both to pull down your hearts by a just humiliation in the sense of your own weaknesse and to raise up your hearts to new acts of dependance upon that soveraign power from which your limited virtue was derived What was more familiar to the Disciples then ejecting of Devils In this only it is denied them Our good God sometimes findes it requisite to hold us short in those abilities whereof we make least doubt that we may feel whence we had them God will be no lesse glorified in what we cannot doe then in what we can doe If his Graces were alwaies at our command and ever alike they would seem natural and soon run into contempt now we are justly held in an awfull dependance upon that gracious hand which so gives as not to cloy us and so denies as not to discourage us Who could now but expect that our Saviour should have pitied and bemoned the condition of this sad father and miserable son and have let fall some words of comfort upon them In stead whereof I hear him chiding and complaining O faithlesse and perverse generation how long shall I be with you how long shall I suffer you Complaining not of that wofull father and more wofull son it was not his fashion to adde affliction to the distressed to break such bruised reeds but of those Scribes who upon the failing of the successe of this suit had insulted upon the disability of the Followers of Christ and depraved his power although perhaps this impatient father
how apt passionate mindes are to take all occasions to renew their sorrow every Object affects them When she saw but the Chamber of her dead Brother straight she thinks there Lazarus was wont to lye and then she wept afresh when the Table There Lazarus was wont to sit and then new teares arise when the Garden There Lazarus had wont to walk and now again she weeps How much more do these friends suppose the Passions would be stirred with the sight of the Grave when she must needs think There is Lazarus O Saviour if the place of the very dead corps of our friend have power to draw our hearts thither and to affect us more deeply how should our hearts be drawn to and affected with Heaven where thou sittest at the right hand of thy Father There O thou which wert dead and art alive is thy body and thy Soul present and united to thy glorious Deity Thither O thither let our access be not to mourn there where is no place for sorrow but to rejoyce with joy unspeakable and glorious and more and more to long for that thy beatifical presence Their indulgent love mistook Marie's errand their thoughts how kind soever were much too low whiles they supposed she went to a dead Brother she went to a living Saviour The world hath other conceits of the actions and carriage of the regenerate then are truely intended setting such constructions upon them as their own carnal reason suggests they think them dying when behold they live sorrowful when they are alwaies rejoycing poor whiles they make many rich How justly do we appeal from them as incompetent Judges and pity those misinterpretations which we cannot avoid Both the Sisters met Christ not both in one posture Mary is still noted as for more Passion so for more Devotion she that before sate at the feet of Jesus now falls at his feet That presence had wont to be familiar to her and not without some outward homeliness now it fetches her upon her knees in an awful veneration whether out of a reverend acknowledgment of the secret excellency and power of Christ or out of a dumb intimation of that suit concerning her dead Brother which she was afraid to utter The very gesture it self was supplicatory What position of body can be so fit for us when we make our address to our Saviour It is an irreligious unmannerliness for us to goe less Where the heart is affected with an awful acknowledgement of Majesty the body cannot but bow Even before all her neighbours of Jerusalem doth Mary thus fall down at the feet of Jesus so many witnesses as she had so many spies she had of that forbidden observance It was no less then Excommunication for any body to confess him yet good Mary not fearing the informations that might be given by those Jewish Gossips adores him and in her silent gesture saies as much as her Sister had spoken before Thou art the Christ the Son of God Those that would give Christ his right must not stand upon scrupulous fears Are we naturally timorous Why do we not fear the denial the exclusion of the Almighty Without shall be the fearfull Her humble prostration is seconded by a lamentable complaint Lord if thou hadst been here my brother had not died The Sisters are both in one mind both in one speech and both of them in one speech bewray both strength and infirmity strength of Faith in ascribing so much power to Christ that his presence could preserve from death infirmity in supposing the necessity of a presence for this purpose Why Mary could not thine Omnipotent Saviour as well in absence have commanded Lazarus to live Is his hand so short that he can doe nothing but by contaction If his Power were finite how could he have forbidden the seizure of death if infinite how could it be limited to place or hindered by distance It is a weakness of Faith to measure success by means and means by presence and to tye effects to both when we deal with an Almighty agent Finite causes work within their own sphere all places are equally near and all effects equally easie to the infinite O Saviour whiles thou now sittest gloriously in Heaven thou dost no less impart thy self unto us then if thou stoodst visibly by us then if we stood locally by thee no place can make difference of thy virtue and aid This was Mary's moan no motion no request sounded from her to her Saviour Her silent suit is returned with a mute answer no notice is taken of her error Oh that marvellous mercy that connives at our faulty infirmities All the reply that I hear of is a compassionate groan within himself O blessed Jesu thou that wert free from all sin wouldst not be free from strong affections Wisdome and Holiness should want much work if even vehement passions might not be quitted from offence Mary wept her tears drew on tears from her friends all their tears united drew groans from thee Even in thine Heaven thou dost no less pity our sorrows thy glory is free from groans but abounds with compassion and mercy if we be not sparing of our tears thou canst not be insensible of our sorrows How shall we imitate thee if like our looking-glass we do not answer tears and weep on them that weep upon us Lord thou knewest in absence that Lazarus was dead and dost thou not know where he was buried Surely thou wert further off when thou sawst and reportedst his death then thou wert from the grave thou inquiredst of thou that knewest all things yet askest what thou knowest Where have ye laid him Not out of need but out of will that as in thy sorrow so in thy question thou mightest depress thy self in the opinion of the beholders for the time that the glory of thine instant Miracle might be the greater the less it was exspected It had been all one to thy Omnipotence to have made a new Lazarus out of nothing or in that remoteness to have commanded Lazarus wheresoever he was to come forth but thou wert neither willing to work more miracle then was requisite nor yet unwilling to fix the minds of the people upon the exspectation of some marvellous thing that thou meantest to work and therefore askest Where have you laid him They are not more glad of the question then ready for the answer Come and see It was the manner of the Jews as likewise of those Egyptians among whom they had sojourned to lay up the dead bodies of their friends with great respect more cost was wont to be bestowed on some of their graves then on their houses as neither ashamed then nor unwilling to shew the decency of their sepulture they say Come and see More was hoped for from Christ then a mere view they meant and exspected that his eye should draw him on to some further action O Saviour whiles we desire our spiritual resuscitation how should we labour to
that all this while stopped that Gracious mouth thou speakest to him that cannot fear those faces he hath made he that hath charged us to confesse him cannot but confesse himself Jesus saith unto him Thou hast said There is a time to speak and a time to keep silence He that is the Wisdome of his Father hath here given us a pattern of both We may not so speak as to give advantage to cavils we may not be so silent as to betray the Truth Thou shalt have no more cause proud and insulting Caiaphas to complain of a speechlesse prisoner now thou shalt hear more then thou demandedst Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of Heaven There spake my Saviour the voice of God and not of man Hear now insolent High Priest and be confounded That Son of man whom thou seest is the Son of God whom thou canst not see That Son of man that Son of God that God and man whom thou now seest standing despicably before thy Consistorial seat in a base dejectednesse him shalt thou once with horrour and trembling see majestically sitting on the Throne of Heaven attended with thousand thousands of Angels and coming in the clouds to that dreadfull Judgment wherein thy self amongst other damned malefactors shalt be presented before that glorious tribunal of his and adjudged to thy just torments Goe now wretched Hypocrite and rend thy garments whiles in the mean time thou art worthy to have thy Soul rent from thy body for thy spightfull Blasphemy against the Son of God Onwards thy pretence is fair and such as cannot but receive applause from thy compacted crue What need have we of witnesses behold now ye have heard his Blasphemy What think ye And they answered and said He is guilty of death What heed is to be taken of mens judgment So light are they upon the balance that one dram of prejudice or forestalment turns the scales Who were these but the grave Benchers of Jerusalem the Synod of the choice Rabbies of Israel yet these passe sentence against the Lord of Life sentence of that death of his whereby if ever they shall be redeemed from the murder of their sentence O Saviour this is not the last time wherein thou hast received cruel dooms from them that professe Learning and Holiness What wonder is it if thy weak members suffer that which was indured by so perfect an head What care we to be judged by man's day when thou who art the Righteous Judge of the world wert thus misjudged by men Now is the fury of thy malignant enemies let loose upon thee what measure can be too hard for him that is denounced worthy of death Now those foul mouths defile thy Blessed Face with their impure spittle the venemous froth of their malice now those cruell hands are lifted up to buffet thy Sacred Cheeks now scorn and insultation triumphs over thine humble Patience Prophesie unto us thou Christ who it is that smote thee O dear Jesu what a beginning is here of a Passion There thou standst bound condemned spat upon buffetted derided by malicious sinners Thou art bound who camest to loose the bands of death thou art condemned whose sentence must acquit the world thou art spat upon that art fairer then the sons of men thou art buffeted in whose mouth was no guile thou art derided who art clothed with Glory and Majesty In the mean while how can I enough wonder at thy infinite Mercy who in the midst of all these wofull indignities couldst finde a time to cast thine eyes back upon thy frail and ingratefull Disciple and in whose gracious eare Peter's Cock sounded louder then all these reproaches O Saviour thou who in thine apprehension couldst forget all thy danger to correct and heal his over-lashing now in the heat of thy arraignment and condemnation canst forget thy own misery to reclaim his errour and by that seasonable glance of thine eye to strike his heart with a needfull remorse He that was lately so valiant to fight for thee now the next morning is so cowardly as to deny thee He shrinks at the voice of a Maid who was not daunted with the sight of a Band. O Peter had thy slip been sudden thy fall had been more easie Premonition aggravates thy offence that stone was foreshewed thee whereat thou stumbledst neither did thy warning more adde to thy guilt then thine own fore-resolution How didst thou vow though thou shouldst die with thy Master not to deny him Hadst thou said nothing but answered with a trembling silence thy shame had been the lesse Good purposes when they are not held do so far turn enemies to the entertainer of them as that they help to double both his sin and punishment Yet a single denial had been but easie thine I fear to speak it was lined with swearing and execration Whence then oh whence was this so vehement and peremptory disclamation of so gracious a Master What such danger had attended thy profession of his attendance One of thy fellows was known to the high-priest for a Follower of Jesus yet he not onely came himself into that open Hall in view of the Bench but treated with the Maid that kept the door to let thee in also She knew him what he was and could therefore speak to thee as brought in by his mediation Art not thou also one of this mans Disciples Thou also supposes the first acknowledged such yet what crime what danger was urged upon that noted Disciple What could have been more to thee Was it that thy heart misgave thee thou mightest be called to account for Malchus It was no thank to thee that that eare was healed neither did there want those that would think how near that eare was to the head Doubtlesse that busie fellow himself was not far off and his fellows and kinsmen would have been apt enough to follow thee besides thy Discipleship upon a bloodshed a riot a rescue Thy conscience hath made thee thus unduly timorous and now to be sure to avoid the imputation of that affray thou renouncest all knowledge of him in whose cause thou foughtest Howsoever the sin was hainous I tremble at such a Fall of so great an Apostle It was thou O Peter that buffetedst thy Master more then those Jews it was to thee that he turned the cheek from them as to view him by whom he most smarted he felt thee afar off and answered thee with a look such a look as was able to kill and revive at once Thou hast wounded me maiest thou now say O my Saviour thou hast wounded my heart with one of thine eyes that one Eye of thy Mercy hath wounded my heart with a deep remorse for my grievous sin with an indignation at my unthankfulnesse that one glance of thine hath resolved me into the tears of sorrow and contrition Oh that mine eyes were fountains and my cheeks channels that
the breast of Pilate His Conscience bids him spare his Popularity bids him kill His Wife warned by a Dream warns him to have no hand in the blood of that just man the importunate multitude presses him for a sentence of death All shifts have been tried to free the man whom he hath pronounced innocent All violent motives are urged to condemn that man whom malice pretends guilty In the height of this strife when Conscience and moral Justice were ready to sway Pilate's distracted heart to a just dismission I hear the Jews cry out If thou let this man goe thou art not Caesar's friend There is the word that strikes it dead it is now no time to demur any more In vain shall we hope that a carnal heart can prefer the care of his Soul to the care of his safety and honour God to Caesar Now Jesus must die Pilate hasts into the Judgment hall the Sentence sticks no longer in his teeth Let him be crucified Yet how foul so ever his Soul shall be with this fact his hands shall be clean He took water and washt his hands before the multitude saying I am innocent of the blood of this just person see ye to it Now all is safe I wis this is expiation enough water can wash off blood the hands can cleanse the heart protest thou art innocent and thou canst not be guilty Vain Hypocrite canst thou think to escape so Is Murder of no deeper dye Canst thou dream waking thus to avoid the charge of thy wives dream Is the guilt of the blood of the Son of God to be wip'd off with such ease What poor shifts do foolish sinners make to beguile themselves Any thing will serve to charm the Conscience when it lists to sleep But O Saviour whiles Pilate thinks to wash off the guilt of thy blood with water I know there is nothing that can wash off the guilt of this his sin but thy blood Oh do thou wash my Soul in that precious bathe and I shall be clean Oh Pilate if that very blood which thou sheddest do not wash off the guilt of thy bloodshed thy water doth but more defile thy Soul and intend that fire wherewith thou burnest Little did the desperate Jews know the weight of that blood which they were so forward to wish upon themselves and their children Had they deprecated their interest in that horrible murder they could not so easily have avoided the vengeance but now that they fetch it upon themselves by a willing execration what should I say but that they long for a curse it is pity they should not be miserable And have ye not now felt O Nation worthy of plagues have ye not now felt what blood it was whose guilt ye affected Sixteen hundred years are now passed since you wished your selves thus wretched have ye not been ever since the hate and scorn of the world Did ye not live many of you to see your City buried in ashes and drowned in blood to see your selves no Nation Was there ever people under Heaven that was made so famous a spectacle of miserie and desolation Have ye yet enough of that blood which ye called for upon your selves and your children Your former cruelties uncleannesses Idolatries cost you but some short Captivities God cannot but be just this Sin under which you now lie groaning and forlorn must needs be so much greater then these as your vastation is more and what can that be other then the murder of the Lord of Life Ye have what ye wisht be miserable till ye be penitent The Crucifixion THe sentence of Death is past and now who can with dry eyes behold the sad pomp of my Saviours bloody execution All the streets are full of gazing spectators waiting for this ruefull sight At last O Saviour there thou comest out of Pilate's gate bearing that which shall soon bear thee To expect thy Crosse was not torment enough thou must carry it All this while thou shalt not only see but feel thy death before it come and must help to be an agent in thine owne Passion It was not out of favour that those scornfull robes being stripped off thou art led to death in thine own cloaths So was thy face besmeared with blood so swoln and discoloured with buffetings that thou couldst not have been known but by thy wonted habit Now thine insulting enemies are so much more imperiously cruell as they are more sure of their successe Their mercilesse tormentings have made thee half dead already yet now as if they had done nothing they begin afresh and will force thy weakned and fainting nature to new tasks of pain The transverse of thy Crosse at least is upon thy shoulder when thou canst scarce goe thou must carry One kicks thee with his foot another strikes thee with his staffe another drags thee hastily by thy cord and more then one spur on thine unpitied wearinesse with angry commands of hast Oh true form and state of a servant All thy former actions O Saviour were though painfull yet free this as it is in itself servile so it is tyrannously inforced Inforced yet more upon thee by thy own Love to mankind then by their power and despight It was thy Father that laid upon thee the iniquity of us all It was thine own Mercy that caused thee to bear our sins upon the Crosse and to bear the Crosse with the curse annexed to it for our sins How much more voluntary must that needs be in thee which thou requirest to be voluntarily undertaken by us It was thy charge If any man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his crosse and follow me Thou didst not say Let him bear his crosse as forceably imposed by another but Let him take up his crosse as his free burden free in respect of his heart not in respect of his hand so free that he shall willingly undergoe it when it is laid upon him not so free as that he shall lay it upon himself unrequired O Saviour thou didst not snatch the Crosse out of the Souldiers hands and cast it upon thy shoulder but when they laid it on thy neck thou underwentest it The constraint was theirs the will was thine It was not so heavy to them or to Simon as it was to thee they felt nothing but the wood thou feltest it clogged with the load of the sins of the whole world No marvell if thou faintedst under that sad burden thou that bearest up the whole earth by thy word didst sweat and pant and groan under this unsupportable carriage O blessed Jesu how could I be confounded in my self to see thee after so much losse of blood and over-toilednesse of pain languishing under that fatal tree And yet why should it more trouble me to see thee sinking under thy Crosse now then to see thee anone hanging upon thy Crosse In both thou wouldst render thy self weak and miserable that thou mightest so much the
one sinner how much more when a world of sinners is perfectly ransomed from death and restored to Salvation Certainly if but one or two appeared all rejoyced all triumphed Neither could they but be herein sensible of their own happy advantage who by thy mediation are confirmed in their glorious estate since thou by the blood of thy Cross and power of thy Resurrection hast reconciled things not in earth onely but in Heaven But above all other the Love of thee their God and Saviour must needs heighten their joy and make thy Glory theirs It is their perpetual work to praise thee how much more now when such an occasion was offered as never had been since the world began never could be after when thou the God of Spirits hadst vanquished all the spiritual powers of darkness when thou the Lord of Life hadst conquered death for thee and all thine so as they may now boldly insult over their last enemy O death where is thy sting O grave where is thy victory Certainly if Heaven can be capable of an increase of joy and felicity never had those Blessed Spirits so great a cause of triumph and gratulation as in this day of thy glorious Resurrection How much more O dear Jesu should we men whose flesh thou didst assume unite revive for whose sake and in whose stead thou didst vouchsafe to suffer and die whose arrerages thou payedst in death and acquittedst in thy Resurrection whose Souls are discharged whose Bodies shall be raised by the power of thy rising how much more should we think we have cause to be over-joyed with the happy memory of this great work of thy Divine Power and unconceiveable Mercy Lo now how weak soever I am in my self yet in the confidence of this victorious Resurrection of my Saviour I dare boldly challenge and defie you O all ye adverse Powers Doe the worst ye can to my Soul in despight of you it shall be safe Is it Sin that threats me Behold this Resurrection of my Redeemer publishes my discharge My Surety was arrested and cast into the prison of his Grave had not the utmost farthing of mine arrerages been paid he could not have come forth He is come forth the Summe is fully satisfied What danger can there be of a discharged Debt Is it the Wrath of God Wherefore is that but for sin If my sin be defraied that quarrel is at an end and if my Saviour suffered it for me how can I fear to suffer it in my self That infinite Justice hates to be twice paid He is risen therefore he hath satisfied Who is he that condemneth It is Christ that died yea rather that is risen Is it Death it self Lo my Saviour that overcame death by dying hath triumph'd over him in his Resurrection How can I now fear a conquered enemy What harm is there in the Serpent but for his sting The sting of death is sin that is pulled out by my powerful Redeemer it cannot now hurt me it may refresh me to carry this cool Snake in my bosome O then my dear Saviour I bless thee for thy Death but I bless thee more for thy Resurrection That was a work of wonderful Humility of infinite Mercy this was a work of infinite Power In that was humane Weakness in this Divine Omnipotence In that thou didst die for our sins in this thou didst rise again for our Justification And now how am I conformable to thee if when thou art risen I lie still in the grave of my Corruptions How am I a lim of thy body if whiles thou hast that perfect dominion over death death hath dominion over me if whiles thou art alive and glorious I lie rotting in the dust of death I know the locomotive faculty is in the Head by the power of the Resurrection of thee our Head all we thy Members cannot but be raised As the earth cannot hold my body from thee in the day of the Second Resurrection so cannot sin withhold my Soul from thee in the First How am I thine if I be not risen and if I be risen with thee why do I not seek the things above where thou sittest at the right hand of God The Vault or Cave which Joseph had hewn out of the rock was large capable of no less then ten persons upon the mouth of it Eastward was that great stone rolled within it at the right hand in the North part of the Cave was hewn out a receptacle for the body three handfuls high from the pavement and a stone was accordingly fitted for the cover of that Grave Into this Cave the good Women finding the stone rolled away descended to seek the body of Christ and in it saw the Angels This was the Goal to which Peter and John ran finding the spoils of death the grave cloaths wrapped up and the napkin that was about the head folded up together and laid in a place by it self and as they came in haste so they return'd with wonder I marvel not at your speed O ye blessed Disciples if upon the report of the Women ye ran yea flew upon the wings of zeal to see what was become of your Master Ye had wont to walk familiarly together in the attendance of your Lord now society is forgotten and as for a wager each tries the speed of his legs and with neglect of other vies who shall be first at the Tomb. Who would not but have tried masteries with you in this case and have made light touches of the earth to have held paces with you Your desire was equal but John is the yonger his lims are more nimble his breath more free he first looks into the Sepulcher but Peter goes down first O happy competition who shall be more zealous in the enquiry after Christ Ye saw enough to amaze you not enough to settle your Faith How well might you have thought Our Master is not subduced but risen Had he been taken away by others hands this fine linen had not been left behinde Had he not himself risen from this bed of earth he had not thus wrapped up his night-cloaths and laid them sorted by themselves What can we doubt when he foretold us he would rise O Blessed Jesu how wilt thou pardon our errours how should we pardon and pity the errours of each other in lesser occasions whenas yet thy prime and dearest Disciples after so much Divine instruction knew not the Scriptures that thou must rise again from the dead They went away more astonished then confident more full of wonder as yet then of belief There is more strength of zeal where it takes in the weaker Sex Those holy Women as they came first so they staid last especially devout Mary Magdalene stands still at the mouth of the Cave weeping Well might those tears have been spared if her Knowledge had been answerable to her Affection her Faith to her Fervour Withall as our eye will be where we love she stoops and looks down
the style of bonus civis a good Patriot as men whose parts may be useful to the weal-publick yet I say such men are no better then the bane of their Country the stain of their Age. Turpis est pars quae suo toti non convenit as Gerson well it is an ill member for which all the body fares the worse Hear this then ye glorious sinners that brag of your good affections and faithful services to your dear Country your hearts your heads your purses your hands ye say are prest for the publick good yea but are your hearts Godless are your lives filthy let me tell you your sins doe more disservice to your Nation then your selves are worth All your valour wisdome subsidiary helps cannot counterpoise one dram of your wickedness Talk what ye will Sin is a shame to any people saith wise Solomon ye bring both a curse and a dishonour upon your Nation It may thank you for the hateful style of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a froward generation This for our first Observation Never Generation was so straight as not to be distorted with some powerful sins but there are differences and degrees in this distortion Even in the very first world were Giants as Moses tells us Gen. 6. 4. which as our Mythologists adde did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 bid battel to Heaven In the next there were mighty hunters proud Babel-builders after them followed beastly Sodomites It were easie to draw down the pedigree of evils through all times till we come to these last which the holy Ghost marks out for perillous Yet some Generation is more eminently sinful then other as the Sea is in perpetual agitation yet the Spring-tides rise higher then their fellows Hence Saint Peter notes this his Generation with an emphasis of mischief 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here is a transcendencie of evil What Age may compare with that which hath embrued their cruel hands in the blood of the Son of God That roaring Lion is never still but there are times wherein he rageth more as he did and doth in the first in the last dayes of the Gospel The first that he might block up the way of saving Truth the last for that he knows his time is short There are times that are poisoned with more contagious Heresies with more remarkable villanies It is not my meaning to spend time in abridging the sacred Chronologies of the Church and to deduce along the cursed successions of damnable Errours from their hellish original only let me touch at the notable difference betwixt the firâ—t and the last world In the first as Epiphanius observes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there was neither diversity of opinion nor mention of Heresie nor act of Idolatry 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 only piety and impiety divided the world whereas now in the last which is the wrangling and techy dotage of the decrepit world here is nothing but unquiet clashings of Opinion nothing but foul Heresie either maintained by the guilty or imputed to the innocent nothing but gross Idolatry in Paganisme in mis-believing Christianity and woe is me that I must say it a coloured Impiety shares too much of the rest My speech is glided ere I was aware into the third Head of our discourse and is suddenly faln upon the practice of that which S. Peter's example here warrants the censure of ill-deserving times which I must crave leave of your Honorable and Christian patience with an holy and just freedome to prosecute It is the peevish humour of a factious eloquence to aggravate the evils of the times which were they better then they are would be therefore cried down in the ordinary language of male contented spirits because present But it is the warrantable and necessary duty of S. Peter and all his true Evangelical successors when they meet with a froward Generation to call it so How commonly do we cry out of those querulous Michaiahs that are still prophesying evil to us and not good No theme but sins no sawce but vineger Might not one of these galled Jewes of S. Peter's Auditory have started up and have thus challenged him for this tartness What means this hard censure why do you slander the time Solomon was a wise man and he sayes Say not thou What is the cause that the former dayes were better then these for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this this is but a needless rigour this is but an envious calumny The Generation were not untoward if your tongue were not uncharitable The Apostle feares none of these currish oblatrations but contemning all impotent misacceptions calls them what he finds them A froward generation And well might he doe so his great Master did it before him an evil and adulterous generation and the Harbinger of that great Master fore-ran him in that censure O generation of Vipers Mat. 3. 7. and the Prophets led the same way to him in every page And why do not we follow Peter in the same steps wherein Peter followed Christ and Christ his Fore-runner and his Fore-runner the Prophets Who should tell the times of their sins if we be silent Pardon me I beseech you most Noble reverend and beloved hearers necessity is laid upon me in this day of our publick mourning I may not be as a man in whose mouth are no reproofs Oh let us be thankful for our Blessings wherein through the mercy of God we outstrip all the nations under Heaven but withall let us bewail our sins which are so much more grievous because ours Would to God it were no less unjust then unpleasing to complain of this as an untoward Generation There be four things that are wont both to make up and evince the pravity of any Generation woe is me that they are too apparently met in this multitude of sins magnitude of sins boldness of sin impunity of sinning Take a short view of them all You shall see that the Multitude is such as that it hath covered the earth the Magnitude such as hath reach'd to Heaven the Boldness such as out-faceth the Gospel the Impunity such as frustrates the wholesome Laws under which we live For the Multitude where is the man that makes true conscience of any the Laws of his God And if every man violate all the laws of God what do all put together Our Forefathers sins were but as drops ours are as torrents Instance in some few Cannot we our selves remember since a debauch'd Drunkard was an Owle among birds a beast of men a monster of beasts abhorred of men shouted at by children Is this sight now any news to us Is not every Tavern a stye of such swine Is not every street indented with their shameful staggerings Is there not now as much spent in wanton Smoak as our honâ—st â—orefathers spent in substantial Hospitality Cannot we remember since Oathes were so geason and uncouth that their sound startled the hearer as amazed at the strange language of treason against the
of Godlinesse in the illuminating our eyes in raising us from our sins in ejecting our corruptions in changing our lives and creating our hearts anew we may at the last feel the happy consummation of this power in the full possessing of us in that eternall Blessednesse and Glory which he hath prepared for all that love him To the perfect fruition whereof he bring us that hath dearly bought us Jesus Christ the righteous to whom c. THE BEAUTY AND UNITY OF THE CHURCH In a SERMON preached at White-hall By J. H. Cant. 6. 9. My Dove my Undefiled is One. OUR last daies discourse was as you heard of War and dissipation this shall be of Love and unity Away with all profane thoughts Every syllable in this Bridal-song is Divine Who doubts that the Bride-groom is Christ the Bride his Church the Church whether at large in all the Faithfull or abridged in every faithfull Soul Christ the Bride-groom praises the Bride his Church for her Beauty for her Entirenesse For her Beauty she is Columba a Dove she is perfecta undefiled Her Entireness is praised by her Propriety in respect of him Columba mea my Dove by her Unity in respect of her self Una one alone My Dove my undefiled is but one So as the beautifull Sincerity the dear Propriety the indivisible Unity of the whole Church in common and of the Epitome thereof every Regenerate Soul is the matter of my Text of my speech Let your holy attention follow me and finde your selves in every particular The two first titles Columba and perfecta are in effect but one This creature hath a pleasing Beauty and an innocent Simplicity Columba imports the one and perfecta the other yea each both for what is the Perfection which can be attained here but Sincerity and what other is our honest Sincerity then those gracefull proportions and colours which make us appear lovely in the eyes of God The undefiled then interprets the Dove and convertibly for therefore is the Church undefiled because she is a Dove she is as Christ bade her 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 innocent Mat. 10. 16. and therefore is she Christ's Dove because she is undefiled with the gall of spiritual bitterness Had ye rather see these Graces apart Look then first at the Loveliness then at the Harmlesness of the Church of the Soul Every thing in the Dove is amiable her Eyes Cant. 1. 15. her Feathers Psal 68. 13. and what not So is the Church in the Eyes of Christ And therefore the vulgar Translation puts both these together Columba mea formosa mea Cant. 2. 10. which Lucas Brugensis confesses not to be in the Hebrew yet addes Nè facile omittas Thy Dove O God yea why not thy Raven rather I am sure she can say of her self I am black And if our own hearts condemn us thou art greater Alas what canst thou see in us but the Pustles of Corruption the Morphews of Deformity the hereditary Leprosie of Sin the Pestilential spots of Death and dost thou say My Dove my undefiled Let malice speak her worst The Church saies she is black but she shies she is comely and that is fair that pleaseth Neither doth God look upon us with our eyes but with his own He sees not as man seeth The Kings daughter is all glorious within finite eyes reach not thither The skin-deep Beauty of earthly faces is a fit object for our shallow sense that can see nothing but colour Have ye not seen some Pictures which being look'd on one way shew some ugly beast or bird another way shew an exquisite face Even so doth God see our best side with favour whiles we see our worst with rigour Not that his Justice sees any thing as it is not but that his Mercy will not see some things as they are Blessed is the man whose sin is covered Psal 32. 1. If we be foul yet thou O Saviour art glorious Thy Righteousnesse beautifies us who are blemished by our own Corruptions But what shall our borrowed Beauty blemish the whiles thine infinite Justice shall we taint thee to clear our selves Dost thou justifie the wicked dost thou feather the Raven with the wings of the Dove whiles the cloth is fair is the skin nastie Is it no more but to deck a Blackmore with white even with the long white robes which are the justifications of Saints God forbid Cursed be he O Lord that makes thy Mercies unjust No whom thou accountest holy thou makest so whom thou justifiest him thou sanctifiest No man can be perfectly just in thee who is not truly though unperfectly holy in himself Whether therefore as fully just by thy gracious imputation or as inchoately just by thy gracious inoperation we are in both thy Dove thy undefiled In spight of all the blemishes of her outward administrations Gods Church is beautifull in spight of her inward weakenesses the faithfull Soul is comely in spight of both each of them is a Dove each of them undefiled It is with both as he said long since of Physicians The Sun sees their successes the earth hides their errours None of their unwilling infirmities can hinder the God of Mercies from a gracious allowance of their integrity Behold thou art all fair But let no idle Donatist of Amsterdam dream hence of an Utopical perfection Even here is the Dove still but Columba seducta or fatua as Tremelius reads it Ephraim Ephraim is a silly seduced Dove Ose 7. 11. The rifeness of their familiar excommunications may have taught them to seek for a spotlesness above And if their furious censures had left but one man in their Church yet that one man would have need to excommunicate the greater half of himself the Old man in his own bosome Our Church may too truly speak of them in the voice of God Woe to them for they have fled from me Ose 7. 13. It is not in the power of their uncharity to make the rest of God's Church and ours any other then what it is The Dove of Christ the undefiled The Harmlesness follows A quality so eminent in the Dove that our Saviour hath hereupon singled it out for an Hieroglyphick of Simplicity Whence it was questionlesse that God of all fowls chose out this for his Sacrifice Sin ex aliqua volucri Levit. 1. 14. And before the Law Abraham was appointed no other Gen. 15. 9. then a Turtle and a Pigeon neither did the Holy Virgin offer any other at her Purifying then this embleme of her self and her blessed Babe Shortly hence it was that a Dove was imployed for the messenger of the exsiccation of the Deluge no fowl so fit to carry an Olive of peace to the Church which she represented And lastly in a Dove the Holy Ghost descended upon the meek Saviour of the world whence as Illyricus and some ancients have guessed the sellers of Doves were whipt out of the Temple as Simoniacal chafferers of the Holy Ghost The
a Saint Oh let this day if we have so long deferr'd it be the day of the renovation of the purification of our Souls And let us begin with a sound humiliation and true sorrow for our former and present wickednesses It hath been an old I say not how true note that hath been went to be set on this day that if it be clear and sun-shinie it portends an bard weather to come if cloudy and louring a milde and gentle season insuing Let me apply this to a spiritual use and assure every hearer that if we overcast this day with the clouds of our sorrow and the rain of our penitent tears we shall find a sweet and hopeful season all our life after Oh let us renew our Covenants with God that we will now be renewed in our Minds The comfort and gain of this change shall be our own whiles the honour of it is Gods and the Gospels for this gracious change shall be followed with a glorious Onwards this onely shall give us true peace of Conscience onely upon this shall the Prince of this world find nothing in us How should he when we are changed from our selves And when we shall come to the last change of all things even when the Heavens and Elements shall be on a flame and shall melt about our ears the Conscience of this change shall lift up our heads with joy and shall give our renewed Souls an happy entry into that new Heaven Or when we shall come to our own last change in the dissolution of these earthly Tabernacles it shall bless our Souls with the assurance of unchangeable happiness and shall bid our renewed bodies lie down in peace and in a sweet exspectation of being changed to the likeness of the glorious body of our Lord Jesus Christ and of an eternal participation of his infinite glory Whereto he who ordained us graciously bring us even for the merits of his Son our Saviour Jesus Christ the Just To whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost be all Praise Honour and Glory now and for ever Amen THE FALL of PRIDE Out of PROVERBS 29. vers 23. By Jos. HALL PROV 29. vers 23. A mans Pride shall bring him low but Honour shall uphold the humble in spirit THat which was the ordinary Apophthegm of a greater then Solomon He that exalteth himself shall be brought low but he that humbleth himself shall be exalted which our Saviour used thrice in terminis oft in sense is here the Aphorism of wise Solomon Neither is it ill guessed by learned Mercerus that our Saviour in that speech of his alludes hither I need not tell you how great how wise Solomon was The Great are wont to be most haunted with pride the Wise can best see the danger of that Pride which haunts the great Great and wise Solomon therefore makes it one of his chief common-places the crying down of Pride a Vice not more general then dangerous as that which his witty Imitator can tell us is initium omnis peccati the beginning of all sin Now Pride can never be so much spighted as by honouring her contemned rival Humility Nothing could so much vex that insolent Agagite as to be made a Lacky to a despised Jew Besides her own portion therefore which is Ruine Solomon torments her with the advancement of her abased Opposite My Text then is like unto Shushan in the streets whereof Honour is proclaimed to an humble Mordecai in the Palace whereof is erected an engine of death to a proud Haman A mans Pride shall bring him low but Honour shall uphold the humble The Propositions are Antithetical wherein Pride is opposed to Humility Honour to Ruine Hear I beseech you how wise Solomon hath learn'd of his Father David to sing of Mercy and Judgement Judgement to the Proud Mercy to the Humble both together with one breath The Judgement to the Proud is their humbling the Mercy to the Humble is their raising to Honour It is the noted course of God to work still by contraries as indeed this is the just praise of Omnipotence to fetch light out of darkness life out of death order out of confusion Heaven out of Hell honour out of humility humiliation out of pride according to that of the sacred Way-maker of Christ Every hill shall be cast down every valley raised But in this particular above all other he delights to cross and abase the Proud to advance the Humble as blessed Mary in her Magnificat to pull down the mighty from their seat and to exalt the humble and meek For God hath a special quarrel to the Proud as those that do more nearly contest with his Majesty and scramble with him for his Glory He knows the Proud afarre off and hath a special favour in store for the Humble as those that are vessels most capable of his Mercy because they are empty This in common we descend to the several parts The Judgement begins first as that which is fit to make way for Mercy Therein there are two strains one is the Sin the other is the Punishment The Sin is a mans Pride A mans not for the distinction of one Sex from another but First for the comprehension of both Sexes under one The Woman was first proud and it sticks by her ever since She is none of the daughters of Eve that inherits not her childs-part in this sin Neither is this Feminine Pride less odious less dangerous Rather the weakness of the Sex gives power and advantage to the vice as the fagot-stick will sooner take fire then the log Secondly for the intimation of the reflex action of Pride A mans Pride therefore is the Pride of himself Indeed the whole endeavour study care of the proud man is the hoising of himself yea this Himself is the adequate subject of all sinful desires What doth the Covetous labour but to inrich himself the Voluptuous but to delight himself the Proud but to exalt himself whether in contempt of others or in competition with God himself For Pride hath a double cast of her eye downwards to other men in scorn upwards to God in a rivalty To men first as the proud Pharisee I am not as others nor as this Publican He thinks he is made of better clay then the common lump it is others happiness to serve him He magnifies every act that fals from him as that proud Nebuchadnezzar Is not this great Babel that I have built yea his own very excretions are sweet and fragrant whiles the perfumes of others are ranck and ill-sented To God secondly For whereas Piety makes God our Alpha and Omega the beginning and the end the beginning to which we ascribe all the end whereto we referre all the Proud man makes himself his own Alpha thanks himself for all makes himself his own Omega seeks himself in all begins at himself ends at himself Which must needs be so much more odious to God as it conforms us
corruption she receives and restores her charge I can no more withhold my body from the earth then the earth can withhold it from my Maker O God this is thy Cabinet or Shrine wherein thou pleasest to lay up the precious relicks of thy dear Saints untill the Jubilee of Glory With what confidence should I commit my self to this sure reposition whiles I know thy word just thy Power infinite IX Upon the sight of Gold melted THis Gold is both the fairest and most solid of all Metals yet is the soonest melted with the fire others as they are courser so more churlish and hard to be wrought upon by a dissolution Thus a sound and good heart is most easily melted into sorrow and fear by the sense of Gods Judgments whereas the carnal minde is stubborn and remorslesse All Metals are but earth yet some are of finer temper then others all hearts are of flesh yet some are through the power of Grace more capable of Spirituall apprehensions O God we are such as thou wilt be pleased to make us Give me a heart that may be sound for the truth of Grace and melting at the terrors of thy Law I can be for no other then thy Sanctuary on earth or thy Treasury of Heaven X. Upon the sight of a Pitcher carried THus those that are great and weak are carried by the eares up and down of Flatterers and Parasites Thus ignorant and simple hearers are carried by false and mis-zealous Teachers Yet to be carried by both eares is more safe then to be carried by one It argues an empty Pitcher to be carried by one aâ—one Such are they that upon the hearing of one part rashly passe their sentence whether of acquitall or censure In all disquisitions of hidden Truths a wise man will be led by the eares not carried that implies a violence of Passion over-swaying Judgement but in matter of civill occurrence and unconcerning rumor it is good to use the Eare not to trust to it XI Upon the sight of a Tree full blossomed HEre is a Tree over-laid with blossomes it is not possible that all these should prosper one of them must needs rob the other of moisture and growth I do not love to see an Infancy over-hopefull in these pregnant beginnings one Faculty starves another and at last leaves the Minde saplesse and barren As therefore we are wont to pull off some of the too-frequent blossomes that the rest may thrive so it is good wisdome to moderate the early excesse of the parts or progresse of over-forward Childhood Neither is it otherwise in our Christian profession a sudden and lavish ostentation of Grace may fill the eye with wonder and the mouth with talk but will not at the last fill the lap with fruit Let me not promise too much nor raise too high expectations of my undertakings I had rather men should complain of my small hopes then of my short performances XII Upon the report of a man suddenly struck dead in his Sin I Cannot but magnifie the Justice of God but withall I must praise his Mercy It were woe with any of us all if God should take us at advantages Alas which of us hath not committed sins worthy of a present revenge had we been also surprized in those acts where had we been O God it is more then thou owest us that thou hast waited for our Repentance it is no more then thou owest us that thou plaguest our offences The wages of Sin is Death and it is but Justice to pay due wages Blessed be thy Justice that hast made others Examples to me blessed be thy Mercy that hast not made me an Example unto others XIII Upon the view of the Heaven and the Earth WHat a strange contrariety is here The Heaven is in continuall motion and yet there is the onely place of Rest the Earth ever stands still and yet here is nothing but Unrest and unquietnesse Surely the end of that Heavenly motion is for the benefit of the Earth and the end of all these Earthly turmoils is our reposall in Heaven Those that have imagined the Earth to turn about and the Heavens to stand still have yet supposed that we may stand or sit still on that whirling Globe of earth how much more may we be perswased of our perfect Rest above those moving Sphears It matters not O God how I am vexed here below a while if ere long I may repose with thee above for ever XIV Upon occasion of a Red-brest coming into his Chamber PRetty Bird how chearfully dost thou sit and sing and yet knowest not where thou art nor where thou shalt make thy next meal and at night must shrowd thy self in a Bush for lodging What a shame is it for me that see before me so liberal provisions of my God and finde my self set warm under my own roof yet am ready to droop under a distrustfull and unthankfull dulnesse Had I so little certainty of my harbour and purveyance how heartlesse should I be how carefull how little list should I have to â—â—ke musick to thee or my self Surely thou camest not hither without a Providence God sent thee not so much to delight as to shame me but all in a conviction of my sâ—llen unbelief who under more apparent means am lesse chearfull and confident Reason and Faith have not done so much in me as in thee mere instinct of Nature Want of fore-sight makes thee more merry if not more happy here then the foresight of better things maketh me O God thy Providence is not impaired by those Powers thou hast given me above these Brute things let not my greater helps hinder me from an holy security and comfortable reliance upon thee XV. Upon occasion of a Spider in his Window THere is no vice in man whereof there is not some Analogie in the brute Creatures As amongst us men there are Thieves by Land and Pirats by Sea that live by spoil and blood so is there in every kinde amongst them variety of natural Sharkers the Hawk in the Aire the Pike in the River the Whale in the Sea the Lion and Tiger and Wolf in the Desart the Wasp in the Hive the Spider in our Window Amongst the rest see how cunningly this little Arabian hath spred out his tent for a prey how heedfully he watches for a Passenger So soon as ever he hears the noise of a Flie afar off how he hastens to his door and if that silly heedlesse Traveller do but touch upon the verge of that unsuspected walk how suddenly doth he seize upon the miserable booty and after some strife binding him fast with those subtile cords drags the helplesse Captive after him into his cave What is this but an Embleme of those Spiritual Free-booters that lie in wait for our Souls They are the Spiders we the Flies they have spred their nets of Sin if we be once caught they binde us fast and hale us into Hell O Lord
Corps as well as he he hath Life so hath a Beast as well as he Reason either for the time he hath not or if he have it he hath it so depraved and marred for the exercise of it that Brutishnesse is much lesse ill-beseeming Surely the Naturall Bestiality is so much lesse odious then the Morall as there is difference in the causes of both that is of Gods making this of our own It is no shame to the Beast that God hath made him so it is a just shame to a Man that he hath made himself a Beast CXXXI Upon the whetting of a Sithe REcreation is intended to the Minde as whetting is to the Sithe to sharpen the edge of it which otherwise would grow dull and blunt He therefore that spends his whole time in Recreation is ever whetting never mowing his grasse may grow and his Steed starve as contrarily he that alwayes toiles and never recreates is ever mowing never whetting labouring much to little purpose As good no Sithe as no Edge Then only doth the work goe forward when the Sithe is so seasonably and moderately whetted that it may cut and so cuts that it may have the help of sharpning I would so interchange that I neither be dull with Work nor idle and wanton with Recreation CXXXII Upon the sight of a Looking-glasse WHen I look in another mans face I see that man and that man sees me as I do him but when I look in my Glasse I do not see my self I see only an Image or Representation of my self howsoever it is like me yet it is not I. It is for an ignorant Childe to look behinde the Glasse to finde out the Babe that he seeth I know it is not there and that the resemblance varies according to the dimnesse or different fashion of the Glasse At our best we do but thus see God here below One sees him more clearly another more obscurely but all in a Glasse Hereafter we shall see him not as he appears but as he is so shall we see him in the face as he sees us the face of our glorified Spirits shall see the glorious face of him who is the God of Spirits In the mean time the proudest Dame shall not more plie her Glasse to look upon that face of hers which she thinks beautifull then I shall gaze upon the clearest glasse of my Thoughts to see that face of God which I know to be infinitely fair and glorious CXXXIII Upon the shining of a piece of Rotten wood How bright doth this Wood shine When it is in the fire it will not so beam forth as it doth in this cold darknesse What an Embleme is here of our future estate This piece whiles it grew in the tree shone not at all now that it is putrified it casts forth this pleasing lustre Thus it is with us whiles we live here we neither are nor seem other then miserable when we are dead once then begins our Glory then doth the Soul shine in the brightnesse of Heavenly glory then doth our good Name shine upon earth in those beams which before Envy had either held in or over-cast Why are we so over-desirous of our growth when we may be thus advantaged by our rottennesse CXXXIV Upon an Ivie-tree BEhold a true Embleme of false Love here are kinde embracements but deadly how close doth this Weed cling unto that Oak and seems to hug and shade it but in the mean time draws away the sap and at last kils it Such is an Harlots love such is a Parasites Give me that love and friendship which is between the Vine and the Elme whereby the Elme is no whit worse and the Vine much the better That wholesome and noble Plant doth not so close winde it self about the tree that upholds it as to gall the bark or to suck away the moisture and again the Elme yields a beneficiall supportation to that weak though generous Plant. As God so wise men know to measure love not by profession and complement which is commonly most high and vehement in the falsest but by reality of performance He is no Enemy that hurts me not I am not his Friend whom I desire not to benefit CXXXV Upon a Quartan ague I Have known when those things which have made an healthfull man sick have been the means of making a sick man whole The Quartan hath of old been justly styled the shame of Physicians yet I have more then once observed it to be cured by a Surfeit One Devil is sometime used for the ejection of another Thus have I also seen it in the sickness of the Soul the same God whose Justice is wont to punish sin with sin even his Mercy doth so use the matter that he cures one sin by another So have we known a Proud man healed by the shame of his uncleanness a Furious man healed by a rash bloodshed It matters not greatly what the medicine be whiles the Physician is infinitely powerfull infinitely skilfull What danger can there be of my safety when God shall heal me as well by evil as by good CXXXVI Upon the sight of a loaded Cart. IT is a passionate expression wherein God bemoans himself of the sins of Israel Ye have pressed me as a cart is pressed with sheaves An empty Cart runs lightly away but if it be soundly loaden it goes sadly sets hard groans under the weight and makes deep impressions the wheels creak and the axel-tree bends and all the frame of it is put unto the utmost stresse He that is Omnipotent can bear any thing but too much Sin his Justice will not let his Mercy be overstrained No marvell if a guilty Soul say Mine iniquity is greater then I can bear when the Infinite God complains of the weight of mens sins But let not vain men think that God complains out of the want of Power but out of the abundance of Mercy He cannot be the worse for our sins we are It grieves him to be over-provoked to our Punishment Then doth he account the Cart to crack yea to break when he is urged to break forth into just Vengeance O Saviour the sins of the whole World lay upon thee thou sweatedst blood under the load what would become of me if I should bear but one sheaf of that load every eare whereof yea every grain of that eare were enough to presse down my Soul to the nethermost hell CXXXVII Upon the sight of a Dwarf AMongst all the bounteous gifts of God what is it that he hath equally bestowed upon all except it be our very Being whiles we are He hath not given to all men the same stature of body not the same strength of Wit not the same capacity of Memory not the same Beauty of parts not the same measure of Wealth or Honour Thus hath he done also in matter of Grace there are spiritual Dwarfs there are Giants there are perfect men children babes embryos This inequality doth so much