their friends and relatives and some Dole and issues of the almes-basket to the poor and if after all this they die quietly and like a lambe and be canoniz'd by a brib'd flatterer in a funerall sermon they make no doubt but they are children of the kingdom and perceive not their folly till without hope of remedy they roar in their expectations of a certain but a horrid eternity of pains * Certainly nothing hath made more ample harvests for the Devil then the deferring of repentance upon vain confidences and lessening it in the extension of parts as well as intension of degrees while we imagine that a few tears and scatterings of devotion are enough to expiate the basenesse of a fifty or threescore yeers impiety This I shall endeavour to cure by shewing what it is to repent and that repentance implies in it the duty of a life or of many and great of long and lasting parts of it and then by direct arguments shewing that repentance put off to our death-bed is invalid and ineffectuall sick languid and impotent like our dying bodies and disabled faculties 1. First therefore Repentance implies a deep sorrow as the beginning and introduction of this duty not a superficiall sigh or tear not a calling our selves sinners and miserable persons this is far from that godly sorrow that worketh repentance and yet I wish there were none in the world or none amongst us who cannot remember that ever they have done this little towards the abolition of their multitudes of sins but yet if it were not a hearty pungent sorrow a sorrow that shall break the heart in pieces a sorrow that shall so irreconcile us to sin as to make us rather choose to die then to sin it is not so much as the beginning of repentance But in Holy Scripture when the people are called to repentance and sorrow which is ever the prologue to it marches sadly and first opens the scene it is ever expressed to be great clamorous and sad it is called a weeping sorely in the verse next after my text a weeping with the bitternesse of heart a turning to the Lord with weeping fasting and mourning a weeping day and night the sorrow of heart the breaking of the spirit the mourning like a dove and chattering like a swallow and if we observe the threnes and sad accents of the Prophet Jeremy when he wept for the sins of his Nation the heart-breakings of David when he mourned for his adultery and murder and the bitter tears of Saint Peter when he washed off the guilt and basenesse of his fall and the denying his Master we shall be sufficiently instructed in this praeludium or introduction to repentance and that it is not every breath of a sigh or moisture of a tender eye not every crying Lord have mercy upon me that is such a sorrow as begins our restitution to the state of grace and Divine favour but such a sorrow that really condemnes our selves and by an active effectual sentence declares us worthy of stripes and death of sorrow and eternall paines and willingly endures the first to prevent the second and weeps and mourns and fasts to obtain of God but to admit us to a possibility of restitution and although all sorrow for sins hath not the same expression nor the same degree of pungency and sensitive trouble which differs according to the temper of the body custome the sexe and accidental tendernesse yet it is not a Godly sorrow unlesse it really produce these effects that is 1. That it makes us really to hate 2. actually to decline sin and 3. produce in us a fear fo Gods anger a sense of the guilt of his displeasure and 4. Then such consequent trouble as can consist with such apprehension of the Divine displeasure which if it expresse not in tears and hearty complaints must be expressed in watchings and strivings against sin in confessing the goodnesse and justice of God threatning or punishing us in patiently bearing the rod of God in confession of our sins in accusation of our selves in perpetual begging of pardon and mean and base opinions of our selves and in al the natural productions from these according to our temper and constitution it must be a sorrow of the reasonable faculty the greatest in its kinde and if it be lesse in kinde or not productive of these effects it is not a godly sorrow not the exordium of repentance But I desire that it be observed that sorrow for sins is not Repentance not that duty which gives glory to God so as to obtain of him that he will glorifie us Repentance is a great volume of duty and Godly sorrow is but the frontispiece or title page it is the harbinger or first introduction to it or if you will consider it in the words of Saint Paul Godly sorrow worketh repentance sorrow is the Parent and repentance is the product and therefore it is a high piece of ignorance to suppose that a crying out and roaring for our sins upon our deathbed can reconcile us to God our crying to God must be so early and so lasting as to be able to teeme and produce such a daughter which must live long and grow from an Embryo to an infant from infancy to childhood from thence to the fulnesse of the stature of Christ and then it is a holy and a happy sorrow but if it be a sorrow onely of a death-bed it is a fruitlesse shower or like the rain of Sodom not the beginning of repentance but the kindling of a flame the comencement of an eternal sorrow For Ahab had a great sorrow but it wrought nothing upon his spirit it did not reconcile his affections to his duty and his duty to God Judas had so great a sorrow for betraying the innocent blood of his Lord that it was intolerable to his Spirit and he burst in the middle and if meer sorrow be repentance then hell is full of penitents for there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth for evermore Let us therefore beg of God as Calebs daughter did of her Father dedisti mihi terram aridam da etiam irriguam thou hast given me a dry land give me also a land of waters a dwelling place in tears rivers of tears ut quoniam non sumus digni oculos orando ad coelum levare at simus digni oculos plorando caecare as Saint Austins expression is that because we are not worthy to lift up our eyes to heaven in prayer yet we may be worthy to weep our selves blinde for sin the meaning is that we beg sorrow of God such a sorrow as may be sufficient to quench the flames of lust and surmount the hills of our pride and may extinguish our thirst of covetousnesse that is a sorrow that shall be an effective principle of arming all our faculties against sin and heartily setting upon the work of grace and the persevering labours of a holy life *
yet their heart deceives them not because it cannot resist the temptation but because it will not go about it For it is certain the heart can if it list For let a Boy enter into your chamber of pleasure and discover your folly either your lust disbands or your shame hides it you will not you care not do it before a stranger Boy and yet that you dare do it before the eyes of the All-seeing God is impudence and folly and a great conviction of the vanity of your pretence and the falsenesse of your heart If thou beest a man given to thy appetite and thou lovest a pleasant morsell as thy life do not declame against the precepts of Temperance as impossible Try this once abstain from that draught or that dish I cannot No Give this man a great blow on the face or tempt him with twenty pound and he shall fast from morning till night and then feast himself with your money and plain wholesome meat And if Chastity and Temperance be so easie that a man may be brought to either of them with so ready and easie instruments Let us not suffer our hearts to deceive us by the weaknesse of its pretences and the strength of its desires For we do more for a Boy then for God and for 20. pound then Heaven it self But thus it is in every thing else take an Hereticke a Rebel a person that hath an ill cause to mannage what he wants in the strength of his reason he shall make it up with diligence and a person that hath Right on his side is cold indiligent lazie and unactive trusting that the goodnesse of his Cause will do it alone But so wrong prevails while evil persons are zealous in a Bad matter and others are remisse in a Good And the same person shall be very industrious alwayes when he hath least reason so to be That 's the first particular The heart is deceitfull in the mannaging of its naturall strengths it is Naturally and Physically strong but Morally weak and impotent 2. The Heart of man is deceitfull in making judgement concerning its own Acts. It does not know when it is pleased or displeased it is peevish and trifling it would and it would not and it is in many Cases impossible to know whether a mans heart desires such a thing or not Saint Ambrose hath an odde saying Facilius inveneris innocentem quam qui poenitentiani digne egerit It is easier to finde a man that hath lived innocently then one that hath truly repented him with a grief and care great according to the merit of his sins Now suppose a man that hath spent his younger yeers in vanity and folly and is by the grace of God apprehensive of it and thinks of returning to sober counsels this man will finde his heart so false so subtil and fugitive so secret and undiscernable that it will be very hard to discerne whether he repents or no. For if he considers that he hates sin and therefore repents Alas he so hates it that he dares not if he be wise tempt himself with an opportunity to act it for in the midst of that which he calls hatred he hath so much love left for it that if the sin comes again and speaks him fair he is lost again he kisses the fire and dies in its embraces And why else should it be necessary for us to pray that we be not lead into temptation but because we hate the sin and yet love it too well we curse it and yet follow it we are angry at our selves and yet cannot be without it we know it undoes us but we think it pleasant And when we are to execute the fierce anger of the Lord upon our sins yet we are kinde-hearted and spare the Agag the reigning sin the splendid temptation we have some kindnesses left towards it These are but ill signes How then shall I know by some infallible token that I am a true Penitent What and if I weep for my sins will you not then give me leave to conclude my heart right with God and at enmity with sin It may be so But there are some friends that weep at parting and is not thy weeping a forrow of affection It is a sad thing to part with our long companion Or it may be thou weepest because thou wouldest have a signe to cozen thy self withall for some men are more desirous to have a signe then the thing signified they would do something to shew their Repentance that themselves may beleeve themselves to be Penitents having no reason from within to beleeve so And I have seen some persons weep heartily for the losse of six pence or for the breaking of a glasse or at some trifling accident and they that do so cannot pretend to have their tears valued at a bigger rate then they will confesse their passion to be when they weep and are vexed for the durting of their linnen or some such trifle for which the least passion is too big an expence So that a man cannot tell his own heart by his tears or the truth of his repentance by those short gusts of sorrow How then Shall we suppose a man to pray against his sin So did Saint Austin when in his youth he was tempted to lust and uncleannesse he prayed against it and secretly desired that God would not hear him for here the heart is cunning to deceive it self For no man did ever heartily pray against his sin in the midst of a temptation to it if he did in any sence or degree listen to the temptation For to pray against a sin is to have desires contrary to it and that cannot consist with any love or any kindnesse to it We pray against it and yet do it and then pray again and do it again and we desire it and yet pray against the desires and that 's almost a contradiction Now because no man can be supposed to will against his own will or choose against his own desires it is plain that we cannot know whether we mean what we say when we pray against sin but by the event If we never act it never entertain it alwayes resist it ever fight against it and finally do prevail then at length we may judge our own heart to have meant honestly in that one particular Nay our heart is so deceitfull in this matter of Repentance that the Masters of spirituall life are fain to invent suppletory Arts and stratagems to secure the duty And we are advised to mourn because we do not mourn to be sorrowfull because we are not sorrowfull Now if we be sorrowfull in the first stage how happens it that we know it not Is our heart so secret to our selves But if we be not sorrowfull in the first period how shall we be so or know it in the second period For we may as well doubt concerning the sincerity of the second or reflex act of sorrow as of the first and
and his own hands forced it into the entertainments of his heart And because it is painfull to draw it forth by a sharp and salutary repentance he still rouls and turns upon his wound and carries his death in his bowels where it first entered by choice and then dwelt by love and at last shall finish the tragedy by divine judgements and an unalterable decree But as the pardon of these sins is uncertain so the conditions of restitution are hard even to them who shall be pardoned their pardon and themselves too must be fetched from the fire water will not do it tears and ineffective sorrow cannot take off a habit or a great crime O nimium faciles qui tristia crimina cadis Tolli flumineâ posse putatis aquâ Bion seeing a Prince weep and tearing his hair for sorrow asked if baldnesse would cure his grief such pompous sorrows may bee good indices but no perfect instruments of restitution Saint James plainly declares the possibilities of pardon to great sins in the cases of contention adultery lust and envy which are the four great indecencies that are most contrary to Christianity and in the 5. Chap. he implies also a possibility of pardon to an habitual sinner whom he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one that erres from the truth that is from the life of a Christian the life of the Spirit of truth and he addes that such a person may be reduced and so be pardoned though he have sinned long he that converts such a one shall hide a multitude of sins But then the way that he appoints for the restitution of such persons is humilty and humiliation penanoes and sharp penitentiall sorrows and afflictions resisting the Devil returning to God weeping and mourning confessions and prayers as you may read at large in the 4. and 5. Chapters and there it is that you shall finde it a duty that such persons should be afflicted and should confesse to their brethren and these are harder conditions then God requires in the formet cases these are a kinde of fiery tryall I have now done with my Text and should adde no more but that the nature of these sins is such that they may increase in their weight and duration and malice and then they increase in mischief and fatality and so go beyond the Text. Cicero said well Ipsa consuetudo assentiendi periculosa esse videtur lubrica l. 4. Acad. Qu. The very custome of consenting in the matters of civility is dangerous and slippery and will quickly ingage us in errour and then we think we are bound to defend them or else we are made flatterers by it and so become vitious and we love our own vices that we are used to and keep them till they are incurable that is till we will never repent of them and some men resolve never to repent that is they resolve they will not be saved they tread under foot the blood of the everlasting covenant those persons are in the fire too but they will not be pulled out concerning whom Gods Prophets must say as once concerning Babylon Curavimus non est sanata derelinquamus eam We would have healed them but they would not be healed let us leave them in their sins and they shall have enough of it Onely this those that put themselves out of the condition of mercy are not to be endured in Christian societies they deserve it not and it is not safe that they should be suffered But besides all this I shall name one thing more unto you for nunquam adeò foedis adeoquè pudendis Utimur exemplis ut non pejora supersint There are some single actions of sin of so great a malice that in their own nature they are beyond the limit of Gospel pardon they are not such things for the pardon of which God entered into covenant because they are such sins which put a man into perfect indispotisions and incapacities of entring into or being in the covenant In the first ages of the world Atheisme was of that nature it was against their whole religion and the sin is worse now against the whole religion still and against a brighter light In the ages after the flood idolatry was also just such another for as God was known first onely as the creator then he began to manifest himself in special contracts with men and he quickly was declared the God of Israel and idolatry perfectly destroyed all that religion and therefore was never pardoned intirely but God did visit it upon them that sinned and when he pardoned it in some degrees yet he also punished it in so me and yet rebellion against the supreme power of Moses and 〈…〉 was worse for that also is a perfect destruction of the whole religion because it refused to submit to those hands upon which God had placed all the religion and all the government And now if we would know in the Gospel what answers these precedent sins I answer first the same sins acted by a resolute hand and heart are worse now then ever they were and a third or fourth is also to be added and that is Apostacy or or a voluntary malicious renouncing the faith The Church hath often declared that sin to be unpardonable witchcraft or final impenitence and obstinacy in any sin are infallibly desperate and in general and by a certain parity of reason whatsoever does destroy charity or the good life of a Christian with the same general venom and deletery as Apostacy destroyes faith and he that is a Renegado from charity is as unpardonable as he that returns to solemn Atheisme or infidelity for all that is directly the sin against the holy Ghost that is a throwing that away wherby onely we can be Christians wherby onely we can hope to be saved to speak a word against the holy Ghost in the Pharisees was declared unpardonable because it was such a word which if it had been true or believed would have destroyed the whole religion for they said that Christ wrought by Beelzebub and by consequence did not come from God He that destroyes al the whole order of Priesthood destroyes one of the greatest parts of the religion one of the greatest effects of the holy Ghost He that destroyes government destroyes another part but that we may come neerer to our selves to quench the spirit of God is worse then to speak some words against him to grieve the spirit of God is a part of the same impiety to resist the holy Ghost is another part and if we consider that every great sin does this in its proportion it would concern us to be careful lest we fal into presumptuous sins lest they get the dominion over us out of this that I have spoken you may easily gather what sort of men those are who cannot be snatched from the fire for whom as S. John saies we are not to pray and how neer men come to it that continue in
and all the security they can have depends upon Gods mercy pardoning their sins they cannot choose but fear infinitely if they have not reason to hope that their sins are pardoned * Now concerning this men indeed have generally taken a course to put this affair to a very speedy issue God is mercifull and God forgive mee and all is done or it may be a few sighs like the deep sobbings of a man that is almost dead with laughter that is a trifling sorrow returning upon a man after he is full of sin and hath pleased himselfe with violence and revolving onely by a naturall change from sin to sorrow from laughter to a groan from sunshine to a cloudy day or it may be the good man hath left some one sin quite or some degrees of all sin and then the conclusion is firm he is rectus in Curâ—â his sins are pardoned he was indeed in an evill condition but now he is purged he is sanctified and clean These things are very bad but it is much worse that men should continue in their sin and grow old in it and arrive at consirmation and the strength of habituall wickednesse and grow fond of it and yet think if they die their account stands as fair in the eyes of Gods mercy as St. Peter's after his tears and sorrow Our sins are not pardoned easily and quickly and the longer and the greater hath been the iniquity the harder and more difficult and uncertain is the pardon it is a great progresse to return from all the degrees of death to life to motion to quicknesse to purity to acceptation to grace to contention and growth in grace to perseverance and so to pardon For pardon stands no where but at the gates of heaven It is a great mercy that signifies a finall and universall acquittance God sends it out in little scroles and excuses you from falling by the sword of the enemy or the secret stroke of an Angell in the days of the plague but these are but little entertainments and inticings of our hopes to work on towards the great pardon which is registred in the leaves of the Book of Life And it is a mighty folly to think that every little line of mercy signifies glory and absolution from the eternall wrath of God and therefore it is not to be wondred at that wicked men are unwilling to dye it is a greater wonder that many of them dye with so little resentment of their danger and their evill There is reason for them to tremble when the Judge summons them to appear When his messenger is clothed with horror and speaks in thunder when their conscience is their accuser and their accusation is great and their bills uncancell'd and they have no title to the crosse of Christ no advocate no excuse when God is their enemy and Christ is the injur'd person and the Spirit is grieved and sicknesse and death come to plead Gods cause against the man then there is reason that the naturall fears of death should be high and pungent and those naturall fears encreased by the reasonable and certain expectations of that anger which God hath laid up in heaven for ever to consume and destroy his enemies And indeed if we consider upon how trifling and inconsiderable grounds most men hope for pardon if at least that may be call'd hope which is nothing but a carelesse boldnesse and an unreasonable wilfull confidence we shall see much cause to pity very many who are going merrily to a sad and intolerable death Pardon of sins is a mercy which Christ purchased with his dearest blood which he ministers to us upon conditions of an infinite kindnesse but yet of great holinesse and obedience and an active living faith it is a grace that the most holy persons beg of God with mighty passion and labour for with a great diligence and expect with trembling fears and concerning it many times suffer sadnesses with uncertain soules and receive it by degrees and it enters upon them by little portions and it is broken as their sighs and sleeps But so have I seen the returning sea enter upon the strand and the waters rolling towards the shore throw up little portions of the tide and retire as if nature meant to play and not to change the abode of waters but still the floud crept by little steppings and invaded more by his progressions then he lost by his retreat and having told the number of its steps it possesses its new portion till the Angell calls it back that it may leave its unfaithfull dwelling of the sand so is the pardon of our sins it comes by slow motions and first quits a present death and turnes it may be into a sharp sicknesse and if that sicknesse prove not health to the soul it washes off and it may be will dash against the rock again and proceed to take off the severall instances of anger and the periods of wrath but all this while it is uncertain concerning our finall interest whether it be ebbe or floud and every hearty prayer and every bountifull almes still enlarges the pardon or addes a degree of probability and hope and then a drunken meeting or a covetous desire or an act of lust or looser swearing idle talk or neglect of Religion makes the pardon retire and while it is disputed between Christ and Christs enemy who shall be Lord the pardon fluctuates like the wave striving to climbe the rock and is wash'd off like its own retinue and it gets possession by time and uncertainty by difficulty and the degrees of a hard progression When David had sinned but in one instance interrupting the course of a holy life by one sad calamity it pleased God to pardon him but see upon what hard terms He prayed long and violently he wept sorely he was humbled in sackcloth and ashes he eat the bread of affliction and drank of his bottle of tears he lost his Princely spirit and had an amazing conscience he suffer'd the wrath of God and the sword never did depart from his house his Son rebell'd and his Kingdome revolted he fled on foot and maintained Spies against his childe hee was forc'd to send an army against him that was dearer then his owne eyes and to fight against him whom he would not hurt for all the riches of Syria and Egypt his concubines were desir'd by an incestuous mixture in the face of the sun before all Israel and his childe that was the fruit of his sin after a 7 days feaver dyed and left him nothing of his sin to show but sorrow and the scourges of the Divine vengeance and after all this God pardoned him finally because he was for ever sorrowfull and never did the sin againe He that hath sinned a thousand times for David's once is too confident if he thinks that all his shall be pardoned at a lesse rate then was used to expiate that one mischief of the religious King The son
shall derive from us This last instance went further then the other of families and kingdoms For not onely the single families of the Jews were made miserable for their Fathers murdering the Lord of life nor also was the Nation extinguished alone for the sins of their Rulers but the religion was removed it ceased to be God peoples the synagogue was rejected and her vail rent and her privacies dismantled and the Gentiles were made to be Gods people when the Jews inclosure was disparkd I need not further to instance this proposition in the case of National Churches though it is a sad calamity that is fallen upon the al seven Churches of Asia to whom the spirit of God wrote seven Epistles by Saint John and almost all the Churches of Africa where Christ was worshipped and now Mahomet is thrust in substitution and the people are servants and the religion is extinguished or where it remains it shines like the Moon in an Eclipse or like the least spark of the pleiades seen but seldom And that rather shining like a gloworm then a taper enkindled with a beam of the Sun of righteousnesse I shall adde no more instances to verifie the truth of this save onely I shall observe to you that even there is danger in being in evil company in suspected places in the civil societies and fellowships of wicked men Vetabo qui Cereris sacrum vnlgarit arcanae sub ijsdem sit trabibus fragilemque mecum solvat phaselum saepe Diespiter Neglectus in cesto addidit in tegrum And it hapned to the Mariners who carried Jonah to be in danger with a horrid storme because Jonah was there who had sinned against the Lord. Many times the sin of one man is punished by the falling of a house or a wall upon him and then al the family are like to be crushed with the same ruine so dangerous so pestilential so infectious a thing is sin that it scatters the poison of its breath to all the neighbourhood and makes that the man ought to be avoided like a person infected with the plague Next I am to consider why this is so and why it is justly so To this I answer 1. Between Kings and their people Parents and their children there is so great a necessitude propriety and entercourse of nature dominion right and possession that they are by God and the laws of Nations reckoned as their Goods and their blessings The honour of a King is in the multitude of his people and children are a gift that cometh of the Lord and happy is that man that hath his quiver full of them and Lo thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the Lord his wife shall be like the fruitful vine by the wals of his house his children like olive branches round about his Table Now if children be a blessing then to take them away in anger is a curse and if the losse of flocks and herds the burning of houses the blasting of fields be a curse how much greater is it to lose our children and to see God slay them before our eyes in hatred to our persons and detestation and loathing of our basenesse When Jobs Messengers told him the sad stories of fire from Heaven the burning his sheep and that the Sabeans had driven his Oxen away and the Chaldeans had stolne his Camels these were sad arrests to his troubled spirit but it was reserved as the last blow of that sad execution that the ruines of a house had crush'd his Sons and Daughters to their graves Sons daughters are greater blessings then sheep Oxen they are not servants of profit as sheep are but they secure greater ends of blesssing they preserve your Names they are so many titles of provision providence every new childe is a new title to Gods care of that family They serve the ends of honour of commonwealths and Kingdoms they are images of our souls and images of God and therefore are great blessings and by consequence they are great riches though they are not to be sold for mony and surely he that hath a cabinet of invaluable jewels will think himself rich though he never sells them Does 〈◊〉 take care for Oxen said our blessed Saviour much more for you yea all and every one of your children are of more value then many Oxen when therefore God for your sin strikes them with crookednesse with deformity with foolishnesse with impertinent and caytive spirits with hasty or sudden deaths it is a greater curse to us then to lose whole herds of cattel of which it is certain most men would be very sensible They are our goods they are our blessings from God therefore we are striken when for our sakes they dye Therefore we may properly be punished by evils happening to our Relatives 2. But as this is a punishment to us so it is not unjust as to them though they be innocent For all the calamities of this life are incident to the most Godly persons of the world and since the King of Heaven and earth was made a man of sorrows it cannot be called unjust or intolerable that innocent persons should be pressed with temporal infelicities onely in such cases we must distinguish the misery from the punishment for that all the world dyes is a punishment of Adams sin but it is no evil to those single persons that die in the Lord for they are blessed in their death Jonathan was killed the same day with his Father the King and this was a punishment to Saul indeed but to Jonathan it was a blessing for since God had appointed the kingdom to his neighbour it was more honourable for him to die fighting the Lords battel then to live and see himself the lasting testimony of Gods curse upon his Father who lost the Kingdom from his family by his disobedience That death is a blessing which ends an Honorable and prevents an inglorious life And our children it may be shall be sanctified by a sorrow and purified by the fire of affliction and they shall receive the blessing of it but it is to their Fathers a curse who shall wound their own hearts with sorrow and cover their heads with a robe of shame for bringing so great evil upon their house 3. God hath many ends of providence to serve in this dispensation of his judgements * 1. He expresses the highest indignation against sin and makes his examples lasting communicative and of great effect it is a little image of hell and we shall the lesse wonder that God with the pains of eternity punishes the sins of time when with our eyes we see him punish a transient action with a lasting judgement * 2. It arrests the spirits of men and surprises their loosenesses and restrains their gaiety when we observe that the judgements of God finde us out in all relations and turns our comforts into sadnesse and makes our families the scene of sorrows and we can escape him no
I shall onely adde one word to this That our sorrow for sin is not to be estimated by our tears and our sensible expressions but by our active hatred and dereliction of sin and is many times unperceived in outward demonstration It is reported of the Mother of Peter Lombard Gratian and Comestor that she having had three sons begotten in unhallowed embraces upon her death-bed did omit the recitation of those crimes to her confessour adding this for Apology that her three sons proved persons so eminent in the Church that their excellency was abundant recompence for her demerit and therefore she could not grieve because God had glorified himself so much by three instruments so excellent and that although her sin had abounded yet Gods grace did superabound Her Confessor replied at dole Saltent quod dolere non possis grieve that thou canst not grieve and so must we alwayes fear that our trouble for sin is nor great enough that our sorrow is too remisse that our affections are indifferent but we can onely be sure that our sorrow is a godly sorrow when it worketh repentance that is when it makes us hate and leave all our sin and take up the crosse of patience or penance that is confesse our sin accuse our selves condemn the action by hearty sentence and then if it hath no other emanation but fasting and prayer for its pardon and hearty industry towards its abolition our sorrow is not reproveable For sorrow alone will not do it there must follow a total dereliction of our sin and this is the first part of repentance Concerning which I consider that it is a sad mistake amongst many that do some things towards repentance that they mistake the first addresses and instruments of this part of repentance for the whole duty it self Confession of sins is in order to the dereliction of them but then confession must not be like the unlading of a ship to take in new stowage or the vomits of intemperance which ease the stomack that they may continue the merry meeting but such a confession is too frequent in which men either comply with custome or seek to ease a present load or gripe of conscience or are willing to dresse up their souls against afestiyal or hope for pardon upon so easie terms these are but retirings baok to leap the further into mischief or but approaches to God with the lips no confession can be of any use but as it is an instrument of shame to the person of humiliation of the man and dereliction of the sin and receives its recompence but as it ads to these purposes all other is like the bleating of the calves and the lowing of the Oxen which Saul reserved after the spoil of Agag they proclaim the sin but do nothing towards its cure they serve Gods end to make us justly to be condemned out of our own mouthes but nothing at all towards our absolution * Nay if we proceed further to the greatest expressions of humiliation parts of which I reckon fasting praying for pardon judging and condemning of our selves by instances of a present indignation against a crime yet unlesse this proceed so far as to a total deletion of the sin to the extirpation of every vitious habit God is not glorified by our repentance nor we secured in our eternal interest Our sin must be brought to judgement and like Antinous in Homer layed in the mids as the sacrifice and the cause of all the mischief 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This is the murderer this is the Achan this is he that troubles Israel let the sin be confessed and carried with the pomps and solennities of sorrow to its funeral and so let the murderer be slain But if after all the forms of confession and sorrow fasting and humiliation and pretence of doing the will of God we spare Agag and the fattest of the cattel our delicious sins and still leave an unlawful King and a tyrant sin to reigne in our mortal bodies we may pretend what we will towards repentance but we are no better penitents then Ahab no neerer to the obtaining of our hopes then Esau was to his birthright for whose repentance there was no place left though he sought it carefully with tears Well let us suppose our penitent advanced thus far as that he decrees against all sin and in his hearty purposes resolves to decline it as in a severe sentence he hath condemned it as his betrayer and his murderer yet we must be curious for now onely the repentance properly begins that it be not onely like the springings of the thorny of the high way ground soon up and soon down For some men when a sadnesse or an unhandsome accident surprizes them then they resolve against their sin but like the goats in Aristotle they give their milk no longer then they are stung as soon as the thorns are removed these men return to their first hardnesse and resolve then to act their first temptation Others there are who never resolve against a sin but either when they have no temptation to it or when their appetites are newly satisfied with it like those who immediately after a full dinner resolve to fast at supper and they keep it till their appetite returnes and then their resolution unties like the cords of vanity or the gossamere against the violence of the Northen winde Thus a lustfull person fills all the capacity of his lust and when he is wearied and the sin goes off with unquietnesse and regret and the appetite falls down like a horseleech when it is ready to burst with putrifaction and an unwholsome plethory then he resolves to be a good man and could almost vow to be a Hermit and hates his lust as Amnon hated his sister Thamar just when he had newly acted his unworthy rape but the next spring tide that comes every wave of the temptation makes an inrode upon the resolution and gets ground and prevailes against it more then his resolution prevailed against his sin How many drunken persons how many Swearers resolve daily and hourely against their sin and yet act them not once the lesse for all their infinite heape of shamefully ret eating purposes * That resolution that begins upon just grounds of sorrow and severe judgement upon fear and love that is made in the midst of a temptation that is inquisitive into all the means and instruments of the cure that prayes perpetually against a sin that watches continually against a surprize and never sinks into it by deliberation that fights earnestly and carries on the war prudently and prevailes by a never ceasing diligence against the temptation that onely is a pious and well begun repentance They that have their fits of a quartan well and ill for ever and think themselves in perfect health when the ague is retired till its period returnes are dangerously mistaken Those intervals of imperfect and fallacious resolution are nothing but states of death and if
grown and so judge of the state of our duty and concerning our finall condition of being saved 1. Concerning the state of grace I consider that no man can be said to be in the state of grace who retaines an affection to any one sin The state of pardon and the divine favour begins at the first instance of anger against our crimes when we leave our fondnesses and kinde opinions when we excuse them not and will not endure their shame when we feele the smarts of any of their evil consequents for he that is a perfect lover of sin and is sealed up to a reprobate sense endures all that sin brings along with it and is reconciled to all its mischiefes can suffer the sicknesse of his own drunkennesse and yet call it pleasure he can wait like a slave to serve his lust and yet count it no disparagement he can suffer the dishonour of being accounted a base and dishonest person and yet look confidently and think himself no worse But when the grace of God begins to work upon a mans spirit it makes the conscience nice and tender and although the sin as yet does not displease the man but he can endure the flattering and alluring part yet he will not endure to be used so ill by his sin he will not be abused and dishonoured by it But because God hath so allayed the pleasures of his sin that he that drinks the sweet should also strain the dregs through his throat by degrees Gods grace doth irreconcile the convert and discovers first its base attendance then its worse consequents then the displeasure of God that here commences the first resolutions of leaving the sin and trying if in the service of God his spirit and the whole appetite of man may be better entertained He that is thus far entred shall quickly perceive the difference and meet arguments enough to invite him further For then God treats the man as he treated the spies that went to discover the land of promise he ordered the year in plenty and directed them to a pleasant and a fruitful place and prepared bunches of grapes of a miraculous and prodigious greatnesse that they might report good things of Canaan and invite the whole nation to attempt its conquest so Gods grace represents to the new converts and the weak ones in faith the pleasures and first deliciousnesses of religion and when they come to spie the good things of that way that leads to heaven they presently perceive themselves cased of the load of an evil conscience of their fears of death of the confusion of their shame and Gods spirit gives them a cup of sensible comfort and makes them to rejoyce in their prayers and weep with pleasures mingled with innocent passions and religious changes and although God does not deal with all men in the same method or in manners that can regularly be described and all men do not feele or do not observe or cannot for want of skill discern such accidental sweetnesses and pleasant grapes at his first entrance into religion yet God to every man does minister excellent arguments of invitation and such that if a man will attend to them they will certainly move either his affections or his will his fancy or his reason and most commonly both But while the spirit of God is doing this work of man man must also be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fellow worker with God he must entertain the spirit attend his inspirations receive his whispers obey all his motions invite him further and utterly renounce all confederacy with his enemy sin at no hand suffering any root of bitternesse to spring up not allowing to himself any reserve of carnal pleasure no clancular lust no private oppressions no secret covetousnesse no love to this world that may discompose his duty for if a man prayes all day and at night is intemperate if he spends his time in reading and his recreation be sinful if he studies religion and practises self interest if he leaves his swearing and yet retaines his pride if he becomes chast and yet remains peevish and imperious this man is not changed from the state of sin into the first stage of the state of grace he does at no hand belong to God he hath suffered himself to be scared from one sin and tempted from another by interest and hath left a third by reason of his inclination and a fourth for shame or want of opportunity But the spirit of God hath not yet planted one perfect plant there God may make use of the accidentally prepared advantages But as yet the spirit of God hath not begun the proper and direct work of grace in his heart But when we leave every sin when we resolve never to return to the chaines when we have no love for the world but such as may be a servant of God then I account that we are entred into a state of grace from whence I am now to begin to reckon the commencement of this precept grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2. And now the first part of this duty is to make religion to be the businesse of our lives for this is the great instrument which will naturally produce our growth in grace and the perfection of a Christian. For a man cannot after a state of sin be instantly a Saint the work of heaven is not done by a flash of lightning or a dash of affectionate raine or a few tears of a relenting pity God and his Church have appointed holy intervals and have taken portions of our time for religion that we may be called off from the world and remember the end of our creation and do honour to God and think of heaven with hearty purposes and peremptory designes to get thither But as we must not neglect those times which God hath reserved for his service or the Church hath prudently decreed nor yet act religion upon such dayes with forms and outsides or to comply with customs or to seem religious so we must take care that all the other portions of our time be hallowed with little retirements of all thoughts and short conversations with God and all along be guided with a holy intention that even our works of nature may passe into the relations of grace and the actions of our calling may help towards the obtaining the price of our high calling while our eatings are actions of temperance our labours are profitable our humiliations are acts of obedience and our almes are charity our marriages are chast and whether we eat or drink sleep or wake we may do all to the glory of God by a direct intuition or by a reflex act by designe or by supplement by fore sight or by an after election and to this purpose we must not look upon religion as our trouble and our hinderance nor think almes chargeable or expensive nor our fastings vexatious and burdensom nor our prayers a wearinesse of spirit
shall be rent into threds of light and scatter like the beards of comets Then shall bee fearfull earthquakes and the rocks shall rend in pieces the trees shall distill bloud and the mountains and fairest structures shall returne unto their primitive dust the wild beasts shall leave their dens and come into the companies of men so that you shall hardly tell how to call them herds of Men or congregations of Beasts Then shall the Graves open and give up their dead and those which are alive in nature and dead in fear shall be forc'd from the rocks whither they went to hide them and from caverns of the earth where they would fain have been concealed because their retirements are dismantled and their rocks are broken into wider ruptures and admit a strange light into their secret bowels and the men being forc'd abroad into the theatre of mighty horrors shall run up and downe distracted and at their wits end and then some shall die and some shall bee changed and by this time the Elect shall bee gathered together from the foure quarters of the world and Christ shall come along with them to judgment These signes although the Jewish Doctors reckon them by order and a method concerning which they had no revelation that appeares nor sufficiently credible tradition yet for the main parts of the things themselves the holy Scripture records Christs own words and concerning the most terrible of them the summe of which as Christ related them and his Apostles recorded and explicated is this The earth shall tremble and the powers of the heavens shall bee shaken the sun shall bee turned into darknesse and the moon into bloud that is there shall bee strange eclipses of the Sun and fearfull aspects in the Moon who when she is troubled looks red like bloud The rocks shall rend and the elements shall melt with fervent heat The heavens shall bee rolled up like a parchment the earth shall bee burned with fire the hils shall be like wax for there shall goe a fire before him and a mighty tempest shall be stirred round about him Dies irae Dies illa Solvet sêclum in favillâ Teste David cum Sibyllâ The Trumpet of God shall sound and the voice of the Archangell that is of him who is the Prince of all that great army of Spirits which shall then attend their Lord and wait upon and illustrate his glory and this also is part of that which is called the signe of the Son of Man for the fulfilling of all these praedictions and the preaching the Gospel to all Nations and the Conversion of the Jews and these prodigies and the Addresse of Majesty make up that signe The notice of which things some way or other came to the very Heathen themselves who were alarum'd into caution and sobriety by these dreadfull remembrances Sic cum compage solutâ Saecula tot mundt suprema coëgerit hora Antiquum repetens iterum chaos omnia mistis Sidera sideribus concurrent ignea pontum Astra petent tellus extendere littora nolet Excutietque fretum fratri contraria Phoebe Ibit Totaque discors Machina divulsi turbabit foedera Mundi Which things when they are come to passe it will be no wonder if mens hearts shall faile them for feare and their wits bee lost with guilt and their fond hopes destroyed by prodigie and amazement but it will bee an extreme wonder if the consideration and certain expectation of these things shall not awake our sleeping spirits and raise us from the death of Sin and the basenesse of vice and dishonorable actions to live soberly and temperately chastly and justly humbly and obediently that is like persons that believe all this and such who are not mad men or fools but will order their actions according to these notices For if they doe not believe these things where is their Faith If they doe believe them and sin on and doe as if there were no such thing to come to passe where is their Prudence and what is their hopes and where their Charity how doe they differ from beasts save that they are more foolish for beasts goe on and consider not because they cannot but we can consider and will not we know that strange terrors shall affright us all and strange deaths and torments shall seise upon the wicked and that we cannot escape and the rocks themselves will not bee able to hide us from the fears of those prodigies which shall come before the day of Judgement and that the mountains though when they are broken in pieces we call upon them to fall upon us shall not be able to secure us one minute from the present vengeance and yet we proceed with confidence or carelesnesse and consider not that there is no greater folly in the world then for a man to neglect his greatest interest and to die for trifles and little regards and to become miserable for such interests which are not excusable in a Childe He that is youngest hath not long to live Hee that is thirty forty or fifty yeares old hath spent most of his life and his dream is almost done and in a very few moneths hee must be cast into his eternall portion that is hee must be in an unalterable condition his finall Sentence shall passe according as hee shall then bee found and that will be an intolerable condition when he shall have reason to cry out in the bitternesse of his soule Eternall woe is to mee who refus'd to consider when I might have been saved and secured from this intolerable calamity But I must descend to consider the particulars and circumstances of the great consideration Christ shall be our Judge at Doomes-day SERMON II. Part II. 1. IF we consider the person of the Judge we first perceive that he is interested in the injury of the crimes he is to sentence Videbunt quem crucifixerunt and they shal look on him whom they have pierced It was for thy sins that the Judge did suffer such unspeakable pains as were enough to reconcile all the world to God The summe and spirit of which pains could not be better understood then by the consequence of his own words My God my God why hast thou forsaken me meaning that he felt such horrible pure unmingled sorrowes that although his humane nature was personally united to the Godhead yet at that instant he felt no comfortable emanations by sensible perception from the Divinity but he was so drenched in sorrow that the Godhead seemed to have forsaken him Beyond this nothing can be added but then that thou hast for thy own particular made all this in vain and ineffective that Christ thy Lord and Judge should be tormented for nothing that thou wouldst not accept felicity and pardon when he purchased them at so dear a price must needs be an infinite condemnation to such persons How shalt thou look upon him that fainted and dyed for love of thee and thou didst
will loves it and so long as it does God cannot love the Man for God is the Prince of purities and the Son of God is the King of Virgins and the holy Spirit is all love and that is all purity and all spirituality And therefore the prayer of an Adulterer or an uncleane person is like the sacrifices to Moloch or the rites of Flora ubi Cato spectator esse non potuit a good man will not endure them much lesse will God entertaine such reekings of the Dead sea and clouds of Sodome For so an impure vapor begotten of the slime of the earth by the feavers and adulterous heats of an intemperate Summer sun striving by the ladder of a mountaine to climbe up to heaven and rolling into various figures by an uneasy unfixed revolution and stop'd at the middle region of the aire being thrown from his pride and attempt of passing towards the seat of the stars turnes into an unwholsome flame and like the breath of hell is confin'd into a prison of darknesse and a cloud till it breaks into diseases plagues and mildews stink and blastings so is the prayer of an unchast person it strives to climbe the battlements of heaven but because it is a flame of sulphur salt and bitumen and was kindled in the dishonorable regions below deriv'd from hell and contrary to God it cannot passe forth to the element of love but ends in barrennesse and murmur fantastick expectations and trifling imaginative confidences and they at last end in sorrows and despaire * Every state of sin is against the possibility of a mans being accepted but these have a proper venome against the graciousnesse of the person and the power of the prayer God can never accept an unholy prayer and a wicked man can never send forth any other the waters passe thorough impure aquaeducts and channels of brimstone and therefore may end in brimstone and fire but never in forgivenesse and the blessings of an eternall charity Henceforth therefore never any more wonder that men pray so seldome there are few that feel the relish and are enticed with the deliciousnesse and refreshed with the comforts and instructed with the sanctity and acquainted with the secrets of a holy prayer But cease also to wonder that of those few that say many prayers so few find any return of any at all To make up a good and a lawfull prayer there must be charity with all its daughters almes forgivenesse not judging uncharitably there must be purity of spirit that is purity of intention and there must be purity of the body and soule that is the cleannesse of chastity and there must be no vice remaining no affection to sin for he that brings his body to God and hath left his will in the power of any sin offers to God the calves of his lips but not a whole burnt-offering a lame oblation but not a reasonable sacrifice and therefore their portion shall be amongst them whose prayers were never recorded in the book of life whose tears God never put into his bottle whose desires shall remaine ineffectuall to eternall ages Take heed you doe not lose your prayers for by them you hope to have eternall life and let any of you whose conscience is most religious and tender consider what condition that man is in that hath not said his prayers in thirty or forty years together and that is the true state of him who hath lived so long in the course of an unsanctified life in all that while he never said one prayer that did him any good but they ought to be reckoned to him upon the account of his sins Hee that is in the affection or in the habit or in the state of any one sin whatsoever is at such distance from and contrariety to God that he provokes God to anger in every prayer hee makes And then adde but this consideration that prayer is the great summe of our Religion it is the effect and the exercise and the beginning and the promoter of all graces and the consummation and perfection of many and all those persons who pretend towards heaven and yet are not experienced in the secrets of Religion they reckon their piety and account their hopes onely upon the stock of a few prayers it may be they pray twice every day it may be thrice and blessed be God for it so farre is very well but if it shall be remembred and considered that this course of piety is so farre from warranting any one course of sin that any one habituall and cherished sin destroyes the effect of all that piety wee shall see there is reason to account this to be one of those great arguments with which God hath so bound the duty of holy living upon us that without a holy life we cannot in any sense be happy or have the effect of one prayer But if we be returning and repenting sinners God delights to hear because he delights to save us Si precibus dixerunt numina justis Victa remollescunt When a man is holy then God is gracious and a holy life is the best and it is a continuall prayer and repentance is the best argument to move God to mercy because it is the instrument to unite our prayers to the intercession of the Holy Jesus SERMON V. Part II. AFter these evidences of Scripture and reason deriv'd from its analogy there will be lesse necessity to take any particular notices of those little objections which are usually made from the experience of the successe and prosperities of evill persons For true it is there is in the world a generation of men that pray long and loud and aske for vile things such which they ought to fear and pray against and yet they are heard The fat upon earth eat and worship But if these men aske things hurtfull and sinfull it is certain God hears them not in mercy They pray to God as despairing Saul did to his Armour-bearer Sta super me interfice me stand upon me and kill me and he that obey'd his voice did him dishonour and sinn'd against the head of his King and his own life And the vicious persons of old pray'd to Laverna Pulchra Laverna Da mihi fallere da justum sanctúmque videri Noctem peccatis fraudibus objice nubem Give me a prosperous robbery a rich prey and secret escape let me become rich with theeving and still be accounted holy For every sort of man hath some religion or other by the measures of which they proportion their lives and their prayers Now as the holy Spirit of God teaching us to pray makes us like himself in order to a holy and an effective prayer and no man prayes well but he that prays by the Spirit of God the Spirit of holinesse and he that prayes with the Spirit must be made like to the Spirit he is first sanctified and made holy and then made fervent and then his prayer ascends beyond the
of David died for his father David as well as he did for us he was the Lambe slain from the beginning of the world and yet that death and that relation and all the heap of the Divine favours which crown'd David with a circle richer then the royall diadem could not exempt him from the portion of sinners when he descended into their pollutions I pray God we may find the sure mercies of David and may have our portion in the redemption wrought by the Son of David but we are to expect it upon such terms as are revealed such which include time and labour and uncertainty and watchfulnesse and fear and holy living But it is a sad observation that the case of pardon of sins is so administred that they that are most sure of it have the greatest fears concerning it and they to whom it doth not belong at all are as confident as children and fooles who believe every thing they have a mind to not because they have reason so to doe but because without it they are presently miserable The godly and holy persons of the Church work out their salvation with fear and trembling and the wicked goe to destruction with gayety and confidence these men think all is well while they are in the gall of bitternesse and good men are tossed in a tempest crying and praying for a safe conduct and the sighs of their feares and the wind of their prayers waft them safely to their port Pardon of sins is not easily obtain'd because they who onely certainly can receive it find difficulty and danger and fears in the obtaining it and therefore their case is pityable and deplorable who when they have least reason to expect pardon yet are most confident and carelesse But because there are sorrows on one side and dangers on the other and temptations on both sides it will concern all sorts of men to know when their sins are pardoned For then when they can perceive their signes certain and evident they may rest in their expectations of the Divine mercies when they cannot see the signes they may leave their confidence and change it into repentance and watchfulnesse and stricter observation and in order to this I shall tell you that which shall never faile you a certaine signe that you may know whether or no and when and in what degree your persons are pardoned 1. I shall not consider the evils of sin by any Metaphysicall and abstracted effects but by sensible reall and materiall Hee that revenges himself of another does something that will make his enemy grieve something that shall displease the offender as much as sin did the offended and therefore all the evills of sin are such as relate to us and are to bee estimated by our apprehensions Sin makes God angry and Gods anger if it be turned aside will make us miserable and accursed and therefore in proportion to this we are to reckon the proportions of Gods mercy in forgivenesse or his anger in retaining 2. Sin hath obliged us to suffer many evills even whatsoever the anger of God is pleased to inflict sicknesse and dishonour poverty and shame a caytive spirit and a guilty conscience famine and war plague and pestilence sudden death and a short life temporall death or death eternall according as God in the severall covenants of the Law and Gospel hath expressed 3. For in the law of Moses sin bound them to nothing but temporall evills but they were sore and heavy and many but these only there were threatned in the Gospel Christ added the menaces of evills spirituall and eternall 4. The great evill of the Jews was their abscission and cutting off from being Gods people to which eternall damnation answers amongst us and as sicknesse and war and other intermediall evills were lesser strokes in order to the finall anger of God against their Nation so are these and spirituall evills intermediall in order to the Eternall destruction of sinning and unrepenting Christians 5. When God had visited any of the sinners of Israel with a grievous sicknesse then they lay under the evill of their sin and were not pardoned till God took away the sicknesse but the taking the evill away the evill of the punishment was the pardon of the sin to pardon the sin is to spare the sinner and this appears For when Christ had said to the man sick of the palsey Son thy sins are forgiven thee the Pharisees accused him of blasphemy because none had power to forgive sins but God onely Christ to vindicate himselfe gives them an ocular demonstration and proves his words that yee may know the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins he saith to the man sick of the palsey Arise and walk then he pardoned the sin when he took away the sicknesse and proved the power by reducing it to act for if pardon of sins be any thing else it must be easier or harder if it be easier then sin hath not so much evill in it as a sicknesse which no Religion as yet ever taught If it be harder then Christs power to doe that which was harder could not be proved by doing that which was easier It remaines therefore that it is the same thing to take the punishment away as to procure or give the pardon because as the retaining the sin was an obligation to the evill of punishment so the remitting the sin is the disobliging to its penalty So farre then the case is manifest 6. The next step is this that although in the Gospel God punishes sinners with temporall judgements and sicknesses and deaths with sad accidents and evill Angels and messengers of wrath yet besides these lesser strokes he hath scorpions to chastise and loads of worse evils to oppresse the disobedient he punishes one sin with another vile acts with evill habits these with a hard heart and this with obstinacy and obstinacy with impenitence and impenitence with damnation Now because the worst of evills which are threatned to us are such which consign to hell by persevering in sin as God takes off our love and our affections our relations and bondage under sin just in the same degree he pardons us because the punishment of sin being taken off and pardoned there can remaine no guilt Guiltinesse is an unsignificant word if there be no obligation to punishment Since therefore spirituall evils and progressions in sin and the spirit of reprobation and impenitence and accursed habits and perseverance in iniquity are the worst of evils when these are taken off the sin hath lost its venome and appendant curse for sin passes on to eternall death onely by the line of impenitence and it can never carry us to hell if we repent timely and effectually in the same degree therefore that any man leaves his sin just in the same degree he is pardoned and he is sure of it For although curing the temporall evill was the pardon of sins
and reluctancies with parts and interrupted steps with waitings and expectations with watchfulnesse and stratagems with inspirations and collaterall assistances after all this grace and bounty and diligence that we should despite this grace and trample upon the blessings and scorn to receive life at so great an expence and love of God this is so great a basenesse and unworthynesse that by troubling the tenderest passions it turns into the most bitter hostilities by abusing Gods love it turns into jealousie and rage and indignation Goe and sin no more lest a worse thing happen to thee 2. Falling away after we have begun to live well is a great cause of fear because there is added to it the circumstance of inexcuseablenesse The man hath been taught the secrets of the Kingdome and therefore his understanding hath been instructed he hath tasted the pleasures of the Kingdome and therefore his will hath been sufficiently entertain'd He was entred into the state of life and renounced the ways of death his sin began to be pardoned and his lusts to be crucified he felt the pleasures of victory and the blessings of peace and therefore fell away not onely against his reason but also against his interest and to such a person the Questions of his soul have been so perfectly stated and his prejudices and inevitable abuses so cleerly taken off and he was so made to view the paths of life and death that if he chooses the way of sin again it must be not by weaknesse or the infelicity of his breeding or the weaknesse of his understanding but a direct preference or prelation a preferring sin before grace the spirit of lust before the purities of the soul the madnesse of drunkennesse before the fulnesse of the Spirit money before our friend and above our Religion and Heaven and God himself This man is not to be pityed upon pretence that he is betrayed or to be relieved because he is oppressed with potent enemies or to be pardoned because he could not help it for he once did help it he did overcome his temptation and choose God and delight in vertue and was an heir of heaven and was a conqueror over sin and delivered from death and he may do so still and Gods grace is upon him more plentifully and the lust does not tempt so strongly and if it did he hath more power to resist it and therefore if this man fals it is because he wilfully chooses death it is the portion that he loves and descends into with willing and unpityed steps Quà m vilis facta es nimis iterans vias tuas said God to Judah 3. He that returns from vertue to his old vices is forced to doe violence to his own reason to make his conscience quiet he does it so unreasonably so against all his fair inducements so against his reputation and the principles of his society so against his honour and his promises and his former discourses and his doctrines his censuring of men for the same crimes and the bitter invectives and reproofs which in the dayes of his health and reason he used against his erring Brethren that he is now constrained to answer his own arguments he is intangled in his own discourses he is shamed with his former conversation and it will be remembred against him how severely he reproved and how reasonably he chastised the lust which now he runs to in despite of himself and all his friends And because this is his condition he hath no way left him but either to be impudent which is hard for him at first it being too big a naturall change to passe suddenly from grace to immodest circumstances and hardnesses of face and heart or else therefore he must entertain new principles and apply his minde to beleeve a lye and then begins to argue There is no necessity of being so severe in my life greater sinners then I have been saved Gods mercies are greater then all the sins of man Christ dyed for us and if I may not be allowed to sin this sin what ease have I by his death or this sin is necessary and I cannot avoid it or it is questionable whether this sin is of so deep a die as is pretended or flesh and bloud is alwaies with me and I cannot shake it off or there are some Sects of Christians that do allow it or if they do not yet they declare it easily pardonable upon no hard terms and very reconcileable with the hopes of heaven or the Scriptures are not rightly understood in their pretended condemnations or else other men do as bad as this and there is not one in ten thousand but hath his private retirements from vertue or else when I am old this sin will leave me and God is very pityfull to mankinde But while the man like an intangled bird flutters in the net and wildly discomposes that which should support him and that which holds him the net and his own wings that is the Lawes of God and his own conscience and perswasion he is resolved to do the thing and seeks excuses afterwards and when he hath found out a fig-leav'd apron that he could put on or a cover for his eyes that he may not see his own deformity then he fortifies his error with irresolution and inconsideration and he beleeves it because he will and he will because it serves his turn then he is entred upon his state of fear and if he does not fear concerning himself yet his condition is fearfull and the man haih 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a reprobate minde that is a judgement corrupted by lust vice hath abused his reasoning and if God proceeds in the mans method and lets him alone in his course and gives him over to beleeve a lye so that he shall call good evill and evill good and come to be heartily perswaded that his excuses are reasonable and his pretences fair then the man is desperately undone through the ignorance that is in him as St. Paul describes his condition his heart is blinde he is past feeling his understanding is darkned then he may walk in the vanity of his minde and give himself over to lasciviousnesse and shall work all uncleannesse with greedinesse then he needs no greater misery this is the state of evill which his fear ought to have prevented but now it is past fear and is to be recovered with sorrow or else to be run through till death and hell are become his portion fiunt novissima illus pejora pejoribus his latter end is worse then his begining 4. Besides all this it might easily be added that he that fals from vertue to vice again addes the circumstance of ingratitude to his load of sins he sins against Gods mercy and puts out his own eyes he strives to unlearn what with labour he hath purchased and despises the trabell of his holy daies and throws away the reward of vertue for an interest which himself despised the
creation if he means to save us he must take our hearts of stone away and give us heart of flesh he must purge the old leaven and make us a new conspersion he must destroy the flesh and must breath into us Spiritum vita the celestiall breath of life without which we can neither live nor move nor have our being No man can come unto mee said Christ unlesse my Father draw him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Divine love must come upon us and snatch us from our imperfection enlighten our understanding move and stirre our affections open the gates of heaven turn our nature into grace entirely forgive our former prevarications take us by the hand and lead us all along and we onely contribute our assent unto it just as a childe when he is tempted to learne to goe and called upon and guided and upheld and constrain'd to put his feet to the ground lest he feel the danger by the smart of a fall just so is our nature and our state of flesh God teaches us and invites us he makes us willing and then makes us able he lends us helps and guides our hands and feet and all the way constrains us but yet so as a reasonable creature can be constrained that is made willing with arguments and new inducements by a state of circumstances and conditionall necessities and as this is a great glorification of the free grace of God and declares our manner of cooperation so it represents our nature to be weak as a childe ignorant as infancy helplesse as an orphan averse as an uninstructed person in so geat degrees that God is forced to bring us to a holy life by arts great and many as the power and principles of the Creation with this onely difference that the subject matter and object of this new creation is a free agent in the first it was purely obedientiall and passive and as the passion of the first was an effect of the same power that reduced it to act so the freedome of the second is given us in our nature by him that onely can reduce it to act for it is a freedome that cannot therefore choose because it does not understand nor taste nor perceive the things of God and therefore must by Gods grace be reduced to action as at first the whole matter of the world was by Gods Almightynesse for so God worketh in us to will and to doe of his owne good pleasure 2. But that I may instance in particulars our naturall weaknesse appears best in two things even in the two great instances of temptation pleasure and pain in both which the flesh is destroyed if it be not helped by a mighty grace as certainly as the Canes doe bow their heads before the breath of a mighty wind 1. In pleasure we see it by the publick miseries and follies of the world An old Greek said well 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There is amongst men nothing perfect because men carry themselves as persons that are lesse then money servants of gain and interest we are like the foolish Poet that Horace tells of Gestit enim nummum in loculos dimittere posthac Securus cadat an recto stet fabula talo Let him but have money for rehearsing his Comedy he cares not whether you like it or no and if a temptation of money comes strong and violent you may as well tye a wilde dog to quietnesse with the guts of a tender Kid as suppose that most men can doe vertuously when they may sin at a great price Men avoyd poverty not onely because it hath some inconveniences for they are few and little but because it is the nurse of vertue they run from it as Children from strict Parents and Tutors from those that would confine them to reason and sober counsels that would make them labour that they may become pale and lean that they may become wise but because Riches is attended by pride and lust tyranny and oppression and hath in its hand all that it hath in its heart and Sin waits upon Wealth ready dress'd and fit for action therefore in some temptations they confesse how little their souls are they cannot stand that assault but because this passion is the daughter of Voluptuousnesse and very often is but a servant sin ministring to sensuall pleasures the great weaknesse of the flesh is more seen in the matter of carnall crimes Lust and Drunkennesse Nemo enim se adsuefacit ad vitandum ex animo evellendum ea quae molesta ei non sunt Men are so in love with pleasure that they cannot think of mortifying or crucifying their lust we doe violence to what we hate not to what we love But the weaknesse of the flesh and the empire of lust is visible in nothing so much as in the captivity and folly of wise men For you shall see some men fit to governe a Province sober in their counsells wise in the conduct of their affaires men of discourse and reason fit to sit with Princes or to treat concerning peace and warre the fate of Empires and the changes of the world yet these men shall fall at the beauty of a woman as a man dies at the blow of an Angell or gives up his breath at the sentence and decree of God Was not Solomon glorious in all things but when he bowed to Pharaoh's daughter and then to Devils and is it not published by the sentence and observation of all the world that the bravest men have been softned into effeminacy by the lisping charms and childish noyses of Women and imperfect persons A faire slave bowed the neck of stout Polydamas which was stiffe and inflexible to the contentions of an enemy and suppose a man set like the brave boy of the King of Nicomedia in the midst of temptation by a witty beauty tyed upon a bed with silk and pretty violences courted with musick and perfumes with promises and easie postures invited by opportunity and importunity by rewards and impunity by privacy and a guard what would his nature doe in this throng of evils and vile circumstances The grace of God secur'd the young Gentleman and the Spirit rode in triumph but what can flesh do in such a day of danger Is it not necessary that we take in auxiliaries from Reason and Religion from heaven and earth from observation and experience from hope and fear and cease to be what we are left we become what we ought not It is certain that in the cases of temptations to voluptuousnesse a man is naturally as the Prophet said of Ephraim like a Pigeon that hath no heart no courage no conduct no resolution no discourse but falls as the water of Nilus when it comes to its cataracts it falls infinitely and without restraint And if we consider how many drunken meetings the Sunne sees every day how many Markets and Faires and Clubs that is so many solemnities of drunkennesse are at this instant
hath the same constitution that a man hath without the act of both it is as imperfect as a dead man the soul cannot produce the body of some actions any more then the body can put life into it and therefore an ineffective pity and a lazie counsell an empty blessing and gay words are but deceitfull charity Quod peto da Caï non peto consiliam He that gave his friend counsell to study the Law when he desired to borrow 20 l. was not so friendly in his counsell as he was uselesse in his charity spirituall acts can cure a spirituall malady but if my body needs relief because you cannot feed me with Diagrams or cloath me with Euclids elements you must minister a reall supply by a corporall charity to my corporall necessity This proposition is not only usefull in the doctrine of charity and the vertue of religion but in the professions of faith and requires that it be publick open and ingenuous In matters of necessary duty it is not sufficient to have it to our selves but we must also have it to God and all the world and as in the heart we beleeve so by the mouth we confesse unto salvation he is an ill man that is only a Christian in his heart and is not so in his professions and publications and as your heart must not be wanting in any good profession and pretences so neither must publick profession be wanting in every good and necessary perswasion The faith and the cause of God must be owned publiquely for if it be the cause of God it will never bring us to shame I do not say what ever we think we must tell it to all the world much lesse at all times and in all circumstances but we must never deny that which we beleeve to be the cause of God in such circumstances in which we can and ought to glorifie him But this extends also to other instances He that swears a false oath with his lips and unswears it with his heart hath deceived one more then he thinks for himself is the most abused person and when my action is contrary to men they will reprove me but when it is against my own perswasion I cannot but reprove my self and am witnesse and accuser and party and guilty and then God is the Judge and his anger will be a fierce executioner because we do the Lords work deceitfully 3. They are deceitfull in the Lords work that reserve one faculty for sin or one sin for themselves or one action to please their appetite and many for Religion Rabbt Kimchi taught his Scholars Cogitationem pravam Deus non habet vice facti nisi concepta fuerit in Dei sidem Religionem that God is never angry with an evill thought unlesse it be a thought of Apostasie from the Jewes religion and therefore provided that men be severe and close in their sect and party they might roll in lustfull thoughts and the torches they light up in the Temple might smoke with anger at one end and lust at the other so they did not flame out in egressions of violence and injustice in adulteries and fouler complications nay they would give leave to some degrees of evill actions for R. Moses and Selomoh taught that if the most part of a mans actions were holy and just though in one he sinned often yet the greater ingredient should prevail and the number of good works should outweigh the lesser account of evill things and this Pharisaicall righteousnesse is too frequent even amongst Christians For who almost is there that does not count fairly concerning himself if he reckons many vertues upon the stock of his Religion and but one vice upon the stock of his infirmity half a dozen to God and one for his company or his friend his education or his appetite and if he hath parted from his folly yet he will remember the fleshpots and please himself with a phantastick sin and call it home through the gates of his memory and place it at the door of fancy that there he may behold it and consider concerning what he hath parted withall out of the fears and terrors of religion and a necessary unavoidable conscience Do not many men go from sin to sin even in their repentance they go backward from sin to sin and change their crime as a man changes his uneasie load and shakes it off from one shoulder to support it with the other How many severe persons virgins and widows are so pleased with their chastity and their abstinence even from lawfull mixtures that by this means they fall into a worse pride insomuch that I remember St. Austin said Audco dicere superbis continentibus expedit cadere they that are chaste and proud it is sometimes a remedy for them to fall into sin and by the shame of lust to cure the devill of pride and by the sin of the body to cure the worser evils of the spirit and therefore he addes that he did beleeve God in a severe mercy did permit the barbarous nations breaking in upon the Roman Empire to violate many virgins professed in Cloisters and religious Families to be as a mortification of their pride lest the accidentall advantages of a continent life should bring them into the certain miseries of a spirituall death by taking away their humility which was more necessary then their virgin state It is not a cure that men may use but God permits it sometimes with greater safety through his wise conduct and over-ruling providence St. Peter was safer by his fall as it fell out in the event of things then by his former confidence Man must never cure a sin by a sin but he that brings good out of our evill he can when he please But I speak it to represent how deceitfully many times we do the work of the Lord. We reprove a sinning Brother but do it with a pompous spirit we separate from scandall and do it with glory and a gaudy heart we are charitable to the poor but will not forgive our unkinde enemies or we powre relief into their bags but we please our selves and drink drunk and hope to commute with God giving the fruit of our labours or effluxes of money for the sin of our souls And upon this account it is that two of the noblest graces of a Christian are to very many persons made a savour of death though they were intended for the beginning and the promotion of an eternal life and those are faith and charity some men think if they have faith it is enough to answer all the accusations of sin which our consciences or the Devils make against us If I be a wanton person yet my faith shall hide it and faith shall cover the follies of drunkennesse and I may all my life relye upon faith at last to quit my scores For he that is most carefull is not innocent but must be saved by faith and he that is least carefull may
teaches us to pray In a festivall fortune our prudence and our needs inforce us equally For though we feel not a present smart yet we are certain then is our biggest danger and if we observe how the world treats her darlings men of riches and honour of prosperity and great successe we cannot but confesse them to be the most miserable of all men as being in the greatest danger of losing their biggest interest For they are bigger then the iron hand of Law and they cannot be restrain'd with fear the hand grasps a power of doing all that which their evill heart can desire and they cannot be restrained with disability to sin they are flatter'd by all mean and base and indiligent persons which are the greatest part of mankinde but few men dare reprove a potent sinner he shall every day be flattered and seldome counselled and his great reflexions and opinions of his condition makes him impatient of reproof and so he cannot be restrain'd with modesty and therefore as the needs of the poor man his rent day and the cryes of his children and the oppression he groans under and his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his uneasie ill sleeping care will make him run to his prayers that in heaven a new decree may be passed every day for the provisions of his daily bread so the greater needs of the rich their temptations and their dangers the flattery and the vanity the power and the pride their businesse and evill estate of the whole world upon them cals upon them to be zealous in this instance that they pray often that they pray without ceasing For there is great reason they should do so and great security and advantage if they do For he that prayes well and prayes often must needs be a good and a blessed man and truly he that does not deserves no pity for his misery For when all the troubles and dangers of his condition may turn into his good if he will but desire they should when upon such easie terms he may be happy for there is no more trouble in it then this Aske and ye shall receive that 's all that is required no more turnings and variety in their road when I say at so cheap a rate a poor man may be provided for and a rich man may escape damnation they that refuse to apply themselves to this remedy quickly earnestly zealously and constantly deserves the smart of his poverty and the care of it and the scorne if he be poor and if he be rich it is fit he should because he desires it dye by the evils of his proper danger * It was observed by Cassian orationibus maximè infidiantur Daemones the Devill is more busie to disturb our prayers then to hinder any thing else For else it cannot be imagined why we should be brought to pray so seldome and to be so listlesse to them and so trifling to them No The Devill knowes upon what hard terms he stands with the praying man he also knows that it is a mighty cmanation of Gods infinite goodnesse and a strange desire of saving mankinde that he hath to so easie a duty promised such mighty blessings For God knowing that upon hard terms we would not accept of heaven it self and yet hell was so intolerable a state that God who loved us would affixe heaven to a state of prayer and devotion this because the Devill knowes to be one of the greatest arts of the Divine mercy he labours infinitely to supplant and if he can but make men unwilling to pray or to pray coldly or to pray seldome he secures his interest and destroys the mans and it is infinitely strange that he can and doth prevail so much in this so unreasonable temptation Opposuisti nubem ne transirot oratio the mourning Prophet complained there was a cloud passed between heaven and the prayer of Judah a little thing God knowes it was a wall which might have been blown down with a few hearty sighs and a few penitentiall tears or if the prayers had ascended in a full and numerous body themselves would have broken through that little partition but so the Devill prevails often opponit nubem he claps a cloud between some little objection a stranger is come or my head akes or the Church is too cold or I have letters to write or I am not disposed or it is not yet time or the time is past these and such as these are the clouds the Devill claps between heaven and us but these are such impotent objections that they were as soon confuted as pretended by all men that are not fools or professed enemies of Religion but that they are clouds which sometimes look like Lions and Bears Castles and wals of fire armies and horses and indeed are any thing that a man will fancy and the smallest article of objection managed and conducted by the Devils arts and meeting with a wretchlesse carelesse indevout spirit is a Lion in the way and a deep river it is impassable and it is impregnable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Sophister said in the Greek Comedy Clouds become any thing as they are represented Wolves to Simon Harts to Cleonymus For the Devill fits us with clouds according as we can be abused and if we love affairs of the world he can contrive its circumstances so that they shall crosse our prayers and so it is in every instance and the best way to cure this evill is prayer pray often and pray zealously and the sun of righteousnesse will scatter these clouds and warm our hearts with his holy fires But it is in this as in all acquired habits the habit makes the actions easie and pleasant but this habit cannot be gotten without frequent actions habits are the daughters of action but then they nurse their mother and produce daughters after her image but far more beautifull and prosperous For in frequent prayer there is so much rest and pleasure that as soon as ever it is perceived the contrary temptation appears unreasonable none are so unwilling to pray as they that pray seldome for they that do pray often and with zeal and passion and desire feel no trouble so great as when they are forced to omit their holy offices and hours of prayer It concerns the Devils interest to keep us from all the experience of the rewards of a frequent and holy prayer and so long as you will not try and taste how good and gracious the Lord is to the praying man so long you cannot see the evill of your coldnesse and lukewarm state but if you would but try though it be but for curiosity sake and informe your selves in the vanity of things and the truth of pretences and the certainty of Theologicall propositions you should finde your selves taken in a golden snare which will tye you to nothing but felicity and safety and holinesse and pleasures But then the caution which I intended to insert is this that
passes the time with incogitancy and hates the imployment and suffers the torments of prayers which he loves not and all this although for so doing it is certain he may perish what fruit what deliciousnesse can he fancy in being weary of his prayers There is no pretence or colour for these things Can any man imagine a greater evill to the body and soul of a man then madnesse and furious eyes and a distracted look palenesse with passion and trembling hands and knees and furiousnesse and folly in the heart and head and yet this is the pleasure of anger and for this pleasure men choose damnation But it is a great truth that there are but very few sins that pretend to pleasure although a man be weak and soon deceived and the Devill is crafty and sin is false and impudent and pretences are too many yet most kinds of sins are reall and prime troubles to the very body without all manner of deliciousnesse even to the sensuall naturall and carnall part and a man must put on something of a Devill before he can choose such sins and he must love mischief because it is a sin for in most instances there is no other reason in the world Nothing pretends to pleasure but the lusts of the lower belly ambition and revenge and although the catalogue of sins is numerous as the production of fishes yet these three only can be apt to cousen us with a fair outside and yet upon the survey of what fruits they bring and what taste they have in the manducation besides the filthy relish they leave behind we shall see how miserably they are abused and fool'd that expend any thing upon such purchases 2. For a man cannot take pleasure in lusts of the flesh in gluttony or drunkennesse unlesse he be helped forward with inconsideration and folly For we see it evidently that grave and wise persons men of experience and consideration are extremely lesse affected with lust and loves the hare-brain'd boy the young gentleman that thinks nothing in the world greater then to be free from a Tutor he indeed courts his folly and enters into the possession of lust without abatement consideration dwels not there but when a sober man meets with a temptation and is helped by his naturall temper or invited by his course of life if he can consider he hath so many objections and fears so many difficulties and impediments such sharp reasonings and sharper jealousies concerning its event that if he does at all enter into folly it pleases him so little that he is forced to do it in despite of himself and the pleasure is so allayed that he knowes not whether it be wine or vinegar his very apprehension and instruments of relish are fill'd with fear and contradicting principles and the deliciousnesse does but affricare cutem it went but to the skin but the allay went further it kept a guard within and suffered the pleasure to passe no further A man must resolve to be a fool a rash inconsiderate person or he will feel but little satisfaction in the enjoyment of his sin indeed he that stops his nose may drink down such corrupted waters and he understood it well who chose rather to be a fool Dum mala delectent mea me vel denique fallant Quà m sapere ringi so that his sins might delight him or deceive him then to be wise and without pleasure in the enjoyment So that in effect a man must lose his discerning faculties before he discerns the little phantastick joyes of his concupiscence which demonstrates how vain how empty of pleasure that is that is beholding to folly and illusion to a jugling and a plain cousenage before it can be fancyed to be pleasant For it is a strange beauty that he that hath the best eyes cannot perceive and none but the blinde or blear-ey'd people can see and such is the pleasure of lust which by every degree of wisdome that a man hath is lessened and undervalued 3. For the pleasures of intemperance they are nothing but the reliques and images of pleasure after that nature hath been feasted For so long as she needs that is so long as temperance waits so long pleasure also stands there But as temperance begins to go away having done the ministeries of Nature every morsell and every new goblet is still lesse delicious and cannot be endured but as men force nature by violence to stay longer then she would How have some men rejoyced when they have escaped a cup and when they cannot escape they pour it in and receive it with as much pleasure as the old women have in the Lapland dances they dance the round but there is a horror and a harshnesse in the Musick and they call it pleasure because men bid them do so but there is a Devill in the company and such as is his pleasure such is theirs he rejoyces in he thriving sin and the swelling fortune of his darling drunkennesse but his joyes are the joyes of him that knowes and alwayes remembers that he shall infallibly have the biggest damnation and then let it be considered how forc'd a joy that is that is at the end of an intemperate feast Non benè mendaci risus componitur ore Nec benè sollicitis ebria verba sonant Certain it is intemperance takes but natures leavings when the belly is full and nature cals to take away the pleasure that comes in afterwards is next to loathing it is like the relish and taste of meats at the end of the third course or the sweetnesse of honey to him that hath eaten til he can endure to take no more and in this there is no other difference of these men from them that die upon another cause then was observed among the Phalangia of old 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some of these serpents make men die laughing and some to die weeping so does the intemperate and so does his brother that languishes of a consumption this man dies weeping and the other dies laughing but they both die infallibly and all his pleasure is nothing but the sting of a serpent immixte liventia mella veneno it wounds the heart and he dies with a Tarantula dancing and singing till he bowes his neck and kisses his bosome with the fatall noddings and declensions of death 4. In these pretenders to pleasure which you see are but few and they not very prosperous in their pretences there is mingled so much trouble to bring them to act and injoyment that the appetite is above half tired before it comes It is necessary a man should be hugely patient that is ambitious Ambulare per Britannos Scythicas pati pruinas no man buy 's death and damnation at so dear a rate as he that fights for it and endures cold and hunger Patiens liminis atque solis The heat of the sun and the cold of the threshold the dangers of war and the snares of a crafty enemy he lies
be not of an indifferent nature it becomes sinfull by giving countenance to a vice or making vertue to become ridiculous 5. If it be not watcht that it complies with all that heare it becomes offensive and injurious 6. If it be not intended to fair and lawfull purposes it is sowre in the using 7. If it be frequent it combines and clusters into a formall sinne 8. If it mingles with any sin it puts on the nature of that new unworthinesse beside the proper uglynesse of the thing it selfe and after all these when can it be lawfull or apt for Christian entertainment The Ecclesiasticall History reports that many jests passed between St. Anthony the Father of the Hermits and his Scholar St. Paul and St. Hilarion is reported to have been very pleasant and of a facete sweet and more lively conversation and indeed plaisance and joy and a lively spirit and a pleasant conversation and the innocent caresses of a charitable humanity is not forbidden plenum tamen suavitatis gratiae sermonem non esse indecorum St. Ambrose affirmed and here in my text our conversation is commanded to be such 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that it may minister grace that is favour complacence cheerfulnesse and be acceptable and pleasant to the hearer and so must be our conversation it must be as far from sullennesse as it ought to be from lightnesse and a cheerfull spirit is the best convoy for Religion and though sadnesse does in some cases become a Christian as being an Index of a pious minde of compassion and a wise proper resentment of things yet it serves but one end being useful in the onely instance of repentance and hath done its greatest works not when it weeps and sighs but when it hates and grows carefull against sin But cheerfulnesse and a festivall spirit fills the soule full of harmony it composes musick for Churches and hearts it makes and publishes glorifications of God it produces thankfulnesse and serves the ends of charity and when the oyle of gladnesse runs over it makes bright and tall emissions of light and holy fires reaching up to a cloud and making joy round about And therefore since it is so innocent and may be so pious and full of holy advantage whatsoever can innocently minister to this holy joy does set forward the work of Religion and Charity And indeed charity it selfe which is the verticall top of all Religion is nothing else but an union of joyes concentred in the heart and reflected from all the angles of our life and entercourse It is a rejoycing in God a gladnesse in our neighbors good a pleasure in doing good a rejoycing with him and without love we cannot have any joy at all It is this that makes children to be a pleasure and friendship to be so noble and divine a thing and upon this account it is certaine that all that which can innocently make a man cheerfull does also make him charitable for grief and age and sicknesse and wearinesse these are peevish and troublesome but mirth and cheerfulnesse is content and civil and compliant and communicative and loves to doe good and swels up to felicity onely upon the wings of charity In this account here is pleasure enough for a Christian in present and if a facete discourse and an amicable friendly mirth can refresh the spirit and take it off from the vile temptations of peevish despairing uncompâ—ying melancholy it must needs be innocent and commendable And we may as well be refreshed by a clean and a brisk discourse as by the aire of Campanian wines and our faces and our heads may as well be anointed and look pleasant with wit and friendy entercourse as with the fat of the Balsam tree and such a conversation no wise man ever did or ought to reprove But when the jest hath teeth and nails biting or scratching our Brother* when it is loose and wanton* when it is unseasonable* and much or many* when it serves ill purposes* or spends better time* then it is the drunkennesse of the soul and makes the spirit fly away seeking for a Temple where the mirth and the musick is solemne and religious But above all the abuses which ever dishonoured the tongues of men nothing more deserves the whip of an exterminating Angel or the stings of scorpions then profane jesting which is a bringing of the Spirit of God to partake of the follies of a man as if it were not enough for a man to be a foole but the wisdome of God must be brought into those horrible scenes He that makes a jest of the words of Scripture or of holy things playes with thunder and kisses the mouth of a Canon just as it belches fire and death he stakes heaven at spurnpoint and trips crosse and pile whether ever he shall see the face of God or no he laughs at damnation while he had rather lose God then lose his jest may which is the horror of all he makes a jest of God himselfe and the Spirit of the Father and the Son to become ridiculous Some men use to read Scripture on their knees and many with their heads uncovered and all good men with fear and trembling with reverence and grave attention Search the Scriptures for therein you hope to have life eternall and All Scripture is written by inspiration of God and is fit for instruction for reproofe for exhortation for doctrine not for jesting but he that makes that use of it had better part with his eyes in jest and give his heart to make a tennisball and that I may speak the worst thing in the world of it it is as like the materiall part of the sin against the holy Ghost as jeering of a man is to abusing him and no man can use it but he that wants wit and manners as well as he wants Religion 3. The third instance of the vain trifling conversation and immoderate talking is revealing secrets which is a dismantling and renting off the robe from the privacies of humane entercourse and it is worse then denying to restore that which was intrusted to our charge for this not onely injures his neighbors right but throws it away and exposes it to his enemy it is a denying to give a man his own arms and delivering them to another by whom he shall suffer mischief He that intrusts a secret to his friend goes thither as to sanctuary and to violate the rites of that is sacriledge and profanation of friendship which is the sister of Religion and the mother of secular blessing a thing so sacred that it changes a Kingdome into a Church and makes Interest to be Piety and Justice to become Religion But this mischief growes according to the subject matter and its effect and the tongue of a babbler may crush a mans bones or break his fortune upon her owne wheel and whatever the effect be yet of it self it is the betraying of a trust and by reproach oftentimes
some sense or other In the wisdom of the Ancient it was observed that there are four great cords which tye the heart of Man to inconvenience and a prison making it a servant of vanity and an heir of corruption 1. Pleasure and 2. Pain 3. Fear and 4. Desire 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 These are they that exercise all the wisdom and resolutions of man and all the powers that God hath given him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Agathon These are those evil Spirits that possess the heart of man mingle with al his actions so that either men are tempted to 1. lust by pleasure or 2. to baser arts by covetousness or 3. to impatience by sorrow or 4. to dishonourable actions by fear and this is the state of man by nature and under the law and for ever till the Spirit of God came and by four special operations cur'd these four inconveniences and restrained or sweetned these unwholesome waters 1. God gave us his Spirit that we might be insensible of worldly pleasures having our souls wholly filâ—d with spiritual and heavenly relishes For when Gods Spirit hath entred into us and possessed us as his Temple or as his dwelling instantly we begin to taste Manna and to loath the diet of Egypt we begin to consider concerning heaven and to prefer eternity before moments and to love the pleasures of the soul above the sottish and beastly pleasures of the body Then we can consider that the pleasures of a drunken meeting cannot make recompence for the pains of a surfet and that nights intemperance much lesse for the torments of eternity Then we are quick to discern that the itch and scab of lustful appetites is not worth the charges of a Surgeon much lesse can it pay for the disgrace the danger the sicknesse the death and the hell of lustfull persons Then we wonder that any man should venture his head to get a crown unjustly or that for the hazard of a victory he should throw away all his hopes of heaven certainly A man that hath tasted of Gods Spirit can instantly discern the madnesse that is in rage the folly and the disease that is in envy the anguish and tediousnesse that is in lust the dishonor that is in breaking our faith and telling a lie and understands things truly as they are that is that charity is the greatest noblenesse in the world that religion hath in it the greatest pleasures that temperance is the best security of health that humility is the surest way to honour and all these relishes are nothing but antepasts of heaven where the quintessence of all these pleasures shall be swallowed for ever where the chast shall follow the Lamb and the virgins sing there where the Mother of God shall reign and the zealous converters of souls and labourers in Gods vineyard shall worship eternally where S. Peter and S. Paul do wear their crown of righteousnesse and the patient persons shall be rewarded with Job and the meek persons with Christ and Moses and all with God the very expectation of which proceeding from a hope begotten in us by the spirit of manifestation and bred up and strengthened by the spirit of obsignation is so delicious an entertainment of all our reasonable appetites that a spirituall man can no more be removed or intic d from the love of God and of religion then the Moon from her Orb or a Mother from loving the son of her joyes and of her sorrows This was observed by S. Peter As new born babes desire the sincere milk of the word that ye may grow thereby if so be that ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious When once we have tasted the grace of God the sweetnesses of his Spirit then no food but the food of Angels no cup but the cup of Salvation the Divining cup in which we drink Salvation to our God and call upon the Name of the Lord with ravishment and thanksgiving and there is no greater externall testimony that we are in the spirit and that the spirit dwels in us then if we finde joy and delight and spirituall pleasures in the greatest mysteries of our religion if we communicate often and that with appetite and a forward choice and an unwearied devotion and a heart truly fixed upon God and upon the offices of a holy worship He that loaths good meat is sick at heart or neer it and he that despises or hath not a holy appetite to the food of Angels the wine of elect souls is fit to succeed the Prodigal at his banquet of sinne and husks and to be partaker of the table of Devils but all they who have Gods Spirit love to feast at the supper of the Lamb and have no appetites but what are of the spirit or servants to the spirit I have read of a spiritual person who saw heaven but in a dream but such as made great impression upon him and was represented with vigorous and pertinacious phantasines not easily disbanding and when he awaked he knew not his cell he remembred not him that slept in the same dorter nor could tell how night and day were distinguished nor could discern oyl from wine but cal d out for his vision again Redde mihi campos meos floridos columnam auream comitem Hieronymum assistentes Angelos Give me my fields again my most delicious fields my pillar of a glorious light my companion S. Jereme my assistant Angels and this lasted till he was told of his duty and matter of obedience and the fear of a sin had disincharmed him and caused him to take care lest he lose the substance out of greedinesse to possesse the shadow And if it were given to any of us to see Paradise or the third heaven as it was to S. Paul could it be that ever we should love any thing but Christ or follow any Guide but the Spirit or desire any thing but Heaven or understand any thing to be pleasant but what shall lead thither Now what a vision can do that the Spirit doth certainly to them that entertain him They that have him really and not in pretence onely are certainly great despisers of the things of the world The Spirit doth not create or enlarge our appetites of things below Spirituall men are not designâ—d to reign upon earth but to reign over their lusts and sottish appetites The Spirit doth not enflame our thirst of wealth but extinguishes it and makes us to esteem all things as lesse and as dung so that we may gain Christ No gain then is pleasant but godlinesse no ambition but longings after heaven no revenge but against our selves for sinning nothing but God and Christ Deus meus omnia and date nobis animas catera vobis tollite as the king of Sodom said to Abraham Secure but the souls to us and take our goods Indeed this is a good signe that
direct action And therefore we may also as well be sorrowfull the third time for want of the just measure or hearty meaning of the second sorrow as be sorrowfull the second time for want of true sorrow at the first and so on to infinite And we shall never be secure in this Artifice if we be not certain of our naturall and hearty passion in our direct and first apprehensions Thus many persons think themselves in a good estate and make no question of their salvation being confident onely because they are confident and they are so because they are bidden to be so and yet they are not confident at all but extreamly timerous and fearfull How many persons are there in the world that say they are sure of their salvation and yet they dare not die And if any man pretends that he is now sure he shall be saved and that he cannot fall away from grace there is no better way to confute him then by advising him to send for the Surgeon and bleed to death For what should hinder him not the sin for it cannot take him from Gods favour not the change of his condition for he sayes he is sure to go to a Better why does he not then say 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 like the Romane gallants when they decreed to die The reason is plainly this They say they are confident and yet are extreamly timerous they professe to beleeve that Doctrine and yet dare not trust it nay they think they beleeve but they do not so false is a mans heart so deceived in its own Acts so great a stranger to its own sentence and opinions 3. The heart is deceitfull in its own resolutions and purposes for many times men make their resolutions onely in their understanding not in their wills they resolve it sitting to be done not decree that they will do it And instead of beginning to be reconciled to God by the renewed and hearty purposes of holy living they are advanced so far onely as to be convinced and apt to be condemned by their own sentence But suppose our resolutions advanced further and that our Will and Choices also are determined see how our hearts deceive us 1. We resolve against those sins that please us not or where temptation is not present and think by an over-acted zeal against some sins to get an indulgence for some others There are some persons who will be Drunk The Company or the discourse or the pleasure of madnesse or an easie nature and a thirsty soul something is amisse that cannot be helped But they will make amends and the next day pray twice as much Or it may be they must satisfie a beastly lust but they will not be drunk for all the world and hope by their Temperance to Commute for their want of Chastity But they attend not the eraft of their secret enemy their Heart for it is not love of the vertue if it were they would love Vertue in all its Instances for Chastity is as much a vertue as Temperance and God hates Lust as much as he hates Drunkennesse But this sin is against my health or it may be it is against my lust it makes me impotent and yet impatient full of desire and empty of strength Or else I do an act of Prayer lest my conscience become unquiet while it is not satisfied or cozened with some intervals of Religion I shall think my self a damned wretch if I do nothing for my soul but if I do I shall call the one sin that remains nothing but my Infirmity and therefore it is my excuse and my Prayer is not my Religion but my Peace and my Pretence and my Fallacy 2. We resolve against our sin that is we will not act it in those circumstances as formerly I will not be drunk in the streets but I may sleep till I be recovered and then come forth sober or if I be overtaken it shall be in Civill and Gentile company Or it may be not so much I will leave my intemperance and my Lust too but I will remember it with pleasure I will revolve the past action in my minde and entertain my fancy with a moros delectation in it and by a fiction of imagination will represent it present and so be satisfied with a little effeminacy or phantastick pleasure Beloved suffer not your hearts so to cozen you as if any man can be faithfull in much that is faithlesse in a little He certainly is very much in love with sin and parts with it very unwillingly that keeps its Picture and wears its Favour and delights in the fancy of it even with the same desire as a most passionate widow parts with her dearest husband even when she can no longer enjoy him But certainly her staring all day upon his picture and weeping over his Robe and wringing her hands over his children are no great signes that she hated him And just so do most men hate and accordingly part with their sins 3. We resolve against it when the opportunity is slipped and lay it aside as long as the temptation please even till it come again and no longer How many men are there in the world that against every Communion renew their vowes of holy living Men that for twenty for thirty yeers together have been perpetually resolving against what they daily Act and sure enough they did beleeve themselves And yet if a man had daily promised us a curtesie and failed us but ten times when it was in his power to have done it we should think we had reason never to beleeve him more And can we then reasonably beleeve the resolutions of our hearts which they have falsified so many hundred times We resolve against a religious Time because then it is the Custome of men and the Guise of the Religion Or we resolve when we are in a great danger and then we promise any thing possible or impossible likely or unlikely all is one to us we onely care to remove the present pressure and when that is over and our fear is gone and no love remaining our condition being returned to our first securities our resolutions also revert to their first indifferencies Or else we cannot look a temptation in the face and we resolve against it hoping never to be troubled with its arguments and importunity Epictetus tells us of a Gentleman returning from banishment in his journey towards home called at his house told a sad story of an Imprudent life the greatest part of which being now spent he was resolved for the future to live Philosophically and entertain no businesse to be candidate for no employment not to go to the Court not to salute Caesar with ambitious attendancies but to study and worship the gods and die willingly when nature or necessity called him It may be this man beleeved himself but Epictetus did not And he had reason For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Letters from Caesar met him at the doors
the longest and latest before it be obtained A man does not begin to know him self till he be old and then he is well stricken in death A mans heart at first being like a plain table unspotted indeed but then there is nothing legible in it As soon as ever we ripen towards the imperfect uses of our reason we write upon this table such crooked characters such imperfect configurations so many fooleries and stain it with so many blots and vitious inspersions that there is nothing worth the reading in our hearts for a great while and when education and ripenesse reason and experience Christian philosophy and the grace of God hath made fair impressions and written the law in our hearts with the finger of Gods holy spirit we blot out this handwriting of Gods ordinances or mingle it with false principles and interlinings of our our own we disorder the method of God or deface the truth of God either we make the rule uneven we bribe or abuse our guide that we may wonder with an excuse Or if nothing else will do it we turn head and professe to go against the laws of God Our Hearts are blinde or our hearts are hardned for these are two great arguments of the wickednesse of our hearts they do not see or they will not see the wayes of God or if they do they make use of their seeing that they may avoid them 1. Our hearts are blinde wilfully blind I need not instance in the ignorance and involuntary nescience of men though if we speak of the necessary parts of religion no man is ignorant of them without his own fault such ignorance is alwayes a direct sin or the direct punishment of a sin A sin is either in its bosom or in its retinue But the ignorance that I now intend is a voluntary chosen delightful ignorance taken in upon designe even for no other end but that we may perish quietly and infallibly God hath opened all the windows of Heaven and sent the Sun of Righteousnesse with glorious apparition and hath discoverd the abysses of his own wisdom made the second person in the Trinity to be the doctor and preacher of his sentences and secrets and the third person to be his Amanuensis or scribe and our hearts to be the Book in which the doctrine is written and miracles and prophecies to be its arguments and all the world to be the verification of it and those leaves contain within their folds all that excellent morality which right reason pickt up after the shipwrack of nature and all those wise sayings which singly made so many men famous for preaching some one of them all them Christ gathered and added some more out of the immediate book of Revelation So that now the wisdom of God hath made every mans heart to be the true Veronica in which he hath imprinted his own lineaments so perfectly that we may dresse our selves like God and have the aire and features of Christ our Elder-Brother that we may be pure as God is perfect as our Father meek and humble as the Son and may have the holy Ghost within us in gifts and Graces in wisdom and holinesse This hath God done for us and see what we do for Him We stand in our own light and quench Gods we love darknesse more then light and entertain our selves accordingly For how many of us are there that understand nothing of the wayes of God that know no more of the laws of Jesus Christ then is remaining upon them since they learned the childrens Catechisme But amongst a thousand how many can explicate and unfold for his own practise the ten Commandments And how many sorts of sins are there forbidden which therefore passe into action and never passe under the scrutinies of repentance because they know not that they are sinnes Are there not very many who know not the particular duties of meeknesse and never consider concerning Longsuffering and if you talk to them of growth in Grace or the spirit of obsignation or the melancholy lectures of the Crosse and imitation of and conformitie to Christs sufferings or adherences to God or rejoycing in him or not quenching the spirit you are too deep learned for them And yet these are duties set down plainly for our practise necessary to be acted in order to our Salvation We brag of light and reformation and fulnesse of the spirit in the mean time we understand not many parts of our dutie We enquire into something that may make us talk or be talked of or that we may trouble a Church or disturb the peace of mindes but in things that concern Holy living and that wisdom of God whereby we are wise unto Salvation never was any age of Christendom more ignorant then we For if we did not wink hard we must needs see that obedience to supreme Powers Denying of our selves Humility Peacefulnesse and Charity are written in such Capital text letters that it is impossible to be ignorant of them And if the heart of man had not rare arts to abuse the understanding it were not to be imagined that any man should bring the 13. Chapter to the Romans to prove the lawfulnesse of taking up Armes against our rulers but so we may abuse our selves at noon and go to bed if we please to call it midnight And there have been a sort of wittie men that maintained that snow was hot I wonder not at the probleme but that a man should beleeve his paradox and should let eternity go away with the fallacie and rather lose heaven then leave his foolish argument is a signe that wilfulnesse and the deceiving heart is the Sophister and the great ingredient into our Deception But that I may be more particular the heart of man uses devices that it may be ignorant 1. We are impatient of honest and severe reproofe and order the circumstances of our persons and addresses that we shall never come to the true knowledge of our condition Who will endure to heare his curate tell him that he is Covetous or that he is proud 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is Calumny and Reviling if he speak it to his head and relates to his person and yet if he speak onely in general every man neglects what is not recommended to his particular But yet if our Physitian tell us you look well Sir but a Feaver lurks in your spirits 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 drink Julips and abstain from flesh no man thinks it shame or calumny to be told so but when we are told that our liver is inflamed with lust or anger that our heart is vexed with envie that our eyes rowl with wantonnesse And though we think all is well yet we are sick sick unto death neer to a sad and fatal sentence we shall think that man that tells us so is impudent or uncharitable and yet he hath done him no more injury then a deformed man receives daily from his looking-glasse which
if he shall dash against the wall because it showes him his face just as it is his face is not so ugly as his manners And yet our heart is so impatient of seeing its own staines that like the Elephant it tramples in the pure streames and first troubles them then stoops and drinks when he can least see his huge deformitie 2. In order to this we heap up teachers of our own and they guide us not whither but which way they please for we are curious to go our own way and carelesse of our Hospitall or Inne at night A faire way and a merry company and a pleasant easie guide will entice us into the Enemies quarters and such guides we cannot want Improbitati occasio nunquam defuit If we have a minde to be wicked we shall want no prompters and false teachers at first creeping in unawares have now so filled the pavement of the Church that you can scarce set your foot on the ground but you tread upon a snake Cicero l. 7. ad Atticum undertakes to bargain with them that kept the Sybils books that for a sum of money they shall expound to him what he please and to be sure ut quidvis potius quam Regem proferrent They shall declare against the government of kings say that the Gods will endure any thing rather then Monarchy in their beloved republick And the same mischief God complains of to be among the Jews the Prophets prophecie lies and my people love to have it so and what will the end of these things be even the same that Cicero complain'd of Ad opinionem imperitorum fictas esse Religiones Men shall have what Religion they please and God shall be intitled to all the quarrels of covetous and Ambitious persons 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Demosthenes wittily complained of the Oracle An answer shall be drawn out of Scripture to countenance the designe God made to Rebel against his own Ordinances And then we are zealous for the Lord God of Hosts and will live and die in that quarrel But is it not a strange cozenage that our hearts shall be the main wheel in the engine and shall set all the rest on working The heart shall first put his own candle out then put out the eye of reason then remove the Land-mark and dig down the causeywayes and then either hire a blinde guide or make him so and all these Arts to get ignorance that they may secure impiety At first man lost his innocence onely in hope to get a little knowledge and ever since then lest knowledge should discover his errour and make him returne to innocence we are content to part with that now and to kow nothing that may discover or discountenance our sins or discompose our secular designe And as God made great revelations and furnished out a wise Religion and sent his spirit to give the gift of Faith to his Church that upon the foundation of Faith he might build a holy life now our hearts love to retire into Blindnesse sneak under the covert of False principles and run to a cheape religion and an unactive discipline and make a faith of our own that we may build upon it ease and ambition and a tall fortune and the pleasures of revenge and do what we have a minde to scarce once in seven years denying a strong and an unruly appetite upon the interest of a just conscience and holy religion This is such a desperate method of impiety so certain arts and apt instruments for the Divel that it does his work intirley and produces an infallible damnation 3. But the heart of man hath yet another stratagem to secure its iniquity by the means of ignorance and that is Incogitancy or Inconsideration For there is wrought upon the spirits of many men great impression by education by a modest and temperate nature by humane Laws and the customes severities of sober persons and the fears of religion and the awfulnesse of a reverend man and the several arguments and endearments of vertue And it is not in the nature of some men to do an act in despite of reason and Religion and arguments and Reverence and modesty and fear But men are forced from their sin by the violence of the grace of God when they heare it speak But so a Roman Gentleman kept off a whole band of souldiers who were sent to murther him and his eloquence was stronger then their anger and designe But suddenly a rude trooper rushed upon him who neither had nor would heare him speak and he thrust his spear into that throat whose musick had charmed all his fellows into peace and gentlenesse So do we The Grace of God is Armour and defence enough against the most violent incursion of the spirits and the works of darknesse but then we must hear its excellent charms and consider its reasons and remember its precepts and dwell with its discourses But this the heart of man loves not If I be tempted to uncleannesse or to an act of oppression instantly the grace of God represents to me that the pleasure of the sin is transient and vain unsatisfying and empty That I shall die and then I shall wish too late that I had never done it It tells me that I displease God who made me who feeds me who blesses me who fain would save me It represents to me all the joyes of Heaven and the horrours and amazements of a sad eternity And if I will stay and heare them ten thousand excellent things besides fit to be twisted about my understanding for ever But here the heart of man shuffles all these discourses into disorder and will not be put to the trouble of answering the objections but by a meer wildenesse of purpose and rudnesse of resolution ventures super totam materiam at all and does the thing not because it thinks it fit to do so but because it will not consider whether it be or no it is enough that it pleases a present appetite and if such incogitancy comes to be habitual as it is in very many men first by resisting the motions of the holy spirit then by quenching him we shall find the consequents to be first an Indifferencie then a dulnesse then a Lethargie then a direct Hating the wayes of God and it commonly ends in a wretchlessenesse of spirit to be manifested on our death-bed when the man shall passe hence not like the shadow but like the dog that departeth without sence or interest or apprehension or real concernment in the considerations of eternity and t is but just when we will not heare our king speak and plead not to save himself but us to speak for our peace and innocency and Salvation to prevent our ruine and our intolerable calamity certainly we are much in love with the wages of death when we cannot endure to heare God cal us back and stop our ears against the voice of the charmer charme
ugly or a deformed person and yet will give a great price for a picture extreamly like him Humility is despised in substance but courted and admired in effigie And Aesops picture was sold two talents when himself was made a slave at the price of two Philippicks And because Humility makes a man to be honoured Therefore we imitate all its garbs and postures its civilities and silence its modesties and condescensions And to prove that we are extreamly proud in the midst of all this pagentry we should be extreamly angry at any man that should say we are proud And that 's a sure signe we are so And in the middest of all our Arts to seem Humble we use devices to bring our selves into talk we thrust our selves into company we listen at doors and like the great Beards in Rome that pretended Philosophy and strict life 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We walk by the Obelisk and meditate in Piazza's that they that meet us may talk of us and they that follow may cry out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Behold there goes an excellent man He is very prudent or very learned or a charitable person or a good housekeeper or at least very Humble The Heart of man is deeply in love with wickednesse and with nothing else Against not onely the Lawes of God but against his own Reason it s own Interest and its own Securities For is it imaginable that a man who knows the Lawes of God the rewards of Vertue the cursed and horrid effects of sin that knows and considers and deeply sighes at the thought of the intolerable pains of Hell that knowes the joyes of Heaven to be unspeakable and that concerning them there is no temptation but that they are too big for man to hope for And yet he certainly beleeves that a holy life shall infallibly attain thither Is it I say imaginable that this man should for a transient Action forfeit all this Hope and certainly and knowing incur all that calamity Yea but the sin is pleasant and the man is clothed with flesh and blood and their appetites are materiall and importunate and present And the discourses of Religion are concerning things spirituall separate and apt for spirits Angels and souls departed To take off this also We will suppose the man to consider and really to beleeve that the pleasure of the sin is sudden vain empty and transient that it leaves bitternesse upon the tongue before it is descended into the bowels that there it is poison and makes the Belly to swell and the Thigh to rot That he remembers and actually considers that as soon as the moment of sin is past he shall have an intolerable Conscience and does at the instant compare moments with Eternity and with horrour remembers that the very next minute he is as miserable a man as is in the world Yet that this man should sin Nay suppose the sin to have no pleasure at all such as is the sin of swearing Nay suppose it really to have pain in it such as is the sin of Envy which never can have pleasure in its actions but much torment and consumption of the very heart What should make this man sin so for nothing so against himself so against all Reason and Religion and Interest without pleasure for no reward Here the heart betrayes it self to be desperately wioked What man can give a reasonable account of such a man who to prosecute his revenge will do himself an injury that he may do a lesse to him that troubles him Such a man hath given me ill language 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 My head akes not for his language nor hath he broken my thigh nor carried away my land But yet this man must be requited Well suppose that But then let it be proportionable you are not undone let not him be so Oh yes for else my revenge triumphs not Well if you do yet remember he will defend himself or the Law will right him at least do not do wrong to your self by doing him wrong This were but Prudence and self-Interest And yet we see that the heart of some men hath betrayed them to such furiousnesse of Appetite as to make them willing to die that their enemie may be buried in the same Ruines Jovius Pontanus tells of an Italian slave I think who being enraged against his Lord watched his absence from home and the employment and inadvertency of his fellow-servants he locked the doors and secured himself for a while and Ravished his Lady then took her three sons up to the battlements of the house and at the return of his Lord threw one down to him upon the pavement and then a second to rend the heart of their sad Father seeing them weltring in their blood and brains The Lord begd for his third and now his onely Son promising pardon and libertie if he would spare his life The slave seemed to bend a little and on condition his Lord would cut off his own Nose he would spare his Son The sad Father did so being willing to suffer any thing rather then the losse of that Childe But as soon as he saw his Lord all bloody with his wound he threw the third Son and himself down together upon the Pavement The story is sad enough and needs no lustre and advantages of sorrow to represent it But if a man sets himself down and considers sadly he cannot easily tell upon what sufficient inducement or what principle the slave should so certainly so horridly so presently and then so eternally ruine himself What could he propound to himself as a recompence to his own so immediate Tragedy There is not in the pleasure of the revenge nor in the nature of the thing any thing to tempt him we must confesse our ignorance and say that The Fleart of man is desperately wicked and that is the truth in generall but we cannot fathom it by particular comprehension For when the heart of man is bound up by the grace of God and tied in golden bands and watched by Angels tended by those Nurse-keepers of the soul it is not easie for a man to wander And the evil of his heart is but like the ferity and wildnesse of Lyons-whelps But when once we have broken the hedge and got into the strengths of youth and the licenciousnesse of an ungoverned age it is wonderfull to observe what a great inundation of mischief in a very short time will overflow all the banks of Reason and Religion Vice first is pleasing then it grows easie then delightfull then frequent then habituall then confirmed then the man is impenitent then he is obstinate then he resolves never to Repent and then he is Damned And by that time he is come half way in this progresse he confutes the Philosophy of the old Moralists For they not knowing the vilenesse of mans Heart not considering its desperate amazing Impiety knew no other degree of wickednesse but This That men preferred Sense
before Reason and their understandings were abused in the choice of a temporall before an intellectuall and eternall good But they alwayes concluded that the Will of man must of necessity follow the last dictate of the understanding declaring an object to be good in one sence or other Happy men they were that were so Innocent that knew no pure and perfect malice and lived in an Age in which it was not easie to confute them But besides that now the wells of a deeper iniquity are discovered we see by too sad experience that there are some sins proceeding from the heart of man which have nothing but simple and unmingled malice Actions of meer spite doing evil because it is evil sinning without sensuall pleasures sinning with sensuall pain with hazard of our lives with actuall torment and sudden deaths and certain and present damnation sins against the Holy Ghost open hostilities and professed enmities against God and all vertue I can go no further because there is not in the world or in the nature of things a greater Evil. And that is the Nature and Folly of the Devil he tempts men to ruine and hates God and onely hurts himself and those he tempts and does himself no pleasure and some say he increases his own accidentall torment Although I can say nothing greater yet I had many more things to say if the time would have permitted me to represent the Falsenesse and Basenesse of the Heart 1. We are false our selves and dare not trust God 2. We love to be deceived and are angry if we be told so 3. We love to seem vertuous and yet hate to be so 4. We are melancholy and impatient and we know not why 5. We are troubled at little things and are carelesse of greater 6. We are overjoyed at a petty accident and despise great and eternall pleasures 7. We beleeve things not for their Reasons and proper Arguments but as they serve our turns be they true or false 8. We long extreamly for things that are forbidden us And what we despise when it is permitted us we snatch at greedily when it is taken from us 9. We love our selves more then we love God and yet we eat poysons daily and feed upon Toads and Vipers and nourish our deadly enemies in our bosome and will not be brought to quit them but brag of our shame and are ashamed of nothing but Vertue which is most honourable 10. We fear to die and yet use all means we can to make Death terrible and dangerous 11. We are busie in the faults of others and negligent of our own 12. We live the life of spies striving to know others and to be unknown our selves 13. We worship and flatter some men and some things because we fear them not because we love them 14. We are ambitious of Greatnesse and covetous of wealth and all that we get by it is that we are more beautifully tempted and a troop of Clients run to us as to a Pool whom first they trouble and then draw dry 15. We make our selves unsafe by committing wickednesse and then we adde more wickednesse to make us safe and beyond punishment 16. We are more servile for one curtesie that we hope for then for twenty that we have received 17. We entertain slanderers and without choice spread their calumnies and we hugg flatterers and know they abuse us And if I should gather the abuses and impieties and deceptions of the Heart as Chrysippus did the oracular Lies of Apollo into a Table I fear they would seem Remedilesse and beyond the cure of watchfulnesse and Religion Indeed they are Great and Many But the Grace of God is Greater and if Iniquity abounds then doth Grace superabound and that 's our Comfort and our Medicine which we must thus use 1. Let us watch our hearts at every turn 2. Deny it all its Desires that do not directly or by consequence end in godlinesse At no hand be indulgent to its fondnesses and peevish appetites 3. Let us suspect it as an Enemy 4. Trust not to it in any thing 5. But beg the grace of God with perpetuall and importunate prayer that he would be pleased to bring good out of these evils and that he would throw the salutary wood of the Crosse the merits of Christs death and passion into these salt waters and make them healthful and pleasant And in order to the mannaging these advises and acting the purposes of this prayer let us strictly follow a rule and choose a Prudent and faithful guide who may attend our motions and watch our counsels and direct our steps and prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths streight apt and imitable For without great watchfulnesse and earnest devotion and a prudent Guide we shall finde that true in a spiritual sense which Plutarch affirmed of a mans body in the natural that of dead Buls arise Bees from the carcases of horses hornets are produced But the body of man brings forth serpents Our hearts wallowing in their own natural and acquired corruptions will produce nothing but issues of Hell and images of the old serpent the divel for whom is provided the everlasting burning Sermon IX THE FAITH and PATIENCE OF THE SAINTS OR The righteous cause oppressed 1 Peter 4. 17. For the time is come that judgement must begin at the house of God and if it first begin at us what shall the end be of them that obey not the Gospel of God 18. And if the righteous scarcely be saved where shal the ungodly and the sinner appear SO long as the world lived by sense and discourses of natural reason as they were abated with humane infirmities and not at all heightned by the spirit divine revelations So long men took their accounts of good and bad by their being prosperous or unfortunate and amongst the basest and most ignorant of men that onely was accounted honest which was profitable and he onely wise that was rich and that man beloved of God who received from him all that might satisfie their lust their ambition or their revenge Fatis accede deisque colâ— felices miseros fuge sidera terra ut distant flamma maeri sic utile recto But because God sent wise men into the world and they were treated rudely by the world and exercised with evil accidents and this seemed so great a discouragement to vertue that even these wise men were more troubled to reconcile vertue and misery then to reconcile their affections to the suffering God was pleased to enlighten their reason with a little beame of faith or else heightned their reason by wiser principles then those of vulgar understandings and taught them in the clear glasse of faith or the dim perspective of Philosophy to look beyond the cloud and there to spie that there stood glories behinde their curtain to which they could not come but by passing through the cloud and being wet with the dew of heaven and the
was brought in by sin must not go away till it hath returned us into the first condition of innocence the same instant that quits us from sin and the failings of mortality the same instant wipes all tears from our eyes but that is not in this world In the mean time God afflicts the godly that he might manifest many of his attributes and his servants exercise many of their vertues Nec fortuna probat causas sequiturque merentes sed vaga percunctos nullo discrimine fertur scilicet est aliud quod nos cogatque rogatque Majus in proprias ducat mortalia leges For without sufferings of Saints God should lose the glories of 1. Bringing good out of evil 2. Of being with us in tribulation 3. Of sustaining our infirmities 4. Of triumphing over the malice of his enemies 5. Without the suffering of Saints where were the exaltation of the crosse the conformity of the members to Christ their Head the coronets of Martyrs 6. Where were the trial of our faith 7. Or the exercise of long suffering 8. Where were the opportunities to give God the greatest love which cannot be but by dying and suffering for him 9. How should that which the world calls folly prove the greatest wisdom 10. and God be glorified by events contrary to the probability and expectation of their causes By the suffering of Saints Christian religion is proved to be most excellent whilst the iniquity and cruelty of the adversaries proves the illecebra sectae as Tertullians phrase is it invites men to consider the secret excellencies of that religion for which and in which men are so willing to die for that religion must needs be worth looking into which so many wise and excellent men do so much value above their lives and fortunes 12. That a mans nature is passible is its best advantage for by it we are all redeemed by the passivenesse and sufferings of our Lord and brother we were all rescued from the portion of Devils and by our suffering we have a capacity of serving God beyond that of Angels who indeed can sing Gods praise with a sweeter note and obey him with a more unabated will and execute his commands with a swifter wing and a greater power but they cannot die for God they can lose no lands for him and he that did so for all us and commanded us to do so for him is ascended farre above all Angels and is Heir of a greater glory 13. Do this and live was the covenant of the Law but in the Gospel it is suffer this and live He that forsaketh house and land friends and life for my sake is my disciple 14. By the sufferings of Saints God chastises their follies and levities and suffers not their errours to climbe up into heresies nor their infirmities into crimes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Alterat on makes a fool leave his folly If David numbers the people of Judea God punishes him sharply and loudly But if Augustus Caesar numbers all the world he is let alone and prospers Ille crucem pretium sceleris tulit hic diadema And it giving physick we alwayes call that just and fitting that is usefull and profitable no man complains of his Physitians Iniquity if he burns one part to cure all the body if the belly be punished to chastise the floods of humour and the evils of a surfet Punishments can no other way turn into a mercy but when they are designed for medicine and God is then very carefull of thy soul when he will suppresse every of its evils when it first discomposes the order of things and spirits And what hurt is it to thee if a persecution draws thee from the vanities of a former prosperity and forces thee into the sobrieties of a holy life What losse is it what misery Is not the least sin a greater evil then the greatest of sufferings God smites some at the beginning of their sin Others not till a long while after it is done The first cannot say that God is slack in punishing and have no need to complain that the wicked are prosperous for they finde that God is apt enough to strike and therefore that he strikes them and strikes not the other is not defect of justice but because there is not mercy in store for them that sin and suffer not 15. For if God strikes the godly that they may repent it is no wonder that God is so good to his servants but then we must not call that a misery which God intends to make an instrument of saving them And if God forbears to strike the wicked out of anger and because he hath decreed death and hell against them we have no reason to envy that they ride in a gilded chariot to the gallows But if God forbears the wicked that by his long sufferance they may be invited to repentance then we may cease to wonder at the dispensation and argue comforts to the afflicted Saints thus 1. For if God be so gracious to the wicked how much more is he to the godly And if sparing the wicked be a mercy then smiting the godly being the expression of his greater kindnesse affliction is of it self the more eligible condition If God hath some degrees of kindnesse for the persecutor so much as to invite them by kindnesse how much greater is his love to them that are persecuted and therefore his entercourse with them is also a greater favour and indeed it is the surer way of securing the duty fair means may do it but severity will fix and secure it fair means are more apt to be abused then harsh physick that may be turned into wantonnesse but 〈◊〉 but the impudent and grown sinners despise all Gods judgements and therefore God chooses this way to deal with his erring servants that they may obtain an infallible and a great salvation and yet if God spares not his children how much lesse the reprobates and therefore as the sparing the latter commonly is a sad curse so the smiting the former is a very great mercy 16 For by this Oeconomy God gives us a great argument to prove the resurrection since to his saints and servants he assignes sorrow for their present portion Sorrow cannot be the reward of vertue it may be its instrument and hand-maid but not its reward and therefore it may be intermedial to some great purposes but they must look for their portion in the other life For if in this life onely we had hope then we were of all men the most miserable It is Sain Pauls argument to prove a beatificall resurrection And we therefore may learn to estimate the state of the afflicted godly to be a mercy great in proportion to the greatnesse of that reward which these afflictions come to secure and to prove Nunc damna juvant sunt ipsa pericula tanti Stantia non poterant tecta probare Deos. It is a great matter an infinite blessing to escape the pains
proper instruments of religion But since it is the greatest action of the religion and relies upon the most excellent promises and its formality is to be an action of love and nothing is more firmely chosen by an after election at least then an act of love to support Martyrdom or the duty of sufferings by false arches and exteriour circumstances is to build a tower upon the beams of the Sun or to set up a woodden ladder to climbe up to Heaven the soul cannot attain so huge and unimaginable felicities by chance and instruments of fancy and let no man hope to glorifie God and go to Heaven by a life of sufferings unlesse he first begin in the love of God and from thence derive his choice his patience and confidence in the causes of vertue and religion like beams and warmth and influence from the body of the Sun Some there are that fall under the burden when they are pressed hard because they use not the proper instruments in fortifying the will in patience and resignation but endeavour to lighten the burden in imagination and when these temporary supporters fail the building that relies upon them rushes into coldnesse recidivation and luke warmnesse and among all instances that of the main question of the Text is of greatest power to abuse imprudent and lesse severe persons Nullos esse Deos inane coelum Affirmat Selius probatque Quod se videt dum negat haec beatum When men choose a good cause upon confidence that an ill one cannot thrive that is not for the love of vertue or duty to God but for profit and secular interests they are easily lost when they see the wickednesse of the enemy to swell up by impunity and successe to a great evil for they have not learned to distinguish a great growing sin from a thriving and prosperous fortune Ulla si juris tibi pejerati Poena Barine nocuisset unquant Dente si nigro fieret vel unto turpior ungui Crederem They that beleeve and choose because of idle fears and unreasonable fancies or by mistaking the accounts of a man for the measures of God or dare not commit treason for fear of being blasted may come to be tempted when they see a sinner thrive and are scandalized all the way if they die before him or they may come to receive some accidentall hardnesses and every thing in the world may spoil such persons and blast their resolutions Take in all the aids you can and if the fancy of the standers by or the hearing a cock crow can adde any collaterall aids to thy weaknesse refuse it not But let thy state of sufferings begin with choice and be confirmed with knowledge and rely upon love and the aids of God and the expectations of heaven and the present sense of duty and then the action will be as glorious in the event as it is prudent in the enterprise and religious in the prosecution 6. Lastly when God hath brought thee into Christs school and entered thee into a state of sufferings remember the advantages of that state consider how unsavoury the things of the world appear to thee when thou are under the arrest of death remember with what comforts the Spirit of God assists thy spirit set down in thy heart all those entercourses which happen between God and thy own soul the sweetnesses of religion the vanity of sins appearances thy newly entertained resolutions thy longings after heaven and all the things of God and if God finishes thy persecution with death proceed in them if he restores thee to the light of the world and a temporall refreshment change but the scene of sufferings into an active life and converse with God upon the same principles on which in thy state of sufferings thou dost build all the parts of duty If God restores thee to thy estate be not lesse in love with heaven nor more in love with the world let thy spirit be now as humble as before it was broken and to what soever degree of sobriety or austerity thy suffering condition did enforce thee if it may be turned into vertue when God restores thee because then it was necessary thou shouldest entertain it by an after choice do now also by a prae election that thou mayest say with David It is good for me that I have been afflicted for thereby I have learned thy commandments and Paphnutius did not do his soul more advantage when he lost his right eye and suffered his left knee to be cut for Christianity and the cause of God then that in the dayes of Constantine and the Churches peace he lived not in the toleration but in the active piety of a Martyrs condition not now a confessor of the faith onely but of the charity of a Christian we may every one live to have need of these rules and I do not at all think it safe to pray against it but to be armed for it and to whatsoever degree of sufferings God shal call us we see what advantages God intends for us and what advantages we our selves may make of it I now proceed to make use of all the former discourse by removing it a little further even into its utmost spiritual sense which the Apostle does in the last words of the text If the righteous scarcely be saved where shall the wicked and the sinner appear These words are taken out of the proverbs according to the translation of the 70. If the righteous scarcely is safe where the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implyes that he is safe but by intermedial difficulties and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he is safe in the midst of his persecutions they may disturb his rest and discompose his fancy but they are like the firy charriot to Elias he is encircled with fire and rare circumstances and strange usages but is carried up to Heaven in a robe of flames and so was Noah safe when the flood came and was the great type and instance too of the verification of this proposition he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he was put into a strange condition perpetually wandring shut up in a prison of wood living upon faith having never had the experience of being safe in flouds And so have I often seen young and unskilful persons sitting in a little boat when every little wave sporting about the sides of the vessel and every motion and dancing of the barge seemed a danger and made them cling fast upon their fellows and yet all the while they were as safe as if they sat under a tree while a gentle winde shaked the leaves into a refreshment and a cooling shade And the unskiful unexperienced Christian shrikes out when ever his vessel shakes thinking it alwayes a danger that the watry pavement is not stable and resident like a rock and yet all his danger is in himself none at all from without for he is indeed moving upon the waters but fastned to an 〈◊〉 faith is his foundation
in a persecution to perjuries and Apostacy and unhandsome compliances and hypocricy and irreligion and many men are brought to vertue and to God and to felicity by being persecuted and made unprosperous and these are effects of a more absolute and irrespective predestination but when the grace of God is great and prudent and masculine and well grown it is unalter'd in all changes save onely that every accident that is new and violent brings him neerer to God and makes him with greater caution and severity to dwell in vertue 11. Lastly some there are who are firme in all great and foresoen changes and have laid up in the store-houses of the spirit reason and religion arguments and discourses enough to defend them against all violencies and stand at watch so much that they are safe where they can consider and deliberate but there may be something wanting yet and in the direct line in the strait progresse to heaven I call that an infallible signe of a great grace and indeed the greatest degree of a great grace when a man is prepared against sudden invasions of the spirit surreptions and extemporary assaults Many a valiant person dares sight a battle who yet will be timorous and surprised in a mid-night alarme or if he falls into a river And how many discreet persons are there who if you offer them a sin and give them time to consider and tell them of it before hand will rather die then be perjured or tell a deliberate lie or break a promise who it may be tell many sudden lies and excuse themselves and break their promises and yet think themselves safe enough and sleep without either affrightments or any apprehension of dishonour done to their persons or their religion Every man is not armed for all sudden arrests of passions few men have cast such fetters upon their lusts and have their passions in so strict confinement that they may not be over run with a midnight flood or an unlooked for inundation He that does not start when he is smitten suddenly is a constant person and that is it which I intend in this instance that he is a perfect man and well grown in grace who hath so habitual a resolution and so unhasty and wary a spirit as that he decrees upon no act before he hath considered maturely and changed the sudden occasion into a sober counsel David by chance spied Bathsheba washing her self and being surprised gave his heart away before he could consider and when it was once gone it was hard to recover it and sometimes a man is betrayed by a sudden opportunity and all things fitted for his sin ready at the door the act stands in all its dresse and will not stay for an answear and incosideration is the defence and guard of the sin and makes that his conscience can the more easily swallow it what shall the man do then unlesse he be strong by his old strengths by a great grace by an habitual vertue and a sober unmoved spirit he falls and dies in the death and hath no new strengths but such as are to be imployed for his recovery none for his present guard unlesse upon the old stock and if he be a well grown Christian. These are the parts acts and offices of our growing in grace and yet I have sometimes called them signes but they are signes as eating and drinking are signes of life they are signes so as also they are parts of life and these are parts of our growth in grace so that a man can grow in grace to no other purpose but to these or the like improvements Concerning which I have a caution or two to interpose 1. The growth of grace is to be estimated as other morall things are not according to the growth of things naturall Grace does not grow by observation and a continuall efflux and a constant proportion and a man cannot call himself to the account for the growth of every day or week or moneth but in the greater portions of our life in which we have had many occasions and instances to exercise and improve our vertues we may call our selves to account but it is a snare to our consciences to be examined in the growth of grace in every short resolution of solemn duty as against every Communion or great Festivall 2. Growth in grace is not alwayes to be discerned either in single instances or in single graces Not in single instances for every time we are to exercise a vertue we are not in the same naturall dispositions nor do we meet with the same circumstances and it is not alwayes necessary that the next act should be more earnest and intence then the former all single acts are to be done after the manner of men and therefore are not alwayes capable of increasing and they have their termes beyond which easily they cannot swell and therefore if it be a good act and zealous it may proceed from a well grown grace and yet a younger and weaker person may do some acts as great and as religious as it But neither do single graces alwayes affoord a regular and certain judgement in this affair for some persons at the first had rather die then be unchast or perjured and greater love then this no man hath that he lay down his life for God he cannot easily grow in the substance of that act and if other persons or himself in processe of time do it more cheerfully or with fewer fears it is not alwayes a signe of a greater grace but some times of greater collaterall assistances or a better habit of body or more fortunate circumstances for he that goes to the block tremblingly for Christ and yet endures his death certainly and endures his trembling too and runs through all his infirmities and the bigger temptations looks not so well many times in the eyes of men but suffers more for God then those confident Martyrs that courted death in the primitive Church and therefore may be much dearer in the eyes of God But that which I say in this particular is that a smallnesse in one is not an argument of the imperfection of the whole estate Because God does not alwayes give to every man occasions to exercise and therefore not to improve every grace and the passive vertues of a Christian are not to be expected to grow so fast in prosperous as in suffering Christians but in this case we are to take accounts of our selves by the improvement of those graces which God makes to happen often in our lives such as are charity and temperance in young men liberality and religion in aged persons ingenuity and humility in schollers justice in merchants and artificers forgivenesse of injuries in great men and persons tempted by law-suits for since vertues grow like other morall habits by use diligence and assiduity there where God hath appointed our work and in our instances there we must consider concerning our growth in grace in other things
build our duty upon our own bottoms as supported with the grace of God there is no vice but may finde a Patron and no age or relation or state of life but will be an engagement to sin And we shall think it necessary to be lustfull in our youth and revengefull in our man hood and covetous in our old age and we shall perceive that every state of men and every trade and profession lives upon the vices of others or upon their miseries and therefore they will think it necessary to promote or to wish it If men were temperate Physitians would be poor and unlesse some Princes were ambitious or others injurious there would be no imployment for souldiers The Vintners retail supports the Merchants trade and it is a vice that supports the Vintners retail and if all men were wise and sober persons we should have fewer beggers and fewer rich and if our Law-givers should imitate Demades of Athens who condemned a man that lived by selling things belonging to funeralls as supposing he could not choose but wish the death of men by whose dying he got his living we should finde most men accounted criminalls because vice is so involved in the affairs of the world that it is made the support of many trades and the businesse of great multitudes of men Certainly from hence it is that iniquity does so much abound and unlesse we state our questions right and perceive the evil to be designed onely from our selves and that no such pretence shall keep off the punishment or the shame from our selves we shall fall into a state which is onely capable of compassion because it is irrecoverable and then we shall be infinitely miserable when we can onely receive an uselesse and ineffective pity Whatsoever is necessary cannot be avoided He therefore that shall say he cannot avoid his sin is out of the mercies of this Text they who are appointed Guides Physitians of souls cannot to any purpose do their offices of pity It is necessary that we serve God and do our duty and secure the interest of our souls and be as carefull to preserve our relations to God as to our friend or Prince But if it can be necessary for any man in any condition to sin it is also necessary for that man to perish Sermon XVII The severall states and degrees of Sinners WITH The manner how they are to be treated Part II. 4. THe last sort of them that sin and yet are to be treated with compassion is of them that interrupt the course of an honest life with single acts of sin stepping aside and starting like a broken bowe whose resolution stands fair and their hearts are towards God and they sojourn in religion or rather dwell there but that like evil husbands they go abroad and enter into places of dishonour and unthriftinesse Such as these all stories remember with a sad character and every narrative concerning David which would end in honour and fair report is sullied with the remembrances of Bathsheba and the Holy Ghost hath called him a man after Gods own heart save in the matter of Uriah there indeed he was a man after his own heart even then when his reason was stolne from him by passion and his religion was sullied by the beauties of a fair woman I wish we lived in an age in which the people were to be treated with concerning renouncing the single actions of sin and the seldome interruptions of piety Men are taught to say that every man sins in every action he does and this is one of the doctrines for the beleeving of which he shall be accounted a good man and upon this ground it is easie for men to allow themselves some sins when in all cases and in every action it is unavoidable I shall say nothing of the Question save that the Scripture reckons otherwise * and in the accounts of Davids life reckon but one great sin * and in Zachary and Elizabeth gave a testimony of an unblameable conversation * and Hezekiah did not make his confession when he prayed to God in his sicknesse and said he had walked uprightly before God * and therefore Saint Paul after his conversion designed and laboured hard therefore certainly with hopes to accomplish it that he might keep his conscience void of offence both towards God and towards man * and one of Christs great purposes is to present his whole Church pure and spotlesse to the throne of grace and* Saint John the Baptist offended none but Herod * and no pious Christian brought a bill of accusation against the holy Virgin Mother * certain it is that God hath given us precepts of such a holinesse and such a purity such a meeknesse and such humility as hath no pattern but Christ no precedent but the purities of God and therefore it is intended we should live with a life whose actions are not checker'd with white and black half sin and half vertue Gods sheep are not like Jacobs flock streaked and spotted it is an intire holinesse that God requires and will not endure to have a holy course interrupted by the dishonour of a base and ignoble action I do not mean that a mans life can be as pure as the Sun or the rayes of celestial Jerusalem but like the Moon in which there are spots but they are no deformity a lessening onely and an abatement of light no cloud to hinder and draw a vail before its face but sometimes it is not so serene and bright as at other times Every man hath his indiscretions and infirmities his arrests and sudden incursions his neighbourhoods and semblances of sin his little vidences to reason and peevish melancholy and humorous Phantastick discourses unaptnesses to a devout prayer his fondnesses to judge favourably in his own cases little deceptions and voluntary and involuntary cousenages ignorances and inadvertencies carelesse hours and unwatchful seasons but no good man ever commits one act of adultery no godly man wil at any time be drunk or if he be he ceases to be a godly man and is run into the confines of death and is sick at heart and may die of the sicknesse die eternally This happens more frequently in persons of an infant piety when the vertue is not corroborated by a long abode and a confirmed resolution and an usual victory and a triumphant grace and the longer we are accustomed to piety the more imfrequent will be the little breaches of folly and a returning sin But as the needle of a compasse when it is directed to its beloved star at the first addresses waves on either side and seems indifferent in his courtship of the rising or declining sun and when it seems first determined to the North stands a while trembling as if it suffered inconvenience in the first fruition of its desires and stands not still in a full enjoyment till after first a great variety of motion and then an
himself but his spirit suffers violence and his reason is invaded and his infirmities are mighty and his aids not yet prevailing But when this single temptation hath prevailed for a single instance and leaves a relish upon the palate and this produces another and that also is fruitfull and swels into a family and kinred of sin that is it grows first into approbation then to a clear assent and an untroubled conscience thence into frequency from thence unto a custome and easinesse and a habit this man is fallen into the fire There are also some single acts of so great a malice that they must suppose a man habitually sinfull before he could arrive at that height of wickednesse No man begins his sinfull course with killing of his Father or his Prince and Simon Magus had preambulatory impieties he was covetous and ambitious long before he offered to buy the Holy Ghost Nemo repente fuit turpissimus and although such actions may have in them the malice and the mischief the disorder and the wrong the principle and the permanent effect of a habit and a long course of sin yet because they never or very seldom go alone but after the praedisposition of other huishering crimes we shall not amisse comprise them under the name of habituall sins For such they are either formally or equivalently and if any man hath fallen into a sinfull habit into a course and order of sinning his case is little lesser then desperate but that little hope that is remanent hath its degree according to the infancy or the growth of the habit 1. For all sins lesse then habitual it is certain a pardon is ready to penitent persons that is to all that sin in ignorance or in infirmity by surprize or inadvertency in smaller instances or infrequent returns with involuntary actions or imperfect resolutions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Clemens in his Epistles Lift up your hands to Almighty God and pray him to be mercifull to you in all things when you sin unwillingly that is in which you sin with an imperfect choice for no man sins against his will directly but when his understanding is abused by an inevitable or an intolerable weaknesse our wills follow their blind guide and are not the perfect mistresses of their own actions and therefore leave a way and easinesse to repent and be ashamed of it and therefore a possibility and readinesse for pardon And these are the sins that we are taught to pray to God that he would pardon as he gives us our bread that is every day For in many things we offend all said Saint James that is in many smaller matters in matters of surprize or inevitable infirmity And therefore Posidices said that Saint Austin was used to say That he would not have even good and holy Priests go from this world without the susception of equall and worthy penances and the most innocent life in our account is not a competent instrument of a peremptory confidence and of justifying our selves I am guilty of nothing said Saint Paul that is of no ill intent or negligence in preaching the Gospel yet I am not hereby justified for God it may bee knows many little irregularities and insinuations of sin In this case we are to make a difference but humility and prayer and watchfulnesse are the direct instruments of the expiation of such sinnes But then secondly whosoever sins without these abating circumstances that is in great instances in which a mans understanding cannot be cozened as in drunkennesse murder adultery and in the frequent repetitions of any sort of sin whatsoever in which a mans choice cannot be surprized and in which it is certain there is a love of the sin and a delight in it and a power over a mans resolutions in these cases it is a miraculous grace and an extraordinary change that must turn the current and the stream of the iniquity and when it is begun the pardon is more uncertain and the repentance more difficult and the effect much abated and the man must be made miserable that he may be accursed for ever 1. I say his pardon is uncertain because there are some sins which are unpardonable as I shall shew and they are not all named in particular and the degrees of malice being uncertain the salvation of that man is to be wrought with infinite fear and trembling It was the case of Simon Magus Repent and ask pardon for thy sin if peradventure the thought of thy heart may be forgiven thee If peradventure it was a new crime and concerning its possibility of pardon no revelation had been made and by analogy to other crimes it was very like an unpardonable sin for it was a thinking a thought against the Holy Ghost and that was next to speaking a word against him Cains sin was of the same nature It is greater then it can be forgiven his passion and his fear was too severe and decretory it was pardonable but truly we never finde that God did pardon it 2. But besides this it is uncertain in the pardon because it may be the time of pardon is passed and though God hath pardoned to other people the same sins and to thee too some times before yet it may be he will not now he hath not promised pardon so often as we sin and in all the returns of impudence apostacy and it gratitude and it may be thy day is past as was Jerusalems in the day that they crucified the Saviour of the world 3. Pardon of such habitual sins is uncertain because life is uncertain and such sins require much time for their abolition and expiation And therefore although these sins are not necessariò mortifera that is unpardonable yet by consequence they become deadly because our life may be cut off before we have finished or performed those necessary parts of repentance which are the severe and yet the onely condition of getting pardon So that you may perceive that not onely every great single crime but the habit of any sin is dangerous and therefore these persons are to be snatched from the fire if you mean to rescue them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if you stay a day it may be you stay too long 4. To which I adde this fourth consideration that every delay of return is in the case of habitual sins an approach to desperation because the nature of habits is like that of Crocodiles they grow as long as they live and if they come to obstinacy or confirmation they are in hell already and can never return back For so the Pannonian Bears when they have clasped a dart in the region of their Liver wheel themselves upon the wound and with anger and malicious revenge strike the deadly barbe deeper and cannot be quit from that fatal steel but in flying bear along that which themselves make the instrument of a more hasty death So is every vitious person struck with a deadly wound
necessary God would not do it But if it be worth it and all of it be necessary why should we not labour in order to this great end If it be worth so much to God it is so much more to us for if we perish his felicity is undisturbed but we are undone infinitely undone It is therefore worth taking in a spirituall guide so far we are gone But because we are in the question of prudence we must consider whether it be necessary to do so For every man thinks himself wise enough as to the conduct of his soul and managing of his eternal interest and divinity is every mans trade and the Scriptures speak our own language and the commandments are few and plain and the laws are the measure of justice and if I say my prayers and pay my debts my duty is soon summed up and thus we usually make our accounts for eternity and at this rate onely take care for heaven but let a man be questioned for a portion of his estate or have his life shaken with diseases then it will not be enough to employ one agent or to send for a good woman to minister a potion of the juices of her country garden but the ablest Lawyers and the skilfullest Physitians the advice of friends and huge caution and diligent attendances and a curious watching concerning all the accidents and little passages of our disease and truly a mans life and health is worth all that and much more and in many cases it needs it all But then is the soul the onely safe and the onely trifling thing about us Are not there a thousand dangers and ten thousand difficulties and innumerable possibilities of a misadventure Are not all the congregations in the world divided in their doctrines and all of them call their own way necessary and most of them call all the rest damnable we had need of a wise instructor and a prudent choice at our first entrance and election of our side and when we are well in the matter of Faith for its object and jnstitution all the evils of my self and all the evils of the Church and all the good that happens to evil men every day of danger the periods of sicknesse and the day of death are dayes of tempest and storm and our faith wil suffer shipwrack unlesse it be strong and supported and directed But who shall guide the vessel when a stormy passion or a violent imagination transports the man who shall awaken his reason and charm his passion into slumber instruction How shal a man make his fears confident and allay his confidence with fear and make the allay with just proportions and steere evenly between the extremes or call upon his sleeping purposes or actuate his choices or binde him to reason in all the wandrings and ignorances in his passion and mistakes For suppose the man of great skil and great learning in the wayes of religion yet if he be abused by accident or by his own will who shall then judge his cases of conscience and awaken his duty and renew his holy principle and actuate his spiritual powers For Physitians that prescribe to others do not minister to themselves in cases of danger and violent sicknesses and in matter of distemperature we shall not finde that books alone will do all the work of a spiritual Physitian more then of a natural I will not go about to increase the dangers and difficulties of the soul to represent the assistance of a spiritual man to be necessary But of this I am sure our not understanding and our not considering our soul make us first to neglect and then many times to lose it But is not every man an unequal judge in his own case and therefore the wisdom of God and the laws hath appointed tribunals and Judges and arbitrators and that men are partial in the matter of souls it is infinitely certain because amongst those milions of souls that perish not one in ten thousand but believes himself in a good condition and all sects of Christians think they are in the right and few are patient to enquire whether they be or no then adde to this that the Questions of souls being clothed with circumstances of matter and particular contingency are or may be infinite and most men are so infortunate that they have so intangled their cases of conscience that there where they have done something good it may be they have mingled half a dozen evils and when interests are confounded and governments altered and power strives with right and insensibly passes into right and duty to God would fain be reconciled with duty to our relatives will it not be more then necessary that we should have some one that we may enquire of after the way to heaven which is now made intricate by our follies and inevitable accidents But by what instrument shall men alone and in their own cases be able to discern the spirit of truth from the spirit of illusion just confidence from presumption fear from pusillanimity are not all the things and assistances in the world little enough to defend us against pleasure and pain the two great fountains of temptation is it not harder to cure a lust then to cure a feaver and are not the deceptions and follies of men and the arts of the Devil and inticements of the world the deceptions of a mans own heart and the evils of sin more evil and more numerous then the sicknesses and diseases of any one man and if a man perishes in his soul is it not infinitely more sad then if he could rise from his grave and die a thousand deaths over Thus we are advanced a second step in this prudential motive God used many arts to secure our souls interest and there is infinite dangers and infinite wayes of miscarriage in the souls interest and therefore there is great necessity God should do all those mercies of security and that we should do all the under-ministeries we can in this great work But what advantage shall we receive by a spiritual Guide much every way For this is the way that God hath appointed who in every age hath sent a succession of spiritual persons whose office is to minister in holy things and to be stewards of Gods houshold shepherds of the stock dispensers of the mysteries under mediators and ministers of prayer preachers of the law expounders of questions monitors of duty conveiances of blessings and that which is a good discourse in the mouth of another man is from them an ordinance of God and besides its natural efficacy and perswasion it prevails by the way of blessing by the reverence of his person by divine institution by the excellency of order by the advantages of opinion and assistances of reputation by the influence of the spirit who is the president of such ministeries and who is appointed to all Christians according to the despensation that is appointed to them to the people
But I shall instance onely in the intermediall part of this mysterious mercy Why should God cause us to be born of Christian parents and not to be circumcised by the impure hands of a Turkish Priest What distinguished me from another that my Father was severe in his discipline and carefull to bring me up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and I was not exposed to the carelesnesse of an irreligious guardian and taught to steal and lie and to make sport with my infant vices and beginnings of iniquity Who was it that discerned our persons from the lot of dying Chrysomes whose portion must be among those who never glorified God with a free obedience What had you done of good or towards it that you was not condemned to the stupid ignorance which makes the souls of most men but a little higher then beasts and who understand nothing of religion and noble principles of parables and wise sayings of old men And not onely in our cradles but in our schools and in our colledges in our friendships and in our marriages in our enmities and in all our conversation in our vertues and in our vices where all things in us were equal or else we were the inferiour there is none of us but have felt the mercies of many differencies Or it may be my brother and I were intemperate and drunk and quarelsome and he kill'd a man but God did not suffer me to do so He fell down and died with a little disorder I was a beast and yet was permitted to live and not yet to die in my sins He did a misse once and was surprized in that disadvantage I sin daily and am still invited to repentance he would fain have lived and amended I neglect the grace but am allowed the time And when God sends the Angel of his wrath to execute his anger upon a sinfull people we are encompassed with funerals and yet the Angel hath not smitten us what or who makes the difference We shall then see when in the separations of eternity we sitting in glory shall see some of the partners of our sins carried into despair and the portions of the left hand and roaring in the seats of the reprobate we shall then perceive that it is even that mercy which hath no cause but it self no measure of its emanation but our misery no natural limit but eternity no beginning but God no object but man no reason but an essential and an unalterable goodnesse no variety but our necessity and capacity no change but new instances of its own nature no ending or repentance but our absolute and obstinate refusall to entertain it II. Lastly All the mercies of God are concentred in that which is all the felicity of man and God is so great a lover of souls that he provides securities and fair conditions for them even against all our reason and hopes our expectations and weak discoursings The particulars I shall remark are these 1. Gods mercy prevails over the malice and ignorances the weaknesses and follies of men so that in the convention and assemblies of hereticks as the word is usually understood for erring and mistaken people although their doctrines are such that if men should live according to their proper and naturall consequences they would live impiously yet in every one of these there are persons so innocently and invincibly mistaken and who mean nothing but truth while in the simplicity of their heart they talk nothing but error that in the defiance and contradiction of their own doctrines they live according to its contradictory He that beleeves contrition alone with confession to a Priest is enough to expiate ten thousand sins is furnished with an excuse easie enough to quit himself from the troubles of a holy life and he that hath a great many cheap wayes of buying off his penances for a little money even for the greatest sins is taught a way not to fear the doing of an act for which he must repent since repentance is a duty so soon fo certainly and so easily performed But these are notorious doctrines in the Roman Church and yet God so loves the souls of his creatures that many men who trust to these doctrines in their discourses dare not rely upon them in their lives But while they talk as if they did not need to live strictly many of them live so strictly as if they did not beleeve so foolishly He that tels that antecedently God hath to all humane choice decreed man to heaven or to hell takes away from man all care of the way because they beleeve that he that infallibly decreed that end hath unalterably appointed the means and some men that talk thus wildly live soberly and are over-wrought in their understanding by some secret art of God that man may not perish in his ignorance but be assisted in his choice and saved by the Divine mercies And there is no sect of men but are furnished with antidotes and little excuses to cure the venom of their doctrine and therefore although the adherent and constituent poison is notorious and therefore to be declined yet because it is collaterally cured and over-poured by the torrent and wisdom of Gods mercies the men are to be taken into the Quire that we may all joyn in giving of God praise for the operation of his hands 2. I said formerly that there are many secret and undiscerned mercies by which men live and of which men can give no account till they come to give God thanks at their publication and of this sort is that mercy which God reserves for the souls of many millions of men and women concerning whom we have no hopes if we account concerning them by the usuall proportions of revelation and Christian commandements and yet we are taught to hope some strange good things concerning them by the analogy and generall rules of the Divine mercy For what shall become of ignorant Christians people that live in wildnesses and places more desert then a primitive hermitage people that are baptized and taught to go to Church it may be once a yeer people that can get no more knowledge they know not where to have it nor how to desire it and yet that an eternity of pains shall be consequent to such an ignorance is unlike the mercy of God and yet that they should be in any dispositions towards an eternity of intellectuall joyes is no where set down in the leaves of revelation and when the Jews grew rebellious or a silly woman of the daughters of Abraham was tempted and sinned and punished with death we usually talk as if that death passed on to a worse but yet we may arrest our thoughts upon the Divine mercies and consider that it is reasonable to expect from the Divine goodnesse that no greater forfeiture be taken upon a law then was expressed in its sanction and publication He that makes a law and bindes it with the penalty of stripes we
say he intends not to afflict the disobedient with scorpions and axes and it had been hugely necessary that God had scar'd the Jews from their sins by threatning the pains of hell to them that disobeyed if he intended to inflict it for although many men would have ventured the future since they are not affrighted with the present and visible evil yet some persons would have had more Philosophical and spiritual apprehensions then others and have been infallibly cured in all their temptations with the fear of an eternall pain and however whether they had or no yet since it cannot be understood how it consists with the Divine justice to exact a pain bigger then he threatned greater then he gave warning of so we are sure it is a great way off from Gods mercy to do so He that usually imposes lesse and is loth to inflict any and very often forgives it all is hugely distant from exacting an eternall punishment when the most that he threatned and gave notice of was but a temporall The effect of this consideration I would have to be this that we may publikely worship this mercy of God which is kept in secret and that we be not too forward in sentencing all Heathens and prevaricating Jews to the eternall pains of hell but hope that they have a portion in the secrets of the Divine mercy where also unlesse many of us have some little portions deposited our condition will be very uncertain and sometimes most miserable God knows best how intolerably accursed a thing it is to perish in the eternall flames of hell and therefore he is not easie to inflict it and if the joyes of heaven be too great to be expected upon too easie termes certainly the pains of the damned are infinitely too big to passe lightly upon persons who cannot help themselves and who if they were helped with clearer revelations would have avoided it But as in these things we must not pry into the secrets of the Divine Oeconomy being sure whether it be so or no it is most just even as it is so we may expect to see the glories of the Divine mercy made publike in unexpected instances at the great day of manifestation And indeed our dead many times go forth from our hands very strangely and carelesly without prayers without Sacraments without consideration without counsel and without comfort and to dresse the souls of our dear people to so sad a parting is an imployment we therefore omit not alwayes because we are negligent but because the work is sad and allay the affections of the world with those melancholy circumstances but if God did not in his mercies make secret and equivalent provisions for them and take care of his redeemed ones we might unhappily meet them in a sad eternity and without remedy weep together and groan for ever But God hath provided better things for them that they without us that is without our assistances shall be made perfect Sermon XXVII The Miracles of the Divine Mercy Part III. THere are very many more orders and conjugations of mercies but because the numbers of them naturally tend to their own greatnesse that is to have no measure I must reckon but a few more and them also without order for that they do descend upon us we see and feel but by what order of things or causes is as undiscerned as the head of Nilus or a sudden remembrance of a long neglected and forgotten proposition 1. But upon this account it is that good men have observed that the providence of God is so great a provider for holy living and does so certainly minister to religion that nature and chance the order of the world and the influences of heaven are taught to serve the ends of the Spirit of God and the spirit of a man I do not speak of the miracles that God hath in the severall periods of the world wrought for the establishing his lawes and confirming his promises and securing our obedience though that was all the way the overflowings and miracles of mercy as well as power but that which I consider is that besides the extraordinary emanations of the Divine power upon the first and most solemn occasions of an institution and the first beginnings of a religion such as were the wonders God did in Egypt and in the wildernesse preparatory to the sanction of that law and the first covenant and the miracles wrought by Christ and his Apostles for the founding and the building up the religion of the Gospel and the new covenant God does also do things wonderfull and miraculous for the promoting the ordinary and lesse solemn actions of our piety and to assist and accompany them in a constant and regular succession It was a strange variety of naturall efficacies that Manna should stink in 24. hours if gathered upon Wednesday and Thursday and that it should last till 48. hours if gathered upon the Even of the Sabbath and that it should last many hundreds of yeers when placed in the Sanctuary by the ministery of the high Priest but so it was in the Jews religion and Manna pleased every palate and it filled all appetites and the same measure was a different proportion it was much and it was little as if nature that it might serve religion had been taught some measures of infinity which is every where and no where filling all things and circumscribed with nothing measured by one Omer and doing the work of two like the crowns of Kings fitting the browes of Nimrod and the most mighty Warriour and yet not too large for the temples of an infant Prince And not onely is it thus in nature but in contingencies and acts depending upon the choice of men for God having commanded the sons of Israel to go up to Jerusalem to worship thrice every yeer and to leave their borders to be guarded by women and children and sick persons in the neighbourhood of diligent and spitefull enemies yet God so disposed of their hearts and opportunities that they never entered the land when the people were at their solemnity untill they desecrated their rites by doing at their Passeover the greatest sin and treason in the world till at Easter they crucified the Lord of life and glory they were secure in Jerusalem and in their borders but when they had destroyed religion by this act God took away their security and Titus besieged the City at the feast of Easter that the more might perish in the deluge of the Divine indignation To this observation the Jews adde that in Jerusalem no man ever had a fall that came thither to worship that at their solemn festivals there was reception in the Town for all the inhabitants of the land concerning which although I cannot affirm any thing yet this is certain that no godly person among all the tribes of Israel was ever a begger but all the variety of humane chances were over-ruled to the purposes of providence and