event and end infinitely more desirable then all the riches and all the pleasures and all the vanities and all the Kingdoms of this world I will not venture to determine what are the circumstances of the aboad of Holy Souls in their separate dwellings and yet possibly that might be easier then to tell what or how the soul is and works in this world where it is in the body tanquam in alienâ domo as in a prison in fetters and restraints for here the soul is discomposed and hindered it is not as it shall be as it ought to be as it was intended to be it is not permitted to its own freedom and proper operation so that all that we can understand of it here is that it is so incommodated with a troubled and abated instrument that the object we are to consider cannot be offered to us in a right line in just and equal propositions or if it could yet because we are to understand the soul by the soul it becomes not onely a troubled and abused object but a crooked instrument and we here can consider it just as a weak eye can behold a stafâ—e thrust into the waters of a troubled river the very water makes a refraction and the storm doubles the refraction and the water of the eye doubles the species and there is nothing right in the thing the object is out of its just place and the medium is troubled and the organ is impotent At cum exierit in liberum coelum quasi in domum suam venerit when the soul is entred into her own house into the free regions of the rest and the neighbourhood of heavenly joyes then its operations are more spiritual proper and proportioned to its being and though we cannot see at such a distance yet the objects is more fitted if we had a capable understanding it is in it self in a more excellent and free condition Certain it is that the body does hinder many actions of the soul it is an imperfect body and a diseased brain or a violent passion that makes fools no man hath a foolish soul and the reasonings of men have infinite difference and degrees by reason of the bodies constitution Among beasts which have no reason there is a greater likenesse then between men who have as by faces it is easier to know a man from a man then a sparrow from a sparrow or a squirrel from a squirrel so the difference is very great in our souls which difference because it is not originally in the soul and indeed cannot be in simple and spiritual substances of the same species or kind it must needs drive wholly from the body from its accidents and circumstances from whence it follows that because the body casts fetters and restraints hindrances and impediments upon the soul that the soul is much freer in the state of separation and if it hath any any act of life it is much more noble and expedite That the soul is alive after our death S. Paul affirms Christ died for us that whether we wake or sleep we should live together with him Now it were strange that we should be alive and live with Christ and yet do no act of life the body when it is asleep does many and if the soul does none the principle is lesse active then the instrument but if it does any act at all in separation it must necessarily be an act or effect of understanding there is nothing else it can do But this it can For it is but a weak and an unlearned proposition to say That the Soul can do nothing of it self nothing without the phantasmes and provisions of the body For 1. In this life the soul hath one principle clearly separate abstracted immaterial I mean the Spirit of grace which is a principle of life and action and in many instances does not all at communicate with matter as in the infusion superinduction and the creation of spiritual graces 2. As nutrition generation eating and drinking are actions proper to the body and its state so extasies visions raptures intuitive knowledge and consideration of its self acts of volition and reflex acts of understanding are proper to the soul. 3. And therefore it is observable that S. Paul said that he knew not whether his visions and raptures were in or out of the body for by that we see his judgement of the thing that one was as likely as the other neither of them impossible or unreasonable and therefore that the soul is as capable of action alone as in conjunction 4. If in the state of blessednesse there are some actions of the soul which doe not passe through the body such as contemplation of God and conversing with spirits and receiving those influences and rare immissions which coming from the Holy and mysterious Trinity make up the crown of glory it follows that the necessity of the bodies ministery is but during the state of this life and as long as it converses with fire and water and lives with corn and flesh and is fed by the satisfaction of material appetits which necessity and manner of conversation when it ceases it can be no longer necessary for the soul to be served by phantasmes and material representations 5. And therefore when the body shall be re-united it shall be so ordered that then the body shall confesse it gives not any thing but receives all its being and operation its manner and abode from the soul and that then it comes not to serve a necessity but to partake a glory For as the operations of the soul in this life begin in the body and by it the object is transmitted to the soul so then they shall begin in the soul and pass to the body and as the operations of the soul by reason of its dependence on the body are animal natural and material so in the resurrection the body shall be spiritual by reason of the preeminence influence and prime operation of the soul. Now between these two states stands the state of separation in which the operations of the soul are of a middle nature that is not so spirituall as in the resurrection and not so animal and natural as in the state of conjunction To all which I adde this consideration That our souls have the same condition that Christs soul had in the state of separation because he took on him all our nature and all our condition and it is certain Christs soul in the three dayes of his separation did exercise acts of life of joy and triumph and did not sleep but visited the souls of the Fathers trampled upon the pride of Devils and satisfied those longing souls which were Prisoners of hope and from all this we may conclude that the souls of all the servants of Christ are alive and therfore do the actions of life and proper to their state and therefore it is highly probable that the soul works clearer and understands
The foolish exchange fol. 224. 237. Matth. 16. ver 26. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul Sermon 20 21. 22. The Serpent and the Dove or a discourse of Christian Prudence fol. 251. 263. 274. Matth. 10. latter part of ver 16. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmlesse as doves Sermon 23. 24. Of Christian simplicity 289. 301. Matth. 10. latter part of ver 16. And harmlesse as doves Sermon 25. 26. 27. The miracles of the Divine Mercy fol. 313. 327. 340. Psal. 86. 5. For thou Lord art good and ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy to all them that call upon thee A Funerall Sermon preached at the Obsequies of the Right Honourable the Countesse of Carbery fol. 357. 2 Sam. 14. 14. For we must needs die and are as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered up again neither doth God respect any person yet doth he devise means that his banished be not expelled from him A Discourse of the Divine Institution necessity sacrednesse and separation of the Office Ministeriall Sermon I. VVHITSVNDAY OF THE SPIRIT OF GRACE 8. Romans v. 9. 10. But ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his * And if Christ be in you the body is dead because of sin but the Spirit is life because of righteousnesse THe day in which the Church commemorates the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles was the first beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This was the first day that the Religion was professed now the Apostles first openâ—d their commission and read it to all the people The Lord gave his Spirit or the Lord gave his word and great was the company of the Preachers For so I make bold to render that prophesie of David Christ was the word of God verbum aeternum but the Spirit was the word of God verbum Patefactum Christ was the word manifested in the flesh the Spirit was the word manifested to flesh and set in dominion over and in hostility against the flesh The Gospel and the Spirit are the same thing not in substance but the manifestation of the Spirit is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and because he was this day manifested the Gospel was this day first preached and it became a law to us called the law of the Spirit of life that is a law taught us by the Spirit leading us to life eternal But the Gospel is called the Spirit 1. Because it contains in it such glorious mysteries which were revealed by the immediate inspirations of the Spirit not onely in the matter it self but also in the manner and powers to apprehend them For what power of humane understanding could have found out the incarnation of a God that two natures a finite and an infinite could have been concentred into one hypostasis or person that a virgin should be a Mother that dead men should live again that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the ashes of dissolved bones should become bright as the Sun blessed as Angels swift in motion as thought clear as the purest Noone that God should so love us as to be willing to be reconcil'd to us and yet that himself must dye that he might pardon us that Gods most Holy Son should give us his body to eat and his bloud to crown our chalices and his Spirit to sanctifie our souls to turn our bodies into temperance our souls into mindes our mindes into Spirit our Spirit into glory that he who can give us all things who is Lord of Men and Angels and King of all the Creatures should pray to God for us without intermission that he who reigns over all the world should at the day of judgement give up the Kingdom to God the Father and yet after this resignation himself and we with him should for ever reign the more gloriously that we should be justified by Faith in Christ and that charity should be a part of faith and that both should work as acts of duty and as acts of relation that God should Crown the imperfect endeavours of his Saints with glory and that a humane act should be rewarded with an eternal inheritance that the wicked for the transient pleasure of a few minutes should be tormented with an absolute eternity of pains that the waters of baptisme when they are hallowed by the Spirit shall purge the soul from sin and that the Spirit of a man shall be nourished with the consecrated and mysterious elements and that any such nourishment should bring a man up to heaven and after all this that all Christian People all that will be saved must be partakers of the Divine nature of the Nature the infinite nature of God and must dwell in Christ and Christ must dwell in them and they must be in the Spirit and the Spirit must be for ever in them these are articles of so mysterious a Philosophy that we could have inferred them from no premises discours'd them upon the stock of no naturall or scientificall principles nothing but God and Gods spirit could have taught them to us and therefore the Gospel is Spiritus patefactus the manifestation of the Spirit ad aedificationem as the Apostle calls it for edification and building us up to be a Holy Temple to the Lord. 2. But when we had been taught all these mysterious articles we could not by any humane power have understood them unlesse the Spirit of God had given us a new light and created in us a new capacity and made us to be a new creature of another definition Animalis homo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is as S. Jude expounds the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the animal or the naturall man the man that hath not the Spirit cannot discern the things of God for they are spiritually discerned that is not to be understood but by the light proceeding from the Sun of righteousnesse and by that eye whose bird is the Holy Dove whose Candle is the Gospel Scio incapacem te sacramenti Impie Non posse coecis mentibus mysterium Haurire nostrum nil diurnum nox capit He that shall discourse Euclids elements to a swine or preach as Venerable Bede's story reports of him to a rock or talk Metaphysicks to a Bore will as much prevail upon his assembly as S. Peter and S. Paul could do upon uncircumcised hearts and ears upon the indisposed Greeks and prejudicate Jews An Ox will relish the tender flesh of Kids with as much gust and appetite as an unspirituall and unsanctified man will do the discourses of Angels or of an Apostle if he should come to preach the secrets of the Gospel And we finde it true by a sad experience How many times doth God
speak to us by his servants the Prophets by his Son by his Apostles by sermons by spirituall books by thousands of homilies and arts of counsell and insinuation and we sit as unconcerned as the pillars of a Church and hear the sermons as the Athenians did a story or as we read a gazet and if ever it come to passe that we tremble as Felix did when we hear a sad story of death of righteousnesse and judgement to come then we put it off to another time or we forget it and think we had nothing to do but to give the good man a hearing and as Anacharsis said of the Greeks they used money for nothing but to cast account withall so our hearers make use of sermons and discourses Evangelical but to fill up void spaces of our time to help to tell an hour with or without tediousnesse The reason of this is a sad condemnation to such persons they have not yet entertained the Spirit of God they are in darknesse they were washed in water but never baptized with the Spirit for these things are spiritually discerned They would think the Preacher rude if he should say they are not Christians they are not within the Covenant of the Gospel but it is certain that the spirit of Manifestation is not yet upon them and that is the first effect of the Spirit whereby we can be called sons of God or relatives of Christ. If we do not apprehend and greedily suck in the precepts of this holy Discipline as aptly as Merchants do discourse of gain or Farmers of fair harvests we have nothing but the Name of Christians but we are no more such really then Mandrakes are men or spunges are living creatures 3. The Gospel is called Spirit because it consists of Spiritual Promises and Spiritual precepts and makes all men that embrace it truly to be Spiritual men and therefore S. Paul addes an Epithete beyond this calling it a quickening Spirit that is it puts life into our Spirits which the law could not The law bound us to punishment but did not help us to obedience because it gave not the promise of Eternal life to its Disciples The Spirit that is the Gospel onely does this and this alone is it which comforts afflicted mindes which puts activenesse into wearyed Spirits which inflames our cold desires and does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 blows up sparks into live coles and coles up to flames and flames to perpetual burnings and it is impossible that any man who believes and considers the great the infinite the unspeakable the unimaginable the never ceasing joyes that are prepared for all the sons and daughters of the Gospel should not desire them and unlesse he be a fool he cannot but use means to obtain them effective hearty pursuances For it is not directly in the nature of a man to neglect so great a good there must be something in his manners some obliquity in his will or madnesse in his intellectuals or incapacity in his naturals that must make him sleep such a reward away or change it for the pleasure of a drunken feaver or the vanity of a Mistresse or the rage of a passion or the unreasonablenesse of any sin However this promise is the life of all our actions and the Spirit that first taught it is the life of our soules 4. But beyond this is the reason which is the consummation of all the faithful The Gospel is called the Spirit because by and in the Gospel God hath given to us not onely the Spirit of manifestation that is of instruction and of Catechisme of faith and confident assent but the Spirit of Confirmation or obsignation to all them that believe and obey the Gospel of Christ that is the power of God is come upon our hearts by which in an admirable manner we are made sure of a glorious inheritance made sure I say in the nature of the thing and our own persuasions also are confirmed with an excellent a comfortable a discerning and a reasonable hope in the strength of which and by whose ayde as we do not doubt of the performance of the promise so we vigorously pursue all the parts of the condition and are inabled to work all the work of God so as not to be affrighted with fear or seduced by vanity or oppressed by lust or drawn off by evil example or abused by riches or imprison'd by ambition and secular designes This the Spirit of God does work in all his Servants and is called the spirit of obsignation or the confirming spirit because it confirms our hope and assures our title to life eternall and by means of it and other its collateral assistances it also confirms us in our duty that we may not onely professe in word but live lives according to the Gospel And this is the sense of the Spirit mentionâ—d in the Text ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you That is if ye be made partakers of the Gospel or of the spirit of manifestation if ye be truly intitled to God and have received the promise of the Father then are ye not carnal men ye are spirituall ye are in the Spirit if ye have the Spirit in one sense to any purpose ye have it also in another if the Spirit be in you you are in it if it hath given you hope it hath also inabled and ascertainâ—d your duty For the Spirit of manifestation will but upbraid you in the shame and horrours of a sad eternity if you have not the Spirit of obsignation if the Holy Ghost be not come upon you to great purposes of holinesse all other pretences are vain ye are still in the flesh which shall never inherit the kingdom of God In the Spirit that is in the power of the spirit so the Greeks call him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who is possessed by a spirit whom God hath filled with a coelestial immission he is said to be in God when God is in him and it is a similitude taken from persons encompassed with guards they are in custodiâ that is in their power under their command moved at their dispose they rest in their time and receive laws from their authority and admit visiters whom they appoint and must be employed as they shall suffer so are men who are in the Spirit that is they beleeve as he teaches they work as he inables they choose what he calls good they are friends of his friends and they hate with his hatred with this onely difference that persons in custody are forced to do what their keepers please and nothing is free but their wils but they that are under the command of the Spirit do all things which the Spirit commands but they do them cheerfully and their will is now the prisoner but it is in liberâ custodiâ the will is where it ought to be and where it desires to be and it cannot easily
Father and the influences of the Holy Ghost our souls are not onely recovered from the state of flesh and reduced back to the intirenesse of animall operations but they are heightned into spirit and transformâ—d into a new nature And this is a new Article and now to be considered S. Hierom tels of the Custome of the Empire When a Tyrant was overcome they usâ—d to break the head of his Statues and upon the same Trunk to set the head of the Conquerour and so it passed wholly for the new Prince So it is in the kingdom of Grace As soon as the Tyrant sin is overcome and a new heart is put into us or that we serve under a new head instantly we have a new Name given us and we are esteemed a new Creation and not onely changed in manners but we have a new nature within us even a third part of essentiall constitution This may seem strange and indeed it is so and it is one of the great mysteriousnesses of the Gospel Every man naturally consists of soul and body but every Christian man that belongs to Christ hath more For he hath body and soul and spirit My Text is plain for it If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his and by Spirit is not meant onely the graces of God and his gifts enabling us to do holy things there is more belongs to a good man then so But as when God made man he made him after his own image and breath'd into him the spirit of life and he was made in animam viventem into a living soul then he was made a man So in the new creation Christ by whom God made both the worlds intends to conform us to his image and he hath given us the spirit of adoption by which we are made sons of God and by the spirit of a new life we are made new creatures capable of a new state intitled to another manner of duration enabled to do new and greater actions in order to higher ends we have new affections new understandings new wils Vetera transierunt ecce omnia nova facta sunt All things are become new And this is called the seed of God when it relates to the principle and cause of this production but the thing that is produced is a spirit and that is as much in nature beyond a soul as a soul is beyond a body This great Mystery I should not utter but upon the greatest authority in the world and from an infallible Doctor I mean S. Paul who from Christ taught the Church more secrets then all the whole Colledge besides And the very God of peace sanctifie you wholly and I pray God that your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blamelesse unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are not sanctified wholly nor preserved in safety unlesse besides our souls and bodies our spirit also be kept blamelesse This distinction nice and infinitely above humane reason but the word of God saith the same Apostle is sharper then a two-edged sword piercing even to the dividing asunder the soul and the spirit and that hath taught us to distinguish the principle of a new life from the principle of the old the celestiall from the naturall and thus it is This spirit as I now discourse of it is a principle infused into us by God when we become his children whereby we live the life of Grace and understand the secrets of the Kingdom and have passions and desires of things beyond and contrary to our naturall appetites enabling us not onely to sobriety which is the duty of the body not onely to justice which is the rectitude of the soul but to such a sanctity as makes us like to God * For so saith the Spirit of God Be ye holy as I am be pure be perfect as your heavenly Father is pure as he is perfect which because it cannot be a perfection of degrees it must be in similitudine naturae in the likenesse of that nature which God hath given us in the new birth that by it we might resemble his excellency and holinesse And this I conceive to be the meaning of S. Peter According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain to life and godlinesse that is to this new life of godlinesse through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and vertue whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises that by these you might be partakers of the Divine nature so we read it But it is something mistaken it is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Divine nature for Gods nature is indivisible and incommunicable but it is spoken participativè or per analogiant partakers of a Divine nature that is of this new and God-like nature given to every person that serves God whereby he is sanctified and made the childe of God and framed into the likenesse of Christ. The Greeks generally call this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a gracious gift an extraordinary superaddition to nature not a single gift in order to single purposes but an universall principle and it remains upon all good men during their lives and after their death and is that white stone spoken of in the Revelation and in it a new name written which no man knoweth but he that hath it And by this Gods sheep at the day of judgement shall be discerned from goats If their spirits be presented to God pure and unblameable this great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this talent which God hath given to all Christians to improve in the banks of grace and of Religion if they bring this to God increased and grown up to the fulnesse of the measure of Christ for it is Christs Spirit and as it is in us it is called the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ then we shall be acknowledged for sons and our adoption shall passe into an eternall inheritance in the portion of our elder Brother I need not to apply this Discourse The very mystery it self is in the whole world the greatest engagement of our duty that is imaginable by the way of instrument and by the way of thankfulnesse Quisquis magna dedit voluit sibi magna rependi He that gives great things to us ought to have great acknowledgements and Seneca said concerning wise men That he that doth benefit to others hides those benefits as a man layes up great treasures in the earth which he must never see with his eyes unlesse a great occasion forces him to dig the graves and produce that which he buried but all the while the man was hugely rich and he had the wealth of a great relation so it is with God and us For this huge benefit of the Spirit which God gives us is for our good deposited in our souls not made for forms and ostentation not to be looked upon or serve little ends but growing in the secret of our
done more then to escape the punishment of his Fathers follies If sin doth abound and evils by sin are derived from his Parents much more shall grace super abound and mercy by grace If he was in danger from the crimes of others much rather shall he be secured by his own piety For if God punishes the sins of the fathers to four generations yet he rewards the piety of fathers to ten to hundreds and to thousands Many of the Ancestors of Abraham were persons not noted for religion but suffered in the publike impiety and almost universal idolatry of their ages and yet all the evils that could thence descend upon the family were wiped off and God began to reckon with Abraham upon a new stock of blessings and piety and he was under God the Original of so great a blessing that his family for 1500. years together had from him a title to many favours and what ever evils did chance to them in the descending ages were but single evils in respect of that treasure of mercies which the fathers piety had obtained to the whole nation And it is remarkable to observe how blessings did stick to them for their fathers sakes even whether they would or no. For first his Grand-childe Esau proved a naughty man and he lost the great blessing which was intailed upon the family but he got not a curse but a lesse blessing and yet because he lost the greater blessing God excluded him from being reckoned in the elder time for God foreseeing the event so ordered it that he should first lose his birth-right and then lose the blessing for it was to be certain the family must be reckoned for prosperous in the proper line and yet God blessed Esau into a great Nation and made him the Father of many Princes Now the line of blessing being reckoned in Jacob God blessed his family strangely and by miracle for almost five generations he brought them from Egypt by mighty signes and wonders and when for sin they all died in their way to Canaan two onely excepted God so ordered it that they were all reckoned as single deaths the Nation still descending like a river whose waters were drunk up for the beauvrage of an army but still it keeps its name and current and the waters are supplied by showers and springs and providence After this iniquity still increased and then God struck deeper and spread curses upon whole families he translated the Priesthood from line to line he removed the Kingome from one family to another and still they sinned worse and then we read that God smote almost a whole tribe the tribe of Benjmin was almost extinguished about the matter of the Levites Concubine but still God remembred his promise which he made with their forefathers and that breach was made up After this we finde a greater rupture made and ten tribes fell into idolatry and ten tribes were carried captives into Assyria and never came again But still God remembred his covenant with Abraham and left two Tribes but they were restlesse in their provocation of the God of Abraham and they also were carried captive But still God was the God of their fathers and brought them back and placed them safe and they grew again into a Kingdom and should have remained for ever but that they killed one that was greater then Abraham even the Messias and then they were rooted out and the old covenant cast off and God delighted no more to be called the God of Abraham but the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. As long as God kept that relation so long for the fathers sakes they had a title and an inheritance to a blessing for so saith Saint Paul As touching the election they are beloved for the Fathers sakes I did insist the longer upon this instance that I might remonstrate how great and how sure and how persevering mercies a pious Father of a family may derive upon his succeeding generations And if we do but tread in the footsteps of our Father Abraham we shall inherit as certain blessings But then I pray adde these considerations 1. If a great impiety and a clamorous wickednesse hath stained the honour of a family and discomposed its title to the Divine mercies and protection it is not an ordinary piety that can restore this family An ordinary even course of life full of sweetnesse and innocency will secure every single person in his own eternal interest but that piety which must be a spring of blessings and communicative to others that must plead against the sins of their Ancestors and begin a new bank of mercies for the Relatives that must be a great and excellent a very religious state of life A smal pension will maintain a single person but he that hath a numerous family and many to provide for needs a greater providence of God and a bigger provision for their maintenance and a small revenue will not keep up the dignity of a great house especially if it be charged with a great debt And this is the very state of the present question That piety that must be instrumental to take off the curse imminent upon a family to blesse a numerous posterity to secure a fair condition to many ages and to pay the debts of their Fathers sins must be so large as that all necessary expences and dutyes for his own soul being first discharged it may be remarkeable in great expressions it may be exemplar to all the family it may be of universal efficacie large in the extension of parts deep in the intension of degrees and then as the root of a tree receives nourishment not onely sufficient to preserve its own life but to transmit a plastick juice to the trunk of the tree and from thence to the utmost branch and smallest gem that knots in the most distant part So shall the great and exemplar piety of the father of a family not onely preserve to the interest of his own soul the life of grace and hopes of glory but shall be a quickning spirit active and communicative of ablessing not onely to the trunk of the tree to the body and rightly descending line but even to the collateral branches to the most distant relatives and all that shall claim a kinred shall have a title to a blessing And this was the way that was prescribed to the family of Eli upon whom a sad curse was intailed that there should not be an old man of the family for ever and that they should be beggers and lose the office of Priesthood by the counsel of R. Johanan the son of Zacheus all the family betook themselves to a great a strict and a severe religion and God was intreated to revoke his decree to be reconciled to the family to restore them to the common condition of men from whence they stood separate by the displeasure of God against the crime of Eli and his Sons Hophni and Phinehas This course is sure
the reflection will make no distraction of our faculties nor enkindle any irregular fires when we may understand our selves without danger In the mean this consideration is gone high enough when we understand the soul of a man to be so excellently perfect that we cannot understand how excellently perfect it is that being the best way of expressing our conceptions of God himself and therefore I shall not need by distinct discourses to represent that the will of man is the last resort and sanctuary of true pleasure which in its formality can be nothing else but a conformity of possession or of being to the will that the understanding being the châ—nel and conveyance of the noblest perceptions feeds upon pleasureâ— in all its proportionate acts and unlesse it be disturbed by intervening sins and remembrances derived hence keeps a perpetual festival that the passions are every of them fitted with an object in which they rest as in their centre that they have such delight in these their proper objects that too often they venture a damnation rather then quit their interest and possession but yet from these considerations it would follow that to lose a soul which is designed to be an immense sea of pleasures even in its natural capacities is to lose all that whereby a man can possibly be or be supposed happy and so much the rather is this understood to be an insupportable calamity because losing a soul in this sense is not a meer privation of those felicities of which a soul is naturally designed to be a partaker but it is an investing it with contrary objects and crosse effects and dolorous perceptions For the will if it misses its desires is afflicted and the understanding when it ceases to be ennobled with excellent things is made ignorant as a swine dull as the foot of a rock and the afflictions are in the destitution of their perfective actions made tumultuous vexed and discomposed to the height of rage and violence But this is but the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the beginning of those throes which end not but in eternal infelicity Secondly if we consider the price that the Son of God payed for the redemption of a soul we shall better estimate of it then from the weak discourses of our imperfect and unlearned Philosophy not the spoil of rich provinces not the aestimate of kingdoms not the price of Cleopatra's draught not any thing that was corruptible or perishing for that which could not one minute retard the tearm of its own natural dissolution could not be a price for the redemption of one perishing soul. And if we list but to remember and then consider that a miserable lost and accursed soul does so infinitely undervalue and disrelish all the goods and riches that this world dotes on that he hath no more gust in them or pleasure then the fox hath in eating a turfe that if he could be imagined to be the Lord of ten thousand worlds he would give them all for any shaddow of a hope of a possibility of returning to life again that Dives in hell would have willingly gone on embassy to his fathers house that he might have been quit a little from his flames and on that condition would have given Lazarus the fee-simple of all his temporal possessions though he had once denied to relieve him with the superfluities of his table will soon confesse that a moment of time is no good exchange for an eternity of duration and a light unprofitable possession is not to be put in the ballance against a soul which is the glory of the creation a soul with whom God had made a contract and contracted excellent relations it being one of Gods appellatives that he is the lover of souls When God made a soul it was onely faciamus hominem ad imaginem nostram He spake the word and it was done but when man had lost this soul which the spirit of God breathed in him it was not so soon recovered It is like the resurrection which hath troubled the faith of many who are more apt to believe that God made a man from nothing then that he can return a man from dust corruption but for this resurrection of the soul for the reimplacing the divine image for the rescuing it from the devils power for the reintitling it to the kingdoms of grace and glory God did a work greater then the creation He was fain to contract Divinity to a span to send a person to die for us who of himself could not die and was constrained to use rare and mysterious arts to make him capable of dying he prepared a person instrumental to his purpose by sending his Son from his own bosom a person both God and man an aenigma to all nations and to all sciences one that ruled over all the Angels that walked upon the pavements of heaven whose feet were clothed with stars whose eyes were brighter then the Sun whose voice is louder then thunder whose understanding is larger then that infinite space which we imagine in the uncircumscribed distance beyond the first orbe of heaven a person to whom felicity was as essential as life to God this was the onely person that was designed in the eternal decrees of the divine predestination to pay the price of a soul to ransom us from death lesse then this person could not do it for although a soul in its essence is finite yet there were many infinites which were incident and annexed to the condition of lost souls For all which because provision was to be made nothing lesse then an infinite excellence could satisfie for a soul who was lost to infinite and eternal ages who was to be afflicted with insupportable and indetermined that is next to infinite paines who was to bear the load of an infinite anger from the provocation of an eternal God and yet if it be possible that infinite can receive degrees this is but one half of the abysse and I think the lesser for that this person who was God eternal should be lessened in all his appearances to a span to the little dimensions of a man and that he should really become very contemptibly little although at the same time he was infinitely and unalterably great that is essential natural and necessary felicity should turn into an intolerable violent and immense calamity to his person that this great God should not be admitted to pay the price of our redemption unlesse he would suffer that horrid misery which that lost soul should suffer as it represents the glories of his goodnesse who used such rare and admirable instruments in actuating the designes of his mercy so it shewes our condition to have been very desperate and our losse invaluable A soul in Gods account is valued at the price of the blood and shame and tortures of the Son of God and yet we throw it â—way for the exchange of sins that a man naturally is ashamed to own we
it takes from him the spirit of government and render him diffident pusillanimous private and ashamed if it happen in the person of a subject it makes him hate the man that shall shame him and punish him it hates the light and the Sun because that opens him and therefore is much more against government because that publishes and punishes too One thing I desire to be observed that though the primitive heresies now named and all those others their successors practised and taught horrid impurities yet they did not invade government at all and therefore those sects that these Apostles did signifie by prophecy and in whom both these are concentred were to appear in some latter times and the dayes of the prophecy were not then to be fulfill'd what they are since every age must judge by its own experience for its own interest But Christian religion is so pure and holy that chastity is sometimes used for the whole religion and to do an action chastly signifies purity of intention abstraction from the world and separation from low and secular ends the virginity of the soul and its union with God and all deviations and estrangements from God and adhesion to forbidden objects is called fornication and adultery Those sects therefore that teach incourage or practise impious or unhallowed mixtures and shameful lusts are issues of the impure spirit and most contrary to God who can behold no unclean thing 10. Those prophets and Pastors that pretend severity and live loosely or are severe in small things and give liberty in greater or forbid some sins with extreme rigour and yet practise or teach those that serve their interest or constitute their sect are to be suspected and avoided accordingly Nihil est hominum ineptâ persuasione falsius nec fictâ severitate ineptius All ages of the Church were extremely curious to observe when any new teachers did arise what kinde of lives they lived and if they pretended severely and to a strict life then they knew their danger doubled for it is certain all that teach doctrines contrary to the established religion delivered by the Apostles all they are evil men God will not suffer a good man to be seduced damnably much lesse can he be a seducer of others and therefore you shall still observe the false Apostles to be furious and vehement in their reproofs and severe in their animadversions of others but then if you watch their private or stay till their numbers are full or observe their spiritual habits you shall finde them indulgent to themselves or to return from their disguises or so spiritually wicked that their pride or their revenge their envie or their detraction their scorn or their complacency in themselves their desire of preheminence and their impatience of arrival shall place them far enough in distance from a poor carnal sinner whom they shall load with censures and an upbraiding scorn but themselves are like Devils the spirits of darknesse the spiritual wickednesses in high places Some sects of men are very angry against servants for recreating and easing their labours with a lesse prudent and an unsevere refreshment but the patron of their sect shall oppresse a wicked man and an unbelieving person they shall chastise a drunkard and entertain murmurrers they shall not abide an oath and yet shal force men to break three or four This sect is to be avoided because although it is good to be severe against carnal or bodily sins yet it is not good to mingle with them who chastise a bodily sin to make way for a spiritual or reprove a servant that his Lord may sin alone or punish a stranger and a begger that will not approve their sins but will have sins of his own Concering such persons Saint Paul hath told us that they shall not proceed far but their folly shall be manifest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Lysias Cito ad naturam ficta reciderunt sua They that dissemble their sin and their manners or make severity to serve loosnesse and an imaginary vertue to minister to a real vice they that abhor Idols and would commit sacrilege chastise a drunkard and promote sedition declaime against the vanity of great persons and then spoil them of their goods reform manners and engrosse estates talk godly and do impiously these are teachers which the Holy spirit of God hath by three Apostles bid us to beware of and decline as we would run from the hollownesse of a grave or the despaires and sorrows of the damned 11. The substance of al is this that we must not chose our doctrine by our guide but our guide by the doctrine if we doubt concerning the doctrine we may judge of that by the lives and designes of the Teachers By their fruits you shall know them and by the plain words of the scripture by the Apostles Creed and by the commandments and by the certain known and established forms of government These are the great indices and so plain apt and easy that he that is deceived is so because he will be so he is betrayed into it by his own lust and a voluntary chosen folly 12 Besides these premises there are other little candles that can help to make the judgement clearer but they are such as do not signifie alone but in conjunction with some of the precedent characters which are drawn by the great lines of scripture Such as are 1. when the teachers of sects stir up unprofitable and uselesse Questions 2. when they causelesly retire from the universal customs of Christendom 3. And cancel all the memorials of the greatest mysteries of our redemption 4. When their confessions and Catechismes and their whole religion consist 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in speculations and ineffective notions in discourses of Angels and spirits in abstractions and raptures in things they understand not and of which they have no revelation 5. Or else if their religion spends it self in ceremonies outward guises and material solemnities and imperfect formes drawing the heart of the vine forth into leaves and irregular fruitless suckers turning the substance into circumstances and the love of God into gestures and the effect of the spirit into the impertinent offices of a burdensom ceremonial For by these two particulars the Apostles reproved the Jews and the Gnostics or those that from the school of Pythagoras pretended conversation with Angels and great knowledge of the secrets of the spirit chosing tutelar Angels and assigning them offices and charges as in the Church of Rome to this day they do to Saints to these adde 6. that we observe whether the guides of souls avoid to suffer for their religion for then the matter is foul or the man not fit to lead that dares not die in cold blood for his religion will the man lay his life and his soul upon the proposition If so then you may consider him upon his proper grounds but if he refuses that refuse his conduct
our nature or an appendage to it for whereas our constitution is weak our souls apt to diminution and impedite faculties our bodies to mutilation and imperfection to blindnesse and crookednesse to stammering and sorrows to baldnesse and deformity to evil conditions and accidents of body and to passions and sadnesse of spirit God hath in his infinite mercy provided for every condition rare suppletories of comfort and usefulnesse to make recompence and sometimes with an overrunning proportion for those natural defects which were apt to make our persons otherwise contemptible and our conditions intolerable God gives to blinde men better memories For upon this account it is that Rufinus makes mention of Didymus of Alexandria who being blinde was blessed with a rare attention and singular memory and by prayer and hearing and meditating and discoursing came to be one of the most excellent Divines of that whole age And it was more remarkable in Nicasius Machliniensis who being blockish at his book in his first childhood fell into accidental blindnesse and from thence continually grew to so quick an apprehension and so tenacious a memory that he became the wonder of his contemporaries and was chosen Rector of the College at Mechlin and was made licentiate of Theology at Lovaine and Doctor of both the laws at Colein living and dying in great reputation for his rare parts and excellent learning At the same rate also God deals with men in other instances want of children he recompences with freedom from care and whatsoever evil happens to the body is therefore most commonly single and unaccompanied because God accepts that evil as the punishment of the sin of the man or the instrument of his vertue or his security and is reckoned as a sufficient cure or a sufficient Antidote God hath laid laid a severe law upon all women thâ—â— in sorrow they shall bring forth children yet God hath so attempeâ—ed that sorrow that they think themselves more accursed if they want that sorrow and they have reason to rejoyce in that state the trouble of which is alleviated by a promise that they shall be saved in bearing children He that wants one eye hath the force and vigorousnesse of both united in that which is left him and when ever any man is afflicted with sorrow his reason and his religion himself and all his friends persons that are civil and persons that are obliged run into comfort him and he may if he will observe wisely finde so many circumstances of ease and remission so many designes of providence and studied favours such contrivances of collateral advantage and certain reserves of substantial and proper comforâ— that in the whole sum of affaires it often happens that a single crosse is a double blessing that even in a temporal sense it is better to go to the house of mourning then of joyes and festival egressions Is not the affliction of â—overty better then the prosperity of a great and tempting fortune does not wisdom dwell in a mean estate and a low spirit retired thoughts and under a sad roof and is it not generally true that sicknesse it self is appayed with religion and holy thoughts with pious resolutions and penitential prayers with returns to God and to sober councels and if this be true that God sends sorrow to cure sin and affliction be the hand-maid to grace it is also certain that every sad contingency in nature is doubly recompenced with the advantages of religion besides those intervening refreshments which support the spirit and refresh its instruments I shall need to instance but once more in this particular God hath sent no greater evil into the world then that in the sweat of our brows we shall eat our bread and in the difficulty and agony in the sorrows and contention of our souls we shall work out our salvation But see how in the first of these God hath out done his own anger and defeated the purposes of his wrath by the inundation of his mercy for this labour and sweat of our brows is so far from being a curse that without it our very bread would not be so great a blessing It is not labour that makes the Garlick and the pulse the Sycamore and the Cresses the cheese of the Goats and the butter of the sheep to be savoury and pleasant as the flesh of the Roe-buck or the milk of the Kine the marrow of Oxen or the thighs of birds If it were not for labour men neither could eat so much nor relish so pleasantly nor sleep so soundly nor be so healthful nor so useful so strong nor so patient so noble or so untempted and as God hath made us beholding to labour for the purchase of many good things so the thing it self ows to labour many degrees of its worth and value and therefore I need not reckon that besides these advantages the mercies of God have found out proper and natural remedies for labour Nights to cure the sweat of the day sleep to ease our watchfulnesse rest to alleviate our burdens and dayes of religion to procure our rest and things are so ordered that labour is become a duty and an act of many vertues and is not so apt to turne into a sin as is its contrary and is therefore necessary not onely because we need it for making provisions of our life but even to ease the labour of our rest there being no greater tediousnesse of spirit in the world then want of imployment and an unactive life and the lasie man is not onely unprofitable but also accursed and he groans under the load of his time which yet passes over the active man light as a dreame or the feathers of a bird while the disimployed is a desease and like a long sleeplesse night to himself and a load unto his country And therefore although in this particular God hath been so merciful in this infliction that from the sharpnesse of the curse a very great part of mankinde are freed and there are myriads of people good and bad who do not eat their bread in the sweat of their brows yet this is but an overrunning and an excesse of the divine mercy God did more for us then we did absolutely need for he hath disposed of the circumstances of this curse that mans affections are so reconciled to it that they desire it and are delighted in it and so the Anger of God is ended in loving Kindnesse and the drop of water is lost in the full chalice of the wine and the curse is gone out into a multiplied blessing But then for the other part of the severe law and laborious imposition that we must work out our spiritual interest with the labours of our spirit seems to most men to be so intolerable that rather then passe under it they quit their hopes of heaven and passe into the portion of Devils and what can there be to alleviate this sorrow that a man shall be perpetually sollicited with an
brighter and discourses wiser and rejoyces louder and loves noblier and desires purer and hopes stronger then it can do here But if these arguments should fail yet the felicity of Gods Saints cannot fail For suppose the body to be a necessary instrument but out of tune and discomposed by sin and anger by accident and chance by defect and imperfections yet that it is better then none at all and that if the soul works imperfectly with an imperfect body that then she works not at all when she hath none and suppose also that the soul should be as much without sense or perception in death as it is in a deep sleep which is the image and shadow of death yet then God devises other means that his banished be not expelled from him For 2. God will restore the soul to the body and raise the body to such a perfection that it shall be an Organ fitt to praise him upon it shall be made spiritual to minister to the soul when the soul is turned into a Spirit then the soul shall be brought forth by Angels from her incomparable and easie bed from her rest in Christs Holy Bosome and be made perfect in her being and in all her operations And this shall first appear by that perfection which the soul shall receive as instrumental to the last judgement for then she shall see clearly all the Records of this world all the Register of her own memory For all that we did in this life is laid up in our memories and though dust and forgetfulnesse be drawn upon them yet when God shall lift us from our dust then shall appear clearly all that we have done written in the Tables of our conscience which is the souls memory We see many times and in many instances that a great memory is hindered and put out and we thirty years after come to think of something that lay so long under a curtain we think of it suddenly and without a line of deduction or proper consequence And all those famous memories of Simonides and Theodectes of Hortensins and Seneca of Sceptius Metrodorus and Carneades of Cyneas the Embassadour of Pyrrhus are onely the Records better kept and lesse disturbed by accident and desease For even the memory of Herods son of Athens of Bathyllus and the dullest person now alive is so great and by God made so sure a record of all that ever he did that assoon as ever God shall but tune our instrument and draw the curtains and but light up the candle of immortality there we shal finde it all there we shall see all and all the world shall see all then we shall be made fit to converse with God after the manner of Spirits we shall be like to Angels In the mean time although upon the perswasion of the former discourse it be highly probable that the souls of Gods servants do live in a state of present blessednesse and in the exceeding joyes of a certain expectation of the revelation of the day of the Lord and the coming of Jesus yet it will concern us onely to secure our state by holy living and leave the event to God that as S. Paul said whether present or absent whether sleeping or waking whether perceiving or perceiving not we may be accepted of him that when we are banished this world and from the light of the sun we may not be expelled from God and from the light of his countenance but that from our beds of sorrows our souls may passe into the bosome of Christ and from thence to his right hand in the day of sentence For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ then if we have done wel in the body we shal never be expelled from the beatifical presence of God but be domesticks of his family and heires of his Kingdom and partakers of his glory Amen I Have now done with my Text but yet am to make you another Sermon I have told you the necessity and the state of death it may be too largely for such a sad story I shal therefore now with a better compendium teach you how to live by telling you a plain narrative of a life which if you imitate and write after the copy it will make that death shall not be an evil but a thing to be desired and to be reckoned amongst the purchases and advantages of your fortune When Martha and Mary went to weep over the grave of their brother Christ met them there and preached a Funeral Sermon discoursing of the resurrection and applying to the purposes of faith and confession of Christ and glorification of God We have no other we can have no better precedent to follow and now that we are come to weep over the grave of our Dear Sister this rare personage we cannot chuse but have many vertues to learn many to imitate and some to exercise I chose not to declare her extraction and genealogy It was indeed fair and Honorable but having the blessing to be descended from worthy and Honoured Ancestors and her self to be adopted and ingraffed into a more Noble family yet she felt such outward appendages to be none of hers because not of her choice but the purchase of the vertues of others which although they did ingage her to do noble things yet they would upbraid all degenerate and lesse honourable lives then were those which began and increased the honour of the families She did not love her fortune for making her noble but thought it would be a dishonour to her if she did not continue her Noblenesse and excellency of vertue fit to be owned by persons relating to such Ancestors It is fit for all us to honour the Noblenesse of a family but it is also fit for them that are Noble to despise it and to establish their honour upon the foundation of doing excellent things and suffering in good causes and despising dishonourable actions and in communicating good things to others For this is the rule in Nature Those creatures are most Honourable which have the greatest power and do the greatest good And accordingly my self have been a witnesse of it how this excellent Lady would by an act of humility and Christian abstraction strip her self of all that fair appendage of exteriour honour which decked her person and her fortune and desired to be owned by nothing but what was her own that she might onely be esteemed Honourable according to that which is the honour of a Christian and a wise person 2. She had a strict and severe education and it was one of Gods graces and favours to her For being the Heiresse of a great fortune and living amongst the throng of persons in the sight of vanities and empty temptations that is in that part of the Kingdom where greatnesse is too often expressed in great follies and great vices God had provided a severe and angry education to chastise the forwardnesses of a young spirit and a fair fortune
of the greater concernment that we be curious to hear in order to such purposes which are perfective of the soul and of the spirit and not to dwell in fancy and speculation in pleasures and trifling arrests which continue the soul in its infancy and childhood never letting it go forth into the wisdom and vertues of a man I have read concerning Dionysius of Sicily that being delighted extremely with a Ministrel that sung well and struck his Harp dexterously he promised to give him a great reward and that raised the fancy of the Man and made him play better But when the musick was done and the man waited for his great hope the King dismissed him empty telling him that he should carry away as much of the promised reward as himself did of the Musick and that he had payed him sufficiently with the pleasure of the promise for the pleasure of his song both their ears had been equally delighted and the profit just none at all So it is in many mens hearing Sermons they admire the Preacher and he pleases their ears and neither of them both bear along with them any good and the hearer hath as little good by the sermon as the Preacher by the ayr of the peoples breath when they make a noise and admire and understand not And that also is a second caution I desire all men would take 2. That they may never trouble the affairs of preaching and hearing respectively with admiring the person of any man To admire a preacher is such a reward of his pains or worth as if you should crown a Conqueror with a garland of roses or a Bride with Laurell it is an undecency it is no part of the reward which could be intended for him For though it be a good natur'd folly yet it hath in it much danger for by that means the Preacher may lead his hearers captive and make them servants of a faction or of a lust it makes them so much the lesse to be servants of Christ by how much they call any man Master upon earth it weakens the heart and hands of others it places themselves in a rank much below their proper station changing from hearing the word of God to admiration of the person and faces of men and it being a fault that falls upon the more easie natures and softer understandings does more easily abuse a man and though such a person may have the good fortune to admire a good man and a wise yet it is an ill disposition and makes him liable to every mans abuse Stupidum hominem quâvis oratione percelli said Heraclitus An undiscerning person is apt to be cozened by every oration And besides this That Preacher whom some do admire others will most certainly envy and that also is to be provided against with diligence and you must not admire too forwardly for your own sake lest you fall into the hands of a worse preacher and for his sake whom when you admire you also love for others will be apt to envy him 3. But that must by all men be avoided for envy is the worst counsellour in the world and the worst hearer of a wise discourse I pity those men who live upon flattery and wonder and while they sit at the foot of the Doctors chair stare in his face and cry 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rarely spoken admirably done they are like callow and unfeathered birds gaping perpetually to be fed from anothers mouth and they never come to the knowledge of the truth such a knowledge as is effective and expressed in a prudent and holy life But those men that envy the preacher besides that they are great enemies of the Holy Ghost and are spitefully evil because God is good to him they are also enemies to themselves He that envies the honours or the riches of another envies for his own sake and he would fain be rich with that wealth which sweats in his neighbours coffers but he that envies him that makes good sermons envies himself and is angry because himself may receive the benefit and be improved or delighted or instructed by another He that is apt fondly to admire any mans person must cure himself by considering that the Preacher is Gods minister and servant that he speaks Gods word and does it by the Divine assistance that he hath nothing of his own but sin and imperfection that he does but his duty and that also hardly enough that he is highly answerable for his talent and stands deeply charged with the cure of souls and therefore that he is to be highly esteemed for the work sake not for the person his industry and his charity is to be beloved his ability is to be accounted upon another stock and for it the preacher and the hearer are both to give God thanks but nothing is due to the man for that save onely that it is the rather to be imployed because by it we may better be instructed but if any other reflexion be made upon his person it is next to the sin and danger of Herod and the people when the â—sine Oration was made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with huge fancy the people were pleased and Herod was admired and God was angry and an Angel was sent to strike him with death and with dishonour But the envy against a preacher is to be cured by a contrary discourse and we must remember that he is in the place of God and hath received the gift of God and the aids of the holy Ghost that by his abilities God is glorified and we are instructed and the interests of vertue and holy religion are promoted that by this means God who deserves that all souls should serve him for ever is likely to have a fairer harvest of glory and service and therefore that envie is against him that if we envie because we are not the instrument of this good to others we must consider tha we desire the praise to our selves not to God Admiration of a man supposes him to be inferiour to the person so admired but then he is pleased so to be but envie supposes him as low and he is displeased at it and the envious man is not onely lesse then the other mans vertue but also contrary the former is a vanity but this is a vice that wants wisdom but this wants wisdom and charity too that supposes an absence of some good but this is a direct affliction and calamity 4. And after all this if the preacher be not despised he may proceed cheerfully in doing his duty and the hearer may have some advantages by every Sermon I remember that Homer sayes the woers of Penelope laught at Vlisses because at his return he called for a loaf and did not to shew his gallantry call for swords and spears Vlysses was so wise as to call for that he needed and had it and it did him more good then a whole armory would in his case so is the plainest part
choose any thing else because it is extreamly in love with this as the Saints and Angels in their state of Beatific vision cannot choose but love God and yet the liberty of their choice is not lessenâ—d because the object fils all the capacities of the will and the understanding Indifferency to an object is the lowest degree of liberty and supposes unworthinesse or defect in the object or the apprehension but the will is then the freest and most perfect in its operation when it intirely pursues a good with so certain determination and clear election that the contrary evil cannot come into dispute or pretence Such in our proportions is the liberty of the sons of God it is an holy and amiable captivity to the Spirit the will of man is in love with those chains which draws to God and loves the fetters that confine us to the pleasures and religion of the kingdom And as no man will complain that his temples are restraind and his head is prisoner when it is encircled with a crown So when the Son of God had made us free and hath onely subjected us to the service and dominion of the Spirit we are free as Princes within the circles of their Diadem and our chains are bracelets and the law is a law of liberty and his service is perfect freedom and the more we are subjects the more we shall reign as Kings and the faster we run the easier is our burden and Christs yoke is like feathers to a bird not loads but helps to motion without them the body fals and we do not pity birds when in summer we wish them unfeathered and callow or bald as egges that they might be cooler and lighter such is the load and captivity of the soul when we do the work of God and are his servants and under the Government of the spirit They that strive to be quit of this subjection love the liberty of out-laws and the licentiousness of anarchy and the freedom of sad widows and distressed Orphans For so Rebels and fools and children long to be rid of their Princes and their Guardians and their Tutors that they may be accursed without law and be undone without control and be ignorant and miserable without a teacher and without discipline He that is in the Spirit is under Tutours and Governours untill the time appointed of the Father just as all great Heirs are onely the first seizure the Spirit makes is upon the will He that loves the yoke of Christ and the discipline of the Gospel he is in the Spirit that is in the spirits power Upon this foundation the Apostle hath built these two propositions 1. Whosoever hath not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his he does not belong to Christ at all he is not partaker of his Spirit and therefore shall never be partaker of his glory 2. Whosoever is in Christ is dead to sin and lives to the Spirit of Christ that is lives a Spirituall a holy and a sanctifyed life These are to be considered distinctly 1. All that belong to Christ have the Spirit of Christ Immediately before the ascension our blessed Saviour bid his Disciples tarry in Jerusalem till they should receive the promise of the Father Whosoever stay at Jerusalem and are in the actuall Communion of the Church of God shall certainly receive this promise For it is made to you and to your children saith S. Peter and to as many as the Lord our God shall call All shall receive the Spirit of Christ the promise of the Father because this was the great instrument of distinction between the Law and the Gospel In the Law God gave his Spirit 1. to some to them 2. extraregularly 3. without solennity 4. in small proportions like the dew upon Gideons fleece a little portion was wet sometime with the dew of heaven when all the earth besides was dry And the Jewes calld it filiaâ— voois the daughter of a voice still and small and seldom and that by secret whispers and sometimes inarticulate by way of enthusiasme rather then of instruction and God spake by the Prophets transmitting the sound as thorough an Organ pipe things which themselves oftentimes understood not But in the Gospel the spirit is given without measure first powred forth upon our head Christ Jesus then descending upon the beard of Aaron the Fathers of the Church and thence falling like the tears of the balsam of Judea upon the foot of the plant upon the lowest of the people And this is given regularly to all that ask it to all that can receive it and by a solemn ceremony and conveyed by a Sacrament and is now not the Daughter of a voice but the Mother of many voices of divided tongues and united hearts of the tongues of Prophets and the duty of Saints of the Sermons of Apostles and the wisdom of Governours It is the Parent of boldness and fortitude to Martyrs the fountain of learning to Doctors an Ocean of all things excellent to all who are within the ship and bounds of the Catholike Church so that Old men and young men maidens and boyes the scribe and the unlearned the Judge and the Advocate the Priest and the people are full of the Spirit if they belong to God Moses's wish is fulfilled and all the Lords people are Prophets in 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 curâ—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 intied 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 fooâ— 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 taâ—le of Devis 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 phantasmes 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 calâ—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. Jerome 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 designd 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 lâ—sse and as dung so that we may gain Christ No gain then is pleasant but goalâ—nesse 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 ammas caetera 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 we have the Spirit S. John spake a hard saying but by the spirit of manifestation we are also taught to understand it Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin for his seed remaineth in him and he cannot sin because he is born of God The seed of God is the spirit which hath a plastic power to efform us in similitudinem filiorum Dei into the image of the sons of God and as long as this remains in us while the Spirit dwels in us We cannot sin that is it is against our natures our reformed natures to sin And as we say we cannot endure such a potion we cannot suffer such a pain that is we cannot without great trouble we cannot without doing violence to our nature so all spirituall men all that are born of God and the seed of God remains in them they cannot sin cannot without trouble and doing against our natures and their most passionate inclinations A man if you speak naturally can masticate gums and he can break his own legs and he can sip up by little draughts mixtures of Aloes and Rhubarb of Henbane or the deadly Nightshade but he cannot do this naturally or willingly cheerfully or with delight Every sin is against a good mans nature he is ill at case when he hath missed his usual prayers he is amazd if he have fallen into an errour he is infinitely ashamed of his imprudence he remembers a sin as he thinks of an enemy or the horrors of a midnight apparition for all his capacities his understanding and his choosing faculties are filled up with the opinion and perswasions with the love and with the
desires of God and this I say is the Great benefit of the Spirit which God hath given to us as an antidote against worldly pleasures And therefore S. Paul joynes them as consequent to each other For it is impossible for those who were once enlightned and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come c. First we are enlightned in Baptisme and by the Spirit of manifestation the revelations of the Gospel then we relish and taste interiour excellencies and we receive the Holy Ghost the Spirit of confirmation and he gives us a taste of the powers of the world to come that is of the great efficacy that is in the Article of eternall life to perswade us to religion and holy living then we feel that as the belief of that Article dwels upon our understanding and is incorporated into our wils and choice so we grow powerfull to resist sin by the strengths of the Spirit to desie all carnall pleasure and to suppresse and mortifie it by the powers of this Article those are the powers of the world to come 2. The Spirit of God is given to all who truly belong to Christ as an anidote against sorrows against impatience against the evil accidents of the world and against the oppression and sinking of our spirits under the crosse There are in Scripture noted two births besides the naturall to which also by analogy we may adde a third The first is to be born of water and the Spirit It is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one thing signified by a divided appellative by two substantives water and the Spirit that is Spiritus aqueus the Spirit moving upon the waters of Baptisme The second is to be born of Spirit and fire for so Christ was promised to baptize us with the Holy Ghost and with fire that is cum spiritu igneo with a fiery spirit the Spirit as it descended in Pentecost in the shape of fiery tongues And as the watry spirit washed away the sins of the Church so the spirit of fire enkindles charity and the love of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sayes Plutarch the Spirit is the same under both the titles and it enables the Church with gifts and graces And from these there is another operation of the new birth but the same Spirit the spirit of rejoycing or spiritus exultans spiritus laetitiae Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in beleeving that ye may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost There is a certain joy and spirituall rejoycing that accompanies them in whom the Holy Ghost doth dwell a joy in the midst of sorrow a joy given to allay the sorrows of saecular troubles and to alleviate the burden of persecution This S. Paul notes to this purpose And ye became followers of us and of the Lord having received the word in much afâ—liction with joy of the Holy Ghost Worldly afflictions and spirituall joyes may very well dwell together and if God did not supply us out of his storehouses the sorrows of this world would be mere and unmixt and the troubles of persecution would be too great for naturall considences For who shall make him recompence that lost his life in a Duel fought about a draught of wine or a cheaper woman What arguments shall invite a man to suffer torments in testimony of a proposition of naturall Philosophy And by what instruments shall we comfort a man who is sick and poor and disgracâ—d and vitious and lies cursing and despairs of any thing hereafter That mans condition proclaims what it is to want the Spirit of God the Spirit of comfort Now this Spirit of comfort is the hope and confidence the certain expectation of partaking in the inheritance of Jesus This is the faith and patience of the Saints this is the refreshment of all wearied travellers the cordiall of all languishing sinners the support of the scrupulous the guide of the doubtfull the anchor of timorous and fluctuating souls the confidence and the staff of the penitent He that is deprived of his whole estate for a good conscience by the Spirit he meets this comfort that he shall finde it again with advantage in the day of restitution and this comfort was so manifest in the first dayes of Christianity that it was no infrequent thing to see holy persons court a Martyrdom with a fondnesse as great as is our impatience and timorousnesse in every persecution Till the Spirit of God comes upon us we are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 inopis nos atque pusilli finxerunt animi we have little souls little faith and as little patience we fall at every stumbling block and sink under every temptation and our hearts fail us and we die for fear of death and lose our souls to preserve our estates or our persons till the Spirit of God fills us with joy in beleeving and a man that is in a great joy cares not for any trouble that is lesse then his joy and God hath taken so great care to secure this to us that he hath turn'd it into a precept Rejoyce evermore and Rejoyce in the Lord always and again I say rejoyce But this rejoycing must be onely in the hope that is laid up for us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so the Apostle Rejoycing in hope For although God sometimes maks a cup of sensible comfort to overflow the spirit of a man and thereby loves to refresh his sorrows yet that is from a secret principle not regularly given not to be waitd for not to be prayed for and it may fail us if we think upon it but the hope of life eternall can never fail us and the joy of that is great enough to make us suffer any thing or to do any thing ibimus ibimus utcunque praecedes supremum Carpere iter comites parati To death to bands to poverty to banishment to tribunals any whither in hope of life eternall as long as this anchor holds we may suffer a storm but cannot suffer shipwrack And I desire you by the way to observe how good a God we serve and how excellent a Religion Christ taught when one of his great precepts is that we should rejoyce and be exceeding glad and God hath given as the spirit of rejoycing not a sullen melancholy spirit not the spirit of bondage or of a slave but the Spirit of his Son consigning us by a holy conscience to joyes unspeakable and full of glory And from hence you may also infer that those who sink under a persecution or are impatient in a sad accident they put out their own fires which the Spirit of the Lord hath kindled and lose those glories which stand behinde the cloud Part II. 3. THe Spirit of God is given us as an antidote against evil concupiscences and sinfull desires and is
souls and swelling up to a treasure making us in this world rich by title and relation but it shall be produced in the great necessities of doomesday In the mean time if the fire be quenched the fire of Gods Spirit God will kindle another in his anger that shall never be quenched but if we entertain Gods Spirit with our own purities and imploy it diligently and serve it willingly for Gods Spirit is a loving Spirit then we shall really be turned into spirits Irenaeus had a proverbiall saying Perfecti sunt qui tria sine querelâ Deo exhibent They that present three things right to God they are perfect that is a chast body a righteous soul and a holy spirit and the event shall be this which Maimonides expressed not amisse though he did not at all understand the secret of this mystery The soul of a man in this life is in potentiâ ad esse spiritum it is designed to be a spirit but in the world to come it shall be actually as very a spirit as an Angel is and this state is expressed by the Apostle calling it the earnest of the spirit that is here it is begun and given us as an antepast of glory and a principle of Grace but then we shall have it in plenitudine regit idem spiritus artus Orbe alio Here and there it is the same but here we have the earnest there the riches and the inheritance But then if this be a new principle and be given us in order to the actions of a holy life we must take care that we receive not the Spirit of God in vain but remember it is a new life and as no man can pretend that a person is alive that doth not alwayes do the works of life so it is certain no man hath the Spirit of God but he that lives the life of grace and doth the works of the Spirit that is in all holinesse and justice and sobriety Spiritus qui accedit animo vel Dei est vel Daemonis said Tertullian Every man hath within him the Spirit of God or the spirit of the devil The spirit of fornication is an unclean devil and extremely contrary to the Spirit of God and so is the spirit of malice or uncharitablenesse for the Spirit of God is the Spirit of love for as purities Gods Spirit sanctifies the body so by love he purifies the soul and makes the soul grow into a spirit into a Divine nature But God knows that even in Christian societies we see the devils walk up and down every day and every hour the devil of uncleannesse and the devil of drunkennesse the devil of malice and the devil of rage the spirit of filthy speaking and the spirit of detraction a proud spirit and the spirit of rebellion and yet all call Christian. It is generally supposed that unclean spirits walk in the night and so it used to be for they that are drunk are drunk in the night said the Apostle but Suidas tels of certain Empusae that used to appear at Noon at such time as the Greeks did celebrate the Funerals of the Dead and at this day some of the Russians fear the Noon-day Devil which appeareth like a mourning widow to reapers of hay and corn and uses to break their arms and legs unlesse they worship her The Prophet David speaketh of both kindes Thou shalt not be afraid for the terrour by night and a ruinâ daemonio meridiano from the Devil at noon thou shalt be free It were happy if we were so but besides the solemn followers of the works of darknesse in the times and proper seasons of darknesse there are very many who act their Scenes of darknesse in the face of the Sun in open defiance of God and all lawes and all modesty There is in such men the spirit of impudence as well as of impiety And yet I might have expressed it higher for every habituall sin doth not onely put us into the power of the devil but turns us into his very nature just as the Holy Ghost transforms us into the image of God Here therefore I have a greater Argument to perswade you to holy living then Moses had to the sons of Israel Behold I have set before you life and death blessing and cursing so said Moses but I adde that I have upon the stock of this Scripture set before you the good Spirit and the bad God and the devil choose unto whose nature you will be likened and into whose inheritance you will be adopted and into whose possession you will enter If you commit sin ye are of your father the Devil ye are begot of his principles and follow his pattern and shall passe into his portion when ye are led captive by him at his will and remember what a sad thing it is to go into the portion of evil and accursed spirits the sad and eternall portion of Devils But he that hath the Spirit of God doth acknowledge God for his Father and his Lord he despises the world and hath no violent appetites for secular pleasures and is dead to the desires of this life and his hopes are spirituall and God is his joy and Christ is his pattern and his support and Religion is his imployment and godlinesse is his gain and this man understands the things of God and is ready to die for Christ and fears nothing but to sin against God and his will is filled with love and it springs out in obedience to God and in charity to his brother and of such a man we cannot make judgement by his fortune or by his acquaintance by his circumstances or by his adherencies for they are the appendages of a naturall man but the spirituall is judged of no man that is the rare excellencies that make him happy do not yet make him illustrious unlesse we will reckon Vertue to be a great fortune and holinesse to be great Wisedom and God to be the best Friend and Christ the best Relative and the Spirit the hugest advantage and Heaven the greatest Reward He that knows how to value these things may sit down and reckon the felicities of him that hath the Spirit of God The purpose of this Discourse is this That since the Spirit of God is a new nature and a new life put into us we are thereby taught and enabled to serve God by a constant course of holy living without the frequent returns and intervening of such actions which men are pleased to call sins of infirmity Whosoever hath the Spirit of God lives the life of grace The Spirit of God rules in him and is strong according to its age and abode and allows not of those often sins which we think unavoidable because we call them naturall infirmities But if Christ be in you the body is dead because of sin but the spirit is life because of righteousnesse The state of sin is a state of death the state of a man under
the law was a state of bondage and infirmity as S. Paul largely describes him in the seventh Chapter to the Romanes but he that hath the Spirit is made alive and free and strong and a conquerour over all the powers and violencies of sin such a man resists temptations falls not under the assault of sin returns not to the sin which he last repented of acts no more that errour which brought him to shame and sorrow but he that falls under a crime to which he still hath a strong and vigorous inclination he that acts his sin and then curses it and then is tempted and then sins again and then weeps again and calls himself miserable but still the inchantment hath confined him to that circle this man hath not the Spirit for where the Spirit of God is there is liberty there is no such bondage and a returning folly to the commands of sin But because men deceive themselves with calling this bondage a pitiable and excusable infirmity it will not be uselesse to consider the state of this question more particularly lest men from the state of a pretended infirmity fall into a reall death 1. No great sin is a sin of infirmity or excusable upon that stock But that I may be understood we must know that every sin is in some sense or other a sin of infirmity When a man is in the state of spirituall sicknesse or death he is in a state of infirmity for he is a wounded man a prisoner a slave a sick man weak in his judgement and weak in his reasoning impotent in his passions of childish resolutions great inconstancy and his purposes untwist as easily as the rude conjuncture of uncombining cables in the violence of a Northern tempest and he that is thus in infirmity cannot be excused for it is the aggravation of the state of his sin he is so infirm that he is in a state unable to do his duty Such a man is a servant of sin a slave of the Devil an heir of corruption absolutely under command and every man is so who resolves for ever to avoid such a sin and yet for ever falls under it for what can he be but a servant of sin who fain would avoid it but cannot that is he hath not the Spirit of God within him Christ dwels not in his soul for where the Son is there is liberty and all that are in the Spirit are sons of God and servants of righteousnesse and therefore freed from sin But then there are also sins of infirmity which are single actions intervening seldom in litle instances unavoidable or through a faultlesse ignorance Such as these are alwayes the allays of the life of the best men and for these Christ hath payd and they are never to be accounted to good men save onely to make them more wary and more humble Now concerning these it is that I say No great sin is a sin of excusable or unavoidable infirmity Because whosoever hath received the Spirit of God hath sufficient knowledge of his duty and sufficient strengths of grace and sufficient advertency of minde to avoid such things as do great and apparent violence to piety and religion No man can justly say that it is a sin of infirmity that he was drunk For there are but three causes of every sin a fourth is not imaginable 1. If ignorance cause it the sin is as full of excuse as the ignorance was innocent But no Christian can pretend this to drunkennesse to murder to rebellion to uncleannesse For what Christian is so uninstructed but that he knows Adultery is a sin 2. Want of observation is the cause of many indiscreet and foolish actions Now at this gap many irregularities do enter and escape because in the whole it is impossible for a man to be of so present a spirit as to consider and reflect upon every word and every thought but it is in this case in Gods laws otherwise then in mans the great flies cannot passe thorow without observation little ones do and a man cannot be drunk and never take notice of it or tempt his neighbours wife before he be aware therefore the lesse the instance be the more likely it is to be a sin of infirmity and yet if it be never so little if it be observed then it ceases to be a sin of infirmity 3. But because great crimes cannot pretend to passe undiscernably it follows that they must come in at the door of malice that is of want of Grace in the absence of the Spirit they destroy where ever they come and the man dies if they passe upon him It is true there is flesh and blood in every regenerate man but they do not both rule the flesh is left to tempt but not to prevail And it were a strange condition if both the godly and the ungodly were captives to sin and infallibly should fall into temptation and death without all difference saue onely that the godly sins unwillingly and the ungodly sins willingly But if the same things be done by both and God in both be dishonoured and their duty prevaricated the pretended unwillingnesse is the signe of a greater and a baser slavery and of a condition lesse to be endured For the servitude which is against me is intollerable but if I choose the state of a servant I am free in my minde Libertatis servaveris umbram Si quicquid jubeare velis certain it is that such a person who fain would but cannot choose but commit adultery or drunkennesse is the veriest slave to sin that can be imagined and not at all freed by the Spirit and by the liberty of the sons of God and there is no other difference but that the mistaken good man feels his slavery and sees his chains and his fetters but therefore it is certain that he is because he sees himself to be a slave No man can be a servant of sin and a servant of righteousnesse at the same time but every man that hath the Spirit of God is a servant of righteousnesse and therefore whosoever finde great sins to be unavoidable are in a state of death and reprobation as to the present because they willingly or unwillingly it matters not much whether of the two are servants of sin 2. Sins of infirmity as they are small in their instance so they put on their degree of excusablenesse onely according to the weaknesse or infirmity of a mans understanding So far as men without their own fault understand not their duty or are possessed with weaknesse of principles or are destitute and void of discourse or discerning powers and acts so far if a sin creeps upon them it is as naturall and as free from a law as is the action of a childe But if any thing else be mingled with it if it proceed from any other principle it is criminall and not excused by our infirmity because it is chosen and a mans will hath no
his salvation but then if this sorrow and confession and strong purposes begin then when our life is declined towards the West and is now ready to set in darknesse and a dismall night because of themselves they could but procure an admission to repentance not at all to pardon and plenary absolution by shewing that on our death-bed these are too late and ineffectuall they call upon us to begin betimes when these imperfect acts may be consummate and perfected in the actuall performing those parts of holy life to which they were ordained in the nature of the thing and the purposes of God Lastly suppose all this be done and that by a long course of strictnesse and severity mortification and circumspection we have overcome all our vitious and baser habits contracted and grown upon us like the ulcers and evils of a long surfet and that we are clean and swept Suppose that he hath wept and fasted prayed and vowed to excellent purposes yet all this is but the one half of repentance so infinitely mistaken is the world to think any thing to be enough to make up repentance but to renew us and restore us to the favour of God there is required far more then what hath been yet accounted for See it in the second of S. Peter 1 Chap. 4 5. vers Having escaped the corruption that is in the world thorough lust And besides this giving all diligence adde to your faith vertue to vertue knowledge to knowledge temperance to temperance patience and so on to godlinesse to brotherly kindnesse and to charity These things must be in you and abound This is the summe totall of repentance We must not onely have overcome sin but we must after great diligence have acquired the habits of all those Christian graces which are necessary in the transaction of our affairs in all relations to God and our neighbour and our own person It is not enough to say Lord I thank thee I am no extortioner no adulterer not as this Publican all the reward of such a poenitent is that when he hath escaped the corruption of the world he hath also escaped those heavy judgements which threatned his ruine Nec furtum feci nec fugi si mihi dicat Servus habes precium loris non ureris aio Non hominem occidi non pasces in cruce corvos If a servant have not robâ—d his Master nor offered to fly from his bondage he shall scape the Furea his flesh shall not be exposed to birds or fishes but this is but the reward of innocent slaves it may be we have escaped the rod of the exterminating Angel when our sins are crucifyed but we shall never enter into the joy of our Lord unlesse after we have put off the old man with his affections and lusts we also put on the new man in righteousnesse and holinesse of life And this we are taught in most plain doctrine by S. Paul Let us lay aside the weight that doth so easily beset us that is the one half and then it follows Let us run with patience the race that is set before us These are the fruits meet for repentance spoken of by S. John Baptist that is when we renew our first undertaking in baptisme and return to our courses of innocence Parcus Deorum cultor infrequens Insanientis dum sapientiae consultus erro Nunc retrorsum vela dare atque iterare cursus Cogor relictos The sense of which words is well given us by S. John Remember whence thou art fallen repent and do thy first works For all our hopes of heaven rely upon that Covenant which God made with us in Baptisme which is That being redeemed from our vain conversation we should serve him in holinesse and righteousnesse all our dayes Now when any of us hath prevaricated our part of the Covenant we must return to that state and redeem the intermedial time spent in sin by our doubled industry in the wayes of grace we must be reduced to our first estate and make some proportionable returns of duty for our sad omissions and great violations of our Baptismal vow For God having made no covenant with us but that which is consigned in Baptisme in the same proportion in which we retain or return to that in the same we are to expect the pardon of our sins and all the other promises Evangelicall but no otherwise unlesse we can shew a new Gospel or be baptized again by Gods appointment He therefore that by a long habit by a state and continued course of sin hath gone so far from his baptismal purity as that he hath nothing of the Christian left upon him but his name that man hath much to do to make his garments clean to purifie his soul to take off all the stains of sin that his spirit may be presented pure to the eyes of God who beholds no impurity It is not an easie thing to cure a long contracted habit of sin Let any intemperate person but try in his own instance of drunkennesse or the swearer in the sweetning his unwholesome language but then so to command his tongue that he never swear but that his speech be prudent pious and apt to edifie the hearer or in some sense to glorifie God or to become temperate to have got a habit of sobriety or chastity or humility is the work of a life And if we do but consider that he that lives well from his younger yeers or takes up at the end of his youthfull heats and enters into the courses of a sober life early diligently and vigorously shall finde himself after the studies and labours of 20. or 30. yeers piety but a very imperfect person many degrees of pride left unrooted up many inroads of intemperance or beginnings of excesse much indevotion and backwardnesse in religion many temptations to contest against and some infirmities which he shall never say he hath master'd we shall finde the work of a holy life is not to be deferred till our dayes are almost done till our strengths are decayed our spirits are weak and our lust strong our habits confirmed and our longings after sin many and impotent for what is very hard to be done and is alwayes done imperfectly when there is length of time and a lesse work to do and more abilities to do it withall when the time is short and almost expired and the work made difficult and vast and the strengths weaker and the faculties are disabled will seem little lesse then absolutely impossible * I shall end this generall consideration with the question of the Apostle If the righteous scarcely be saved if it be so difficult to overcome our sins and obtain vertuous habits difficult I say to a righteous a sober and well living person where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear What shall become of him who by his evil life hath not onely removed himself from the affections but even from the possibilities of vertue He that
longer it lasts the more obiections it runs through it still should shew a brighter and more certain light to discover the divinity of its principle and that after the more examples and new accidents and strangenesses of providence and daily experience and the multitude of miracles still the Christian should grow more certain in his faith more refreshed in his hope and warm in his charity the very nature of these graces increasing and swelling upon the very nourishment of experience and the multiplication of their own acts And yet because the heart of man is false it suffers the fires of the Altar to go out and the flames lessen by the multitude of fuel But indeed it is because we put on strange fire put out the fire upon our hearths by letting in a glaring Sun beam the fire of lust or the heates of an angry spirit to quench the fires of God and suppresse the sweet cloud of incense The heart of man hath not strength enough to think one good thought of it self it cannot command its own attention to a prayer often lines long but before its end it shall wander after some thing that is to no purpose and no wonder then that it grows weary of a holy religion which consists of so many parts as make the businesse of a whole life And there is no greater argument in the world of our spiritual weaknesse and falsnesse of our hearts in the matters of religion then the backwardnesse which most men have alwayes and all men have somtimes to say their prayers so weary of their length so glad when they are done so wiâ—â—e to excuse and frustrate an opportunity and yet there is no manner of trouble in the duty no wearinesse of bones no violent labours nothing but begging a blessing and receiving it nothing but doing our selves the greatest honour of speaking to the greatest person and greatest king of the world and that we should be unwilling to do this so unable to continue in it so backward to return to it so without gust and relish in the doing it can have no visible reason in the nature of the thing but something within us a strange sicknesse in the heart a spiritual nauseating or loathing of Manna something that hath no name but we are sure it comes from a weake a faint and false heart And yet this weak heart is strong in passions violent in desires unresistable in its appetites impatient in its lust furious in anger here are strengths enough one would think But so have I seen a man in a feaver sick and distempered unable to walk lesse able to speak sence or to do an act of counsel and yet when his feaver hath boild up to a delirium he was strong enough to beat his nurse keeper and his doctor too and to resist the loving violence of all his friends who would faine binde him down to reason and his bed And yet we still say he is weak and sick to death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for these strengths of madnesse are not health but furiousnesse and disease 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is weaknesse another way And so are the strengths of a mans heart they are fetters and manacles strong but they are the cordage of imprisonment so strong that the heart is not able to stir And yet it cannot but be a huge sadnesse that the heart shall pursue a temporal interest with wit and diligence and an unwearied industry and shall not have strength enough in a matter that concerns its Eternal interest to answer one obiection to resist one assault to defeate one art of the divel but shall certainly and infallibly fall when ever it is tempted to a pleasure This if it be examined will prove to be a deceit indeed a pretence rather then true upon a just cause that is it is not a natural but a moral a vicious weaknesse and we may try it in one or two familiar instances One of the great strengths shall I call it or weaknesses of the heart is that it is strong violent and passionate in its lusts and weak and deceitful to resist any Tell the tempted person that if he act his lust he dishonours his body makes himself a servant to follie and one flesh with a harlot he defiles the Temple of God and him that defiles a Temple will God destroy Tell him that the Angels who love to be present in the nastinesse and filth of prisons that they may comfort and assist chast souls and holy persons there abiding yet they are impatient to behold or come neer the filthynesse of a lustful person Tell him that this sin is so ugly that the divels who are spirits yet they delight to counterfeit the acting of this crime and descend unto the daughters or sons of men that they may rather lose their natures then not help to set a lust forward Tell them these and ten thousand things more you move them no more then if you should read one of Tullies orations to a mule for the truth is they have no power to resist it much lesse to master it their heart fails them when they meet their Mistresse and they are driven like a fool to the stocks or a Bull to the slaughter-house And 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 you folly either your lust disbands or your shame hides it you will not you dare 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
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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Alteration 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 in giving physick we alwayes call that just and sitting 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 â—urfet 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 great est 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 deâ—â—ct 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 none 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 of hell and therefore that condition is also very blessed which God sends us to create and to confirm our hopes of that excellent mercy 17. The sufferings of the saints are the sum of Christian Philosophy they are sent to wean us from the vanâ—les and affections of this world and to create in us strong desires of heaven whiles God causes us to be here treated rudely that we may long to be in our Countrey where God shall be our portion and Angels our companions and Christ our perpetuall feast and a never ceasing joy shall be our condition and entertainment O death how bitter art thou to a man that is at ease and rest in his possessions but he that is uneasie in his body and unquiet in his possessions vexed in his person discomposed in his designes who findes no pleasure no rest here will be glad to fix his heart where onely he shall have what he can desire and what can make him happy As long as the waters of persecutions are upon the earth so long we dwell in the Ark but where the land is dry the Dove it self will be tempted to a wandring course of life and never to return to the house of her safety What shall I say more 18 Christ nourisheth his Church by sufferings 19 He hath given a single blessing to all other graces but to them that are persecuted he hath promised a double one It being a double favour first to be innocent like Christ and then to be afflicted like him 20. Without this the miracles of patience which God hath given to fortifie the spirits of the saints would signifie nothing Nemo enim tolerare tanta velit sine causâ nec potuit
boyes that went to Athens the first year were wise men the second year Philosophers the third Orators and the fourth were but Plebeians and understood nothing but their own ignorance And just so it happens to some in the progresses of religion at first they are violent and active and then they satiate all the appetites of religion and that which is left is that they were soon weary and sat down in displeasure and return to the world and dwell in the businesse of pride or mony and by this time they understand that their religion is declined and passed from the heats and follies of youth to the coldnesse and infirmities of old age The remedies of which is onely a diligent spirit and a busie religion a great industry a full portion of time in holy offices that as the Oracle said to the Cirrheans noctes diesque belligerandum they could not be happy unlesse they waged war night and day that is unlesse we perpetually fight against our own vices and repell our Ghostly enemies and stand upon our guard we must stand for ever in the state of babes in Christ or else return to the first imperfections of an unchristened soul and an unsanctified spirit That 's the first particular 2. The second step of our growth in grace is when vertues grow habitual apt and easie in our manners and dispositions For although many new converts have a great zeal and a busie spirit apt enough as they think to contest against all the difficulties of a spiritual life yet they meet with such powerful oppositions from without and a false heart within that their first heats are soon broken and either they are for ever discouraged or are forced to march more slowly and proceed more temperately for ever after 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is an easie thing to commit a wickednesse for temptation and infirmity are alwayes too neer us But God hath made care and sweat prudence and diligence experience and watchfulnesse wisdom and labour at home and good guides abroad to be instruments and means to purchase vertue The way is long and difficult at first but in the progresse and pursuit we finde all the knots made plain and the rough wayes made smooth jam monte potius Now the spirit of grace is like a new soul within him and he hath new appetites and new pleasures when the things of the world grow unsavory and the things of religion are delicious when his temptations to his old crimes return but seldom and they prevail not at all or in very inconsiderable instances and stay not at all but are reproached with a penitentiall sorrow and speedy amendment when we do actions of vertue quickly frequently and with delight then we have grown in grace in the same degree in which they can perceive these excellent dispositions Some persons there are who dare not sin they dare not omit their hours of prayer and they are restlesse in their spirits till they have done but they go to it as to execution they stay from it as long as they can and they drive like Pharoahs charets with the wheels off sadly and heavily and besides that such persons have reserved to themselves the best part of their sacrifice and do not give their will to God they do not love him with all their heart they are also soonest tempted to retire and fall off Sextius Romanus resigned the honours and offices of the city and betook himself to the severity of a Philosophical life But when his unusual diet and hard labour began to pinch his flesh and he felt his propositions smart and that which was fine in discourse at a Symposiack or an Academical dinner began to sit uneasily upon him in the practise he so despaired that he had like to have cast himself into the sea to appease the labours of his religion Because he never had gone further then to think it a fine thing to be a wise man he would commend it but he was loth to pay for it at the price that God and the Philosopher set upon it But he that his grown 〈◊〉 grace and hath made religion habitual to his spirit is not at ease but when he is doing the works of the new man he rests in religion and comforts his sorrows with thinking of his prayers and in all crosses of the world he is patient because his joy is at hand to refresh him when he list for he cares not so he may serve God and if you make him poor here he is rich there and he counts that to be his proper service his worke his recreation and reward 3. But â—â—cause in the course of holy living although the duty be regular and constant yet the sensible relishes and the flowrings of affections the zeal and the visible expressions do not alwayes make the same emission but sometimes by designe and sometimes by order somtimes by affection we are more busie more intire and more intent upon the actions of religion in such cases we are to judge of our growth in grace if after every interval of extraordinary piety the next return be more devout and more affectionate the labour be more cheerfull and more active and if religion returnes oftner and stayes longer in the same expressions and leaves more satisfaction upon the spirit Are your communions more frequent and when they are do ye approach neerer to God have you made firmer resolutions and entertained more hearty purposes of amendment Do you love God more dutifully and your neighbour with a greater charity do you not so easily return to the world as formerly are not you glad when the thing is done do you go to your secular accounts with a more weaned affection then before if you communicate well it is certain that you will still do it better if you do not communicate well every opportunity of doing it is but a new trouble easily excused readily omitted done because it is necessary but not because we love it and we shall finde that such persons in their old age do it worst of all And it was observed by a Spanish Confessor who was also a famous preacher that in persons not very religious the confessions which they made upon their deathbed were the coldest the most imperfect and with lesse contrition then all that he had observed them to make in many years before For so the Canes of Egypt when they newly arise from their bed of mud and slime of Nilus start up into an equal and continual length and are interrupted but with few knots and are strong and beauteous with great distances and intervals but when they are grown to their full length they lessen into the point of a pyramis and multiply their knots and joynts interrupting the finenesse and smoothnesse of its body so are the steps declensions of him that does not grow in grace at first when he springs up from his impurity by the waters of baptisme and
a great hell to those persons who by their evil lives are consigned to such sad and miserable portions A thousand yeers is a long while to be in torment we finde a fever of 21. dayes to be like an age in length but when the duration of an intolerable misery is for ever in the height and for ever beginning and ten thousand yeers hath spent no part of its terme but it makes a perpetual efflux and is like the centre of a circle which ever transmits lines to the circumference this is a consideration so sad that the horrour of it and the reflexion upon its abode and duration make a great part of the hell for hell could not be hell without the despair of accursed souls for any hope were a refreshment and a drop of water which would help to allay those flames which as they burn intolerably so they must burn for ever And I desire you to consider that although the Scripture uses the word fire to expresse the torments of accursed souls yet fire can no more equal the pangs of hell then it can torment a material substance the pains of perishing souls being as much more afflictive then the smart of fire as the smart of fire is troublesome beyond the softnesse of Persian carpets or the sensuality of the Asian Luxury for the pains of hell and the perishing or losing of the soul is to suffer the wrath of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our God is a consuming fire that is the fire of hell when God takes away all comfort from us nothing to support our spirit is left us when sorrow is our food and tears our drink when it is eternal night without Sun or star or lamp or sleep when we burn with fire without light that is are loaden with sadnesse without remedy or hope or ease and that this wrath is to be expressed and to fall upon us in spiritual immateriall but most accursed most pungent and dolorous emanations then we feel what it is to lose a soul. We may guesse at it by the terrours of a guilty conscience those verbera laeniatus those secret lashings and whips of the exterminating Angel those thorns in the soul when a man is haunted by an evil spirit those butcheries which the soul of a Tyrant or a violent or a vitious person when he falls in to fear or any calamity does feel are the infinite arguments that Hell which is the consummation of the torment of conscience just as man-hood is the consummation of infancy or as glory is the perfection of grace is an affliction greater then the bulk of heaven and eaâ—th for there it is that God powrs out the treasures of his wrath and empties the whole magazin of thunder bolts and all the â—rmory of God is imployed not in the chastising but in the tâ—â—menting of a perishing soul. Lucian brings in Radamanthus telâ—ing the poor wandring souls upon the banks of Elysium 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for every wickednesse that any man commits in his life when he comes to hell he hath stamped upon his soul an invisible brand and mark of torment and this begins here and is not cancâ—â—led by deathâ— but there is enlarged by the greatnesse of infinite and â—he aboads of eternity How great these tormens of conscience are here let any man imagine that can but understand what despair means despair upon just reason let it be what it will no misery can be greater then despair and because I hope none here have felt those horrors of an evil conscience which are consignations to eternity you may please to learn it by your own reason or els by the sad instances of story It is reported of Petrus Ilosuanus A Polonian School-master that having read some ill managed discourses of absolute decrees and divine reprobation began to be Phantastick and melancholy and apprehensive that he might be one of those many whom God had decreed for hell from all eternity from possible to probable from probable to certain the temptation soon carried him and when he once began to believe himself to be a person inevitably perishing it is not possible to understand perfectly what infinite fears and agonies and despairs what tremblings what horrors what confusion and amazement the poor man felt within him to consider that he was to be tormented extremely without remedy even to eternal ages This in a short continuance grew insufferable and prevailed upon him so far that he hanged himself and left this account of it or to this purpose in writing in his study I am gone from hence to the flames of hell have forced my way thither being impatient to try what those great torments are which here I have heard with an insupportable amazement this instance may suffice to show what it is to lose a soul. But I will take off from this sad discourse onely I shall crave your attention to a word of exhortation That you take care lest for the purchase of a little trifling inconsiderable portion of the world you come into this place and state of torment Although Homer was pleased to complement the beauty of Helena to such a height as to say it was a sufficient price for all the evils which the Greeks and Trojans suffered in ten years 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Yet it was a more reasonable conjecture of Herodotus that during the ten years siege of Troy Helena for whom the Greeks fought was in Egypt not in the city because it was unimaginable but that the Trojans would have thrown her over the walls rather then for the sake of such a trifle have endured so great calamities we are more sottish then the Trojans if we retain our Helena any one beloved lust any painted Devil any sugar'd temptation with not the hazard but the certainty of having such horrid miseries such in valuable losses And certainly its a strange stupidity of spirit that can sleep in the midst of such thunder when God speaks from heaven with his lowdest voice and draws aside his curtain and shows his arsenal and his armory full of arrows steeled with wrath headed and pointed and hardned with vengeance still to snatch at those arrows if they came but in the retinue of a rich fortune or a vain Mistris if they wait but upon pleasure or profit or in the reare of an ambitious designe But let not us have such a hardinesse against the threats and representments of the divine vengeance as to take the little imposts and revenues of the world and stand in defiance against God and the fears of hell unlesse we have a charm that we can be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 invisible to the judge of heaven and earth and are impregnable against or are sure we shall be insensible of the miseries of a perishing soul. There is a sort of men who because they will be vitious and Atheistical in their lives have no way to go on with any plaisance and
slaughter and when they were drawn into the folds of the church they were betrayed into the hands of evil men infinitely and unavoidably and when an Apostle invited a proselyte to come to Christ it was in effect a snare laid for his life and he could neither conceal his religion nor hide his person nor avoid a captious question nor deny his accusation nor elude the bloody arts of Orators and informers nor break prisons nor any thing but die If the case stood just thus it was well eternity stood at the outer doors of our life ready to receive such harmlesse people but surely there could be no art in the designe no pitying of humane weaknesses no complying with the condition of man no allowances made for customs and prejudices of the world no inviting men by the things of men no turning nature into religion but it was all the way a direct violence and an open prostitution of our lives and a throwing away our fortune into a sea of rashnesse and credulity But therefore God ordered the affaires and necessities of religion in other wayes and to other purposes Although God bound our hands behinde us yet he did not tie our understandings up although we might not use our swords yet we might use our reason we were not suffered to be violent but we might avoid violence by all the arts of prudence and innocence if we did take heed of sin we might also take heed of men because in al contentions between wit and violence prudence rudenesse learning and the sword the strong hand took it first and the strong head possessed it last the strong man first governed and the witty man succeeded him and lasted longer it came to passe that the wisdom of the Father hath so ordered it that all his Disciples should overcome the power of the Roman legions by a wise religion and prudence and innocence should become the mightiest guards and the Christian although exposed to persecution yet is so secured that he shall never need to die But when the circumstances are so ordered that his reason is convinced that then it is fit he should fit I say in order to Gods purposes and his own For he that is innocent is safe against all the rods and the axes of all the Consuls of the world if they rule by justice and he that is prudent will also escape from many rudenesses and irregular violences that can come by injustice and no wit of man no government no armies can do more for Caesar perished in the midst of all his legions and all his honours and against chance and irregularities there is no provision lesse then infinite that can give security and although prudence alone cannot do this yet innocence gives the greatest title to that providence which onely can if he pleases and will if it be fitting Here then are the two armes defensive of a Christian Prudence against the evils of men Innocence against the evils of Devils and all that relates to his kingdom Prudence fences against persecution and the evil snares against the opportunities and occasions of sin it prevents surprizes it fortifies all its proper weaknesses it improves our talents it does advantage to the kingdom of Christ and the interests of the Gospel it secures our condition and instructs our choice in all the wayes and just passages to felicity it makes us to live profitably and die wisely and without it simplicity would turn to sillinesse zeal into passion passion into fury religion into scandal conversation into a snare civilities into temptation curtesies into danger and an imprudent person falls into a condition of harmelesse rich and unwary fools or rather of birds sheep and bevers who are hunted and persecuted for the spoils of their fleece or their flesh their skins or their entrails and have not the foresight to avoid a snare but by their fear and undefending follies are driven thither where they die infallibly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Every good man is incircled with many enemies and dangers and his vertue shall be rifled and the decency of his soul and spirit shall he discomposed and turned into a heap of inarticulate and disorderly fancies unlesse by the methods and guards of prudence it be mannaged and secured But in order to the following discourse and its method we are first to consider whether this be or indeed can be a commandement or what is it For can all men that give up their names in baptisme be enjoyned to be wise and prudent It is as if God would command us to be eloquent or witty men fine speakers or strait bodied or excellent schollers or rich men If he please to make us so we are so and prudence is a gift of God a blessing of an excellent nature and of great leisure and a wise opportunity and a severe education and a great experience and a strict observation and good company all which being either wholâ—y or in part out of our power may be expected as free gifts but cannot be imposed as commandments To this I answer That Christian prudence is in very many instances a direct duty in some an instance and advice in order to degrees and advantages where it is a duty it is put into every mans power where it is an advice it is onely expected according to what a man hath and not according to what he hath not and even here although the events of prudence are out of our power yet the endeavours and the observation the diligence and caution the moral part of it and the plain conduct of our necessary duty which are portions of this grace are such things which God will demand in proportion to the talent which he hath intrusted into our Banks There are in indeed some Christians very unwary and unwise in the conduct of their religion and they cannot all help it at least not in all degrees but yet they may be taught to do prudent things though not to be prudent persons if they have not the prudence of advice and conduct yet they may have the prudence of obedience and of disciples and the event is this without prudence their vertue is unsafe and their persons defenselesse and their interest is unguarded for prudence is a hand-maid waiting at the production and birth of vertue It is a nurse to it in its infancy its patron in assaults its guide in temptations its security in all portions of chance and contingency And he that is imprudent if he have many accidents and varieties is in great danger of being none at all or if he be at the best he is but a weak and an unprofitable servant uselesse to his neighbour vain in himself and as to God the least in the kingdom his vertue is contingent and by chance not proportioned to the reward of wisdom and the election of a wise religion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 No purchase no wealth no advantage is great enough to
be compared to a wise soul and a prudent spirit and he that wants it hath a lesse vertue and a defenselesse minde and will suffer a mighty hazard in the interest of eternity Its parts and proper acts consist in the following particulars 1. It is the duty of Christian prudence to choose the end of a Christian that which is perfective of a man satisfactory to reason the rest of a Christian and the beatification of his spirit and that is to choose and desire and propound to himself heaven and the fruition of God as the end of all his acts and arts his designes and purposes For in the nature of things that is most eligible and most to be pursued which is most perfective of our nature and is the acquiescence the satisfaction and proper rest of our most reasonable appetites Now the things of this world are difficult and uneasie full of thornes and empty of pleasures they fill a diseased faculty or an abused sense but are an infinite dissatisfaction to reason and the appetites of the soul they are short and transient and they never abide unlesse sorrow like a chain be bound about their leg and then they never stir till the grace of God and religion breaks it or else that the rust of time eats the chain in pieces they are dangerous and doubtfull few and difficult fordid and particular not onely not communicable to a multitude but not diffusive upon the whole man there being no one pleasure or object in this world that delights all the parts of man and after all this they are originally from earth and from the creatures onely that they oftentimes contract alliances with hell and the grave with shame and sorrow and all these put together make no great amability or proportion to a wise mans choice But on the other side the things of God are the noblest satisfactions to those desires which ought to be cherished and swelled up to infinite their deliciousnesse is vast and full of relish and their very appendant thorns are to be chosen for they are gilded they are safe and medicinall they heal the wound they make and bring forth fruit of a blessed and a holy life The things of God and of religion are easie and sweet they bear entertainments in their hand and reward at their back their good is certain and perpetual and they make us cheerfull to day and pleasant to morrow and spiritual songs end not in a sigh and a groan neither like unwholesome physick do they let loose a present humour and introduce an habitual indisposition But they bring us to the felicity of God the same yesterday and to day and for ever they do not give a private and particular delight but their benefit is publike like the incense of the altar it sends up a sweet smell to heaven and makes atonement for the religious man that kindled it and delights all the standers by and makes the very air wholesome there is no blessed soul goes to heaven but he makes a generall joy in all the mansions where the Saints do dwell and in all the chappels where the Angels sing and the joyes of religion are not univocal but productive of rare and accidental and praeternatural pleasures for the musick of holy hymnes delights the ear and refreshes the spirit and makes the very bones of the Saint to rejoyce and charity or the giving alms to the poor does not onely ease the poverty of the receiver but makes the giver rich and heals his sicknesse and delivers from death and temperance though it be in the matter of meat and drink and pleasures yet hath an effect upon the understanding and makes the reason sober and his will orderly and his â—ffections regular and does things beside and beyond their natural and proper efficacy for all the parts of our duty are watered with the showers of blessing and bring forth fruit according to the influence of heaven and beyond the capacities of nature And now let the voluptuous person go and try whether putting his wanton hand to the bosome of his Misâ—â—s will get half such honour as Scaevola put upon his head when he put his hand into the fire Let him see whether a drunken meeting will cure a fever or make him wise A hearty and a persevering prayer will Let him tell me if spending great summes of money upon his lusts will make him sleep soundly or be rich Charity will Alms will increase his fortune and a good conscience shall charme all his cares and sorrows into a most delicious slumber well may a full goblet wet the drunkards tongue and then the heat rising from the stomack will dry the spunge and heat it into the scorchings and little images of hell and the follies of a wanton bed will turn the itch into a smart and empty the reins of all their lustfull powers but can they do honour or satisfaction in any thing that must last and that ought to be provided for No All the things of this world are little and trifling and limited and particular and sometimes necessary because we are miserable wanting and imperfect but they never do any thing toward perfection but their pleasure dies like the time in which it danced a while and when the minute is gone so is the pleasure too and leaves no footstep but the impression of a sigh and dwells no where but in the same house where you shall finde yesterday that is in forgetfulnesse and annihilation unlesse its onely childe sorrow shall marry and breed more of its kinde and so continue its memory and name to eternall ages It is therefore the most necessary part of prudence to choose well in the main stake and the dispute is not much for if eternall things be better then temporall the soul more noble then the body vertue more honourable then the basest vices a lasting joy to be chosen before an eternall sorrow much to be preferred before little certainty before danger publike good things before private evils eternity before moments then let us set down in religion and make heaven to be our end God to be our Father Christ our elder Brother the Holy Ghost the earnest of our inheritance vertue to be our imployment and then we shall never enter into the portion of fools and accursed ill-choosing spirits Nazianzen said well Malim prudentiae guttam quà m foecundioris fortunae pelagus One drop of prudence is more usefull then an ocean of a smooth fortune for prudence is a rare instrument towards heaven and a great fortune is made oftentimes the high-way to hell and destruction However thus farre prudence is our duty every man can be so wise and is bound to it to choose heaven and a cohabitation with God before the possessions and transient vanities of the world 2. It is a duty of Christian prudence to pursue this great end with apt means and instruments in proportion to that end No wise man will sail to Ormus
restrained by an imperfect feared shame so long as they think there is a reserve of reputation which they may secure then they can be with all the furious declamations of the world when themselves are represented ugly and odious full of shame and actually punished with the worst of temporâ—â—â— evils beyond which he fears not here to suffer and from whence because he knows it will be hard for him to be redeemed by an afterâ—game of reputation it makes him desperate and incorrigible bâ— fraternall correption A zealous man hath not done his duty when he calls his brother drunkard and beast and he may better do it by telling him he is a man and sealed with Gods Spirit and honoured with the title of a Christian and is or ought to be reputed as a discreet person by his friends and a governour of a family or a guide in his countrey or an example to many and that it is huge pity so many excellent things should be sullied and allayed with what is so much below all this Then a reprover does his duty when he is severe against the vice and charitable to the man and carefull of his reputation and sorry for his reall dishonour and observant of his circumstances and watchfull to surprize his affections and resolutions there where they are most tender and most tenable and men will not be in love with vertue whither they are forced with rudenesse and incivilities but they love to dwell there whither they are invited friendly and where they are treated civilly and feasted liberally and lead by the hand and the eye to honour and felicity 6. It is a duty of Christian prudence not to suffer our souls to walk alone unguarded unguided and more single then in other actions and interests of our lives which are of lesse concernment Vae soli singulari said the Wise man Wo to him that is alone and if we consider how much God hath done to secure our souls and after all that how many wayes there are for a mans soul to miscarry we should think it very necessary to call to a spirituall man to take us by the hand to walk in the wayes of God and to lead us in all the regions of duty and thorow the labyrinths of danger For God who best loves and best knows how to value our souls set a price no lesse upon it then the life-blood of his Holy Son he hath treated it with variety of usages according as the world had new guises and new necessities he abates it with punishment to make us avoid greater he shortned our life that we might live for ever he turns sicknesse into vertue he brings good out of evil he turns enmities to advantages our very sins into repentances and stricter walking he defeats all the follies of men and all the arts of the Devil and layes snares and uses violence to secure our obedience he sends Prophets and Priests to invite us and to threaten us to felicities he restrains us with lawes and he bridles us with honour and shame reputation and society friends and foes he layes hold on us by the instruments of all the passions he is enough to fill our love he satisfies our hope he affrights us with fear he gives us part of our reward in hand and entertains all our faculties with the promises of an infinite and glorious portion he curbs our affections he directs our wills he instructs our understandings with Scriptures with perpetuall Sermons with good books with frequent discourses with particular observations and great experience with accidents and judgements with rare events of providence and miracles he sends his Angels to be our guard and to place us in opportunities of vertue and to take us off from ill company and places of danger to set us neer to good example he gives us his holy Spirit and he becomes to us a principle of a mighty grace descending upon us in great variety and undiscerned events besides all those parts of it which men have reduced to a method and an art and after all this he forgives us infinite irregularities and spares us every day and still expects and passes by and waits all our dayes still watching to do us good and to save that soul which he knowes is so precious one of the chiefest of the works of God and an image of divinity Now from all these arts and mercies of God besides that we have infinite reason to adore his goodnesse we have also a demonstration that we ought to do all that possibly we can and extend all our faculties and watch all our opportunities and take in all assistances to secure the interest of our soul for which God is pleased to take such care and use so many arts for its security If it were not highly worth it God would not do it If it were not all of it 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
many particulars and yet if her children separate from her they may be unreasonable and impious 5. The wayes of direction which we have from holy Scripture to distinguish false Apostles from true are taken from their doctrine or their lives That of the doctrine is the most sure way if we can hit upon it but that also is the thing signified and needs to have other signes Saint John and Saint Paul took this way for they were able to do it infallibly All that confesse Jesus incarnate are of God said Saint John those men that deny it are hereticks avoid them and Saint Paul bids to observe them that cause divisions and offences against the doctrine delivered Them also avoid that do so And we might do so as easily as they if the world would onely take their depositum that doctrine which they delivered to all men that is the Creed and superinduce nothing else but suffer Christian faith to rest in its own perfect simplicity unmingled with arts and opinions and interests This course is plain and easie and I will not intricate it with more words but leave it directly in its own truth and certainty with this onely direction That when we are to choose our doctrine or our side we take that which is in the plain unexpounded words of Scripture for in that onely our religion can consist Secondly choose that which is most advantageous to a holy life to the proper graces of a Christian to humility to charity to forgivenesse and alms to obedience and complying with governments to the honour of God and the exaltation of his attributes and to the conservation and advantages of the publike societies of men and this last Saint Paul directs Let our be carefull to maintain good works for necessary uses for he that heartily pursues these proportions cannot be an ill man though he were accidentally and in the particular applications deceived 6. But because this is an act of wisdom rather then prudence and supposes science or knowledge rather then experience therefore it concerns the prudence of a Christian to observe the practise and the rules of practise their lives and pretences the designes and colours the arts of conduct and gaining proselytes which their Doctors and Catechists do use in order to their purposes and in their ministery about souls For although many signes are uncertain yet some are infallible and some are highly probable 7. Therefore those teachers that pretend to be guided by a private spirit are certainly false Doctors I remember what Simmias in Plutarch tels concerning Socrates that if he heard any man say he saw a divine vision he presently esteemed him vain and proud but if he pretended onely to have heard a voice or the word of God he listened to that religiously and would enquire of him with curiosity There was some reason in his fancy for God does not communicate himself by the eye to men but by the ear ye saw no figure but ye heard a voice said Moses to the people concerning God and therefore if any man pretends to speak the word of God we will enquire concerning it the man may the better be heard because he may be certainly reproved if he speaks amisse but if he pretends to visions and revelations to a private spirit and a mission extraordinary the man is proud and unlerned vicious and impudent No Scripture is of private interpretation saith S. Peter that is of private emission or declaration Gods words were delivered indeed by single men but such as were publikely designed Prophets remarked with a known character approved of by the high Priest and Sanhedrim indued with a publike spirit and his doctrines were alwayes agreeable to the other Scriptures But if any man pretends now to the spirit either it must be a private or publike if it be private it can but be usefull to himself alone and it may cozen him too if it be not assisted by the spirit of a publike man But if it be a publike spirit it must enter in at the publike door of ministeries and divine ordinances of Gods grace and mans endeavour it must be subject to the Prophets it is discernable and judicable by them and therefore may be rejected and then it must pretend no longer For he that will pretend to an extraordinary spirit and refuses to be tried by the ordinary wayes must either prophecy or work miracles or must have a voice from heaven to give him testimony The Prophets in the old Testament and the Apostles in the New and Christ between both had no other way of extraordinary probation and they that pretend to any thing extraordinary cannot ought not to be beleeved unlesse they have something more then their own word If I bear witnesse of my self my witnesse is not true said Truth it self our Blessed Lord. But secondly they that intend to teach by an extraordinary spirit if they pretend to teach according to Scripture must be examined by the measures of Scripture and then their extraordinary must be judged by the ordinary spirit and stands or falls by the rules of every good mans religion and publike government and then we are well enough But if they speak any thing against Scripture it is the spirit of Antichrist and the spirit of the Devil For if an Angel from heaven he certainly is a spirit preach any other doctrine let him be accursed But this pretence of a single and extraordinary spirit is nothing else but the spirit of pride errour and delusion a snare to catch easie and credulous souls which are willing to die for a gay word and a distorted face it is the parent of folly and giddy doctrine impossible to be proved and therefore uselesse to all purposes of religion reason or sober counsels it is like an invisible colour or musick without a sound it is and indeed is so intended to be a direct overthrow of order and government and publike ministeries It is bold to say any thing and resolved to prove nothing it imposes upon willing people after the same manner that Oracles and the lying Daemons did of old time abusing men not by proper efficacy of its own but because the men love to be abused it is a great disparagement to the sufficiency of Scripture and asperses the Divine providence for giving to so many ages of the Church an imperfect religion expressely against the truth of their words who said they had declared the whole truth of God and told all the will of God and it is an affront to the Spirit of God the Spirit of wisdom and knowledge of order and publike ministeries But the will furnishes out malice and the understanding sends out levity and they marry and produce a phantastick dream and the daughter sucking winde instead of the milk of the word growes up to madnesse and the spirit of reprobation Besides all this an extraordinary spirit is extremely unnecessary and God does not give immissions and miracles from heaven to
told his disciples that they should sit upon twelve thrones they presently thought they had his bond for a kingdom and dreamt of wealth and honour power and a splendid court and Christ knew they did but did not disintangle his promise from the enfolded and intricate sence of which his words were naturally capable but he performed his promise to better purposes then they hoped for they were presidents in the conduct of souls Princes of Gods people the chief in sufferings stood neerest to the crosse had an elder brothers portion in the Kingdom of grace were the founders of Churches and dispensers of the mysteries of the kingdom and ministers of the spirit of God and chanels of mighty blessings under mediators in the Priesthood of their Lord and their names were written in heaven and this was infinitely better then to groan and wake under a head pressed with a golden crown and pungent cares and to eat alone and to walk in a croud and to be vexed with all the publick and many of the private evils of the people which is the sum Total of an earthly Kingdom When God promised to the obedient that they should live long in the land which he would give them he meant it of the land of Canaan but yet reserved to himself the liberty of taking them quickly from that land and carrying them to a better He that promises to lend me a staffe to walk withal and instead of that gives me a horse to carry me hath not broken his promise nor dealt deceitfully And this is Gods dealing with mankinde he promises more then we could hope for and when he hath done that he gives us more then he hath promised God hath promised to give to them that fear him all that they need food and raiment but he addes out of the treasures of his mercy variety of food and changes of raiment some to get strength and some to refresh something for them that are in health and some for the sick And though that skins of buls and stagges and foxes and bears could have drawn a vail thick enough to hide the apertures of sin and natural shame and to defend us from heat and cold yet when he addeth the fleeces of sheep and beavers and the spoiles of silk worms he hath proclaimed that although his promises are the bounds of our certain expectation yet they are not the limits of his loving kindnesse and if he does more then he hath promised no man can complain that he did otherwise and did greater things then he said thus God does but therefore so also must we imitating that example and transcribing that copy of divine truth alwayes remembring that his promises are yea and Amen And although God often goes more yet he never goes lesse and therefore we must never go from ur promises unlesse we be thrust from thence by disability or let go by leave or called up higher by a greater intendment and increase of kindnesse And therefore when Solyman had sworn to Ibrahim-Bassa that he would never kill him so long as he were alive he quitted himself but ill when he sent an Eunuch to cut his throat when he slept because the Priest told him that sleep was death His act was false and deceitful as his great prophet But in this part of simplicity we Christians have a most especiall obligation for our religion being ennobled by the most and the greatest promises and our faith made confident by the veracity of our Lord and his word made certain by miracles and prophecies and voices from heaven and all the testimony of God himself and that truth it self is bound upon us by the efficacy of great endearments and so many precepts if we shall suffer the faith of a Christian to be an instrument to deceive our brother and that he must either be incredulous or deceived uncharitable or deluded like a fool we dishonour the sacrednesse of the institution and become strangers to the spirit of truth and to the eternall word of God Our Blessed Lord would not have his disciples to swear at all no not in publick Judicature if the necessities of the world would permit him to be obeyed If Christians will live according to the religion the word of a Christian were sufficient instrument to give testimony and to make promises to secure a faith and upon that supposition oathes were uselesse and therefore forbidden because there could be no necessity to invoke Gods name in promises or affirmations if men were indeed Christians and therefore in that case would be a taking it in vain but because many are not and they that are in name oftentimes are so in nothing else it became necessary that man should swear in judgment and in publick courts but consider who it was that invented and made the necessitie of oaths of bonds of securities of statutes extents judgements and all the artifices of humane diffidence and dishonesty These things were indeed found out by men but the necessity of these was from him that is the father of lies from him that hath made many faire promises but never kept any or if he did it was to do a bigger mischief to cozen the more for so does the Devil He promises rich harvests and blasts the corn in the spring he tells his servants they shall be rich and fills them with beggerly qualities makes them base and indigent greedy and penurious and they that serve him intirely as witches and such miserable persons never can be rich if he promises health then men grow confident and intemperate and do such things whereby they shall die the sooner and die longer they shall die eternally He deceives men in their trust and frustrates their hopes and eludes their expectations and his promises have a period set beyond which they cannot be true For wicked men shall enjoy a faire fortune but till their appointed time and then it ends imperfect and most accomplished misery and therefore even in this performance he deceives them most of all promising and performing coloured stones and glasse-gems that he may cozen them of their glorious inheritance All fraudulent breakers of promises dresse themselves by his glasse whose best imagery is deformity and lies Sermon XXIV Of Christian Simplicity Part II. 4. CHristian simplicity teaches opennesse and ingenuity in Contracts and matters of buying and selling covenants associations and all such entercourses which suppose an equality of persons as to the matter of right and justice in the stipulation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was the old Attick law and nothing is more contrary to Christian religion then that the entercourses of justice be direct snares and that we should deal with men as men deal with foxes and wolves and vermin do all violence and when that cannot be use all craft and every thing whereby they can be made miserable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There are men in the world who love to smile but that smile is more dangerous then
they were perpetual would be intolerable the needs of nature and the provisions of providence sleep and businesse refreshments of the body and entertainment of the soul these are to be reckoned as acts of bounty rather then mercy God gave us these when he made us and before we needed mercy these were portions of our nature or provided to supply our consequent necessities but when we forfeited all Gods favour by our sins then that they were continued or restored to us became a mercy and therefore ought to be reckoned upon this new account for it was a rare mercy that we were suffered to live at all or that the Anger of God did permit to us one blessing that he did punish us so gently But when the rack is changed into an ax and the ax into an imprisonment and the imprisonment changed into an enlargement and the enlargement into an entertainment in the family and this entertainment passes on to an adoption these are steps of a mighty favour and perfect redemption from our sin and the returning back our own goods is a gift and a perfect donative sweetned by the apprehensions of the calamity from whence every lesser punishment began to free us and thus it was that God punished us and visited the sin of Adam upon his posterity He threatned we should die and so we did but not so as we deserved we waited for death and stood sentenced and are daily summoned by sicknesses and uneasinesse and every day is a new reprieve and brings a new favour certain as the revolution of the Sun upon that day and at last when we must die by the irreversible decree that death is changed into a sleep and that sleep is in the bosom of Christ and there dwels all peace and security and it shall passe forth into glories and felicities We looked for a Judge and behold a Saviour we feared an accuser and behold an Advocate we sate down in sorrow and rise in joy we leaned upon Rhubarb and Aloes and our aprons were made of the sharp leaves of Indian fig-trees and so we fed and so were clothed But the Rhubarb proved medicinal and the rough leaf of the tree brought its fruit wrapped up in its foldings and round about our dwellings was planted a hedge of thornes and bundles of thistles the Aconite and the Briony the Night-shade and the Poppy and at the root of these grew the healing Plantain which rising up into a talnesse by the friendly invitation of a heavenly influence turn'd about the tree of the crosse and cured the wounds of the thorns and the curse of the thistles and the malediction of man and the wrath of God Si sio irascitur quomodo convivatur If God be thus kinde when he is Angry what is he when he feasts us with caresses of his more tender Kindnesse All that God restored to us after the forfeiture of Adam grew to be a double Kindnesse for it became the expression of a bounty which knew not how to repent a graciousnesse that was not to be altered though we were and that was it which we needed That 's the first generall all the bounties of the creation became mercies to us when God continued them to us and restored them after they were forfeit 2. But as a circle begins every where and ends no where so do the mercies of God after all this huge progresse now it began anew God is good and gracious and God is ready to forgive Now that he had once more made us capable of mercies God had what he desired and what he could rejoyce in something upon which he might pour forth his mercies and by the way this I shall observe for I cannot but speak without art when I speak of that which hath no measure God made us capable of one sort of his mercies and we made our selves capable of another God is good and gracious that is desirous to give great gifts and of this God made us receptive first by giving us naturall possibilities that is by giving those gifts he made us capable of more and next by restoring us to his favour that he might not by our provocations be hindered from raining down his mercies But God is also ready to forgive and of this kinde of mercy we made our selves capable even by not deserving it Our sin made way for his grace and our infirmities called upon his pity and because we sinned we became miserable and because we were miserable we became pitiable and this opened the other treasure of his mercy that because our sin abounds his grace may superabound In this method we must confine our thoughts 1. Giving 2. Forgiving Thou Lord art good and ready to forgive plenteous in mercy to all them that call upon thee 3. Gods mercies or the mercies of his giving came first upon us by mending of our nature For the ignorance we fell into is instructed and better learned in spirituall notices then Adams morning knowledge in Paradise our appetites are made subordinate to the spirit and the liberty of our wills is improved having the liberty of the sons of God and Christ hath done us more grace and advantage then we lost in Adam and as man lost Paradise and got Heaven so he lost the integrity of the first and got the perfection of the second Adam his living soul is changed into a quickning spirit our discerning faculties are filled with the spirit of faith and our passions and desires are entertained with hope and our election is sanctified with charity and his first life of a temporall possession is passed into a better a life of spirituall expectations and though our first parent was forbidden it yet we live of the fruits of the tree of life But I instance in two great things in which humane nature is greatly advanced and passed on to greater perfections The first is that besides body and soul which was the summe totall of Adams constitution God hath superadded to us a third principle the beginner of a better life I mean the Spirit so that now man hath a spiritual and celestial nature breathed into him and the old man that is the old constitution is the least part and in its proper operations is dead or dying but the new man is that which gives denomination life motion and proper actions to a Christian and that is renewed in us day by day But secondly Humane nature is so highly exalted and mended by that mercy which God sent immediately upon the fall of Adam the promise of Christ that when he did come and actuate the purposes of this mission and ascended up into heaven he carried humane nature above the seats of Angels to the place whither Lucifer the son of the morning aspir'd to ascend but in his attempt fell into hell For so said the Prophet the son of the morning said I will ascend into heaven and sit in the sides of the North that is the throne of
person for whom God will not hear me yet then he will hear me for my self though I say nothing in my own behalf and our prayers are like Jonathans arrows if they fall short yet they return my friend or my friendship to me or if they go home they secure him whom they pray for and I have not onely the comfort of rejoycing with him but the honour and the reward of procuring him a joy and certain it is that a charitable prayer for another can never want what it asks or instead of it a greater blessing The good man that saw his poor brother troubled because he had nothing to present for an offering at the Holy communion when all knew themselves obliged to do kindnesse for Christs poor members with which themselves were incorporated with so mysterious union and gave him mony that he might present for the good of his soul as other Christians did had not onely the reward of almes but of religion too and that offering was well husbanded for it did benefit to two souls for as I sin when I make another sin so if I help him to do a good I am a sharer in the gains of his talent and he shall not have the lesse but I shall be rewarded upon his stock And this was it which David rejoyced in Particâ—ps sum omnium timentium te I am a partner a companion of all them that fear thee I share in their profits If I do but rejoyce at every grace of God which I see in my Brother I shall be rewarded â—or that grace and we need not envy the excellency of another It becomes mine as well as his and if I do rejoyce I shall have â—ause to rejoyce so excellent so full so artificial is the mercy of God in making and seeking and finding all occasions to do us good 5. The very charity and love and mercy that is commanded in our religion is in it self a great excellency not onely in order to heaven but to the comforts of the earth too such without which a man is not capable of a blessing or a comfort he that sent charity and friendships into the world intended charity to be as relative as justice to do its effect both upon the loving and the beloved person It is a reward and a blessing to a kinde Father when his children do well and every degree of prudent love which 〈◊〉 bears to them is an endearment of his joy and he that loves them not but looks upon them as burdens of necessity and â—oads to his fortune loses those many rejoycings and the pleasâ—â—es of kindnesse which they feast withal who love to divide their fortunes amongst them because they have already divided out large and equal portions of their heart I have instanced in this relation but it is true in all the excellency of friendship and every man rejoyces twice when he hath a partner of his joy A friend shares my sorrow and makes it but a moiâ—ty but he swells my joy and makes it double For so two chanels divide the river and lessen it into rivulets and make it foordable and apt to be drunk up at the first revels of the Sirian star but two torches do not divide but increase the flame and though my tears are the sooner dryed up when they run upon my friends cheeks in the furrows of compassion yet when my flame hath kindled his lamp we unite the glories and make them radiant like the golden Candle-sticks that burn before the throne of God because they shine by numbers by unions and confederations of light and joy And now upon this account which is already so great I need not reckon concerning the collateral issues and little streams of comfort which God hath made to issue from that religion to which God hath obliged us such as are mutual comforts visiting sick people instructing the ignorant and so becoming better instructed and fortified and comforted our selves by the instruments of our Brothers ease and advantages the glories of converting souls of rescuing a sinner from hell of a miserable man from the grave the honour and noblenesse of being a good man the noble confidence and the bravery of innocence the ease of patience the quiet of contentednesse the rest of peacefulnesse the worthinesse of forgiving others the greatnesse of spirit that is in despising riches and the sweetnesse of spirit that is in meeknesse and humility these are Christian graces in every sense favours of God and issues of his bounty his mercy but al that Ishal now observe further concerning them is this that God hath made these necessary he hath obliged us to have them under pain of damnation he hath made it so sure to us to become happy even in this world that if we will not he hath threatened to destroy us which is not a desire or aptnesse to do us an evil but an art to make it impossible that we should For God hath so ordered it that we cannot perish unlesse we desire it our selves and unlesse we will do our selves a mischief on purpose to get hell we are secured of heaven and there is not in the nature of things any way that can more infallibly do the work of felicity upon creatures that can choose then to make that which they should naturally choose be spiritually their duty and that he will make them happy hereafter if they will suffer him to make them happy here But hardly stand another throng of mercies that must be considered by us and God must be glorified in them for they are such as are intended to preserve to us all this felicity 9. God that he might secure our duty and our present and consequent felicity hath tied us with golden chaines and bound us not onely with the bracelets of love and the deliciousnesse of hope but with the ruder cords of fear and reverence even with all the innumerable parts of a restraining grace For it is a huge aggravation of humane calamity to consider that after a man hath been instructed in the love and advantages of his Religion and knows it to be the way of honour and felicity and that to prevaricate his holy sanctions is certain death and disgrace to eternal ages yet that some men shall despise their religion others shall be very weary of its laws and cal the commandments a burden and too many with a perfect choice shall delight in death and the wayes that lead thither and they choose mony infinitely and to rule over their Brother by al means to be revenged extremely and to prevail by wrong and to do all that they can and please themselves in all that they desire and love it fondly and be restlesse in all things but where they perish if God should not interpose by the arts of a miraculous and merciful grace and put a bridle in the mouth of our lusts and chastise the sea of our follies by some heaps of sand or
the drinkings of the children and it is a long time before nature makes them capable of help for there are many deaths and very many diseases to which poor babes are exposed but they have but very few capacities of physick to shew that infancy is as liable to death as old age and equally exposed to danger and equally uncapable of a remedy with this onely difference that old age hath diseases incurable by nature and the diseases of child-hood are incurable by art and both the states are the next heirs of death 3. But all the middle way the case is altered Nature is strong and art is apt to give ease and remedy but still there is no security and there the case is not altered 1 For there are so many diseases in men that are not understood 2 So many new ones every year 3 The old ones are so changed in circumstance and intermingled with so many collateral complications 4 The Symptoms are oftentimes so alike 5 Sometimes so hidden and fallacious 6 Somtimes none at all as in the most sudden and the most dangerous imposthumations 7 And then the diseases in the inward parts of the body are oftentimes such to which no application can be made 8 They are so far off that the effects of all medicines can no otherwise come to them then the effect and juices of all meats that is not till after two or three alterations and decoctions which change the very species of the medicament 9 And after all this very many principles in the art of Physick are so uncertain that after they have been believed seven or eight ages and that upon them much of the practise hath been established they come to be considered by a witty man and others established in their stead by which men must practise and by which three or four generations of men more as happens must live or die 10. And all this while the men are sick and they take things that certainly make them sicker for the present and very uncertainly restore health for the future that it may appear of what a large extent is humane calamity when Gods providence hath not onely made it weak and miserable upon the certain stock of a various nature and upon the accidents of an infinite contingency but even from the remedies which are appointed our dangers and our troubles are certainly increased so that we may well be likened to water our nature is no stronger our aboad no more certain If the sluces be opened it falls away and runneth apace if its current be stopped it swells and grows troublesome and spils over with a greater diffusion If it be made to stand still it putrefies and all this we do For 4. In all the processe of our health we are running to our grave we open our own sluces by vitiousnesse and unworthy actions we pour in drink and let out life we increase diseases and know not how to bear them we strangle our selves with our own intemperance we suffer the feavers and the inflammations of lust and we quench our souls with drunkennesse we bury our understandings in loads of meat and surfets and then we lie down upon our beds and roar with pain and disquietnesse of our souls Nay we kill one anothers souls and bodies with violence and folly with the effects of pride and uncharitablenesse we live and die like fools and bring a new mortality upon our selves wars and vexatious cares and private duels and publike disorders and every thing that is unreasonable and every thing that is violent so that now we may adde this fourth gate to the grave Besides Nature and Chance and the mistakes of art men die with their own sins and then enter into the grave in haste and passion and pull the heavy stone of the monument upon their own heads And thus we make our selves like water spilt on the ground we throw away our lives as if they were unprofitable and indeed most men make them so we let our years slip through our fingers like water and nothing is to be seen but like a showr of tears upon a spot of ground there is a grave digged and a solemn mourning and a great talk in the neighbourhood and when the dayes are finished they shall be and they shall be remembred no more And that 's like water too when it is spilt it cannot be gathered up again There is no redemption from the grave inter se mortales mutua vivunt Et quasi cursores vitäi lampada tradunt Men live in their course and by turns their light burns a while and then it burns blew and faint and men go to converse with Spirits and then they reach the taper to another and as the hours of yesterday can never return again so neither can the man whose hours they were and who lived them over once he shall never come to live them again and live them better When Lazarus and the widows son of Naim and Tabitha and the Saints that appeared in Jerusalem at the resurrection of our blessed Lord arose they came into this world some as strangers onely to make a visit and all of them to manifest a glory but none came upon the stock of a new life or entred upon the stage as at first or to perform the course of a new nature and therefore it is observable that we never read of any wicked person that was raised from the dead Dives would fain have returned to his brothers house but neither he nor any from him could be sent but all the rest in the New Testament one onely excepted were expressed to have been holy persons or else by their age were declared innocent Lazarus was beloved of Christ those souls that appeared at the resurrection were the souls of Saints Tabitha raised by Saint Peter was a charitable and a holy Christian and the maiden of twelve years old raised by our blessed Saviour had not entred into the regions of choice and sinfulnesse and the onely exception of the widows son is indeed none at all for in it the Scripture is wholly silent and therefore it is very probable that the same processe was used God in all other instances having chosen to exemplifie his miracles of nature to purposes of the Spirit and in spirituall capacities So that although the Lord of nature did break the bands of nature in some instances to manifest his glory to succeeding great and never failing purposes yet besides that this shall be no more it was also instanced in such persons who were holy and innocent and within the verge and comprehensions of the eternall mercy We never read that a wicked person felt such a miracle or was raised from the grave to try the second time for a Crown but where he fell there he lay down dead and saw the light no more This consideration I intend to you as a severe Monitor and an advice of carefulnesse that you order your affairs so that you may
sink down and die For so have I seen the pillars of a building assisted with artificiall props bending under the pressure of a roof and pertinaciously resisting the infallible and prepared ruine Donec certa dies omni compage solutâ Ipsum cum rebus subruat auxilium till the determined day comes and then the burden sunk upon the pillars and disordered the aids and auxiliary rafters into a common ruine and a ruder grave so are the desires and weak arts of man with little aids and assistances of care and physick we strive to support our decaying bodies and to put off the evil day but quickly that day will come and then neither Angels nor men can rescue us from our grave but the roof sinks down upon the walls and the walls descend to the foundation and the beauty of the face and the dishonours of the belly the discerning head and the servile feet the thinking heart and the working hand the eyes and the guts together shall be crush'd into the confusion of a heap and dwell with creatures of an equivocall production with worms and serpents the sons and daughters of our own bones in a house of durt and darknesse Let not us think to be excepted or deferred If beauty or wit or youth or Noblenesse or wealth or vertue could have been a defence and an excuse from the grave we had not met here to day to mourn upon the hearse of an excellent Lady and God onely knows for which of us next the mourners shall go about the streets or weep in houses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We have lived so many years and every day and every minute we make an escape from those thousands of dangers and deaths that encompasse us round about and such escapings we must reckon to be an extraordinary fortune and therefore that it cannot last long Vain are the thoughts of Man who when he is young or healthfull thinks he hath a long threed of life to run over and that it is violent and strange for young persons to die and naturall and proper onely for the aged It is as naturall for a man to die by drowning as by a fever And what greater violence or more unnaturall thing is it that the horse threw his Rider into the river then that a drunken meeting cast him into a fever and the strengths of youth are as soon broken by the strong sicknesses of youth and the stronger intemperance as the weaknesse of old age by a cough or an asthma or a continuall rheume Nay it is more naturall for young Men and Women to die then for old because that is more naturall which hath more naturall causes and that is more naturall which is most common but to die with age is an extreme rare thing and there are more persons carried forth to buriall before the five and thirtieth year of their age then after it And therefore let no vain confidence make you hope for long life If you have lived but little and are still in youth remember that now you are in your biggest throng of dangers both of body and soul and the proper sins of youth to which they rush infinitely and without consideration are also the proper and immediate instruments of death But if you be old you have escaped long and wonderfully and the time of your escaping is out you must not for ever think to live upon wonders or that God will work miracles to satisfie your longing follies and unreasonable desires of living longer to sin and to the world Go home and think to die and what you would choose to be doing when you die that do daily for you will all come to that passe to rejoyce that you did so or wish that you had that will be the condition of every one of us for God regardeth no mans person Well! but all this you will think is but a sad story What we must die and go to darknesse and dishonour and we must die quickly and we must quit all our delights and all our sins or do worse infinitely worse and this is the condition of us all from which none can be excepted every man shall be spilt and fall into the ground and be gathered no more Is there no comfort after all this shall we go from hence and be no more seen and have no recompense Miser ô miser aiunt omnia ademit Vna die infausta mihi tot praemia vitae Shall we exchange our fair dwellings for a coffine our softer beds for the moistned and weeping turf and our pretty children for worms and is there no allay to this huge calamity Yes there is There is a yet in the Text For all this yet doth God devise means that his banished be not expelled from him All this sorrow and trouble is but a phantasme and receives its account and degrees from our present conceptions and the proportion to our relishes and gust When Pompey saw the Ghost of his first Lady Julia who vexed his rest and his conscience for superinducing Cornelia upon her bed within the ten moneths of mourning he presently fancied it either to be an illusion or else that death could be no very great evil Aut nihil est sensus animis in morte relictum Aut mors ipsa nihil Either my dead wife knows not of my unhandsome marriage and forgetfulnesse of her or if she does then the dead live longae canitis si cognita vitae Mors media est Death is nothing but the middle point between two lives between this and another concerning which comfortable mystery the holy Scripture instructs our faith and entertains our hope in these words God is still the God of Abraham Isaak and Jacob for all do live to him and the souls of Saints are with Christ I desire to be dissolved saith S. Paul and to be with Christ for that is much better and Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord they rest from their labours and their works follow them For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God a house not made with hands eternall in the heavens and this state of separation S. Paul calls a being absent from the body and being present with the Lord This is one of Gods means which he hath devised that although our Dead are like persons banished from this world yet they are not expelled from God They are in the hands of Christ they are in his presence they are or shall be clothed with a house of Gods making they rest from all their labours all tears are wiped from their eyes and all discontents from their spirits and in the state of separation before the soul be reinvested with her new house the spirits of al persons are with God so secured and so blessed and so sealed up for glory that this state of interval and imperfection is in respect of its certain
that Christ prayes in Heaven for us and if we do not pray on earth in the same manner according to our measures we had as good hold our peace our prayers are an abominable sacrifice and send up to God no better a perfume then if wee burned assa faetida or the raw flesh of a murdered man upon the altar of incense 6. The spirit of Christ and of prayer helps our infirmities by giving us confidence and importunity I put them together For as our faith is and our trust in God so is our hope and so is our prayer weary or lasting long or short not in words but in works and in desires For the words of prayer are no part of the spirit of prayer words may be the body of it but the spirit of prayer alwayes consists in holinesse that is in holy desires and holy actions words are not properly capable of being holy all words are in themselves seâ—vants of things and the holinesse of a prayer is not at all concerned in the manner of its expression but in the spirit of it that is in the violence of its desires and the innocence of its ends and the continuence of its imployment this is the verification of that great Prophecie which Christ made that in all the world the true worshippers should worship in spirit and in truth that is with a pure minde with holy desires for spiritual things according to the minde of the spirit in imitation of Christs intercession with perseverance with charity or love That is the spirit of God and these are the spiritualities of the Gospel and the formalities of prayer as they are Christian and Evangelicall 7. Some men have thought of a seventh way and explicate our praying in the spirit by a mere volubilty of language which indeed is a direct undervaluing the spirit of God and of Christ the spirit of manifestation and intercession it is to return to the materiality and imperfection of the law it is to worship God in outward forms and to think that Gods service consists in shels and rinds in lips and voices in shadows and images of things it is to retire from Christ to Moses and at the best it is a going from real graces to imaginary gifts and when praying with the spirit hath in it so many excellencies and consists of so many parts of holinesse and sanctification and is an act of the inner man we shall be infinitely mistaken if we let go this substance and catch at a shadow and sit down and rest in the imagination of an improbable unnecessary uselesse gift of speaking to which the nature of many men and the art of all learned men and the very use and confidence of ignorant men is too abundantly sufficient Let us not so despise the spirit of Christ as to make it no other then the breath of our lungs * For though it might be possible that at the first and when formes of prayer were few and seldome the spirit of God might dictatethe very words to the Apostles and first Christians yet it follows not that therfore he does so still to all that pretend praying with the spirit For if he did not then at the first dictate words as we know not whether he did or no why shall he be supposâ—d to do so now If he did then it follows that he does not now because his doing it then was sufficient for all men since for so the formes taught by the spirit were paternes for others to imitate in all the descending ages of the Church There was once an occasion so great that the spirit of God did think it a work â—it for him to teach a man to weave silke or embroider gold or woke in brasse as it happened to Besaleel and Aholiab But then every weaver or worker in brasse may by the same reason pretend that he works by the spirit as that he prayes by the spirit if by prayer he means forming the words For although in the ease of working it was certain that the spirit did teach in the ease of inditing or forming the words it is not certain whether he did or no yet because in both it was extraordinary if it was at all and ever since in both it is infinitely needlesse to pretend the Spirit in forms of every mans making even though they be of contrary religions and pray one against the other it may serve an end of a phantastic and hypochondriacal religion or a secret ambition but not the ends of God or the honour of the Spirit The Jews in their declensions to folly and idolatry did worship the stone of imagination that is certain smooth images in which by art magic pictures and little faces were represented declaring hidden things and stoln goods and God severely forbad this basenesse but we also have taken up this folly and worship the stone of imagination we beget imperfect phantasmes and speculative images in our phansy and we fall down and worship them never considering that the spirit of God never appears through such spectres Prayer is one of the noblest exercises of Christian religion or rather is it that duty in which all graces are concentred Prayer is charity it is faith it is a conformity to Gods will a desiring according to the desires of Heaven an imitation of Christs intercession and prayer must suppose all holinesse or else it is nothing and therefore all that in which men need Gods Spirit all that is in order to prayer Baptisme is but a prayer and the holy Sacrament of the Lords Supper is but a prayer a prayer of sacrifice representative and a prayer of oblation and a prayer of intercession and a prayer of thanksgiving and obedience is a prayer and begs and procures blessings and if the Holy Ghost hath sanctified the whole man then he hath sanctified the prayer of the man and not till then and if ever there was or could be any other praying with the spirit it was such a one as a wicked man might have and therefore it cannot be a note of distinction between the good and bad between the saints and men of the world But this onely which I have described from the fountains of Scripture is that which a good man can have and therefore this is it in which we ought to rejoyce that he that glories may glory in the Lord. Thus I have as I could described the effluxes of the Holy Spirit upon us in his great chanels But the great effect of them is this That as by the arts of the spirits of darknesse and our own malice our souls are turned into flesh not in the naturall sense but in the morall and Theologicall and animalis homo is the same with carnalis that is his soul is a servant of the passions and desires of the flesh and is flesh in its operations and ends in its principles and actions So on the other side by the Grace of God and the promise of the
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 Vtimur 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 some and yet rebellion against the supreme power of Moses and Aaron 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 woâ—â—d concern us to be careful lest we fal into presumptuous sins lest they get the dominiâ—â— 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 any known sin if I should descend to particulars I might lay a snare to scrupulous and nice consciences This onely every confirmed habitual sinner does manifest the divine justice in punishing the sins of a short life with a never dying worm and a never quenched flame because we have an affection to sin that no time will diminish but such as would increase to eternal ages and accordingly as any man hath a degree of love so he hath lodged in his soul a spark which unless it be speedily effectively quenched will break forth into unquenchable fire Sermon XVIII THE FOOLISH EXCHANGE Matthew 16. Ver. 26. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul WHen the eternal mercy of God had decreed to resâ—ue mankinde from misery and infelicity and so triumphed over his own justice the excellent wisdom of God resolved to do it in wayes contradictory to the appetites and designes of man that it also might triumph over our weaknesses and imperfect conceptions So God decreeing to glorifie his mercy by curing our sins and to exalt his wisdome by the reproof of our ignorance and the representing upon what weak and false principals we had built our hopes and expectations of felicity Pleasure and profit victory over our enemies riches and pompous honours power and revenge desires according to sensual appetites and prosecutions violent and passionate of those appetites health and long life free from trouble without poverty or persecution Hac sunt jucundissime Martialis vitam quae faciunt beatiorem These are the measures of good and evil the object of our hopes and fears the securing our content and the portion of this world and for the other let it be as it may But the Blessed Jesus having made revelations of an immortal duration of another world and of a strange restitution to it even by the resurrection of the body and a new investiture of the soul with the same upper garment clarified and made pure so as no Fuller on earth can whiten it hath also preached a new Philosophy
hath cancelled all the old principles reduced the appetites of sence to the discourses of reason and heightned reason to the sublimities of the spirit teaching us abstractions and immaterial conceptions giving us new eyes and new objects and new proportions For now sensual pleasures are not delightful riches are drosse honours are nothing but the appendages of vertue and in relation to it are to receive their account but now if you would enjoy life you must die if you would be at ease you must take up Christs crosse and conform to his sufferings if you would save your life you must lose it and if you would be rich you must abound in good works you must be poor in spirit and despise the world and be rich unto God for whatsoever is contrary to the purchases and affections of this world is an endearment of our hopes in the world to come and therefore he having stated the question so that either we must quit this world or the other our affections I mean and adherencies to this or our interest and hopes of the other the choice is rendered very easie by the words of my text because the distance is not lesse then infinite and the comparison hath terms of a vast difference heaven and hell eternity and a moment vanity and real felicity life and death eternal all that can be hoped for and all that can be feared these are the terms of our choice and if a man have his wits about him and be not drunk with sensuality and senslessenesse he need not much to dispute before he passe the sentence For nothing can be given to us to recompeâ—ce the losse of heaven and if our soulâ— be lost there is nothing remaining to us whereby we can be happy What shall it profit a man or what shall a man give is there any exchange for a mans soul the question is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the negative Nothing can be given for an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a price to satisfie for its losse The blood of the son of God was given to recover it or as an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to God and when our souls were forfeit to him nothing lesse then the life and passion of God and man could pay the price I say to God who yet was not concerned in the losse save onely that such was his goodnesse that it pitied him to see his creature lost But to us what shall be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what can make us recompence when we have lost our own souls and are lost in a miserable eternity what can then recompence us not all the world not ten thousand worlds and of this that miserable man whose soul is lost is the best judge For the qustion is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and hath a potential signification and means 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is suppose a man ready to die condemned to the sentence of a horrid death heightned with all the circumstances of trembling and amazement what would he give to save his life eye for eye tooth for tooth and all that a man hath will he give for his life and this turned to a proverb among the Jews for so the last words of the text are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which proverb being usually meant concerning a temporal death and was intended to represent the sadnesses of a condemned person our blessed Saviour fits to his own purpose and translates to the signification of death eternal which he first revealed clearly to the world and because no interest of the world can make a man recompence for his life because to lose that makes him incapable of enjoying the exchange and he were a strange fool who having no designe upon immortality or vertue should be willing to be hanged for a thousand pound per annum this argument increases infinitely in the purpose of our Blessed Saviour and to gain the world and to lose our souls in the Christian sence is infinitely more madnesse and a worse exchange then when our souls signifie nothing but a temporal life and because possibly the indefinite hopes of â—lysium or an honorable name might tempt some hardy persons to leave this world hoping for a better condition ever among the heathens yet no excuse will acquit a Christian from madnesse If for the purchase of this world he lose his eternitie Here then first we will consider the propositions of the exchange the world and a mans soul by way of supposition supposing all that is propounded were obtained the whole world Secondly we will consider what is likely to be obtained really and indeed of the world and what are really the miseries of a lost soul For it is propounded in the text by way of supposition If a man should gain the world which no man ever did nor ever can and he that gets most gets too little to be exchanged for a temporal life And thirdly I shall apply it to your practise and make material considerations 1. First then suppose a man gets all the world what is it that he gets It is a bubble and a Phantasme and hath no reality beyond a present transient use a thing that is impossible to be enjoyed because its fruits and usages are transmitted to us by parts and by succession He that hath all the world if we can suppose such a man cannot have a dish of fresh summer fruits in the midst of winter not so much as a green fig and very much of its possessions is so hid so fugacious and of so uncertain purchase that it is like the riches of the sea to the Lord of the shore all the fish and wealth within all its hollownesses are his but he is never the better for what he cannot get All the shell fishes that produce pearl produce them not for him and the bowels of the earth shall hide her treasures in undiscovered retirements so that it will signifie as much to this great purchaser to be intitled to an inheritance in the upper region of the aire he is so far from possessing all its riches that he does not so much as know of them nor understand the Philosophy of her minerals 2. I consider that he that is the greatest possessor in the world enjoyes its best and most noble parts and those which are of most excellent perfection but in common with the inferiour persons and the most despicable of his kingdom Can the greatest Prince inclose the Sun and set one little star in his cabinet for his own use or secure to himself the gentle and benigne influence of any one constellation Are not his subjects fields bedewed with the same showers that water his gardens of pleasure Nay those things which he esteems his ornament and his singularity of his possessions are they not of more use to others then to himself For suppose his garments splendid and shining like the robe of a cherub or the clothing of the fields all that he that wears them