religion with arts of the world nor offer to support the arke with unhallowed hands nor mingle false propositions with true nor make religion a pretence to profit or preferment nor do things which are like a vice neither ever speak things dishonorable of God nor abuse thy brother for Gods sake nor be solicitous and over busie to recover thy own little things neither alwayes think it fit to lose thy charity by forcing thy brother to do justice and all those things which are the outsides and faces the garments and most discerned parts of religion be sure that they be dressed according to all the circumstances of men and by all the rules of common honesty and publick reputation Is it not a sad thing that the Jew should say the Christians worship images or that it should become a proverb that the Jew spends all in his passeover the Moore in his marriage and the Christian in his law suits that what the first sacrifice to religion and the second to publick joy we should spend in malice covetousnesse and revenge Pudet haec opprobria nobis dici potuisse non potuisse refelli But among our selves also we serve the Devils ends and minister to an eternal dis-union by saying and doing things which look unhandsomely One sort of men is superstitious phantastical greedy of honour and tenacious of propositions to fill the purse and his religion is thought nothing but policy and opinion Another sayes he hath a good religion but he is the most indifferent and cold person in the world either to maintain it or to live according to it the one dresses the images of Saints with fine clothes the other lets the poor go naked and disrobes the priests that minister in the religion A third uses God worse then all this and sayes of him such things that are scandalous even to an honest man and such which would undo a good mans reputation And a fourth yet endures no governour but himself and pretends to set up Christ and make himself his lieutenant And a fifth hates all government and from all this it comes to passe that it is hard for a man to choose his side and he that chooses wisest takes that which hath in it least hurt but some he must endure or live without communion and every Church of one denomination is or hath been too incurious of preventing infamy or disreputation to their confessions One thing I desire should be observed that here the Question being concerning prudence and the matter of doing reputation to our religion it is not enough to say we can with learning justifie all that we do and make all whole with 3. or 4. distinctions for possibly the man that went to visit the Corinthian Lais if he had been asked why he dishonoured himself with so unhandsome an entrance might finde an excuse to legitimate his act or â—t least to make himself beleeve well of his own person but he that intends to do himself honour must take care that he be not suspected that he give no ocasion of reproachful language for fame and honour is a nice thing tender as a womans chastity or like the face of the purest mirrour which a foul breath or an unwholesome air or a watry eye can fully and the beauty is lost although it be not dashed in pieces When a man or a sect is put to answer for themselves in the matter of reputation they with their distinctions wipe the glasse and at last can do nothing but make 〈◊〉 appear it was not broken but their very abstersion and laborious excuses confesse it was foul and faulty We must know that all sorts of men and all sects of Christians have not onely the mistakes of men and their prejudices to contest withall but the calumnies and aggravation of Devils and therefore it will much ease our accounts of dooms-day if we are now so prudent that men will not be offended here nor the Devils furnished with a libell in the day of our great account To this rule appertains that we be curious in observing the circumstances of men and satisfie all their reasonable expectations and do things at that rate of charity and religion which they are taught to be prescribed in the institution There are some things which are undecencies rather then sins such which may become a just Heathen but not a holy Christian a man of the world but not a man professing godlinesse Because when the greatnesse of the man or the excellency of the Law engage us upon great severity or an exemplar vertue whatsoever is lesse then it renders the man unworthy of the religion or the religion unworthy of its fame Men think themselves abused and therefore return shame for payment We never read of an Apostle that went to law and it is but reasonable to expect that of all men in the world Christians should not be such fighting people and Clergy men should not command Armies and Kings should not be drunk and subjects should not strike Princes for justice and an old man should not be youthfull in talk or in his habit and women should not swear and great men should not lie and a poor man should not oppresse for besides the sin of some of them there is an undecency in all of them and by being contrary to the end of an office or the reputation of a state or the sobrieties of a graver or sublimed person they asperse the religion as insufficient to keepe the persons within the bounds of fame and common reputation But above all things those sects of Christians whose professed doctrine brings destruction and diminution to government give the most intolerable scandal and dishonour to the institution and it had been impossible that Christianity should have prevailed over the wisdom and power of the Greeks and Romans if it had not been humble to superiours patient of injuries charitable to the needy a great exactour of obedience to Kings even to heathens that they might be won and convinced and to persecutours that they might be sweetned in their anger or upbraided for their cruel injustice for so doth the humble vine creep at the foot of an oak and leans upon its lowest base and begs shade and protection and leave to grow under its branches and to give and take mutuall refreshment and pay a friendly influence for a mighty patronage and they grow and dwell together and are the most remarkable of friends and married pairs of all the leavie nation Religion of it self is soft easie and defenselesse and God hath made it grow up with empire and to leane upon the arms of Kings and it cannot well grow alone and if it shall like the Ivy suck the heart of the oak upon whose body it grew and was supported it will be pulled down from its usurped eminency and fire and shame shall be its portion We cannot complain if Princes arm against those Christians who if they are suffered to preach will
either to take off the judgement or to change it into a blessing to take a way the rod or the smart and evil of it to convert the punishment into a meer naturall or humane chance and that chance to the opportunity of a vertue and that vertue to the occasion of a crown 2. It is of great use for the securing of families that every Master of a family order his life so that his piety and vertue be as communicative as is posible that is that he secure the religion of his whole family by a severe supravision and animadversion and by cutting off all those unprofitable and hurtful branches which load the tree and hinder the growth and stock disimprove the fruit revert evil juice to the very root it self Calvisius Sabinus laid out vast sums of mony upon his servants to stock his house with learned men and bought one that could recite all Homer by heart a second that was ready at Hesiod a third at Pindar and for every of the Lyricks one having this fancy that all that learning was his own what soever his servants knew made him so much the more skilful It was noted in the man for a rich and a prodigal folly but if he had chang'd his instance bought none but vertuous servants into his house he might better have reckoned his wealth upon their stock the piety of his family might have helped to blesse him and to have increased the treasure of the Masters vertue Every man that would either cut off the title of an old curse or secure a blessing upon a new stock must make vertue as large in the fountain as he can that it may the sooner water all his Relatives with fruitfulnesse and blessings And this was one of the things that God noted in Abraham and blessed his family for it and his posterity I know that Abraham will teach his sons to fear me When a man teaches his family to know and fear God then he scatters a blessing round about his habitation And this helps to illustrate the reason of the thing as well as to prove its certainty We hear it spoken in our books of Religion that the faith of the parents is imputed to their children to good purposes that a good husband sanctifies an ill wife a beleeving wife an unbeleeving husband and either of them makes the children to be sanctified else they were unclean and unholy that is the very designing children to the service of God is a sanctification of them and therefore S. Hierom cals Christian children Candidatos fidei Christianae and if this very designation of them makes them holy that is acceptable to God intitled to the promises partakers of the Covenant within the condition of sons much more shall it be effectual to greater blessings when the Parents take care that the children shall be actually pious full of sobriety full of religion then it becomes a holy house a chosen generation an elect family and then there can no evil happen to them but such which will bring them neerer to God that is no crosse but the crosse of Christ no misfortune but that which shall lead them to felicity and if any semblance of a curse happens in the generations it is but like the anathema of a sacrifice not an accursed but a devoted thing for so the sacrifice upon whose neck the Priests knife doth fall is so far from being accursed that it helps to get a blessing to all that joyn in the oblation so every misfortune that shal discompose the ease of a pious and religious family shall but make them sit to be presented unto God and the rod of God shall be like the branches of fig-trees bitter and sharp in themselves but productive of most delicious fruit no evil can curse the family whose stock is pious and whose branches are Holinesse unto the Lord. If any leaf or any boughs shall fall untimely God shall gather it up and place it in his Temple or at the foot of his throne and that family must needs be blessed whom infelicity it self cannot make accursed 3. If a curse be feared to descend upon a family for the fault of their Ancestors pious sons have yet another way to secure themselves to withdraw the curse from the family or themselves from the curse and that is by doing some very great illustrious act of piety an action in gradu heroico as Aristotle cals it an heroicall action If there should happen to be one Martyr in a family it would reconcile the whole kinred to God make him who is more inclined to mercy then to severity rather to be pleased with the Relatives of the Martyr then continue to be angry with the Nephews of a deceased sinner I cannot insist long upon this But you may see it proved by one great instance in the case of Phinehas who killed an unclean Prince turned the wrath of God from his people he was zealous for God and for his countreymen did an heroicall action of zeal Wherefore saith God Behold I give unto him my covenant of peace and he shall have it his seed after him even the covenant of an everlasting priesthood because he was zealous for his God made an atonement for the children of Israel Thus the sons of Rechab obtainâ—d the blessing of an enduring and blessed family because they were most strict religious observers of their fathers precept and kept it after his death abstained from wine for ever and no temptation could invite them to taste it for they had as great reverence to their fathers ashes as being children they had to his rod to his eyes Thus a man may turn the wrath of God from his family secure a blessing for posterity by doing some great noble acts of charity or a remarkable chastity like that of Joseph or an expensive an effectionate religion and love to Christ and his servants as Mary Magdalene did Such things as these which are extraordinary egressions and transvolations beyond the ordinary course of an even piety God loves to reward with an extraordinary favour and gives it testimony by an extraregular blessing One thing more I have to adde by way of advice and that is that all parents and fathers of families from whose loyns a blessing or a curse usually does descend be very carefull not onely generally in all the actions of their lives for that I have already pressed but particularly in the matter of repentance that they be curious that they finish it do it thorowly for there are certain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 leavings of repentance which makes that Gods anger is taken from us so imperfectly and although God for his sake who died for us will pardon a returning sinner bring him to heaven through tribulation a fiery triall yet when a man is weary of his sorrow his fastings are a load to him his sins are
hath lived in sin will die in sorrow The Invalidity of a death-bed Repentance Part II. BUt I shall pursue this great and necessary truth first by shewing what parts and ingredients of repentance are assigned when it is described in holy Scripture Secondly by shewing the necessities the absolute necessities of a holy life and what it means in Scripture to live holily Thirdly by considering what directions or intimations we have concerning the last time of beginning to repent and what is the longest period that any man may venture with safety And in the prosecution of these particulars we shall remove the objections those aprons of fig-leaves which men use for their shelter to palliate their sin and to hide themselves from that from which no rocks or mountains shall protect them though they fall upon them that is the wrath of God First That repentance is not onely an abolition and extinction of the body of sin a bringing it to the altar and slaying it before God and all the people but that we must also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mingle gold and rich presents the oblation of good works and holy habits with the sacrifice I have already proved but now if we will see repentance in its stature and integrity of constitution described we shall finde it to be the one half of all that which God requires of Christians Faith and Repentance are the whole duty of a Christian. Faith is a sacrifice of the understanding to God Repentance sacrifices the whole will That gives the knowing this gives up all the desiring faculties That makes us Disciples this makes us servants of the Holy Jesus Nothing else was preached by the Apostles nothing was enjoyned as the duty of man nothing else did build up the body of Christian religion So that as faith contains all that knowledge which is necessary to salvation So repentance comprehends in it all the whole practise and working duty of a returning Christian And this was the sum totall of all that Saint Paul preached to the Gentiles when in his farewell Sermon to the Bishops and Priests of Ephesus he professed that he kept back nothing that was profitable to them and yet it was all nothing but this Repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ so that whosoever believes in Jesus Christ and repents towards God must make his accounts according to this standard that is to believe all that Christ taught him and to do all that Christ commanded and this is remarked in Saint Pauls Catechisme where he gives a more particular Catalogue of fundamentals he reckons nothing but Sacraments and faith of which he enumerates two principal articles resurrection of the dead and eternal judgement whatsoever is practical all the whole duty of man the practise of all obedience is called repentance from dead works which if we observe the singularity of the phrase does not mean sorrow For sorrow from dead works is not sense but it must mean mutationem status a conversion from dead works which as in all motions supposes two terms from dead works to living works from the death of sin to the life of righteousnesse I will adde but two places more out of each Testament one in which I suppose you may see every lineament of this great duty described that you may no longer mistake a grashopper for an Eagle Sorrow and holy purposes for the intire duty of repentance In the 18. of Ezek. 21. you shall finde it thus described But if the wicked will turne from all his sins that he hath committed and keep all my statutes and do that which is lawful and right he shall surely live he shall not die or as it is more fully described in Ezek. 33. 14 When I say unto the wicked Thou shalt surely die If he turn from his sin and do that which is lawful and right if the wicked restore the pledge give again that he had robbed walk in the statutes of life without committing iniquity he shall surely live he shall not die Here onely is the condition of pardon to leave all your sins to keep all Gods statutes to walk in them to abide to proceed and make progresse in them and this without the interruption by a deadly sin without committing iniquity to make restitution of all the wrongs he hath done all the unjust money he hath taken all the oppressions he hath committed all that must be satisfied for and repayed according to our ability we must make satisfaction for all injury to our Neighbours fame all wrongs done to his soul he must be restored to that condition of good things thou didst in any sense remove him from when this is done according to thy utmost power then thou hast repented truely then thou hast a title to the promise thou shalt surely live thou shalt not die for thy old sins thou hast formerly committed * Onely be pleased to observe this one thing that this place of Ezekiel is it which is so often mistaken for that common saying At what time soever a sinner repents him of his sins from the bottom of his heart I will put all his wickednesse out of my remembrance saith the Lord For although at what time soever a sinner does repent as repentance is now explained God will forgive him and that repentance as it is now stated cannot be done At what time soever not upon a mans deathbed yet there are no such words in the whole Bible nor any neerer to the sense of them then the words I have now read to you out of the Prophet Ezekiel Let that therefore no more deceive you or be made a colour to countenance a persevering sinner or a deathbed penitent Neither is the duty of Repentance to be bought at an easier rate in the New Testament You may see it described in the 2 Cor. 7. 11. Godly sorrow worketh repentance Well but what is that repentance which is so wrought This it is Behold the self same thing that ye sorrowed after a godly sort what carefulnesse it wrought in you yea what clearing of your selves yea what indignation yea what fear ye what vehement desire yea what zeal yea what revenge These are the fruits of that sorrow that is effectual these are the parts of repentance clearing our selves of all that is past and great carefulnesse for the future anger at our selves for our old sins and fear lest we commit the like again vehement desires of pleasing God and zeal of holy actions and a revenge upon our selves for our sins called by Saint Paul in another place a judging our selves lest we be judged of the Lord. And in pursuance of this truth the primitive Church did not admit a sinning person to the publike communions with the faithfull till besides their sorrow they had spent some years in an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in doing good works and holy living and especially in such actions which did contradict that wicked inclination which led
it takes from him the spirit of government and render him diffident pusillanimous private and ashamed if it happen in the person of a subject it makes him hate the man that shall shame him and punish him it hates the light and the Sun because that opens him and therefore is much more against government because that publishes and punishes too One thing I desire to be observed that though the primitive heresies now named and all those others their successors practised and taught horrid impurities yet they did not invade government at all and therefore those sects that these Apostles did signifie by prophecy and in whom both these are concentred were to appear in some latter times and the dayes of the prophecy were not then to be fulfill'd what they are since every age must judge by its own experience for its own interest But Christian religion is so pure and holy that chastity is sometimes used for the whole religion and to do an action chastly signifies purity of intention abstraction from the world and separation from low and secular ends the virginity of the soul and its union with God and all deviations and estrangements from God and adhesion to forbidden objects is called fornication and adultery Those sects therefore that teach incourage or practise impious or unhallowed mixtures and shameful lusts are issues of the impure spirit and most contrary to God who can behold no unclean thing 10. Those prophets and Pastors that pretend severity and live loosely or are severe in small things and give liberty in greater or forbid some sins with extreme rigour and yet practise or teach those that serve their interest or constitute their sect are to be suspected and avoided accordingly Nihil est hominum ineptâ persuasione falsius nec fictâ severitate ineptius All ages of the Church were extremely curious to observe when any new teachers did arise what kinde of lives they lived and if they pretended severely and to a strict life then they knew their danger doubled for it is certain all that teach doctrines contrary to the established religion delivered by the Apostles all they are evil men God will not suffer a good man to be seduced damnably much lesse can he be a seducer of others and therefore you shall still observe the false Apostles to be furious and vehement in their reproofs and severe in their animadversions of others but then if you watch their private or stay till their numbers are full or observe their spiritual habits you shall finde them indulgent to themselves or to return from their disguises or so spiritually wicked that their pride or their revenge their envie or their detraction their scorn or their complacency in themselves their desire of preheminence and their impatience of arrival shall place them far enough in distance from a poor carnal sinner whom they shall load with censures and an upbraiding scorn but themselves are like Devils the spirits of darknesse the spiritual wickednesses in high places Some sects of men are very angry against servants for recreating and easing their labours with a lesse prudent and an unsevere refreshment but the patron of their sect shall oppresse a wicked man and an unbelieving person they shall chastise a drunkard and entertain murmurrers they shall not abide an oath and yet shal force men to break three or four This sect is to be avoided because although it is good to be severe against carnal or bodily sins yet it is not good to mingle with them who chastise a bodily sin to make way for a spiritual or reprove a servant that his Lord may sin alone or punish a stranger and a begger that will not approve their sins but will have sins of his own Concering such persons Saint Paul hath told us that they shall not proceed far but their folly shall be manifest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Lysias Cito ad naturam ficta reciderunt sua They that dissemble their sin and their manners or make severity to serve loosnesse and an imaginary vertue to minister to a real vice they that abhor Idols and would commit sacrilege chastise a drunkard and promote sedition declaime against the vanity of great persons and then spoil them of their goods reform manners and engrosse estates talk godly and do impiously these are teachers which the Holy spirit of God hath by three Apostles bid us to beware of and decline as we would run from the hollownesse of a grave or the despaires and sorrows of the damned 11. The substance of al is this that we must not chose our doctrine by our guide but our guide by the doctrine if we doubt concerning the doctrine we may judge of that by the lives and designes of the Teachers By their fruits you shall know them and by the plain words of the scripture by the Apostles Creed and by the commandments and by the certain known and established forms of government These are the great indices and so plain apt and easy that he that is deceived is so because he will be so he is betrayed into it by his own lust and a voluntary chosen folly 12 Besides these premises there are other little candles that can help to make the judgement clearer but they are such as do not signifie alone but in conjunction with some of the precedent characters which are drawn by the great lines of scripture Such as are 1. when the teachers of sects stir up unprofitable and uselesse Questions 2. when they causelesly retire from the universal customs of Christendom 3. And cancel all the memorials of the greatest mysteries of our redemption 4. When their confessions and Catechismes and their whole religion consist 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in speculations and ineffective notions in discourses of Angels and spirits in abstractions and raptures in things they understand not and of which they have no revelation 5. Or else if their religion spends it self in ceremonies outward guises and material solemnities and imperfect formes drawing the heart of the vine forth into leaves and irregular fruitless suckers turning the substance into circumstances and the love of God into gestures and the effect of the spirit into the impertinent offices of a burdensom ceremonial For by these two particulars the Apostles reproved the Jews and the Gnostics or those that from the school of Pythagoras pretended conversation with Angels and great knowledge of the secrets of the spirit chosing tutelar Angels and assigning them offices and charges as in the Church of Rome to this day they do to Saints to these adde 6. that we observe whether the guides of souls avoid to suffer for their religion for then the matter is foul or the man not fit to lead that dares not die in cold blood for his religion will the man lay his life and his soul upon the proposition If so then you may consider him upon his proper grounds but if he refuses that refuse his conduct
our nature or an appendage to it for whereas our constitution is weak our souls apt to diminution and impedite faculties our bodies to mutilation and imperfection to blindnesse and crookednesse to stammering and sorrows to baldnesse and deformity to evil conditions and accidents of body and to passions and sadnesse of spirit God hath in his infinite mercy provided for every condition rare suppletories of comfort and usefulnesse to make recompence and sometimes with an overrunning proportion for those natural defects which were apt to make our persons otherwise contemptible and our conditions intolerable God gives to blinde men better memories For upon this account it is that Rufinus makes mention of Didymus of Alexandria who being blinde was blessed with a rare attention and singular memory and by prayer and hearing and meditating and discoursing came to be one of the most excellent Divines of that whole age And it was more remarkable in Nicasius Machliniensis who being blockish at his book in his first childhood fell into accidental blindnesse and from thence continually grew to so quick an apprehension and so tenacious a memory that he became the wonder of his contemporaries and was chosen Rector of the College at Mechlin and was made licentiate of Theology at Lovaine and Doctor of both the laws at Colein living and dying in great reputation for his rare parts and excellent learning At the same rate also God deals with men in other instances want of children he recompences with freedom from care and whatsoever evil happens to the body is therefore most commonly single and unaccompanied because God accepts that evil as the punishment of the sin of the man or the instrument of his vertue or his security and is reckoned as a sufficient cure or a sufficient Antidote God hath laid laid a severe law upon all women thâ—â— in sorrow they shall bring forth children yet God hath so attempeâ—ed that sorrow that they think themselves more accursed if they want that sorrow and they have reason to rejoyce in that state the trouble of which is alleviated by a promise that they shall be saved in bearing children He that wants one eye hath the force and vigorousnesse of both united in that which is left him and when ever any man is afflicted with sorrow his reason and his religion himself and all his friends persons that are civil and persons that are obliged run into comfort him and he may if he will observe wisely finde so many circumstances of ease and remission so many designes of providence and studied favours such contrivances of collateral advantage and certain reserves of substantial and proper comforâ— that in the whole sum of affaires it often happens that a single crosse is a double blessing that even in a temporal sense it is better to go to the house of mourning then of joyes and festival egressions Is not the affliction of â—overty better then the prosperity of a great and tempting fortune does not wisdom dwell in a mean estate and a low spirit retired thoughts and under a sad roof and is it not generally true that sicknesse it self is appayed with religion and holy thoughts with pious resolutions and penitential prayers with returns to God and to sober councels and if this be true that God sends sorrow to cure sin and affliction be the hand-maid to grace it is also certain that every sad contingency in nature is doubly recompenced with the advantages of religion besides those intervening refreshments which support the spirit and refresh its instruments I shall need to instance but once more in this particular God hath sent no greater evil into the world then that in the sweat of our brows we shall eat our bread and in the difficulty and agony in the sorrows and contention of our souls we shall work out our salvation But see how in the first of these God hath out done his own anger and defeated the purposes of his wrath by the inundation of his mercy for this labour and sweat of our brows is so far from being a curse that without it our very bread would not be so great a blessing It is not labour that makes the Garlick and the pulse the Sycamore and the Cresses the cheese of the Goats and the butter of the sheep to be savoury and pleasant as the flesh of the Roe-buck or the milk of the Kine the marrow of Oxen or the thighs of birds If it were not for labour men neither could eat so much nor relish so pleasantly nor sleep so soundly nor be so healthful nor so useful so strong nor so patient so noble or so untempted and as God hath made us beholding to labour for the purchase of many good things so the thing it self ows to labour many degrees of its worth and value and therefore I need not reckon that besides these advantages the mercies of God have found out proper and natural remedies for labour Nights to cure the sweat of the day sleep to ease our watchfulnesse rest to alleviate our burdens and dayes of religion to procure our rest and things are so ordered that labour is become a duty and an act of many vertues and is not so apt to turne into a sin as is its contrary and is therefore necessary not onely because we need it for making provisions of our life but even to ease the labour of our rest there being no greater tediousnesse of spirit in the world then want of imployment and an unactive life and the lasie man is not onely unprofitable but also accursed and he groans under the load of his time which yet passes over the active man light as a dreame or the feathers of a bird while the disimployed is a desease and like a long sleeplesse night to himself and a load unto his country And therefore although in this particular God hath been so merciful in this infliction that from the sharpnesse of the curse a very great part of mankinde are freed and there are myriads of people good and bad who do not eat their bread in the sweat of their brows yet this is but an overrunning and an excesse of the divine mercy God did more for us then we did absolutely need for he hath disposed of the circumstances of this curse that mans affections are so reconciled to it that they desire it and are delighted in it and so the Anger of God is ended in loving Kindnesse and the drop of water is lost in the full chalice of the wine and the curse is gone out into a multiplied blessing But then for the other part of the severe law and laborious imposition that we must work out our spiritual interest with the labours of our spirit seems to most men to be so intolerable that rather then passe under it they quit their hopes of heaven and passe into the portion of Devils and what can there be to alleviate this sorrow that a man shall be perpetually sollicited with an
that Christ prayes in Heaven for us and if we do not pray on earth in the same manner according to our measures we had as good hold our peace our prayers are an abominable sacrifice and send up to God no better a perfume then if wee burned assa faetida or the raw flesh of a murdered man upon the altar of incense 6. The spirit of Christ and of prayer helps our infirmities by giving us confidence and importunity I put them together For as our faith is and our trust in God so is our hope and so is our prayer weary or lasting long or short not in words but in works and in desires For the words of prayer are no part of the spirit of prayer words may be the body of it but the spirit of prayer alwayes consists in holinesse that is in holy desires and holy actions words are not properly capable of being holy all words are in themselves seâ—vants of things and the holinesse of a prayer is not at all concerned in the manner of its expression but in the spirit of it that is in the violence of its desires and the innocence of its ends and the continuence of its imployment this is the verification of that great Prophecie which Christ made that in all the world the true worshippers should worship in spirit and in truth that is with a pure minde with holy desires for spiritual things according to the minde of the spirit in imitation of Christs intercession with perseverance with charity or love That is the spirit of God and these are the spiritualities of the Gospel and the formalities of prayer as they are Christian and Evangelicall 7. Some men have thought of a seventh way and explicate our praying in the spirit by a mere volubilty of language which indeed is a direct undervaluing the spirit of God and of Christ the spirit of manifestation and intercession it is to return to the materiality and imperfection of the law it is to worship God in outward forms and to think that Gods service consists in shels and rinds in lips and voices in shadows and images of things it is to retire from Christ to Moses and at the best it is a going from real graces to imaginary gifts and when praying with the spirit hath in it so many excellencies and consists of so many parts of holinesse and sanctification and is an act of the inner man we shall be infinitely mistaken if we let go this substance and catch at a shadow and sit down and rest in the imagination of an improbable unnecessary uselesse gift of speaking to which the nature of many men and the art of all learned men and the very use and confidence of ignorant men is too abundantly sufficient Let us not so despise the spirit of Christ as to make it no other then the breath of our lungs * For though it might be possible that at the first and when formes of prayer were few and seldome the spirit of God might dictatethe very words to the Apostles and first Christians yet it follows not that therfore he does so still to all that pretend praying with the spirit For if he did not then at the first dictate words as we know not whether he did or no why shall he be supposâ—d to do so now If he did then it follows that he does not now because his doing it then was sufficient for all men since for so the formes taught by the spirit were paternes for others to imitate in all the descending ages of the Church There was once an occasion so great that the spirit of God did think it a work â—it for him to teach a man to weave silke or embroider gold or woke in brasse as it happened to Besaleel and Aholiab But then every weaver or worker in brasse may by the same reason pretend that he works by the spirit as that he prayes by the spirit if by prayer he means forming the words For although in the ease of working it was certain that the spirit did teach in the ease of inditing or forming the words it is not certain whether he did or no yet because in both it was extraordinary if it was at all and ever since in both it is infinitely needlesse to pretend the Spirit in forms of every mans making even though they be of contrary religions and pray one against the other it may serve an end of a phantastic and hypochondriacal religion or a secret ambition but not the ends of God or the honour of the Spirit The Jews in their declensions to folly and idolatry did worship the stone of imagination that is certain smooth images in which by art magic pictures and little faces were represented declaring hidden things and stoln goods and God severely forbad this basenesse but we also have taken up this folly and worship the stone of imagination we beget imperfect phantasmes and speculative images in our phansy and we fall down and worship them never considering that the spirit of God never appears through such spectres Prayer is one of the noblest exercises of Christian religion or rather is it that duty in which all graces are concentred Prayer is charity it is faith it is a conformity to Gods will a desiring according to the desires of Heaven an imitation of Christs intercession and prayer must suppose all holinesse or else it is nothing and therefore all that in which men need Gods Spirit all that is in order to prayer Baptisme is but a prayer and the holy Sacrament of the Lords Supper is but a prayer a prayer of sacrifice representative and a prayer of oblation and a prayer of intercession and a prayer of thanksgiving and obedience is a prayer and begs and procures blessings and if the Holy Ghost hath sanctified the whole man then he hath sanctified the prayer of the man and not till then and if ever there was or could be any other praying with the spirit it was such a one as a wicked man might have and therefore it cannot be a note of distinction between the good and bad between the saints and men of the world But this onely which I have described from the fountains of Scripture is that which a good man can have and therefore this is it in which we ought to rejoyce that he that glories may glory in the Lord. Thus I have as I could described the effluxes of the Holy Spirit upon us in his great chanels But the great effect of them is this That as by the arts of the spirits of darknesse and our own malice our souls are turned into flesh not in the naturall sense but in the morall and Theologicall and animalis homo is the same with carnalis that is his soul is a servant of the passions and desires of the flesh and is flesh in its operations and ends in its principles and actions So on the other side by the Grace of God and the promise of the
irrigahit torrentem spinarum so it is in the vulgar latin and it shall water the torrent of thorns that is the state or time of the gospel which like a torrent shall cary all the world before it and like a torrent shall be fullest in ill weather and by its banks shall grow nothing but thorns and briers sharp afflictions temporal infelicities and persecution This sense of the words is more fully explained in the book of the prophet Isa. upon the ground of my people shall thorns and briers come up how much more in all the houses of the city of rejoycing which prophecy is the same in the stile of the prophets that my text is in the stile of the Apostles the house of God shall be watered with the dew of heaven and there shall spring up briers in it judgement must begin there but how much more in the houses of the city of rejoycing how much more amongst them that are at ease in Sion that serve their desires that satisfie their appetites that are given over to their own hearts lust that so serves themselves that they never serve God that dwell in the city of rejoycing they are like Dives whose portion was in this life who went in fine linnen and fared deliciously every day they indeed trample upon their briers and thorns and suffer them not to grow in their houses but the roots are in the ground and they are reserved for fuel of wrath in the day of everlasting burning Thus you see it was prophesied now see how it was performed Christ was the captain of our sufferings and he began He entred into the world with all the circumstances of poverty he had a star to illustrate his birth but a stable for his bed chamber and a manger for his cradle the angels sang hymnes when he was born but he was cold and cried uneasy and unprovided he lived long in the trade of a carpenter he by whom God made the world had in his first years the businesse of a mean and an ignoble trade he did good where ever he went and almost where ever he went was abused he deserved heaven for his obedience but found a crosse in his way thither and if ever any man had reason to expect fair usages from God and to be dandled in lap of ease softnes and a prosperous fortune he it was onely that could deserve that or any thing that can be good But after he had chosen to live a life of vertue of poverty and labour he entred into a state of death whose shame and trouble was great enough to pay for the sins of the whole world And I shall choose to expresse this mystery in the vvords of scripture he died not by a single or a sudden death but he was the Lambe slain from the beginning of the world For he was massacred in Abel saith Saint Paulinus he was tossed upon the waves of the Sea in the person of Noah It was he that went out of his Countrey when Abraham was called from Charran and wandred from his native soil He was offered up in Isaac persecuted in Jacob betrayed in Joseph blinded in Sampson affronted in Moses sawed in Esay cast into the dungeon with Jeremy For all these were types of Christ suffering and then his passion continued even after his resurrection for it is he that suffers in all his members it is he that endures the contradiction of all sinners it is he that is the Lord of life and is crucified again and put to open shame in all the sufferings of his servants and sins of rebels and defiances of Apostates and renegados and violence of Tyrants and injustice of usurpers and the persecutions of his Church It is he that is stoned in Saint Stephen flayed in the person of Saint Bartholomew he was rosted upon Saint Laurence his Cridiron exposed to lyons in Saint Ignatius burned in Saint Polycarpe frozen in the lake where stood fourty Martyrs of Cappadocia Vnigenitus enim Dei ad peragendum mortis suae sacramentum consummavit omne genus humanarum passionum said Saint Hilary The Sacrament of Christs death is not to be accomplished but by suffering all the sorrows of humanity All that Christ came for was or was mingled with sufferings For all those little joyes which God sent either to recreate his person or to illustrate his office were abated or attended with afflictions God being more carefull to establish in him the Covenant of sufferings then to refresh his sorrows Presently after the Angels had finished their Halleluiahs he was forced to fly to save his life and the air became full of shrikes of the desolate mothers of Bethlehem for their dying Babes God had no sooner made him illustrious with a voyce from heaven and the descent of the Holy Ghost upon him in the waters of Baptisme But he was delivered over to be tempted and assaulted by the Devil in the wildernesse His transfiguration was a bright ray of glory but then also he entred into a cloud and was told a sad story what he was to suffer at Jerusalem And upon Palme Sunday when he rode triumphantly into Jerusalem and was adorned with the acclamations of a King and a God he wet the Palmes with his tears sweeter then the drops of Mannah or the little pearls of heaven that descended upon mount Hermon weeping in the midst of this triumph over obstinate perishing and maliciour Jerusalem For this Jesus was like the rain-bowe which God set in the clouds as a sacrament to confirm a promise and establish a grace he was half made of the glories of the light and half of the moisture of a cloud in his best dayes he was but half triumph and half sorrow he was sent to tell of his Fathers mercies and that God intended to spare us but appeared not but in the company or in the retinue of a shower and of foul weather But I need not tell that Jesus beloved of God was a suffering person that which concerns this question most is that he made for us a covenant of sufferings His Doctrines were such as expressely and by consequent enjoyne and suppose sufferings and a state of affliction His very promises were sufferings his beatitudes were sufferings his rewards and his arguments to invite men to follow him were onely taken from sufferings in this life and the reward of sufferings hereafter For if we summon up the Commandements of Christ we shall finde humility mortification self-deniall repentance renouncing the world mourning taking up the crosse dying for him patience and poverty to stand in the chiefest rank of Christian precepts and in the direct order to heaven He that will be my Disciple must deny himself and take up his crosse and follow me We must follow him that was crowned with thorns and sorrows him that was drenchâ—d in Cedron nailed upon the Crosse that deserved all good and suffered all evil That is the summe of Christian Religion as
resurrection else on no termes Christ took away sin from us but he left us our share of sufferings and the crosse which was first printed upon us in the waters of baptisme must for ever be born by us in penance in mortification in self-denial and in martyrdom and toleration according as God shall require of us by the changes of the world and the condition of the Church For Christ considers nothing but souls he values not their estate or bodies supplying our want by his providence and being secured that our bodies may be killed but cannot perish so long as we preserve our duty and our consciences Christ our Captain hangs naked upon the crosse our fellow souldiers are cast into prison torne with Lions rent in sunder with trees returning from their violent bendings broken upon wheels rosted upon gridirons and have had the honour not onely to have a good cause but also to suffer for it and by faith not by armies by patience not by fighting have overcome the world sit anima mea cum Christianis I pray God my soul may be among the Christians and yet the Turks have prevailed upon a great part of the Christian world and have made them slaves and tributaries and do them all spite and are hugely prosperous but when Christians are so then they are tempted and put in danger and never have their duty and their interest so well secured as when they lose all for Christ and are adorned with wounds or poverty change or scorn affronts or revilings which are the obelisks and triumphs of a holy cause Evil men and evil causes had need have good fortune and great successe to support their persons and their pretences for nothing but innocence and Christianity can flourish in a persecution I summe up this first discourse in a word in all the Scripture and in all the Authentick stories of the Church we finde it often that the Devil appeared in the shape of an Angell of light but was never suffered so much as to conterfeit a persecuted sufferer say no more therefore as the murmuring Israelites said If the LORD be with us why have these evils apprehended us for if to be afflicted be a signe that God hath forsaken a man and refuses to own his religion or his question then he that oppresses the widow and murders the innocent and puts the fatherlesse to death and follows providence by doing all the evils that he can that is all that God suffers him he I say is the onely Saint and servant of God and upon the same ground the wolf and the fox may boast when they scatter and devour a flock of lambs and harmlesse sheep Sermon X. The Faith and Patience of the SAINTS OR The righteous cause oppressed Part II. IT follows now that we inquire concerning the reasons of the Divine Providence in this administration of affairs so far as he hath been pleased to draw aside the curtain and to unfold the leaves of his counsels and predestination and for such an inquiry we have the precedent of the Prophet Jeremy Righteous art thou O Lord when I plead with thee yet let us talk to thee of thy judgements wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper Wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously Thou hast planted them yea they have taken root they grow yea they bring forth fruit Concerning which in generall the Prophet Malachy gives this account after the same complaint made And now we call the proud happy and they that work wickednesse are set up yea they that tempt God are even delivered They that feared the Lord spake often one to another and the Lord hearkened and heard and a book of remembrance was written before time for them that feared the Lord and thought upon his Name and they shall be mine saith the Lord of Hosts in that day when I binde up my jewels and I will spare them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him Then shall ye return and discern betwen the righteous and the wicked between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not In this interval which is a valley of tears it is no wonder if they rejoyce who shall weep for ever and they that sow in tears shall have no cause to complain when God gathers all the mourners into his kingdom they shall reape with joy For innocence and joy were appointed to dwel together for ever And joy went not first but when innocence went away sorrow and sicknesse dispossessed joy of its habitation and now this world must be alwayes a scene of sorrows and no joy can grow here but that which is imaginary and phantastick there is no worldly joy no joy proper for this world but that which wicked persons fancy to themselves in the hopes and designes of iniquity He that covets his neighbours wife or land dreams of fine things and thinks it a fair condition to be rich and cursed to be a beast and die or to lie wallowing in his filthinesse but those holy souls who are not in love with the leprosie the Itch for the pleasure of scratching they know no pleasure can grow from the thorns which Adam planted in the hedges of Paradise and that sorrow which was brought in by sin must not go away till it hath returned us into the first condition of innocence the same instant that quits us from sin and the failings of mortality the same instant wipes all tears from our eyes but that is not in this world In the mean time God afflicts the godly that he might manifest many of his attributes and his servants exercise many of their vertues Nec fortuna probat causas sequiturque merentes sed vaga percunctos nullo discrimine fertur scilicet est aliud quod nos cogatque rogatque Majus in proprias ducat mortalia leges For without sufferings of Saints God should lose the glories of 1. Bringing good out of evil 2. Of being with us in tribulation 3. Of sustaining our infirmities 4 Of triumphing over the malice of his enemies 5. Without the suffering of Saints where were the exaltation of the crosse the conformity of the members to Christ their Head the coronets of Martyrs 6. Where were the trial of our faith 7. Or the exercise of long suffering 8. Where were the opportunities to give God the greatest love which cannot be but by dying and suffering for him 9. How should that which the world calls folly prove the greatest wisdom 10. and God be glorified by events contrary to the probability and expectation of their causes By the suffering of Saints Christian religion is proved to be most excellent whilst the iniquity and cruelty of the adversaries proves the illecebra sectae as Tertullians phrase is it invites men to consider the secret excellencies of that religion for which and in which men are so willing to die for that religion must needs be worth looking into which so many wise
hearts and poor cottages and small fortunes A Christian so long as he preserves his integrity to God and to religion is bold in all accidents he dares die and he dares be poor but if the persecutor dies he is undone Riches are beholding to our fancies for their value and yet the more we value the riches the lesse good they are and by an overvaluing affection they become our danger and our sin But on the other side death and persecution loose all the ill that they can have if we do not set an edge upon them by our fears and by our vices From our selves riches take their wealth and death sharpens his arrows at our forges and we may set their prices as we please and if we judge by the spirit of God we must account them happy that suffer And therefore that the prevailing oppressor Tyrant or persecutor is infinitly miserable onely let God choose by what instruments he will govern the world by what instances himself would be served by what waies he will chastise the failings and exercise the duties and reward the vertues of his servants God sometimes punishes one sinne with another pride with adultery drunkennesse with murder carelesnesse with irreligion idlenesse with vanity penury with oppression irreligion with blasphemy and that with Atheisme and therefore it is no wonder if he punishes a sinner by a sinner And if David made use of villains and profligate persons to frame an armie and Timoleon destroyâ—d the Carthaginians by the help of souldiers who themselves were sacrilegious and Physitians use the poison to expel poisons and all common-wealths take the basest of men to be their instruments of justice and executions we shall have no further cause to wonder if God raises up the Assyrians to punish the Israelites and the Egyptians to destroy the Assyrians and the Ethiopians to scourge the Egyptians and at last his own hand shall separate the good from the bad in the day of separation in the day when he makes up his Iewels 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Soph. Elect. God hath many ends of providence to serue by the hands of violent and vitious men by them he not onely checks the beginning errours and approaching sins of his predestinate but by them he changes governments and alters kingdoms and is terrible among the sons of men for since it is one of his glories to convert evil into good and that good into his own glory and by little and little to open and to turn the leaves and various folds of providence it becomes us onely to dwell in duty and to be silent in our thoughts and wary in our discourses of God and let him choose the time when he will prâ—â—e his vine and when he will burn his thorns how long he will smite his servants and when he will destroy his enemies In the dayes of the primitive persecutions what prayers how many sighings how deep groanes how many bottles of tears did God gather into his repository all praying for ease and deliverances for Halcyon dayes and fine sunshine for nursing fathers and nursing mothers for publick assemblies and open and solemn sacraments And it was 3 hundred years before God would hear their prayers and all that while the persecuted people were in a cloud but they were safe and knew it not and God kept for them the best wine untill the last they ventured for a crown and fought valiantly they were faithful to the death and they received a crown of life and they are honored by God by angels and by men whereas in all the prosperous ages of the Church we hear no stories of such multitudes of Saints no record of them no honour to their memorial to accident extraordinary scarce any made illustrious with a miracle which in the dayes of suffering were frequent and popular And after all our fears of sequestration and poverty of death or banishment our prayers against the persecution and troubles under it we may please to remember that twenty years hence it may be sooner it wil not be much longer all our cares and our troubles shall be dead and then it shall be enquired how we did bear our sorrows and who inflicted them and in what cause and then he shall be happy that keeps company with the persecuted and the persecutors shall be shut out amongst dogs and unbelievers He that shrinks from the yoke of Christ from the burden of the Lord upon his death-bed will have cause to remember that by that time all his persecutions would have been past and that then there would remain nothing for him but rest and crowns and scepters When Lysimachus impatient and overcome with thirst gave up his kingdom to the Getae and being a captive and having drank a lusty draught of wine and his thirst was now gone he fetched a deep sigh and said Miserable man that I am who for so little pleasure the pleasure of one draught lost so great a Kingdom such will be their case who being impatient of suffering change their persecution into wealth and an easie fortune they shall finde themselves miserable in the separations of eternity losing the glories of heaven for so little a pleasure illiberaliâ— ingrate voluptatis causa as Plutarch calls it for illiberal and ungratefull pleasure in which when a man hath entred he loses the rights and priviledges and honours of a good man and gets nothing that is profitable and useful to holy purposes or necessary to any but is already in a state so hateful and miserable that he needs neither God nor man to be a revenger having already under his splendid robe miseries enough to punish and betray this hypocrisy of his condition being troubled with the memory of what is past distrustful of the present suspicious of the future vitious in their lives and full of pageantry and out-sides but in their death miserable with calamities real eternal and insupportable and if it could be other wise vertue it self would be reproached with the calamity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I end with the advice of Saint Paul In nothing be terrified of your 〈…〉 Sermon XI The Faith and Patience of the SAINTS OR The righteous cause oppressed Part III. 〈…〉 from dishonour As long as they belong to God it is necessary that they suffer persecution or sorrow no rules can teach them to avoid that but the evil of the suffering and the danger must be declined and we must use such spirituall arts as are apt to turn them into health and medicine For it were a hard thing first to be scourged and then to be crucified to suffer here and to perish hereafter through the fiery triall and purging fire of afflictions to passe into hell that is intollerable
God and give him praise in their capacity and yet he gave them no speech no reason no immortall spirit or capacity of eternall blessednesse but he hath distinguished us from them by the absolute issues of his predestination and hath given us a lasting and eternall spirit excellent organs of perception and wonderfull instruments of expression that we may joyn in consort with the morning star and bear a part in the Chorus with the Angels of light to sing Alleluiah to the great Father of men and Angels But was it not a huge chain of mercies that we were not strangled in the regions of our own naturall impurities but were sustained by the breath of God from perishing in the womb where God formed us in secreto terrae told our bones and kept the order of nature and the miracles of creation and we lived upon that which in the next minute after we were born would strangle us if it were not removed but then God took care of us and his hands of providence clothed us and fed us But why do I reckon the mercies of production which in every minute of our being are alike and continued and are miracles in all senses but that they are common and usuall I onely desire you to remember that God made all the works of his hands to serve him and indeed this mercy of creating us such as we are was not to lead us to repentance but was a designe of innocence he intended we should serve him as the Sun and the Moon do as fire and water do never to prevaricate the laws he fixed to us that we might have needed no repentance But since we did degenerate and being by God made better and more noble creatures then all the inhabitants of the air the water and the earth besides we made our selves baser and more ignoble then any For no dog crocodile or swine was ever Gods enemy as we made our selves yet then from thence forward God began his work of leading us to repentance by the riches of his goodnesse He causeth us to be born of Christian parents under whom we were taught the mysteriousnesse of its goodnesse and designes for the redemption of man And by the designe of which religion repentance was taught to mankind and an excellent law given for distinction of good and evil and this is a blessing which though possibly we do not often put into our eucharisticall Letanies to give God thanks for yet if we sadly consider what had become of us if we had been born under the dominion of a Turkish Lord or in America where no Christians do inhabite where they worship the Devil where witches are their priests their prophets their phisitians and their Oracles can we choose but apprehend a visible notorious necessity of perishing in those sins which we then should not have understood by the glasse of a divine law to have declined nor by a revelation have been taught to repent of But since the best of men does in the midst of all the great advantages of lawes and examples and promises and threatnings do many things he ought to be ashamed of and needs to repent of we can understand the riches of the Divine goodnesse best by considering that the very designe of our birth and education in the Christian religion is that we may recover of and cure our follies by the antidote of repentance which is preached to us as a doctrine and propounded as a favour which was put into a law and purchased for us by a great expence which God does not more command to us as a duty then he gives us a blessing For now that we shall not perish for our first follies but be admitted to new conditions to be repaired by second thoughts to have our infirmities excused and our sins forgiven our habits lessened and our malice cured after we were wounded and sick and dead and buried and in the possession of the Devil this was such a blessing so great riches of the Divine goodnesse that as it was taught to no religion but the Christian revealed by no law-giver but Christ so it was a favour greater then ever God gave to the Angels and Devils for although God was rich in the effusion of his goodnesse towards them yet they were not admitted to the condition of second thoughts Christ never shed one drop of blood for them his goodnesse did not lead them to repentance but to us it was that he made this largesse of his goodnesse to us to whom he made himself a brother and sucked the paps of our mother he paid the scores of our sin and shame and death onely that we might be admitted to repent and that this repentance might be effectuall to the great purposes of felicity and salvation And if we would consider this sadly it might make us better to understand our madnesse and folly in refusing to repent That is to be sorrowfull and to leave all our sins and to make amends by a holy life For that we might be admitted and suffered to do so God was fain to pour forth all the riches of his goodnesse It cost our deerest Lord the price of his deerest blood many a thousand groans millions of prayers and sighes and at this instant he is praying for our repentance nay he hath prayed for our repentance these 1600. yeers incessantly night and day and shall do so till doomes-day He sits at the right hand of God making intercession for us And that we may know what he prayes for he hath sent us Embassadours to declare the purpose of all his designe for Saint Paul saith We are Embassadours for Christ as though he did beseech you by us we pray you in Christs stead to be reconciled to God The purpose of our Embassy and Ministery is a prosecution of the mercies of God and the work of Redemption and the intercession and mediation of Christ It is the work of atonement and reconciliation that God designed and Christ died for and still prayes for and we preach for and you all must labour for And therefore here consider if it be not infinite impiety to despise the riches of such a goodnesse which at so great a charge with such infinite labour and deep mysterious arts invites us to repentance that is to such a thing which could not be granted to us unlesse Christ should die to purchase it such a glorious favour that is the issue of Christs prayers in heaven and of all his labours his sorrows and his sufferings on earth if we refuse to repent now we do not so much refuse to do our own duty as to accept of a reward it is the greatest and the dearest blessing that ever God gave to Men that they may repent and therefore to deny it or to delay it is to refuse health brought us by the skill and industry of the Physitian it is to refuse liberty indulged to us by our gracious Lord and certainly we had reason
Christian may not be drunk with wine neither may he be drunk with passion if he may not kill his neighbour neither then must he tempt him to sin for that destroyes him more if he may not wound him then he may not perswade him to intemperance and a drunken feaver if it be not lawful to cozen a man much lesse is it permitted that he make a man a fool and a beast and exposed to every mans abuse and to all ready evils And yet men are taught to start at the one half of these and make no conscience of the other half whereof some have a greater basenesse then the other that are named and all have the same unreasonablenesse 3. A man is guilty even when no law names his action if he does any thing that is a cause or an effect a part or unhandsome adjunct of a forbidden instance he that forbad all intemperance is as much displeased with the infinite of foolish talk that happens at such meetings as he is at the spoiling of the drink and the destroying the health If God cannot endure wantonnesse how can he suffer lascivious dressings tempting circumstances wanton eyes high diet if idlenesse be a sin then al immoderate mispending of our time all long and tedious games all absurd contrivances how to throw away a precious hour and a day of salvation also are against God and against religion He that is commanded to be charitable it is also intended he should not spend his money vainely but be a good husband and provident that he may be able to give to the poor as he would be to purchase a Lordship or pay his daughters portion and upon this stock it is that Christian religion forbids jeering and immoderate laughter and reckon jestings amongst the things that are unseemly This also would be considered 4. Besides the expresse laws of our religion there is an universal line and limit to our passions and designes which is called the anology of Christianity that is the proportion of its sanctity and strictnesse of its holy precepts This is not forbidden but does this become you Is it decent to see a Christian live in plenty and ease and heap up mony and never to partake of Christs passions there is no law against a Judge his being a dresser of gardens or a gatherer of Sycamore fruits but it becomes him not and deserves a reproof If I do exact justice to my neighbour and cause him to be punished legally for all the evils he makes me suffer I have not broken a fragment from the stony tables of the law but this is against the analogy of our religion It does not become a Disciple of so gentle a master to take all advantages that he can Christ that quitted all the glories that were essential to him and that grew up in his nature when he lodged in his Fathers bosom Christ that suffered all the evils due for the sins of mankinde himself remaining most innocent Christ that promised persecution injuries and affronts as part of our present portion and gave them to his Disciples as a legacy and gave us his spirit to enable us to suffer injuries and made that the parts of suffering evils should be the matter of three or four Christian graces of patience of fortitude of longanimity and perseverance he that of eight beatitudes made that five of them should be instanced in the matter of humiliation and suffering temporal inconvenience that blessed Master was certainly desirous that his Disciples should take their crowns from the crosse not from the evennesse and felicities of the world He intended we should give something and suffer more things and forgive all things all injuries whatsoever and though together with this may consist our securing a just interest yet in very many circumstances we shall be put to consider how far it becomes us to quit something of that to pursue peace and when we have secured the letter of the law that we also look to its analogy when we do what we are striectly bound to then also we must consider what becomes us who are disciples of such a Master who are instructed with such principles charmed with so severe precepts and invited with the certainty of infinite rewards Now although this discourse may seem new and strange and very severe yet it is infinitely reasonable because Christianity is a law of love and voluntary services it can in no sense be confined with laws and strict measures well may the Ocean receive its limits and the whole capacity of fire be glutted and the grave have his belly so full that it shal cast up al its bowels and disgorge the continual meal of so many thousand years but love can never have a limit and it is indeed to be swallowed up but nothing can fill it but God who hath no bound Christianity is a law for sons not for servants and God that gives his grace without measure and rewards without end and acts of favour beyond our askings and provides for us beyond our needs and gives us counsels beyond commandments intends not to be limited out by the just evennesses and stricken measures of the words of a commandment Give to God full measure shaken together pressed down heaped up and running over for God does so to us and when we have done so to him we are infinitely short of the least measure of what God does for us we are still unprofitable servants And therefore as the breaking any of the laws of Christianity provoks God to anger so the prevaricating in the analogy of Christianity stirres him up to jealousie He hath reason to suspect our hearts are not right with him when we are so reserved in the matter and measures of our services and if we will give God but just what he calls for by expresse mandate it is just in him to require all of that at our hands without any abatement then we are sure to miscarry And let us remember that when God said he was a jealous God he expressed the meaning of it to be he did punish to the third and fourth generation Jelousie is like the rage of a man but if it be also like the anger of God it is insupportable and will crush us into the ruines of our grave But because these things are not frequently considered there are very many sins committed against religion which because the commandment hath not marked men refuse to mark and think God requires no more I am entred into a sea of matter which I must not now prosecute but I shall onely note this to you that it is but reasonable we should take accounts of our lives by the proportions as well as by the expresse rules of our religion because in humane and civil actions all the nations of the world use so to call their subjects to account For that which in the accounts of men is called reputation and publick honesty is the same which in religion we call
in a cock-boat or use a childe for his interpreter and that Generall is a Cyclops without an eye who chooses the sickest men to man his Towns and the weakest to fight his battels It cannot be a vigorous prosecution unlesse the means have an efficacy or worth commensurate to all the difficulty and something of the excellency of that end which is designed And indeed men use not to be so weak in acquiring the possessions of their temporals But in matters of religion they think any thing effective enough to secure the greatest interest as if all the fields of heaven and the regions of the Kingdom were waste ground and wanted a Colony of planters and that God invited men to heaven upon any terms that he might rejoyce in the multitude of subjects For certain it is men do more to get a little money then for all the glories of heaven Men rise up early and sit up late and eat the bread of carefulnesse to become richer then their neighbours and are amazed at every losse and impatient of an evil accident and feel a direct strom of passion if they suffer in their interest But in order to heaven they are cold in their religion indevout in their prayers incurious in their walking unwatchfull in their circumstances indifferent in the use of their opportunities infrequent in their discoursings of it not inquisitive of the way and yet think they shall surely go to heaven But a prudent man knows that by the greatnesse of the purchase he is to make an estimate of the value and the price When we ask of God any great thing As wisdom delivery from sicknesse his holy Spirit the forgivenesse of sins the grace of chastity restitution to his favour or the like do we hope to obtain them without a high opinion of the things we ask and if we value them highly must we not desire them earnestly and if we desire them earnestly must we not pray for them fervently and whatsoever we ask for fervently must not we beg for frequently and then because prayer is but one hand toward the reaching a blessing and God requires our cooperation and endeavour and we must work with both hands are we not convinced that our prayers are either faint or a designe of lazinesse when we either ask coldly or else pray loudly hoping to receive the graces we need without labour A prudent person that knows to value the best object of his desires will also know that he must observe the degrees of labour according to the excellency of the reward Prayer must be effectuall fervent frequent continuall holy passionate that must get a grace or secure a blessing The love that we must have to God must be such as to keep his commandements and to make us willing to part with all our estate and all our honour and our life for the testimony of a holy conscience Our charity to our neighbours must be expressive in a language of a reall friendship aptnesse to forgive readinesse to forbear in pitying infirmities in relieving necessities in giving our goods and our lives and quitting our privileges to save his soul to secure and support his vertue Our repentance must be full of sorrows and care of diligence and hatred against sin it must drive out all and leave no affections towards it it must be constant and persevering fearfull of relapse and watchfull of all accidents Our temperance must sometimes turn into abstinence and most commonly be severe and ever without reproof He that striveth for masteries is temperate saith Saint Paul in all things he that does all this may with some pretence and reason say he intends to go to heaven But they that will not deny a lust nor refrain an appetite they that will be drunk when their friends do merrily constrain them or love a cheap religion and a gentle and lame prayer short and soft quickly said and soon passed over seldome returning and but little observed How is it possible that they should think themselves persons disposed to receive such glorious crowns and scepters such excellent conditions which they have not faith enough to believe nor attention enough to consider and no man can have wit enough to understand But so might an Arâ—adian shepherd look from the rocks or thorow the clefts of the valley where his sheep graze and wonder that the messenger stayes so long from comming to him to be crowned King of all the Greek Ilands or to be adopted heir to the Macedonian Monarchy It is an infinite love of God that we have heaven upon conditions which we can perform with greatest diligence But truely the lives of men are generally such that they do things in order to heaven things I say so few so trifling so unworthy that they are not proportionable to the reward of a crown of oak or a yellow riband the slender reward with which the Romans payed their souldiers for their extraordinary valour True it is that heaven is not in a just sense of a commutation a reward but a gift and an infinite favour but yet it is not reached forth but to persons disposed by the conditions of God which conditions when we pursue in kinde let us be very carefull we do not fail of the mighty price of our high calling for want of degrees and just measures the measures of zeal and a mighty love 3. It is an office of prudence so to serve God that we may at the same time preserve our lives and our estates our interest and reputation for our selves and our relatives so farre as they can consist together Saint Paul in the beginning of Christianity was careful to instruct the forwardnesse and zeal of the new Christians into good husbandry and to catechize the men into good trades and the women into useful imployments that they might not be unprofitable For Christian religion carrying us to heaven does it by the way of a man and by the body it serves the soul as by the soul it serves God and therefore it endeavours to secure the body and its interest that it may continue the opportunities of a crown and prolong the stage in which we are to run for the mighty price of our salvation and this is that part of prudence which is the defensative and guards of a Christian in the time of persecution and it hath in it much of duty He that through an indiscreet zeal casts himself into a needlesse danger hath betrayed his life to tyranny and tempts the sin of an enemy he loses to God the service of many yeers and cuts off himself from a fair opportunity of working his salvation in the main parts of which we shall finde a long life and very many yeers of reason to be little enough he betrayes the interest of his relatives which he is bound to preserve he disables himself of making provision for them of his own house and he that fails in this duty by his own fault is worse then
the primitive Christians had got a trick to give money for certificates that they had sacrificed to idols though indeed they did not do it but had corrupted the officers and ministers of state they dishonoured their religion and were marked with the appellative of libellatici Libellers and were excommunicate and cast off from the society of Christians and the hopes of Heaven till they had returned to God by a severe repentance optanduum est ut quod libenter facis diu facere possis It is good to have time long to doe that which wee ought to doe but to pretend that which we dare not doe and to say we have when we have not if we know we ought not is to dishonour the cause and the person too it is expressly against confession of Christ of which Saint Paul saith by the mouth confession is made unto salvation And our Blessed Saviour he that confesseth me before men I will confesse him before my Heavenly Father and if here he refuseth to own me I will not own him hereafter it is also expressly against Christian fortitude and noblenesse and against the simplicity and sincerity of our religion and it turnes prudence into craft and brings the Devil to wait in the temple and to minister to God and it is a lesser Kinde of apostacy and it is well that the man is tempted no further for if the persecutors could not be corrupted with money it is ods but the complying man would and though he would with the money hide his shame yet he will not with the losse of all his estate redeeme his religion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some men will lose their lives rather then a faire estate and doe not almost all the armies of the world I mean those that fight in the justest causes pretend to fight and die for their lands and liberties and there are too many also that will die twice rather then be beggers once although we all know that the second death is intolerable Christian prudence forbids us to provoke a danger and they were fond persons that run to persecution and when the Proconsul sate on the life and death and made strict inquisition after Christians went and offered themselves to die and he was a fool that being in Portugal run to the Priest as he elevated the host and overthrew the mysteries and openly defied the rites of that religion God when he sends a persecution will pick out such persons whom he will have to die and whom he will consigne to banishment and whom to poverty In the mean time let us do our duty when we can and as long as we can and with as much strictnesse as we can walking 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Apostles Phrase is not prevaricating in the least tittle and then if we can be safe with the arts of civil innocent inoffensive compliance let us blesse God for his permissions made to us and his assistances in the using them But if either we turne our zeal into the ambition of death and the follies of an unnecessary beggery or on the other side turn our prudence into craft and covetousnesse to the first I say that God hath no pleasure in fooles to the latter If you gain the whole world and lose your own soul your losse is infinite and intolerable Sermon XXI Of Christian Prudence Part II. 4. IT is the office of Christian prudence so to order the affaires of our life as that in all the offices of our souls and conversation we do honour and reputation to the religion we professe For the follies and vices of the Professors give great advantages to the adversary to speak reproachfully and does aliene the hearts and hinder the complyance of those undetermined persons who are apt to be perswaded if their understandings be not prejudiced But as our necessary duty is bound upon us by one ligament more in order to the honour of the cause of God so it particularly bindes us to many circumstances adjuncts and parts of duty which have no other commandment but the law of prudence There are some sects of Christians which have some one constant indisposition which as a character divides them from all others and makes them reproved on all hands some are so suspitious and ill natured that if a person of a facile nature and gentle disposition fall into their hands he is presently sowred and made morose unpleasant and uneasy in his conversation Others there are that do things so like to what themselves condemn that they are forced to take sanctuary and labour in the mine of unsignificant distinctions to make themselves believe they are innocent and in the mean time they offend all men else and open the mouths of their adversaries to speak reproachful things true or false as it happens And it requires a great wit to understand all the distinctions and devices thought of for legitimating the worshipping of images And those people that are liberal in their excommunications make men think they have reason to say their Judges are proud or self willed or covetous or ill natured people These that are the faults of Governours and continued are quickly derived upon the sect and cause a disreputation to the whole society and institution And who can think that congregation to be a true branch of the Christian who makes it their profession to kill men to save their souls against their will and against their understanding who calling themselves disciples of so meek a Master do live like bears upon prey and spoil and blood It is a huge dishonour to the sincerity of a mans purposes to be too busie in fingring money in the matters of religion and they that are zealous for their rights and tame in their devotion furious against sacrilege and a companion of drunkards implacable against breakers of a Canon and carelesse and patient enough with them that break the fifth or sixth Commandments of the Decalogue tell all the world their private sense is to preserve their own interest with scruple and curiosity and leave God to take care for his Thus Christ reproved the Pharisees for straining at a gnat and swallowing a Camel the very representation of the manner and matter of fact discovers the vice by reproving the folly of it They that are factious to get a rich proselyte and think the poor not worth saving dishonour their zeal and teach men to call it covetousnesse and though there may be a reason of prudence to desire one more then the other because of a bigger efficacy the example of the one may have more then the other yet it will quickly be discovered if it be done by secular designe and the Scripture that did not allow the preferring of a gay man before a poor Saint in the matter of place will not be pleased that in the matter of souls which are all equal there should be a faction and designe and an acceptation of persons Never let us pollute our
nothing is easier then to follow and to be obedient Sermon XXII Of Christian Prudence Part III. 7. AS it is a part of Christian prudence to take into the conduct of our soules a spiritual man for a guide so it is also of great concernment that we be prudent in the choice of him whom we are to trust in so great an interest Concerning which it will be impossible to give characters and significations particular enough to enable a choice without the interval assistances of prayer experience and the Grace of God He that describes a man can tell you the colour of his hair his stature and proportions and describe some general lines enough to distingush him from a Cyclops or a Saracen but when you chance to see the man you will discover figures or little features of which the description had produced in you no Phantasme or expectation And in the exteriour significations of a sect there are more semblances then in mens faces and greater uncertainty in the signes what is faulty strives so craftily to act the true and proper images of things and the more they are defective in circumstances the more curious they are in forms and they also use such arts of gaining Proselytes which are of most advantage towards an effect and therefore such which the true Christian ought to pursue and the Apostles actually did and they strive to follow their patterns in arts of perswasion not onely because they would seem like them but because they can have none so good so effective to their purposes that it follows that it is not more a duty to take care that we be not corrupted with false teachers then that we be not abused with false signes for we as well finde a good man teaching a false proposition as a good cause managed by ill men and a holy cause is not alwayes dressed with healthful symptomes nor is there a crosse alwayes set upon the doores of those congregations who are infected with the plague of heresy When Saint John was to separate false teachers from true he took no other course but to remark the doctrine which was of God and that should be the mark of cognisance to distinguish right shepheards from robbers and invaders every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God He that denieth it is not of God By this he bids his schollers to avoid the present sects of Ebion Cerinthus Simon Magus and such other persons that denied that Christ was at all before he came or that he came really in the flesh and a proper humanity This is a clear note and they that conversed with Saint John or believed his doctrine were sufficiently instructed in the present Questions But this note will signify nothing to us for all sects of Christians confesse Jesus Christ come in the flesh and the following sects did avoid that rock over which a great Apostle had hung out so plain a lantern In the following ages of the Church men have been so curious to signifie misbelievers that they have invented and observed some signes which indeed in some cases were true real appendages of false believers but yet such which were also or might be common to them with good men and members of the Catholick Church some few I shall remark and give a short account of them that by removing the uncertain we may fix our inquiries and direct them by certain significations lest this art of prudence turn into folly and faction errour and secular designe 1. Some men distinguish errour from truth by calling their adversaries doctrine new and of yesterday and certainly this is a good signe if it be rightly applyed for since all Christian doctrine is that which Christ taught his Church and the spirit enlarged or expounded and the Apostles delivered we are to begin the Christian aera for our faith and parts of religion by the period of their preaching our account begins then and whatsoever is contrary to what they taught is new and false and whatsoever is besides what they taught is no part of our religion and then no man can be prejudiced for believing it or not and if it be adopted into the confessions of the Church the proposition is alwayes so uncertain that it s not to be admitted into the faith and therefore if it be old in respect of our dayes it is not therefore necessary to be believed if it be new it may be received into opinion according to its probabilitie and no sects or interest are to be divided upon such accounts This onely I desire to be observed that when a truth returns from banishment by a postliminium if it was from the first though the Holy fire hath been buried or the river ran under ground yet that we do not call that new since newnesse is not to be accounted of by a proportion to our short lived memories or to the broken records and fragments of story left after the inundation of barbarisme and war and change of Kingdoms and corruption of Authors but by its relation to the fountain of our truths and the birth of our religion under our Fathers in Christ the holy Apostles and Disciples a Camel was a new thing to them that saw it in the fable But yet it was created as soon as a cow or the domestick creatures and some people are apt to call every thing new which they never heard of before as if all religion were to be measured by the standards of their observation or country customs Whatsoever was not taught by Christ or his Apostles though it came in by Papias or Dionysius by Arius or Liberius is certainly new as to our account and whatsoever is taught to us by the Doctors of the present age if it can shew its test from the beginning of our period for revelation is not to be called new though it be pressed with a new zeal and discoursed of by unheard of arguments that is though men be ignorant and need to learn it yet it is not therefore new or unnecessary 2. Some would have false teachers sufficiently signified by a name or the owning of a private Appellative as of Papist Lutheran Calvenists Zuinglian Socinian think it is enough to denominat them not of Christ if they are called by the name of a man And indeed the thing is in it self ill but then if by this mark we shall esteem false teachers sufficiently signified we must follow no man no Church nor no communion for all are by their adversaries marked with an appellative of separation and singularity and yet themselves are tenacious of a good name such as they choose or such as is permitted to them by fame and the people and a natural necessity of making a distinction Thus the Donatist called themselves the flock of God and the Novatians called the Catholicks traditors and the Eustathians called themselves Catholikes and the worshippers of images made Iconoclast to be a name
of scorn and men made names as they listed or as the fate of the market went And if a Doctor preaches a doctrine which another man likes not but preaches the contradictory he that consents and he that refuses have each of them a teacher by whose name if they please to wrangle they may be signified It was so in the Corinthian Church with this onely difference that they divided themselves by names which signified the same religion I am of Paul and I of Apollo and I am of Peter and I of Christ these Apostles were ministers of Christ and so does every teacher new or old among the Christians pretend himself to be Let that therefore be examined if he ministers to the truth of Christ and the religion of his master let him be entertained as a servant of his Lord but if an appellative be taken from his name there is a faction commenced in it and there is a fault in the men if there be none in the doctrine but that the doctrine be true or false to be received or to be rejected because of the name is accidental and extrinsecall and therefore not to be determined by this signe 3. Amongst some men a sect is sufficiently thought to be reproved if it subdivides and breaks into little fractions or changes its own opinions indeed if it declines its own doctrine no man hath reason to beleeve them upon their word or to take them upon the stock of reputation which themselves being judges they have forfeited and renounced in the changing that which at first they obtruded passionately And therefore in this case there is nothing to be done but to beleeve the men so farre as they have reason to beleeve themselves that is to consider when they prove what they say and they that are able to do so are not persons in danger to be seduced by a bare authority unlesse they list themselves for others that sink under an unavoidable prejudice God will take care for them if they be good people and their case shall be considered by and by But for the other part of the signe when men fall out among themselves for other interests or opinions it is no argument that they are in an errour concerning that doctrine which they all unitedly teach or condemn respectively but it hath in it some probability that their union is a testimony of truth as certainly as that their fractions are a testimony of their zeal or honesty or weaknesse as it happens and if we Christians be too decretory in this instance it will be hard for any of us to keep a Jew from making use of it against the whole religion which from the dayes of the Apostles hath been rent into innumerable sects and under-sects springing from mistake or interest from the arts of the Devil or the weaknesse of man But from hence we may make an advantage in the way of prudence and become sure that all that doctrine is certainly true in which the generality of Christians who are divided in many things yet do constantly agree and that that doctrine is also sufficient since it is certain that because in all Communions and Churches there are some very good men that do all their duty to the getting of truth God will not fail in any thing that is necessary to them that honestly and heartily desire to obtain it and therefore if they rest in the heartinesse of that and live accordingly and superinduce nothing to the destruction of that they have nothing to do but to rely upon Gods goodnesse and if they perish it is certain they cannot help it and that is demonstration enough that they cannot perish considering the justice and goodnesse of our Lord and Judge 4. Whoever break the bands of a Society or Communion and go out from that Congregation is whose Confession they are baptized do an intolerable scandal to their doctrine and persons and give suspicious men reason to decline their Assemblies and not to choose them at all for any thing of their authority or outward circumstances and Saint Paul bids the Romans to mark them that cause divisions and offences But the following words make their caution prudent and practicable contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned and avoid them they that recede from the doctrine which they have learned they cause the offence and if they also obtrude this upon their congregations they also make the division For it is certain if we receive any doctrine contrary to what Christ gave and the Apostles taught for the authority of any man then we call men Masters and leave our Master which is in heaven and in that case we must separate from the Congregation and adhere to Christ but this is not to be done unlesse the case be evident and notorious But as it is hard that the publike doctrine of a Chruch should be rifled and misunderstood and reproved and rejected by any of her wilful or ignorant sons and daughters so it is also as hard that they should be bound not to see when the case is plain and evident There may be mischiefs on both sides but the former sort of evils men may avoid if they will for they may be humble and modest and entertain better opinions of their Superiours then of themselves and in doubtful things give them the honour of a just opinion and if they do not do so that evil will be their own private for that it become not publike the King and the Bishop are to take care but for the latter sort of evil it will certainly become universal If I say an authoritative false doctrine be imposed and is to be accepted accordingly for then all men shall be bound to professe against their conscience that is with their mouthes not to confesse unto salvation what with their hearts they believe unto righteousnesse The best way of remedying both the evils is that Governours lay no burden of doctrines or lawes but what are necessary or very profitable and that Inferiours do not contend for things unnecessary nor call any thing necessary that is not till then there will be evils on both sides and although the Governours are to carry the Question in the point of law reputation and publike government yet as to Gods Judicature they will bear the bigger load who in his right do him an injury and by the impresses of his authority destroy his truth But in this case also although separating be a suspicious thing and intolerable unlesse it be when a sin is imposed yet to separate is also accidentall to truth for some men separate with reason some men against reason therefore here all the certainty that is in the thing is when the truth is secured and all the security to the men will be in the humility of their persons and the heartinesse and simplicity of their intention and diligence of inquiry The Church of England had reason to separate from the Confession and practises of Rome in
no purpose and to no necessities of his Church for the supplying of which he hath given Apostles and Evangelists Prophets and Pastors Bishops and Priests the spirit of Ordination and the spirit of instruction Catechists and Teachers Arts and Sciences Scriptures and a constant succession of Expositors the testimony of Churches and a constant line of tradition or delivery of Apostolical Doctrine in all things necessary to salvation And after all this to have a fungus arise from the belly of mud and darknesse and nourish a gloworm that shall challenge to out-shine the lantern of Gods word and all the candles which God set upon a hill and all that the Spirit hath set upon the candlesticks and all the starres in Christs right hand is to annull all the excellent established orderly and certain effects of the Spirit of God and to worship the false fires of the night He therefore that will follow a Guide that leads him by an extraordinary spirit shall go an extraordinary way and have a strange fortune and a singular religion and a portion by himself a great way off from the common inheritance of the Saints who are all led by the Spirit of God and have one heart and one minde one faith and one hope the same baptisme and the helps of the Ministery leading them to the common countrey which is the porâ—ion of all that are the sons of adoption consigned by the Spirit of God the earnest of their inheritance Concerning the pretence of a private spirit for interpretation of the confessed doctrine of God the holy Scriptures it will not so easily come into this Question of choosing our spirituall Guides Because every person that can be Candidate in this office that can be chosen to guide others must be a publike man that is of a holy calling sanctified or separate publikely to the office and then to interpret is part of his calling and imployment â—nd to do so is the work of a publike spirit he is ordained and designed he is commanded and inabled to do it and in this there is no other caution to be interposed but that the more publike the man is of the more authority his interpretation is and he comes neerest to a law of order and in the matter of government is to be observed but the more holy and the more learned the man is his interpretation in matter of Question is more likely to be true and though lesse to be pressed as to the publick confession yet it may be more effective to a private perswasion provided it be done without scandal or lessening the authority or disparagement to the more publick person 8. Those are to be suspected for evil guides who to get authority among the people pretend a great zeal and use a bold liberty in reproving Princes and Governours nobility and Prelates for such homilies cannot be the effects of a holy religion which lay a snare for authority and undermine power and discontent the people and make them bold against Kings and immodest in their own stations and trouble the government Such men may speak a truth or teach a true doctrine for every such designe does not unhallow the truth of God but they take some truthes and force them to minister to an evil end but therefore mingle not in the communities of such men for they will make it a part of your religion to prosecute that end openly which they by arts of the Tempter have insinuated privately But if ever you enter into the seats of those Doctors that speak reproachfully of their Superiours or detract from government or love to curse the King in their heart or slander him with their mouths or disgrace their persons blesse your self and retire quickly for there dwells the plague but the spirit of God is not president of the assembly and therefore you shall observe in all the characters which the B. Apostles of our Lord made for describing and avoiding societies of hereticks false guides and bringers in of strange doctrines still they reckon treason and rebellion so S. Paul In the last dayes perillous times shall come the men shall have the form of Godlinesse and denie the power of it they shall be Traitors heady high minded that 's their characteristic note So Saint Peter the Lord knoweth how to deliver the Godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgement to be punished But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleannesse and despise government presumptuous are they self willed they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities The same also is recorded and observed by Saint Jude likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh despise dominion and speak evil of dignities These three testimonies are but the declaration of one great contingency they are the same prophesy declared by three Apostolical men that had the gift of prophecy and by this character the Holy Ghost in all ages hath given us caution to avoid such assemblies where the speaking and ruling man shall be the canker of government and a preacher of sedition who shall either ungirt the Princes sword or unloose the button of their mantle 9. But the Apostles in all these prophecies have remarked lust to be the inseparable companion of these rebel prophets they are filthy dreamers they defile the flesh so Saint Jude they walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleannesse so Saint Peter they are lovers of pleasure more then lovers of God incontinent and sensual So Saint Paul and by this part of the character as the Apostles remarked the Nicolatians and Gnosticks the Carpocratians and all their impure branches which began in their dayes and multiplied after their deaths so they prophetically did foresignifie al such sects to be avoided who to catch silly women laden with sins preach doctrines of ease and licenciousnesse apt to countenance and encourage vile things and not apt to restrain a passion or mortifie a sin Such as those that God sees no sin in his children that no sin will take us from Gods favour that all of such a party are elect people that God requires of us nothing but faith and that faith which justifies is nothing but a meere believing that we are Gods chosen that we are not tied to the law of commandments that the law of grace is a law of liberty and that liberty is to do what we list that divorces are to be granted upon many and slight causes that simple fornication is no sin these are such doctrines that upon the belief of them men may doe any thing and will do that which shall satisfie their own desires and promote their interests and seduce their shee disciples and indeed it was not without great reason that these three Apostles joyned lust and treason together because the former is so shameful a crime and renders a mans spirit naturally averse to government that if it falls upon the person of a Ruler
ever accounted when our duty leads us into a persecution * Hither also appertain that we never do a thing that we know we must repent of * that we do not admire too many things nor anything too much * that we be even in prosperity * and patient in adversity but transported with neither into the regions of despair or levity pusillanimity or Tyranny dejection or Garishnesse * alwayes to look upon the sear we have impressed upon our flesh and no more to handle dangers and knives to abstain from ambitious and vexatious suits not to contend with a mighty man * ever to listen to him who according to the proverb hath four ears Reason Religion wisdom and experience * rather to lose a benefit then to suffer a detriment and an evil * to stop the beginnings of evil * to pardon and not to observe all the faults of friends or enemies * of evils to choose the least * and of goods to choose the greatest if it be also safest * not to be insolent in successe but to proceed according to the probability of humane causes and contingencies * ever to be thankful for benefits * and profitable to others and useful in all that we can * to watch the seasons and circumstances of actions * to do that willingly which cannot be avoided lest the necessity serve anothers appetite and it be lost to all our purposes Insignis enim est prudentiae ut quod non facere non possis id facere ut libenter fecisse videaris * not to pursue difficult uncertain and obscure things with violence and passion These if we observe we shall do advantage to our selves and to the religion and avoid those evils which fools and unwary people suffer for nothing dying or bleeding without cause and without pity I end this with the saying of Socrates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vertue is but a shadow and a servile imployment unlesse it be adorned and instructed with prudence which gives motion and conduct spirits and vigourousnesse to religion making it not onely humane and reasonable but Divine and caelestial Sermon XXIII OF CHRISTIAN SIMPLICITY Matthew 10. latter part of Ver. 16. And harmlesse as doves OUR Blessed Saviour having prefac'd concerning Prudence addes to the integrity of the precept and for the conduct of our religion that we be simple as well as prudent innocent as well as wary harmlesse and safe to gether do well for without this blessed union prudence turns into craft and simplicity degenerates into folly Prudens simplicitas is Martial's character of a good man a wary and cautious innocence a harmlesse providence and provision Verâ simplicitate bonus a true simplicity is that which leaves to a man arms defensive his castles and strong forts but takes away his swords and spears or else his anger and his malice his peevishnesse and spite But such is the misery and such is the iniquity of mankinde that craft hath invaded all the contracts and entercourses of men and made simplicity so weak a thing that it is grown into contempt sometimes with and sometimes without reason Et homines simplices minimè malos the Romans called parum cautos saepè stolidos unwary fools and defenselesse people were called simple and when the innocency of the old simple Romans in Junius Brutus time in Fabritius and Camillus began to degenerate and to need the Aquilian law to force men to deal honestly quickly the mischief increased till the Aquilian law grew as much out of power as honesty was out of countenance And there and every where else men thought they got a purchase when they met with an honest man and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Aristotle calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A fool is a profitable person and he that is simple is little better then mad And so it is when simplicity wants prudence He that because he means honestly himself thinks every man else does so and therefore is unwary in all or any of his entercourses is a simple man in an evil sence and therefore Saint Gregory Nazianzen remarks Constantius with a note of folly for suffering his easie nature to be abused by Georgius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Princes simplicity so he calls it for reverence but indeed it was folly for it was zeal without knowledge But it was a better temper which he observed in his own father 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such a simplicity which onely wanted craft or deceit but wanted no prudence or caution and that is truly Christian simplicity or the sincerity of an honest and ingenious and a fearlesse person and it is a rare band not onely of societies and contracts but also of friendships and advantages of mankinde We do not live in an age in which there is so much need to bid men be wary as to take care that they be innocent Indeed in religion we are usually too loose and ungirt exposing our selves to temptation and others to offence and our name to dishonour and the cause it self to reproach and we are open and ready to every evil but persecution from that we are close enough and that alone we call prudence but in the matter of interest we are wary as serpents subtil as foxes vigilant as the birds of the night rapacious as Kites tenacious as grapling hooks and the weightiest anchors and above all false and hypocritical as a thin crust of ice spread upon the face of a deep smooth and dissembling pit if you set your foot your foot slips or the ice breaks and you sink into death and are wound in a sheet of water descending into mischief or your grave suffering a great fall or a sudden death by your confidence and unsuspecting foot There is an universal crust of hypocrisie that covers the face of the greatest part of mankinde Their religion consists in forms and outsides and serves reputation or a designe but does not serve God Their promises are but fair language and the civilities of the Piazzas or Exchanges and disband and unty like the air that beat upon their teeth when they spake the delicious and hopefull words Their oaths are snares to catch men and make them confident Their contracts are arts and stratagems to deceive measured by profit and possibility and every thing is lawfull that is gainfull and their friendships are trades of getting and their kindnesse of watching a dying friend is but the office of a vulture the gaping for a legacy the spoil of the carcasse and their sicknesses are many times policies of state sometimes a designe to shew the riches of our bed-chamber and their funeral tears are but the paranymphs and pious solicitors of a second Bride and every thing that is ugly must be hid and every thing that is handsome must be seen and that will make a fair cover for a huge deformity and therefore it is as they think necessary that men should alwayes have some pretences
and forms some faces of religion or sweetnesse of language confident affirmatives or bold oaths protracted treaties or multitude of words affected silence or grave deportment a good name or a good cause a fair relation or a worthy calling great power or a pleasant wit any thing that can be fair or that can be usefull any thing that can do good or be thought good we use it to abuse our brother or promote our interests Leporina resolved to die being troubled for her husbands danger and he resolved to die with her that had so great a kindnesse for him as not to out-live the best of her husbands fortune It was agreed and she temperd the poyson and drank the face of the unwholesome goblet but the weighty poyson sunke to the bottome and the easie man drank it all off and died and the woman carried him forth to funeral and after a little illnesse which she soon recovered she enterd upon the inheritance and a second marriage Tuta frequensque via est This is an usual and a safe way to cozen upon colour of friendship or religion but that is hugely criminal to tell a lie to abuse a mans belief and by it to enter upon any thing of his possession or his injury is a perfect destruction of all humane society the most ignoble of all humane follies perfectly contrary to God who is Truth it self the greatest argument of a timorous and a base a cowardly and a private minde not at all honest or confident to see the Sun a vice fit for slaves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Dio Chrysostomus calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the most timorous and the basest of beasts use craft and lie in wait and take their prey and save their lives by deceit and it is the greatest injury to the abused person in the world for besides that it abuses his interest it also makes him for ever insecure and uneasie in his confidence which is the period of cares the rest of a mans spirit it makes it necessary for a man to be jealous and suspicious that is to be troublesome to himself and every man else and above all lying or craftinesse and unfaithful usages robs a man of the honour of his soul making his understanding uselesse and in the condition of a fool spoiled and dishonoured and despised 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Said Plato Every soul loses truth very unwillingly Every man is so great a lover of truth that if he hath it not he loves to beleeve he hath and would fain have all the world to beleeve as he does either presuming that he hath truth or else hating to be deceived or to be esteemed a cheated and an abused person Non licet suffurari mentem hominis etiam Samaritani said R. Moses sed veritatem loquere atque age ingenuè If a man be a Samaritan that is a hated person a person from whom you differ in matter of religion yet steal not his minde away but speak truth to him honestly and ingenuously A mans soul loves to dwell in truth it is his resting place and if you take him from thence you take him into strange regions a place of banishment and dishonour Qui ignotos laedit latro appellatur qui amicos paulò minus quam parricida He that hurts strangers is a thief but he that hurts his friends is little better then a parricide That 's the brand and stigma of hypocrisie and lying it hurts our friends mendacium in damnum potens and makes the man that owns it guilty of a crime that is to be punished by the sorrows usually suffered in the most execrable places of the cities But I must reduce the duty to particulars and discover the contrary vice by the several parts of its proportion 1. The first office of Christian simplicity consists in our religion and manners that they be open and honest publike and justifiable the same at home and abroad for besides the ingenuity and honesty of this there is an indispensable and infinite necessity it should be so because whoever is a hypocrite in his religion mocks God presenting to him the outside and reserving the inward for his enemy which is either a denying God to be the searcher of our hearts or else an open defiance of his omniscience and of his justice To provoke God that we may deceive men to defie his Almightinesse that we may abuse our brother is to destroy all that is Sacred all that is prudent it is an open hostility to all things humane and divine a breaking from all the bands of all relations and uses God so cheaply as if he were to be treated or could be cozened like a weak man and an undiscerning and easie merchant But so is the life of many men Vita fallax abditos sensus gerens Nimisque pulchram turpibus faciem induens It is a crafty life that men live carrying designes and living upon secret purposes Pudor impudentem celat audacem quies pietas nefandum vera fallaces probant simulantque molles dura Men pretend modesty and under that red vail are bold against Superiours saucy to their betters upon pretences of religion invaders of others rights by false propositions in Theology pretending humility they challenge superiority above all orders of men and for being thought more holy think that they have title to govern the world they bear upon their face great religion and are impious in their relations false to their trust unfaithful to their friend unkinde to their dependants 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 turning up the white of their eye and seeking for reputation in the streets so did some of the old hypocrites the Gentile Pharisees Asperum cultum intonsum caput negligentiorem barbam nitidum argento odium cubile humi positum quicquid aliud ambitionem viâ perversâ sequitur being the softest persons under an austere habit the loosest livers under a contracted brow under a pale face having the reddest and most spritely livers these kinde of men have abused all ages of the world and all religions it being so easie in nature so prepared and ready for mischiefs that men should creep into opportunities of devouring the flock upon pretence of defending them and to raise their estates upon colour of saving their souls Introrsum turpes speciosi pelle decorâ Men that are like painted sepulchres entertainment for the eye but images of death chambers of rottennesse and repositories of dead mens bones It may sometimes concern a man to seem religious Gods glory may be shewed by fair appearances or the edification of our brother or the reputation of a cause but this is but sometimes but it alwayes concerns us that we be religious and we may reasonably think that if the colours of religion so well do advantage to us the substance and reality would do it much more For no man can have a good by seeming religious and another by not being so
the power of godlinesse never destroys any well built fabrick that was raised upon the reputation of religion and its pretences Nunquam est peccare utile quâ—â— semper est turpe said Cicero It is never profitable to sin because it is always base and dishonest and if the face of religion could do a good turn which the heart and substance does destroy then reâ—igion it self were the greatest hypocrite in the world and promises a blessing which it never can perform but must be beholding to its enemy to verifie its promises No. We shall be sure to feel the blessings of both the worlds if we serve in the offices of religion devoutly and charitably before men and before God if we ask of God things honest in the sight of men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Pythagoras gave in precept praying to God with a free heart and a publike prayer and doing before men things that are truly pleasing to God turning our heart outward and our face inwards that is conversing with men as in the presence of God and in our private towards God being as holy and devout as if we prayed in publike and in the corners of the streets Pliny praising of Ariston gave him the title of an honest and hearty religion Ornat hunc magnitudo animi quae nihil ad ostentationem omnia ad conscientiam refert rectèque facti non ex populi sermone mercedem sed ex facto petit And this does well state the question of a sincere religion and an ingenuous goodnesse It requires that we do nothing for ostentation but every thing for conscience and we may be obliged in conscience to publish our manner of lives but then it must be not that we may have a popular noise for a reward but that God may be glorified by our publike worshippings and others edified by our good examples Neither doth the sincerity of our religion require that we should not conceal our sins for he that sins and dares to own them publikely may become impudent and so long as in modesty we desire our shame should be hid and men to think better of us then we deserve I say for no other reason but either because we would not derive the ill examples to others or the shame to our selves we are within the protection of one of vertues sisters and we are not far from the gates of the kingdom of heaven easie and apt to be invited in and not very unworthy to enter But if any other principle draws the vail if we conceal our vices because we would be honoured for sanctity or because we would not be hindered in our designes we serve the interest of pride and ambition covetousnesse or vanity if an innocent purpose hides the ulcer it does half heal it but if it retires into the secrecy of sin and darknesse it turns into a plague and infects the heart and it dies infallibly of a double exulceration The Macedonian boy that kept the coal in his flesh and would not shake his arm lest he should disturbe the sacrifice or discompose the ministery before Alexander the Great concealed his pain to the honour of patience and religion But the Spartan boy who suffered the little fox to eat his bowels rather then confesse his theft when he was in danger of discovery payed the price of a bold hypocrisie that is the dissimulation reproveable in matter of manners which conceals one sin to make way for another 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lucian notes it of his Philosophical hypocrites dissemblers in matter of deportment and religion they seem severe abroad but they enter into the vaults of harlots and are not ashamed to see a naked sin in the midst of its uglinesse and undressed circumstances A mighty wrastler that had won a crown at Olympus for contending prosperously was observed to turn his head and go forward with his face upon his shoulder to behold a fair woman that was present and he lost the glory of his strength when he became so weak that a woman could turn his head about which his adversary could not These are the follies and weaknesses of man and dishonours to religion when a man shall contend nobly and do handsomly and then be taken in a base or a dishonorable action and mingle venome with his delicious ointment Quid quod olet gravius mistum dia pasmate virus Atque duplex animae longius exit odor When Fescenia perfumed her breath that she might not smell of wine she condemned the crime of drunkennesse but grew ridiculous when the wine broke thorow the cloud of a tender perfume and the breath of a Lozenge and that indeed is the reward of an hypocrite his laborious arts of concealment furnish all the world with declamation and severity against the crime which himself condemnes with his caution But when his own sentence too is prepared against the day of his discovery Notas ergo nimis fraudes deprensaque furta Jam tollas sis ebria simpliciter A simple drunkard hath but one fault But they that avoid discovery that they may drink on without shame or restraint adde hypocrisy to their vitious fulnesse and for all the amazements of their consequent discovery have no other recompence but that they pleased themselves in the security of their crime and their undeserved reputation Sic quae nigrior est cadente moro Cerussata sibi placet Lycoris for so the most easy and deformed woman whose girdle no foolish young man will unloose because shee is blacker then the falling mulbery may please her self under a skin of Cerusse and call her self fairer then Pharaohs daughter or the hinds living upon the snowy mountaines One thing more there is to be added as an instance to the simplicity of religion and that is that we never deny our religion or lie concerning our faith nor tell our propositions and articles deceitfully nor instruct Novices or catechumens with fraud but that when we teach them we do it honestly justly and severely not alwayes to speak all but never to speak otherwise then it is nor to hide a truth from them whose soules are concerned in it that it be known nequè enim id est celare cum quid reticias sed cum quod tuscias â—d ignorare emolumenti tui causâ velis eos quorum inter est id scire So Cicero determins the case of prudence and simplicity The discovery of pious frauds and the disclaiming of false but profitable and rich propositions the quitting honours fraudulently gotten and unjustly detained the reducing every man to the perfect understanding of his own religion so far as can concern his duty the disallowing false miracles legends and fabulous stories of cosening the people into awfulnesse fear and superstition these are parts of Christian simplicity which do integrate this duty for religion hath strengths enough of its own to support it self it needs not a devil for its advocate it is the breath of God
and as it is purer then the beams of the morning so it is stronger then a tempest or the combination of all the windes though united by the prince that ruleth in the aire And we finde that the Nicene faith prevailed upon all the world though some Arian Bishops went from Ariminum to Nice and there decreed their own articles and called it the faith read at Nice and used all arts and all violence and all lying and all diligence to discountenance it yet it could not be it was the truth of God and therefore it was stronger then all the gates of hell then all the powers of darknesse and he that tells a lie for his religion or goes about by fraud and imposture to gain proselytes either dares not trust his cause or dare not trust God True religion is open in its articles honest in its prosecutions just in its conduct innocent when it is accused ignorant of falsehood sure in its truth simple in its sayings and as Julius Capitolinus said of the Emperour Verus it is morum simplicium quae adumbrare nihil possit it covers indeed a multitude of sins by curing them and obtaining pardon for them but it can dissemble nothing of it self it cannot tell or do a lie but it can become a sacrifice a good man can quit his life but never his integrity That 's the first duty the sum of which is that which Aquilius said concerning fraud and craft bona fides the honesty of a mans faith and religion is destroyed cum aliud simulatum aliud actum sit when either we conceale what we ought to publish or do not act what we pretend 2. Christian simplicity or the innocence of prudence relates to laws both in their sanction and execution that they be decreed with equity and proportioned to the capacity and profit of the subjects and that they be applied to practise with remissions and reasonable interpretations agreeable to the sence of the words and the minde of the lawgiver but laws are not to be cosened and abused by contradictory glosses and phantastick elusions as knowing that if the majesty and sacrednesse of them be once abused and subjected to contempt and unreasonable and easy resolutions their girdle is unloosed and they suffer the shame of prostitution and contempt When Saul made a law that he that eat before night should die the people perswaded him directly to rescind it in the case of Jonathan because it was unequal and unjust that he who had wrought their deliverance and in that working it was absent from the promulgation of the law should suffer for breaking it in a case of violent necessity and of which he heard nothing upon so faire and probable a cause and it had been well that the Persian had been so rescued who against the laws of his country killed a Lion to save the life of his Prince in such cases it is fit the law be rescinded and dispensed with all as to certain particulars so it be done ingenuously with competent authority in great necessity and without partiality But that which I intend here is that in the rescission or dispensation of the law the processe be open and free and such as shall preserve the law and its sacrednesse as well as the person and his interest The laws of Sparta forbad any man to be twice Admiral but when their affaires required it they made Araeus titular and Lysander supravisor of him and Admiral to all real and effective purposes this wanted ingenuity and laid a way open for them to despise the law which was made patient of such a weak evasion The Lacedemonian Embassador perswaded Pericles to turn the tables of the law which were forbidden to be removed and an other ordained in a certain case that the laws should sleep 24. hours A third decreed that June should be called May because the time of an election appointed by the law was elapsed these arts are against the ingenuity and simplicitie of laws and lawgivers and teach the people to cheat in their obedience when their Judges are so fraudulent in the administration of their laws Every law should be made plain open honest significant and he that makes a decree and intricates it on purpose or by inconsideration layes a snare or leaves one there and is either an imprudent person and therefore unfit to govern or else he is a Tyrant and a vulâ—ur It is too much that a man can make a law by an arbitrary power But when he shall also leave the law so that every of the ministers of Justice and the Judges shall have power to rule by a loose by an arbitrary by a contradictory interpretation it is intolerable They that rule by prudence should above all things see that the patrons and Advocates of innocence should be harmlesse and without an evil sting 3. Christian simplicity relates to promises and acts of grace and favour and its caution is that all promises be simple ingenuous agreeable to the intention of the promiser truly and effectually expressed and never going lesse in the performance then in the promise and words of the expression concerning which the cases are several 1. First all promises in which a third or a second person hath no interest that is the promises of kindnesse and civilities are tied to passe into performance secundum aequum bonum and though they may oblige to some small inconvenience yet never to a great one and I will visit you to morrow morning because I promised you and therefore I will come etiamsi non concoxero although I have not slept my full sleep but Si febricitavcro if I be in a feaver or have reason to fear one I am disobliged For the nature of such promises bears upon them no bigger burthen then can be expounded by reasonable civilities and the common expectation of kinde and the ordinary performances of just men who do excuse and are excused respectively by all rules of reason proportionably to such small entercourses and therefore although such conditions be not expressed in making promises yet to perform or rescind them by such laws is not against Christian simplicity 2. Promises in matters of justice or in matters of grace as from a superiour to an inferiour must be so singly and ingenuously expressed intended and performed accordingly that no condition is to be reserved or supposed in them to warrant their non-performance but impossibility or that which is next to it an intolerable inconvenience in which cases we have a natural liberty to commute our promises but so that we pay to the interested person a good at least equal to that which we first promised And to this purpose it may be added that it is not against Christian simplicity to expresse our promises in such words which we know the interested man will understand to other purposes then I intend so it be not lesse that I mean then that he hopes for When our Blessed Saviour
told his disciples that they should sit upon twelve thrones they presently thought they had his bond for a kingdom and dreamt of wealth and honour power and a splendid court and Christ knew they did but did not disintangle his promise from the enfolded and intricate sence of which his words were naturally capable but he performed his promise to better purposes then they hoped for they were presidents in the conduct of souls Princes of Gods people the chief in sufferings stood neerest to the crosse had an elder brothers portion in the Kingdom of grace were the founders of Churches and dispensers of the mysteries of the kingdom and ministers of the spirit of God and chanels of mighty blessings under mediators in the Priesthood of their Lord and their names were written in heaven and this was infinitely better then to groan and wake under a head pressed with a golden crown and pungent cares and to eat alone and to walk in a croud and to be vexed with all the publick and many of the private evils of the people which is the sum Total of an earthly Kingdom When God promised to the obedient that they should live long in the land which he would give them he meant it of the land of Canaan but yet reserved to himself the liberty of taking them quickly from that land and carrying them to a better He that promises to lend me a staffe to walk withal and instead of that gives me a horse to carry me hath not broken his promise nor dealt deceitfully And this is Gods dealing with mankinde he promises more then we could hope for and when he hath done that he gives us more then he hath promised God hath promised to give to them that fear him all that they need food and raiment but he addes out of the treasures of his mercy variety of food and changes of raiment some to get strength and some to refresh something for them that are in health and some for the sick And though that skins of buls and stagges and foxes and bears could have drawn a vail thick enough to hide the apertures of sin and natural shame and to defend us from heat and cold yet when he addeth the fleeces of sheep and beavers and the spoiles of silk worms he hath proclaimed that although his promises are the bounds of our certain expectation yet they are not the limits of his loving kindnesse and if he does more then he hath promised no man can complain that he did otherwise and did greater things then he said thus God does but therefore so also must we imitating that example and transcribing that copy of divine truth alwayes remembring that his promises are yea and Amen And although God often goes more yet he never goes lesse and therefore we must never go from ur promises unlesse we be thrust from thence by disability or let go by leave or called up higher by a greater intendment and increase of kindnesse And therefore when Solyman had sworn to Ibrahim-Bassa that he would never kill him so long as he were alive he quitted himself but ill when he sent an Eunuch to cut his throat when he slept because the Priest told him that sleep was death His act was false and deceitful as his great prophet But in this part of simplicity we Christians have a most especiall obligation for our religion being ennobled by the most and the greatest promises and our faith made confident by the veracity of our Lord and his word made certain by miracles and prophecies and voices from heaven and all the testimony of God himself and that truth it self is bound upon us by the efficacy of great endearments and so many precepts if we shall suffer the faith of a Christian to be an instrument to deceive our brother and that he must either be incredulous or deceived uncharitable or deluded like a fool we dishonour the sacrednesse of the institution and become strangers to the spirit of truth and to the eternall word of God Our Blessed Lord would not have his disciples to swear at all no not in publick Judicature if the necessities of the world would permit him to be obeyed If Christians will live according to the religion the word of a Christian were sufficient instrument to give testimony and to make promises to secure a faith and upon that supposition oathes were uselesse and therefore forbidden because there could be no necessity to invoke Gods name in promises or affirmations if men were indeed Christians and therefore in that case would be a taking it in vain but because many are not and they that are in name oftentimes are so in nothing else it became necessary that man should swear in judgment and in publick courts but consider who it was that invented and made the necessitie of oaths of bonds of securities of statutes extents judgements and all the artifices of humane diffidence and dishonesty These things were indeed found out by men but the necessity of these was from him that is the father of lies from him that hath made many faire promises but never kept any or if he did it was to do a bigger mischief to cozen the more for so does the Devil He promises rich harvests and blasts the corn in the spring he tells his servants they shall be rich and fills them with beggerly qualities makes them base and indigent greedy and penurious and they that serve him intirely as witches and such miserable persons never can be rich if he promises health then men grow confident and intemperate and do such things whereby they shall die the sooner and die longer they shall die eternally He deceives men in their trust and frustrates their hopes and eludes their expectations and his promises have a period set beyond which they cannot be true For wicked men shall enjoy a faire fortune but till their appointed time and then it ends imperfect and most accomplished misery and therefore even in this performance he deceives them most of all promising and performing coloured stones and glasse-gems that he may cozen them of their glorious inheritance All fraudulent breakers of promises dresse themselves by his glasse whose best imagery is deformity and lies Sermon XXIV Of Christian Simplicity Part II. 4. CHristian simplicity teaches opennesse and ingenuity in Contracts and matters of buying and selling covenants associations and all such entercourses which suppose an equality of persons as to the matter of right and justice in the stipulation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was the old Attick law and nothing is more contrary to Christian religion then that the entercourses of justice be direct snares and that we should deal with men as men deal with foxes and wolves and vermin do all violence and when that cannot be use all craft and every thing whereby they can be made miserable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There are men in the world who love to smile but that smile is more dangerous then
our religion can charme the passion and enable the spirit to entertain and master a sorrow and when we have such rare supplies out of the store-houses of reason and religion we have lesse reason to use these arts and little deviees which are arguments of an infirmity as great as is the charity and therefore we are to keep our selves strictly to the foregoing measures Let every man speak the truth to his neighbour putting away lying for we are members one of another and be as harmlesse as doves saith our blessed Saviour in my text which contain the whole duty concerning the matter of truth and sincerity in both which places truth and simplicity are founded upon justice and charity and therefore wherever a lie is in any sense against justice and wrongs any thing of a man his judgement and his reason his right or his liberty it is expresly forbidden in the Christian religion what cases we can truly suppose to be besides these the law forbids not and therefore it is lawful to say that to my self which I believe not for what innocent purpose I please and to all those over whose understanding I have or ought to have right These cases are intricate enough and therefore I shall return plainly to presse the doctrine of simplicity which ought to be so sacred that a man ought to do nothing indirectly which it is not lawful to own to receive no advantage by the sin of another which I should account dishonest if the action were my own for whatsoever disputes may be concerning the lawfulnesse of pretending craftily in some rare and contingent cases yet it is on all hands condemned that my craft should do injury to my brother I remember that when some greedy and indigent people forged a will of Lucius Minutius Basilius and joyned M. Crassus and Q. Hortensius in the inheritance that their power for their own interest might secure the others share they suspecting the thing to be a forgery yet being not principals and actors in the contrivance alieni facinoris munus culum non repudiaverunt refused not to receive a present made them by anothers crime but so they entred upon a moiety of the estate and the biggest share of the dishonour we must not be crafty to anothers injury so much as by giving countenance to the wrong for Tortoises and the Estrich hatch their egges with their looks onely and some have designes which a dissembling face or an acted gesture can produce but as a man may commit adultery with his eye so with his eye also he may tell a lie and steal with one finger and do injury collaterally and yet designe it with a direct intuition upon which he looks with his face over his shoulder and by whatsoever instrument my neighbour may be abused by the same instrument I sin if I do designe it antecedently or fal upon it together with something else or rejoyce in it when it is done 7. One thing more I am to adde that it is not lawful to tell a lie in jest It was a vertue noted in Aristides and Epaminondes that they would not lie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not in sport and as Christian simplicity forbids all lying in matter of interest and serious rights so there is an appendix to this precept forbidding to lie in mirth for of every idle word a man shall speak he shall give account in the day of judgment and such are the jestings which S. Paul reckons amongst things uncomly But amongst these fables apologues parables or figures of Rhetorick and any artificial instrument of instruction or innocent pleasure are not to be reckoned But he that without any end of charity or institution shall tell lies onely to become ridiculous in himself or mock another hath set some thing upon his doomsday book which must be taken off by water or by fire that is by repentance or a judgement Nothing is easier then simplicity and ingenuity it is open and ready without trouble and artificial cares fit for communities and the proper vertue of men the necessary appendage of useful speech without which language were given to men as nails and teeth to Lions for nothing but to do mischief it is a rare instrument of institution and a certain token of courage the companion of goodnesse and a noble minde the preserver of friendship the band of society the security of merchants and the blessing of trade it prevents infinite of quarrels and appeals to Judges and suffers none of the evils of Jealousie men by simplicity converse as do the Angels they do their own work and secure their proper interest and serve the publick and do glory to God But hypocrites and liars and dissemblers spread darknesse over the face of affaires and make men like the blinde to walk softly and timorously and crafty men like the close aire suck that which is open and devour its portion and destroy its liberty and it is the guise of devils and the dishonour of the soul and the canker of society and the enemy of justice and truth and peace of wealth and honour of courage and merchandise He is a good man with whom a blind man may safely converse dignus quicum in tenebris mices to whom in respect of his fair treatings the darknesse and light are both alike But he that bears light upon the face and a dark heart is like him that transforms himself into an Angel of light when he means to do most mischief Remember this onely that false colours laid upon the face besmear the skin and durty it but they neither make a beauty nor mend it Apocal 22. 15. For without shall be dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and Murderers and idolaters and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie Sermon XXV THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY Psalm 86. 5 For thou Lord art good and ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy to all them that call upon thee MAN having destroyed that which God delighted in that is the beauty of his soul fell into an evil portion and being seized upon by the divine justice grew miserable and condemned to an incurable sorrow Poor Adam being banished and undone went and lived a sad life in the mountains of India and turned his face and his prayers towards Paradise thither he sent his sighes to that place he directed his devotions there was his heart now and his felicity sometimes had been but he knew not how to return thither for God was his enemy and by many of his attributes opposed himself against him Gods power was armed against him and poor man whom a fly or a fish could kill was assaulted and beaten with a sword of fire in the hand of a Cherubim Gods eye watched him his omniscience was mans accuser his severity was the Judge his justice the executioner It was a mighty calamity that man was to undergo when he that made him armed himself against his creature which would have died or turned
strangely and carelesly without prayers without Sacraments without consideration without counsel and without comfort and to dresse the souls of our dear people to so saâ— a parting is an imployment we therefore omit not alwayes because we are negligent but because the work is sad and allay the affections of the world with those melancholy circumstances but iâ— God did not in his mercies make secret and equivalent provisions for them and take care of his redeemed ones we might unhappily meet them in a sad eternity and without remedy weep together and groan for ever But God hath provided better things for them that they without us that is without our assistances shall be made perfect Sermon XXVII The Miracles of the Divine Mercy Part III. THere are very many more orders and conjugations of mercies but because the numbers of them naturally tend to their own greatnesse that is to have no measure I must reckon but a few more and them also without order for that they do descend upon us we see and feel but by what order of things or causes is as undiscerned as the head of Nilus or a sudden remembrance of a long neglected and forgotten proposition 1. But upon this account it is that good men have observed that the providence of God is so great a provider for holy living and does so certainly minister to religion that nature and chance the order of the world and the influences of heaven are taught to serve the ends of the Spirit of God and the spirit of a man I do not speak of the miracles that God hath in the severall periods of the world wrought for the establishing his lawes and confirming his promises and securing our obedience though that was all the way the overflowing and miracles of mercy as well as power but that which I consider is that besides the extraordinary emanations of the Divine power upon the first and most solemn occasions of an institution and the first beginnings of a religion such as were the wonders God did in Egypt and in the wildernesse preparatory to the sanction of that law and the first covenant and the miracles wrought by Christ and his Apostles for the founding and the building up the religion of the Gospel and the new covenant God does also do things wonderfull and miraculous for the promoting the ordinary and lesse solemn actions of our piety and to assist and accompany them in a constant and regular succession It was a strange variety of naturall efficacies that Manna should sâ—nk in 24. hours if gathered upon Wednesday and Thursday and that it should last till 48. hours if gathered upon the Even of the Sabbath and that it should last many hundreds of yeers when placed in the Sanctuary by the ministery of the high Priest but so it was in the Jews religion and Manna pleased every palate and it filled all appetites and the same measure was a different proportion it was much and it was little as if nature that it might serve religion had been taught some measures of infinity which is every where and no where filling all things and circumscribed with nothing measured by one Omer and doing the work of two like the crowns of Kings fitting the browes of Nimrod and the most mighty Warriour and yet not too large for the temples of an infant Prince And not onely is it thus in nature but in contingencies and acts depending upon the choice of men for God having commanded the sons of Israel to go up to Jerusalem to worship thrice every yeer and to leave their borders to be guarded by women and children and sick persons in the neighbourhood of diligent and spitefull enemies yet God so disposed of their hearts and opportunities that they never entered the land when the people were at their solemnity untill they desecrated their rites by doing at their Passeover the greatest sin and treason in the world till at Easter they crucified the Lord of life and glory they were secure in Jerusalem and in their borders but when they had destroyed religion by this act God took away their security and Titus besieged the City at the feast of Easter that the more might perish in the deluge of the Divine indignation To this observation the Jews adde that in Jerusalem no man ever had a fall that came thither to worship that at their solemn festivals there was reception in the Town for all the inhabitants of the land concerning which although I cannot affirm any thing yet this is certain that no godly person among all the tribes of Israel was ever a begger but all the variety of humane chances were over-ruled to the purposes of providence and providence was measured by the ends of the religion and the religion which promised them plenty performed the promise till the Nation and the religion too began to decline that it might give place to a better ministery and a more excellent dispensation of the things of the world But when Christian religion was planted and had taken root and had filled all lands then all the nature of things the whole creation became servant to the kingdom of grace and the Head of the religion is also the Head of the creatures and ministers all the things of the world in order to the Spirit of grace and now Angels are ministring spirits sent forth to minister for the good of them that fear the Lord and all the violences of men and things of nature and choice are forced into subjection and lowest ministeries and to cooperate as with an united designe to verifie all the promises of the Gospel and to secure and advantage all the children of the kingdom and now he that is made poor by chance or persecution is made rich by religion and he that hath nothing yet possesses all things and sorrow it self is the greatest comfort not only because it ministers to vertue but because it self is one as in the case of repentance and death ministers to life and bondage is freedom and losse is gain and our enemies are our friends and every thing turns into religion and religion turns into felicity and all manner of advantages But that I may not need to enumerate any more particulars in this observation certain it is that Angels of light and darknesse all the influences of heaven and the fruits and productions of the earth the stars and the elements the secret things that lie in the bowels of the Sea and the entrails of the earth the single effects of all efficients and the conjunction of all causes all events foreseen and all rare contingencies every thing of chance and every thing of choice is so much a servant to him whos 's greatest desire and great interest is by all means to save our souls that we are thereby made sure that all the whole creation shall be made to bend in all the flexures of its nature and accidents that it may minister to religion to the good