Off-spring of his Body as of that of his Soul His Notions are his Darlings So that neither Children nor Self are half so Dear to him as the Only begotten of his Mind And therefore in the Dispensations of Religion God will have this only Begotten this Best-beloved this Isaac of our Souls above all other Offerings that a Man can bring Him to be sacrificed and given up to Him Thirdly God in great Wisdom has been pleased to put a Mysteriousness into the Greatest Articles of our Religion thereby to engage us in a closer and more diligent Search into them He would have them the Objects of our Study and for that Purpose has render'd them hard and difficult For no Man studies Things plain and Evident and such as by their Native clearness do even prevent our Search and of their own accord offer themselves to our Understandings The Foundation of all enquiry is the obscurity as well as Worth of the Thing enquired after And God has thought good to make the Constitution and Complexion of our Religion such as may fit it to be our Business and our Task to require and take up all our Intellectual strengths and in a word to try the force of our Best our Noblest and most Active Faculties For if it were not so then surely Humane Literature could no ways promote the Study of Divinity nor could skill in the Liberal Arts and Sciences be any step to raise us to those higher Speculations But so the Experience of the World maugre all Fanatick Pretences all Naked Truths and Naked Gospels or rather shameful Nakedness instead of either Truth or Gospel has ever yet found it to be For still the Schools are and must be the standing Nurseries of the Church And all the Cultivation and Refinement they can bestow upon the best Wits in the use of the most unwearied industry are but a means to facilitate their advance higher and to let them in more easily at the Strait Gate of those more hidden and involved Propositions which Christianity would employ and exercise the mind of Man with For suppose that we could grasp in the whole Compass of Nature as to all the Particulars and Varieties of Being and Motion yet we should find it a Vast if not an Impossible Leap from thence to ascend to the full Comprehension of any one of God's Attributes and much more from thence to the Mysterious Oeconomy of the Divine Persons and lastly to the astonishing Work of the Worlds Redemption by the bloud of the Son of God himself condescending to be a Man that He might die for us All which were Things hidden from the Wise and Prudent in spight of all their Wisdom and Prudence as being Heights above the Reach and Depths beyond the Fathom of any Mortal Intellect We are Commanded by Christ to Search the Scriptures as the Great Repository of all the Truths and Mysteries of our Religion and whosoever shall apply himself to a through Performance of this high Command shall find Difficulty and Abstruseness enough in the Things Searched into to perpetuate his Search For they are a rich Mine which the greatest Wit and Diligence may dig in for ever and still find new matter to entertain the busiest Contemplation with even to the utmost Period of the most Extended life For no Man can out-live the Reasons of Enquiry so long as he carries any thing of Ignorance about him And that every Man must and shall do while he is in this State of Mortality For he who himself is but a part of Nature shall never compass or comprehend it all Truth we are told dwells Low and in a Bottom and the most Valued things of the Creation are conceal'd and hidden by the Great Creator of them from the common View of the World Gold and Diamonds with the most Precious Stones and Metals lie couched and covered in the Bowels of the Earth the very Condition of their Being giving them their Burial too So that Violence must be done to Nature before she will produce and bring them forth And then as for what concerns the mind of Man God has in His Wise Providence cast things so as to make the business of Men in this World Improvement that so the very Work of their condition may still remind them of the Imperfection of it For surely he who is still pressing forward has not yet obtain'd the Prize Nor has he who is only Growing in Knowledge yet arrived to the full stature of it Growth is Progress and all Progress designs and tends to the Acquisition of something which the Growing Person is not yet Possessed of Fourthly The fourth and Last Reason which I shall alledge of the Mysterious Dispensation of the Gospel here is That the full Entire knowledge of it may be one Principal Part of our Felicity and Blessedness hereafter All those Heights and Depths which we now stand so much amazed at and which so confound and baffle the subtlest and most Piercing Apprehension shall then be made Clear Open and Familiar to us God shall then display the Hidden Glories of His Nature and withal Fortify the Eye of the Soul so that it shall be able to behold and take them in so far as the Capacities of an humane Intellect shall enable it to do We shall then see the Mysteries of the Trinity and of the Incarnation of Christ and of the Resurrection of the Dead unriddled and made plain to us all the Knots of God's Deâ—rees and Providence untyed and made fit for our Vnderstanding as well as our Admiration We shall then be transported with a Nobler kind of Wonder not the Effect of Ignorance but the Product of a Clearer and more Advanced Knowledge We shall Admire and Adore the Works and Attributes of the Great God because we shall see the Glorious Excellency of the one and the Admirable Contrivances of the Other made evident to our very Reason So as to inform and satisfy that which before they could only astonish and amaze The Happiness of Heaven shall be an Happiness of Vision and of Knowledge and we shall there pass from the Darkness of our Native Ignorance from the Dusk and Twilight of our former Notions into the Broad Light of an Everlasting Day A Day which shall leave nothing Undiscovered to us which can be fit for us to know And therefore the Apostle comparing our Present with our Future Condition in respect of those different measures of Knowledge allotted to each of them 1 Cor. 13.12 tells us That here we see but darkly and in a glass and a glass we know often gives us a false but always a Faint representation of the Object but then saies he shall we see God face to face And again Here we know but in Part but there we shall know as we are known and that which is Perfect being come then that which is in Part shall be done away Reason being then unclogged from the Body shall have its full Flight
office of Conscience clear beyond all Objection And thus much I thought fit to premise concerning the Nature of the Light here spoken of by our Saviour and Intended for the subject of the present discourse Which Light as it is certainly the great and Sovereign Gift of God to Mankind for the Guidance and Government of their Actions in all that concernâ— them with reference to this Life 〈◊〉 a better so it is also as certain that it is Capable of being turned into Darkness and thereby made wholly useless for so Nobl 〈…〉 Purpose For so much the Words of the Tâ—â— Import nor do they Import only bare possibility that it may be so but aâ— so a very high Probability that witâ—â—â—â— an extraordinary Prevention it will bâ— so For as mâ—ch as all Warning in thâ— very Reason of the Thing and according to the Naturâ—l force of such expressions implies in it these two Thingâ— First Some very Considerable Evil or mischief Warned against and Secondly An Equal danger of falling into iâ— without which all Warning would be not only superfluous but Ridiculous Now both these in the Present Case are very great as will appear by a distinâ—t consideration of each of them And First For the Evil which we are warned or caution'd against to wit the Turning of this light within us into Darkness 〈◊〉 Evil so unconceivable great and comprehensive that to give an Account of the Utmost extent of it would pose our Thoughts as well as Nonplus our Expressions But yet to help our Apprehensions of it the best we 〈◊〉 let â—s but consider with our selves those Intolerable Evils which Bodily Blindness Deafness Stupefaction and an utter Deprivatâ—on of all sense must unavoidably subject the outward Man to For what is one in such a Condition able to do And what is He not lyable to suffer and yet Doing and Suffering upon the matter Comprehend all that concerns a Man in this World If such an ones Enemy seeks his Life as He may be sure that some or other will and Possibly such an One as he takes for his Truest Friend in this forlorn Case he can neither see nor hear nor perceive his Approach till He finds Himself actually in his Murthering Hands He can neither encounter nor eâ—cape Him neither in his own â—â—fence give nor ward off a Blow 〈◊〉 whatsoever blinds a Man ipso facto disarms Him so that being thus 〈◊〉 rest both of his Sight and of all his Senseâ— besides what such an one can be fit for unless it be to set up for Prophecy or believe Tâ—â—â—substantiation I cannot Imagine Thâ—â— I say are some of those Fâ—â—tal mischiefs which corporal Blindneâ—â— and Insensibility expose the Body to and are not those of a Spiritual Blindneâ—â— Unexpressibly greater For must 〈◊〉 Man Labouring under this be utterly 〈◊〉 at a loss how to distinguish betweâ—â—â— the two grand Governing concerns 〈◊〉 â—â—fe Good and Evil and may not thâ—â— Ignorance of these cost us as dear as the Knowledge of them did our first Parentsâ— Life and Death Vice and Vertue comâ— alike to such an one As all things are oâ— the same Colour to Him who cannot seâ— His whole Soul is nothing but Night and Confusion Darkness and Indistinction He can neither see the way to Happinesâ— and how then should He choose it Noâ— yet to destruction and how then should He avoid it For where there is no sense of things there can be no distinction and â—here there is no distinction there can be no Choice A Man destitute of this directing and distinguishing Light within Him is and must be at the Mercy of every thing 〈◊〉 Nature that would impose or serve 〈◊〉 Turn upon Him So that whatsoever the Devil will have Him do that 〈◊〉 must do Whithersoever any Exâ—â—â—tant desire or design hurries Him thither He must go Whatsoever any base Interest shall prescribe that he must set his hand to whether His Heart goes along with it or no. If he be a Statesman He must be as willing to sell as the Enemy of his Country can be to bay If a Churchman he must be ready to surrender and give up the Church and make a Sacrifice of the Altar it self though He lives by it and in a Word take that for a full discharge from all his Subscriptions and obligations to it to do as He is bid Which being the Case of such as steer by a false Light certainly no slave in the Gallies is or can be in such a Wretched Condition of slavery as a Man thus abandoned by Conscience and bereft of all Inward Principles that should either Guide or Controul Him in the Course of his Conversation So that we see here the Transcendent Greatness of the Evil which 〈◊〉 stand caution'd against But then Secondly If it were an Evil that seldom happened that very hardly and raâ—â—ly befell a Man this might in a 〈◊〉 measure supersede the strictness of tâ—â—â— Caution But on the contrary we shaâ—â— find that as great as the Evil is which we are to fence against and that is 〈◊〉 great as the Capacities of an Immortal Soul the Greatness of the danger is still Commensurate For it is a Case that usually happens It is a mischief as frequent in the Event as it is or can be Fatal in the Effect It is as in a Common Plague in which the Infectionâ—â— as hard to be escaped as the distempâ—â— to be Cured For that which brings this Darkness upon the Soul is Sin And as the state of Nature now is the Soul is not so Close United to the Body as Sin is to the Soul indeed so close is the Union between them that one would even think the Soul it self as much a Spirit as it is were the matter and Sin the form in our present Constitution In a word there is a set Combination of all without a Man and all within Him of all above ground and all under it if Hell be so first to put out his Eyes and then to draw or drive Him headlong into Perdition From all which I suppose we must needs see Reason more than sufficient for this Admonition of our Saviour Take heed that the Light which is in Thee be not Darkness An Admonition founded upon no less a Concern than all that a Man can save and all that He can lose to Eternity And thus having shewn both the Vastness of the Evil it self and the extreme danger we are in of it Since no Man can be at all the Wiser or the Safer barely for knowing his danger without a Vigorous application to prevent it and since the surest and most Rational preventive of it is to know by what Arts and methods our Enemy will encounter us and by which He is most likely to prevail over us we will enquire into and Consider those Ways and Means by which He commonly attempts and too frequently effects this so dismal a Change upon us as to strip us even of the poor
its great Clog and Impediment As the skilfulest Artist in the World would make but sorry work of it should he be forced to make use of Tools no way fit for his Purpose But whether the fault be in the Spiritual or Corporeal part of our Nature or rather in Both certain it is that no two Things in the World do more rise and grow upon the Fall of Each other than the Flesh and the Spirit They being like a kind of Balance in the hand of Nature so that as one mounts up the other still sinks down and the high Estate of the Body seldom or never fails to be the Low declining Estate of the Soul Which great contrariety and discord between them the Apostle describes as well as words can do Galat. 5.7 The Flesh says He lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit lusteth against the Flesh and these two are contrary like two mighty Princes whose Territories join they are always encroaching and Warring upon one Another And as it most commonly falls out that the Worse Cause has the Best success so when the Flesh and the Spirit come to a Battle it is seldom but the Flesh comes off Victorious And therefore the same great Apostle who so constantly exercised Himself to keep a Conscience void of Offence did as constantly and severely exercise Himself to keep under his Body and bring it into subjection 1 Cor. 9.27 And the same in all Ages has been the Judgment and Practice of all such as have had any Experience in the ways of God and the true methods of Religion For all Bodily Pleasure dulls and weakens the Operations of the Mind even upon a Natural Account and much more upon a Spiritual Now the Pleasures which Chiefly Affect or rather Bewitch the Body and by so doing become the very Pest and Poyson of the Nobler and Intellectual Part of Man are those false and fallacious Pleasures of Lust and Intemperance Of Each of which severally and First For Lust. Nothing does or can darken the mind or Conscience of Man more Nay it has a peculiar Efficacy this way and for that cause may justly be ranked amongst the very Powers of Darkness It being that which as Naturalists observe strikes at the proper seat of the Understanding the Brain Something of that Blackness of Darkness mentioned in the 13 th of St. Iude seeming to be of the very Nature as well as Punishment of this Vice Nor does only the Reason of the thing it self but also the Examples of such as have been possessed with it demonstrate as much For had not Sampson think we an Intolerable Darkness and Confusion upon his understanding while He ran Roving after every strumpet in that Brutish manner that He did Was it not the Eye of his Conscience which his Dalilah first put out and so of a Judge of Israel rendred Himself really a Judgment upon them And when the two Angels as we read in 19. Gen. struck those Monsters the Men of Sodom with Blindness had not their own detestable Lust first stricken them with a greater Or could Herod have ever Thought Himself obliged by the Religion of an Oath to have Murdered the Baptist had not his Lust and His Herodias Imprisoned and Murdered his Conscience first For surely the Common Light of Nature could not but Teach Him that no Oath or Vow whatsoever could warrant the greatest Prince upon Earth to take away the Life of an Innocent Person But it seems his besotted Conscience having broken through the seventh Commandment the sixth stood too near it to be safe long and therefore his two great Casuists the Devil and his Herodias the worse Devil of the Two having allowed Him to lie and wallow in Adultery so long easily perswaded Him that the same Salvo might be found out for Murder also So that it was His Lust obstinately continued in which thus darken'd and deluded his Conscience and the same will no doubt darken and delude and in the End extinguish the Conscience of any Man Breathing who shall surrender Himself up to it The Light within him shall grow every day less and less and at length totally and finally go out and that in a stink too So hard or rather utterly unfeasible is it for Men to be Zealous Votaries of the Blind God without losing their Eyes in his Service and it is well if their Noses do not follow From all which it appears what a Paradox it is in Morals for any one under the Dominion of his lust to think to have a Right Judgment in Things relating to the state of his Soul And the same in the Second Place holds equally in that other Branch of sensuality Intemperance whereupon we find them both Joined together by the Prophet Hosea 4.11 Whoredom says He and Wine take away the Heart that is according to the Language of Holy Writ a Mans Iudging and Discerning abilities And therefore whosoever would preserve these Faculties especially as to their discernment of Spiritual objects quick and vigorous must be sure to keep the upper Region of His Soul clear and serene which the Fumes of Meat and Drink lâ—xuriously taken in will never suffer it to be We know the method which this high and exact Pattern of Spiritual Prudence St. Paul took to keep the great sentinel of His Soul his Conscience always vigilant and circumspect It was by a Constant and severe Temperance heighten'd with frequent Watchings and Fastings as He Himself tells us 2 Cor. 11.27 In watchings often in Fastings often c. This was the Discipline which kept his senses exercised to a sure and exquisite discrimination of Good and Evil and made the Lamp within Him shine always with a Bright and a Triumphant flame But Gluttony and all excess either in eating or drinking strangely clouds and dulls the Intellectual Powers and then it is not to be expected that the Conscience should bear up when the Vnderstanding is drunk down An Epicure's Practice Naturally disposes a Man to an Epicure's Principles that is to an equal looseness and dissolution in Both And He who makes his Belly His Business will quickly come to have a Conscience of as large a swallow as his Throat of which there wants not several scandalous and deplorable Instances Loads of meat and drink are fit for none but a Beast of Burden to bear and He is much the greater Beast of the two who carries his Burden in his Belly than He who carries it upon his Back On the contrary Nothing is so great a Friend to the mind of Man as Abstinence It strenghens the memory clears the Apprehension and sharpens the Iudgment and in a word gives Reason its full scope of Acting and when Reason has That it is always a diligent and faithful Hand-Maid to Conscience And therefore where Men look no further than meer Nature as many do not let no Man expect to keep his Gluttony and his Parts His Drunkenness and his Wit his Revellings and his Iudgment
and much less His Conscience together For neither Grace nor Nature will have it so It is an utter Contradiction to the methods of Both. Who hath Woe Who hath Sorrow Who hath Contentions Who hath Babling Who hath wounds without Cause Who hath Redness of Eyes says Solomon Prov. 23.29 Which Question He Himself presently Answers in the next verse They who tarry long at the wine they who seek after mixt wine So say I who has a stupid Intellect a Broken memory and a blasted wit and which is worse than all a Blind and a Benighted Conscience but the Intemperate and Luxurious the Epicure and the Smell-feast So Impossible is it for a Man to turn Sott without making Himself a Blockhead too I know this is not always the present effect of these Courses but at long run it will Infallibly be so and Time and Luxury together will as certainly change the Inside as it does the outside of the Best heads whatsoever and much more of such Heads as are strong for nothing but to bear drink concerning which it ever was and is and will be a sure observation that such as are Ablest at the Barrel are generally Weakest at the Book And thus much for the first great Darkner of Man's mind sensuality and that in Both the Branches of it Lust and Intemperance Secondly Another Vitious affection which Clouds and Darkens the Conscience is Covetousness Concerning which it may truly be affirmed that of all the Vices incident to Humane Nature none so powerfully and peculiarly Carries the Soul downwards as Covetousness does It makes it all Earth and Dirt Burying that Noble Thing which can never Die. So that while the Body is above ground the Soul is under it and therefore must needs be in a state of Darkness while it Converses in the Regions of it How mightily this Vice Darkens and Debases the Mind Scripture-Instancer do abundantly shew When Moses would assign the proper Qualifications of a Judge which office certainly calls for the Quickest Apprehension and the solidest Judgment that the Mind of Man is well Capable of Deut. 16.19 Thou shalt not says He take a Gift But why He presently adds the Reason Because a Gift says He blinds the Eyes of the wise And no wonder for it perverts their will and then who so Blind as the Man who resolves not to see Gold it seems being but a very bad help and Cure of the Eyes in such Cases In like manner when Samuel would set the Credit of his Integrity clear above all the Aspersions of Envy and Calumny it self 1 Sam. 12.3 Of whose hands says He have I received a Bribe to blind my Eyes therewith Implying thereby that for a Man to be Gripe-handed and Clear-sighted too was Impossible And again Eccl. 7.7 A gift says the Wiseman destroyeth the Heart That is as we have shewn already the Iudging and Discerning Powers of the Soul By all which we see that in the Judgment of some of the wisest and greatest Men that ever lived such as Moses Samuel Solomon Himself Covetousness Baffles and Befools the mind Blinds and Confounds the Reasoning Faculty and that not only in ordinary Persons but even in the Ablest the Wisest and most sagacious And to give you one Proof above all of the peculiar blinding Power of this Vice there is not the most Covetous wretch Breathing who does so much as see or perceive that He is Covetous For the Truth is preach to the Conscience of a Covetous Person if he may be said to have any with the Tongue of Men and Angels and tell him of the Vanity of the World of Treasure in Heaven and of the Necessity of being Rich toward God and Liberal to his Poor Brother and 't is all but flat insipid and ridiculous stuff to Him who neither sees nor feels nor suffers any thing to pass into His Heart but through his Hands You must preach to such an One of Bargain and sale Profits and Perquisits Principal and Interest use upon use and if you can perswade Him that Godliness is gain in his own sense perhaps you may do something with Him otherwise though you edge every word you speak with Reason and Religion Evidence and Demonstration you shall never affect nor touch nor so much as reach his Conscience for it is kept sealed up in a bag under Lock and Key and you cannot come at it And thus much for the second base Affection that blinds the mind of Man which is Covetousness A thing directly Contrary to the very Spirit of Christianity which is a free a large and an open Spirit A Spirit open to God and Man and always carrying Charity in one hand and Generosity in the other Thirdly The third and last Vile affection which I shall mention as having the same Darkening effect upon the Mind or Conscience is Ambition For as Covetousness dulls the mind by pressing it down too much below it self so Ambition dazles it by lifting it up as much above it self But both of them are sure to darken the light of it For if you either look too intently down a deep Precipice upon a Thing at an extreme distance below you or with the same earnestness fix your Eye upon something at too great an Height above you in both cases you will find a Vertigo or Giddiness And where there is a Giddiness in the Head there will be always a mist before the Eyes And thus no doubt it was only an Ambitious aspiring after high Things which not long since caused such a Woful scandalous Giddiness in some Men's Consciences and made them turn Round and Round from this to That and from That to this till at length they knew not what Bottom to fix upon And this in my Opinion is a Case that admits of no Vindication Pride we know which is always Cousin-German to Ambition is Commonly reckoned the Fore-runner of a Fall It was the Devil's sin and the Devil's ruine and has been ever since the Devil 's strategem who like an Expert Wrestler usually gives a Man a Lift before he gives Him a Throw But how does he do this Why by first blinding Him with Ambition and when a Man either cannot or will not mind the Ground he stands upon as a Thing forsooth too much below Him he is then easily justled down and thrust headlong into the next ditch The Truth is in this case Men seem to ascend to an High station just as they use to leap down a very great steep in both Cases they shut their Eyes first for in both the danger is very dreadful and the way to venture upon it is not to see it Yea so fatally does this touring aspiring humour intoxicate and impose upon Mens minds that when the Devil stands Bobbing and Tantalizing their Gaping hopes with some Preferment in Church or State they shall do the Basest the Vilest and most Odious things Imaginable and that not only in defiance of Conscience but which is yet more
are told is who shall reckon his Years For he shall live to be very Aged Though yet we know no more of his Age but that he Prophesied about forty Years whereas some others have Prophesied much longer and particularly Hosea who Prophesied about fourscore As for the other Expression of his seeing his Seed and prolonging his Days that we are taught must signify that he should see many of his Converts in Egypt where he should live for a long time Though yet we read not of any one of those Converts nor of any such prolonging his Days there but that it is a constant Tradition of Antiquity that he died an untimely disastrous Death being knock'd on the Head in Egypt by his wicked Country-men with a Fuller's Club. And in the last place for his dividing the Spoil with the Mighty that we are informed was fullfilled in this That Nebuzaradan Captain of the Chaldean Host as we find it in Ieremy 40.5 gave him a Reward and some Victuals that is to say a small supply or modicum of Meat and Money for his present support and so sent him away A worthy glorious dividing of the Spoil indeed and much after the same rate that the Poor may be said to divide the Spoil when they take their shares of what is given them at Rich-men's Doors So then we have here an Interpretation but as for the sense of it that for ought I see must shift for it self But whether thus to drag and hale words both from Sence and Context and then to squeeze whatsoever meaning we please out of them be not as I may speak with some change of the Prophet's Phrase to draw lyes with cords of Blasphemy and Nonsence as it were with a Cart-rope let any sober and impartial Hearer or Reader be Judge For whatsoever titles the itch of Novelty and Socinianism has thought fit to Dignify such Immortal Incomparable Incomprehensible Interpreters with yet if these Interpretations ought to take place the said Prophecies which all before Grotius and the aforesaid Rabby Saadias Unanimously fixed in the first sense of them upon the sole Person of the Messiah might have been actually fullfilled and consequently the Veracity of God in the said Prophecies strictly accounted for though Iesus of Nazareth had never been Born Which being so would any one have thought that the Author of the Book de Veritate Religionis Christianae de satisfactione Christi could be also the Author of such Interpretations as these No Age certainly ever produced a mightier Man in all sorts of Learning than Grotius nor more happily furnished with all sorts of Arms both Offensive and Defensive for the Vindication of the Christian Faith had he not in his Annotations too frequently turned the Edge of them the wrong way Well therefore taking it for manifest and that upon all the grounds of Rational and unforced Interpretation that the Person here spoken of was the Messias and that this Messias could be no other than Iesus of Nazareth the Great Mediator of the second Covenant very God and very Man in whom every tittle of this Prophecy is most exactly verifyed and to whom it does most peculiarly and incommunicably agree We shall proceed now to take an account of the several parts of the Text in which we have these three things considerable First The suffering it self He was stricken Secondly The Nature of the suffering which was Penal and Expiatory He was stricken for Transgression And Thirdly The Ground and Cause of this suffering which was God's propriety in and relation to the Persons for whom Christ was stricken implyed in this word My People For the Transgression of My People was he stricken Of each of which in their order And First For the suffering it self He was stricken The very word imports violence and invasion from without It was not a suffering upon the stock of the meer internal weaknesses of Nature which carries the seeds and causes of its dissolution in its own bowels and so by degrees withers and decays and at length dies like a Lamp that for want of Oyl can burn no longer but like a Torch in its full flame beat and ruffled and at length blown out by the breath of a North-Wind So was Christ dealt with in the very prime and vigor of his Years being by main force torn and stricken out of the World Blows did the work of time and Stripes and Spears were instead of Age to put a period to his afflicted Life Now the Greatness of this Suffering will be made out to us upon these three accounts First Upon the Account of the Latitude and Extent of it Secondly Of the Intenseness and Sharpness of it And Thirdly Of the Person inflicting it First As for the Latitude or Extent of it The Blow reach'd every part of His humanity carrying the grief all over till by an Universal diffusion of it self it entred according to the Psalmists expression like water into His bowels or like Oyl into His bones It spread it self into every part of his Body as if it had been another Soul Nothing was free from suffering that could suffer Suffering seem'd to be his Portion his Inheritance nay his very Property Even the Religion that he came to propagate and establish was a suffering Religion and by the severest method of establishment he gave the First and the Greatest Instance of it in himself He who would recount every part of Christ that suffered must read a Lecture of Anatomy From the Crown of the Head to the Sole of the Foot there was nothing but the traces of pain and suffering they made long furrows upon His back says the Psalmist they did as it were tear and plow up his innocent Body In his Person we might have seen Grief in its height and supremacy Grief Triumphant Crown'd and arrayed in Purple Grief reigning and doing the utmost that it was able It is a Subject too well known and too frequently discoursed of to make descriptions of the Thorns the Spears and the Nails that acted their several parts in this Tragedy and that so that the very Narrative of our Saviour's Passion cannot but beget another in every pious hearer of it But when we have said the utmost of his Bodily sufferings we still know that Nature has provided a support able to mate and stand up against all these for the strength and firmness of a Resolved Mind will bear a Man above his Infirmity as the Breath bears up the Body from sinking But when the supporter it self fails when the Primum vivens and the Vltimum moriens has had a mortal blow and the Iron enters into the very Soul then baffled Nature must surrender and quit the Combat unless seconded and held up by something greater and mightier than it self And this was our Saviour's Condition There was a Sword which reach'd his very Spirit and pierced his Soul till it Bled through his Body for they were the Struggles and Agonies of the
body and a leaden Soul against all the apprensions of ordinary sorrow so that there is need of some pain to awaken such an one and to convince him that he is alive but our Saviour who had an Understanding too quick to let any Thing that was Intelligible escape it took in the dolorous afflicting object in its full dimensions He saw the utmost Evil of every one of those strokes which the guilt of our Sins inflicted on Him And what His Eye saw His heart proportionably felt For surely they must needs have been inconceiveably afflicting in the Actual Endurance which were so dreadful in their very approach that the horror of them put the Man of God's right hand the Man made strong for that very purpose to start back and decline the Blow could the avoidance of it have stood with the Decrees of Heaven Father if it be possible let this Cup pass from Me. Which yet was not the Voice of cowardize but of humane Nature Nature which by its first and most Essential Principle would have saved it self might it have consisted with the Saving of the World Thirdly The third thing setting forth the greatness of this suffering is the Cause and Author of it which was God Himself The measure of every passion is the Operation of the Agent And then we know what Omnipotence can do Omnipotence imployed or rather inflamed by Iustice in whose Quarrel it was then Engaged We must not measure the Divine strokes by the proportion of those blows which are inflicted by the greatest and most exasperated mortal The Condition of whose Nature sets bounds to his Power when it cannot to his Rage So that in the utmost executions of it he acts but like a Wasp very angrily indeed but very weakly Every blow inflicted by the fiercest Tyrant can reach no further than the Body and the Body is but the dwelling place not any part of the Soul and consequently can no more communicate its Ruins to that than a Man can be said to be wounded in his Person because a wall of his House was broken down Upon which account there have been some whose Souls have been so fortifyed with Philosophy and great principles as to enable them to laugh in Phalaris's Bull to sing upon the Rack and to despise the flames For still when God Torments us by the Instrumental mediation of the Creature his Anger can fall upon us in no greater proportions than what can pass through the narrow capacities of a created Being For be the Fountain never so full yet if it communicates it self by a little pipe the stream can be but small and inconsiderable and equal to the measures of the Conveyance God can no more give His Power than His Glory to another there is no mortal arm can draw His bow God cannot Thunder or Lighten by Proxy He alone is the Father of Spirits and none can reach the Conscience but He who made it And therefore being to discharge the utmost of His Vindictive Justice upon the Sins of Mankind then charged upon our Saviour He took the Sword into His Own Hand entred the lists and dealt with Him immediately by Himself And then we find the Difference of our Saviour's suffering by the difference of His behaviour While He was Buffetted Scourged and Nailed to the Cross we hear nothing from Him but like a Lamb before the shearers He was dumb not because He could not but because He scorned to roar under the Impressions of a Finite anger But when God reached forth His Hand and darted His immediate Rebukes into His very Soul and Spirit as He did while He was hanging upon the Cross then He cries out My God My God why hast Thou forsaken Me Silence upon such a loss would have been but stupidity and patience an absurdity for when God withdrew his Presence from him that Darkness which then covered the face of the whole Earth was but a faint Embleme of that Blacker Cloud of despair which had overcast His Soul It is not possible for us to conceive the utmost weight of those heavy strokes inflicted by the Almighty Himself upon our Saviour All the Representations and little draughts of them made by Words and Fancy are vastly short of the keen impressions of Sense But yet that which gives us the nearest resemblance of them surely is the Torment of a guilty mind under a State of Desertion when God shall turn the worm of Conscience into a Scorpion and smite it with the secret invisible stings of his Wrath such as shall fester and rage inwardly gnaw and rake the very entrails of the Soul The Burden and anguish of this has been sometimes so insupportable that some have professed themselves to envy the condition of Iudas and the Damned Spirits as thinking the Endurance of those flames more tolerable than the expectation and accordingly have done violence to their own lives and so fled to Hell as to a Sanctuary and chose Damnation as a Release Far were such persons God knows from bettering their Condition by completing that which they could not bear in the very beginnings and foretasts of it yet however it demonstrates to us the unspeakable wretchedness of a guilty Soul Labouring under the Hand of God And by the way let the boldest the hardiest and the securest Sinner know that God is able without ever touching him either in his Estate his Health his Reputation or any other outward enjoyment dear to him but meerly by letting a few drops of his Wrath fall upon his guilty Conscience so to scald and gall him with the lively Sense of Sin that he shall live a continual Terror to himself carry about him an Hell in his own Breast which shall Echo to him such Peals of Vengeance every Hour that all the Wine and Musick all the Honours and Greatness of the World shall not be able to minister the least ease to his heart-sick and desponding Soul Now in these Torments of a guilty Conscience we have some little Image of the pains then suffered by our Saviour the greatness of both being founded upon the same Reason Namely That God is the sole and immediate Inflicter of such strokes And then surely the suffering must needs be grievous when Infinite Justice passes Sentence and Infinite Power does Execution And thus I have finished the first general thing proposed from the Text which was the Suffering it self expressed in these words He was stricken and that by considering the Latitude the Intenseness and also the Cause of it All of them so many Arguments to demonstrate to us its unparallel'd Greatness 2. The Second general thing proposed was the Nature and quality of this suffering Namely That it was Penal and Expiatory He was stricken for Transgression And to prove that it was Penal there needs no other Argument to any clear unbiassed Understanding than the natural genuine and unconstrained use of the Word For what other sence can there be of a Man's being stricken or
none can conclude the debt either paid by him or forgiven to him but by the release of his person Who could believe Christ to have been a God and a Saviour while he was hanging upon the Tree A dying crucified God a Saviour of the World who could not save himself would have been exploded by the Universal consent of Reason as an horrible Paradox and absurdity Had not the Resurrection followed the Crucifixion that scoff of the Jews had stood as an unanswerable Argument against him Mark 15.31 Himself He cannot save and in the 32. v. Let Him come down from the Cross and we will believe in Him Otherwise surely that which was the lowest instance of humane weakness and mortality could be no competent demonstration of a Deity To save is the effect of Power and of such a Power as prevails to a compleat victory and a Triumph But it is expresly affirmed 2 Cor. 13.4 That Christ was crucified through weakness Death was too hard for his humanity and bore away the spoils of it for a Time So that while Christ was in the Grave Men might as well have expected that a person hung in chains should come down and head an Army as imagine that a dead body continuing such should be able to Triumph over Sin and Death which so potently Triumphs over the Living The discourse of the Two Disciples going to Emmaus and expecting no such thing as a Resurrection was upon that supposition hugely rational and significant Luk. 24.21 We trusted said they that this had been He who should have redeemed Israel thereby clearly implying that upon his Death they had let that confidence fall to the ground together with Him For they could not imagine that a breathless carcase could chase away the Roman Eagles and so recover the Kingdom and Nation of the Jews from under their subjection which was the Redemption that even the Disciples till they were further enlightened promised themselves from their Messiah But the Argument would equally nay more strongly hold against a Spiritual Redemption supposing his continuance under a State of Death as being a thing in it self much more difficult For how could such an one break the Kingdom of darkness and set his Foot upon Principalities and Powers and Spiritual Wickednesses in High places Who himself fell a Sacrifice to the wickedness of mortal Men and remained a Captive in the lower parts of the Earth reduced to a Condition not only below Men's Envy but below their very Feet 5. The Fifth and Last Ground of the Impossibility of Christ's perpetual continuance under a State of Death was the Nature of the Priesthood which he had took upon him The Apostle Heb. 8.4 says That if He were upon Earth He should not be a Priest Certainly then much less could he be so should He continue under the Earth The two great works of his Priesthood were to offer Sacrifice and then to make intercession for Sinners correspondent to the two works of the Mosaical Priesthood in which the Priest first slew the Lamb and then with the bloud of it entred into the Holy of Holies there to appear before God in the behalf of the People Christ therefore after that he had offered himself upon the Cross was to enter into Heaven and there presenting himself to the Father to make that Sacrifice effectual to all the Intents and Purposes of it Upon which Account the Apostle to express his fitness for the Priesthood infinitely beyond any of the Sons of Aaron states it upon this Heb. 7.25 That He lives for ever to make intercession for us and upon that very score also is able to save to the uttermost But surely the dead could not intercede for the Living nor was the Grave a Sanctum Sanctorum Had not Christ risen again His bloud indeed might have cryed for Vengeance upon his Murderers but not for Mercy upon Believers In short It had spoke no better things than the bloud of Abel which call'd for nothing but a fearful Judgment upon the Head of him who shed it Christ's Death merited a Redemption for the World but Christ while dead could not shew forth the full effects of that Redemption He made the purchace at his Death but He could not take Possession till he was returned to Life Ever since Christ ascended into Heaven He has been pursuing the great Work begun by him upon the Cross and applying the vertue of his Sacrifice to those for whom it was offer'd It is affirmed by some and that not without great probability of Reason That the Souls of the Saints who dyed before Christ's resurrection did not actually enter into a State of Compleat Glory till Christ the Great Captain of their Salvation upon his Ascension first entred into it himself and then made way for others So that according to that Divine Anthem of the Church After that he had overcome the sharpness of death then at length and not till then He opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all Believers And thus I have given five several reasons why it was not possible that a State of Death should finally prevail over Christ which was the thing to be proved And I have nothing further to recommend to your consideration but only Two things which the very Nature of the Subject seems of it self to imprint upon all pious Minds 1. The First is a Dehortation from Sin and that indeed the strongest that can be For can we imagine that the Second Person in the Glorious Trinity would concern himself to take upon him our Flesh and to suffer and die and at length rise again only to render us the more secure and confident in our Sins Would he neither see nor endure any Corruption in his Dead Body that we should harbour all the Filth and Corruption imaginable in our Immortal Souls Did he Conquer and Triumph over Death that we should be the Slaves and Captives of that which is worse than Death Christ has declared that he will dwell in those whom he assumes into the Society of his Mystical Body But can we think that he who passed from a clean new Sepulchre into an Heavenly Mansion will descend from thence to take up his Habitation in the Rotten Sepulchre of an heart possessed and polluted with the Love of that which he infinitely Hates It will little avail us That Christ rose from a Temporal Death unless we also rise from a Spiritual For those who do not Imitate as well as Believe Christ's Resurrection must expect no benefit by it 2. Christ's Resurrection is an high and Soveraign Consolation against Death Death we know is the Grand Enemy of Mankind the Merciless Tyrant over Nature and the King of Terrors But Blessed be God Christ has given a Mortal blow to his Power and broke his Scepter And if we by a through Conquest of our Sins and Rising from them can be but able to say O Sin where is thy Power We may very Rationally and Warrantably say thereupon O
gave me as I should do which my Neighbour did not and for that Reason I go to Heaven and he to Hell and as he can blame none but himself for the One â—o I am beholden to None but my self for the Other This I say is the main of the Pelagian Divinity though much more compendiously delivered in that known but lewd Aphorism of theirs A Deo habemus quòd sumus Homines à nobis autem ipsis quod sumus Iusti. To which we may add another of their Principlâ—â— to wit That if a man does all that Naturally he can do still understanding hereby the Present State of Nature God is bound in Iustice to supply whatsoever more shall be Necessary to his Salvation Which Premisses if they do not directly and unavoidably infer in Man a Power of meriting of God the World is yet to seek what the Nature and Notion of Merit is Accordingly both Gelasius and St. Austin in setting down the Points wherein the Catholick Church differed from the Pelagians assign this for one of the chief That the Pelagians held Gratiam Dei secundùm Hominum merita conferri And the Truth is upon their Principles a man may even merit the Incarnation of Christ For if there be no saving Grace without it and a Man may do that which â—hall oblige God in Iustice to vouchsafe him such Grace as with no small self-contradiction these Men use to speak then let them Qualify and Soften the matter with what Words they Please I affirm that upon these Terms a Man really merits his Salvation and by Consequence all that is or can be necessary thereunto In the mean time throughout all this Pelagian Scheme we have not so much as one Word of Mans Natural Impotency to Spiritual Things though inculcated and wrote in both Testaments with a Sun-beam nor consequently of the Necessity of some Powerful Divine Energy to Bend Encline and effectually Draw Mans Will to such Objects as it Naturally resists and is averse to Not a Word I say of this or any Thing like it for those Men used to explode and deny it all as their Modern Off-spring amongst us also do And yet this passed for sound and good Divinity in the Church in St. Austin's time and within less thâ—â— an hundred years since in our Church too till Pelagianism and Socâ—nianism Deism Tritheism Atheism and a Spirit of Innovation the Root of all and Worse than all broke in upon us and by false Schemes of Models countenanced and encouraged have given quite a new face to Things though a new face is certainly the worst and most unbecoming that can be set upon an old Religion But Secondly To proceed to another sort of men famous for corrupting Christianity more ways than one to wit those of the Church of Rome We shall find that this Doctrine of Mans being able to merit of God is one of the Chief Foundations of Popery also Even the Great Diana which some of the most Experienced Craftsmen in the World do with so much Zeal Sacrifice to and make shrines for and by so doing Get their living and that a very plentyful and Splendid One too As knowing full well that without it the Grandeur of their Church which is all their Religion would quickly fall to the Ground For if there be no merit of good Works then no Supererogation and if no Supererogation no Indulgences and if no Indulgences then it is to be feared that the Silversmiths Trade will run low and the Credit of the Pontifical Bank begin to fail So that the very marrow the life and Spirit of Popery lies in a stiff adherence to this Doctrine The Grand Question still insisted upon by these Merchants being Quid dabitis and the great Commodity set to sale by them being merit For can any one think that the Pope and his Cardinals and the rest of their Ecclesiastical Grandees care a Rush whether the Will of Man be free or No as the Jesuits state the Freedom of it on the one side and Dominicans and Jansenists on the other or that they at all concern themselves about Iustification and Free Grace but only as the Artificial stating of such Points may sometimes serve them in their Spiritual Traffick and now and then help them to Turn the Penny No they Value not their Schools any further than they furnish their Markets nor regard any Gospel but that of Cardinal Palaviâ—cini which professedly owns it for the main design of Christianity to make Men as Rich as Great and as Happy as they can be in this World And the Grand Instrument to compass all this by is the Doctrine of Merit For how else could it be That so many in that Communion should be able to satisfy themselves in doing so much less than they know they are required to do for the saving of their Souls but that they are taught to believe that there are some again in the World who do a great deal more than they are bound to do and so may very well keep their Neighbours lamp from going out by having oyl enough both to supply their own and a comfortable Overplus besides to lend or which is much better to Sell in such a Case In a Word take away the Foundation and the House must fall and in like manner beat down Merit and down goes Popery too And so at length that I may not trespass upon your Patience too much I descend to the Fourth and Last Particular proposed at â—â—â—st from the Words Which was to remove an Objection naturally apt to issue â—â—om the Foregoing Particulars The Objection is obvious and the Answer to it needs not be long It proceeds thus If the Doctrine hitherto advanced be True can there be a Greater discouragement to Men in their Christian course than to consider that all their Obedience all their Duties and Choicest performances are Nothing Worth in the sight of God and that they themselves after they have done their Best their Vtmost and their very All in His service are still for all that Vseless and Vnprofitable and such as can Plead no Recompence at all at His hands This You will say is very hard but to it I Answer First That it neither ought nor uses to be any Discouragement to a Begger â—s we all are in respect of Almighty God to continue asking an Alms and doing all that he can to obtain it though he knows he can do Nothing to Claim it But Secondly I deny That our Disavoâ—â—ing this Doctrine of Merit cuts us 〈◊〉 from all Plea to a Recompence for our Châ—â—stian Obedience at the hands of God It cuts us off indeed from all Plea to it upon the score of Condignity and strict Iustice But then should we not on the other side consider whether God's Iustice be the only Thing that can oblige Him in Hiâ— transactings with Men For does not Hâ—â— Veracity and His Promise oblige Him aâ— much as His Iustice can And has Hâ—
doing and always condemning himself for what He does And for this cause a Man shuts his Eyes and stops his Ears against all that His Reason would tell Him of the sinfulness of that Practice which long Custom and frequency has endeared to Him So that He becomes studiously and affectedly Ignorant of the Illness of the Course he takes that He may the moâ—â— sensibly Tast the Pleasure of it And thus when an Inveterate Imperious Custom has so over-ruled all a Mans faculties as neither to suffer His Eyes to see nor his Ears to hear nor his mind to think of the Evil of what He does that is when all the Instruments of Knowledge are forbid to do their office Ignorance and Obscurity must needs be upon the whole Soul For when the Windows are stopped up no Wonder if the whole Room be Dark The Truth is such an Habitual frequency of Sinning does as it were Bar and Bolt up the Conscience against the sharpest Reproofs and the most Convincing Instructions so that when God by the Thunder of his Judgments and the Voice of His Ministers has been ringing Hell and Vengeance into the Ears of such a Sinner perhaps like Felix He may Tremble a little for the Present and seem to yield and fall down before the over-powering Evidence of the Conviction but after a while Custom overcoming Conscience the Man goes his way and though He is Convinced and satisfyed what He ought to do yet He actually does what he uses to do And all this because through the darkness of his Intellect he Judges the present Pleasure of such a sinful Course an over-balance to the Evil of it For this is certain That Nature has placed all Humane Choice in such an Essential Dependance upon the Iudgment that no Man does any Thing though never so Vile Wicked and Inexcusable but all circumstances considered he Judges it Pro hìc nunc absolutely better for Him to do it than not to do it And what a Darkness and Delusion must Conscience needs be under while it makes a Man judge that really best for him which directly tends to and generally ends in his utter Ruin and Damnation Custom is said to be a second Nature and if by the first we are already so bad by the second to be sure we shall be much worse Thirdly Every Corrupt Passion or Affection of the Mind will certainly pervert the judging and obscure and darken the discerning Power of Conscience The Affections which the Greeks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Latines Affectus Animi are of much the same use to the Soul which the Members are of to the Body serving as the proper Instruments of most of its Actions and are always attended with a certain Preternatural Motion of the Blood and Spirits peculiar to each Passion or Affection And as for the Seat or Fountain of them Philosophers both place them in and derive them from the Heart But not to insist upon meer Speculations The Passions or Affections are as I may so call them the mighty Flights and Sallyings out of the Soul upon such objects as come before it and are generally accompanied with such Vehemence that the Stoicks reckoned them in their very Nature and Essence as so many Irregularities and Deviations from Right Reason and by no means incident to a wise or good Man But though better Philosophy has long since exploded this Opinion and Christianity which is the greatest and the best has taught us that we may be Angry and yet not Sin Eph. 4.26 And that Godly Sorrow is neither a Paradox nor a Contradiction 2 Cor. 7.10 and consequently that in every Passion or Affection there is something purely Natural which may both be distinguished and divided too from what is sinful and irregular yet notwithstanding all this it must be confessed That the Nature of the Passions is such that they are extreamly prone and apt to pass into Excess and that when they do so nothing in the World is a greater hindrance to the Mind or Reason of Man from making a True Clear and Exact Judgment of Things than the Passions thus wrought up to any Thing of Ferment or Agitation It being as Impossible to keep the Iudging Faculty steady in such a Case as it would be to view a Thing distinctly and perfectly through a Perspective Glass held by a shaking Paralytick hand When the Affections are once engaged the Iudgment is always Partial and Concerned There is a strong Bent or Byass upon it it is possessed and gained over and as it were fee'd and retained in their Cause and thereby made utterly unable to carry such an equal regard to the object as to consider Truth Nakedly and stripped of all Foreign Respects and as such to make it the Rigid Inflexible Rule which it is to Iudge by especially where Duty is the Thing to be Iudged of For a Man will hardly be brought to Judge Right and True when by such a Judgment he is sure to Condemn Himself But this being a Point of such high and Practical Importance I will be yet more particular about it and show severally in several Corrupt and Vitious Affections how Impossible it is for a Man to keep his Conscience rightly Informed and fit to guide and direct Him in all the Arduous Perplexing Cases of Sin and Duty while He is actually under the Power of any of them This I know Men generally are not apt to believe or to think that the flaws or failures of their Morals can at all affect their Intellectuals But I doubt not but to make it not only Credible but Undeniable Now the Vitious Affections which I shall single and cull out of those Vast Numbers which the Heart of Man that great Store-house of the Devil abounds with as some of the Principal which thus Darken and Debauch the Conscience shall be these Three First Sensuality Secondly Covetousness Thirdly Ambition Of each of which I shall speak particularly and First For Sensuality or a vehement delight in and pursuit of Bodily Pleasures We may truly say of the Body with Reference to the Soul what was said by the Poet of an ill Neighbour Nemo tam propè tam proculque None so nearly joined in point of Vicinity and yet so widely distant in point of Interest and Inclinations The Ancient Philosophers generally holding the Soul of Man to be a Spiritual Immaterial substance could give no Account of the several failures and defects in the Operations of it which they were sufficiently sensible of but from its Immersion into and intimate conjunction with matter called by the Greeks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And accordingly all their complaints and accusations were still levelled at this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the only cause of all that they found amiss in the whole Frame and Constitution of Mans Nature In a word whatsoever was observed by them either Irregular or Defective in the Workings of the Mind was all Charged upon the Body as
which they can neither see hear feel nor understand And thus much for the first Negative the Love that we are to show to Enemies is not a fair external Courtly deportment It is not such a thing as may be learnt in a Dancing-School nor in those Shops of fallacy and dissimulation the Courts and Palaces of great Men where Mens thoughts and words stand at an infinite distance and their tongues and minds hold no Correspondence or intercourse with one another 2. Fair Promises are not the Love that our Saviour here Commands us to shew our Enemies And yet these are one step and advance above the former for many fair Speeches may be given many Courteous Harangues uttered and yet no Promise made And it is worth observing how some great ones often delude and simple ones suffer themselves to be deluded by general discourses and expressions of Courtesy As take you no Care I will provide for you I will never see you want Leave your business in my hands and I will manage it with as much or more concern than you could your self What need you insist so much upon this or that in particular I design better things for you But all this while there is no particular determinate thing promised so as to hold such an one by any real solid Engagement supposing that his Promise were such but perhaps when the next advantage comes in the way the Man is forgot and balked Yet still those general Speeches hold as true as ever they did and so will continue notwithstanding all particular defeats as indeed being never Calculated for any thing else but to keep up the expectation of easy Persons to feed them for the present and to fail them in the Issue But now as these empty glozing words are short of Promises so Promises are equally short of Performances Concerning both which I shall say this That there is no wise Man but had rather have one Promise than a thousand Fair words and one Performance than ten thousand Promises For what trouble is it to Promise what charge is it to spend a little breath for a Man to give one his word who never intends to give him any thing else and yet according to the measures of the World this must sometimes pass for an high piece of Love and many poor unexperienced believing Souls who have more honesty than wit think themselves rapt up into the Third Heaven and actually possessed of some notable Preferment when they can say I have such a great Persons Promise for such or such a thing Have they so Let them see if such a Promise will pay Rent buy Land and maintain them like Gentlemen It is at the best but a future contingent for either the Man may die or his Interest may fail or his Mind may Change or ten thousand Accidents may Intervene Promises are a dyet which none ever yet thrived by and a Man may feed upon them heartily and never break his Fast. In a word I may say of Humane Promises what Expositors say of Divine Prophecies That they are never understood till they come to be fullfilled But how speaks the Scripture of these matters Why in Rom. 12.20 If thine Enemy hunger feed Him if he thirst give Him drink It is not promise Him Meat and drink a Week hence that is perhaps two days after he is dead with Thirst and Hunger He who lives only upon Reversions and maintains himself with hope and has nothing to cover him but the Cloths of dead Men and the Promises of the Living will find just as much relief from them as a Man in the depth of Winter feels the heat of the following Summer But bare Promises are so far from answering Christ's Precept of loving our Enemies that if they are not realiz'd in Deeds they become a Plague and a great Calamity For they raise an Expectation which unsatisfied or defeated is the greatest of Torments they betray a Man to a fallacious dependance which bereaves Him of the succours of his other Endeavours and in the issue leaves him to Inherit the shame and misery of a disappointment and unable to say any thing else for himself but that he was Credulous and the Promiser False 3. But thirdly and lastly to advance a degree yet higher to do one or two kind Offices for an Enemy is not to fullfil the Precept of loving Him He who Cloths a Naked Man with a pair of Gloves and administers to one Perishing with Thirst a drop or two of Water reaches not the measure of his Necessity but instead of Relieving only upbraids his want and passes a jest upon his Condition It is like pardoning a Man the Debt of a Penny and in the mean time suing Him fiercely for a Talent Love is then only of reality and value when it deals forth benefits in a full proportion to ones need and when it shews it self both in Universality and Constancy Otherwise it is only a Trick to serve a Turn and carry on a design For he who would take a cleanly unsuspected way to ruine his Adversary must pave the way to his destruction with some Courtesies of a lighter sort the sense of which shall take Him off from his guard his wariness and suspicion and so lay him open to such a Blow as shall destroy him at once The Skillful Rider strokes and pleases the unruly Horse only that he may come so near him as to get the Bit into his Mouth and then he rides and rules and domineers over him at his pleasure So he who hates his Enemy with a Cunning equal to his Malice will not strain to do this or that good turn for him so long as it does not thwart but rather promote the main design of his utter subversion For all this is but like the helping a Man over the stile who is going to be hanged which surely is no very great or difficult piece of Civility In the Reign of Queen Elizabeth we read of One whom the Grandees of the Court procured to be made Secretary of State only to break his Back in the Business of the Queen of Scots whose Death they were then projecting Like true Courtiers they first engage Him in that Fatal Scene and then desert him in it using him only as a Tool to do a present State-job and then to be Reproached and Ruin'd for what he had done And a little observation of the World may shew us that there is not only a Course of Beheading or Hanging but also of preferring Men out of the way But this is not to love an Enemy but to hate him more artificially He is ruined more speciously indeed but not less efficaciously than if he had been laid fast in a Dungeon or banished his Country or by a packed Iury dispatched into another World 2. And thus having done with the Negative I come now to the second General Thing proposed Namely to shew positively what is Included in the Duty of Loving our
a Supplication for him into a Satyr against him by representing him in our Prayers under the Character of one void of all Grace and Goodness and consequently a much fitter object for God's Vengeance than his Mercy And yet there was a Time in which this way of Praying was in no small Vogue with a certain sort of Men who would allow neither the gift nor spirit of Prayer to any but themselves For if at any time they prayed for those whom they accounted their Enemies and that only because they had done so much to make them so it could not be properly called an interceding with God for them but a downright enditing and arraigning them before God as a pack of graceless Wretches and Villains and avowed Enemies to the Power and Purity of the Gospel This and the like I say was the devout Language of their Prayers sometimes by Intimation and sometimes by direct Expression And thus under the Colour and Cover of some Plausible Artificial words it was but for them to call those whom they maligned Antichrist and themselves the Kingdom of Christ and then they might very laudably pray for the pulling down of the one and the setting up of the other and thereby no doubt answer all the measures of a Sanctified Self-denying Petition But as those days are at an end so it were to be wished that such kind of Praying were so too especially since Our Church I am sure has so much Charity as to teach all of her Communion to pray for those who are not only Enemies to our Persons but also to our very Prayers And thus I have endeavoured to shew what it is to Love our Enemies though I will not say that I have recounted all the Instances in which this Duty may exert it self For Love is Infinite and the methods of its acting Various and Innumerable But I suppose that I have marked out those Generals which all Particulars may be fairly Reduced to And now before I proceed to the Motives and Arguments to enforce the Duty I shall to prevent some Abuses of this Doctrine shew what is not Inconsistent with this Loving our Enemies And that is to defend and secure our selves against them I am to love my Enemy but not so as to hate my self if my Love to Him be a Copy I am sure the Love to my self ought to be the Original Charity is indeed to diffuse it self abroad but yet it may Lawfully begin at Home For the Precept surely is not unnatural and irrational nor can it state the Duty of Christians in opposition to the Privileges of Men and command us tamely to surrender up our Lives and Estates as often as the hands of Violence would wrest them from us We may Love our Enemies but we are not therefore to be fond of their Enmity And though I am commanded when my Enemy Thirsts to give him Drink yet it is not when he thirsts for my Blood It is my Duty to give him an Almes but not to let him take my Estate Princes and Governours may very well secure themselves with Laws and Arms against implacable Enemies for all this Precept they are not bound to Leave the State Defenceless against the Projects Plots and Insurrections of those who are pleased to think themselves persecuted if they are not permitted to Reign We may with a very fair comportment with this Precept Love our Enemies Persons while we hate their Principles and counterplot their designs I come now to the third and last thing viz. to assign Motives and Arguments to enforce this Love to our Enemy and they shall be taken 1. From the Condition of our Enemies Person 2. From the Excellency of the Duty 3. From the great Examples that recommend it and For the first of these if we Consider our Enemy we shall find that he sustains several Capacities which may give him a just Claim to our Charitable affection 1. As first he is joined with us in the Society and Community of the same Nature He is a Man And so far bears the Image and Superscription of our Heavenly Father He may cease to be our Friend but He cannot cease to be our Brother For we all descended from the same Loins and though Esau hates Iacob and Iacob supplants Esau yet they once lay in the same Womb and therefore the saying of Moses may be extended to all Men at Variance Why do ye wrong one to another for ye are Brethren If my Enemy were a Snake or a Viper I could do no more than hate and trample upon Him but shall I hate the seed of the Woman as much as I do that of the Serpent We hold that God Loves the most Sinful of his Creatures so far as they are his Creatures and the very Devils could not Sin themselves out of an excellent Nature though out of an Happy Condition Even War which is the Rage of Mankind and observes no Laws but its own yet it offers quarter to an Enemy I suppose because Enmity does not obliterate Humanity nor wholly Cancel the Sympathies of Nature For every Man does or I am sure he may see something of himself in his Enemy and a transcript of those perfections for which he Values himself And therefore those Unhumane Butcheries which some Men have acted upon others stand upon Record not only as the Crimes of Persons but also as the reproach of our very Nature and excusable upon no other Colour or Account whatsoever but that the Persons who acted such Cruelties upon other Men first ceased to be Men themselves and and were indeed to be reckoned as so many Anomalies and Exceptions from Mankind Persons of another Make or Mold from the rest of the Sons of Adam and deriving their original not from the Dust but rather from the stones of the Earth 2. An Enemy notwithstanding his Enmity may be yet the proper object of our Love because it sometimes so falls out that he is of the same Religion with us and the very business and design of Religion is to Unite and to put as it were a Spiritual Cognation and Kindred between Souls I am sure this is the great purpose of the Christian Religion which never joins Men to Christ but by first joining them amongst themselves and making them Members one of another as well as knitting them all to the same Head By how much the more intolerable were our late Zealots in their pretences to a more refined strain of Purity and Converse with God while in the mean time their Hearts could serve them to plunder worry and undo their poor Brethren only for their loyal adherence to their Sovereign Sequestring and Casting whole Families out of their Houses and Livings to starve abroad in the wide World against all the Laws of God and Man and who to this day breath the same Rage towards all Dissenters from them should they once more get the Reforming Sword into their Hands What these Men's Religion may teach
that a Soveraign could suffer from his Subjects Scorning all Revenge as more below him than the very Persons whom he might have been revenged upon he gloried in nothing so much as in giving Mercy the upper hand of Majesty it self making Amnesty his Symbol or Motto and Forgiveness the peculiar signalizing Character of his Reign herein Resembling the Almighty Himself as far as mortality can who seems to claim a greater Glory for Sparing and Redeeming Man than for Creating Him So that in a word as our Saviour has made Love to our Enemies one of the Chiefest badges of our Religion so our King has almost made it the very mark of our Allegiance Thus even to a Prodigy Merciful has he shewn Himself Merciful by Inclination and merciful by Extraction merciful in his Example and merciful in hiâ— Laws and thereby expressing the utmost dutifulness of a Son as well as the highest Magnanimity and Clemency of a Prince while He is still making that good upon the Throne which the Royal Martyr his Father had enjoined upon the Scaffold where He dyed pardoning and praying for those whose malice he was then falling a Victim to And this with a Charity so unparallell'd and a devotion so â—ervent that the Voice of his Prayers 't is to be hoped drowned the very Cry of his Blood But I Love not to dwell upon such Tragedies save only to illustrate the height of one Contrary by the height of another and therefore as an humble follower of the Princely Pattern here set before us I shall draw a Veil of silence over all especially since it surpasses the Power of Words sufficiently to set forth either the greatness of the Crimes forgiven or of the mercy that forgave them But to draw to a close We have here had the highest and the hardest Duty perhaps belonging to a Christian both recommended to our Judgment by Argument and to our Practice by Example and what remains but that we submit our Iudgment to the one and govern our Practice by the other And for that Purpose that we beg of God an Assistance equal to the Difficulty of the Duty enjoyned for certainly it is not an ordinary measure of Grace that can conquer the opposition that Flesh and Blood and corrupt Reason it self after all its convictions will be sure to make to it The greatest miseries that befall us in this World are from Enemies and so long as Men naturally desire to be happy it will be naturally as hard to them to Love those who they know are the grand Obstacles to their being so The Light of Nature will convince a Man of many Duties which it will never enable him to perform And if we should look no further than bare Nature this seems to be one cut out rather for our Admiration than our Practice It being not more difficult where Grace does not Interpose to cut off a Right Hand than to reach it heartily to the Relief of an inveterate Implacable Adversary And yet God expects this from us and that so peremptorily that he has made the Pardon of our Enemies the Indispensable Condition of our own And therefore that Wretch whosoever he was who being pressed hard upon his Death-Bed to Pardon a notable Enemy which he had answered That if He died indeed he Pardoned Him but if He lived He would be Revenged on Him That Wretch I say and every other such Image of the Devil no doubt went out of the World so that he had better never have come into it In fine after we have said the utmost upon this Subject that we can I believe we shall find this the Result of all That He is an happy Man who has no Enemies and he a much happier who has never so many and can Pardon them God preserve us from the one or enable us to do the other To whom be rendred and ascribed as is most due all Praise Might Majesty and Dominion both now and for evermore Amen False Foundations removed AND True ones laid for such Wise Builders as design to build for Eternity IN A SERMON Preached at St. Mary's Oxon before the University Decem. 10. 1661. MATT. VII 26 27. And every one that heareth these sayings of Mine and doth them not shall be likened unto a foolish Man which built his House upon the Sand. And the Rain descended and the Floods came and the Winds blew and beat upon that House and it fell and great was the fall of it IT seems to have been all along the Prime Art and method of the great Enemy of Souls not being able to root the Sense of Religion out of Mens hearts yet by his Sophistries and Delusions to defeat the Design of it upon their Lives and either by empty Notions or false perswasions to take them off from the main business of Religion which is Duty and Obedience by bribing the Conscience to rest satisfyed with something less A project extremely sutable to the corrupt Nature of Man whose chief or rather sole quarrel to Religion is the severity of its Precepts and the Difficulty of their Practice So that although it is as Natural for him to desire to be happy as to breath yet he had rather lose and miss of happiness than seek it in the way of Holiness Upon which Account nothing speaks so full and home to the very inmost Desires of his Soul as those Doctrines and Opinions which would perswade him that it may and shall be well with him hereafter without any Necessity of his living well here Which great Mystery of Iniquity being carefully managed by the utmost skill of the Tempter and greedily embraced by a Man 's own Treacherous affections lies at the bottom of all false Religions and eats out the very Heart and Vitals of the True For in the strength of this some hope to be saved by Believing well some by Meaning well some by Paying well and some by shedding a few insipid Tears and uttering a few hard words against those Sins which they have no other Controversy with but that they were so unkind as to leave the Sinner before he was willing to leave them For all this Men can well enough submit to as not forceing them to abandon any one of their Beloved Lusts. And therefore they will not think themselves hardly dealt with though you require Faith of them if you will but dispense with Good Works They will abound and even overflow with good Intentions if you will allow them in quite contrary Actions And you shall not want for Sacrifice if that may Compound for Obedience nor Lastly will they grudge to find Money if some body else will find Merit But to Live well and to Do well are Things of too hard a Digestion Accordingly our Saviour who well knew all these false hopes and Fallacious Reasonings of the Heart of Man which is never so subtle as when it would deceive it self tells his hearers that all these little trifling Inventions will avail them
a violent Flame cannot presently melt down a constant though a gentle heat will at length exhale It is our known Duty to fight and resist the Devil and we shall find that scarce any Temptation ever encounters the Soul without its second So then you see here the First Cause of this great Overthrow namely The Assault and Impression made from without by the Tempter which in the next place is rendred Effectual by the Impotence and Non-resistance of the Soul that is so opposed which peculiarly answers his threefold Opposition with three Contrary Qualifications First As First That it is frequently unprepared The Soul God knows is but seldom upon the Watch It s Spiritual Armour is seldom buckled on The Business the Cares and the Pleasures of the World draw it off from its own defence Business imploys Care distracts and Pleasure lulls it asleep And is this a Posture to receive an Enemy in An Enemy Cunning Watchful and Malicious An Enemy who never sleeps nor loyters nor overlooks an advantage Secondly As it is unprepared so it is also weak and feeble The Spirit says our Saviour is willing but the Flesh is weak And such is the Condition of Man in this World that much more of Flesh than Spirit goes to his Constitution Nay is not Grace it self described under the Weakness of smoaking Flax or a bruised Reed Of which how quickly is one Extinguished and how easily is the other broke Thirdly As it is both unprepared and weak so it is also inconstant Peter will die for his Master at one time and not many Hours after deny and forswear Him Steadfastness is the Result of strength and how then can Constancy dwell with weakness The greatest strength of the mind is in its Resolutions and yet how often do they Change Even in the weightiest concerns Men too frequently put them on and off with their Cloaths They deceive when they are most trusted suddainly starting and flying in pieces like a broken bow and like a bow again even when strongest they can hardly be kept always Bent. We see what fair and promising beginings some made Luke 8.13 They heard the Word they received it with joy but having not Root they believed only for a while and so in Time of Temptation fell away Constancy is the Crowning Vertue Matth. 10.22 He who endureth to the End shall be saved But then Constancy and Perseverance are the gift of God and above the Production of meer Nature it being no small Paradox to imagine that where the stock it self is slight and infirm any thing which grows out of it should be strong And thus having shewn the Threefold Impotence of the Soul answerable to the Threefold Opposition made against it by the Devil What can we conclude But that where Vnpreparedness is encountred with unexpected Force Weakness with Violence Inconstancy with Importunity there Destruction must needs be not the Effect of Chance but Nature and by the closest connexion of Causes unavoidable It now remains that in the Last place we shew wherein the Greatness of this fall consists The House fell and great was the Fall thereof In short it may appear upon these two accounts First That it is scandalous and diffuses a Contagion to others and a blot upon Religion A falling House is a bad Neighbour It is the Property of Evil as well as of Good to be Communicative We still suppose the Building here mentioned in the Text to have had all the Advantages of visible Representment all the Pomp and Flourish of external Ornament a Stately superstructure and a Beautyful appearance and therefore such an one must needs Perish as remarkably as it stood That which is seen afar off while it stands is heard of much further when it Falls An Eminent Professor is the concern of a Whole Profession As to Non-plus an Aristotle would look not only like a Slur to a particular Philosopher but like a Baffle to Philosophy it self The Devil will let a Man build and Practice high that he may at length fetch him down with the greater shame and so make even a Christian an Argument against Christianity The subduing of any soul is a Conquest but of such an One a Triumph A signal Professor cannot Perish without a Train and in his very Destruction his Example is Authentick Secondly The Greatness of the Fall here spoken of appears also in this That such an One is hardly and very rarely recovered He whose House falls has not usually either Riches or Heart to build Another It is the Business of a Life once to build God indeed can cement the Ruins and heal the Breaches of an Apostate Soul but usually a shipwrack'd Faith and a defloured Conscience admit of no Repair Like the Present time which when once gone never returns What may be within the Compass of Omnipotence the Secret of a Decree or the Unlimited Strains of Extraordinary Grace is not here disputed But as it would be Arrogance for us Men to define the Power of Grace so it is the Height of Spiritual Prudence to observe its Methods And upon such Observation we shall find that the Recovery of such Apostates is not the Custom but the Prerogative of Mercy A Man is ruin'd but once A miscarriage in the New-Birth is dangerous and very Fatal it generally proves to pass the Critical Seasons of a defeated Conversion And thus I have at length dispatched what 〈◊〉 at first proposed Now the Words themselves being as I said before Christ's application of His Own Sermon cannot be improved into a Better and consequently need not into Another except what their own natural Consequence does suggest and that is What our Saviour Himself intimates elsewhere Namely That he who is about to build would first sit down and consider what it is like to cost him For building is Chargeable especially if a Man lays out his Money like a Fool Would a Man build for Eternity that is in other words Would he be Saved Let him consider with himself what charges he is willing to be at that he may be so Nothing under an Universal sincere Obedience to all the Precepts of the Gospel can entitle him to the Benefits of it and thus far and deep he must go if he will lay his Foundation true It is in hard and a Rocky work I confess but the difficulty of laying it will be abundantly recompenced by the Firmness of it when it is laid But it is a sad and mortifying Consideration to think upon what false and sinking Grounds or rather upon what Whirlepools and Quicksands many venture to build Some you shall have amusing their Consciences with a set of Phantastical New-Coin'd Phrases such as Laying hold on Christ getting into Christ and rolling themselves upon Christ and the like by which if they mean any Thing else but obeying the Precepts of Christ and a Rational hope of Salvation thereupon which it is certain that generally they do not mean it is all but
Converts were not yet so perfectly and entirely Christians but that they still observed the Ordinances of the Mosaical Law as supposing it still in Force Others on the contrary being more confirmed and grown up in the knowledge of their Christian Liberty and thereby being fully satisfyed that the Ceremonial part of the Mosaick Law was abolish'd and took away observed not that difference of Days and Meats which was prescribed in that Law but look'd upon one Day as another and indifferently ate any kind of Meats being perswaded in their Conscience that Christ had took away all such distinction and made the use of all Lawful Nevertheless the former sort of Converts not understanding that it was the Design of Christianity to abrogaâ—e any thing once established by Moses had their Consciences still in Bondage to a Religious Observation of whatsoever had been enjoyned in his Law And thereupon though they owned Christ yet if any Meat prohibited by Moses was set before them they held themselves bound rather to fast or to eat only Herbs than by eating such Meat to break the Law as they thought and thereby to Defile themselves This was their Case But in this 8 th Chapter of 1 Cor. St. Paul speaks of Persons newly Converted from Idolatry and that touching the Lawfulness or Unlawfulness of eating Meats offered to Idols Concerning which offerings we must know that besides what was eaten of them in the Idols Temple which eating was an Act of Religious Worship and Communion with the Idol as our eating the Bread in the Sacrament is a Communion with Christ besides this I say there was a certain Portion of those Sacrifices which fell to the Priests and which they having no use of sold to those who afterwards exposed it to â—ale promiscuously amongst other Meats upon the Shambles from whence it was accordingly bought up and spent in private Families without any distinction whether it had or had not been offered to Idols Now as for the former way of eating Meats thus offered namely in the Idols Temple this the Apostle utterly disallows as absolutely Unlawful But the latter only under some Circumstances For he allows that it might be lawfully bought amongst other Meat in the Market and being so bought might be eaten in any private House without the least Sin Only with this Caution That whereas there were some who well understood that Meat could have no defiling quality imprinted upon it by its Consecration to an Idol And others on the contrary having not so much knowledge supposed that the Consecration of it to the Idol left upon it such a Polluting quality and near Relation to the Idol as defiled the Eater The former sort might freely and Innocently eat such Meats in private Families provided it was not before those of the latter sort who through weakness having an Opinion of the Unlawfulness of such Meats might nevertheless be induced to use the same Liberty though their Consciences in the mean time having quite another Judgment in this matter esteemed the eating them little better than Idolatry Now the Argument by which the Apostle abridges the liberty of the former sort of Converts in condescension to those of the latter sort proceeds upon the strength of this Assertion That the Lawfulness of Men's Actions depends not solely either upon the lawfulness of their subject matter nor yet upon the Conscience of the doers of them considered in it self but as considered with reference to the Consciences of others to whom by the law of Charity they stand bound so to behave themselves as by none of their Actions to give them occasion of Sin And this was the Case of the Persons here treated of by the Apostle in this Chapter Which Historical account of the subject matter of the words being thus premised I shall cast the prosecution of them under these Three Heads 1. I shall shew what a Weak Conscience is 2. What it is to Wound or Sin against it 3. I shall lay down some Conclusions or Assertions naturally resulting from the foregoing Particulars And First for the first of these what a Weak Conscience is I said at first that such a Conscience was improperly called Tender which in the sense it commonly bears is an expression of our own framing and no where to be met with in the Scriptures Tenderness applyed to Conscience properly imports quickness and exactness of sense which is the Perfection of this Faculty whose duty it is to be Spiritual Watch to give us warning of whatsoever concerns us It is indeed the Eye of the Soul and though the Eye is naturally the most tender and delicate part of the Body yet it is not therefore called Weak so long as its sight is quick and strong Conscience the more sensible it is to accuse or excuse which is its office and to spy out every little thing which may annoy or defile the Soul so much the more Tender it is to be accounted but not therefore so much the more Weak which sufficiently shews Weakness and Tenderness of Conscience to be in strictness of speech two different things And the same appears yet further from those Contraries to which they stand Respectively opposed A Tender Conscience being opposed to a Hard or Seared Conscience Such a one as either wholly or in a great measure has lost the distinguishing sence of Good and Evil Honest and Dishonest But a Weak Conscience is opposed to a Strong Which very strength we shew consisted in the Tenderness or Quickness of its discerning or Perceptive Power whereupon we read of Strong Men and Babes in Christ which denominations take their Rise from the strength or weakness of the Conscience For such as the Conscience is such must be the Christian. And here let none think my Insisting upon the distinction of these Terms either Nice or Needless For it is no small Artifice of Fraud to prepossess the Minds of Men by representing a bad thing under a good Name and calling Weakness of Conscience which is a defect by the Name of Tenderness which is a Perfection Words govern the Generality of the World who seldom go 〈◊〉 deep as to look into Things And Impostors well know how likely their Cause is to succeed if their Terms can but once be admitted As for the Place now before us it is evident that the weakness of Conscience here spoken of is opposed to Faith So that in Rom. 14. Such an one is said to be Weak in the Faith and v. 2. One Believeth that he may eat all things another who is Weak eateth Herbs Where observe that He who believeth is opposed to him who is Weak Now by Faith here is not meant that act or quality by which a Man is justified but signifies the same with Knowledge As 1 Cor. 8.10 If any Man see thee who hast Knowledge sit at meat in the Idols Temple shall not the Conscience of Him who is weak be emboldened to do so too And in v. 7. Howbeit there
design but this certainly and effectually does as being not only the Wisdom but Secondly The Power of God too the first Infallible the other Irresistible In a word the Wisdom here spoken of is a Messenger which always goes as far as sent an Instrument which never fails or lurches the Great Agent who imploys it either in Reaching the End He directs it to or in Finishing the Work He intends it for So that in short there could not be an higher and a nobler Elogy to express the Gospel by than by representing it to us as the Wisdom of God For as Wisdom in general is the Noblest and most Sublime Perfection of an Intellectual Nature and particularly in God Himself is the Leading Ruling Attribute prescribing to all the rest so a Commendation drawn from thence must needs be the most glorious that can possibly pass upon any Action or Design proceeding from such an One. And the Apostle seems here most peculiarly to have directed this Encomium of the Gopel as a Defiance to the Philosophers of his Time the Flustring Vain glorious Greeks who pretended so much to magnify and even Adore the Wisdom they professed and with great modesty no doubt confin'd wholly to themselves A Wisdom I think little to be envyed them being such as none who had it could be the better nor consequently the wiser for And thus much for the first Thing contained in the Words and proposed from them namely That the Gospel is the Wisdom of God I proceed now to the Second which we shall chiefly insist upon and that is concerning the Mysteriousness of it as That it is the Wisdom of God in a Mystery For the prosecution of which we shall enquire into and endeavour to give some Account of the Reasons so far as we may presume to judge of them why God should deliver to Mankind a Religion so full of Mysteries as the Christian Religion certainly is and was ever accounted to be Now the Reasons of this in general I conceive may be stated upon these two Grounds First The Nature and Quality of the Things treated of in the Christian Religion And Secondly The Ends to which all Religion both as to the General and Particular Nature of it is designed with relation to the Influence which it ought to have upon the minds of Men. And first of all For the Nature of the Things themselves which are the Subject matter of the Christian Religion there are in them these three Qualifications or Properties which do and must of Necessity render them Mysterious Obscure and of difficult Apprehension As First Their surpassing Greatness and Inequality to the mind of Man The Christian Religion as to a great part of it is but a kind of Comment upon the Divine Nature an Instrument to convey right Conceptions of God into the Soul of Man so far as it is capable of receiving them But now God we know is an Infinite Being without any Bounds or Limitations of His Essence Wonderful in His Actings Inconceivable in His Purposes and Inexpressible in His Attributes which yet as Great as they are if severally taken give us but an Incomplete Representation of Him He is another World in Himself too high for our Speculations and too great for our Descriptions For how can such Vast and Mighty things be crowded into a little finite Understanding Heaven I confess enters into us as we must into That by a very narrow Passage But how shall the King of Glory whom the Heavens themselves cannot contain enter in by these Doors by a Weak Imagination a slender Notion and a contracted Intellect How shall these poor short faculties measure the Lengths of His Eternity the Breadth and Expansions of His Immensity the Heights of His Prescience and the Depths of His Decrees and last of all that Unutterable Incomprehensible Mystery of Two Natures United into one Person and again of one and the same Nature diffused into a Triple Personality All which being some of the Prime Fundamental matters treated of in our Religion how can it be otherwise than a Systeme of Mysteries and a knot of dark inexplicable Propositions Since it exhibits to us such Things as the very Condition of our Nature renders us Uncapable of clearly understanding The Socinians indeed who would obtrude upon the World and of late more daringly than ever a New Christianity of their own Inventing will admit of nothing Mysterious in this Religion or such as the Natural Reason of Man cannot have a clear and Comprehensive perception of and this not only in defiance of the express Words of Scripture so frequently and fully affirming the contrary but also of the constant universal sense of all Antiquity Unanimously confessing an Incomprehensibility in many of the Articles of the Christian Faith So that these bold Persons stand alone by themselves upon a new bottom and an Upstart Principle not much above an Hundred years old spitting upon all Antiquity before them and as some have well observed of them who have wrote against them are the only Sect of Men in the World who ever pretended to set up or own a Religion without either a Mystery or a Sacrifice belonging to it For as we have shewn that they deny the first so they equally explode the latter by denying Christ to be properly a Priest or His Death to have been a Propitiatory Oblation for the Sins of the World And now are not these blessed New Lights think we fit to be encouraged courted and have Panegyricks made upon their Wonderful Abilities forsooth Whilst they on the other side are imploying the utmost of those abilities such as they are in Blaspheming our Saviour and Overturning our Religion But this is their hour and the Power of Darkness For it is a Truth too too manifest to be denied That there have been more Innovations upon and Blasphemies against the Chief Articles of our Faith published in this Kingdom and that after a more Audacious and Scandalous manner within these several years last past than have been known here for some Centuries of years before even those times of Confusion both in Church and State betwixt Forty One and Sixty not excepted And what this may produce and end in God only at present knows and I wish the whole Nation may not at length feel Secondly A second Qualification of the Chief Things treated of in our Religion and which must needs render them Mysterious is their Spirituality and Abstraction from all Sensible and Corporeal Matter Of which sort of Things it is impossible for the Understanding of Man to form to it self an exact Idea or Representation So that when we hear or read that God is a Spirit and that Angels and the Souls of Men are Spirits our Apprehensions are utterly at a loss how to frame any Notion or Resemblance of them but are put to float and wander in an endless Maze of Guesses and Conjectures and know not certainly what to fix upon For in this Case
Celestial Luminaries to receive no Tincture Sullage or Defilement from the most noysome sinks and dunghills here below but to maintain a Pure Untainted Virgin light in spight of all their Exhalations So our Saviour shined in the World with such an invincible Light of Holiness as suffered nothing of the corrupt manners and depraved Converse of Men to rub the least filth or pollution upon Him He was not capable of receiving any Impression from all the Sin and villainy which like a Contagion fastened upon every Soul round about Him In a Word He was Pure Righteous and Undefiled not only above the World but what is more in the Midst of it Secondly The next thing considerable in a Star is the manner of its Appearance It appears but small and of a little Compass So that although our reason assures us that it is bigger than the whole Earth yet our sight would seem to perswade us that it is not much bigger than a Diamond sparkling upon the Circle of a little Ring And now how appositely does this consideration also sute the Condition of our Saviour Who both in His rising and shining upon the World seemed in the Eyes of all Men but a small and a Contemptible thing a poor helpless Man first living upon a Trade and then upon something that was much meaner namely upon Alms. Whereupon what slight thoughts had they of His Person as if He had been no more than an ordinary soul join'd to an Ordinary Body and so sent into the World to take His Course in the common lot of Mortality They little dream'd of a Deity and of something greater than the World lodged in that little Tabernacle of His Flesh. So that notwithstanding His being the Great and Almighty God the Lord of Hosts and King of Kings yet the generality of Men took Him for but a mean Person and such another living piece of clay as themselves And what could be the cause of His being thought so but the same that makes Stars to be thought little things even their height and vast distance from poor earthly spectators So the Glories of Christ's Person were by the very transcendency of their height placed above the reach and ken of a mortal apprehension And God must yet elevate our Reason by Revelation or the Son of God Himself will still seem but a small thing in our Eyes For Carnal reason measures the greatest things by all the disadvantages of their outward appearance just as little Children judge of the proportion of the Sun and Moon reckoning that to be the smalness of the Object which is only the Distance of the Beholder or the Weakness of the Organ Third The third and Last thing to be considered in a Star is the Quality of its Operation which is Twofold First Open and Visible by its Light Secondly Secret and Invisible by its influence And First This Morning Star Operates by its Brightness and Lustre in respect of which it is the first fruits of Light and as it were Day in its Minority clearing the Heavenly Stage and chasing away all other Stars till it reigns in the Firmament alone And now to make good the Comparison between Christ and this we shall shew how He by His appearence chaced away many things much admired and gazed at by the World and particularly these Three First Much of the Heathenish Worship and Superstition which not only like a Cloud but like a black and a dark Night had for along time covered the face of the whole earth and made such Triumphs over the reason of Mankind that in nothing more appeared the Ruins and Decays of our Nature And it was unquestionably the greatest and severest Instance of the Divine Wrath upon Man for his Original Apostacy from God thus to leave him confounded and uncertain in the management of the greatest affair and Concernment of his Soul his Religion So that as it was then ordered it was nothing else but a strange confused Compound of Absurdity and Impiety For as to the Object of their Worship the Apostle tells us that they Worship'd Devils 1 Cor. 10.20 and elsewhere they worshipt men like themselves Nay Birds and Beasts and Creeping things and as Historians tell us Roots and Herbs Leeks and Onions yea and their own base Desires and Affections Deifying and building Temples to Lust Anger Revenge and the like In summ They Worship'd all things but God who only of all things was to have been Worshipped Now upon the Comeing of Christ very much though not all of this Idolatrous Trumpery and Superstition was driven out of the World So that many of the Oracles those great instruments of Delusion ceased about the Time of our Saviour's Nativity The Divine Power then dispossessing the Devil of his greater Temples as well as of his lesser the bodies of Men and so casting down the Throne of Fallacy and Superstition by which he had so long enslaved the Vassal World and led it Captive at his Pleasure Secondly As the Heathenish false Worship so also the Iewish imperfect Worship began to be done away by the Coming of Christ. The Jews indeed drew their Religion from a Purer Fountain than the Gentiles God Himself being the Author of it and so both Ennobling and Warranting it with the Stamp of Divine Authority Yet God was pleased to limit His Operations in this particular to the Narrowness and small Capacities of the subject which He had to deal with and therefore the Jews being naturally of a gross and sensual apprehension of things had the Oeconomy of their Religion in many parts of it brought down to their temper and were trained to Spirituals by the ministry of Carnal Ordinances Which yet God was pleased to advance in their signification by making them Types and Shaddows of that Glorious Archetype that was to Come into the World His Own Son both in Person and Office by admirable Mystery and Contrivance fitted to be the Great Redeemer of Mankind He therefore being the Person to Whom all the Prophets bore Witness to Whom all Ceremonies pointed and Whom all the various Types prefigured it was but reason That when He actually appeared in the World all that previous Pomp and Apparatus should go off the Stage and like Shadows vanish before the Substance And accordingly we look upon the whole Mosaical Institution as having received its Period by Christ as defunct and ceased and the Church now grown up to that Virility and Stature as to be above the Discipline of beggarly Rudiments and like an Adult Heir passing from the Pedagogy of Tutors to assume its full Liberty and Inheritance For those whom Christ makes free are free indeed Thirdly And Lastly All pretended false Messiah's vanish'd upon the appearance of Christ the True One. A Crown will not want Pretenders to Claim it nor Usurpers if their power serves them to possess it And hereupon the Messiaship was pretended to by several Impostors but Fallacy and falshood being naturally weak
they still sunk and came to Nothing It must be confessed indeed that there rose up such Counterfeits after Christ as well as before Him yet still I think their defeat ought to be ascribed to His Coming because as a Light scatters the Darkness on all sides of it So there was such a Demonstration and Evidence given of Jesus's being the True Messias by his Coming in the Flesh that it cast its discovering Influence both backwards and forwards and equally baffled and confuted the Pretences of those who went before and of those who Rose up after Him So Potent and Victorious is Truth especially when it comes upon such an Errand from Heaven as to save the World Amongst those several false Messias's it is remarkable that one called himself Barchocab or the Son of a Star but by his fall he quickly shew'd himself of a Nature far differing from this Glorious Morning Star mentioned in the Text Which even then was fixed in Heaven while it shone upon the Earth It was not the Transitory light of a Comet which shines and glares for a while and then presently vanishes into Nothing but a Light Durable and Immortal and such an One as shall outlive the Sun and shine and burn when Heaven and Earth and the whole World shall be reduced to Cinders Having thus shewn how Christ resembled a Star in respect of His external visible shinings to the World by which He drove away much of the Heathenish Idolatry all the Jewish Ceremonies together with the Pretences of all counterfeit Messias's as the light dispels and chaces away the Darkness Come we now in the Second place to see how He resembles a Star also in respect of its Internal secret Operation and Influence upon all Sublunary Inferior beings And indeed this is the Noblest and the greatest part of the Resemblance Stars are thought to Operate powerfully even then when they do not appear and are felt by their Effects when they are not seen by their Light In like manner Christ often strikes the Soul and darts a secret beam into the heart without alarming either the Eye or Ear of the Person wrought upon And this is called both properly and elegantly by St. Peter in 2 Ep. â— 19 The Day-star's arising in our Hearts that is by the secret silent workings of His Spirit He illuminates the Judgment bends the Will and the Affections and at last changes the whole Man and this is that powerful but still Voice by which He speaks Eternal Peace to the Souls of His Elect in the Admirable but Mysterious Work of their Conversion So that our great Concern and enquiry should be whether those Heavenly Beams have reached us inwardly and pierced into our Minds as well as shone in our Faces and whether the Influence of this Star upon us has been such as to govern and draw us after it as it did the Wisemen and thereby both make and prove us Wise unto Salvation For Light is Operative as well as Beautiful and by working upon the Spirits affects the Heart as well as pleases the Eye Above all things therefore let us be strict and impartial in this search where the Thing Searched for is of such Consequence For since there are False Lights Light it self should be tryed And if we would know infallibly whether it be the Light from Above by which we are led and live and whether this Morning-Star has had its full efficacy upon or rather within us Let us see whether or no It has scattered the Clouds and darkness of our Spiritual Ignorance and the noysom foggs of our Lusts and vile Affections Do we live as the Sons of Light Do we walk as in the Day without stumbling into the mire of our old Sins These are the only sure Evidences that Christ is not only a Star in Himself but such an One also to us For when the Day-spring from on high visits us truely and effectually it first takes us out of these Shaddows of Death and then guides our Feet into the Ways of Peace To Which God of His Mercy Vouchsafe to bring us all To Whom be Rendred and Ascribed as is most due All Honour c. Jesus of Nazareth PROVED The True and Onely promised Messiah IN A SERMON Preached At S t Mary's Oxon. Before the University ON Christmas-Day 1665. JOHN I. 11 He came to His Own and His Own received Him not I cannot think it directly requisite to the prosecution of these Words nor will the Time allotted for it permit to assert and vindicate the foregoing verses from the perverse Interpretations of that false Pretender to reason and real Subverter all Religion Socinus Who in the Exposition of this Chapter together with some part of the 8 th both of them taken from the Posthumous Papers of his Uncle Lelius laid the foundation of that great Babel of Blasphemies with which he afterwards so amuzed and pestered the Christian World and under Colour of Reforming and Refining forsooth the best of Religions has imployed the utmost of his skill and art to bring Men indeed to believe none And therefore no small cause of Grief must it needs be to all pious minds that such horrid Opinions should find so ready a Reception and so fatal a Welcome in so many parts of the World as they have done considering both what they tend to and whom they come from For they tend only to give us such a Christ and Saviour as neither the Prophets nor Evangelists know nor speak any thing of And as for their Original if we would trace them up to that through some of the chief Branches of their Infamous Pedigree we must carry them a little backward from hence First to the forementioned Faustus Socinus and his Uncle Lelius and from them to Gentilis and then to Servetus and so through a long Interval to Mahomet and his Sect and from them to Photinus and from him to Arius and from Arius to Paulus Samosatenus and from him to Ebion and Cerinthus and from them to Simon Magus and so in a direct Line to the Devil himself Under whose Conduct in the several Ages of the Church these Wretches successively have been some of the most Notorious opposers of the Divinity of our Saviour and would undoubtedly have overthrown the belief of it in the World could they by all their Arts of wresting corrupting and false interpreting the Holy Text have brought the Scriptures to speak for them which they could never yet do And amongst all the Scriptures No One has stood so directly and immoveably in their way as this first Chapter of St. Iohn's Gospel A Chapter carrying in it so bright and full an Assertion of the Eternal Godhead of the Son that a Man must put common sense and reason extreamly upon the Rack before he can give any tolerable Exposition of it to the contrary So that an Eminent Dutch Critick who could find in his heart as much as in him lay to interpret away that
inward Man the Labours and Strivings of his restless Thoughts which cast his Body into that Prodigious Sweat For though it was the Flesh that Sweated it was the Spirit that took the Pains It was that which was then treading the Wine-Press of God's Wrath alone till it made him Red in his Apparel and dyed all his Garments with Blood What thought can reach or Tongue express what our Saviour then felt within his own Breast The Image of all the Sins of the World for which he was to suffer then appeared clear and lively and express to his Mind All the vile and horrid circumstances of them stood as it were particularly ranged before his Eyes in all their dismal Colours He saw how much the Honour of the Great God was abused by them and how many millions of Poor Souls they must inevitably have cast under the Pressures of a Wrath Infinite and Intolerable should he not have turn'd the Blow upon himself The horrour of which then fill'd and amazed his vast Apprehensive Soul and those Apprehensions could not but affect his tender Heart then brimful of the highest Zeal for God's Glory and the most relenting Compassion for the Souls of Men till it fermented and boyled over with Transport and Agony and even forced its way through all his Body in those strange Ebullitions of Blood not to be parallel'd by the sufferings of any Person recorded in any History whatsoever It was this which drew those doleful words from him My Soul is exceeding sorrowful c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It was surrounded and as it were besieged with an Army of Sorrows And believe it his Soul was too big and of too strong a make to bend under an ordinary Sorrow It was not any of those little things which make us put the Finger in the Eye as loss of Estate Friends Preferment Interest and the like things too mean to raise a tumult in the Breast of a resolved Stoick and much less in His who both placed and preached Happiness not only in the want but in the very defyance of them And now after this his Agony in the Garden I need not much insist upon the Wounds given his Reputation by the Sword of a Blaspheming Tongue the sharpest of all others and which like a Poysoned Dagger hurting both with Edge and Venom too at the same time both makes a Wound and prevents its Cure Even a guilty Person feels the sting of a malicious Report and if so much more must one who is innocent and yet infinitely more must He who was not only Innocent but Innocence it self Reputation is tender and for it to be blown upon is to be tainted like a Glass the clearer and finer it is the more it suffers by the least Breath And therefore for him who came to destroy the Kingdom of Satan to be traduced as a Partner with and an Agent for Beelzebub For Him whose greatest Repasts were Prayer and abstinence and the most rigid severities upon Himself to be taxed as a Wine-bibber and a Good-fellow For Him who came into the World both in Life and Death to bear Witness to the Truth to suffer as an Impostor and a Deceiver what could be more grievous and afflicting to a great Innocence joyned with as great an Apprehension However his Church gains this great Advantage of Comfort by it that the worst of sufferings comes sanctified to our Hands by the Person of our grand Example Who was reviled and slandered and tossed upon the Tongues of Men before us A greater Martyrdom questionless than to be cast as the Primitive Christians were to the Mouths of Lyons which are tender and merciful compared to the Mouths of Men whether we look upon that bitter Spirit which acted in those Jews or in some Christians now adays worse than Jews Men who seem to have out-done all before them in the Arts of a more refined Malice and improved Calumny Qualities lately sprung up out of the stock of a spreading Atheism and a domineering reigning Sensuality Sins now made National and Authentick and so much both Iudgment and Mercy-proof that it is well if we can be cured without being cut off But to return to the business before us We have now seen the first thing setting forth the greatness of this suffering to wit the Latitude and Extent of it as that it seized both Body and Soul and every Part and Faculty of both Second The next thing declaring its greatness was the intenseness and sharpness of it We have seen already how far it went we are now to consider how deep It fell not on him like a dew or mist which only wets the surface of the Ground but like a pouring soaking Rain which descends into the very Bowels of it There was pain enough in every single part to have been spread in lesser Proportions over the whole Man Christ suffered only the exquisiteness and heights of pain without any of those mitigations which God is pleased to temper and allay it with as it befalls other Men like a Man who drinks only the Spirits of a Liquor separated and extracted from the dull unactive Body of the Liquor it self All the force and activity the stings and fierceness of that troublesome thing were as it were drain'd and distill'd and abridged into that Cup which Christ drank off There was something sharper than Vinegar and bitterer than Gall which that draught was prepared and made up with We cannot indeed say that the sufferings of Christ were long in duration for to be violent and lasting too is above the methods or measures of Nature But he who lived at that rate that he might be said to live an Age every hour was able to suffer so too and to comprize the greatest torments in the shortest space which yet by their shortness lost nothing of their Force and Keenness as a Pen-Knife is as sharp as a Spear though not so long That which promotes and adds to the Impressions of pain is the delicate and exact Crasis and Constitution of the Part or Faculty aggrieved And there is no doubt but the very Fabrick and Complexion of our Saviour's Body was a Master-piece of Nature a thing absolutely and exactly framed and of that fineness as to have the quickest and most sensible touches of every Object and withal to have these advanced by the communion of his admirably made Body with his high and vigorous Intellectuals All which made him drink in Pain more deeply feel every lash every wound with so much a closer and a more affecting sense For it is not to be doubted but a dull Fellow can endure the Paroxysms of a Fever or the Torments of the Gout or Stone much better than a Man of a quick mind and an exalted Fancy because in one Pain beats upon a Rock or an Anvil in the other it prints it self upon wax One is even born with a kind of Lethargy and stupefaction into the World armed with an Iron
a suffering Religion and there are two sorts of suffering to which it will certainly expose every genuine Professor of it 1. The First is from himself 2. The Second from the World 1. And First it will engage him in a suffering from himself even that Grand suffering of Self-denial and Mortification the sharpest and most indispensable of all others in which every Christian is not only to be the Sufferer but himself also the Executioner He who is Christ's says the Apostle has crucified the Flesh with the Affections and Lusts. A severe Discipline certainly in which a Man is to act his fiercest anger upon his Dearest Friends For could Nature ever yet suggest to any one the hatred of his own Flesh the Crucifixion of his Desires and the stabbing of his most beloved affections Nature indeed cannot will not prompt it but Christianity which rises many strains above Nature both must and will The best Sacrifice to a Crucified Saviour is a Crucified Lust a bleeding Heart and a dying Corruption We cannot bring nor indeed does Christ expect a recompence for what he has suffered for us yet that which he will accept as if it were a recompence is for us to deal cruelly with that body of Sin which has caused the acting of all those Cruelties upon him Let the Ambitious Man lay his Pride in the dust the Covetous Man deposite his Treasures in the Banks of Charity and Liberality and let the Voluptuous Epicure renonuce his Cups and his Whores and this will be a present to Heaven better than an whole Hecatomb nor could the Fruit of his Body fall so grateful a Sacrifice upon God's Altars as the Sin of his Soul But it is like the Jolly World about us will but scoff at the Paradox of such Practices and explode them as Madness and Melancholy Yet let those Sons of pleasure know that such as scorn to be thus Melancholy in this World will have but little cause to be Merry in the next 2. The other kind of suffering in which Christianity will engage a Man is from the World Such is the Genius and Nature of the Christian Religion that it must unavoidably bring him who owns it in the power of it under Temporal troubles and afflictions In the World says Christ ye shall have tribulation And he spoke it not so much by a Spirit of Prophecy as Philosophy and by an actual sight of it in its pregnant Causes For the contrariety of the Principles and Maxims of Christianity to those of the World cannot but engage Men in such practices as shall also thwart the Customs and Modes which govern the Actions of the World But where there is contrariety there will be fighting and where there is fighting the weaker I am sure must suffer and generally the Christian is so in all Worldly encounters whose chief Defensatives lie not in that Armour that is Sword-proof or Bullet-proof and who wears no Breast-plate upon but within his Breast that is his Innocence his Conscience and his Confidence in a Reconciled God Suffering is a thing which all Men abhor and that because they are ashamed of it and their being so is grounded upon this Opinion that To suffer in the very Nature of it seems to impeach the suffering Person either in the Reputation of his Power or of his Innocence that is he suffers either because he is weak and cannot hinder it or because he is faulty and so deserves it But with every Christian Christ is an abundant answer to both these Objections For when we see Omnipotence hanging upon the Cross and God himself scourged and spit upon and when we see him who could have commanded fire from Heaven and Legions of Angels to his rescue yet surrendering himself quietly to the will of his Murderers surely no mortal Man who is but dirt and worms-meat at the best can pretend himself too great and too high to suffer And again when we behold Vertue Innocence and Purity more than Angelical crucified between Thieves and Malefactors shall any Man whose Birth and Actions revile and speak him a Sinner to his face thing himself too good to come under the Cross and to take his share in the common Lot of Christianity 'T is not the suffering it self but the Cause of it that is dishonourable And even in the worst and most shameful of sufferings though the Hangman does the Execution yet it is the Crime alone which does the Disgrace Christ commands us nothing but he enforces it with Arguments from his Person as well as from his Word and it is well if we can make a due use of them For God knows how soon he may call us from our easy Speculations and Theories of Suffering to the Practical Experience of it How soon he may draw us forth for Persecution and the Fiery tryal Only this we may be sure of that if these things be brought upon us for His honour it will be for Ours too to endure them And be our distresses never so great our calamities never so strange and unusual yet we have both our Saviour's Example to direct and his Promise to support us who has left it upon record in his Everlasting Gospel That if we suffer with Him we shall also Reign with Him To Whom therefore be Rendered and Ascribed as is most due all Praise Mighty Majesty and Dominion both now and for evermore Amen A SERMON Upon the Resurrection Preached On Easter-Day 1667. ACTS II. 24 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Whom God hath raised up having loosed the Pains of Death because it was not possible that He should be holden of it IT is of Infinite Concern to Mankind both as to their Wellfare in this World and the next to preserve in their Minds a full Belief of a Future Estate of Happiness or Misery into which according to the Quality of their Actions here they must for ever be disposed of hereafter The Experience of all Ages having found the Insufficiency of bare humane Restraints to Controul the Audacious Sinfulness of some Tempers and Dispositions without holding them under the Awe of this Perswasion From which though some by much and long Sinning and Preverse Ratiocinations caused thereby have in a great Measure disintangled their Consciences yet these are but few and inconsiderable compared with the rest of the World in whose Minds Education and better Principles grafted upon the very Instincts of Nature have fixed this Perswasion too deep to be ever totally rooted out And it is from the Victorious Influence of this that the Common Peace of the World has been maintained against those bold Invasions which the Corruption of Man's Nature would otherwise continually make upon it But now as highly necessary as it is for Men to believe such a Future Estate yet it must be acknowledged that with the Generality of the World this Belief has stood hitherto upon very false or at the best very weak Foundations and consequently that it is of no small Import
to state and settle it upon Better For the doing of which the most effectual ways I conceive may be these Two 1. By Revelation 2. By Exemplification First As to the first whereof it must needs be either by an Immediate Declaration of this great Truth not discoverable by Reason by a Voice from Heaven or by God's Inspiring some certain Select Persons with the Knowledge of it and afterwards enabling them to Attest it to the World by Miracles And as this is undoubtedly sufficient in it self for such a Purpose so Providence has not been Wanting partly by Revelation and partly by Tradition thereupon to keep alive amongst Men some Perswasion at least of this Important Truth all along as appears even from those fabulous accounts and stories which the Heathen World still Cloathed or rather Corrupted it with Nevertheless such has been the Prevalence of Humane Corruption and Infidelity as in a great Degree to frustrate all the Impressions that bare Revelation or Tradition could make upon Men's Minds while they chiefly governed their Belief by the Observation of their Senses which from the Daily occurring Instances of Mortality shew them that as the Tree fell so it lay and that no Body was ever seen by them to return from the Mansions of the Dead but that for any thing they could find to the contrary all passed into Dust and Rottenness and Perpetual Oblivion Secondly The other way therefore of Convincing the World of this momentous Truth in comparison of which all Science and Philosophy are but Trifles must be by Exemplification That is to say by giving the World an Instance or Example of it in some Person or Persons who having been confessedly Dead should revive and return to Life again And this one would think should be as full and Unexceptionable a Proof that there may be a Resurrection of Men to a future Estate as could be desired Nothing striking the Mind of Man so powerfully as Instances and Examples which make a Truth not only Intelligible but even Palpable sliding it into the Understanding through the Windows of Sense and by the most familiar as well as most unquestionable perceptions of the Eye And accordingly this Course God thought fit to take in the Resurrection of Christ by which he Condescended to give the World the greatest satisfaction that Infidelity it self could rationally insist upon Howbeit notwithstanding so plain an Address both to Men's Reason and Sense too neither has this Course proved so successful for Convincing of the World of a Resurrection from the Dead and a future Estate consequent thereupon but that Unbelief has been still putting in its objections against it For it is not I confess the Interest of such as Live ill in this World to believe that there shall be another or that they shall be sensible of any Thing after Death has once done its Work upon them and therefore let Truth and Scripture and even Sense it self say what they will for a Resurrection Men for ought appears will for ever square their Belief to their Desires and their Desires to their Corruptions so that as we find it in the 16 th of Luke and last v. though they should even see one rise from the Dead they would hardly be perswaded of their own Resurrection Such a sad and deplorable hardness of Heart have Men Sinned themselves into that nothing shall convince them but what first pleases them be it never so much a Delusion Nevertheless the most Wise and Just God is not so to be mocked who knows that by Raising Christ from the Dead he has done all that rationally can or ought to be done for the Convincing of Mankind that there shall be a Resurrection whether they will be Convinced by it or no. But now if after all it should be asked How is Christ's Resurrection a Proof that the rest of Mankind shall rise from the Dead too I answer That considered indeed as a bare Instance or Example it proves no more than that there may be such a Thing since the same Infinite Power which effected the One may as well effect the Other but then if we consider it as an Argument and a Confirmation of that Doctrine whereof the Assertion of a General Resurrection makes a principal part I affirm that so taken it does not only prove that such a Thing may be but also That it actually shall be and that as certainly as it is Impossible for the Divine Power to set its seal to a Lye by ratifying an Imposture with such a Miracle And thus as Christ's Resurrection irrefragably proves the Resurrection of the rest of Mankind so it no less proves Christ himself to have been the Messiah for that having all along affirmed himself to be so he made good the Truth of what he had so affirmed by his miraculous rising again and so gave as strong a Proof of his Messiaship as Infinite Power joined with Equal Veracity could give And upon this Account we have his Resurrection alledged by St. Peter for the same Purpose here in the Text which was part of his Sermon to the Jews concerning Iesus Christ whom he proves to be their True and long expected Messiah against all the Cavils of Prejudice and Unbelief by this one invincible Demonstration In the Text then we have these Three Things Considerable First Christ's Resurrection and the Cause of it in these words Whom God hath raised up Secondly The manner by which it was effected which was by loosing the Pains of Death And Thirdly and Lastly The Ground of it which was its absolute Necessity expressed in these Words It was not possible that He should be holden of it and 1. For the first of these The Cause of the Resurrection set forth in this expression Whom God hath raised up It was such an Action as proclaimed an Omnipotent Agent and carried the hand of God writt upon it in broad Characters Legible to the meanest Reason Death is a disease which Art cannot Cure and the Grave a Prison which delivers back its Captives upon no humane summons To restore Life is only the Prerogative of him who gives it Some indeed have pretended by Art and Physical applications to recover the dead but the success has sufficiently upbraided the attempt Physick may repair and piece up Nature but not Create it Cordials Plaisters and Fomentations cannot always stay a Life when it is going much less can they remand it when it is gone Neither is it in the Power of a Spirit or Demon good or bad to inspire a new Life For it is a Creation and to Create is the incommunicable Prerogative of a Power infinite and unlimited Enter into a body they may and so act and move it after the manner of a Soul but it is one thing to move another to animate a Carcass You see the Devil could fetch up nothing of Samuel at the request of Saul but a shadow and a Resemblance his Countenance and his Mantle which yet
was not enough to cover the cheat or to palliate the Illusion But I suppose no body will be very importunate for any further proof of this That if Christ was raised it must be God who raised him The Angel might indeed roll away the stone from the Sepulchre but not turn it into a Son of Abraham and a less Power than that which could do so could not effect the Resurrection 2. I come now to the second thing which is to shew the manner by which God wrought this Resurrection set forth in those Words having loosed the Pains of Death An expression not altogether so clear but that it may well require a further explication For it may be enquired with what propriety God could be said to loose the Pains of Death by Christs Resurrection when those Pains continued not till the Resurrection but determined and expired in the Death of his Body Upon which ground it is that some have affirmed That Christ descended into the place of the damned where during his Body's abode in the Grave they say that in his Soul he really suffered the pains of Hell and this not unsutably to some Ancient Copies which read it not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Pains of Death but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the pains of Hell and this also with much seeming consonance to that Article of the Creed in which Christ is said to have descended into hell But to this I answer That Christ suffered not any such pains in Hell as the forementioned opinion would pretend which we may demonstrate from this That if Christ suffered any of those pains during His abode in the Grave then it was either in his Divine Nature or in his Soul or in his Body But the Divine Nature could not suffer or be tormented as being wholly impassible Nor yet could he suffer in his Soul for as much as in the very same day of his Death that passed into Paradise which surely is no place of pain Nor Lastly in his Body for that being Dead and Consequently for the time bereaved of all Sense could not be capable of any Torment And then for answer to what was alledged from the Antient Copies it is to be observed that the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which some render Hell indifferently signifies also the Grave and a state of Death And Lastly for that Article of the Creed in which there is mention made of Christ's descent into Hell there are various expositions of it but the most rational and agreeable is that it means His abode in the grave and under the State of Death three Days and three nights or rather three 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 viz. part of the First and Third so called by a Synechdoche of the part for the whole and the Second entirely Whereby as his Burial signified his entrance into the grave So his descending into Hell signified his continuance there and subjection to that Estate And thus the three parts of his humiliation in the last and grand Scene of it do most appositely answer to the three parts of his exaltation For First His Death answers to his Rising again Secondly His Burial answers to his ascending into Heaven And Thirdly His Descending into Hell answers to his sitting at the Right hand of God in a State of never dying Glory Honour and Immortality But however that his descending into Hell mentioned in the Creed cannot signify his Local descent into the place of the Damned the former Argument disproving his suffering the Pains of Hell will by an easy Change of the Terms sufficiently evince this also For First Christ could not descend according to His Divine Nature since that which is Infinite and fills all places could not acquire any new place And as for his Soul that was in Paradise and his body was laid in the Grave and being so what part of Chirst could descend into Hell the whole Christ being thus disposed of needs a more than Ordinary apprehension to conceive We are therefore in the next place to see how we can make out the Reason of this Expression upon some other and better ground In order to which it is very observable that the same word which in the Greek Text is rendred by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and in the English by Pains in the Hebrew signifies not only pain but also a cord or band according to which it is very easy and proper to conceive that the Resurrection discharged Christ from the bands of Death besides that this rendition of the Word seems also most naturally to agree with the genuine meaning of some other words in the same verse as of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 having loosed which is properly applicable to bands and not to pains as also of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies properly to be bound with some cord or band So that undoubtedly this exposition would give the whole verse a much more natural and apposite Construction and withal remove the diffiulty But Secondly Because the Evangelist St. Luke follows the Translation of the Septuagint who little minding the Hebrew pointings rendred the Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cords or Bands but by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pains we are therefore not to baulk so great an Authority but to see how the Scheme of the Text may be made clear and agreeable even to this Exposition To this therefore I answer First That the Words contain in them an Hebraism viz. the pains of death for a painful death as it is said Matth. 24.15 The abomination of desolation for an abominable desolation and so the Resurrection loosed Christ from a painful Death not indeed painful in sensu Composito as if it were so at the time of his release from it but in a divided sence as the Logicians speak it loosed him from a Continuance under that Death which relating to the Time of his suffering it was so painful 2. But Secondly I answer further That though the pains of Death ceased long before the Resurrection so that this could not in strictness of sence be said to remove them yet taking in a Metonymy of the Cause for the Effect the Pains of Death might be properly said to have been loosed in the Resurrection because that Estate of Death into which Christ was brought by those foregoing pains was then conquered and completely Triumph'd over Captivity under Death and the Grave was the Effect and Consequent of those Pains and therefore the same Deliverance which discharged Christ from the one might not improperly be said to loose Him from the other And thus Christ was no sooner bound but within a little time he was loosed again He was not so much buryed as for a while deposited in the Grave for a small inconsiderable space So that even in this respect he may not inelegantly be said to have tasted of Death for a taste is transient short and quickly past God rescued him from that Estate as a
Prey from the Mighty and a Captive from the strong and though he was in the very Iaws of Death yet he was not devoured Corruption the common Lot of Mortality seized not on him Worms and Putrefaction durst not approach him His Body was Sacred and inviolable as sweet under ground as above it and in Death it self retaining One of the highest Privileges of the Living 3. Come we now to the Last and principal thing proposed namely The Ground of Christ's Resurrection which was its absolute Necessity expressed in these Words Because it was not possible that He should be holden of it and that according to the strictest and most received sence of the word Possible For it was not only Par aequum that Christ should not always be detained under Death because of his Innocence as Grotius precariously and to serve an Hypothesis would have the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here signify but it was absolutely necessary that he should not and impossible that he should continue under the Bands of Death from the Peculiar Condition of his Person as well as upon several other Accounts And accordingly this Impossibility was founded upon these Five Things 1. The Union of Christ's Humane Nature to the Divine 2. God's Immutability 3. His Justice 4. The Necessity of Christ's being believed upon 5. And Lastly the Nature of his Priesthood First of all then The Hypostatical Vnion of Christ's Humane Nature to His Divine rendred a perpetual Duration under Death absolutely impossible For how could that which was united to the Great Source and Principle of Life be finally prevailed over by Death and pass into an Estate of perpetual darkness and oblivion Even while Christ's body was divided from his Soul yet it ceased not to maintain an intimate indissolvable Relation to his Divinity It was assumed into the same Person for according to the Creed of Athanasius As the Soul and Body make one Man so the Divine Nature and the Humane make One Christ. And if so is it imaginable that the Son of God could have one of his Natures rent wholly from his Person His Divinity as it were buoyed up his sinking Humanity and preserved it from a total Dissolution for as while the Soul continues joyned to the Body still speaking in sensu composito Death cannot pass upon it for as much as that is the proper Effect of their Separation So while Christ's Manhood was retained in a Personal conjunction with His Godhead the bands of death were but feeble and insignificant like the Wit hs and Cords upon Sampson while he was inspired with the mighty Presence and Assistance of God's Spirit It was possible indeed that the Divine Nature might for a while suspend its supporting influence and so deliver over the Humane Nature to pain and death but it was impossible for it to let go the relation it bore to it A Man may suffer his Child to fall to the ground and yet not wholly quit his hold of him but still Keep it in his power to recover and lift him up at his pleasure Thus the Divine Nature of Christ did for a while hide it self from his Humanity but not desert it put it into the Chambers of death but not lock the Everlasting Doors upon it The Sun may be clouded and yet not Eclipsed and Eclips'd but not stop'd in his Course and much less forced out of his Orb. It is a Mystery to be admired that any thing belonging to the Person of Christ should suffer but it is a Paradox to be exploded that it should perish For surely that Nature which diffusing it self throughout the Universe communicates an enlivening Influence to every part of it and quickens the least spire of grass according to the measure of its Nature and the proportion of its capacity would not wholly leave a Nature assumed into its Bosom and what is more into the very Unity of the Divine Person breathless and inanimate and dismantled of its Prime and Noblest Perfection For Life is so high a Perfection of Being that in this respect the least Fly or Mite is a more noble Being than a Star And God has expresly declared himself not the God of the Dead but of the Living and this in respect of the very Persons of Men but how much more with reference to what belongs to the Person of his Son For when Natures come to Unite so near as mutually to interchange Names and Attributes and to verify the Appellation by which God is said to be Man and Man to be God surely Man so privileg'd and advanced cannot for ever lie under Death without an insufferable invasion upon the entireness of that Glorious Person whose Perfection is as inviolable as it is incomprehensible 2. The Second Ground of the Impossibility of Christ's continuance under Death was that Great and Glorious Attribute of God His Immutability Christ's Resurrection was founded upon the same bottom with the consolation and Salvation of Believers expressed in that full declaration made by God of Himself Mala. 3.6 I the Lord change not therefore ye Sons of Jacob are not consumed Now the Immutability of God as it had an influence upon Christ's Resurrection was Two-fold First In respect of his Decree or Purpose Secondly In respect of his Word or Promise And First for his Decree God had from all Eternity designed this and sealed it by an irreversible Purpose For can we imagine that Christ's Resurrection was not decreed as well as his Death and sufferings and these in the 23. v. of this Chapter are expresly said to have been determined by God It is a known rule in Divinity that whatsoever God does in Time that He purposed to do from Eternity for there can be no new Purposes in God since he who takes up a new purpose does so because he sees some ground to induce him to such a purpose which he did not see before but this can have no place in an Infinite knowledge which by one Comprehensive Intuition sees all things as Present before ever they come to pass So that there can be no new Emergency that can alter the Divine Resolutions And therefore it having been Absolutely purposed to raise Christ from the Dead his Resurrection was as fixed and Necessary as the Purpose of God was Irrevocable A Purpose which Commenced from Eternity and was declared in the very Beginnings of Time a Purpose not to be Changed nor so much as bent and much less broke by all the Created Powers in Heaven and Earth and in Hell besides For though indeed Death is a great Conqueror and his Bands much too strong for Nature and Mortality Yet when over-matched by a Decree This Conqueror as old as he has grown in Conquest must surrender back his spoils unbind his Captives and in a word even Death it self must receive its Doom From all which it is manifest That where there is a Divine Decree there is always an Omnipotence to second it and Consequently That by
Death where is thy Sting So that when we come to resign back these frail Bodies these Vessels of Mortality to the Dust from whence they were taken we may yet say of our Souls as Christ did of the Damosel whom he raised up That she was not dead but only Slept for in like manner we shall as certainly rise out of the Grave and Triumph over the dishonours of its Rottenness and Putrefaction as we rise in the Morning out of our Beds with Bodies refreshed and advanced into Higher and Nobler Perfections For the Head being once risen we may be sure the Members cannot stay long behind And Christ is already risen and gone before to prepare Mansions for all those who belong to him under that High Relation That where He is They to their Eternal Comfort may be also rejoycing and singing Praises and Hallelujahs to him who sitteth upon the Throne and to the Lamb for Ever and Ever To Whom Be Rendered and Ascribed as is most due all Glory Might Majesty and Dominion to Eternal Ages Amen THE Christian Pentecost OR THE Solemn Effusion of the Holy Ghost IN THE Several Miraculous Gifts Conferred by Him upon the Apostles and first Christians Set forth in a SERMON Preached At Westminster-Abbey 1692. 1 COR. XII 4 Now there are diversities of Gifts but the same Spirit OUR Blessed Saviour having Newly Changed his Crown of Thorns for a Crown of Glory and ascending up on high took Possession of his Royal Estate and Soveraignty according to the Custom of Princes is here treating with this Lower World now at so great a distance from him by his Ambassador And for the greater Splendour of the Embassy and Authority of the Message by an Ambassador no ways Inferiour to Himself even the Holy Ghost the Third Person in the Blessed Trinity in Glory Equal in Majesty Co-eternal and therefore most peculiarly fit not only as a Deputy but as a kind of Alter Idem to supply his Place and Presence here upon Earth and indeed had he not been Equal to him in the Godhead he could no more have supplyed his Place than he could have filled it which we know in the Accounts of the World are Things extreamly different as by sad and scandalous Experience is too often found Now the summ of this his Glorious Negotiation was to Confirm and ratifie Christ's Doctrine to seal the New Charter of the Worlds Blessedness given by Christ Himself and drawn up by his Apostles and Certainly it was not a greater Work first to Publish than it was afterwards to Confirm it For Christianity being a Religion made up of Truth and Miracle could not Receive its Growth from any Power less than that which first gave it its Birth And being withal a Doctrine Contrary to Corrupt Nature and to those Things which Men most Eagerly Loved to wit their Worldly Interests and their Carnal Lusts it must needs have quickly decayed and withered and dyed away if not Watered by the same Hand of Omnipotence by which it was first planted Nothing could keep it up but such a standing mighty Power as should be able upon all occasions to Countermand and Controul Nature such an one as should at the same time both Instruct and Astonish and baffle the Disputes of Reason by the Obvious overpowering Convictions of Sense And this was the Design of the Spirit 's Mission That the same Holy Ghost who had given Christ his Conception might now give Christianity its Confirmation And this he did by that wonderful and various Effusion of his Miraculous Gifts upon the first Messengers and Propagators of this Divine Religion For as our Saviour himself said John 4.48 Vnless you see signs and wonders you will not believe So that Sight was to introduce Belief and accordingly the first Conquest and Conviction was made upon the Eye and from thence passed victorious to the Heart This therefore was their Rhetorick this their method of Perswasion Their Words were Works Divinity and Physick went together They Cured the Body and thereby Convinced the Soul They Conveyed and enforced all their Exhortations not by the Arts of Eloquence but by the Gift of Tongues These were the Speakers and Miracle the Interpreter Now in Treating of these Words I shall Consider these Three Things First What those Gifts were which were conferred by the Spirit both upon the Apostles and first Professors of Christianity Secondly What is Imported and to be understood by their Diversity and Thirdly And Lastly What are the Consequences of their Emanation from one and the same Spirit First And first for the first of them These Gifts are called in the Original 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say Acts of Grace or favour and signifie here certain Qualities and Perfections which the Spirit of God freely bestowed upon Men for the better Enabling them to Preach the Gospel and to settle the Christian Religion in the World and accordingly we will Consider them under that known Dichotomy or Division by which they stand divided into Ordinary and Extraordinary And first for the Ordinary Gifts of the Spirit these he conveys to us by the mediation of our own Endeavours And as He who both makes the Watch and Winds up the Wheels of it may not Improperly be said to be the Author of its motion so God who first Created and since sustains the Powers and Faculties of the Soul may justly be called the Cause of all those Perfections and Improvements which the said faculties shall attain unto by their Respective Operations For that which gives the form gives also the Consequents of that form and the Principle with all its appendant Actions is to be referred to the same Donor But God forbid that I should determine God's Title to our Actions barely in his giving us the Power and Faculty of Acting Durandus indeed an Eminent Schoolman held so and so must Pelagius and his followers hold too if they will be True to and abide by their own Principles But undoubtedly God does not only give the Power but also vouchsafes an Active Influence and Concurrence to the production of every particular Action so far as it has either a Natural or a Moral goodness in it And therefore in all acquired Gifts or Habits such as are those of Philosophy Oratory or Divinity we are properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Co-workers with God And God ordinarily gives them to none but to such as Labour hard for them They are so his Gifts that they are also our own Acquisitions His assistance and our own study are the joint and adequate Cause of these Perfections And to imagine the Contrary is all one as if a Man should think to be a Scholar barely by his Master's Teaching without his own Learning In all these Cases God is ready to do his Part but not to do both His own and ours too Secondly The other sort of the Spirit 's Gifts are Extraordinary Which are so absolutely and entirely from God that the Soul
looking too deep into them or dwelling too long upon them And these are not properly framed to serve the Church either in the knotty dark and less pleasing parts of Religion but are fitted rather for the Airy Joyful Offices of Devotion such as are praise and Thanksgiving Iubilations and Halleluja's which though indeed not so difficult are yet as pleasing a Work to God as any other For they are the Noble Employment of Saints and Angels and a lively resemblance of the Glorified and Beatifick State in which all that the Blessed Spirits do is to rejoice in the God who made and saved them to sing his Praises and to adore his Perfections Again there are others of a melancholy reserved and severe Temper who think much and Speak little and these are the fittest to serve the Church in the Pensive Afflictive Parts of Religion in the Austerities of Repentance and Mortification in a Retirement from the World and a settled Composure of their Thoughts to self-reflexion and meditation And such also are the ablest to deal with troubled and distressed Consciences to meet with their doubts and to answer their Objections and to ransack every Corner of their shifting and fallacious hearts and in a word to lay before them the true State of their Souls having so frequently descended into and took a strict Account of their own And this is so great a Work that there are not many whose Minds and Tempers are Capable of it who yet may be serviceable enough to the Church in other Things And it is the same Thoughtful and reserved Temper of Spirit which must enable others to serve the Church in the hard and controversial parts of Religion Which sort of Men though they should never rub Men's Itching Ears from the Pulpit the Church can no more be without than a Garrison can be without Souldiers or a City without Walls or than a Man can defend Himself with his Tongue when his Enemy comes against Him with his Sword And therefore great pity it is that such as God has eminently and peculiarly furnished and as it were cut out for this service should be cast upon and compell'd to the Popular Speaking Noisy part of Divinity it being all one as if when a Town is besieged the Governour of it should call off a Valiant and expert Souldier from the Walls to sing Him a Song or Play Him a Lesson upon the Violin at a Banquet and then turn him out of Town because He could not sing and play as well as He could fight And yet as ridiculous as this is it is but too like the irrational and absurd Humour of the present Age which thinks all sence and Worth confined wholly to the Pulpit And many Excellent Persons because they cannot make a Noise with Chapter and Verse and Harangue it twice a Day to factious Trades-Men and Ignorant Old Women are esteemed of as Nothing and scarce Thought worthy to eat the Church's Bread But for all these false Notions and wrong measures of Things and Persons so scandalously prevalent amongst us Wisdom as our Saviour tells us is and will be justified of Her Children But then again there are others besides these who are of a Warmer and more fervent Spirit having much of heat and fire in their Constitution And God may and does serve his Church even by such kind of Persons as these also as being particularly fitted to Preach the Terrifying Rigours and Curses of the Law to obstinate daring Sinners Which is a Work as absolutely Necessary and of as high as Consequence to the good of Souls as it is that Men should be driven if they cannot be drawn off from their Sins that they should be cut and launced if they cannot otherwise be Cured and that the Terrible Trump of the last Iudgment should be always Sounding in their Ears if nothing else can awaken them But then while such Persons are thus busied in Preaching of Iudgment it is much to be wished that they would do it with Iudgment too and not Preach Hell and Damnation to Sinners so as if they were pleased with what they preached No let them rather take heed that they mistake not their own fierce Temper for the mind of God for some I have known to do so and that at such a Rate that it was easy enough to distinguish the Humour of the Speaker from the Nature of the Thing he spoke Let Ministers threaten Death and Destruction even to the very worst of Men in such a manner that it may appear to all their sober Hearers that they do not desire but fear that these dreadful Things should come to pass let them declare God's Wrath against the hardened and impenitent as I have seen a Iudge Condemn a Malefactor with Tears in his Eyes for surely much more should a dispenser of the Word while he is pronouncing the infinitely more killing Sentence of the Divine Law grieve with an inward bleeding compassion for the misery of those forlorn Wretches whom it is like to pass upon But I never knew any of the Geneva or Scotch model which sort of Sanctifyed Reprobationers we abound with either use or like this way of Preaching in my Life but generally Whips and Scorpions Wrath and Vengeance Fire and Brimstone made both Top and Bottom Front and Rear First and Last of all their Discourses But then on the Contrary there are others again of a Gentler a Softer and more Tender Genius and these are full as serviceable for the Work of the Ministry as the former sort could be though not in the same way as being much fitter to represent the Meekness of Moses than to Preach his Law to bind up the broken hearted to speak Comfort and Refreshment to the weary and to take off the Burden from the heavy Laden Nature it self seems peculiarly to have fitted such for the dispensations of Grace And when they are once put into the Ministry they are as it were marked and singled out by Providence to do those benign Offices to the Souls of Men which Persons of a rougher and more vehement Disposition are by no means so fit or able to do These are the Men whom God pitches upon for the Heraulds of his Mercy with a peculiar Emphasis and felicity of Address to proclaim and issue out the pardons of the Gospel to close up the wounds which the Legal Preacher had made to bath and supple them with the Oyl of Gladness and in a word to Crown the sorrows of Repentance with the Joys of Assurance And thus we have seen how the Gospel must have both its Boanarges and its Barnabas Sons of Thunder and Sons of Consolation the first as it were to Cleanse the Air and Purge the Soul before it can be fit for the Refreshments of a Sunshine the Beams of Mercy and the Smiles of a Saviour David had shewn himself but a mean Psalmist had his skill reached no further than to one Note and therefore Psal. 101. 1
st v. we have him Singing of Iudgment as well as Mercy and so raising the sweetest Harmony out of the seeming discord of the most disagreeing Attributes There can be no Composition in any thing without some multiplicity and diversity of Parts and therefore we have a Catalogue of those Gifts which did as it were compound and make up the Primitive Church in the 8 9 and 10 th verses of this 12 th Chapter of the 1 st to the Corinthians Where the Apostle tells us That to one is given the Word of Wisdom to another the Word of Knowledge to another Faith with many more such like Gifts there reckoned up and indeed so many and various were the Gifts poured out by the Spirit of God upon the first Preachers of the Gospel that there is need almost of the Gift of Tongues to rehearse them Of which great Variety as we have hitherto observed the Vse so it is intended also for the Ornament of the Church I say Ornament for I cannot perswade my self that God ever designed his Church for a Rude Naked Unbeautified Lump or lay to the Foundations of Purity in the Ruines of decency The Entrance and Gate of Solomon's Temple was called Beautiful and as there were several Orders of Priests and Levites belonging to it so they had their several Offices their several Chambers and Apartments in that Temple It was a kind of Representation of Heaven in which our Saviour tells us there are many Mansions But behold there are Wiser much Wiser than Solomon amongst us who will have it quite otherwise in the Christian Church Nothing of Order or Distinction nothing of Splendour or Dress must be allowed of here No they are all for lying in the Dust before God as their word is and therefore will have nothing but Dust and Nastiness for the Churches Furniture To attempt a Confutation of such Persons would be superfluous and indeed I have no more to say for those who contend for such a sordid and mean Condition of the Church but that in this they do not so much speak their Devotion as their Education it being generally found that a slovenly way of breeding disposes Men to a kind of slovenly Religion Much might be spoken by way of Analogy between the Internal and External the Spiritual and the Material Ornaments of the Church But both of them serve to dress and set off the Spouse of Christ the first to recommend Her to his own Eyes and the latter to the Eyes of the World Where would be the Beauty of the Heavens themselves if it were not for the multitude of the Stars and the Variety of their Influences and then for the Earth here below and those who dwell therein certainly we might live without the Plumes of Peacocks and the Curious Colours of Flowers without so many different Odors so many several Tastes and such an Infinite diversity of Airs and Sounds But where would then be the glory and lustre of the Universe the flourish and gaiety of Nature if our Senses were forced to be always poring upon the same Things without the Diversion of Change and the quickning Relish of Variety And now when matters stand thus may we not justly say If God so cloathes the Fields so paints the Flowers and paves the very places we Tread upon and with such curiosity provides for all our senses which yet are but the Servants and under Officers of the Soul shall He not much more provide for the Soul it self and his own service thereby in the Glorious Oeconomy and great Concernments of the Church and moreover does not such a Liberal Effusion of Gifts equally Argue both the Power and the Bounty of the Giver Number and multitude are the signs of Riches and the materials of Plenty And therefore though Vnity in the Government and Communion of the Church is indeed a great blessing yet in the Gifts and endowments of it it would be but Penury and a Curse But Secondly As this diversity of the Spirits Gifts imports Variety so it excludes Contrariety Different they are but they are not opposite There is no Jarr no Combat or Contest between them but all are disposed of with mutual Agreements and a happy subordination For as Variety adorns so Opposition destroys Things most different in Nature may yet be united in the same design and the most distant Lines may meet an◠Clasp in the same Centre As for Instance One would Think that the Spirit of Meekness and the Spirit of Zeal stood at that distance of Contrariety as to defie all Possibility either of likeness or Reconcilement and yet as we have already shewn they both may and do equally serve and carry on the great End and business of Religion And the same Spirit which Baptizes with Water Baptizes also with Fire It is an Art to attain the same End by several Methods and to make things of a quite contrary Operation to concur in one and the same Effect Come we now to the third and last Thing proposed from the Words which is to shew What are the Consequences of this Emanation of so many and different Gifts from one and the same Spirit I shall instance in Four directly and naturally deducible from it As First If the Spirit Works such Variety of Gifts and those in so vast a Multitude and for the most part above the force of Nature certainly it is but Rational to Conclude That it is a Being superiour to Nature and so may justly Challenge to it self a Deity There have been several who have impugned the Deity of the Holy Ghost though not in the same manner but the Principal of them come within these two sorts 1. Macedonius and his followers who allowed Him to be a Person but denyed his Deity Affirming Him to be the Chief Angel the supreme and most Excellent of those Blessed Spirits imployed by God in Administring the Affairs of the Church and Conveying good suggestions to the minds of Men and for that cause to be called the Holy Spirit and sometimes simply and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or by way of Eminence The Spirit And the same was held also by one Biddle an Heretick of some Note here in England a little before the Restauration That is to say while Confusion and Toleration gave Countenance to almost all Religions except the True 2. But secondly Socinus and his School deny both the Deity of the Holy Ghost and his Personal subsistence too not granting Him to be a Person but only the Power of God To wit That Vis or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by which he effects or produces Things And amongst those who assert this none have given such bold strokes at the Deity of the Holy Ghost as Crellius in his Book de uno Deo Patre and his other de Spiritu Sancto Now to draw forth and Insist upon all the Arguments and Texts of Scripture which use to be traversed on both sides in this Controversy would be a
Thing neither to be done within this Compass of time nor perhaps so proper for this Exercise and therefore let it suffice us upon the warrant of express Scripture not Sophisticated by Nice and forced Expositions but plainly interpreted by the General Tradition of the Church to which all private Reason ought in Reason to give place to confess and adore the Deity of the Holy Ghost Now this Holy Spirit is in the Church as the Soul in the Natural Body For as the same Soul does in and by the several parts of the Body exercise several functions and Operations so the Holy Ghost while He animates the mystical Body of Christ Causes in it several Gifts and Powers by which He Enables it to exert Variety of Actions And as in the River Nilus it is the same fountain which supplies the seven streams So when we read of the seven Spirits Revelation 4.5 They are but so many several Gifts of the same Spirit all bearing the Name and Title of their Donor as it is usual for so many several Volumes to bear the single denomination of their Author and we say properly enough that such an one has read Cicero or Plutarch when he has read their Works But now surely this Glorious Person or Being who thus enlightens the minds of all Men coming into the World in some measure and of the Church more Especially cannot be in the Rank and Number of Created Beings The Heathens attributed a kind of Divinity or Godhead to springs because of that Continual Inexhaustible Emanation from them Resembling a kind of Infinity But here we see the very Gifts of the Spirit to be Divine and where we find such a Divinity in the stream certainly we may well ascribe it in a more transcendent manner to the Fountain Besides if the Holy Ghost were not God I cannot see how our Bodies could be well called his Temples since none but God can Challenge to Himself the Prerogative of a Temple And so much for the first Consequent But Secondly This great diversity of the Spirits Gifts may read a Lecture of Humility to some and of Contentment to others God indeed in this great Scheme of the Creation has drawn some Capital Letters set forth some Master-Pieces and furnished them with Higher Abilities than ordinary and given them Gifts as it were with both hands But for all that none can brag of a Monopoly of them none has so absolutely engrossed them all as to be that Thing of which we may say Here we see what and how much God can do No God has wrote upon no Created Being the utmost stint of his Power but only the free Issues and Products of his Pleasure God has made no Man in Opprobrium Naturae only to overlook his Fellow Creatures to upbraid them with their Defects and to discourage them with the Amazing distance of the Comparison He has filled no Man's Intellectuals so full but He has left some Vacuities in them that may sometimes send Him for supplies to Minds of a much Lower Pitch He has Stocked no Land or Countrey with Such Universal Plenty without the mixture of some wants to be the ground and Cause of Commerce for mutual wants and mutual perfections together are the Bond and Cement of Conversation The vast Knowledge and Ruling Abilities of Moses might yet stand in need of Aaron's Elocution And He who speaks with the Tongue of Angels and the greatest Fluency of Spiritual Rhetorick may yet be at a loss when He comes to matters of Controversy and to assert the Truth against the Assaults and Sophistry of a subtle opponent God indeed can and sometimes happily does unite both these Gifts in the same Person But where He does not let not Him who can Preach condemn Him who can only Dispute neither let Him who can dispute despise Him who can only Preach For as we have shewn before the Church is served by both and has equally need of some Men to speak and declare the Word and of others to Defend it it being enough and too often more than enough for one Man to maintain what another says In which Work the speaking part is indeed the more Easy but the Defensive the more glorious And as this may give some Check to the Presumption of the most raised Understandings so it should prevent the despondency of the meanest For the Apostle makes this very use of it in the 21. and 22. v. Where He would not have even the lowest and poorest member of the Church to be dejected upon the Consideration of what it wants but rather be Comforted in the sense of what it has Let not the foot Trample upon it self because it does not rule the Body but consider that it has the honour to support it Nay the greatest Abilities are sometimes beholding to the very meanest if but for this only that without them they would want the Gloss and Lustre of a Foyl The Two Talents went into Heaven as easily as the Five And God has put a Peculiar usefulness even into the smallest Members of the Body answerable to some Need or Defect in the greatest thereby to level them to a mutual Intercourse of Compliance and Benefaction which alone can keep things equal and is indeed the very Poise and bâ—last of Society And thus much for the second Consequent But Thirdly The foregoing Doctrine affords us also a Touchstone for the Tryal of Spirits For such as are the Gifts such must be also the Spirit from which they flow And since both of them have been so much pretended to it is well for the Church that it has rule of judgment and a note of Discrimination There is none who is not willfully a stranger to the Affairs of our Israel but has had the Noise and blusters of Gifted Brethren and of persons pretending to the Spirit ringing in his Ears Concerning which Plea of theirs since we all know that there are Spirits both Good and Bad it cannot be denyed but that in some sence they might have the Spirit such a Spirit as it was and that in a very large measure But as for their Gifts we must Examine them by the standard of those here mentioned by the Apostle And first for that of Prophecy These Men were once full of a Prophecy that the World should be destroyed in the Year 1656 Because forsooth the Flood came upon the Old World in that Year Reckoning from the Creation And again that the Downfal of Pope and Antichrist together with that of Monarchy and Episcopacy which they always accounted as Limbs of Antichrist should be in the Year 1666. And that because some Remarkable mention is made of the Number 666 in the Revelation with many other such like Predictions The Event of all which has shewn that those Men were not of God's Privy Council but on the Contrary that all their Prophecies were like those of Almanacks which warn every Wise Body to prepare against foul weather by their foretelling
of particulars and a Common-wealth where Governours cannot govern themselves That which like a worm eats out the every heart of Government is the Emulation the Ambition and the discord of the Parties invested with it But the Supremacy placed in One Cuts off all these for no Man is his own Rival no Man envies Himself or designs to Trip up his own Heels whatsoever he may Chance to do And to shew the Naturalness of Monarchy all other Forms of Government insensibly partake of it and slide into it For look upon any Aristocracy or Democracy and still you shall find some one Ruling Active Person amongst the rest who does every thing and carries all before Him Was not De Witt amongst our Neighbours a kind of King in a Common-wealth and was not that Usurper here amongst our selves a Monarch in Reality of Fact before He wore the Title or assumed the Office Moreover when any Common-wealth is forced to Defend it self by War it finds it necessary to appoint one General over all as this very Common-wealth found to its cost and to make the Conduct of its Armies at least Monarchical Nay the Romans themselves in their greatest Exigencies of State had recourse to their Dictatorship which was a Perfect Monarchy for the time And when they sent out their Armies under the Conduct of two Consuls yet those Consuls were to Command the whole Army by Turns one one Day and another another which was a Tacit Confession of the Necessity of a single Conduct for the Right Management of great Affairs And I think upon a full survey of the Roman story we may truly pronounce that the greatest defeats that were ever given that Common-wealth in any lasting War have been from this that the Custom of shifting Consuls every Year hindred the Conduct of the whole War from being continued in the hands of one experienced Commander In their Wars with Hannibal nothing is more manifest From all which I infer that Kingly Government is the most Natural Excellent and Beneficial to Society of all others and that in every Common-wealth in spight of its Constitution there will be something of Monarchy And that if a Republick ever Atchieves any thing great or considerable it is still by vertue of something in it that is Monarchical Secondly The next thing is to shew That the greatness or strength of a Monarchy depends Cheifly upon the Personal Qualifications of the Prince or Monarch It ebbs or flows according to the Rising or falling of his Spirit For still it is the Person that makes the Place Considerable and not the Place Him And we shall find in every Government that the Activity and Bravery of the Prince is the Soul Politick which animates and upholds all When Alexander the Great died the Grecian Monarchy expired with Him He was both the Emperor and the Empire too And after the Death of Iulius and Augustus Caesar those great Commanding Souls the Roman Empire declined every day falling into the hands of Brutes and Sots who could scarce wield the weight of their own Bellies and much less the Burthen of such vast Dominions The present grandeur of the Papacy is intirely owing to the Prudence and governing Arts of some of the Popes and it never suffered any great Blow but when a weak or a Voluptuous Person Sate in the Chair And here amongst our selves both the Protector and the New Protectorship died in one Man though the name indeed survived a while in another and it was quickly seen how ridiculous it was for any one to attempt to succeed into his Power who could not succeed into his Spirit But it is Evident from Reason that the fate and fortune of Governments must Naturally follow the Personal Abilities of the Governour For what is there else that the strength of a Kingdom can be supposed to lean upon but one of these three It s Treasure its Military Power or its Laws But now none of all these can signifie any thing where the Prince is not endued with that Royal skill that is requisite to the Duâ— Management of them For surely the bare Image of a Prince upon the Coin of any Nation can neither Improve or Employ the Treasure of it Nor can the Military force of a Kingdom do much to strengthen it should the Prince either wear a Padlock upon his Sword nor draw it in defense of his Enemies Nor lastly can the Laws much Contribute to the support of it if the Execution of them be either Neglected or discountenanced for it is not how Laws are made nor how they are Interpreted but how they are used that must influence the Publick By all which we see what moment there is in the sole Person of a Prince For as He is qualified or disposed so all these great things become helpful or ineffectual The Treasure Arms and Laws of a Nation are all virtually in Him And it is He who must breath Life and efficacy into them all Which is the first great Reason why God extends such a particular Providence over the Persons of Kings namely because the main Concerns of Civil Government and Society which Providence so much tenders the Preservation of are Principally deposited in them Secondly The other great Reason is Because Princes have the most Powerful Influence upon the concerns of Religion and the Preservation of the Church of all other Persons whatsoever Religion is indeed an immortal seed and the Church is proof against the very gates of Hell as being founded upon a Promise and so standing Fast in the Eternal strength of God's Veracity Nevertheless as to its outward State and Circumstances in this World it must clasp about the secular Power and as that frowns or smiles upon it so it must droop or flourish Accordingly God has declared Kings the Nursing Fathers of his Church and every Prince by the Essential Inherent Right of his Crown is or should be a defender of the Faith He holds it by a Charter from Heaven long before the Pope's Donation who never gives any thing to Princes but what was their own before Every Christian King is within his own Dominions the great Pastor both to rule Christ's Flock and to see it fed though He does not feed it Himself We know how glorious a Deliverance our Church Received this Day and it was by the Wisdom of that Head which wore the Crown that God vouchsafed it to Her King and Church then as 't is seldom otherwise were both designed to the same Fate But God preserved the King and the King the Church And who knows but for such a Day as this God paved his way before Him in such a peaceable Entrance into the English Throne so much above and against the Expectation of the World round about Him and of the Court of Rome Especially which it is well known had other designs upon the Anvil at that time And as he then saved the Church from Perishing by one Blow so he afterwards supported it