Idolatry to get ground amongst them 17. THE two Tribes of Judah and Benjamin were loyal both to God and their Prince continuing obedient to their lawful Sovereign and firmly adhering to the worship of the Temple though even here too impiety in some places maintained its ground having taken root in the Reign of Solomon who through his over-great partiality and fondness to his Wives had been betrayed to give too much countenance to 〈◊〉 The extirpation hereof was the design and attempt of all the pious and good Princes of Judah Jehosaphat set himself in good earnest to recover Religion and the state of the Church to its ancient purity and lustre he abolished the Groves and high places and appointed itinerant Priests and Levites to go from City to City to expound the Law and instruct the people in the knowledge of their duty nay he himself held a royal Visitation Going quite through the Land and bringing back the people to the Lord God of their Fathers But under the succeeding Kings Religion again lost its ground and had been quite extinct during the tyranny and usurpation of Athaliah but that good Jehoiada the High Priest kept it alive by his admirable zeal and industry While he lived his Pupil Joas who owed both his Crown and his life to him promoted the design and purged the Temple though after his Tutors death he apostatized to prophaneness and idolatry Nor indeed was the reformation effectually advanced till the time of Hezekiah who no sooner ascended the Throne but he summoned the Priests and Levites exhorted them to begin at home and first to reform themselves then to cleanse and repair the Temple he resetled the Priests and Levites in their proper places and offices and caused them to offer all sorts of Sacrifices and the Passeover to be universally celebrated with great strictness and solemnity he destroyed the Monuments of Idolatry took away the Altars in Jerusalem and having given commission the people did the like in all parts of the Kingdom breaking the Images cutting down the Groves throwing down the Altars and high places until they had utterly destroyed them all But neither greatness nor piety can exempt any from the common Laws of mortality Hezekiah dies and his son Manasseh succeeds a wicked Prince under whose influence impiety like a land-flood broke in upon Religion and laid all waste before it But his Grandchild Josiah made some amends he gave signal instances of an early piety for in the eighth year of his Reign while he was yet young he began to seek after the God of David his Father and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem he defaced whatever had been abused and prostituted to Idolatry and Superstition throughout the whole Kingdom repaired God's house and ordered its worship according to the prescript of the Mosaick Law a copy whereof they had found in the ruines of the Temple solemnly engaged himself and his people to be true to Religion and the worship of God and caused so great and solemn a Passeover to be held that there was no Passeover like to it kept in Israel from the days of Samuel And more he had done had not an immature death cut him off in the midst both of his days and his pious designs and projects Not many years after God being highly provoked by the prodigious impieties of that Nation delivered it up to the Army of the King of Babylon who demolished the City harassed the Land and carried the people captive unto Babylon And no wonder the Divine patience could hold no longer when all the chief of the Priests and the people transgressed very much after all the abominations of the Heathen and polluted the house of the Lord which he had hallowed in Jerusalem Seventy years they remained under this captivity during which time the Prophet Daniel gave lively and particular accounts of the Messiah that he should come into the World to introduce a Law of everlasting righteousness to die as a sacrifice and expiation for the sins of the people and to put a period to the Levitical sacrifices and oblations And whereas other prophecies had only in general defined the time of the Messiah's coming he particularly determines the period that all this should be at the end of LXX weeks that is at the expiration of CCCCXC years which exactly fell in with the time of our Saviour's appearing in the World The seventy years captivity being run out by the 〈◊〉 of the King of Babylon they were set free and by him permitted and assisted to repair Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple which was accordingly done under the government of Nehemiah and the succeeding Rulers and the Temple finished by Zorobabel and things brought into some tolerable state of order and decency and so continued till the Reign of Antiochus Epiphanes King of Syria by whom the Temple was prophaned and violated and the Jewish Church miserably afflicted and distressed he thrust out Onias the High Priest and put in his brother Jason a man lost both to Religion and good manners and who by a vast summ of money had purchased the Priesthood of Antiochus At this time Matthias a Priest and the head of the 〈◊〉 Family stood up for his Country after whom came Judas Macchabaeus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Josephus truly characters him a man of a generous temper and a valiant mind ready to do or suffer any thing to assert the Liberties and Religion of his Country followed both in his zeal and prosperous success by his two Brothers Jonathan and Simon successively High Priests and Commanders after him Next him came John surnamed Hyrcanus then Aristobulus Alexander Hyrcanus Aristobulus junior Alexander Antigonus in whose time Herod the Great having by the favour of Antony obtained of the Roman Senate the Sovereignty over the Jewish Nation and being willing that the Priesthood should intirely depend upon his arbitrary disposure abrogated the succession of the Asmonaean Family and put in one Ananel 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Josephus calls him an obscure Priest of the line of those who had been Priests in Babylon To him succeeded Aristobulus to him Jesus the son of Phabes to him Simon who being deposed next came Matthias deposed also by Herod next him Joazar who underwent the same fate from Archelaus then Jesus the son of Sie after whom Joazar was again restored to the Chair and under his Pontificate though before his first deposition Christ was born things every day growing worse among them till about seventy years after the wrath of God came upon them to the uttermost and brought the Romans who finally took away their place and Nation 18. BEFORE we go off from this part of our discourse it may not be amiss to take a more particular view of the state of the Jewish Church as it stood at the time of our Saviour's appearing in the World as what may reflect some considerable light upon the
consideration is particular because there are fewer capacities of making sins to become national than personal and therefore if we understand when a sin is National we may the rather understand the meaning of God's hand when he strikes a People For National sins grow higher and higher not merely according to the degree of the sin or the intension alone but according to the extension 〈◊〉 to its being 〈◊〉 so it is productive of more or less mischief to a Kingdom Customary iniquities amongst the People do then amount to the account of National sins when they are of so universal practice as to take in well-near every particular such as was that of Sodom not to leave ten righteous in all the Countrey and such were the sins of the Old world who left but eight persons to escape the angry baptism of the Floud And such was the murmur of the children of Israel refusing to march up to Canaan at the commandment of God they all murmured but Caleb and 〈◊〉 and this God in the case of the Amalekites calls the fulfilling of their sins and a filling up the measure of their iniquities And hither also I reckon the defection of the Ten Tribes from the House of Judah and the Samaritan Schism these caused the total extirpation of the offending People For although these sins were personal and private at first yet when they come to be universal by diffusion and dissemination and the good People remaining among them are but like drops of Wine in a Tun of Water of no consideration with God save only to the preservation of their own persons then although the persons be private yet all private or singular persons make the Nation But this hath happened but seldome in Christianity I think indeed never except in the case of Mutinies and Rebellion against their lawful Prince or the attesting violence done in unjust Wars But God only knows and no man can say that any sin is national by diffusion and therefore in this case we cannot make any certain judgment or advantage to our selves or very rarely by observing the changes of Providence upon a People 9. But the next above this in order to the procuring popular Judgments is publick impunities the not doing Justice upon Criminals publickly complained of and demanded especially when the persons interested call for Justice and execution of good Laws and the Prince's arm is at liberty and in full strength and there is no contrary reason in the particular instance to make compensation to the publick for the omission or no care taken to satisfie the particular Abimelech thought he had reason to be angry with Isaac for saying 〈◊〉 was his Sister for one of the people might have ly'ne with thy wife and thou shouldst have brought 〈◊〉 upon us meaning that the man should have escaped unpunished by reason of the mistake which very impunity he feared might be expounded to be a countenance and encouragement to the sin But this was no more than his fear The case of the Benjamites comes home to this present article for they refused to do justice upon the men that had ravished and killed the Levite's Concubine they lost twenty five thousand in battel their Cities were destroyed and the whole Tribe almost extinguished For punishing publick and great acts of injustice is called in Scripture putting away the evil from the land because to this purpose the sword is put into the Prince's hand and he bears the sword in vain who ceases to protect his People and not to punish the evil is a voluntary retention of it unless a special case intervene in which the Prince thinks it convenient to give a particular pardon provided this be not encouragement to others nor without great reason big enough to make compensation for the particular omission and with care to render some other satisfaction to the person injured in all other cases of impunity that sin becomes National by forbearing which in the acting was personal and it is certain the impunity is a spring of universal evils it is no thank to the publick if the best man be not as bad as the worst 10. But there is a step beyond this and of a more publick concernment such are the Laws of Omri when a Nation consents to and makes ungodly Statutes when mischief is established as a Law then the Nation is engaged to some purpose When I see the People despise their Governours scorn and rob and disadvantage the Ministers of Religion make rude addresses to God to his Temple to his Sacraments I look upon it as the insolency of an untaught People who would as readily do the contrary if the fear of God and the King were upon them by good Examples and Precepts and Laws and severe executions And farther yet when the more publick and exemplar persons are without sense of Religion without a dread of Majesty without reverence to the Church without impresses of Conscience and the tendernesses of a religious fear towards God as the persons are greater in estimation of Law and in their influences upon the People so the score of the Nation advances and there is more to be paid for in popular Judgments But when Iniquity or Irreligion is made a Sanction and either God must be dishonoured or the Church exauthorated or her Rites invaded by a Law then the fortune of the Kingdom is at stake No sin engages a Nation so much or is so publick so solemn iniquity as is a wicked Law Therefore it concerns Princes and States to secure the Piety and innocency of their Laws and if there be any evil Laws which upon just grounds may be thought productive of God's anger because a publick misdemeanour cannot be expiated but by a publick act of Repentance or a publick Calamity the Laws must either have their edge abated by a desuetude or be laid asleep by a non-execution or dismembred by contrary proviso's or have the sting drawn forth by interpretation or else by abrogation be quite rescinded But these are National sins within it self or within its own Body by the act of the Body I mean diffusive or representative and they are like the personal sins of men in or against their own bodies in the matter of Sobriety There are others in the matter of Justice as the Nation relates to other People communicating in publick Entercourse 11. For as the Entercourse between man and man in the actions of commutative and distributive Justice is the proper matter of Vertues and Vices personal so are the Transactions between Nation and Nation against the publick rules of Justice Sins National directly and in their first original and answer to Injustice between man and man Such are commencing War upon unjust titles Invasion of neighbours territories Consederacies and aids upon tyrannical interest Wars against true Religion or Sovereignty Violation of the Laws of nations which they have consented to as the publick instrument of accord and negotiation
he bearing them upon his tender body with an even and excellent and dispassionate spirit offered up these beginnings of sufferings to his Father to obtain pardon even for them that injured him and for all the World 6. Judas now seeing that this matter went farther than he intended it repented of his fact For although evil persons are in the progress of their iniquity invited on by new arguments and supported by confidence and a careless spirit yet when iniquity is come to the height or so great a proportion that it is apt to produce Despair or an intolerable condition then the Devil suffers the Conscience to thaw and grow tender but it is the tenderness of a Bile it is soreness rather and a new disease and either it comes when the time of Repentance is past or leads to some act which shall make the pardon to be impossible and so it happened here For Judas either impatient of the shame or of the sting was thrust on to despair of pardon with a violence as hasty and as great as were his needs And Despair is very often used like the bolts and bars of Hell-gates it 〈◊〉 upon them that had entred into the suburbs of eternal death by an habitual sin and it secures them against all retreat And the Devil is forward enough to bring a man to Repentance provided it be too late and Esau wept bitterly and repented him and the five foolish Virgins lift up their voice aloud when the gates were shut and in Hell men shall repent to all eternity But I consider the very great folly and infelicity of Judas it was at midnight he received his money in the house of Annas betimes in that morning he repented his bargain he threw the money back again but his sin stuck close and it is thought to a 〈◊〉 eternity Such is the purchace of Treason and the reward of Covetousness it is cheap in its offers momentany in its possession unsatisfying in the fruition uncertain in the stay sudden in its 〈◊〉 horrid in the remembrance and a ruine a certain and miserable ruine is in the event When Judas came in that sad condition and told his miserable story to them that set him on work they 〈◊〉 him go away unpitied he had served their ends in betraying his Lord and those that hire such servants use to leave them in the disaster to shame and to sorrow and so did the Priests but took the money and 〈◊〉 to put it into the treasury because it was the price of bloud but they made no scruple to take it from the treasury to buy that bloud Any thing seems lawful that serves the ends of ambitious and bloudy persons and then they are scrupulous in their cases of Conscience when nothing of Interest does intervene for evil men make Religion the servant of Interest and sometimes weak men think that it is the 〈◊〉 of 〈◊〉 Religion and suspect that all of it is a design because many great Politicks make it so The end of the Tragedy was that Judas died with an ignoble death marked with the circumstances of a horrid Judgment and perished by the most infamous hands in the world that is by his own Which if it be confronted against the excellent spirit of S. Peter who did an act as contradictory to his honour and the grace of God as could be easily imagined yet taking sanctuary in the arms of his Lord he lodged in his heart for ever and became an example to all the world of the excellency of the Divine Mercy and the efficacy of a holy Hope and a hearty timely and an operative Repentance 7. 〈◊〉 now all things were ready for the purpose the High Priest and all his Council go along with the Holy Jesus to the house of Pilate hoping he would verifie their Sentence and bring it to execution that they might 〈◊〉 be rid of their fears and enjoy their sin and their reputation quietly S. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the High Priest caused the Holy Jesus to be led with a cord about his neck and in memory of that the Priests for many Ages 〈◊〉 a stole about theirs But the Jews did it according to the custom of the Nation to signifie he was condemned to death they desired Pilate that he would crucifie him they having 〈◊〉 him worthy And when Pilate enquired into the particulars they gave him a general and an indefinite answer If he were not guilty we would not have brought him 〈◊〉 thee they intended not to make Pilate Judge of the cause but 〈◊〉 of their cruelty But Pilate had not learned to be guided by an implicite faith of such persons which he knew to be malicious and violent and therefore still called for instances and arguments of their Accusation And that all the world might see with how great unworthiness they prosecuted the 〈◊〉 they chiefly there accused him of such crimes upon which themselves condemned him not and which they knew to be false but yet likely to move Pilate if he had been passionate or inconsiderate in his sentences He offered to make himself a King This 〈◊〉 happened at the entry of the Praetorium for the 〈◊〉 who made no conscience of killing the King of Heaven made a conscience of the external customs and ceremonies of their Law which had in them no interiour sanctity which were apt to separate them 〈◊〉 the Nations and remark them with characters of Religion and abstraction it would defile them to go to a Roman Forum 〈◊〉 a capital action was to be judged and yet the effusion of the best bloud in the world was not esteemed against their 〈◊〉 so violent and blind is the spirit of malice which turns humanity into 〈◊〉 wisdom into craft diligence into subornation and Religion into Superstition 8. Two other articles they alledged against him but the first concerned not Pilate and the second was involved in the third and therefore he chose to examine him upon this only of his being a King To which the Holy Jesus answered that it is true he was 〈◊〉 King indeed but not of this world his Throne is Heaven the Angels are his Courtiers and the 〈◊〉 Creation are his Subjects His Regiment is spiritual his 〈◊〉 are the Courts of Conscience and Church-tribunals and at Dooms-day the Clouds The Tribute which he demands are conformity to his Laws Faith 〈◊〉 and Charity no other Gabels but the duties of a holy Spirit and the expresses of a religious Worship and obedient Will and a consenting Understanding And in all this Pilate thought the interest of 〈◊〉 was not invaded For certain it is the Discipline of Jesus confirmed it much and supported it by the strongest pillars And here Pilate saw how impertinent and malicious their Accusation was And we who declaim against the unjust proceedings of the Jews against our dearest Lord should do well to take care that we in accusing any of our Brethren either with malicious purpose or with
in the 〈◊〉 year of his Age and was buried in the Sepulchre which himself had purchased of the sons of Heth. Contemporary with Abraham was his Nephew Lot a just man but vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked for dwelling in the midst of an impure and debauched generation In seeing and hearing he vexed his righteous Soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds This endeared him to Heaven who took a particular care of him and sent an Angel on purpose to conduct him and his family out of Sodom before he let loose that fatal vengeance that overturned it 18. Abraham being dead Isaac stood up in his stead the son of his Parents old age and the fruit of an extraordinary promise Being delivered from being a sacrifice he frequented say the Jews the School of Sem wherein he was educated in the knowledge of Divine things till his marriage with Rebeccah But however that was he was a good man we read of his going out to meditate or pray in the field at even-tide and elsewhere we find him publickly sacrificing and calling upon God In all his distresses God still appeared to him animated him against his fears and encouraged him to go on in the steps of his Father renewing the same promises to him which he had made to Abraham Nay so visible and remarkable was the interest which he had in Heaven that Abimelech King of the Philistines and his Courtiers thought it their wisest course to confederate with him for this very reason because they saw certainly that the Lord was with him and that he was the blessed of the Lord. Religion is the truest interest and the wisest portion 't is the surest protection and the safest refuge When a man's ways please the Lord he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him Isaac dying in the CLXXX year of his life the Patriarchate devolved upon his son Jacob by vertue of the primogeniture which he had purchased of his brother Esau and which had been confirmed to him by the grant and blessing of his Father though subtilly procured by the artifice and policy of his Mother who also told him that God Almighty would bless and multiply him and his seed after him and that the blessing of Abraham should come upon them He intirely devoted himself to the fear and service of God kept up his Worship and vindicated it from the incroachments of Idolatry he erected Altars at every turn and zealously purged his house from those Teraphim or Idols which Rachel had brought along with her out of Laban's house either to prevent her Father's enquiring at them which way Jacob had made his escape or to take away from him the instruments of his Idolatry or possibly that she might have wherewith to propitiate and 〈◊〉 her Father in case he should pursue and overtake them as Josephus thinks though surely then she would have produced them when she saw her Father so zealous to retrieve them He had frequent Visions and Divine condescensions God appearing to him and ratifying the Covenant that he had made with Abraham and changing his name from Jacob to Israel as a memorial of the mighty prevalency which he had with Heaven In his later time he removed his family into Egypt where God had prepared his way by the 〈◊〉 of his son Joseph to be Vice-Roy and Lord of that vast and fertile Country advanced to that place of state and grandeur by many strange and unsearchable methods of the Divine Providence By his two Wives the Daughters of his Uncle Laban and his two Handmaids he had twelve Sons who afterwards became founders of the Twelve Tribes of the Jewish Nation to whom upon his death-bed he bequeathed his blessings consigning their several portions and the particular fates of every Tribe among whom that of 〈◊〉 is most remarkable to whom it was foretold that the 〈◊〉 should arise out of that Tribe that the Regal Power Political Soveraignty should be annexed to it and remain in it till the 〈◊〉 came at whose coming the Scepter should depart and the Law-giver from between his knees And thus all their own Paraphrasts both Onkelos Jonathan and he of Jerusalem do expound it that there should not want Kings or Rulers of the house of Judah nor Scribes to teach the Law of that race 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 until the time that 〈◊〉 the King shall come whose the Kingdom is And so it accordingly came to pass for at the time of Christ's Birth Herod who was a stranger had usurped the Throne debased the Authority of their great Sanhedrim murdered their Senators devested them of all Judiciary power and kept them so low that they had not power 〈◊〉 to put a man to death And unto him shall the gathering of the people be A prophecy exactly accomplished when in the first Ages of Christianity the Nations of the World 〈◊〉 to the standard of Christ at the publication of the Gospel Jacob died CXLVII years old and was buried in Canaan in the Sepulchre of his Fathers After whose decease his posterity for some hundreds of years were afflicted under the Egyptian yoke Till God remembring the Covenant he had made with their Fathers powerfully rescued them from the Iron Furnace and conducted them through the wilderness into the Land of Promise where he framed and ordered their Commonwealth appointed Laws for the government of their Church and setled them under a more fixed and certain dispensation 19. HITHERTO we have surveyed the state of the Church in the constant succession of the Patriarchal Line But if we step a little further into the History of those times we shall find that there were some extraordinary persons without the Pale of that holy Tribe renowned for the worship of God and the profession of Religion among whom two are most considerable Melchisedeck and Job Melchisedeck was King of Salem in the land of Canaan and Priest of the most high God The short account which the Scripture gives of him hath left room for various fancies and conjectures The opinion that has most generally obtained is that Melchisedeck was Sem one of the sons of Noah who was of a great Age and lived above LXX years after Abraham's coming into Canaan and might therefore well enough meet him in his triumphant return from his conquest over the Kings of the Plain But notwithstanding the universal authority which this opinion assumes to it self it appears not to me with any tolerable probability partly because Canaan where Melchisedeck lived was none of those Countries which were allotted to Sem and to his posterity and unlikely it is that he should be Prince in a foreign Country partly because those things which the Scripture reports concerning Melchisedeck do no ways agree to Sem as that he was without Father and Mother without genealogie c. whenas Moses does most exactly describe and record Sem and his Family both as to his Ancestors
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his School or place of institution was at Tiberias and nothing more commonly shewed to Travellers than Job's well in the way between Ramah and Jerusalem others place it in Syria near Damascus so called from 〈◊〉 the supposed Founder of that City others a little more Northward at Apamea now called Hama where his house is said to be shewed at this day Most make it to be part of Idumaea near mount 〈◊〉 or else Arabia the Desart probably it was in the confines of both this part of Arabia being nearest to the Sabaeans and Chaldaeans who invaded him and most applicable to his dwelling among the Sons of the East to the situation of his friends who came to visit him and best corresponding with those frequent Arabisms discernable both in the Language and Discourses of Job and his Friends not to say that this Country produced persons exceedingly addicted to Learning and Contemplation and the studies of natural Philosophy whence the wise men who came out of the East to worship Christ are thought by many to have been Arabians For his kindred and his friends we find four taken notice of who came to visit him in his distress Eliphaz the Temanite the son probably of Teman and grandchild of Esau by his eldest son Eliphaz the Country deriving its name Teman from his Father and was situate in Idumaea in the borders of the Desart Arabia Bildad the Shuhite a descendant in all likelihood of Shuah one of the sons of Abraham by his wife Keturah whose seat was in this part of Arabia Zophar the Naamathite a Country lying near those parts And Elihu the Buzite of the off-spring of Buz the son of Nahor and so nearly related to Job himself He was the son of Barachel of the kindred of Ram who was the head of the Family and his habitation was in the parts of Arabia the Desart near Euphrates or at least in the Southern part of 〈◊〉 bordering upon it As for Job himself he is made by some a Canaanite of the posterity of Cham by others to descend from Sem by his son Amram whose eldest sons name was 〈◊〉 by most from Esau the Father of the Idumaean Nations but most probably either from Nahor Abraham's brother whose sons were Huz Buz Chesed c. or from Abraham himself by some of the sons which he had by his wife Keturah whereby an account is most probably given how Job came to be imbued with those seeds of Piety and true Religion for which he was so eminently remarkable as deriving them from those Religious principles and instructions which Abraham and Nahor had bequeathed to their posterity His quality and the circumstances of his External state were very considerable a man rich and honourable His substance was seven thousand Sheep and three thousand Camels and five hundred yoke of Oxen and five hundred she-Asses and a very great houshold so that he was the greatest of all the men of the East himself largely describes the great honour and prosperity of his fortunes that he washed his steps in Butter and the rock poured out rivers of Oil when he went out to the gate through the City and prepared his seat in the street the young men saw him and hid themselves the aged arose and stood up the Princes refrained talking and laid their hand on their mouth c. He delivered the poor that cried and the fatherless and him that had none to help him the blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon him c. He brake the jaws of the wicked and pluckt the spoil out of their teeth c. Indeed so great his state and dignity that it has led many into a perswasion that he was King of Idumaea a powerful and mighty Prince a fancy that has received no small encouragement from the common but groundless confounding of Job with Jobab King of Edom of the race of Esau. For the story gives no intimation of any such royal dignity to which Job was advanced but always speaks of him as a private person though exceeding wealthy and prosperous and thereby probably of extraordinary power and estimation in his Country Nay that he might not want fit Companions in his Regal capacity three of his friends are made Kings as well as he the LXX Translators themselves stiling Eliphaz King of the Temanites Bildad of the Suchites and Zophar King of the Minaeans though with as little probably less reason than the former 21. BUT whatever his condition was we are sure he was no less eminent for Piety and Religion he was a man perfect and upright one that feared God and eschewed evil Though living among the Idolatrous Gentiles he kept up the true and sincere worship of God daily offered up Sacrifices and Prayers to Heaven piously instructed his Children and Family lived in an intire dependence upon the Divine Providence in all his discourses expressed the highest and most honourable sentiments and thoughts of God and such as best became the Majesty of an Infinite Being in all transactions he was just and righteous compassionate and charitable modest and humble indeed by the character of God himself who knew him best There was none like him in the Earth a perfect and an upright man fearing God and eschewing evil his mind was submissive and compliant his patience generous and unshaken great even to a Proverb You have heard of the Patience of Job And enough he had to try it to the utmost if we consider what sufferings he underwent those evils which are wont but singly to seise upon other men all centred and met in him Plundered in his Estate by the Sabaean and Chaldaean Free-booters whose standing livelihood were spoils and robberies and not an Oxe or Asse left of all the Herd not a Sheep or a Lamb either for Food or Sacrifice Undone in his Posterity his Seven Sons and Three Daughters being all slain at once by the fall of one House blasted in his credit and good name and that by his nearest friends who traduced and challenged him for a dissembler and an hypocrite Ruined in his health being smitten with sore boiles from the crown of the Head to the sole of the Foot till his Body became a very Hospital of Diseases tormented in his mind with sad and uncomfortable reflections The arrows of the Almighty being shot within him the poyson whereof drank up his spirit the terrours of God setting themselves in array against him All which were aggravated and set home by Satan the grand Engineer of all those torments and all this continuing for at least Twelve Months say the Jews probably for a much longer time and yet endured with great courage and fortitude of mind till God put a period to this tedious Trial and crowned his sufferings with an ample restitution We have seen who this excellent Person was we are next to enquire when he lived And here we meet with almost an infinite variety of
Their Oral and unwritten Law It s original and succession according to the mind of the Jews Their unreasonable and blasphemous preferring it above the written Law Their religious observing the Traditions of the Elders The Vow of Corban what The superseding Moral Duties by it The Sects in the Jewish Church The Pharisees their denomination rise temper and principles Sadducees their impious Principles and evil lives The Essenes their original opinions and way of life The Herodians who The Samaritans Karraeans The Sect of the Zealots The Roman Tyranny over the Jewes 1. THE Church which had hitherto lyen dispersed in private Families and had often been reduced to an inconsiderable number being now multiplied into a great and a populous Nation God was pleased to enter into Covenant not any longer with particular Persons but with the Body of the People and to govern the Church by more certain and regular ways and methods than it had hitherto been This Dispensation began with the delivery of the Law and continued till the final period of the Jewish state consisting only of meats and drinks and divers washings and carnal Ordinances imposed on them until the time of reformation In the survey whereof we shall chiefly consider what Laws were given for the Government of the Church by what Methods of revelation God communicated his mind and will to them and what was the state of the Church especially towards the conclusion of this Oeconomy 2. THE great Minister of this Dispensation was Moses the Son of Amram of the House of Levi a Person whose signal preservation when but an Infant presaged him to be born for great and generous undertakings Pharaoh King of Egypt desirous to suppress the growing numbers of the Jewish Nation had afflicted and kept them under with all the rigorous severities of tyranny and oppression But this not taking its effect he made a Law that all Hebrew Male-children should be drowned as soon as born knowing well enough how to kill the root if he could keep any more Branches from springing up But the wisdom of Heaven defeated his crafty and barbarous 〈◊〉 Among others that were born at that time was Moses a goodly Child and whom his Mother was infinitely desirous to preserve but having concealed him till the saving of his might endanger the losing her own life her affection suggested to her this little stratagem she prepared an Ark made of Paper-reeds and pitched within and so putting him a-board this little Vessel threw him into the River Nilus committing him to the mercy of the waves and the conduct of the Divine Providence God who wisely orders all events had so disposed things that Pharaohs daughter whose name say the Jews was Bithia Thermuth says Josephus say the Arabians Sihhoun being troubled with a distemper that would not endure the hot Bathes was come down at this time to wash in the Nile where the cries of the tender Babe soon reached her ears She commanded the Ark to be brought a-shore which was no sooner opened but the silent oratory of the weeping Infant sensibly struck her with compassionate resentments And the Jews add that she no sooner touched the Babe but she was immediately healed and cried out that he was a holy Child and that she would save his life for which say they she obtained the favour to be brought under the wings of the Divine Majesty and to be called the daughter of God His Sister Miriam who had all this while beheld the scene afar off officiously proffered her service to the Princess to call an Hebrew Nurse and accordingly went and brought his Mother To her care he was committed with a charge to look tenderly to him and the promise of a reward But the hopes of that could add but little where nature was so much concerned Home goes the Mother joyful and proud of her own pledge and the royal charge carefully providing for his tender years His infant state being pass'd he was restored to the Princess who adopted him for her own son bred him up at Court where he was polished with all the arts of a noble and ingenuous education instructed in the modes of civility and behaviour in the methods of policy and government Learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians whose renown for wisdom is not only once and again taken notice of in holy Writ but their admirable skill in all liberal Sciences Natural Moral and Divine beyond the rate and proportion of other Nations is sufficiently celebrated by foreign Writers To these accomplishments God was pleased to add a Divine temper of mind a great zeal for God not able to endure any thing that seemed to clash with the interests of the Divine honour and glory a mighty courage and resolution in God's service whose edge was not to be taken off either by threats or charms He was not afraid of the Kings commandment nor feared the wrath of the King for he endured as seeing him that is invisible His contempt of the World was great and admirable sleighting the honours of Pharoah's Court and the fair probabilities of the Crown the treasures and pleasures of that rich soft and luxurious Country out of a firm belief of the invisible rewards of another World He refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter chusing rather to suffer 〈◊〉 with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt for he had respect unto the recompence of reward Josephus relates that when but a child he was presented by the Princess to her Father as one whom she had adopted for her son and designed for his successor in the Kingdom the King taking him up into his arms put his Crown upon his head which the child immediately pull'd off again and throwing it upon the ground trampled it under his feet An action which however looked upon by some Courtiers then present 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 portending a fatal Omen to the Kingdom did however evidently presage his generous contempt of the grandeur and honours of the Court and those plausible advantages of Soveraignty that were offered to him His patience was insuperable not tired out with the abuses and disappointments of the King of Egypt with the hardships and troubles of the Wilderness and which was beyond all with the cross and vexatious humors of a stubborn and unquiet generation He was of a most calm and treatable disposition his spirit not easily ruffled with passion he who in the cause of God and Religion could be bold and fierce as a Lion was in his own patient as a Lamb God himself having given this character of him That he was the meekest man upon the Earth 3. THIS great personage thus excellently qualified God made choice of him to be the Commander and conducter of the Jewish Nation and his Embassador to the King of Egypt to demand the enfranchisement of
revealed and we shall remain ignorant for ever of many natural things unless they be revealed and unless we knew all the secrets of Philosophy the mysteries of Nature and the rules and propositions of all things and all creatures we are fools if we say that what we call an Article of Faith I mean truly such is against natural Reason It may be indeed as much against our natural reasonings as those reasonings are against truth But if we remember how great an ignorance dwells upon us all it will be found the most reasonable thing in the world only to enquire whether God hath revealed any such Proposition and then not to say It is against natural Reason and therefore an Article of Faith but I am told a truth which I knew not till now and so my Reason is become instructed into a new Proposition And although Christ hath given us no new moral Precepts but such which were essentially and naturally reasonable in order to the End of Man's Creation yet we may easily suppose him to teach us many a new Truth which we knew not and to explicate to us many particulars of that estate which God designed for Man in his first production but yet did not then declare to him and to furnish him with new Revelations and to signifie the greatness of the designed End to become so many arguments of indearment to secure his Duty that is indeed to secure his Happiness by the infallible using the instruments of attaining it 30. This is all I am to say concerning the Precepts of Religion Jesus taught us he took off those many superinduced Rites which God injoyned to the Jews and reduced us to the natural Religion that is to such expressions of Duty which all wise men and Nations used save only that he took away the Rite of sacrificing Beasts because it was now determined in the great Sacrifice of Himself which sufficiently and eternally reconciled all the world to God All the other things as Prayers and Adoration and Eucharist and Faith in God are of a natural order and an unalterable expression And in the nature of the thing there is no other way of address to God than these no other expression of his Glories and our needs both which must for ever be signified 31. Secondly Concerning the Second natural Precept Christian Religion hath also added nothing beyond the first obligation but explained it all Whatsoever ye would men should do to you do ye so to them that is the eternal rule of Justice and that binds contracts keeps promises affirms truth makes Subjects obedient and Princes just it gives security to Marts and Banks and introduces an equality of condition upon all the world save only when an inequality is necessary that is in the relations of Government for the preservation of the common rights of equal titles and possessions that there be some common term indued with power who is to be the Father of all men by an equal provision that every man's rights be secured by that fear which naturally we shall bear to him who can and will punish all unreasonable and unjust violations of Property And concerning this also the Holy Jesus hath added an express Precept of paying Tribute and all Caesar's dues to Caesar in all other particulars it is necessary that the instances and minutes of Justice be appointed by the Laws and Customs of the several Kingdoms and Republicks And therefore it was that Christianity so well combined with the Government of Heathen Princes because whatsoever was naturally just or declared so by the Political power their Religion bound them to observe making Obedience to be a double duty a duty both of Justice and Religion And the societies of Christians growing up from Conventicles to Assemblies from Assemblies to Societies introduced no change in the Government but by little and little turned the Commonwealth into a Church till the World being Christian and Justice also being Religion Obedience to Princes observation of Laws honesty in Contracts faithfulness in promises gratitude to benefactors simplicity in discourse and ingenuity in all pretences and transactions became the Characterisms of Christian men and the word of a Christian the greatest solemnity of stipulation in the world 32. But concerning the general I consider that in two very great instances it was remonstrated that Christianity was the greatest prosecution of natural Justice and equality in the whole world The one was in an election of an A postle into the place of Judas when there were two equal Candidates of the same pretension and capacity the Question was determined by Lots which naturally was the arbitration in questions whose parts were wholly indifferent and as it was used in all times so it is to this day used with us in many places where lest there be a disagreement concerning the manner of tithing some creatures and to prevent unequal arts and unjust practices they are tithed by lot and their sortuitous passing through the door of their sold. The other is in the Coenobitick life of the first Christians and Apostles they had all things in common which was that state of nature in which men lived charitably and without injustice before the distinction of dominions and private rights But from this manner of life they were soon driven by the publick necessity and constitution of affairs 33. Thirdly Whatsoever else is in the Christian Law concerns the natural precept of Sobriety in which there is some variety and some difficulty In the matter of 〈◊〉 the Holy Jesus did clearly reduce us to the first institution of Marriage in Paradise allowing no other mixture but what was first intended in the creation and first sacramental union and in the instance he so permitted us to the natural Law that he was pleased to mention no instance of forbidden Lust but in general and comprehensive terms of Adultery and Fornication in the other which are still more unnatural as their names are concealed and hidden in shame and secrecy we are to have no instructer but the modesty and order of Nature 34. As an instance of this Law of Sobriety Christ superadded the whole doctrine of Humility which Moses did not and which seem'd almost to be extinguished in the world and it is called by S. Paul sapere ad sobrietatem the reasonableness or wisdom of sobriety And it is all the reason in the world that a man should think of himself but just as he is He is deceived that thinks otherwise and is a fool And when we consider that Pride makes wars and causes affronts and no man loves a proud man and he loves no man but himself and his flatterers we shall understand that the Precept of Humility is an excellent art and a happy instrument towards humane Felicity And it is no way contradicted by a natural desire of Honour it only appoints just and reasonable ways of obtaining it We are not forbidden to
the injurious if I be not Judge my self is also within the moderation of an unblameable defence unless some accidents or circumstances vary the case but forgiving injuries is a separating the malice from the wrong the transient act from the permanent effect and it is certain the act which is passed cannot be rescinded the effect may and if it cannot it does no way alleviate the evil of the accident that I draw him that caused it into as great a misery since every evil happening in the world is the proper object of pity which is in some sense afflictive and therefore unless we become unnatural and without bowels it is most unreasonable that we should encrease our own afflictions by introducing a new misery and making a new object of pity All the ends of humane Felicity are secured without Revenge for without it we are permitted to restore our selves and therefore it is against natural Reason to do an evil that no way cooperates towards the proper and perfective End of humane nature And he is a miserable person whose good is the evil of his neighbour and he that revenges in many cases does worse than he that did the injury in all cases as bad For if the first injury was an injustice to serve an end of an advantage and real benefit then my revenge which is abstracted and of a consideration separate and distinct from the reparation is worse for I do him evil without doing my self any real good which he did not for he received advantage by it But if the first injury was matter of mere malice without advantage yet it is no worse than Revenge for that is just so and there is as much phantastick pleasure in doing a spight as in doing revenge They are both but like the pleasures of eating coals and toads and vipers And certain it is if a man upon his private stock could be permitted to revenge the evil would be immortal And it is rarely well discoursed by Tyndarus in Euripides If the angry Wife shall kill her Husband the Son shall revenge his Father's death and kill his Mother and then the Brother shall kill his Mother's murtherer and he also will meet with an avenger for killing his Brother 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What end shall there be to such inhumane and sad accidents If in this there be injustice it is against natural Reason and If it be evil and disorders the felicity and security of Society it is also against natural Reason But if it be just it is a strange Justice that is made up of so many inhumanities 41. And now if any man pretends specially to Reason to the ordinate desires and perfections of Nature and the sober discourses of Philosophy here is in Christianity and no-where else enough to satisfie and inform his Reason to perfect his Nature and to reduce to act all the Propositions of an intelligent and wise spirit And the Holy Ghost is promised and given in our Religion to be an eternal band to keep our Reason from returning to the darknesses of the old creation and to promote the ends of our natural and proper Felicity For it is not a vain thing that S. Paul reckons helps and governments and healings to be fruits of the Spirit For since the two greatest Blessings of the world personal and political consist that in Health this in Government and the ends of humane Felicity are served in nothing greater for the present interval than in these two Christ did not only enjoyn rare prescriptions of Health such as are Fasting Temperance Chastity and Sobriety and all the great endearments of Government and unless they be sacredly observed man is infinitely miserable but also hath given his Spirit that is extraordinary aids to the promoting these two and facilitating the work of Nature that as S. Paul says at the end of a discourse to this very purpose the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us 42. I shall add nothing but this single consideration God said to the children of Israel Ye are a royal Priesthood a Kingdom of Priests Which was therefore true because God reigned by the Priests and the Priests lips did then preserve knowledge and the people were to receive the Law from their mouths for God having by Laws of his own established Religion and the Republick did govern by the rule of the Law and the ministery of the Priests The Priests said Thus saith the LORD and the people obeyed And these very words are spoken to the Christian Church Ye are a Royal Priesthood an holy Nation a peculiar people that ye should shew forth the praises of him that hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light That is God reigns over all Christendom just as he did over the Jews He hath now so given to them and restored respectively all those reasonable Laws which are in order to all good ends personal oeconomical and political that if men will suffer Christian Religion to do its last intention if men will live according to it there needs no other coercion of Laws or power of the Sword The Laws of God revealed by Christ are sufficient to make all societies of men happy and over all good men God reigns by his Ministers by the preaching of the Word And this was most evident in the three first Ages of the Church in which all Christian Societies were for all their proper entercourses perfectly guided not by the authority and compulsion but by the Sermons of their Spiritual Guides insomuch that S. Paul sharply reprehends the Corinthians that Brother goeth to law with Brother and that before the unbelievers as if he had said Ye will not suffer Christ to be your Judge and his Law to be your Rule which indeed was a great fault among them not only because they had so excellent a Law so clearly described or where they might doubt they had infallible Interpreters so reasonable and profitable so evidently concurring to their mutual felicity but also because God did design Jesus to be their King to reign over them by spiritual regiment as himself did over the Jews till they chose a King And when the Emperors became Christian the case was no otherwise altered but that the Princes themselves submitting to Christ's yoke were as all other Christians are for their proportion to be governed by the Royal Priesthood that is by the Word preached by Apostolical persons the political Interest remaining as before save that by being submitted to the Laws of Christ it received this advantage that all Justice was turned to be Religion and became necessary and bound upon the Conscience by Divinity And when it happens that a Kingdom is converted to Christianity the Common-wealth is made a Church and Gentile Priests are Christian Bishops and the Subjects of the Kingdom are Servants of Christ the Religion of the Nation is turned Christian and the Law of the Nation made a part
and to bring him word pretending that he would come and worship him also 11. The Wise men prosecuted the business of their journey and having heard the King they departed and the Star which as it seems attended their motion went before them until it came and stood over where the young Child was where when they saw the Star they rejoyced with exceeding great joy Such a Joy as is usual to wearied Travellers when they are entring into their Inne such a joy as when our hopes and greatest longings are laying hold upon the proper objects of their desires a joy of certainty immediately before the possession for that is the greatest Joy which possesses before it is satisfied and rejoyces with a joy not abated by the surfeits of possession but heightned with all the apprehensions and fancies of hope and the neighbourhood of fruition a joy of Nature of Wonder and of Religion And now their hearts laboured with a throng of spirits and passions and ran into the house to the embracement of Jesus even before their feet But when they were come into the house they saw the young Child with Mary his mother And possibly their expectation was something lessened and their wonder heightned when they saw their hope empty of pomp and gayety the great King's Throne to be a Manger a Stable to his Chamber of presence a thin Court and no Ministers and the King himself a pretty Babe and but that he had a Star over his head nothing to distinguish him from the common condition of children or to excuse him from the miseries of a poor and empty fortune 12. This did not scandalize those wise persons but being convinced by that Testimony from Heaven and the union of all Circumstances they fell down and worshipped him after the manner of the Easterlings when they do veneration to their Kings not with an empty Ave and gay blessing of fine words but they bring presents and come into his Courts for when they had opened their treasures they presented unto him gifts Gold Frankincense and Myrrh And if these Gifts were mysterious beyond the acknowledgment of him to be the King of the Jews and Christ that should come into the world Frankincense might signifie him to be acknowledged a God Myrrh to be a Man and Gold to be a King Unless we chuse by Gold to signifie the acts of Mercy by Myrrh the Chastity of minds and Purity of our bodies to the incorruption of which Myrrh is especially instrumental and by 〈◊〉 we intend our Prayers as the most apt presents and oblations to the honour and service of this young King But however the fancies of Religion may represent variety of Idea's the act of Adoration was direct and religious and the Myrrh was medicinal to his tender body the Incense possibly no more than was necessary in a Stable the first throne of his Humility and the Gold was a good Antidote against the present indigencies of his Poverty Presents such as were used in all the Levant especially in Arabia and Saba to which the growth of Myrrh and Frankincense were proper in their addresses to their God and to their King and were instruments with which under the veil of Flesh they worshipped the Eternal Word the Wisdom of God under infant Innocency the Almighty Power in so great Weakness and under the lowness of Humane nature the altitude of Majesty and the infinity of Divine Glory And so was verified the prediction of the Prophet Esay under the type of the son of the Prophetess Before a child shall have knowledge to cry My Father and my Mother he shall take the spoil of Damascus and Samaria from before the King of Assyria 13. When they had paid the tribute of their Offerings and Adoration Being warned in their sleep by an Angel not to return to Herod they returned into their own countrey another way where having been satisfied with the pleasures of Religion and taught by that rare demonstration which was made by Christ how Man's Happiness did nothing at all consist in the affluence of worldly Possessions or the tumours of Honour having seen the Eternal Son of God poor and weak and unclothed of all exteriour Ornaments they renounced the World and retired empty into the recesses of Religion and the delights of Philosophy Ad SECT IV. Considerations upon the Apparition of the Angels to the Shepherds 1. WHen the Angels saw that come to pass which Gabriel the great Embassador of God had declared that which had been prayed for and expected four thousand years and that by the merits of this new-born Prince their younger brethren and inferiours in the order of Intelligent creatures were now to be redeemed that Men should partake the glories of their secret habitations and should fill up those void places which the fall of Lucifer and the third part of the Stars had made their joy was great as their understanding and these mountains did leap with joy because the valleys were filled with benediction and a fruitful shower from Heaven And if at the Conversion of one sinner there is jubilation and a festival kept among the Angels how great shall we imagine this rejoycing to be when Salvation and Redemption was sent to all the World But we also to whom the joy did more personally relate for they rejoyced for our sakes should learn to estimate the grace done us and believe there is something very extraordinary in the Piety and Salvation of a man when the Angels who in respect of us are unconcern'd in the communications rejoyce with the joy of Conquerors or persons suddenly 〈◊〉 from tortures and death 2. But the Angels also had other motions for besides the pleasures of that joy which they had in beholding Humane nature so highly exalted and that God was Man and Man was God they were transported with admiration at the ineffable Counsel of God's Predestination prostrating themselves with adoration and modesty seeing God so humbled and Man so changed and so full of charity that God stooped to the condition of Man and Man was inflam'd beyond the love of Seraphims and was made more knowing than Cherubims more established than Thrones more happy than all the orders of Angels The issue of this consideration teaches us to learn their Charity and to exterminate all the intimations and beginnings of Envy that we may as much rejoyce at the good of others as of our selves for then we love good for God's sake when we love good whereever God hath placed it and that joy is charitable which overflows our neighbours fields when our selves are unconcerned in the personal accruements for so we are made partakers of all that fear God when Charity unites their joy to ours as it makes us partakers of their common sufferings 3. And now the Angels who had adored the Holy Jesus in Heaven come also to pay their homage to him upon Earth and laying aside their flaming swords they
oftentimes the Custom or the Philosophy of the opinions of a Nation are made instrumental through God's acceptance to ends higher than they can produce by their own energy and intendment And thus the Astrological Divinations of the Magi were turned into the order of a greater design than the whole Art could promise their imployment being altered into Grace and Nature into a Miracle But then when the Wise men were brought by this means and had seen Jesus then God takes ways more immediate and proportionable to the Kingdom of Grace the next time God speaks to them by an Angel For so is God's usual manner to bring us to him first by ways agreeable to us and then to increase by ways agreeable to himself And when he hath furnished us with new capacities he gives new Lights in order to more perfect imployments and To him that hath shall be given full measure pressed down shaken together and running over the eternal kindness of God being like the Sea which delights to run in its old Chanel and to fill the hollownesses of the Earth which it self hath made and hath once watered 5. This Star which conducted the Wise men to Bethlehem if at least it was proproperly a Star and not an Angel was set in its place to be seen by all but was not observed or not understood nor its message obeyed by any but the three Wise men And indeed no man hath cause to complain of God as if ever he would be deficient in assistances necessary to his Service but first the Grace of God separates us from the common condition of incapacity and indisposition and then we separate our selves one from another by the use or neglect of this Grace and God doing his part to us hath cause to complain of us who neglect that which is our portion of the work And however even the issues and the kindnesses of God's Predestination and antecedent Mercy do very much toward the making the Grace to be effective of its purpose yet the manner of all those influences and operations being moral perswasive reasonable and divisible by concourse of various circumstances the cause and the effect are brought nearer and nearer in various suscipients but not brought so close together but that God expects us to do something towards it so that we may say with S. Paul It is not I but the Grace of God that is with me and at the same time when by reason of our cooperation we actuate and improve God's Grace and become distinguished from other persons more negligent under the same opportunities God is he who also does distinguish us by the proportions and circumstantiate applications of his Grace to every singular capacity that we may be careful not to neglect the Grace and yet to return the intire glory to God 6. Although God to second the generous design of these wise personages in their Enquiry of the new Prince made the Star to guide them through the difficulties of their journey yet when they came to Jerusalem the Star disappeared God so resolving to try their Faith and the activity of their desires to remonstrate to them that God is the Lord of all his Creatures and a voluntary Dispenser of his own favours and can as well take them away as indulge them and to engage them upon the use of ordinary means and ministeries when they are to be had for now the extraordinary and miraculous Guide for a time did cease that they being at Jerusalem might enquire of them whose office and profession of sacred Mysteries did oblige them to publish the MESSIAS For God is so great a lover of Order so regular and certain an exactor of us to use those ordinary ministeries of his own appointing that he having used the extraordinary but as Architects do frames of wood to support the Arches till they be built takes them away when the work is ready and leaves us to those other of his designation and hath given such efficacy to these that they are as perswasive and operative as a Miracle and S. Paul's Sermon would convert as many as if Moses should rise from the grave And now the Doctrines of Christianity have not only the same truth but the same evidence and virtue also they had in the midst of those prime demonstrations extraordinary by Miracle and Prophecy if men were equally disposed 7. When they were come to the Doctors of the Jews they asked confidently and with great openness under the ear and eye of a Tyrant Prince bloudy and timorous jealous and ambitious Where is he that is born King of the Jews and so gave evidence of their Faith of their Magnanimity and fearless confidence and profession of it and of their love of the mystery and object in pursuance of which they had taken so troublesome and vexatious journeys and besides that they upbraided the tepidity and 〈◊〉 baseness of the Jewish Nation who stood unmoved and unconcerned by all the Circumstances of wonder and stirred not one step to make enquiry after or to visit the new-born King they also teach us to be open and confident in our Religion and Faith and not to consider our temporal when they once come to contest against our Religious interests 8. The Doctors of the Jews told the Wise men where Christ was to be born the Magi they address themselves with haste to see him and to worship and the Doctors themselves stir not God not only serving himself with truth out of the mouths of impious persons but magnifying the recesses of his Counsel and Wisdom and Predestination who uses the same Doctrine to glorifie himself and to confound his enemies to save the Scholars and to condemn the Tutors to instruct one and upbraid the other making it an instrument of Faith and a conviction of Infidelity the Sermons of the Doctors in such cases being like the spoils of Bevers Sheep and Silk-worms design'd to clothe others and are made the occasions of their own nakedness and the causes of their death But as it is a demonstration of the Divine Wisdom so it is of humane Folly there being no greater imprudence in the world than to do others advantage and to neglect our own If thou dost well unto thy 〈◊〉 men will speak good of thee but if thou beest like a Chanel in a Garden through which the water runs to cool and moisten the herbs but nothing for its own use thou buildest a fortune to them upon the ruines of thine own house while after thy preaching to others thou thy self dost become a cast-away 9. When the Wise men departed from Jerusalem the Star again appeared and they rejoyced with exceeding great joy and indeed to new Converts and persons in their first addresses to the worship of God such spiritual and exterior Comforts are often indulged because then God judges them to be most necessary as being invitations to Duty by the entertainments of our affections with such
tremulous and so are the most holy and eminent Religious persons more full of awfulness and fear and modesty and humility so that in true Divinity and right speaking there is no such thing as the Unitive way of Religion save onely in the effects of duty obedience and the expresses of the precise vertue of Religion Meditations in order to a good life let them be as exalted as the capacity of the person and subject will endure up to the height of Contemplation but if Contemplation comes to be a distinct thing and something besides or beyond a distinct degree of vertuous Meditation it is lost to all sense and Religion and prudence Let no man be hasty to eat of the fruits of Paradise before his time 28. And now I shall not need to enumerate the blessed fruits of holy Meditation for it is a Grace that is instrumental to all effects to the production of all Vertues and the extinction of all Vices and by consequence the inhabitation of the Holy Ghost within us is the natural or proper emanation from the frequent exercise of this Duty onely it hath something particularly excellent besides its general influence for Meditation is that part of Prayer which knits the Soul to its right object and confirms and makes actual our intention and Devotion Meditation is the Tongue of the Soul and the language of our spirit and our wandring thoughts in prayer are but the neglects of Meditation and recessions from that Duty and according as we neglect Meditation so are our Prayers imperfect Meditation being the Soul of Prayer and the intention of our spirit But in all other things Meditation is the instrument and conveyance it habituates our affections to Heaven it hath permanent content it produces constancy of purpose despising of things below inflamed desires of Vertue love of God self-denial humility of understanding and universal correction of our life and manners The PRAYER HOly and Eternal Jesus whose whole Life and Doctrine was a perpetual Sermon of Holy life a treasure of Wisedom and a repository of Divine materials for Meditation give me grace to understand diligence and attention to consider care to lay up and carefulness to reduce to practice all those actions discourses and pious lessons and intimations by which thou didst expresly teach or tacitly imply or mysteriously signifie our Duty Let my Understanding become as spiritual in its imployment and purposes as it is immaterial in its nature fill my Memory as a vessel of Election with remembrances and notions highly compunctive and greatly incentive of all the parts of 〈◊〉 Let thy holy Spirit dwell in my Soul instructing my Knowledge sanctifying my Thoughts guiding my Affections directing my Will in the choice of Vertue that it may be the great imployment of my life to meditate in thy Law to study thy preceptive will to understand even the niceties and circumstantials of my Duty that Ignorance may neither occasion a sin nor become a punishment Take from me all vanity of spirit lightness of fancy curiosity and impertinency of inquiry illusions of the Devil and phantastick deceptions Let my thoughts be as my Religion plain honest pious simple prudent and charitable of great imployment and force to the production of Vertues and extermination of Vice but suffering no transportations of sense and vanity nothing greater than the capacities of my Soul nothing that may minister to any intemperances of spirit but let me be wholly inebriated with Love and that love wholly spent in doing such actions as best please thee in the conditions of my infirmity and the securities of Humility till thou shalt please to draw the curtain and reveal thy interiour beauties in the Kingdom of thine eternal Glories which grant for thy mercie 's sake O Holy and Eternal Jesu Amen The goodly CEDAR of Apostolick Catholick EPISCOPACY compared with the moderne Shoots Slips of divided NOVELTIES in the Church before the Introduction of the Apostles Lives In Rama was there a voice heard lamentation and weeping and great mourning â—â—â—hel weeping for her Children and would not be Comforted because they are not SECT VI. Of the Death of the Holy Innocents or the Babes of Bethlehem and the Flight of JESVS into Egypt The killing the Infants S. MAT. 2. 18 In Rama was there a voice heard Lamentation and weeping and great mourning Rachel weeping for her children and would not be conforted because they are not The flight into Egipt S. MAT. 2. 14. When he arose he took the young Child and his mother by night and departed into egipt 1. ALL this while Herod waited for the return of the Wise men that they might give directions where the Child did lie and his Sword might find him out with a certain and direct execution But when he saw that he was mocked of the Wise men he was exceeding wroth For it now began to deserve his trouble when his purposes which were most secret began to be contradicted and diverted with a prevention as if they were resisted by an all-seeing and almighty Providence He began to suspect the hand of Heaven was in it and saw there was nothing for his purposes to be acted unless he could dissolve the golden chain of Predestination Herod believed the divine Oracles foretelling that a King should be born in Bethlehem and yet his Ambition had made him so stupid that he attempted to cancel the Decree of Heaven For if he did not believe the Prophecies why was he troubled If he did believe them how could he possibly hinder that event which God had foretold himself would certainly bring to pass 2. And therefore since God already had hindered him from the executions of a distinguishing sword he resolved to send a sword of indiscrimination and confusion hoping that if he killed all the Babes of Bethlehem this young King's Reign also should soon determine He therefore sent forth and 〈◊〉 all the children that were in Bethlehem and all the coasts thereof from two years old and under according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the Wise men For this Execution was in the beginning of the second year after Christ's Nativity as in all probability we guess not at the two years end as some suppose because as his malice was subtile so he intended it should be secure and though he had been diligent in his inquiry and was near the time in his computation yet he that was never sparing of the lives of others would now to secure his Kingdom rather over-act his severity for some moneths than by doing execution but just to the tittle of his account hazard the escaping of the Messias 3. This Execution was sad cruel and universal no abatements made for the dire shriekings of the Mothers no tender-hearted souldier was imployed no hard-hearted person was softned by the weeping eyes and pity-begging looks of those Mothers that wondred how it was possible any person should hurt their pretty Sucklings no
himself extremely upon a mistake The Child Jesus was born a King but it was a King of all the World not confined within the limits of a Province like the weaker beauties of a Torch to shine in one room but like the Sun his Empire was over all the World and if Herod would have become but his Tributary and paid him the acknowledgments of his Lord he should have had better conditions than under Caesar and yet have been as absolute in his own Jewry as he was before His Kingdom was not of this World and he that gives heavenly Kingdoms to all his servants would not have stooped to have taken up Herod's petty Coronet But as it is a very vanity which Ambition seeks so it is a shadow that disturbs and discomposes all its motions and apprehensions 8. And the same mistake caused calamities to descend upon the Church for some of the Persecutions commenced upon pretence Christianity was an enemy to Government But the pretence was infinitely unreasonable and therefore had the fate of senseless allegations it disbanded presently for no external accident did so incorporate the excellency of Christ's Religion into the hearts of men as the innocency of the men their inoffensive deportment the modesty of their designs their great humility and obedience a life expresly in enmity and contestation against secular Ambition And it is to be feared that the mingling humane interests with Religion will deface the image Christ hath stamped upon it Certain it is the metall is much abated by so impure allay while the Christian Prince serves his end of Ambition and bears arms upon his neighbour's Countrey for the service of Religion making Christ's Kingdom to invade Herod's rights and in the state Ecclesiastical secular interests have so deep a portion that there are snares laid to tempt a Persecution and men are invited to Sacrilege while the Revenues of a Church are a fair fortune for a Prince I make no scruple to find fault with Painters that picture the poor Saints with rich garments for though they deserved better yet they had but poor ones and some have been tempted to cheat the Saint not out of ill will to his Sanctity but love to his Shrine and to the beauty of the cloaths with which some imprudent persons have of old time dressed their Images So it is in the fate of the Church Persecution and the robes of Christ were her portion and her cloathing and when she is dressed up in gawdy fortunes it is no more than she deserves but yet sometimes it is occasion that the Devil cheats her of her Holiness and the men of the world sacrilegiously cheat her of her Riches and then when God hath reduced her to that Poverty he first promised and intended to her the Persecution ceases and Sanctity returns and God curses the Sacrilege and stirs up mens minds to religious Donatives and all is well till she grows rich again And if it be dangerous in any man to be rich and discomposes his steps in his journey to Eternity it is not then so proportionable to the analogy of Christ's Poverty and the inheritance of the Church to be sedulous in acquiring great Temporalties and putting Princes in jealousie and States into care for securities lest all the Temporal should run into Ecclesiastical possession 9. If the Church have by the active Piety of a credulous a pious and less-observant Age been endowed with great Possessions she hath rules enough and poor enough and necessities enough to dispend what she hath with advantages to Religion but then all she gets by it is the trouble of an unthankful a suspected and unsatisfying dispensation and the Church is made by evil persons a Scene of ambition and stratagem and to get a German Bishoprick is to be a Prince and to defend with niceness and Suits of Law every Custom or lesser Rite even to the breach of Charity and the scandal of Religion is called a Duty and every single person is bound to forgive injuries and to quit his right rather than his Charity but if it is not a duty in the Church also in them whose life should be excellent to the degree of Example I would fain know if there be not greater care taken to secure the Ecclesiastical Revenue than the publick Charity and the honour of Religion in the strict Piety of the Clergy for as the not ingaging in Suits may occasion bold people to wrong the Church so the necessity of ingaging is occasion of losing Charity and of great Scandal I find not fault with a free Revenue of the Church it is in some sense necessary to Governours and to preserve the Consequents of their Authority but I represent that such things are occasion of much mischief to the Church and less Holiness and in all cases respect should be had to the design of Christianity to the Prophecies of Jesus to the promised lot of the Church to the dangers of Riches to the excellencies and advantages and rewards of Poverty and if the Church have enough to perform all her duties and obligations chearfully let her of all Societies be soonest content If she have plenty let her use it temperately and charitably if she have not let her not be querulous and troublesome But however it would be thought upon that though in judging the quantum of the Church's portion the World thinks every thing too much yet we must be careful we do not judge every thing too little and if our fortune be safe between envy and contempt it is much mercy If it be despicable it is safe for Ecclesiasticks though it may be accidentally inconvenient or less profitable to others but if it be great publick experience hath made remonstrance that it mingles with the world and durties those fingers which are instrumental in Consecration and the more solemn Rites of Christianity 10. Jesus fled from the Persecution as he did not stand it out so he did not stand out against it he was careful to transmit no precedent or encouragement of resisting tyrannous Princes when they offer violence to Religion and our lives He would not stand disputing for privileges nor calling in Auxiliaries from the Lord of Hosts who could have spared him many Legions of Angels every single Spirit being able to have defeated all Herod's power but he knew it was a hard lesson to learn Patience and all the excuses in the world would be sought out to discourage such a Doctrine by which we are taught to die or lose all we have or suffer inconveniences at the will of a Tyrant we need no authentick examples much less Doctrines to invite men to War from which we see Christian Princes cannot be restrained with the engagements and peaceful Theorems of an excellent and a holy Religion nor Subjects kept from Rebelling by the interests of all Religions in the world nor by the necessities and reasonableness of Obedience nor the indearments of
instantly if he be in capacity leaves the wife of his bosom and the pretty delights of children and his own security and ventures into the dangers of waters and unknown seas and freezings and calentures thirst and hunger Pirates and shipwrecks and hath within him a principle strong enough to answer all objections because he believes that Riches are desirable and by such means likely to be had Our Blessed Saviour comparing the Gospel to a Merchant-man that found a pearl of great price and sold all to buy it hath brought this instance home to the present discourse For if we did as verily believe that in Heaven those great Felicities which transcend all our apprehensions are certainly to be obtained by leaving our Vices and lower desires what can hinder us but we should at least do as much for obtaining those great Felicities as for the lesser if the belief were equal For if any man thinks he may have them without Holiness and Justice and Charity then he wants Faith for he believes not the saying of S. Paul Follow peace with all men and Holiness without which no man shall ever see God If a man believes Learning to be the only or chiefest ornament and beauty of Souls that which will ennoble him to a fair employment in his own time and an honourable memory to succeeding ages this if he believes heartily it hath power to make him indure Catarrhs Gouts Hypochondriacal passions to read till his eyes almost fix in their orbs to despise the pleasures of idleness or tedious sports and to undervalue whatsoever does not cooperate to the end of his Faith the desire of Learning Why is the Italian so abstemious in his drinkings or the Helvetian so valiant in his fight or so true to the Prince that imploys him but that they believe it to be noble so to be If they believed the same and had the same honourable thoughts of other Vertues they also would be as national as these For Faith will do its proper work And when the Understanding is peremptorily and fully determined upon the perswasion of a Proposition if the Will should then dissent and chuse the contrary it were unnatural and monstrous and possibly no man ever does so for that men do things without reason and against their Conscience is because they have put out their light and discourse their Wills into the election of a sensible good and want faith to believe truly all circumstances which are necessary by way of predisposition for choice of the 〈◊〉 15. But when mens Faith is confident their resolution and actions are in proportion For thus the Faith of Mahumetans makes them to abstain from Wine for ever and therefore if we had the Christian Faith we should much rather abstain from Drunkenness for ever it being an express Rule Apostolical Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess The Faith of the Circumcellians made them to run greedily to violent and horrid deaths as willingly as to a Crown for they thought it was the King's high-way to Martyrdom And there was never any man zealous for his Religion and of an imperious bold Faith but he was also willing to die for it and therefore also by as much reason to live in it and to be a strict observer of its prescriptions And the stories of the strict Sanctity and prodigious Sufferings and severe Disciplines and expensive Religion and compliant and laborious Charity of the primitive Christians is abundant argument to convince us that the Faith of Christians is infinitely more fruitful and productive of its univocal and proper issues than the Faith of Hereticks or the false religions of Misbelievers or the perswasions of Secular persons or the Spirit of Antichrist And therefore when we see men serving their Prince with such difficult and ambitious services because they believe him able to reward them though of his will they are not so certain and yet so supinely negligent and incurious of their services to God of whose power and will to reward us infinitely there is certainty absolute and irrespective it is certain probation that we believe it not for if we believe there is such a thing as Heaven and that every single man's portion of Heaven is far better than all the wealth in the world it is morally impossible we should prefer so little before so great profit 16. I instance but once more The Faith of Abraham was instanced in the matter of confidence or trust in the Divine Promises and he being the father of the faithful we must imitate his Faith by a clear dereliction of our selves and our own interests and an intire confident relying upon the Divine goodness in all cases of our needs or danger Now this also is a trial of the verity of our Faith the excellency of our condition and what title we have to the glorious names of Christians and Faithful and 〈◊〉 If our Fathers when we were in pupillage and minority or a true and an able Friend when we were in need had made promises to supply our necessities our confidence was so great that our care determined It were also well that we were as confident of God and as secure of the event when we had disposed our selves to reception of the blessing as we were of our Friend or Parents We all profess that God is Almighty that all his Promises are certain and yet when it comes to a pinch we find that man to be more confident that hath ten thousand pounds in his purse than he that reads God's Promises over ten thousand times Men of a common spirit saith S. Chrysostome of an ordinary Sanctity will not steal or kill or lie or commit Adultery but it requires a rare Faith and a sublimity of pious affections to believe that God will work a 〈◊〉 which to me seems impossible And indeed S. 〈◊〉 hit upon the right He had need be a good man and love God 〈◊〉 that puts his trust in him For those we love we are most apt to trust and although trust and confidence is sometime founded upon experience yet it is also begotten and increased by love as often as by reason and discourse And to this purpose it was excellently said by S. Basil That the 〈◊〉 which one man learneth of another is made perfect by continual Use and Exercise but that which through the grace of God is engrassed in the mind of man is made absolute by Justice 〈◊〉 and Charity So that if you are willing even in death to confess not only the Articles but in affliction and death to trust the Promises if in the lowest nakedness of Poverty you can cherish your selves with the expectation of God's promises and dispensation being as confident of food and raiment and deliverance or support when all is in God's hand as you are when it is in your own if you can be chearful in a storm smile when the world frowns be content in the midst of spiritual
The Samaritans coming to Jesus V. 28. The woman left her water pot went her way into the city saith to the men Come see a man which told me all things that ever I did is not this the Christ Then they went out of the city came unto him V. 39. Many of the Samaritans beleived on him for the saying of the woman when they were come to him many more believed because of his own word 1. WHen Jesus understood that John was cast into prison and that the Pharisees were envious at him for the great multitudes of people that resorted to his Baptism which he ministred not in his own person but by the deputation of his Disciples they finishing the ministration which himself began who as Euodins Bishop of Antioch reports baptized the Blessed Virgin his Mother ther and Peter only and Peter baptized Andrew James and John and they others he left Judaea and came into Galilee and in his passage he must touch Sychar a City of Samaria where in the heat of the day and the weariness of his journey he sate himself down upon the margent of Jacob's Well whither when his Disciples were gone to buy meat a Samaritan woman cometh to draw water of whom Jesus asked some to cool his thirst and refresh his weariness 2. Little knew the woman the excellency of the person that asked so small a charity neither had she been taught that a cup of cold water given to a Disciple should be rewarded and much rather such a present to the Lord himself But she prosecuted the spite of her Nation and the interest and quarrel of the Schism and in stead of washing Jesus's feet and giving him drink demanded why he being a Jew should ask water of a Samaritan for the Jews have no intercourse with the Samaritans 3. The ground of the quarrel was this In the sixth year of Hezekiah Salmanasar King of Assyria sacked Samaria transported the Israelites to Assyria and planted an Assyrian Colony in the Town and Country who by Divine vengeance were destroyed by Lions which no power of man could restrain or lessen The King thought the cause was their not serving the God of Israel according to the Rites of Moses and therefore sent a Jewish captive Priest to instruct the remanent inhabitants in the Jewish Religion who so learned and practised it that they still retained the Superstition of the Gentile rites till Manasses the Brother of Jaddi the high Priest at Jerusalem married the daughter of Sanballat who was the Governour under King Darius Manasses being reproved for marrying a stranger the daughter of an uncircumcised Gentile and admonished to dismiss her flies to Samaria perswades his Father-in-law to build a Temple in Mount Gerizim introduces the Rites of daily Sacrifice and makes himself high Priest and began to pretend to be the true successor of Aaron and commences a Schism in the time of Alexander the Great From whence the Question of Religion grew so high that it begat disassections anger animosities quarrels bloudshed and murthers not only in Palestine but where ever a Jew and Samaritan had the ill fortune to meet Such being the nature of men that they think it the greatest injury in the world when other men are not of their minds and that they please God most when they are most furiously zealous and no zeal better to be expressed than by hating all those whom they are pleased to think God hates This Schism was prosecuted with the greatest spite that ever any was because both the people were much given to Superstition and this was helped forward by the constitution of their Religion consisting much in externals and Ceremonials and which they cared not much to hallow and make moral by the intertexture of spiritual senses and Charity And therefore the Jews called the Samaritans accursed the Samaritans at the Paschal solemnity would at midnight when the Jews Temple was open scatter dead mens bones to profane and desecrate the place and both would fight and eternally dispute the Question sometimes referring it to Arbitrators and then the conquered party would decline the Arbitration after sentence which they did at Alexandria before Ptolemaeus Philometor when Andronicus had by a rare and exquisite Oration procured sentence against Theodosius and Sabbaeus the Samaritan Advocates The sentence was given for Jerusalem and the Schism increased and lasted till the time of our Saviour's conference with this woman 4. And it was so implanted and woven in with every understanding that when the woman perceived Jesus to be a Prophet she undertook this Question with him Our Fathers worshipped in this mountain and ye say that Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship Jesus knew the Schism was great enough already and was not willing to make the rent wider and though he gave testimony to the truth by saying Salvation is of the Jews and we know what we worship ye do not yet because the subject of this Question was shortly to be taken away Jesus takes occasion to preach the Gospel to hasten an expedient and by way of anticipation to reconcile the disagreeing interests and settle a revelation to be verified for ever Neither here nor there by way of confinement not in one Countrey more than another but where-ever any man shall call upon God in spirit and truth there he shall be heard 5. But all this while the Holy Jesus was athirst and therefore hastens at least to discourse of water though as yet he got none He tells her of living water of eternal satisfactions of never thirsting again of her own personal condition of matrimonial relation and professes himself to be the Messias And then was interrupted by the coming of his Disciples who wondred to see him alone talking with a woman besides his custom and usual reservation But the Woman full of joy and wonder left her water-pot and ran to the City to publish the Messias and immediately all the City came out to see and many believed on him upon the testimony of the Woman and more when they heard his own discourses They invited him to the Town and received him with hospitable civilities for two days after which he departed to his own Galilee 6. Jesus therefore came into the Countrey where he was received with respect and fair entertainment because of the Miracles which the Galileans saw done by him at the Feast and being at Cana where he wrought the first Miracle a Noble personage a little King say some a Palatine says S. Hierome a Kingly person certainly came to Jesus with much reverence and desire that he would be pleased to come to his house and cure his Son now ready to die which he seconds with much importunity fearing left his Son be dead before he get thither Jesus who did not do his Miracles by natural operations cured the child at distance and dismissed the Prince telling him his Son lived which by
thing that it must be ventured for satisfaction of a vicious person or a vain custom or such a folly which a wise and a severe person had rather die than be guilty of Honour is from him that honours now certainly God and the King are the fountains of Honour right Reason and Religion the Scripture and the Laws are the best rules of estimating Honour and if we offer to account our Honours by the senseless and illiterate discourses of vain and vicious persons our Honour can be no greater than the fountain from whence it is derivative and at this rate Harpaste Seneca's Wive's fool might have declared Thersites an honourable person and every bold Gladiator in a Roman Theatre or a fighting Rebel among the slaves of Sparta or a Trouper of Spartacus his Guard might have stood upon their Honour upon equal and as fair a challenge Certainly there is no greater honour than to be like the Holy Jesus and he is delectable in the eyes of God and so are all his relatives and sollowers by participation of his honour and nothing can be more honourable than to do wise and excellent actions according to the account of Divine and 〈◊〉 Laws and if either God or the King can derive Honour upon their subjects then whatsoever is contrary to that which they honour must needs be base dishonourable and inglorious 6. But if we be troubled for fear of new and succeeding injuries and will needs fight and as much as lies in us kill our Brother to prevent an injury nothing can be more unworthy of a Christian nothing can be more inhumane 〈◊〉 pleading in the Roman Senate in the behalf of the Rhodian Embassadors who came to beg peace of the Commonwealth which had entertained an anger and some thoughts of war against them upon pretence that the Rhodians would war with them when they durst discoursed severely and prudently against such unreasonable purposes And the life of men and the interest of states is not like the trade of Fencers whose lot is to conquer if they strike sirst to die if they be prevented Man's life is not established upon so unequal and unreasonable necessities that either we must sirst do an injury or else it is certain we must receive a mischief God's providence and care in his government of the world is more vigilant and merciful and he protects persons innocent and just in all cases except when he means to make an injury the instrument of a grace or a violent death to be the gate of glory It was not ill answered of 〈◊〉 to King Polyphontes who therefore killed his Brother because he had entertained a purpose to have killed him You should only have done the same injury to him which he did to you you should still have had a purpose to kill him for his injustice went no farther and it is hard to requite ill and uncertain purposes with actual Murther especially when we are as much secured by the power of Laws as the whole Commonwealth is in all its greatest interests And therefore for Christians to kill a man to prevent being bastled or despised is to use an extreme desperate remedy infinitely painful and deadly to prevent a little griping in the belly foreseen as possible to happen it may be three years after But besides this objection supposes a Disease almost as earnestly to be cured as this of the main Question for it represents a man keeping company with lewd and debauched persons spending his time in vanity drunken societies or engaged in lust or placing his 〈◊〉 amongst persons apt to do affronts and unworthy misdemeanours and indeed an affront an injury a blow or a loud disgrace is not the consequent of not sighting but a punishment for engaging in loose baser and vicious company If the Gallants of the age would find an honest and a noble employment or would be delicate in the choice of their friends and company or would be severe in taking accounts of themselves and of their time would live as becomes persons wise and innocent that is like Christians they would soon perceive themselves removed far from injuries and yet farther from trouble when such levities of mischance or folly should intervene But suppose a man affronted or disgraced it is considerable whether the man deserved it or no. If he did let him entertain it for his punishment and use it for an instrument of correction and humility If he did not as an instance of fortitude and despite of lower things But to venture lives to abolish a past-act is madness unless in both those lives there was not good enough to be esteemed greater and of better value than the light affront had in it of misery and trouble Certainly those persons are very unfortunate in whose lives much more pleasure is not than there is mischief in a light blow or a lighter affront from a vain or an angry person But suppose there were not yet how can sighting or killing my adversary wipe off my aspersion or take off my blow or prove that I did not lie For it is but an ill argument to say If I dare kill him then I did not lie or if I dare fight then he struck me not or if I dare venture damnation then I am an honourable person And yet farther who gave me power over my own life or over the life of another that I shall venture my own and offer to take his God and God's Vicegerent only are the Lords of lives who made us Judges and Princes or Gods and if we be not such we are Murtherers and Villains When Moses would have parted the Duellists that fought in Egypt the injurious person asked him Who made thee a judge or ruler over us Wilt thou kill me as thou didst the Egyptian yesterday meaning he had no power to kill none to judge of life and death unless he had been made a Ruler Yea but flesh and bloud cannot endure a blow or a disgrace Grant that too but take this into the account Flesh and bloud shall not inherit the Kingdom of God And yet besides this those persons have but a tender stock of reason and wisdom and patience who have not discourse enough to make them bear an injury which the Philosophy of the Gentiles without the light of Christianity taught them to tolerate with so much equanimity and dispassionate entertainment That person is not a man who knows not how to suffer the inconvenience of an accident and indiscretion of light persons or if he could not yet certainly that is a mad impatience when a man to remedy the pain of a drop of scalding water shall drench himself in the liquid flames of pitch and a bituminous bath 7. Truth is to fight a Duel is a thing that all Kingdoms are bound to restrain with highest severity it is a consociation of many the worst acts that a person ordinarily can be guilty of it is want of Charity of Justice of
against every thing but nothing could please them But wisdom righteousness had a theatre in its own family and is justified of all her children Then he proceeds to a more applied reprehension of Capernaum and Chorazin and Bethsaida for being pertinacious in their sins and infidelity in defiance and reproof of all the mighty works which had been wrought in them But these things were not revealed to all dispositions the wife and the mighty of the world were not subjects prepared for the simplicity and softer impresses of the Gospel and the down-right severity of its Sanctions And therefore Jesus glorified God for the magnifying of his mercy in that these things which were hid from the great ones were revealed to babes and concludes this Sermon with an invitation of all wearied and disconsolate persons loaded with sin and misery to come to him promising ease to their burthens and refreshment to their weariness and to exchange their heavy pressures into an easie yoke and a light burthen 9. When Jesus had ended this Sermon one of the Pharisees named Simon invited him to eat with him into whose house when he was entred a certain woman that was a sinner abiding there in the City heard of it her name was Mary she had been married to a noble personage a native of the Town and Castle of Magdal from whence she had her name of Magdalen though she her self was born in Bethany a widow she was and prompted by her wealth liberty and youth to an intemperate life and too free entertainments She came to Jesus into the Pharisee's house not as did the staring multitude to glut her eyes with the sight of a miraculous and glorious person nor as did the Centurion or the 〈◊〉 or the Ruler of the Synagogue for cure of her sickness or in behalf of her friend or child or servant but the only example of so coming she came in remorse and regret for her sins 〈◊〉 came to Jesus to lay her burthen at his feet and to present him with a broken heart and a weeping eye and great affection and a box of Nard Pistick salutary and precious For she came trembling and fell down before him weeping bitterly for her sins pouring out a 〈◊〉 great enough to wash the feet of the Blessed Jesus and wiping them with the hairs of her head after which she brake the box and anointed his feet with ointment Which expression was so great an ecstasie of love sorrow and adoration that to anoint the feet even of the greatest Monarch was long unknown and in all the pomps and greatnesses of the Roman Prodigality it was not used till Otho taught it to Nero in whose instance it was by Pliny reckoned for a prodigy of unnecessary profusion and in it self without the circumstance of 〈◊〉 free a dispensation it was a present for a Prince and an Alabaster-box of Nard Pistick was sent as a present from 〈◊〉 to the King of Ethiopia 10. When Simon observed this sinner so busie in the expresses of her Religion and 〈◊〉 to Jesus he thought with himself that this was no Prophet that did not know her to be a sinner or no just person that would suffer her to touch him For although the Jews Religion did permit Harlots of their own Nation to live and enjoy the priviledges of their Nation save that their Oblations were refused yet the Pharisees who pretended to a greater degree of Sanctity than others would not admit them to civil 〈◊〉 or the benefits of ordinary society and thought Religion it self and the honour of a Prophet was concerned in the interests of the same superciliousness and therefore Simon made an objection within himself Which Jesus knowing for he understood his thoughts as well as his words made her Apology and his own in a civil question expressed in a Parable of two Debtors to whom a greater and a less debt respectively was forgiven both of them concluding that they would love their merciful Creditor in proportion to his mercy and donative and this was the case of Mary Magdalen to whom because much was forgiven she loved much and expressed it in characters so large that the Pharisee might read his own incivilities and inhospitable entertainment of the Master when it stood confronted with the magnificency of Mary Magdalen's penance and charity 11. When Jesus had dined he was presented with the sad sight of a poor Demoniack possessed with a blind and a dumb Devil in whose behalf his friends intreated Jesus that he would cast the Devil out which he did immediately and the blind man saw and the dumb spake so much to the amazement of the people that they ran in so prodigious companies after him and so scandalized the Pharisees who thought that by means of this Prophet their reputation would be lessened and their Schools empty that first a rumour was scattered up and down from an uncertain principle but communicated with tumult and apparent noises that Jesus was beside himself Upon which rumour his friends and kindred came together to see and to make provisions accordingly and the holy Virgin-mother came her self but without any apprehensions of any such horrid accident The words and things she had from the beginning laid up in her heart would furnish her with principles exclusive of all apparitions of such fancies but she came to see what that persecution was which under that colour it was likely the Pharisees might commence 12. When the Mother of Jesus and his kindred came they found him in a house encircled with people full of wonder and admiration And there the holy Virgin-mother might hear part of her own Prophecy verified that the generations of the earth should call her blessed for a woman worshipping Jesus cried out Blessed is the womb that bare thee and the paps that gave thee suck To this Jesus replied not denying her to be highly blessed who had received the honour of being the Mother of the Messias but advancing the dignities of spiritual excellencies far above this greatest temporal honour in the world Yea rather blessed are they that hear the word of God and do it For in respect of the issues of spiritual perfections and their proportionable benedictions all immunities and temporal honours are empty and hollow blessings and all relations of kindred disband and empty themselves into the greater chanels and flouds of Divinity 13. For when Jesus being in the house they told him his Mother and his Brethren staid for him without he told them those relations were less than the ties of Duty and Religion For those dear names of Mother and Brethren which are hallowed by the laws of God and the endearments of Nature are made far more sacred when a spiritual cognation does supervene when the relations are subjected in persons religious and holy but if they be abstract and separate the conjunction of persons in spiritual bands in the same Faith and the same Hope and the union of them
Breach of publick faith desending Pirates and the like When a publick Judgment comes upon a Nation these things are to be thought upon that we may not think our selves acquitted by crying out against Swearing and Drunkenness and Cheating in manufactures which unless they be of universal dissemination and made national by diffusion are paid for upon a personal score and the private infelicities of our lives will either expiate or punish them severely But while the People mourns for those sins of which their low condition is capable sins that may produce a popular Fever or perhaps the Plague where the misery dwells in Cottages and the Princes often have indemnity as it was in the case of David yet we may not hope to appease a War to master a Rebellion to cure the publick Distemperatures of a Kingdom which threaten not the People only or the Governours also but even the Government it self unless the sins of a more publick capacity be cut off by publick declarations or other acts of national Justice and Religion But the duty which concerns us all in such cases is that every man in every capacity should enquire into himself and for his own portion of the Calamity put in his own symbol of Emendation for his particular and his Prayers for the publick interest in which it is not safe that any private persons should descend to particular censures of the crimes of Princes and States no not towards God unless the matter be notorious and past a question but it is a sufficient assoilment of this part of his duty if when he hath set his own house in order he would pray with indefinite significations of his charity and care of the publick that God would put it into the hearts of all whom it concerns to endeavour the removal of the sin that hath brought the exterminating Angel upon the Nation But yet there are sometimes great lines drawn by God in the expresses of his anger in some Judgments upon a Nation and when the Judgment is of that danger as to invade the very Constitution of a Kingdom the proportions that Judgments many times keep to their sins intimate that there is some National sin in which either by diffusion or representation or in the direct matter of sins as false Oaths unjust Wars wicked Confederacies or ungodly Laws the Nation in the publick capacity is delinquent 12. For as the Nation hath in Sins a capacity distinct from the sins of all the People inasmuch as the Nation is united in one Head guarded by a distinct and a higher Angel as Persia by Saint Michael transacts affairs in a publick right transmits insluence to all particulars from a common fountain and hath entercourse with other collective Bodies who also distinguish from their own particulars so likewise it hath Punishments distinct from those infelicities which vex particulars Punishments proportionable to it self and to its own Sins such as are Change of Governments of better into worse of Monarchy into Aristocracy and so to the lowest ebb of Democracy Death of Princes Infant Kings Forein Invasions Civil Wars a disputable Title to the Crown making a Nation tributary Conquest by a Foreiner and which is worst of all removing the Candlestick from a People by extinction of the Church or that which is necessary to its conservation the several Orders and Ministeries of Religion and the last hath also proper sins of its own analogy such as are false Articles in the publick Confessions of a Church Schism from the Catholick publick Scandals a general Viciousness of the Clergy an Indifferency in Religion without warmth and holy fires of Zeal and diligent pursuance of all its just and holy interests Now in these and all parallel cases when God by Punishments hath probably marked and distinguished the Crime it concerns publick persons to be the more forward and importunate in consideration of publick Irregularities and for the private also not to neglect their own particulars for by that means although not certainly yet probably they may secure themselves from falling in the publick calamity It is not infallibly sure that holy persons shall not be smitten by the destroying Angel for God in such deaths hath many ends of mercy and some of Providence to serve but such private and personal emendations and Devotions are the greatest securities of the men against the Judgment or the evil of it preserving them in this life or wasting them over to a better Thus many of the Lord's champions did fall in battel and the armies of the 〈◊〉 did twice prevail upon the juster People of all Israel and the Greek Empire hath declined and shrunk under the fortune and power of the Ottoman Family and the Holy Land which was twice possessed by Christian Princes is now in the dominion of unchristened Saracens and in the production of these alterations many a gallant and pious person suffered the evils of war and the change of an untimely death 13. But the way for the whole Nation to proceed in cases of epidemical Diseases Wars great Judgments and popular Calamities is to do in the publick proportion the same that every man is to do for his private by publick acts of Justice Repentance Fastings pious Laws and execution of just and religious Edicts making peace quitting of unjust interests declaring publickly against a Crime protesting in behalf of the contrary Vertue or Religion and to this also every man as he is a member of the body politick must co-operate that by a Repentance in diffusion help may come as well as by a Sin of universal dissemination the Plague was hastened and invited the rather But in these cases all the work of discerning and pronouncing concerning the cause of the Judgment as it must be without asperity and only for designs of correction and emendation so it must be done by Kings and Prophets and the assistence of other publick persons to whom the publick is committed Josua cast lots upon Achan and discovered the publick trouble in a private instance and of old the Prophets had it in commission to reprove the popular iniquity of Nations and the consederate sins of Kingdomes and in this Christianity altered nothing And when this is done modestly prudently humbly and penitently oftentimes the tables turn immediately but always in due time and a great Alteration in a Kingdome becomes the greatest Blessing in the world and fastens the Church or the Crown or the publick Peace in bands of great continuance and security and it may be the next Age shall feel the benefits of our Sufferance and Repentance And therefore as we must endeavour to secure it so we must not be too decretory in the case of others or disconsolate or diffident in our own when it may so happen that all succeeding generations shall see that God pardoned us and loved us even when he smote us Let us all learn to fear and walk humbly The Churches of Laodicea and the Colossians suffered
industry for the good of the Church He suffered in the ninth year of the persecution with the loss of his head gaining the crown of Martyrdom After whose death came in the prosperous and happy days of the Church Constantine the Great turning the black and dismal scene of things into a state of calmness and serenity XVIII Achillas 9 though Nicephorus of Constantinople allows him but one year By him Arius upon his submission was ordained Presbyter XIX Alexander 23 under him Arius began more openly to broach his Heresie at Alexandria who was thereupon excommunicated and thrust out by Alexander and shortly after condemn'd by the Fathers of the Council of Nice ERRATA 〈◊〉 Pag. 15. line 17. read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 22. l. 6. for silent r. 〈◊〉 p. 31. l. 24. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 47. l. 51. for were r. 〈◊〉 Lives of the Apostles Introduct p. 7. l. 20. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Book p. 2. l. 27. r. 〈◊〉 p. 9. l. 12. dele 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 11. l. 17. for lawful r. careful p. 32. l. 45. r. 〈◊〉 p. 33. l. 15. for of r. 〈◊〉 p. 36. marg over against l. 32. r. 〈◊〉 p. 43. l. 54. r. Man p. 84. l. 17. after the add 〈◊〉 p. 87. l. 33. for This add 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 109. l. 52. after he add had Some other literal mistakes the Reader I hope will amend In the 〈◊〉 words these two letters Daleth and Resh are not sufficiently distinguished FINIS A Brief Catalogue of Books newly Printed and Reprinted for R. Royston Bookseller to his Most Sacred Majesty THE Works of the Reverend and Learned Henry Hammond D. D. containing a Collection of Discourses chiefly Practical with many Additions and Corrections from the Author' s own hand together with the Life of the Author enlarged by the Reverend Dr. Fell Dean of Christ-Church in Oxford In large Folio A Paraphrase and Annotations upon all the Books of the New Testament Briefly explaining all the difficult Places thereof The Fourth Edition corrected By H. Hammond D. D. In Folio 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Or a Collection of Polemical Discourses addressed against the enemies of the Church of England both Papists and Fanaticks in large Folio by Jer. Taylor Chaplain in Ordinary to K. Charles the First of Blessed Memory and late Lord Bishop of Down and Conner The Second Part of the Practical Christian consisting of Meditations and Psalms illustrated with Notes or Paraphrased relating to the Hours of Prayer the ordinary Actions of Day and Night and several Dispositions of Men. By R. Sherlock D. D. Rector of Winwick An Answer to a Book Entituled A Rational Compendious way to Convince without dispute all persons whatsoever dissenting from the true Religion by J. K. By Gilbert Burnet In Octavo new The Royal Martyr and the Dutiful Subject in two Sermons By Gilbert Burnet New The Christian Sacrifice a Treatise shewing the Necessity End and Manner of Receiving the Holy Communion c. The Devout Christian instructed how to Pray and give Thanks to or a Book of Devotions for Families c. Both written by the Reverend S. Patrick D. D. in 12. A Serious aud Compassionate Enquiry into the Causes of the present Neglect and Contempt of the Protestant Religion and Church of England c. Considerations concerning Comprehension Toleration and the Renouncing the Covenant In Octavo new Animadversions upon a Book Entituled Fanaticism Fanatically imputed to the Catholick Church by Dr. Stillingfleet and the Imputation Refuted and Retorted by S. C. The Second Edition By a Person of Honour In Octavo Reflections upon the Devotions of the Roman Church With the Prayers Hymns and Lessons themselves taken out of their Authentick Authors In Three Parts In Octavo Go in Peace Containing some brief Directions for young Ministers in their Visitation of the Sick Useful for the People in their state both of Health and Sickness In 12. New Conformity according to Canon Justified and the new way of Moderation Reproved A Sermon Preached at Exon in the Cathedral of S. Peter at the Visitation of the Right Reverend Father in God Anthony by Divine permission Lord Bishop of Exon. By William Gould In Quarto New A Visitation Sermon preached in the Cathedral at Exon. By John Prince Minister of the Gospel at S. Martins Exon. A Sermon preached at the Oxfordshire-Feast Novemb. 25. 1674. In the Church of S. Michael's Cornhill London By John Woolley M. A. In 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 16. Tom. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lib. de 〈◊〉 pag. 350. 〈◊〉 XXVII in Genes Tom. 2. p. 285. Heb. 1. 1 2. * Talm. Trast Sanbedr cap. Halce alibi vid. Menass Ben Isr. dâ— Resurrect lib. 3. c. 3. Concil Quast xxx in Genes Rom. 2. 14 15. Gen. 4. 6 7. Gem. Babyl Tâ— Sanhedr cap. 7. fol. 56. Maimond Tr. Me lak cap. 9. al â—â— passim ap Judaeos vid. Selâ—en de Jur. N. G. l. 1. c. 10. de Synedr Vol. 1. c. 2. p. 8. Job 31. 26 27 28. Job 1. 6. Job 31. 29 Job 31. 9 10 11. Vers. 5. 7. Chap. 24. 2 3 4 seq Chap. 31. 11-28 Gen. 9. 3 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Porphyr de 〈◊〉 lib. 1. Sect. 47. p. 39. 〈◊〉 V. 5 6. 〈◊〉 17. 11. Gen 17. 9 10 11. * Talm. Tract Jeban 〈◊〉 8. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mor. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 3. 〈◊〉 49. p. 506. Gen. 6. 2 3. Gen. 18. 19. Gen. 18. 2. Exod 4. 31. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 XVIII in 〈◊〉 p. 173. Tom. 2. Gen. 15. 17. Psalm 20. 3. 〈◊〉 P. 〈◊〉 in Gen. 4. Gen. 8. 20. Gen. 12. 7 8. 〈◊〉 chap. 13. 4. 18. Gen. 21. 33. Judg 6. 25. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 13. Deut. 16. 21. 〈◊〉 13. 18. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 LXX Ita 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 aliter 〈◊〉 in 〈◊〉 18. 1. * Antiquit. Jd. l. 1. c. 11. p. 19. * 〈◊〉 loc 〈◊〉 in 〈◊〉 Arboch ‖ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 * Hist. Ec. l. lit 2. c. 4. p. 447. Gen. 4. 30 〈◊〉 Gen. 2. 3. 〈◊〉 19. 22. Exod. 24. 5. Gen. 49. 3. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fol. 71. col 1. ap Selden de success ad leg Ebr. c. 5. p. 45. Heb. 12. 16. Gen. 3. 21. Levit. 7. 8. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Homil. XVIII in 〈◊〉 p. 174. Heb. 11. 4. Gen. 4. 4 5. Antiquit. Jud. 〈◊〉 1. 〈◊〉 3. 〈◊〉 8. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Smeg 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 8. p. 226. seqq Gen. 4. 26. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1. Sect. 1. ‖ Vid. ap 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 cit p. 230. * Dionys. Voss. not in 〈◊〉 p. 4. 〈◊〉 de Hist. Patr. 〈◊〉 6. p. 223. ‖ R. Eliez Maas Beres 〈◊〉 22. ibid. Gen. 6. 2. * Elmacin ap 〈◊〉 p. 233. Id. 〈◊〉 p. 234. * Elmac. Patric apud 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 supr p. 235. Gen. 5. 〈◊〉 Heb. 11. 5 6. Gen. 5. 29. Gen. 6. 9. Antiqu. Jud. lib. 1. 〈◊〉 4. p. 8. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Syria p. 882. 〈◊〉 2. Genes 11. 〈◊〉 7. 11. 5. 32. 10. 21. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p.