can be required of a Christian they look no farther then the outward work observe not what heart is under this outside but resolve their estate is safe they have as much interest in Heaven as any one Such men as these the Apostle begins to character and censure in the 12. verse of the Chapter As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh c. They that stand only on a fair specious out-side and think all the sap and life of Religion lies in the bark they do this and this these will have you circumcised and constrain you to a many burthensome ceremonies measuring out Religion to you by the weight thus much is required of you to do as Popish Confessors set their deluded votaries their task of Ave Maries and Pater nosters by tale and thus you may be sure to be saved In brief the Apostle here shews the unprofitableness of all these and sets up the inward sanctity and renewedness of heart against them all as the only thing that will stand us in stead and appear to be of any weight in the balance of the sanctuary If you observe all the commands and submit your selves to all the burden of both Law and Gospel and bear it upon your shoulders never so valiantly if you be content to be circumcised as Christ was or because he hath now abrogated that make use of Christian liberty and remain uncircumcised notwithstanding all inducements to the contrary In brief be you outwardly never so severe a Jew or Christian all that is nothing worth there is but one thing most peremptorily required of you and that you have omitted For neither circumcision availeth any thing neither uncircumcision but a new creature The particle but in the front of my Text is exclusive and restrictive it excludes every thing in the world from pretending to avail any thing from being believed to do us any good For by circumcision the Church of the Jews and by uncircumcision the whole profession of Christian Religion being understood when he saith neither of these availeth any thing he forcibly implies that all other means all professions all observances that men think or hope to get Heaven by are to no purpose and that by consequence it exactly restrains to the new creature there it is to be had and no where else thus doth he slight and undervalue and even reprobate all other wayes to Heaven that he may set the richer price and raise a greater estimation in us of this The substance of all the Apostles discourse and the ground-work of mine shall be this one Aphorism Nothing is efficaciously available to salvation but a renewed regenerated heart For the opening of which we will examine by way of doctrine wherein this new creature consists and then by way of use the necessity of that and unprofitableness of all other plausible pretending means and first of the first wherein this new creature consists 'T is observable that our state of nature and sin is in Scripture exprest ordinarily by old age the natural sinful man that is all our natural affections that are born and grow up with us are called the old man as if since Adams fall we were decrepit and feeble and aged as soon as born as a child begotten by a man in a consumption never comes to the strength of a man is alwayes weak and crazy and puling hath all the imperfections and corporal infirmities of age before he is out of his Infancy And according to this ground the whole Analogy of Scripture runs all that is opposite to the old decrepit state to the dotage of nature is phrased new The new Covenant Mark i. 27. The language of believers new tongues Mark xvi 17. A new commandment John xiii 34. A new man Ephes ii 15. In sum the state of grace is exprest by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all is become new 2 Cor. v. 17. So that old and new as it divides the Bible the whole state of things the world so it doth that to which all these serve man every natural man which hath nothing but nature in him is an old man be he never so young is full of years even before he is able to tell them Adam was a perfect man when he was but a minute old and all his children are old even in the cradle nay even dead with old age Eph. ii 5. And then consequently every spiritual man which hath somewhat elsé in him then he received from Adam he that is born from above John iii. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for it may be so rendred from the original as well as born again as our English read it he that is by Gods spirit quickned from the old death Ephes ii 5. he is contrary to the former a new man a new creature the old Eagle hath cast his beak and is grown young the man when old has entred the second time into his mothers womb and is born again all the gray hairs and wrinkles fall off from him as the scales from blind Tobits eyes and he comes forth a refin'd glorious beauteous new creature you would wonder to see the change So that you find in general that the Scripture presumes it that there is a renovation a casting away of the old coat a youth and spring again in many men from the old age and weak bed-rid estate of nature Now that you may conceive wherein it consists how this new man is brought forth in us by whom it is conceived and in what womb 't is carried I will require no more of you then to observe and understand with me what is meant by the ordinary phrase in our Divines a new principle or inward principle of life and that you shall do briefly thus A mans body is naturally a sluggish unactive motionless heavy thing not able to stir or move the least animal motion without a soul to enliven it without that 't is but a carcass as you see at death when the soul is separated from it it returns to be but a stock or lump of flesh the soul bestows all life and motion on it and enables it to perform any work of nature Again the body and soul together considered in relation to somewhat above their power and activity are as impotent and motionless as before the body without the soul Set a man to remove a mountain and he will heave perhaps to obey your command but in event will do no more towards the displacing of it then a stone in the street could do but now let an omnipotent power be annext to this man let a supernatural spirit be joyned to this soul and then will it be able to overcome the proudest stoutest difficulty in nature You have heard in the primitive Church of a grain of faith removing mountains and believe me all miracles are not yet out-dated The work of regeneration the bestowing of a spiritual life on one
would fain Christianity hath out-dated to build Temples and offer sacrifice to sins under the name of Venus Priapus and the like that men that were naturally 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 superstitious adorers of Devils or anything that was called God might account Incontinence Religion and all impieties in the World a kind of adoration Thus to profess whoredoms and set up trophies in our eyes to build their eminent place in the head of every way in the verse next to my Text was then the imputation of the Jews and pray God it prove not the guilt of Christians from whence the whole Church of them is here styled An imperious c. Thus hath the Apostate Jew been represented to you in his picture and resemblance the Libertine Christian and Ezekiel become an Historian as well as Prophet Thus hath indulgence in vice among Professors of Christianity been aggravated against you 1. By the weak Womanish condition of it nature it self and ordinary man-like reason is ashamed of it 2. By the Adulterous Unfaithfulness 1. Want of Faith 2. Of Fidelity bewray'd in it 3. By the imperiousness of the behaviour 1. In shamelesness 2. In confidence and spiritual security 3. In tyrannizing over himself and faculties by force compelling and then insulting over his goods and graces prodigally mispending them in the prosecution of his lusts and Lording over all that come near him men or sins first pressing then leading the one and both ravishing and tormenting the other to perform him the better service Now that this discourse may not have been sent into the air unprofitably that all these prophetical censures of sin may not be like Xerxes his stripes on the Sea on inanimate senseless bodies 't is now time that every tender open guilty heart begin to retire into it self every one consider whether he be not the man that the parable aims at that you be not content to have your ears affected or the suburbs of the Soul filled with the sound unless also the heart of the City be taken with its efficacy Think and consider whether 1. This effeminacy and womanishness of heart and not weakness but torpor and stupidity 2. This unfaithfulness and falseness unto Christ exprest by the spiritual incontinence and whoredoms of our souls and actions 3. That Confidence and magnanimous stately garb in sin arising in some from Spiritual Pride in others from Carnal Security whether any or all of these may not be inscrib'd on our Pillars and remain as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 against us to upbraid and aggravate the nature and measure of our sins also I cannot put on so solemn a person as to act a Cato or Aristarchus amongst an Assembly that are all Judices critici to reprehend the learned and the aged and to chide my teachers You shall promise to spare that thankless task and to do it to your selves It will be more civility perhaps and sink down deeper into ingenuous natures fairly to bespeak and exhort you and from the first part of my Text only because 't would be too long to bring down all from the weakness and womanish condition of indulgent sinners to put you in mind of your strength and the use you are to make of it in a word and close of Application We have already taken notice of the double inheritance and patrimony of strength and graces which we all enjoy first as Men secondly as Christians And ought not we Beloved that have spent the liveliest and sprightfullest of our age and parts in the pursuit of Learning to set some value on that estate we have purchased so dear and account ourselves somewhat the more men for being Scholars Shall not this deserve to be esteemed some advantage to us and a rise that being luckily taken may further us something in our stage towards Heaven That famous division of Rational Animals in Jamblicus out of Aristotle into three different species That some were Men others Gods others such as Pythagoras will argue some greater priviledges of Scholars above other men That indeed the deep Learneder sort and especially those that had attained some insight 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in divine affairs were in a kind of a more venerable species than ordinary ignaro's And for the benefits and helps that these excellencies afford us in our way to Heaven do but consider what a great part of the world overshaded in Barbarism brought up in blind Idolatry do thereby but live in a perpetual Hell and at last pass not into another kind but degree of darkness Death being but an officer to remove them from one Tophet to another or at most but as from a Dungeon to a Grave Think on this and then think and count what a blessing divine knowledge is to be esteemed even such a one as seems not only the way but the entrance not only a preparation but even a part of that vision which shall be for ever beatifical And therefore it will nearly concern us to observe what a talent is committed to our husbanding and what increase that hard Master will exact at his coming For as Dicaearchus in his Description of Greece saith of the Chalcidians That they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 born as it were with one Foot in Learning and both by the genius of the place and Language which they spake being Greek even suckt the arts from their Mothers Breasts at least were prepared for and initiated in them by nature and therefore it would be a great shame for them not to be Scholars So most truly of those of us that are learned full illuminate Christians the very language that we speak and air we breath in doth naturally infuse some sacred instincts into us doth somewhat enter us in this Spiritual Heavenly Wisdom will be some munition for us and not suffer us to be so pitifully baffled befooled and triumphed over by that old Sophister And if for all these advantages we prove dunces at last it will be an increase not only of our torments but our shame of our indignation at our selves at the day of doom and the reproach and infamy superadded to our sufferings will scarce afford us leisure to weep and wail for gnashing of our teeth And therefore as Josephus of the Jews That they prayed to God daily 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. not that he would bestow good things on them for he did that already on his own accord pouring out plenty of all in the midst of them But 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that they might be able to receive and keep what he bestowed So will it concern us to pray and labor mainly for the preserving that we be the better for this great bounty of Gods That neither our inobservance of his gifts suffer them to pass by us unprofitably and neglected being either not laid hold on or not imployed nor the unthrifty mis-husbanding of them cause the Lord to call in the talent entrusted to us already because
as it were the Midwife of the Old Testament to open its Womb and bring the Messias into the World Howsoever at the least it is plain that the Old Testament brought him to his birth though it had not strength to bring forth and the Prophets as Moses from Mount Nebo came to a view of this Land of Canaan For the very first words of the New Testament being as it it were to fill up what only was wanting in the Old are the Book and History of his generations and birth Matth. i. You would yet be better able to prize the excellency of this Work and reach the pitch of this days rejoycing if you would learn how the very Heathen flutter'd about this light what shift they made to get some inkling of this Incarnation before-hand how the Sibyls Heathen Women and Virgil and other Heathen Poets in their writings before Christ's time let fall many passages which plainly referred and belonged to this Incarnation of God It is fine sport to see in our Authors how the Devil with his famous Oracles and Prophets foreseeing by his skill in the Scripture that Christ was near his birth did droop upon it and hang the wing did sensibly decay in his courage began to breath thick and speak imperfectly and sometimes as men in the extremity of a Feaver distractedly wildly without any coherence and scarce sense and how at last about the birth of Christ he plainly gave up the ghost and left his Oracular Prophets as speechless as the Caves they dwelt in their last voice being that their gread god Pan i. e. The Devil was dead and so both his Kingdom and their Prophecies at an end as if Christ's coming had chased Lucifer out of the World and the powers of Hell were buried that minute when a Saviour was born And now by way of Use Can ye see the Devil put out of heart and ye not put forward to get the Field can you delay to make use of such an advantage as this can ye be so cruel to your selves as to shew any mercy on that now disarmed enemy will ye see God send his Son down into the Field to enter the Lists and lead up a Forlorn Troop against the Prince of this World and ye not follow at his Alarm will ye not accept of a conquest which Christ so lovingly offers you It is a most terrible exprobration in Hosea Chap. xi 3. look on it where God objects to Ephraim her not taking notice of his mercies her not seconding and making use of his loving deliverances which plainly adumbrates this deliverance by Christ's death as may appear by the first verse of the Chapter compared with the second of Mat. 14. Well saith God I taught Ephraim to go taking them by their arms but they knew not that I healed them I drew them with the cords of a man an admirable phrase with all those means that use to oblige one man to another with bands of love c. i. e. I used all means for the sustaining and strengthening of my people I put them in a course to be able to go and fight and overcome all the powers of darkness and put off the Devils yoke I sent my son amongst them for this purpose Vers 1. And all this I did by way of love as one friend is wont to do for another and yet they would not take notice of either the benefit or the donor nor think themselves beholding to me for this mercy And this is our case beloved If we do not second these and the like mercies of God bestowed on us if we do not improve them to our Souls health if we do not fasten on this Christ incarnate if we do not follow him with an expression of gratitude and reverence and stick close to him as both our Friend and Captain Finally if we do not endeavor and pray that this his incarnation may be seconded with an other that as once he was born in our flesh to justifie us so he may be also born spiritually in our Souls to sanctifie us For there is a spiritual 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Mystical incarnation of Christ in every regenerate man where the Soul of Man is the Womb wherein Christ is conceived by the Holy Ghost The proof of which Doctrine shall entertain the remainder of this hour For this is the Emmanuel that most nearly concerns us God with us i. e. With our spirits or Christ begotten and brought forth in our hearts Of which briefly And that Christ is thus born in a regenerate mans soul if it were denied might directly appear by these two places of Scripture Gal. ii 20. I live yet not I but Christ liveth in me Again Ephes iii. 17. That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith c. Now that you may understand this Spiritual Incarnation of Christ the better we will compare it with his Real Incarnation in the Womb of the Virgin that so we may keep close to the business of the day and at once observe both his birth to the World and ours to Grace and so even possess Christ whilst we speak of him And first if we look on his Mother Mary we shall find her an entire pure Virgin only espoused to Joseph but before they came together she was found with child of the Holy Ghost Matth. i. 18. And then the Soul of Man must be this Virgin Now there is a threefold Purity or Virginity of the Soul First An absolute one such as was found in Adam before his fall Secondly A respective of a Soul which like Mary hath not yet joyned or committed with the World to whom it is espoused which though it have its part of natural corruptions yet either for want of ability of age or occasion hath not yet broke forth into the common outrages of sin Thirdly A restored purity of a Soul formerly polluted but now cleansed by repentance The former kind of natural and absolute purity as it were to be wished for so is it not to be hoped and therefore is not to be imagined in the Virgin Mother or expected in the Virgin Soul The second purity we find in all regenerate infants who are at the same time outwardly initiated to the Church and inwardly to Christ or in those whom God hath called before they have engaged themselves in the courses of Actual heinous sins such are well disposed well brought up and to use our Saviours words Have so lived as not to be far from the Kingdom of God Such happily as Cornelius Acts x. 1. and such a Soul as this is the fittest Womb in which our Saviour delights to be incarnate where he may enter and dwell without either resistance or annoyance where he shall be received at the first knock and never be disordered or repulsed by any stench of the carcass or violence of the Body of sin The restared purity is a right Spirit renewed in the Soul
distorted and defaced it once was light in the Lord almost an Angel of light it shone as the Sun in the Firmament in majesty and full brightness but is now only as the Moon pale and dim scarce able to do us any service unless it borrows some rays from the Sun of Righteousness The fall hath done somewhat with it I know not what to call it either much impaired it and diminisht its light in its essence or else much incumbred or opprest it in its operations as a candle under a vail or lanthorn which though it burn and shine as truly as on a candlestick yet doth not so much service in enlightning the room the soul within us is much changed either is not in its essence so perfect and active and bright as once it was or else being infused in a sufficient perfection is yet terribly overcast with a gloom and cloud of corruptions that it can scarce find any passage to get through and shew it self in our actions for the corruptible body presseth down the soul c. Wisd ix 15. And from this caution grow many lower branches whence we may gather some fruit as in the second place infinitely to humble our selves before God for the first sin of Adam which brought this darkness on our souls and account it not the meanest or slightest of our miseries that our whole nature is defiled and bruised and weakned to aggravate every circumstance and effect of that sin against thy self which has so liberaâ—ly afforded fâ—el to the flames of lust of rage and wild desire and thereby without Gods gracious mercy to the flames of Hell This is a most profitable point yet little thought on and therefore would deserve a whole Sermon to discuss to you 3. To observe and acknowledge the necessity of some brighter light then this of nature can afford us and with all the care and vigilancy of our hearts all the means that Scripture will lend us and at last with all the importunities and groans and violence of our souls to petition and sollicit and urge Gods illuminating spirit to break out and shine on us To undertake to interpret any antient Author requires say the Grammarians a man of deep and various knowledge because there may be some passage or other in that book which will refer to every sort of learning in the world whence 't is observed that the old Scholiasts and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were most exquisit Scholars Thus certainly will not any ordinary skill serve turn to interpret and explain many dark sayings which were at first written in the book of our hearts but are now almost past reading only that omniscient Spirit that hath no shadow of ignorance the finger that first writ must be beseeched to read and point out the riddle We must make use of that rotten staffe of nature as far as its strength will bear and that very gingerly too never daring to lean or lay our whole weight upon it lest it either wound with its splinter or else break under us our help and stay and subsistence and trust must be in the Lord our eyes must wait on his inlightning Spirit and never lose a ray that falls from it Fourthly to clear up as much as we can and reinliven this light within us And that first By stirring up and blowing and so nourishing every spark we find within us The least particle of fire left in a coal may by pains be improved into a flame 't is held possible to restore or at least preserve for a time any thing that is not quite departed If thou findest but a spark of Religion in thee which saith A God is to be worship't care and â—edulity and the breath of prayers may in time by this inflame the whole man into a bright fire of Zeal towards God In brief whatever thou dost let not any the least atome of that fire which thou once feelest within thee ever go out quench not the weakest motion or inclination even of reason towards God or goodness how unpolish't soever this Diamond be yet if it do but glissen 't is too pretious to be cast away And then 2. By removing all hindrances or incumbrances that may any way weaken or oppress it and these you have learnt to be corrupt affections That democracy and croud and press and common people of the soul raises a tumult in every street within us that no voice of law or reason can be heard If you will but disgorge and purge the stomach which hath been thus long opprest if you will but remove this cloud of crudities then will the brain be able to send some rayes down to the heart which till then are sure to be caught up by the way anticipated and devoured For the naked simplicity of the soul the absence of all disordered passions is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Aphrodiseus that kindly familiar good temper of the soul by which it is able to find out and judge of truth In brief if thou canst crop thy luxuriant passions if thou canst either expel or tame all the wild beasts within thee which are born to devour any thing which is weak or innocent then will that mild voice within thee in the cave take heart and shew it self In the mean time this hurry of thy senses drowns that reason and thou canst not hope to see as long as like old Tobit the dung and white film doth remain upon thine eyes If thou canst use any means to dissolve this dung of affections which an habit of sin hath baked within thee the scales will fall off from thine eyes and the blind Tobit shall be restored to his sight In brief do but fortifie thy reasonable soul against all the undermining and faction and violence of these sensual passions do but either depose or put to the sword that Atheistical Tyrant and Usurper as Iamblichus calls the affections do but set reason in the chair and hear and observe his dictates and thou hast disburthened thy self of a great company of weights and pressures thou wilt be able to look more like a man to hold thy head more couragiously and bend thy thoughts more resolutely toward Heaven and I shall expect and hope and pray and almost be confident that if thou dost perform sincerely what thy own soul prompts thee to Gods spirit is nigh at hand to perfect and crown and seal thee up to the day of redemption In the next place thou maist see thine own guilts the clearer call thy self to an account even of those things which thou thinkest thou art freest from that which the Apostle in this chapter and part of my discourse hath charged the Heathens with and if thou lookest narrowly I am afraid thou wilt spy thine own picture in that glass and find thy self in many things as arrant a Gentile as any of them For any sincere care of God or Religion how few of us are there that ever entertained so unpleasant
dead in trespasses and sins the making of a carcass walk the natural old man to spring again and move spiritually is as great a miracle as that Now the soul in that it produces life and motion the exercise of life in the body is called a principle that is a spring or fountain of life because all comes from it in like manner that which moves this soul and enables it to do that which naturally it could not that which gives it a new life which before it lived not furnisheth it with spiritual powers to quell and subdue all carnal affections which were before too hard for it this I say is called properly an inward principle and an inward because it is inwardly and secretly infused doth not only outwardly assist us as an auxiliary at a dead lift but is sown and planted in our hearts as a soul to the soul to elevate and enable it above it self hath its seat and palace in the regenerate heart and there exercises dominion executes judgment and that is commonly either by prison or banishment it either fetters or else expels all insolent rebellious lusts Now the new principle by which not the man but the new man the Christian lives is in a word the spirit of God which unites it self to the regenerate heart so that now he is said to be a godly man a spiritual man from the God from the spirit as before a living reasonable man from the soul from the reason that inform'd and ruled in him which is noted by that distinction in Scripture betwixt the regenerate and unregenerate exprest by a natural or animal and a spiritual man Those creatures that have no soul in them are called naturals having nothing but nature within to move them others which have a soul animals or living creatures by both which the unregenerate is signified indifferently because the soul which he hath stands him in little stead his flesh rules all and then he is also called a carnal man for all his soul he is but a lump of flesh and therefore whether you say he hath a soul and so call him an animal or hath not a soul and so call him a meer natural there is no great difference in it But now the regenerate man which hath more then a soul Gods spirit to enliven him he is of another rank 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a spiritual man nay only he properly a Christian because he lives by Christ He lives yet not he but Christ liveth in him Gal. ii 20. This being premised that now you know what this new creature is he that lives and moves by a new principle all that is behind will be clearliest presented to you by resolving these four questions 1. whence it comes 2. where it lodges 3. when it enters 4. what works it performs there To the first whence it comes the answer is clear and punctual John iii. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from above from whence comes every good and especially every perfect gift James i. 17. but this most peculiarly by a several and more excellent way then any thing else Since Christs ascension the Holy Ghost of all the persons in the Trinity is most frequently employed in the work of descending from Heaven and that by way of mission from the Father and the Son according to the promise of Christ John xv 26. The comforter whom I will send from the Father Now this spirit being present every where in its essence is said to come to us by communication of his gifts and so to be peculiarly resident in us as God is in the Church from which Analogy our bodies are called the Temples of the Holy Ghost which is in us 1 Cor. vi 19. God sends then his Spirit into our hearts and this I said by a peculiar manner not by way of emission as an arrow sent out of a bow which loses its union which it had with the bow and is now fastned in the But or white nor properly by way of infusion as the soul is in the body infus'd from God yet so also that it is in a manner put into our hands and is so in the man's possession that hath it that it is neither in any mans else nor yet by any extraordinary tye annext to God from whom it came but by way of irradiation as a beam sent from the Sun that is in the air indeed and that substantially yet so as it is not separated from the Sun nay consists only in this that it is united to the Sun so that if it were possible for it to be cut off from the Sun it would desist to be it would illuminate no longer So that you must conceive these beams of Gods Spirit at the same time in the Christians heart and in the spirit and so uniting that Spirit to the heart as you may conceive by this proportion I have a javelin or spear in my hand if I would mischief any thing or drive it from me I dart it out of my hand at it from which Gods judgments are compared to shooting and lightning He hath bent his bow he hath sent forth his arrows he cast forth lightnings Psal xviii 14. But if I like any thing that I meet with if I would have it to me I reach out my spear and fasten in it but still hold the spear in my hand and having pierct it draw it to me Thus doth God reach forth his graces to us and as I may so say by keeping one end in his hand and fastning the other in us plucks and unites us to himself from which regeneration is ordinarily called an union with Christ and this union by a strong able band 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Euseb his phrase which no man can cut asunder 'T is impossible to divide or cut a spirit and this bond is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a spiritual one and that made St. Paul so confident That no creature should ever separate him Rom. viii 39. And this God does by way of emanation as a loadstone sending out its effluvia or magnetick atomes draws the iron to it self which never stays till it be united Thus do you see from whence this principle comes to me and in what manner from Gods Spirit by this means uniting me to himself To the second question where it lodges my answer is in the heart of man in the whole soul not in the understanding not in the will a distinction of faculties invented by Philosophers to puzzle and perplex Divines and put them to needless shifts but I say in the whole soul ruling and guiding it in all its actions enabling it to understand and will spiritually conceived I say and born in the soul but nursed and fed and encreased into a perfect stature by the outward Organs and actions of the body for by them it begins to express and shew it self in the world by them the habit is exerted and made perfect the seed shot
up into an ear the Spring improved to Autumn when the tongue discourses the hands act the feet run the way of Gods Commandments So I say the soul is the mother and the operations of soul and body the nurse of this Spirit in us and then who can hold in his Spirit without stifling from breaking out into that joyful acclamation Blessed is the womb that bears this incarnate Spirit and the paps that give him suck Now this inward principle this grace of regeneration though it be seated in the whole soul as it is an habit yet as it is an operative habit producing or rather enabling the man to produce several gracious works so it is peculiarly in every part and accordingly receives divers names according to several exercises of its power in those several parts As the soul of man sees in the eye hears in the ear understands in the brain chooses and desires in the heart and being but one soul yet works in every room every shop of the body in a several trade as it were and is accordingly called a seeing a hearing a willing or understanding soul thus doth the habit of grace seated in the whole express and evidence it self peculiarly in every act of it and is called by as several names as the reasonable soul hath distinct acts or objects In the understanding 't is first spiritual wisdom and discretion in holy things opposite to which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. i. 28. an unapproving as well as unapproved or reprobate mind and frequently in Scripture spiritual blindness Then as a branch of this it is belief or assent to the truth of the promises and the like in the practical judgment 't is spiritual prudence in ordering all our holy knowledge to holy practice in the will 't is a regular choice of whatsoever may prove available to salvation a holy love of the end and embracing of the means with courage and zeal Lastly in the outward man 't is an ordering of all our actions to a blessed conformity with a sanctified soul In brief 't is one principle within us doth every thing that is holy believes repents hopes loves obeys and what not And consequently is effectually in every part of body and soul sanctifying it to work spiritually as an holy instrument of a divine invisible cause that is the Holy Ghost that is in us and throughout us For the third question when this new principle enters first you are to know that comes into the heart in a three-fold condition 1. as an harbinger 2. as a private secret guest 3. as an inhabitant or house-keeper As 't is an harbinger so it comes to fit and prepare us for it self trims up and sweeps and sweetens the soul that it may be readier to entertain him when he comes to reside and that he doth as the ancient gladiators had their arma praelusoria by skirmishing with our corruptions before he comes to give them a pitch-battel he brandishes a flaming sword about our ears and as by a flash of lightning gives us a sense of a dismal hideous state and so somewhat restrains us from excess and fury first by a momentary remorse then by a more lasting yet not purifying flame the Spirit of bondage In sum every check of conscience every sigh for sin every fear of judgment every desire of grace every motion or inclination toward spiritual good he it never so short-winded is praeludium spiritus a kind of John Baptist to Christ something that God sent before to prepare the wayes of the Lord. And thus the Spirit comes very often in every affliction every disease which is part of Gods discipline to keep us in some order in brief at every Sermon that works upon us at the hearing then I say the lightning flashes in our eyes we have a glimpse of his Spirit but cannot come to a full sight of it and thus he appears to many whom he will never dwell with Unhappy men that they cannot lay hold on him when he comes so near them and yet somewhat more happy then they that never came within ken of him stopt their ears when he spake to them even at this distance Every man in the Christian Church hath frequently in his life a power to partake of Gods ordinary preparing graces and 't is some degree of obedience though no work of regeneration to make good use of them and if he without the Inhabitance of the Spirit cannot make such use as he should yet to make the best he can and thus I say the Spirit appears to the unregenerate almost every day of our lives 2. When this Spirit comes a guest to lodge with us then is he said to enter but till by actions and frequent obliging works he makes himself known to his neighbours as long as he keeps his chamber till he declare himself to be there so long he remains a private secret guest and that 's called the introduction of the form that makes a man to be truly regenerate when the seed is sown in his heart when the habit is infused and that is done sometimes discernibly sometimes not discernibly but seldom as when Saul was called in the midst of his madness Acts ix he was certainly able to tell a man the very minute of his change of his being made a new creature Thus they which have long lived in an enormous Antichristian course do many times find themselves strucken on a sudden and are able to date their regeneration and tell you punctually how old they are in the Spirit Yet because there be many preparations to this Spirit which are not this Spirit many presumptions in our hearts false-grounded many tremblings and jealousies in those that have it great affinity between faith natural and spiritual seeing 't is a Spirit that thus enters and not as it did light on the Disciples in a bodily shape 't is not an easie matter for any one to define the time of his conversion Some may guess somewhat nearer then others as remembring a sensible change in themselves but in a word the surest discerning of it is in its working not at its entring I may know that now I have the Spirit better then at what time I came to it Undiscernibly Gods supernatural agency interposes sometimes in the mothers womb as in John Baptist springing in Elizabeth at Maryes salutation Luke i. 41. and perhaps in Jeremy Jer. i. 5. Before thou camest out of the womb I Sanctified thee and in Isaiah Isa xlix 5. The Lord that formed me from the womb to be his servant But this divine address attends most ordinarily till the time of our Baptism when the Spirit accompanying the outward sign infuses it self into their hearts and there seats and plants it self and grows up with the reasonable soul keeping even their most luxuriant years within bounds and as they come to an use of their reason to a more and more multiplying this habit of
yea sum of our belief we deny and bandy against all our lives long If the story of Christ coming to judgment set down in the xxv of Matthew after the 30. verse had ever entred through the doors of our ears to the inward closets of our hearts 't is impossible but we should observe and practise that one single duty there required of us Christ there as a Judge exacts and calls us to account for nothing in the world but only works of mercy and according to the satisfaction which we are able to give him in that one point he either entertains or repels us and therefore our care and negligence in this one business will prove us either Christians or Infidels But alas 't is too plain that in our actions we never dream either of the judgment or the arraignment our stupid neglect of this one duty argues us not only unchristian but unnatural Besides our Alms-deeds which concern only the outside of our neighbour and are but a kind of worldly mercy there are many more important but cheaper works of mercy as good counsel spiritual instructions holy education of them that are come out of our loyns or are committed to our care seasonable reproof according to that excellent place Lev xix 17. Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart but in any wise reprove him a care of carrying our selves that we may not scandal or injure or offer violence to the soul and tender conscience of him that is flexible to follow us into any riot These and many other works of mercy in the highest degree as concerning the welfare of other mens souls and the chief thing required of us at the day of judgment are yet so out-dated in our thoughts so utterly defaced and blotted out in the whole course of our lives that it seems we never expect that Christ in his Majesty as a Judge whom we apprehend and embrace and hug in his humility as a Saviour Beloved till by some severe hand held over our lives and particularly by the daily study and exercise of some work of mercy or other we demonstrate the sincerity of our belief the Saints on Earth and Angels in Heaven will shrewdly suspect that we do only say over that part of our Creed that we believe only that which is for our turn the sufferings and satisfactions of Christ which cost us nothing but do not proceed to his office of a Judge do not either fear his judgments or desire to make our selves capable of his mercies Briefly whosoever neglects or takes no notice of this duty of exercising works of mercy whatsoever he brags of in his theory or speculation in his heart either denies or contemns Christ as Judge and so destroys the sum of his Faith and this is another kind of secret Atheism Fourthly Our Creed leads us on to a belief and acknowledgement of the Holy Ghost and 't is well we have all conn'd his name there for otherwise I should much fear that it would be said of many nominal Christians what is reported of the Ephesian Disciples Acts xix 2. They have not so much as heard whether there be an Holy Ghost or no. But not to suspect so much ignorance in any Christian we will suppose indeed men to know whatsoever they profess and enquire only whether our lives second our professions or whether indeed they are meer Infidels and Atheistical in this business concerning the Holy Ghost How many of the ignorant sort which have learnt this name in their Catechism or Creed have not yet any further use to put it to but only to make up the number of the Trinity have no special office to appoint for him no special mercy or gift or ability to beg of him in the business of their salvation but mention him only for fashion sake not that they ever think of preparing their bodies or souls to be Temples worthy to entertain him not that they ever look after the earnest of the Spirit in their hearts 2 Cor. i. 22. Further yet how many better learned amongst us do not yet in our lives acknowledge him in that Epithet annext to his title the Holy Ghost i. e. not only eminently in himself holy but causally producing the same quality in us from thence called the sanctifying and renewing Spirit How do we for the most part fly from and abandon and resist and so violently deny him when he once appears to us in this Attribute When he comes to sanctifie us we are not patient of so much sowreness so much humility so much non-conformity with the world as he begins to exact of us we shake off many blessed motions of the Spirit and keep our selves within garrison as far as we can out of his reach lest at any turn he should meet with and we should be converted Lastly the most ordinary morally qualified tame Christians amongst us who are not so violent as to profess open arms against this Spirit how do they yet reject him out of all their thoughts How seldom do many peaceable orderly men amongst us ever observe their wants or importune the assistance of this Spirit In sum 't was a shrewd speech of the Fathers which will cast many fair out-sides at the bar for Atheists That the life of an unregenerate man is but the life of an Heathen and that 't is our regeneration only that raises us up 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from being still meer Gentiles He that believes in his Creed the person nay understands in the Schools the Attributes and gifts of the Holy Ghost and yet sees them only in the fountain neither finds nor seeks for any effects of them in his own soul he that is still unregenerate and continues still gaping and yawning stupid and senseless in this his condition is still for all his Creed and learning in effect an Atheist And the Lord of Heaven give him to see and endeavours to work and an heart to pray and his Spirit to draw and force him out of this condition Fifthly Not to cramp in every Article of our Creed into this Discourse we will only insist on two more We say therefore that we believe the forgiveness of sins and 't is a blessed confidence that all the treasures in the world cannot equal But do our selves keep equipage and hand in hand accompany this profession Let me catechize you a while You believe the forgiveness of sins but I hope not absolutely that the sufferings of Christ shall effectually clear every mans score at the day of judgment well then it must be meant only of those that by repentance and faith are grafted into Christ and shall appear at that great marriage in a wedding garment which shall be acknowledged the livery and colours of the Lamb. But do our lives ever stand to this explication and restriction of the Article Do they ever expect this beloved remission by performing the condition of repentance Do we ever
It makes him apply himself c. we mean not that the encrease of sin produces faith formally but only inciteth to believe by way of instruction by shewing us what distress we are in and consequently in what a necessity of a deliverer The meditation of our sinful courses may disclose our misery not redress it may explore not mend a sinner like a touchstone to try not any way to alter him It is the controuling Spirit which must effectually renew our spirits and lead us to the Christ which our sins told us we had need of The sense of sin may rouze the soul but it is the Spirit of God that layes the toils the feeling of our guilt may beat the waters but it is the great fisher of our souls which spreads the nets which entraps us as we are in our way to Hell and leads us captive to salvation The mere gripings of our Conscience being not produced by any Pharmacon of the spirit but by some distemper arising from sin what anxiety doth it cause within us What pangs and twinges to the soul O Lord do thou regenerate us and then thy Holy Spirit shall sanctifie even our sins unto our good and if thy grace may lead us our sins shall pursue and drive us unto Christ Secondly by way of character how to distinguish a true convert from a false A man which from an inveterate desperate malady shall meet with a miraculous unexpected cure will naturally have some art of expression above an ordinary joy you shall see him in an extasie of thanksgiving and exultancy whilst another which was never in that distress quietly enjoys the same health and gives thanks softly by himself to his preserver So is it in the distresses of the soul which if they have been excessive and almost beyond hope of recovery as the miracle must so will the expression of this deliverance be somewhat extraordinary The soul which from a good moral or less sinful natural estate is magis immutata quam genita rather chang'd then regenerate into a spiritual goes through this business without any great noise the Spirit entring into it in a still small voice or at a breathing but when a robustous obdurate sinner shall be rather apprehended then called when the Sea shall be commanded to give up his ship-wrack't and the Sepulchre to restore her dead the soul surely which thus escapeth shall not be content with a mean expression but will practice all the Hallelujahs and Magnificats which the triumphant Liturgies of the Saints can afford it Wherefore I say if any one out of a full violent course of sinning conceive himself converted and regenerated let him examine what a degree of spiritual exultancy he hath attained to and if he find it but mean and slight and perfunctory let him somewhat suspect that he may the more confirm the evidence of his calling Now this spiritual exultancy of the regenerate consists both in a solemn humiliation of himself and a spiritual rejoycing in God his Saviour both exprest in Maries Magnificat where she specifies in the midst of her joy the lowliness of his handmaid and in St. Pauls victory-song over death So that if the conversion of an inordinate sinner be not accompanied with unwonted joy and sorrow with a godly sense of his past distress and a godly triumph for his delivery if it be not followed with a violent eagerness to fasten on Christ finally if there be not somewhat above ordinary in the expression then I counsel not to distrust but fear that is with a sollicitous not suspicious trembling to labour to make thy calling and election sure to pray to that Holy Spirit to strike our hearts with a measure of holy joy and holy sorrow some way proportionable to the size of those sins which in our unregeneracy reigned in us and for those of us whom our sins have separated far from him but his grace hath called home to him that he will not suffer us to be content with a distance but draw us close unto himself make us press toward the mark and fasten our selves on that Saviour which hath redeemed us from the body and guilt of this so great death The third Use is of comfort and confirmation to some tender souls who are incorporated into Christ yet finding not in themselves that excessive measure of humiliation which they observe in others suspect their own state and infinitely grieve that they can grieve no more Whereas this doctrine being observed will be an allay to their sorrow and wipe some unnecessary tears from their eyes For if the greatness of sin past or the plentiful relicks of sin remaining do require so great a measure of sorrow to expiate the one and subdue the other if it be a deliverance from an habituate servitude to all manner of sin which provokes this extraordinary pains of expression then certainly they who have been brought up with the spirit which were from their baptism never wholly deprived of it need not to be bound over to this trade of sorrow need not to be set apart to that perpetual humiliation which a more stubborn sin or Devil is wont to be cast out by I doubt not but a soul educated in familiarity with the spirit may at once enjoy her self and it and so that if it have an humble conceit of it self and a filial of God may in earth possess God with some clearness of look some serenity of affections some alacrity of heart and tranquility of spirit God delights not in the torment of his children though some are so to be humbled yea he delights not in such burnt offerings as they bestow upon him who destroy and consume and sacrifice themselves but the Lords delight is in them that fear him filially and put their trust i. e. assurance confidence in his mercy in them that rejoyce that make their service a pleasure not an affliction and thereby possess Heaven before they come to it 'T is observed in husbandry that soil laid on hard barren starved ground doth improve it and at once deface and enrich it which yet in ground naturally fruitful and kept in heart and good case is esteemed unnecessary and burthensome You need not the application Again the husbandman can mend a dry stubborn wayward fruitless earth by overflowing of it and on such indeed is his ordinary requisite discipline to punish it for its amendment But there is a ground otherwise well tempered which they call a weeping ground whence continually water soaks out and this proves seldom fruitful if our learned husbandmen observe aright whereof there is sometime need of draining as well as watering The application is that your soul which either hath been naturally dry and barren or else over-wrought in the business of the world needs a flood of tears to soften and purge it But the well temper'd soul which hath never been out of heart but hath alwayes had some inward life some fatness of
is so rich in heads each to be cut off by the work of a several repentance Now in the last place as this sin of all mankind in Adam is considered in its effects so it becomes to us a body of sin and death a natural disorder of the whole man an hostility and enmity of the flesh against the spirit and the parent of all sin in us as may appear Rom. vii and Jam. i. 14. Which that you may have a more compleat understanding of consider it as it is ordinarily set down consisting of three parts 1. A natural defect 2. A moral affection 3. A legal guilt 1. A guiltiness of the breach of the law for these three whatsoever you may think of them are all parts of that sin of our nature which is in and is to be imputed to us called ordinarily original sin in us to distinguish it from that first act committed by Adam of which this is an effect And first that natural defect is a total loss and privation of that primitive justice holiness and obedience which God had furnisht the creature withal a disorder of all the powers of the soul a darkness of the understanding a perversness of the will a debility weakness and decay of all the senses and in sum a poverty and destruction and almost a nothingness of all the powers of soul and body And how ought we to lament this loss with all the veins of our heart to labour for some new strain of expressing our sorrow and in fine to petition that rich grace which may build up all these ruines to pray to God that his Christ may purchase and bestow on us new abilities that the second Adam may furnish us with more durable powers and lasting graces then we had but forfeited in the first The following part of this sin of our nature viz. A moral evil affection is word for word mentioned Rom. vii 5. For there the Greek words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ordinarily translated motions of sins and in the margin the passions of sins are more significantly to be rendred affections of sins i. e. by an usual figure sinful affections That you may the better observe the encumbrances of this branch of this sin which doth so overshadow the whole man and so sence him from the beams and light of the spiritual invisible Sun I am to tell you that the very Heathen that lived without the knowledge of God had no conversation with and so no instruction from the Bible in this matter that these very Heathens I say had a sense of this part of original sin to wit of these evil moral lusts and affections which they felt in themselves though they knew not whence they sprang Hence is it that a Greek Philosopher out of the ancients makes a large discourse of the unsatiable desire and lust which is in every man and renders his life grievous unto him where he useth the very same word though with a significant Epithet added to it that St. James doth c. i. ver 15. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 infinite lust with which as St. James saith a man is drawn away and enticed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so saith he that part of the mind in which these lusts dwell is perswaded and drawn or rather falls backward and forward 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which lust or evil concupiscence he at last defines to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an unsattable intemperance of the appetite never filled with a desire never ceasing in the prosecution of evil and again he calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our birth and nativity derived to us by our parents i. e. an evil affection hereditary to us and delivered to us as a legacy at our birth or nativity all which seems a clear expression of that original lust whose motions they felt and guest at its nature Hence is it that it was a custom among all of them I mean the common Heathen to use many ways of purgations especially on their children who at the imposition of their names were to be lustrated and purified with a great deal of superstition and ceremony such like as they used to drive away a plague or a cure for an house or City As if nature by instinct had taught them so much Religion as to acknowledge and desire to cure in every one this hereditary disease of the soul this plague of mans heart as 't is called 1 Kings viii 38. And in sum the whole learning of the Wisest of them such were the Moralists was directed to the governing and keeping in order of these evil affections which they called the unruly Citizens and common people of the soul whose intemperance and disorders they plainly observed within themselves and laboured hard to purge out or subdue to the government of reason and vertue which two we more fully enjoy and more Christianly call the power of grace redeeming our souls from this body of sin Thus have I briefly shewed you the sense that the very Heathen had of this second branch of original sin which needs therefore no farther aggravation to you but this that they who had neither Spirit nor Scripture to instruct them did naturally so feelingly observe and curse it that by reason of it they esteemed their whole life but a living death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and their body but the Sepulchre of the soul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 both which together are but a Periphrasis of that which St. Paul calls in brief the body of death And shall we who have obtained plenty of light and instruction besides that which nature bestowed on us with them shall we I say let our eyes be confounded with abundance of day shall we see it more clearly to take less notice of it Shall we feel the stings of sin within us which though they do but prick the regenerate prove mortal to the rest of us and shall we not observe them Shall we not rather weep those fountains dry and crop this luxury of our affections with a severe sharp sorrow and humiliation Shall we not starve this rank fruitful mother of Vipers by denying it all nourishment from without all advantages of temptations and the like which it is wont to make use of to beget in us all manner of sin let us aggravate every circumstance and inconvenience of it to ourselves and then endeavour to banish it out of us and when we find we are not able importune that strong assistant the Holy Spirit to curb and subdue it that in the necessity of residing it yet may not reign in our mortal bodies to tame and abate the power of this necessary Amorite and free us from the activity and mischief and temptations of it here and from the punishment and imputation of it hereafter And so I come to the third part or branch of this original sin to wit its legal guilt and this we do contract by such an early
noisome Soul or more truly that evil spirit Mark I. 23. that made the man disclaim and renounce Christ and his mercies when he came to cure Let us alone what have we to do with thee By which is noted That contentedness and acquiescence in sin that even stubborn wilfulness and resolvedness to die that a long sluggish custom in sin will bring us to and that you may resolve on as the main discernable cause of this weakness of the heart a habit and long service and drudgery in sin But then as a ground of that you may take notice of another a phansie that hath crept into most mens hearts and suffers them not to think of resisting any temptation to sin that all their actions as well evil as good were long ago determined and set down by God and now nothing left to them but a necessity of performing what was then determined I would fain believe that that old heresie of the Stoicks revived indeed among the Turks concerning the inevitable production of all things that fatal necessity even of sins should yet never have gotten any footing or entertainment among Christians but that by a little experience in the practice of the world I find it among many a main piece of their faith and the only point that can yield them any comfort that their sins be they never so many outragious are but the effects or at least the consequents of Gods decree that all their care and sollicitude and most wary endeavors could not have cut off any one sin from the Catalogue that unless God be pleased 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to come down upon the Stage by the irresistible power of his constraining spirit as with a Thunderbolt from Heaven to shake and shiver to pieces the carnal man within them to strike them into a swoon as he did Saul that so he may convert them and in a word to force and ravish them to Heaven Unless he will even drive and carry them they are never likely to be able to stir to perform any the least work of reason but fall minutely into the most irrational unnatural sins in the world nay even into the bottom of that pit of Hell without any stop or delay or power of deliberating in this their precipice This is an heresie that in some Philosopher-Christians hath sprouted above ground hath shewed it self in their brains and tongues and that more openly in some bolder Wits but the Seeds of it are sown thick in most of our hearts I fear in every habitual sinner amongst us if we were but at leisure to look into our selves The Lord give us a heart to be forewarned in this behalf To return into the rode Our natural inclinations and propensions to sin are no doubt active and prurient enough within us somewhat of Jehu's constitution and temper they drive very furiously But then to perswade our selves that there is no means on earth besides the very hand of God and that out of our reach able to trash or overslow this furious driver that all the ordinary clogs that God hath provided us our reason and natural conscience as Men our Knowledge as Christians nay his restraining though not sanctifying graces together with the Lungs and Bowels of his Ministers and that energetical powerful Instrument the Gospel of Christ Which is the power of God unto salvation even to every Jew nay and Heathen Rom. 1. To resolve That all these are not able to keep us in any compass to quell any the least sin we are inclined to that unless God will by force make Saints of us we must needs presently be Devils and so leave all to Gods omnipotent working and never make use of those powers with which he hath already furnished us This is a monstrous piece of unchristian divinity a way by advancing the Grace of God to destroy it and by depending on the Holy Ghost to grieve if not to sin against him to make the corruption of our nature equal to nay surpassing the punishment of the Devils a necessary and irreversible obduration in all kinds and measures of sin This one practical Heresie will bring us through all the prodigies of the old Philosophical Sects from Stoicks to Epicurism and all sensual Libertinism and from thence to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Pythagoreans For unless the soul that is now in one of us had been transplanted from a Swine or some other the most stupid sottish degenerous sort of Beasts it is impossible that it should thus naturally and necessarily and perpetually and irrecoverably delight wallow in every kind of sensuality without any check or contradiction either of Reason or Christianity If I should tell you that none of you that hath understood and pondered the Will of God wants abilities in some measure to perform it if he would muster up all his forces at time of need that every Christian hath grace enough to smother lusts in the Womb and keep them at least from bringing forth to quell a temptation before it break out into an actual sin you would think perhaps that I flattered you and deceived my self in too good an opinion of your strength Only thus much then It would be somewhat for your edification to try what you could do Certainly there is much more in a Christians power if he be not engaged in a habit of sin than we imagine though not for the performing of good yet for the inhibiting of evil And therefore bethinking our selves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Arrian That we are the sons of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Let us not have too low and degenerous an opinion of our selves Do but endeavour resolutely and couragiously to repel temptations as often as they sollicite thee make use of all thy ordinary restraints improve thy natural fear and shamefac'dness thy Christian education tender disposition to the highest pitch do but hold sincerely as long as thou art able and though I will not say that all thy sins shall be confin'd to those two heads of original a branch of which are evil motions and of omission yet I will undertake that thou shalt have an easier burthen of actual commissions upon thy soul and that will prove a good ease for thee Those are they that weigh it down into the deep that sink it desperateliest into that double Tophet of obduration and despair Final obduration being a just judgment of God on one that hath fill'd up the measure of his iniquities that hath told over all the hairs of his head and sands of the Sea in actual sins and a necessary consummation of that despair the first part the Prologue and Harbinger to that worm in Hell 'T were easie to shew how faith might afford a Christian sufficient guard and defence against the keenest weapon in the Devils armory and retort every stroke upon himself But because this is the Faith only of a Wife not as we now consider as a woman at
unworthy of any more It was a shrewd though Atheistical speech of Hippocrates That sure if the Gods had any good things to bestow they would dispense them among the rich who would be able and ready to requite them by Sacrifices But all evil presents all Pandora's Box should be divided among the poor because they are still murmuring and repining and never think of making any return for favours The Eye of Nature it seems could discern thus much of God and his gifts that they are the most plentifully bestowed where the greatest return may be expected And for others from whom all the liberality in the world can extort no retribution but grumbling and complaints it is not charity or alms but prodigality and riot to bestow on them These are to be fed not with bread but stripes they are not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rather beggars than poor like Pharaohs lean Kine after the devouring of the fat ones still lank and very ill-favoured And the judgment of these you shall find in the Gospel From them shall be taken away even that which they have And therefore all which from God at this time and for ever I shall require and beg of you is the exercise and the improvement of your talent that your learning may not be for ostentation but for traffick not to possess but negotiate withal not to complain any longer of the poverty of your stock but presently to set to work to husband it That knowledge of God which he hath allowed you as your portion to set up with is ample enough to be the Foundation of the greatest estate in the World and you need not despair through an active labouring thriving course at last to set Heaven as a Roof on that Foundation Only it will cost you some pains to get the materials together for the building of the Walls it is as yet but a Foundation and the Roof will not become it till the walls be raised And therefore every faculty of your Souls and Bodies must turn Bezaleels and Aholiabs Spiritual Artificers for the forwarding and perfecting of this work It is not enough to have gotten an abstracted Mathematical Scheme or Diagram of this Spiritual Building in our Brain it is the Mechanical labouring part of Religion that must make up the edifice the work and toil and sweat of the Soul the business not of the Designer but the Carpenter that which takes the rough unpolished though excellent materials and trims and fits them for use which cuts and polishes the rich but as yet deformed jewels of the Soul and makes them shine indeed and sparkle like stars in the Firmament That ground or sum of Pythagorean Philosophy as it is set down by Hierocles in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if it were admitted into our schools or hearts would make us Scholars and Divines indeed that Virtue is the way to Truth Purity of affections a necessary precursory to depth of knowledge 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the only means to prepare for the uppermost form of Wisdom the speculation of God which doth ennoble the Soul unto the condition of an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of an heroical nay sacred person is first to have been the person of a man aright and by the practice of vertue to have cleared the eye for that glorious Vision But the divinity and learning of these times floats and hovers too much in the brain hath not either weight or sobriety enough in it to sink down or settle it in the heart We are all for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Clemens calls it the art of sorting out and laying in order all intellectual store in our brains tracing the Councils of God and observing his methods in his secrecies but never for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the refunding and pouring out any of that store in the alms as it were and liberality of our actions If Gerson's definition of Theology that it is scientia effectiva non speculativa were taken into our consideration at the choice of our professions we should certainly have fewer pretenders to Divinity but 't is withal hoped more Divines The Lacedaemonians and Cretians saith Josephus brought up men to the practice but not knowledg of good by their example only not by precept or law The Athenians and generally the rest of the Grecians used instructions of laws only but never brought them up by practice and discipline But of all Lawgivers saith he only Moses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dispensed and measured both these proportionably together And this beloved is that for which that policy of the Primitive Jews deserved to be called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by a special name the Government of God Himself This is it the combination of your knowledg with your practice your learning with your lives which I shall in fine commend unto you to take out both for your selves and others 1. For your selves that in your study of Divinity you will not behold Gods Attributes as a sight or spectacle but as a Copy not only to be admired but to be transcribed into your hearts and lives not to gaze upon the Sun to the dazling nay destroying of your eyes but as it were in a burning-glass contract those blessed sanctifying rayes that flow from it to the enlivening and inflaming of your hearts And 2. In the behalf of others so to digest and inwardly dispense every part of sacred knowledg into each several member and vein of Body and Soul that it may transpire through hands and feet and heart and tongue and so secretly insinuate it self into all about you that both by Precept and Example they may see and follow your good works and so glorifie here your Father which is in heaven that we may all partake of that blessed Resurrection not of the learned and the great but the just and so hope and attain to be all glorified together with him hereafter Now to him c. The II. Sermon PHIL. IV. 13. I can do all things through Christ that strengthneth me THose two contrary Heresies that cost S. Austin and the Fathers of his time so much pains the one all for natural strength the other for irrecoverable weakness have had such unkindly influence on succeeding ages that almost all the actions of the ordinary Christian have some tincture of one of these Scarce any sin is sent abroad into the World without either this or that inscription And therefore parallel to these we may observe the like division in the hearts and practical faculties between pride and sloth opinion of absolute power and prejudice of absolute impotence The one undertaking all upon its own credit the other suing as it were for the preferment or rather excuse of being bankrupts upon record that so they may come to an easie composition with God for their debt of obedience The one so busie in contemplation of their present fortunes
that they are not at leisure to make use of them their pride helping them to ease and if you look nearly to poverty too Revel iii. 17. the other so fastned to this Sanctuary this religious piece of prophaneness that leaving the whole business to God as the undertaker and proxy of their obedience their idleness shall be deemed devotion and their best piety sitting still These two differences of Men either sacrilegious or supine imperious or lethargical have so dichotomized this lower sphear of the Word almost into two equal parts that the practice of humble obedience and obeying humility the bemoaning our wants to God with Petition to repair them and the observing and making use of those succors which God in Christ hath dispensed to us those two foundations of all Christian duty providing between them that our Religion be neither 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nor 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Neither the vertue of the Atheist nor the prayer of the Sluggard are almost quite vanished out of the World As when the Body is torn asunder the Soul is without any farther act of violence forced out of its place that it takes its flight home to Heaven being thus let out at the Scissure as at the Window and only the two fragments of carcass remain behind For the deposing of these two Tyrants that have thus usurped the Soul between them dividing the Live child with that false Mother into two dead parts For the abating this pride and enlivening this deadness of practical faculties for the scourging this stout Beggar and restoring this Cripple to his Legs the two Provisions in my Text if the order of them only be transposed and in Gods method the last set first will I may hope and pray prove sufficient I can do c. 1. Through Christ that strengthneth me You have there first The Assertion of the necessity of grace and secondly that enforced from the form of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which imports the minutely continual supply of aids and then thirdly we have not only positively but exclusively declared the person thus assisting in Christo confortante it is by him not otherwise we can do thus or thus Three particulars all against the natural confidence of the proud Atheist 2. The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I can do all things First The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and secondly the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1. The power and 2. the extent of that power 1. The potency and 2. the omnipotency and then 3. this not only originally of Christ that strengthneth but inherently of me being strengthned by Christ Three particulars again and all against the conceived or pretended impotence either of the false spie that brought news of the Giants Anakims Cannibals in the way to Canaan Numb xiii 32. Or of the Sluggard that is alway affrighting and keeping himself at home with the Lion in the streets some 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or other difficulty or impossibility whensoever any work or travel of obedience is required of us Prov. xxvi 13. It will not befit the majesty of the subject to have so many particulars by being severally handled joyntly neglected Our best contrivance will be to shorten the retail for the encreasing of the gross to make the fewer parcels that we may carry them away the better in these three Propositions I. The strength of Christ is the Original and Fountain of all ours Through Christ that c. II. The strength of a Christian from Christ derived in a kind of Omnipotency sufficient for the whole duty of a Christian Can do all things c. III. The strength and power being thus bestowed the work is the Work of a Christian of the suppositum the Man strengthned by Christ I can do c. Of these in this order for the removing only of those prejudices out of the Brain which may trash and encumber the practice of piety in the heart And first of the first The strength of Christ is the Original and Fountain of all ours The strength of Christ and that peculiarly of Christ the second Person of the Trinity who was appointed by consent to negotiate for us in the business concerning our Souls All our tenure or plea to grace or glory to depend not on any absolute respectless though free donation but conveyed to us in the hand of a Mediator That Privy Seal of his annexed to the Patent or else of no value at that Court of Pleas or that Grand Assizes of Souls Our Natural strength is the gift of God as God is considered in the first Article of our Creed and by that title of Creation we have that priviledge of all created substances to be able to perform the work of nature or else we should be inferior to the meanest creature in this for the least stone in the street is able to move downwards by its own principle of nature And therefore all that we have need of in the performing of these is only Gods concurrence whether previous or simultaneous and in acts of choice the government and direction of our will by his general providence and power However even in this Work of Creation Christ must not be excluded 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Gods in the Plural all the Persons of the Deity in the whole work peculiarly in the Faciamus hominem are adumbrated if not mentioned by Moses And therefore God is said to have made all by his Word that inward eternal Word in his bosome an articulation and as it were incarnation of which was that Fiat factum est which the Heathen Rhetorician so admired in Moses for a magnificent sublime expression Yet in this Creation and consequently this donation of natural strength peculiarly imputed to the first Person of the Trinity because no personal act of Christ either of his satisfaction or merit of his humiliation or exaltation did conduce to that though the Son were consulted about it yet was it not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 delivered to us in the hand of a Mediator Our natural strength we have of God without respect to Christ incarnate without the help of his Mediation but that utterly unsufficient to bring us to Heaven 2 Cor. iii. 5. Not that we are sufficient of our selves to think any thing i. e. saith Parisiensis Any thing of moment or valor according to the Dialect of Scripture that calls the whole man by the name of his soul so many souls i. e. so many men and so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Pythagoreans word thy soul is thou counts of nothing but what tends to the salvation of that But then our supernatural strength that which is called Grace and Christian strength that is of another date of another tenure of another allay founded in the promise actually exhibited in the death and exaltation of the Messias and continually paid out to us by the continued daily exercise of his Offices 1. The Covenant sealed in his Blood after
we are men yet not Christians Live saith Clemens 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a kind of embryon imperfect heathen of a child in the womb of the gentle dark uncomfortable being a kind of first draught or ground colours only and monogram of life Though we have Souls yet in relation to spiritual acts or objects but weak consumptive cadaverous souls as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Old Testament word for the Soul and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the 72 signifies a carkass or dead body Numb v. 2. and otherwhere and then by this accession of this strength of Christ this dead Soul revives into a kind of omnipotency the Pygmie is sprung up into a Gyant this languishing puling state improv'd into an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he that even now was insufficient to think any thing is now able to do all things which brings me to my second Proposition The strength of a Christian from Christ deriv'd is a kind of Omnipotence sufficient for the whole duty of a Christian 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Can do all things The clearing of this Truth from all difficulties or prejudices will depend mainly on the right understanding of the predicate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in my Text or the whole duty of a Christian in the proposition which two being of the same importance the same hand will unravel them both Now what is the whole duty of a Christian but the adequate condition of the second Covenant upon performance of which salvation shall certainly be had and without which salvare nequeat ipsa si cupias salus the very sufferings and saving mercies of Christ will avail us nothing As for any Exercise of Gods absolute Will or Power in this business of Souls under Christs Kingdom I think we may fairly omit to take it into consideration for sure the New Testament will acknowledg no such phrase nor I think any of the Ancients that wrote in that language Whereupon perhaps it will be worth observing in the confession of the Religion of the Greek Church subscribed by Cyril the present Patriarch of Constantinople where having somewhat to do with this phrase Of Gods absolute Dominion so much talked on here in the West he is much put to it to express it in Greek and at last fain to do it by a word coyned on purpose a meer Latinism for the turn 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an expression I think capable of no excuse but this that a piece of new Divinity was to be content with a barbarous phrase Concerning this condition of the second Covenant Three things will require to be premised to our present enquiry 1. That there is a Condition and that an adequate one of the same extent as the promises of the Covenant something exacted at our hands to be performed if we mean to be the better for the demise of that Indenture As many as received him to them he gave power c. Joh. i. 12. to these and to none else positively and exclusively To him that overcometh will I give Rev. ii 7. I have fought a good fight c. 2 Tim. iv 7. henceforth there is laid up for me a Crown Then begins the title to the Crown and not before when the fight is fought the course finished the faith kept then coelum rapiunt God challenged on his righteousness as a Judg not on ground of his absolute pleasure as a Lord which will but upon supposition of a Pact or Covenant which limits and directs the award process for according unto it God the righteous Judge shall give And Mark xvi 16. in Christs farewel speech to his Disciples where he seals their Commission of Embassage and Preaching to every creature He that believeth not shall be damned this believing whatever it signifies is that condition here we speak of and what it imports you will best see by comparing it with the same passage set down by another Amanuensis in the last verse of S. Matth. To observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you A belief not of brain or phansie but that of heart and practice i. e. Distinctly Evangelical or Christian obedience the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in my Text and the whole duty of a Christian in the proposition which if a Christian by the help of Christ be not able to perform then consequently he is still uncapable of Salvation by the second Covenant no creature being now rescuable from Hell stante pacto but those that perform the condition of it that irreversible Oath of God which is always fulfilled in kind without relaxation or commutation or compensation of punishment being already gone out against them I have sworn in my wrath that they shall not enter into my rest And therefore when the end of Christs mission is described Joh. iii. 17. That the world through him might be saved there is a shrewd But in the next Verse But he that believeth not is condemned already This was upon agreement between God and Christ that the impenitent Infidel should be never the better for it should die unrescued in his old Condemnation So that there is not only a logical possibility but a moral necessity of the performing of this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or else no possibility of Salvation And then that reason of disannulling the old and establishing the new Covenant because there was no justification to be had by the old rendred Gal. iii. 21. would easily be retorted upon the Apostle thus Why neither is any life or justification to be had by this second the absurdity of which sequel being considered may serve for one proof of the Proposition The Second thing to be premised of this Condition is That it is an immutable unalterable indispensable Condition The 2d Covenant standing this must also stand that hath been proved already because a condition adequate and of the same latitude with the Covenant But now secondly this second both Covenant and Condition must needs stand an Everlasting Covenant Ezek. xvi 60. No possibility of a change unless upon an impossible supposition there should remain some other fourth Person of the Deity to come into the World The Tragick Poets saith Tully when they had overshot themselves in a desperate Plot that would never come about ad Deum confugiunt they were fain to flie to a God to lay that unruly spirit that their phansie had raised Upon Adam's sin and breach of the Condition of the First Covenant there was no possibility in the wit of man in the sphere of the most Poetical phansie Fabulae exitum explicare to come off with a fair conclusion had not the Second Person of the Trinity that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 come down in his tire and personation of flesh not in the stage Cloaths or Livery but substantial form of a servant upon the stage And he again having brought things into some possibility of an happy conclusion though it cost him his life in the
was not quite able throughly to perform without help which deceitful consideration drew on Pelagius himself that was first only for nature at last to take in one after another five Subsidiaries more but only as so many horses to draw together in the Chariot with nature being so pursued by the Councils and Fathers from one hold to another till he was at last almost deprived of all acknowledging saith S. Austin Divinae gratiae adjutorium ad posse and then had not the Devil stuck close to him at the exigence and held out at the velle operari he might have been in great danger to have lost an Heretick But I absolutely impotent in my self to any supernatural duty being then rapt above my self strengthned by Christs perpetual influence having all my strength ability from him am then by that strength able to do all things my self As in the old Oracle the God inspired and spake in the ear of the Prophet and then the Vates spoke under from thence called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ecchoed out that voice aloud which he had received by whisper a kind of Scribe or Cryer or Herauld to deliver out as he was inspired The principal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a God or Oracle the Prophet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an inspired Enthusiast dispensing out to his credulous clients all that the Oracle did dictate or as the Earth which is cold and dry in its elementary constitution and therefore bound up to a necessity of perpetual barrenness having neither of those two procreative faculties heat or moisture in its composition but then by the beams of the Sun and neighbourhood of Water or to supply the want of that rain from Heaven to satisfie its thirst this cold dry Element begins to teem carries many Mines of treasure in the Womb many granaries of fruit in its surface and in event 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 contributes all that we can crave either to our need or luxury Now though all this be done by those foraign aids as principal nay sole efficients of this fertility in the earth to conceive of its strength to bring forth yet the work of bringing forth is attributed to the Earth Heb. vi 7. as to the immediate parent of all Thus is it God's work 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Cyril to plant and water and that he doth mediately by Apollos and Paul yea and to give the encrease that belongs to him immediately neither to Man nor Angel but only ad Agricolam Trinitatem saith S. Austin but after all this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 though God give the encrease thou must bring forth the fruit The Holy Ghost overshadowed Mary and she was found with child Mat. i. 18. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 she was found no more attributed to her the Holy Ghost the principal nay sole agent in the work and she a pure Virgin still and yet Luk. i. 31. 't is the Angels Divinity That Mary shall conceive and bring forth a Son All the efficiency from the Holy Ghost and partus ventrem the work attributed and that truly to Mary the subject in whom it was wrought and therefore is she call'd by the Ancients not only officina miraculorum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The shop of Miracles and The Work-house of the Holy Ghost as the Rhetorick of some have set it but by the Councils that were more careful in their phrases 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not only the Conduit through which he past but the Parent of whose substance he was made And thus in the production of all spiritual Actions the principal sole efficient of all is Christ and His Spirit all that is conceived in us is of the Holy Ghost The holy Principle holy Desire holy Action the posse velle operari all of him Phil. ii 12. But then being so overshadowed the Soul it self conceives being still assisted carries in the Womb and by the same strength at fulness of time as opportunities do Midwife them out brings forth Christian Spiritual Actions and then as Mary was the Mother of God so the Christian Soul is the Parent of all its Divine Christian Performances Christ the Father that enables with his Spirit and the Soul the Mother that actually brings forth And now that we may begin to draw up towards a conclusion Two things we may raise from hence by way of inference to our Practice 1. Where all the Christians non-proficiency is to be charged either 1. Upon the Habitual Hardness or 2. The Sluggishness or 3. The Rankness of his own wretchless heart 1. Hardness That for all the seed that is sown the softning dew that distills rain that is poured down the enlivening influences that are dispensed among us yet the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the hardness and toughness of the Womb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that dry unnutrifying Earth in the Philosopher's or in Christs dialect Stony-ground resists all manner of Conception will not be hospitable yield any entertainment even to these Angelical guests though they come as to Lot's house in Sodom only to secure the owner from most certain destruction This is the reason that so much of Gods Husbandry among us returns him so thin so unprofitable an Harvest ceciderunt in petrosa and 't is hard finding any better tillage now a-days the very Holy Land the milk and honey of Canaan is degenerate they say into this Composition and herein is a marvellous thing that where God hath done all that any man if it were put to his own partial judgment would think reasonable for him to do for his Vineyard gathered out stones those seeds of natural hardness and which deserves to be marked built a Wine-press Isa v. 2. a sure token that he expected a vintage in earnest not only manur'd for fashion or to leave them without excuse yet for all these Labruscas wild juiceless Grapes heartless Faith unseasoned Devotion intemperate Zeal blind and perverse Obedience that under that name shall disguise and excuse Disobedience tot genera labruscarum so many wild unsavoury fruits is the best return he can hear of One thing more let me tell you 'T is not the original hardness of Nature to which all this can be imputed for for the mollifying of that all this gardening was bestowed digging gathering out and indeed nothing more ordinary than out of such stones to raise up children unto Abraham But 't is the long habit and custom of sin which hath harrast out the Soul congealed that natural gravel and improved it into a perfect quarry or mine and 't is not the Preachers Charm the Annunciation of the Gospel that Power of God unto Salvation unto a Jew or Heathen 't is not David's Harp that could exorcise the evil Spirit upon Saul not the every day eloquence even of the Spirit of God that can in holy Esdras his phrase perswade them to Salvation 2. Sluggishness and inobservances of God's seasons
the covetous man's sad galling Mules burthens of Gold his Achans Wedge that cleaves and rends in sunder Nations so that in the Hebrew that sin signifies wounding and incision Joel ii 8. and is alluded to by his piercing himself thorow with divers sorrows 1 Tim. vi 10. his very Purgatories and Limbo's nay Hell as devouring and perpetual as it and the no kind of satisfaction so much as to his eye from the vastest heaps or treasures were he not in love with folly and ruin had he not been drenched with philtres and charms had not the Necromancer plaid some of his prizes on him and as S. Paul saith of his Galatians even bewitched him to be a fool would we but make a rational choice of our sins discern somewhat that were amiable before we let loose our passion on them and not deal so blindly in absolute elections of the driest unsavory sin that may but be called a sin that hath but the honor of affronting God and damning one of Christ's redeemed most of our wasting sweeping sins would have no manner of pretensions to us and that you will allow to be one special accumulation of the folly and madness of these simple ones that they thus love simplicity The second aggravation is the continuance and duration of this fury a lasting chronical passion quite contrary to the nature of passions a flash of lightning lengthned out a whole day together That they should love simplicity so long It is the nature of acute diseases either to have intervals and intermissions or else to come to speedy crises and though these prove mortal sometimes yet the state is not generally so desperate and so it is with sins Many the sharpest and vehementest indispositions of the Soul pure Feavers of rage and lust prove happily but flashing short furies are attended with an instant smiting of the heart a hating and detesting our follies a striking on the thigh in Jeremy and in David's penitential stile a So foolish was I and ignorant even as a beast before thee And it were happy if our Feavers had such cool seasons such favorable ingenuous intermissions as these But for the hectick continual Feavers that like some weapons the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 barbed shafts in use among the Franks in Agathias being not mortal at the entrance do all their slaughter by the hardness of getting out the Vultures that so tyre and gnaw upon the Soul the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that never suffer the sinner fool to make any approach toward his wits toward sobriety again This passionate love of folly improved into an habitual steady course of Atheisticalness a deliberate peremptory final reprobating of Heaven the purity at once and the bliss of it the stanch demure covenanting with death resolvedness to have their part to run their fortune with Satan through all adventures this is that monstrous brat That as for the birth of the Champion in the Poet three nights of darkness more than Egyptian were to be crowded into one all the simplicity and folly in a Kingdom to help to a being in the World And at the birth of it you will pardon Wisdom if she break out into a passion and exclamation of pity first and then of indignation How long ye simple ones c. My last particular The first debt that Wisdom that Christ that every Christian Brother ows and pays to every unchristian liver is that of pity and compassion which is to him of all others the properest dole Look upon all the sad moanful objects in the world betwixt whom all our compassion is wont to be divided First the Bankrupt rotting in a Gaol secondly the direful bloody spectacle of the Soldier wounded by the Sword of War thirdly the Malefactor howling under the Stone or gasping upon the Rack or Wheel and fourthly the gallant person on the Scaffold or Gallows ready for execution And the secure senseless sinner is the brachygraphy of all these You have in him 1. A rich patrimony and treasure of grace purchased dear and setled on him by Christ most prodigally and contumeliously mispent exhausted 2. A Soul streaming out whole Rivers of blood and spirits through every wound even every sin it hath been guilty of and not enduring the Water to cleanse much less the Wine or Oyl to be poured into any one of them the whole Soul transfigured into one wound one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 congelation and clod of blood Then thirdly beyond this all the racks and pangs of a tormenting conscience his only present exercise And lastly all the torments in Hell the Officer ready hurrying him to the Judg and the Judg delivering him to the Executioner his minutely dread and expectation the dream that so haunts and hounds him And what would a man give in bowels of compassion to Christianity or but to humane kind to be able to reprieve or rescue such an unhappy creature to be but the Lazarus with one drop of water to cool the tipof the scalding Tongue that is engaged in such a pile of flames If there be any Charity left in this frozen World any Beam under this cold uninhabitable Zone it will certainly work some meltings on the most obdurate heart it will dissolve and pour out our bowels into a seasonable advice or admonition that excellent Recipe saith Themist 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That supplies the place and does the work of the burnings and scarifyings A cry to stop him in his precipitous course a tear at least to solemnize if not to prevent so sad a fate And it were well if all our bowels were thus employed all our kindness most passionate love thus converted and laid out on our poor lapsed sinner-brethrens souls to seize upon those fugitives as Christ is said to do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heb. xi 16. to catch hold and bring them back ere it be yet too late rescue them out of the hands of their dearest espoused sins and not suffer the most flattering kind of death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Gal. de Athl. the Devil in the Angelical disguise the sin that undertakes to be the prime Saint the zeal for the Lord of Hosts any the most venerable impiety to lay hold on them Could I but see such a new fashioned Charity received and entertained in the World every man to become his brothers keeper and every man so tame as to love and interpret aright entertain and embrace this keeper this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this Guardian Angel as an Angel indeed as the only valuable friend he hath under Heaven I should think this a lucky omen of the worlds returning to its wits to some degree of piety again And till then there is a very fit place and season for the exercise of the other part of the passion here that of Indignation the last minute of my last particular as the how long is an expression of Indignation Indignation not at the men for however
to us i. e. Christs Incarnation brought Salvation into the World For if there be a substantial agreement betwixt the Prophet and the Angel if Emmanuel signifie directly Jesus if God with us and a Saviour be really the same title of Christ then was there no Saviour and consequently no Salvation before this presence of God with us Which position we will briefly explain and then omitting unnecessary proofs apply it In explaining of it we must calculate the time of Christs Incarnation and set down how with it and not before came Salvation We may collect in Scripture a three-fold incarnation of Christ 1. In the Counsel of God 2. In the Promises of God 3. In a Personal open exhibiting of him unto the World the effect and complement of both Counsel and Promises 1. In the Counsel of God so He was as slain so incarnate before the foundation of the World Rev. xiii 8. For the word slain being not competible to the Eternal God but only to the assumption of the humane nature presupposes him incarnate because slain God then in his Prescience surveyingbefore he created and viewing the lapsed miserable sick estate of the future Creation in his Eternal Decree foresaw and preordained Jesus the Saviour the Author and Finisher of the Worlds Salvation So that in the Counsel of God to whom all things to come are made present Emmanuel and Jesus went together and no Salvation bestowed on us but in respect to this God with us 2. In the Promises of God and then Christ was incarnate when he was promised first in Paradise The seed of the Woman c. and so he is as old in the flesh as the World in sin and was then in Gods Promise first born when Adam and man-kind began to die Afterwards he was not again but still incarnate in Gods promise more evidently in Abraham's time In thy seed c. and in Moses his time when at the addition of the Passeover a most significant representation of the incarnate and crucified Christ he was more than promised almost exhibited Under which times it is by some asserted that Christ in the form of Man and habit of Angel appeared sundry times to the Fathers to give them not an hope but a possession of the Incarnate God and to be praeludium incarnationis a pawn unto them that they trusted not in vain And here it is plain thorowout that this Incarnation of Christ in the Promise of God did perpetually accompany or go before Salvation not one blessing on the nations without mention of thy seed not one encouragement against fear or unto confidence but confirm'd and back'd with an I am thy shield c. i. e. according to the Targum my Word is thy shield i. e. my Christ who is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Word in the first of Joh. i. Not any mention of Righteousness and Salvation but on ground and condition of belief of that Jesus which was then in promise Emmanuel God with us 3. In the Personal exhibiting of Christ in form of flesh unto the World dated at the fulness of time and call'd in our ordinary phrase his Incarnation then no doubt was Emmanuel Jesus then was he openly shewed to all people in the form of God a Saviour which Simeon Luk. ii 30. most divinely styles God's Salvation thereby no doubt meaning the Incarnate Christ which by being God with us was Salvation Thus do you see a three-fold Incarnation a three-fold Emmanuel and proportionably a three-fold Jesus 1. A Saviour first decreed for the World answerable to God incarnate in Gods Counsel and so no man was ever capable of Salvation but through God with us 2. A Saviour promised to the World answerable to the second God with us to wit incarnate in the Promise and so there is no Covenant of Salvation but in this God with us 3. A Saviour truly exhibited and born of a Woman answerable to the third Immanuel and so also is there no manifestation no proclaiming no preaching of Salvation but by the birth and merits of God with us To these three if we add a fourth Incarnation of Christ the assuming of our Immortal Flesh which was at his Resurrection then surely the Doctrine will be complete and this Emmanuel incarnate in the Womb of the grave brought forth cloath'd upon with an incorruptible seed is now more fully than ever prov'd an Eternal Jesus For when he had overcome the sharpness of Death he opened the kingdom of Heaven to all believers as it is in our Te Deum as if all that till then ever entred into Heaven had been admitted by some privy key but now the very gates were wide opened to all believers This last Incarnation of Christ being accompanied with a Catholick Salvation that Jesus might be as Eternal as Immanuel that he might be as Immortal a Saviour as a God with us 'T were but a superfluous work further to demonstrate that through all ages of the World there was no salvation ever tendred but in respect to this Incarnation of Christ that the hopes the belief the expectation of Salvation which the Father 's lived and breathed by under the types of the Law was only grounded upon and referred unto these promises of the future Incarnation that they which were not in some measure enlightned in this mystery were not also partakers of this Covenant of Salvation that all the means besides that Heaven and Earth and which goes beyond them both the brain of Man or Angel could afford or invent could not excuse much less save any child of Adam That every Soul which was to spring from these loins had been without those transcendent mercies which were exhibited by this Incarnation of Christs plung'd in necessary desperate damnation Your patience shall be more profitably imployed in a brief Application of the point First That you perswade and drive your selves to a sense and feeling of your Sins those sins which thus pluckt God out of Heaven and for a while depriv'd him of his Majesty which laid an engagement upon God either to leave his infinite Justice unsatisfied or else to subject his infinite Deity to the servile mortality of Flesh or else to leave an infinite World in a common damnation Secondly To strain all the expressions of our hearts tongues and lives to the highest note of gratitude which is possible in answer to this Mystery and Treasure of this God with us to reckon all the Miracles of either common or private preservations as foils to this incomparable Mercy infinitely below the least circumstance of it without which thine Estate thy Understanding thy Body thy Soul thy Being thy very Creation were each of them as exquisite Curses as Hell or Malice could invent for thee Thirdly To observe with an ecstasie of joy and thanks the precious priviledges of us Christians beyond all that ever God profest love to in that we have obtained a full revelation of this God
with us which all the Fathers did but see in a cloud the Angels peep'd at the Heathen world gap'd after but we beheld as in a plain at mid-day For since the veil of the Temple was rent every man that hath eyes may see Sanctum Sanctorum the Holy of Holies God with us Fourthly To make a real use of this Doctrine to the profit of our Souls that if God have designed to be Emmanuel and Jesus an Incarnate God and Saviour to us that then we will fit and prepare and make our selves capable of this Mercy and by the help of our religious devout humble endeavours not frustrate but further and promote in our selves this end of Christs Incarnation the saving of our Souls and this use is effectually made to our hands in the twelfth to the Hebrews at the last Wherefore we receiving a Kingdom that cannot be moved i. e. being partakers of the Presence the Reign the Salvation of the Incarnate God Let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear And do thou O powerful God improve the truth of this Doctrine to the best advantage of our Souls that thy Son may not be born to us unprofitably but that he may be God not only with us but in us in us to sanctifie and adorn us here with his effectual grace and with us to sustain us here as our Emmanuel and as our Jesus to crown and perfect us hereafter with glory And so much for this point That Jesus and Emmanuel import the same thing and there was no Salvation till this presence of God with us We now come to the substance it self i. e. Christs Incarnation noted by Emmanuel which is by interpretation c. Where first we must explain the word then drive forward to the matter The Word in Isaiah in the Hebrew is not so much a name as a sentence describing unto us the mystery of the Conception of the Virgin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with us God where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God is taken in Scripture either absolutely for the nature of God as for the most part in the Old Testament or personally and so either for the Person of the Father in many places or else distinctly for the Person of the Son so Hos i. 7. And will save them by the Lord their God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their God i. e. Christ and so also most evidently in this place out of Isaiah where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies the Son Incarnate God man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and many the like especially those where the Targum paraphrases Jehovah or Jehovah Elohim by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Word of the Lord i. e. Christ Jesus Joh. i. 1. As for instance Gen. iii. 22. that Word of the Lord said and Gen. ii 6. the Word created Secondly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies in its extent near at with or amongst Thirdly the Particle signifying us though it expresses not yet it must note our humane nature our abode our being in this our great World wherein we travel and this our little World wherein we dwell not as a mansion place to remain in but either as an Inn to lodge or a Tabernacle to be covered or a Prison to suffer in So that the words in their latitude run thus Emmanuel i. e. The second Person in Trinity is come down into this lower world amongst us for a while to travel to lodg to sojourn to be fetter'd in this Inn this Tabernacle this Prison of mans flesh or briefly at this time is conceived and born God-man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the same both God and Man the Man Christ Jesus And this is the cause and business the ground and theme of our present rejoycing in this were limited and fulfilled the expectation of the Fathers and in this begins and is accomplished the hope and joy of us Christians That which was old Simeons warning to death the sight and embraces of the Lords Christ Luk. ii 28. as the greatest happiness which an especial favour could bestow on him and therefore made him in a contempt of any further life sing his own funeral Nunc dimittis Lord now lettest thou c. This is to us the Prologue and first part of a Christians life either the life of the World that that may be worthy to be call'd life or that of Grace that we be not dead whilst we live For were it not for this assumption of flesh you may justly curse that ever you carried flesh about you that ever your Soul was committed to such a Prison as your Body is nay such a Dungeon such a Grave But through this Incarnation of Christ our flesh is or shall be cleansed into a Temple for the Soul to worship in and in Heaven for a robe for it to triumph in For our body shall be purified by his Body If ye will be sufficiently instructed into a just valuation of the weight of this Mystery you must resolve your selves to a pretty large task and it were a notable Christmas employment I should bless God for any one that would be so piously valiant as to undertake it you must read over the whole Book of Scripture and Nature to this purpose For when you find in the Psalmist the news of Christs coming Then said I loe I come you find your directions how to tract him In the volume of thy book it is written of me c. i. e. either in the whole book or in every folding every leaf of this Book Thou shalt not find a Story a Riddle a Prophecy a Ceremony a downright legal Constitution but hath some manner of aspect on this glass some way drives at this mystery God manifest in flesh For example perhaps you have not noted wherever you read Seth's Genealogies more insisted on than Cain's Sem's than his elder brother Ham's Abraham's than the whole World besides Jacob's than Esau's Judah's than the whole twelve Patriarchs and the like passages which directly drive down the line of Christ make that the whole business of the Scripture Whensoever I say you read any of these then are you to note that Shiloh was to come that he which was sent was on his journey that from the Creation till the fulness of time the Scripture was in travel with him and by his leaping ever now and then and as it were springing in the Womb gave manifest tokens that it had conceived and would at last bring forth the Messias So that the whole Old Testament is a Mystical Virgin Mary a kind of Mother of Christ which by the Holy Ghost conceived him in Genesis Chap. iii. 15. And throughout Moses and the Prophets carried him in the Womb and was very big of him And at last in Malachi Chap. iii. 4. was in a manner delivered of him For there you shall find mention of John Baptist who was
Psal li. 10. A wound cured up by repentance and differs only from the former purity as a scar from a skin never cut wanting somewhat of the beauty and outward clearness but nothing of either the strength or health of it Optandum esset ut in simplici Virginitate servaretur navis c. It were to be wished that the Ship our Souls could be kept in its simple Virginity never be in danger of either leak or shipwrack But this perpetual integrity being a desperate impossible wish there is one only remedy which though it cannot prevent a leak can stop it And this is repentance after sin committed Post naufragium tabula a means to secure one after a shipwrack to deliver him even in the deep Waters And this we call a restored Virginity of the Soul which Christ also vouchsafes to be conceived and born in The first degree of Innocence being not to have sinned the second to have repented In the second place The Mother of Christ in the flesh was a Virgin not only till the time of Christ's conception but also till the time of his birth Matth. i. 25. He knew her not till she had brought forth c. And farther as we may probably believe remained a Virgin all the days of her life after For to her is applied by the Learned that which is typically spoken of the East-gate of the Sanctuary Ezek. xliv 2. This gate shall be shut it shall not be opened no man shall enter in by it because the Lord the God of Israel hath entred in by it therefore it shall be shut A place if appliable very apposite for the expression Hence is she called by the Fathers Councils 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Perpetual Virgin against the Heresie of Helvidius The probability of this might be farther proved if it were needful And ought not upon all principles of nature and of justice the Virgin Soul after Christ once conceived in it remain pure stanch till Christ be born in it nay be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Perpetual Virgin never indulge to sensual pleasures or cast away that purity which Christ either found orwrought in it If it were a respective purity then ought it not perpetually retain and encrease it and never fall off to those disorders that other men supinely live in If it were a recovered purity hold it fast and never turn again As a Dog to his vomit or d Sow to her wallowing in the mire For this conception and birth of Christ in the Soul would not only wash a way the filth that the Swine was formerly mired in but also take away the Swinish nature that she shall never have any strong propension to return again to her former inordinate delights Now this continuance of the Soul in this its recovered Virginity is not from the firm constant stable nature of the Soul but as Eusebius saith in another case 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 From a more strong able Band the Union of Christ to the Soul his Spiritual Incarnation in it Because the Lord the God of Israel hath entred in by it therefore it shall be shut Ezek. xliv 2. i. e. It shall not be opened either in consent or practise to the lusts and pollutions of the World or Flesh because Christ by being born in it hath cleansed it because he the Word of God said the Word therefore the leprosie is cured in whom he enters he dwells and on whom he makes his real impression he seals them up to the day of redemption unless we unbuild our selves and change our shape we must be his In the third place if we look on the agent in this conception we shall find it both in Mary and in the Soul of Man to be the Holy Ghost that which is conceived in either of them is of the Holy Ghost Mat. i. 20. Nothing in this business of Christs birth with us to be imputed to natural power or causes the whole contrivance and final production of it the preparations to and laboring of it is all the workmanship of the Spirit So that as Mary was called by an Ancient so may the Soul without an Hyperbole by us be styled The Shop of Miracles and The Work-house of the Holy Ghost in which every operation is a miracle to nature and no tools are used but what the Spirit forged and moves Mary conceived Christ but it was above her own reach to apprehend the manner how for so she questions the Angel Luk. i. 34. How shall this be c So doth the Soul of Man conceive and grow big and bring forth Christ yet not it self fully perceives how this work is wrought Christ being for the most part insensibly begotten in us and to be discerned only spiritually not at his entrance but in his fruits In the fourth place That Mary was chosen and appointed among all the Families of the Earth to be the Mother of the Christ was no manner of desert of hers but Gods special favor and dignation whence the words run truly interpreted Luk. i. 28. Hail thou that art highly favored not as the Vulgar read Gratiâ plena full of Grace And again Vers 30. Thou hast found favor with God So is it in the case of Mans Soul there is no power of nature no preparation of Morality no art that all the Philosophy or Learning in the World can teach a man which can deserve this grace at Christs hands that can any way woo or allure God to be born spiritually in us which can perswade or entice the Holy Ghost to conceive and beget Christ in us but only the meer favor good pleasure of God which may be obtained by our prayers but can never be challenged by our merits may be comfortably expected and hoped for as a largess given to our necessities and wants but can never be required as a reward of our deserts For it was no high pitch of perfection which Mary observed in her self as the motive to this favour but only the meer mercy of God which regarded the lowliness of his hand-maid Luke i. 48. Whence in the fifth place This Soul in which Christ will vouchsafe to be born must be a lowly humble soul or else it will not perfectly answer Maries temper nor fully bear a part in her Magnificat where in the midst of her glory she humbly specifies the lowliness of his hand-maid But this by the way In the sixth place If we consider here with John the Baptist his forerunner coming to prepare his way and his Preaching repentance as a necessary requisite to Christs being born received in the World Then we shall drive the matter to a further issue and find repentance a necessary preparation for the birth of Christ in our hearts For so the Baptist's Message set down Isa xl 3. Prepare the ways c. is here interpreted by the event Mat. iii. 2. Repent
for the Kingdom of God is at hand As if this Harbinger had no other furniture and provision to bespeak in the heart that was to receive Christ but only repentance for sins I will not examine here the precedence of Repentance before Faith in Christ though I might seasonably here state the question and direct you to begin with John proceed to Christ first repent then fasten on Christ Only this for all The promises of Salvation in Christ are promised on condition of repentance and amendment they must be weary and heavy laden who ever come to Christ and expect rest Matth. xi 28. And therefore whosoever applies these benefits to himself and thereby conceives Christ in his heart must first resolve to undertake the condition required to wit Newness of life which yet he will not be able to perform till Christ be fully born and dwell in him by his enabling graces For you may mark that Christ and John being both about the same age as appears by the story Christ must needs be born before Johns Preaching So in the Soul there is supposed some kind of incarnation of Christ before repentance or newness of life yet before Christ he is born or at least come to his full stature and perfect growth in us this Baptist's Sermon that is this repentance and resolution to amendment must be presumed in our Souls And so repentance is both a preparation to Christs birth and an effect of it For so John preached Repent for c. Matth. iii. 2. And so also in the same words Christ preaches Repent c. Matth. iv 17. And so these two together John and Christ Repentance and Faith though one began before the other was perfected yet I say these two together in the fully regenerate man Fulfil all righteousness Matth. iii. 15. In the seventh place you may observe That when Christ was born in Bethlehem the whole Land was in an uproar Herod the King was troubled and all Jerusalem with him Matth. ii 3. Which whether we apply to the lesser city the Soul of Man in which or the adjoyning people amongst whom Christ is spiritually born in any man you shall for the most acknowledge the agreement For the man himself if he have been any inordinate sinner then at the birth of Christ in him all his natural sinful faculties are much displeased his reigning Herod sins and all the Jerusalem of habituate Lusts and Passions are in great disorder as knowing that this new birth abodes their instant destruction and then they cry oft in the voice of the Devil Mark i. 24. What have we to do with thee Jesus thou Son of God Art thou come to torment and dispossess us before our time If it be applied to the Neighbor Worldlings which hear of this new convert then are they also in an uproar and consult how they shall deal with this turbulent spirit Which is made to upbraid our ways and reprove our thoughts Wisd ii Which is like to bring down all their trading and cousenage to a low ebb like Diana's Silver-smith in the Acts Chap. xix 24. which made a solemn speech and the Text says there was a great stir against Paul because the attempt of his upstart doctrine was like to undo the Shrine-makers Sirs ye know that by this craft we have our wealth And no marvel that in both these respects there is a great uproar seeing the spiritual birth of Christ is most infinitely opposite to both the common people of the World and common affections of the Soul two the most turbulent tumultuous wayward violent Nations upon Earth In the eighth and last place because I will not tyre you above the time which is allotted for the tryal of your parience you may observe the encrease and growth of Christ and that either in himself in Wisdom and Stature c. Luke ii 52. or else in his troop and attendants and that either of Angels to minister unto him Matth. iv 11. or of Disciples to follow obey him and then the harmony will still go currant Christ in the regenerate man is first conceived then born then by degrees of childhood and youth grows at last to the measure of the stature of this fulness and the Soul consequently from strength to strength from vertue to vertue is encreased to a perfect manhood in Christ Jesus Then also where Christ is thus born he chuses and calls a Jury at least of Disciple-graces to judge and sit upon thee to give in evidence unto thy Spirit That thou art the Son of God Then is he also ministred unto and furnished by the Angels with a perpetual supply either to encrease the lively or to recover decayed graces So that now Christ doth bestow a new life upon the man and the regenerate soul becomes the daughter as well as the Mother of Christ she conceives Christ and Christ her she lives and grows and moves in Christ and Christ in her So that at last she comes to that pitch and height and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that S. Paul speaks of Gal. ii 20. I live yet not I but Christ liveth in me and the life which I live in the flesh I live by the Faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me And do thou O Holy Jesus which hast loved us and given thy self for us love us still and give thy self to us Thou which hast been born in the World to save sinners vouchsafe again to be again incarnate in our Souls to regenerate and sanctifie sinners Thou which art the Theme of our present rejoycing become our Author of perpetual spiritual rejoycing that our Souls may conceive and bring forth and thou mayst conceive and regenerate our Souls that we may dwell in Christ and Christ in us And from the Meditation of thy Mortal flesh here we may be partakers with thee of thine Immortal glory hereafter Thus have we briefly passed through these words and in them first shewed you the real agreement betwixt Matthew and Isaiah in the point of Christ's Name and from thence noted that Jesus and Emmanuel is in effect all one and that Christs Incarnation brought Salvation into the World Which being proved through Christs several Incarnations were applied to our direction 1. To humble our selves 2. To express our thankfulness 3. To observe our priviledges 4. To make our selves capable and worthy receivers of this mercy Then we came to the Incarnation it self where we shewed you the excellency of this Mystery by the effects which the expectation and foresight of it wrought in the Fathers the Prophets the Heathens the Devils and then by way of Use what an horrible sin it was not to apply and imploy this mercy to our Souls Lastly We came to another birth of Christ besides that in the flesh his Spiritual Incarnation in Man's Soul which we compared with the former exactly in eight chief Circumstances and so left all to God's Spirit
amongst us to witness his compassion to satisfie for us by his own death and attach himself for our liberty to undergo such hard conditions rather than be forced to a cheap severity and that he might appear to love his Enemies to hate his Son In brief to fulfil the Work without any aid required from us and make Salvation ready to our hands as Manna is called in the sixth of Wisdom 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Bread baked and sent down ready from Heaven Wisd xvi 20. to drop it in our mouths and exact nothing of us but to accept of it this is an act of love and singleness that all the malice we carry about us knows not how to suspect so far from possibility of a treacherous intent or double dealing that if I were an Heathen nay a Devil I would bestow no other appellation on the Christians God than what the Author of the Book of Wisdom doth so often 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the friend or the lover of Souls But this is a vulgar though precious subject and therefore I shall no longer insist on it Only before I leave it would I could see the effect of it exprest in our Souls as well as acknowledged in our looks your hearts ravished as thorowly as your brains convinc'd your breasts as open to value and receive this superlative mercy as your tongues to confess it then could I triumph over Hell and death and scoff them out of countenance then should the Devil be reduced to his old pittance confined to an empty corner of the World and suffer as much by the solitariness as darkness of his abode all his engines and arts of torment should be busied upon himself and his whole exercise to curse Christ for ever that hath thus deprived him of Associates But alas we are too sollicitous in the Devil's behalf careful to furnish him with Companions to keep him warm in the midst of fire 't is to be feared we shall at last thrust him out of his Inheritance 'T is a probable argument that God desires our Salvation because that Hell wheresoever it is whether at the Center of the Earth or Concave of the Moon must needs be far less than Heaven and that makes us so besiege the gate as if we feared weshould find no room there We begin our journey betimes left we should be forestall'd and had rather venture a throng or crowd in Hell than to expect that glorious liberty of the Sons of God 'T is to be feared that at the day of Judgment when each Body comes to accompany its Soul in torment Hell must be let out and enlarge its territories to receive its Guests Beloved there is not a Creature here that hath reason to doubt but Christ was sent to die for him and by that death hath purchased his right to life Only do but come in do but suffer your selves to live and Christ to have died do not uncrucifie Christ by crucifying him again by your unbelief do not disclaim the Salvation that even claims right and title to you and then the Angels shall be as full of joy to see you in Heaven as God is willing nay desirous to bring you thither and Christ as ready to bestow that Inheritance upon you at his second coming as at his first to purchase it Nothing but Infidelity restrains Christs sufferings and confines them to a few Were but this one Devil cast out of the World I should be straight of Origens Religion and preach unto you Universal Catholick Salvation A second Argument of God's good meaning towards us of his willingness that we should live is the calling of the Gentiles the dispatching of Posts Heralds over the whole ignorant Heathen World and giving them notice of this treasure of Christs blood Do but observe what a degree of prophaneness unnatural abominations the Gentile World was then arrived to as you may read in all their stories and in the first to the Romans how well grown and ripe for the Devil Christ found them all of them damnably Superstitious and Idolatrous in their Worship damnably unclean in their lives nay engaged for ever in this rode of damnation by a Law they had made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 never to entertain any new Laws or Religion not to innovate though it were to get Salvation as besides their own Histories may be gathered out of Act. xvii 18. And lastly consider how they were hook'd in by the Devil to joyn in crucifying of Christ that they might be guilty of that blood which might otherwise have saved them and then you will find no argument to perswade you 't was possible that God should have any design of mercy on them Peter was so resolv'd of the point that the whole succession of the Gentiles should be damned that God could scarce perswade him to go and Preach to one of them Act. x. He was fain to be cast into a Trance and see a Vision about it and for all that he is much troubled about the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their prophaneness and uncleanness that they were not fit for an Apostle to defile himself about their Conversion And this was the general opinion of all the Jews they of the Circumcision were astonished at the news Act. x. 45. Nay this is it that the Angels wondred at so when they saw it wrought at the Church by Pauls Ministery never dreaming it possible till it was effected as may appear Eph. iii. 10. This was the Mystery which from the beginning of the World had been hid in God V. 9. One of God's Cabinet Counsels a Mercy decreed in secret that no Creature ever wist of till it was performed And in this behalf are we all being lineally descended from the Gentiles bound over to an infinite measure both of humiliation and gratitude for our deliverance from the guilt and reign of that second original sin that Heathenism of our Ancestors and Catholick damnation that Sixteen hundred years ago we were allinvolv'd in Beloved we were long ago set right again and the obligation lies heavy upon us to shew this change to have been wrought in us to some purpose to prove our selves Christians in grain so fixed and established that all the Devils in Hell shall not be able to reduce us again to that abhorred condition If we that are thus called out shall fall back after so much Gospel to Heathen practices and set up Shrines and Altars in our hearts to every poor delight that our sottishness can call a God if we are not called out of their sins as well as out of their ignorance then have we advanced but the further toward Hell we are still but Heathen Gospellers our Christian Infidelity and practical Atheism will but help to charge their guilt upon us and damn us the deeper for being Christians Do but examine your selves on this one Interrogatory whether this calling the Gentiles hath found any effect in your
hearts any influence on your lives whether your Conversations are not still as Heathenish as ever If you have no other grounds or motives to embrace the Gospel but only because you are born within the pale of the Church no other evidences of your Discipleship but your livery then God is little beholding to you for your service The same motives would have served to have made you Turks if it had been your chance to have been born amongst them and now all that fair Christian outside is not thank-worthy 'T is but your good fortune that you are not now at the same work with the old Gentiles or present Indians a worshipping either Jupiter or the Sun 'T was a shrewd speech of Clemens that the life of every unregenerate Man is an Heathen-life and the sins of unsanctified Men are Heathen-sins and the estate of a Libertine Christian an Heathen estate and unless our resolutions and practices are consonant to our profession of Christ we are all still Heathens and the Lord make us sensible of this our Condition The third and in sum the powerfullest Argument to prove God's willingness that we should live is that he hath bestowed his spirit upon us that as soon as he called up the Son he sent the Comforter This may seem to be the main business that Christ ascended to Heaven about so that a Man would guess from the xvi Chapter of St. John and Vers 7. that if it had not been for that Christ had tarried amongst us till this time but that it was more expedient to send the Spirit to speak those things powerfully to our hearts which often and in vain had been sounded in our ears 'T is a fancy of the Paracelsians that if we could suck out the lives and spirits of other Creatures as we feed on their flesh we should never die their lives would nourish and transubstantiate into our lives their spirit increase our spirits and so our lives grow with our years the older we were by consequence the fuller of life and so no difficulty to become Immortal Thus hath God dealt with us first sent his Son his Incarnate Son his own Flesh to feed and nourish us and for all this we die daily he hath now given us his own very Life and incorporeous Essence a piece of pure God his very Spirit to feed upon and digest that if it be possible we might live There is not a vein in our Souls unless it be quite pin'd and shrivel'd up but hath some blood produced in it by that holy nourishment every breath that ever we have breathed toward Heaven hath been thus inspired besides those louder Voices of God either sounding in his Word or thundring in his Judgments there is his calm soft voice of Inspiration like the Night Vision of old which stole in upon the mind mingled with sleep and gentle slumber He draws not out into the Field or meets us as an Enemy but entraps us by surprize and disarms us in our quarters by a Spiritual Stratagem conquers at unawares and even betrays and circumvents and cheats us into Heaven That precept of Pythagoras 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To worship at the noise and whistling of the wind had sense and divinity in it that Iamblicus that cites it never dreamt of that every sound and whispering of this Spirit which rustles either about our ears or in our hearts as the Philosopher saith Tecum est intus est when it breaths and blows within us the stoutest faculty of our Souls the proudest piece of flesh about us should bow down and worship Concerning the manner of the Spirits working I am not I need not to dispute Thus far it will be seasonable and profitable for you to know that many other Illuminations and holy Graces are to be imputed to Gods Spirit besides that by which we are effectually converted God speaks to us many times when we answer him not and shines about our eyes when we either wink or sleep Our many sudden short-winded Ejaculations toward Heaven our frequent but weak inclinations to good our ephemerous wishes that no man can distinguish from true piety but by their sudden death our every-day resolutions of obedience whilestwe continue in sin are arguments that God's Spirit hath shined on us though the warmth that it produced be soon chill'd with the damp it meets with in us For example there is no doubt beloved but the Spirit of God accompanies his Word as at this time to your ears if you will but open at its knock and receive and entertain it in your hearts it shall prove unto you according to its most glorious attribute Rom. i. The power of God unto salvation But if you will refuse it your stubborness may repel and frustrate God's Work but not annihilate it though you will not be saved by it it is God's still and so shall continue to witness against you at the day of doom Every word that was every darted from that Spirit as a beam or javelin of that piercing Sun every atome of that flaming Sword as the word is phrased shall not though it be rebated vanish the day of vengeance shall instruct your Souls that it was sent from God and since it was once refused hath been kept in store not to upbraid but damn you Many other petty occasions the Spirit ordinarily takes to put off the Cloud and open his Face towards us nay it were not a groundless doubt whether he do not always shine and the cloud be only in our hearts which makes us think the Sun is gone down or quite extinct if at any time we feel not his rays within us Beloved there be many things amongst us that single fire can do nothing upon they are of such a stubborn frozen nature there must be some material thing for the fire to consist in a sharp iron red hot that may bore as well as burn or else there is small hopes of conquering them Many men are so hardned and congealed in sin that the ordinary beam of the Spirit cannot hope to melt them the fire must come consubstantiate with some solid instrument some sound corpulent piercing judgment or else it will be very unlikely to thrive True it is the Spirit is an omnipotent Agent which can so invisibly infuse and insinuate its vertue through the inward man that the whole most enraged adversary shall presently fall to the earth Act. ix the whole carnal man lie prostrate and the sinner be without delay converted and this is a Miracle which I desire from my heart might be presently shewed upon every Soul here present But that which is to my present purpose is only this That God hath also other manners and ways of working which are truly to be said to have descended from Heaven though they are not so successful as to bring us thither other more calm and less boysterous influences which if they were received into an honest heart might prove semen
work so much miracle as Simon Magus is said to have done who undertook to raise the dead give motion to the head make the eyes look up or the tongue speak but the lower part of the man and that the heaviest will by no charm or spell be brought to stir but weigh sink even into Hell will still be carcass and corruption Damnation is his birth-right Ecclus xx 25. And it is impossible though not absolutely yet ex hypothesi the second Covenant being now sealed even for God himself to save him or give him life It is not David's Musick that exorcised and quieted Saul's evil spirit nor Pythagoras's Spondees that tamed a man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 set him right in his wits for ever that can work any effect on a fleshy heart So that Chrysostom would not wonder at the voice that cried O Altar Altar hear the voice of the Lord because Jeroboam's heart was harder than that nor will I find fault with Bonaventure that made a solemn prayer for a stony heart as if it were more likely to receive impression than that which he had already of flesh It were long to insist on the wilfulness of our fleshy hearts how they make a faction within themselves and bandy faculties for the Devil how when grace and life appear and make proffer of themselves all the carnal affections like them in the Gospel Joyn all with one consent to make excuses nothing in our whole lives we are so sollicitous for as to get off fairly to have made a cleanly Apology to the invitations of God's Spirit and yet for a need rather than go we will venture to be unmannerly We have all married a Wife espoused our selves to some amiable delight or other we cannot we will not come The Devil is wiser in his generation than we he knows the price and value of a Soul will pay any rate for it rather than lose his market he will give all the riches in the world rather than miss And we at how low a rate do we prize it it is the cheapest commodity we carry about us The beggarliest content under Heaven is fair is rich enough to be given in exchange for the Soul Spiritus non ponderat saith the Philosopher the Soul being a spirit when we put it into the balance weighs nothing nay more than so it is lighter than vanity lighter than nothing i. e. it doth not only weigh nothing but even lifts up the scale it is put into when nothing is weighed against it How many sins how many vanities how many idols i. e. in the Scripture phrase how many nothings be there in the world each of which will outweigh and preponderate the Soul It were tedious to observe and describe the several ways that our devillish sagacity hath found out to speed our selves to damnation to make quicker dispatch in that unhappy rode than ever Elias his fiery Chariot could do toward Heaven Our daily practice is too full of arguments almost every minute of our lives as it is an example so is it a proof of it Our pains will be employed to better purpose if we leave that as a worn beaten common place and betake our selves to a more necessary Theme a close of Exhortation And that shall be by way of Treaty as an Ambassador sent from God that you will lay down your arms that you will be content to be friends with God and accept of fair terms of composition which are That as you have thus long been enemies to God proclaiming hostility perpetually opposing every merciful will of his by that wilfulness so now being likely to fall into his hands you will prevent that ruine you will come in and whilst it is not too late submit your selves that you may not be forced as Rebels and outlaws but submit as Servants This perhaps may be your last parley for peace and if you stand out the battery will begin suddenly and with it the horrendum est Heb. x. 31. It is a fearful hideous thing to fall into the hands of the living God All that remains upon our wilful holding out may be the doom of Apostates from Christianity a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation that shall devour the adversaries Vers 27. And methinks the very emphasis in my Text notes as much Why will you die As if we were just now falling into the pit and there were but one minute betwixt this time of our jollity and our everlasting hell Do but lay this one circumstance to your hearts do but suppose your selves on a Bed of sickness laid at with a violent burning Fever such a one as shall finally consume the whole world as it were battered with thundering and lightning and besieged with fire where the next throw or plunge of thy disease may possibly separate thy soul from thy body and the mouth of Hell just then open and yawning at thee and then suppose there were one only minute wherein a serious resigning up thy self to God might recover you to Heaven O then what power and energy what force and strong efficacy would there be in this voice from God Why will you die I am resolved that heart that were truly sensible of it that were prepared seasonably by all these circumstances to receive it would find such inward vigor and spirit from it that it would strike death dead in that one minute this ultimus conatus this last spring and plunge would do more than a thousand heartless heaves in a lingring sickness and perhaps overcome and quit the danger And therefore let me beseech you to represent this condition to your selves and not any longer be flattered or couzened in a slow security To day if you will hear his voice harden not your hearts If you let it alone till this day come in earnest you may then perhaps heave in vain labour and struggle and not have breath enough to send up one sigh toward Heaven The hour of our death we are wont to call Tempus improbabilitatis a very improbable inch of time to build our Heaven in as after death is impossibilitatis a time wherein it is impossible to recover us from Hell If nothing were required to make us Saints but outward performances if true repentance were but to groan and Faith but to cry Lord Lord we could not promise our selves that at our last hour we should be sufficient for that perhaps a Lethargy may be our fate and then what life or spirits even for that perhaps a Fever may send us away raving in no case to name God but only in oaths and curses and then it were hideous to tell you what a Bethlehem we should be carried to But when that which must save us must be a work of the Soul and a gift of God how can we promise our selves that God will be so merciful whom we have till then contemned or our souls then capable of any holy impression having
find faith upon the earth And then immediately verse 9. he spake another parable to certain that trusted in themselves where this speech in the midst when the Son of man comes c. stands there by it self like the Pharisee in my Text seorsim apart as an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or intercalary day between two moneths which neither of them will own or more truly like one of Democritus his atomes the casual concurrence of which he accounted the principle and cause of all things That we may not think so vulgarly of Scripture as to dream that any tittle of it came by resultance or casually into the world that any speech dropt from his mouth unobserved that spake as man never spake both in respect of the matter of his speeches and the weight and secret energie of all accidents attending them it will appear on consideration that this speech of his which seems an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a supernumerary superfluous one is indeed the head of the corner and ground of the whole parable or at least a fair hint or occasion of delivering it at that time Not to trouble you with its influence on the parable going before concerning perseverance in prayer to which it is as an Isthmus or fibula to joyn it to what follows but to bring our eyes home to my present subject After the consideration of the prodigious defect of faith in this decrepit last age of the world in persons who made the greatest pretences to it and had arriv'd unto assurance and security in themselves he presently arraigns the Pharisee the highest instance of this confidence and brings his righteousness to the bar sub hac formâ There is like to be toward the second coming of Christ his particular visitation of the Jews and then its parallel his final coming to judgment such a specious pompous shew and yet such a small pittance of true faith in the world that as it is grown much less than a grain of mustard-seed it shall not be found when it is sought there will be such gyantly shadows and pigmy substances so much and yet so little faith that no Hieroglyphick can sufficiently express it but an Egyptian temple gorgeously over-laid inhabited within by Crocodiles and Cats and carcasses instead of gods or an apple of Sodom that shews well till it be handled a painted Sepulchre or a specious nothing or which is the contraction and Tachygraphy of all these a Pharisee at his prayers And thereupon Christ spake the parable verse 9. there were two men went up into the temple to pray the one a Pharisee c. verse 10. Concerning the true nature of faith mistaken extremely now adays by those which pretend most to it expuls'd almost out of mens brains as well as hearts so that now it is scarce to be found upon earth either in our lives or almost in our books there might be framed a seasonable complaint in this place were I not already otherwise imbarked By some prepossessions and prejudices infus'd into us as soon as we can conn a Catechism of that making it comes to pass that many men live and die resolved that faith is nothing but the assurance of the merits of Christ applied to every man particularly and consequently of his salvation that I must first be sure of Heaven or else I am not capable of it confident of my salvation or else necessarily damned Cornelius Agrippa being initiated in natural magick Paracelsus in mineral extractions Plato full of his Idea's will let nothing be done without the Pythagoreans brought up with numbers perpetually in their ears and the Physicians poring daily upon the temperaments of the body the one will define the soul an harmony the other a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Philoponus And so are many amongst us that take up fancies upon trust for truths never laying any contrary proposals to heart come at last to account this assurance as a principle without which they can do nothing the very soul that must animate all their obedience which is otherwise but a carcass or heathen vertue in a word the only thing by which we are justified or saved The confutation of this popular error I leave to some grave learned tongue that may enforce it on you with some authority for I conceive not any greater hindrance of Christian obedience and godly practice among us than this for as long as we are content with this assurance as sufficient stock to set up for Heaven there is like to be but little faith upon the earth Faith if it be truly so is like Christ himself when he was Emmanuel God upon the earth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an incarnate faith cut out and squared into limbs and lineaments not only a spiritual invisible faith but even flesh and blood to be seen and felt organiz'd for action 't is to speak and breath and walk and run the ways of Gods Commandments An assent not only to the promises of the Gospel but uniformly to the whole word of God commands and threats as well as promises And this not in the brain or surface of the soul as the Romanist seats it but in the heart as regent of the hand and tongue in the concurrence of all the affections Where it is not only a working faith an obeying faith but even a work even obedience it self not only a victorious faith but even victory it self 1 Jo. 5. 4. This is our victory even our faith to part with this as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is our only business is sure an unreasonable Thesis Any faith but this is a faith in the clouds or in the air the upper region of the soul the brain or at most but a piece of the heart a magical faith a piece of sorcery and conjuring that will teach men to remove mountains only by thinking they are able but will never be taken by Christ for this faith upon the earth if it do walk here it is but as a Ghost 't is even pity but it were laid Let me beseech you meekly but if this would not prevail I would conjure you all in this behalf the silly weak Christian to fly from this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and call for some light of their lawful pastors to find out the deceit and the more knowing illuminate Christian to examine sincerely and impartially by feeling and handling it throughly whether there be any true substance in it or no. The Pharisee looking upon himself superficially thought he had gone on on very good grounds very unquestionable terms that he was possest of a very fair estate he brought in an inventory of a many precious works I fast I tithe c. verse 12. hath no other Liturgies but thanksgivings no other sacrifice to bring into the temple but Eucharistical and yet how foully the man was mistaken God I thank c. The first thing I shall
Pharisee is noted for An easiness and cheatableness that costs the bankrupting of many a jolly christian Soul He saith Plutarch that wants health let him go to the Physicians but he that wants 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a good durable habit of body let him go to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the masters of exercise otherwise he shall never be able to confirm himself into a solid firm constant health call'd thereupon by Hippocrates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the constitution of wrestlers without which health it self is but a degree of sickness nourishment proves but swellings and not growth but a tympany Both these saith he Philosophy will produce in the soul not only teaching men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where by the way he repeats almost the whole decalogue of Moses though in an heathen Dialect to worship the Gods c. which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the health of the soul but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that which is above all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not to be overjoyed or immoderately affected in all this This which he attributes to Philosophy in general is saith Aristotle an act of intellectual prudence or sobriety 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not to vouchsafe higher titles to himself than he is worthy of not to think himself in better health than he is which is not the dialect of a meer heathen but the very language of Canaan Rom. 12. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the very word in Aristotle which cannot be better exprest than by that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to have a moderate sober equal opinion of ones own gifts not to overprize Gods graces in our selves not to accept ones own person or give flattering titles to ones self in Jobs phrase This Chrysostom calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a word near kin unto the former the meekness or lowliness of heart 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. when a man having attain'd to a great measure of grace and done great matters by it and knoweth it too yet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fancies no great matter of himself for all this As the 3. children in Daniel having receiv'd a miracle of graces which affected even the enemies of God yet were not affected with it themselves Enabled to be martyrs and yet live Or as the Poet of Callimachus that stood after he was dead 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Which is Nebuchadnezzars phrase walking in the midst of the fire and yet they have no hurt Yet in their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their Song of praise all that they say of themselves is this and now we cannot open our mouths ver 9. for this saith Chrysostom we open our mouths that we may say this only that it is not for us to open our mouths By this low modest interpretation every Christian is to make of his own actions and gifts you may guess somewhat of the Pharisees misconceits For first were he never so holy and pure of never so spiritual Angelical composition yet the very reflecting on these excellencies were enough to make a devil of him The Angels saith Gerson as the Philosophers intelligences have a double habitude two sorts of imployments natural to them One upwards in an admiration of Gods greatness love of his beauty obedience to his will moving as it were a circular daily motion about God their Center as Boethius of them mentemque profundam circumeunt another downward of regiment and power in respect of all below which they govern and move and manage Now if it be questioned saith he which of these two be more honourable for the credit of the Angelical nature I determine confidently that of subjection pulchriorem perfectiorem esse quam secunda regitivae dominationis 't is more renown to be under God than over all the world besides As the service to a King is the greatest preferment that even a Peer of the Realm is capable of And then if an Angel should make a song of exultance to set himself out in the greatest pomp he would begin it as Mary doth her Magnificat For he hath regarded the low estate of his servant So that the blessed Virgins mention of her own lowliness was not a piece only of modest devotion but an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of expression and high Metaphysical insinuation of the greatest dignity in the world And then let the Pharisee be as righteous as himself can fancy come to that pitch indeed which the contemptuous opinionative Philosophers feigned to themselves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Tatianus which is in the Church of Laodicaea's phrase I am rich and am increased in spiritual wealth and have need of nothing or the fools in the gospel I have store laid up for many years nay to St. Pauls pitch rapt so high that the schools do question whether he were viator or comprehensor a traveller or at his journeys end yet the very opinion of Gods graces would argue him a Pharisee this conceiving well of his estate is the foulest misconceit For if he be such a complete righteous person so accomplish't in all holy graces why should he thus betray his soul by depriving it of this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the very Heathens could observe so absolutely necessary this humility and lowliness of mind this useful and most ingenuous vertue always to think vilely of himself not to acknowledge any excellence in himself though he were even put upon the rack The Philosophers that wrote against pride are censured to have spoil'd all by putting their names to their books Modesty like Dina desiring never so little to be seen is ravished The sanctifying spirit that beautifies the soul ie an humbling spirit also to make it unbeauteous in its own eyes And this is the first misconceit the first step of Pharisaical hypocrisy thinking well of ones self on what ground soever contrary to that virgin grace Humility which is a vertue required not only of notorious infamous sinners for what thanks or commendation is it for him to be on the ground that hath faln and bruised himself in his race for him that is ready to starve to go a begging but chiefly and mainly of him that is most righteous when he that knows a great deal of good by himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a great deal of good success in the spirit yet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is not advanced a whit at the fancy of all this The Pharisees second misconceit is a favourable overprizing of his own worth expecting a higher reward than it in proportion deserves When looking in the glass he sees all far more glorious in that reflect beam than it is in the direct all the deformities left in the glass and nothing but fair return'd to him a rough harsh unpleasing voice smoothed and softned and grown harmonious in the Eccho there is no such cheating in the world as by reflexions A looking-glass by shewing some handsom persons their good faces
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to magnifie a vow then is the vow or resolution truly great that will stand us in stead when it is performed As for all others they remain as brands and monuments of reproach to us upbraiding us of our inconstancy first then of disobedience and withal as signs to warn that Gods strength is departed from us I doubt not but this strength being thus lost may return again before our death giving a plunge as it did in Samson when he pluckt the house about their ears at last Jude xvi But this must be by the growing out of the hair again verse 22. the renewing of his repentance and sanctity with his vow and by prayer unto God verse 28. Lord God or as the LXXII 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Remember me I pray thee and strengthen me but for all this it was said before in the 19. verse his strength and in the 20. verse the Lord was departed from him And so now doubt it may from us if we have no better security for our selves than the present possession and a dream of perpetuity For though no man can excommunicate himself by one rule yet he may by another in the Canon Law that there be some faults excommunicate a man ipso facto one who hath committed them the law excommunicates though the Judge do not you need not the application there be perhaps some sins and Devils like the Carian Scorpions which Apollonius and Antigonus mention out of Aristotle which when they strike strangers do them no great hurt 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 presently kill their own countrey-men some Devils perhaps that have power to hurt only their own subjects as sins of weakness and ignorance though they are enough to condemn an unregenerate man yet we hope through the merits of Christ into whom he is ingrafted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 shall do little hurt to the regenerate unless it be only to keep him humble to cost him more sighs and prayers But then saith the same Apollonius there your Labylonian snakes that are quite contrary do no great hurt to their own countrey-men but are present death to strangers and of this number it is to be feared may presumption prove and spiritual pride sins that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Devils natives ordinary habitual sinners need not much to fear but to the stranger and him that is come from far thinking himself as S. Paul was dropt out of the third Heaven and therefore far enough from the infernal countrey 't is to be feared I say they may do much mischief to them And therefore as Porphyry sayes of Plotinus in his life and that for his commendation that he was not ashamed to suck when he was eight years old but as he went to the Schools frequently diverted to his nurse so will it concern us for the getting of a consistent firm habit of soul not to give over the nurse when we are come to age and years in the spirit to account our selves babes in our virility and be perpetually a calling for the dug the sincere milk of the word of the Sacraments of the Spirit and that without any coyness or shame be we in our own conceits nay in the truth never so perfect full grown men in Christ Jesus And so much be spoken of the first point proposed the Pharisees flattering misconceit of his own estate and therein implicitely of the Christians premature deceivable perswasions of himself 1. thinking well of ones self on what grounds soever 2. overprizing of his own worth and graces 3. his opinion of the consistency and immutability of his condition without either thought of what 's past or fear of what 's to come Many other misconceits may be observed if not in the Pharisee yet in his parallel the ordinary confident Christian as 1. that Gods decree of election is terminated in their particular and individual entities without any respect to their qualifications and demeanors 2. That all Christian faith is nothing but assurance a thing which I toucht 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the preface and can scarce forbear now I meet with it again 3. That the Gospel consists all of promises of what Christ will work in us no whit of precepts or prohibitions 4. That it is a state of ease altogether and liberty no whit of labour and subjection but the Pharisee would take it ill if we should digress thus far and make him wait for us again at our return We hasten therefore to the second part the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or natural importance of the words and there we shall find him standing apart and thanking God only perhaps in complement his posture and language give notice of his pride the next thing to be toucht upon Pride is a vice either 1. in our natures 2. in our educations or 3. taken upon us for some ends the first is a disease of the soul which we are inclined to by nature but actuated by a full diet and inflation of the soul through taking in of knowledge virtue or the like which is intended indeed for nourishment for the soul but through some vice in the digestive faculty turns all into air and vapours and windiness whereby the soul is not fed but distended and not fill'd but troubled and even tortured out of it self To this first kind of pride may be accommodate many of the old fancies of the Poets and Philosophers the Gyants fighting with God i. e. the ambitious daring approaches of the soul toward the unapproachable light which cost the Angels so dear and all mankind in Eve when she ventured to taste of the tree of knowledge Then the fancy of the heathens mentioned by Athenagoras that the souls of those gyants were Devils that 't is the Devil indeed that old serpent that did in Adams time and doth since animate and actuate this proud soul and set it a moving And Philoponus saith that winds and tumours i. e. lusts and passions those troublesom impressions in the soul of man are the acceptablest sacrifices the highest feeding to the Devils nay to the very damned in Hell who rejoyce as heartily to hear of the conversion of one vertuous or learned man to the Devil of such a brave proselyte I had almost said as the Angels in Heaven at the repentance and conversion of a sinner This is enough I hope to make you keep down this boyling and tumultuousness of the soul lest it make you either a prey or else companions for Devils and that 's but a hard choice nay a man had far better be their food than their associates for then there might be some end hoped for by being devoured but that they have a villanous quality in their feeding they bite perpetually but never swallow all jaws and teeth but neither throats nor stomachs which is noted perhaps by that phrase in the Psalmist Death gnaweth upon the wicked is perpetually a gnawing but never devours
against all persons or doctrines or lives that are not ordered or revised by them For what Photius out of Josephus observes among others to have been one main cause or Prognostick of the destruction of Jerusalem the civil wars betwixt the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Zelots and the cut-throats pray God we find not the same success amongst us Whilst the Zelots saith he fell on the Sicarii the whole body of the city 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was bitterly and unmercifully butchered betwixt them and under one of those two names all the people were brought to suffer their part in the massacre I desire not to chill or damp you with unnecessary fears or to suspect that our sins shall be so unlimited as utterly to outvie and overreach Gods mercies But beloved this ill blood that is generally nourish't amongst us if it be not a Prognostick of our fate is yet an ill Symptome of our disease These convulsions and distortions of one member of the body from another as far as it can possibly be distended this burning heat and from thence raving and disquietness of the soul are certainly no very comfortable Symptomes When the Church and Kingdom must be dichotomiz'd precisely divided into two extreme parts and all moderate persons by each extreme tossed to the other with furious prejudice must brand all for Hereticks or carnal persons that will not undergo their razor And then the contrary extreme censure and scoff at their preciseness that will not bear them company to every kind of riot These beloved are shrewd feverish distempers pray God they break not forth into a flame When the boat that goes calmly with the stream in the midst of two impetuous rowers shall be assaulted by each of them for opposing or affronting each when the moderate Christian shall be branded on the one hand for preciseness on the other for intemperance on the one side for a Puritan on the other for a Papist or a Remonstrant when he that keeps himself from either extreme shall yet be entituled to both what shall we say is become of that ancient Primitive charity and moderation The use beloved that I desire to make of all this shall not be to declaim at either but only by this compass to find out the true point that we must sail by By this saith Aristotle you shall know the golden mediocrity that it is complained on both sides as if it were both extremes that may you define to be exact liberality which the covetous man censures for prodigality and the prodigal for covetousness And this shall be the sum not only of my advice to you but prayers for you that in the Apostles phrase your moderation may be known unto all men by this livery and cognizance that you are indited by both extremes And if there be any such Satanical art crept in amongst us of authorizing errors or sins on one side by pretending zeal and earnestness against their contraries as Photius observes that it was a trick of propagating heresies by writing books intitled to the confutation of some other heresie the Lord grant that this evil spirit may be either laid or cast out either fairly led or violently hurried out of our coasts I have done with the Pharisees censoriousness I come now in the last place to the ground or rather occasion of it his seeing the Publican comparing himself with notorious sinners I thank thee that c. That verse 1 Cor. xv 33. which St. Paul cites out of Menanders Thais that wicked communication corrupts good manners is grounded on this moral essay that nothing raiseth up so much to good and great designs as emulation that he that casts himself upon such low company that he hath nothing to imitate or aspire to in them is easily perswaded to give over any farther pursuit of vertue as believing that he hath enough already because none of his acquaintance hath any more thus have many good wits been cast away by falling unluckily into bad times which could yield them no hints for invention no examples of poetry nor encouragement for any thing that was extraordinary And this is the Pharisees fate in my text that looking upon himself either in the deceivable glass of the sinful world or in comparison with notorious sinners extortioners adulterers Publicans sets himself off by these foils finds nothing wanting in himself so is solaced with a good comfortable opinion of his present estate and a slothful negligence of improving it And this beloved is the ordinary lenitive which the Devil administers to the sharp unquiet diseases of the conscience if at any time they begin to rage the only conserve that he folds his bitterest receits in that they may go down undiscern'd that we are not worse than other men that we shall be sure to have companions to hell nay that we need not neither at all fear that danger for if Heaven gates be so strait as not to receive such sinners as we the rooms within are like to be but poorly furnisht with guests the marriage feast will never be eaten unless the lame and cripples in the street or hospital be fetch 't in to fill the table But beloved the comforts with which the Devil furnisheth these men are if they were not merely feigned and fantastical yet very beggarly and lamentable such as Achilles in Homer would have scorned only to be chief among the dead or Princes and eminent persons in Hell We must set our emulation higher than so somewhat above the ordinary pitch or mark Let our designs flie at the same white that the skilfullest marks-men in the army of Saints and Martyrs have aimed at before us that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Church the religious exercisers and champions and trophy-bearers of this holy martial field have dealt in 'T is a poor boast to have out-gon Heathens and Turks in vertue and good works to be taller than the dwarfs as it were and Pygmies of the world we must not be thus content but outvy even the sons of Anak those tall gyantly supererogatory undertakings of the proudest nay humblest Romanists O what a disgrace will it be for us Protestants at the dreadful day of doom O what an accession not only to our torments but our shame and indignation at our selves to see the expectation of meriting in a Papist nay the desire of being counted vertuous in a Heathen attended with a more pompous train of charitable magnificent deeds of constant magnanimous sayings than all our faith can shew or vouch for us Shall not the Romanist triumph and upbraid us in St. James his language Chap. ii 18. Thou hast faith and I have works and all that we can fetch out of St. Paul not able to stop his mouth from going on Shew me thy faith without thy works as our english reads it out of the
habit never to rejoyce or grieve but on just occasion which lesson we must con perfectly when we are young and then with years an easie discipline will bring on vertue of its own accord Lastly in the transcendent knowledge of Metaphysicks which Aristotle would fain call wisdom 't is the Philosophers labour which they were very sedulous in to invent and set down rules to prepare us for that study the best that Aristotle hath is in the third of Metaph. to examine and inform our selves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which things are chiefly worth doubting of and searching after in which one thing if we would observe his counsel if we would learn to doubt only of those things which are worth our knowledge we should soon prove better Scholars than we are Iamblicus beyond all the rest most to the purpose prescribes retiredness and contempt of the world that so we might 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ever live and be nourished by the excursions of the mind towards God where indeed he speaks more like a Christian than a Pythagorean as if he had learnt Christ to deny himself and the world and follow him and intended to come to that pitch and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which S. Paul speaks of Gal. ii 20. The life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith c. But to conclude this praecognoscendum there be throughout all works of nature and imitations of art some imperfect grounds on which all perfection is built some common expressions with which the understanding is first signed some ground-colours without the laying on of which no perfect effigies or pourtraicture can be drawn Nay thus it is in some measure in spiritual matters also we are men before we are Christians there is a natural life and there is a spiritual life And as in the resurrection 1 Cor. xv 46. so also in the spiritual 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the soul first that which is natural and after that which is spiritual and in the spiritual life there be also its periods the infancy the youth and virility of the spirit the first being most imperfect yet most necessary and preparing the way to the last perfection To bring all home to the business in hand thus did it not befit the Saviour of the World to come abruptly into it to put on flesh as soon as flesh had put on sin the business was to be done by degrees and after it had been a long time in working for the final production of it the fulness of time was to be expected The Law had its time of paedagogy to declare it self and to be obeyed as his Usher for many years and after all this he appears not in the World till his Baptist hath proclaimed him he makes not toward his Court till his Harbinger hath taken up the rooms He comes not to inhabit either in the greater or lesser Jewry the World or mans heart till the Praecursor hath warn'd all to make ready for him and this is the voice of the Praecursor his sermon and the words of my Text Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Instead of dividing the words I shall unite them and after I have construed them to you contrive that into one body which would not conveniently be dismembred 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies to fit to prepare to make ready Ye are all those to whom Christ should ever come The ways of the Lord are whatsoever is capable of receiving of Christ or his Gospel peculiarly the hearts of the elect The form of speech imperative notes the whole complexum to be one single duty required of all the Baptists and my Auditors sub hac formâ that every man's heart must be prepared for the receiving of Christ or punctually to imitate the order of the words in my Text the preparation of the soul is required for Christ's birth in us For there is in every elect vessel a spiritual 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or mystical incarnation of Christ where the soul like Mary is first overshadowed by the holy Ghost then conceives then carries in the womb grows big and at last falls into travail and brings forth Christ My Text goes not thus far to bring to the Birth neither will I. My discourse shall be happy if it may be his Baptist his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in your hearts to prepare them for his birth which I shall endeavour to do first by handling preparation in general 2. The preparation here specified of the soul 3. In order to Christs birth in us And first of preparation in general 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 prepare ye or make ready the necessity of this performance to any undertaking may appear by those several precedaneous methods in common life which have nothing in themselves to ingratiate them unto us but cost much toil and trouble yet notwithstanding are submitted to If the Earth would answer the farmers expectation without any culture or husbandry he would never be so prodigal towards it But seeing it hath proposed its fruitfulness under condition of our drudgery we plow and harrow and manure and drain and weed it or else we are sure to fare the worse at harvest The variety of preparations in these low affairs was by Cato and Varro and Columella accounted a pretty piece of polite necessary learning And a Christian if he will apply their rules to his spiritual Georgicks the culture of his soul shall be able to husband it the better and by their directions have a further insight into those fallow-grounds of his own heart which the Prophet speaks of 'T were a great and perhaps unnecessary journey to trace over the whole world of creatures to perfect this observation almost every passage of nature will furnish you with an example Hence is it that they that had nothing but natural reason to instruct them were assiduous in this practice and never ventured on any solemn business without as solemn endeavours to fit themselves for the work they took in hand those series of preparations before the ancient Athletica as anoynting and bathing and rubbing and dust 't were fit enough for a sermon to insist on the exercise which they prepared for being reputed sacred and parts of their solemnest worship and the moral of them would prove of good use to discipline and to bring us up to those spiritual Agones mentioned in Scripture as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eph. 4. 14. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1 Cor. ix 26. and in the same place 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and its preparative 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Wrestling cuffing and running three of the five Olympian games adopted as it were into the Church and spiritualiz'd by the Apostle for our imitation But to pass by these and the like as less apposite for our discourse what shall we think Was it superstition or rather mannerlyness that made the Graecian Priests so rub and wash and scour themselves before they would meddle with a
sacrifice 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it was and that we construe superstition but indeed it signifies an awe and reverence to the Deity they worship and a fear and a care lest the unpreparedness of the Priest should pollute their sacrifice as 't is much to be feared that our holyest duties for want of this care are turn'd into sin the vanities and faults of our very prayers adding to the number of those guilts we pray against and every sacrifice even of atonement it self needing some expiation To look a while on the highest part and as it were the Sacraments of their Religion their Eleusinia sacra resembling in one respect Christian Baptism in another holy Orders What a multitude of rites and performances were required of every one before his admission to them For their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being divided into two classes the less or lower sort were praeludia to the greater or as the Scholiast on Aristophanes hath it more clearly to our purpose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a premundation or presanctification of them that sued to be admitted higher as Baptism Confirmation and a Christian education in the Church fits us for the participations of those mysteries which the other sacraments present to us so that it punctually notes that preparation we here talk of for before they were admitted to those grand 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they were saith Suidas to spend a year or two in a lower form undergo a shop of purgations 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and many more so that Tertullian could not without wonder and praise of their solemnities observe tot suspiria epoptarum multam in adytis divinitatem 'T was no mean toil nor ordinary merit that was required to make them capable of these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Aristophanes calls them The ground of all the ceremony we may observe to be the natural impurity which the Heathens themselves acknowledge to be in every man as may appear most distinctly by Iamblicus though they knew not clearly at what door it came in at sure they were they found it there and therefore their own reason suggested them that things of an excellent purity of an inherent or at least an adherent sanctity were not to be adventured on by an impure nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Clement till it had by some laborious prescribed means somewhat rid it self of its pollutions and this the Barbarian did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith he thinking the bare washing of the outward parts sufficient but the Graecians whom learning had made more substantial in their Worship required moreover an habituate temper of passions longam castimoniam sedatam mentem that the inward calmness and serenity of the affections might perform the promises of the outward purity In sum when they were thus qualified and had fulfil'd the period or circle of their purgation required to their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they were at length admitted intra adyta ad epoptica sacra where all the mysteries of their Theology were revealed to them All which seems to me as much as can be expected from their dim imperfect knowledge to express the state of grace and saving knowledge in the world and also the office of ministring in sacred things into which no man was thought fit to be received or initiated but he which had undergone a prentiship of purgations for although those Eleusynia of theirs at a Christians examination would prove nothing but religious delusions containing some prodigies of their mythical divinity in sum but grave specious puppets and solemn serious nothing yet hence it may appear that the eye of nature though cheated in the main taking that for a sacred mystery which was but a prodigious vanity yet kept it self constant in its ceremonies would not dare or hope to approach abruptly to any thing which it could believe to be holy Now shall we be more sawcy in our devotions and insolent in our approaches to either the throne of Majesty or grace of our true God than they were to the unprofitable empty 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of their false Shall we call the mannerliness of the Heathen up in judgment against the Christian rudeness 'T will be an horrid exprobration at the day of Doom when a neat wash't respectful Gentile shall put a swinish miry negligent Christian to shame such a one who never took so much care to trim himself to entertain the bridegroom as the Heathen did to adore an empty gaud a vain ridiculous bauble Yet is not their example prescribed you as an accomplish't pattern as the pitch to aim at and drive no higher but rather as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a sarcasm or contumely engrav'd in Marble to upbraid you mightily if you have not gone so far All that they practised was but superficial and referring to the body and therein the washing of the outsides yours must be inward and of the soul which is the next word in the doctrine the specification of it by the subject noted in the Text by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the way and expressed in the latter part of the subject of my proposition the Preparation of the soul This Preparation consists in removing those burthens and wiping off those blots of the soul which any way deface or oppress it in scouring off that rust and filth which it contracted in the Womb and driving it back again as near integrity as may be And this was the aim and business of the wisest among the Ancients who conceived it possible fully to repair what was lost because the privation was not total and finding some sparks of the primitive flame still warm within them endeavour'd and hoped hard to enliven them To this purpose a great company of them saith S. Austin puzled themselves in a design of purging the soul per 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 consecrationes theurgicas but all in vain as Porphyry himself confesses No man saith he by this theurgick Magick could ever purge himself the nearer to God or wipe his eyes clear enough for such a vision They indeed went more probably to work which used no other magick or exorcism to cast out these Devils to clear and purge the soul but only their reason which the Moralist set up and maintain'd against 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the two ringleaders of sensuality To this purpose did Socrates the first and wisest Moralist furnish and arm the reasonable faculty with all helps and defensations that Philosophy could afford it that it might be able to shake off and disburthen it self of those encumbrances which naturally weighed and pressed it downward ut exoneratus animus naturali vigore in aeterna se attolleret where if that be true which some observe of Socrates that his professing to know nothing was because all was taught him by his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I wonder not that by others his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and consecrated into a Deity for certainly never Devil bore so much charity to mankind and treachery to his own kingdom as to instruct him in the cleansing of his soul whereby those strong holds of Satan are undermined which cannot subsist but on a stiff and deep Clay foundation From these beginnings of Socrates the moralists ever since have toil'd hard at this task to get the soul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Iambl phrases it out of that corruption of its birth that impurity born with it which the soul contracts by its conversation with the body and from which they say only Philosophy can purge it For it is Philoponus his observation that that Canon of the Physicians That the inclinations of the soul necessarily follow the temper of the body is by all men set down with that exception implied unless the Man have studied Philosophy for that study can reform the other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 make the soul contemn the commands and arm it against the influences and poysons and infections of the body In sum the main of Philosophy was to this purpose to take off the soul from those corporeal dependences and so in a manner restore it to its primitive self that is to some of that divine perfection with which it was infused for then is the soul to be beheld in its native shape when 't is stript of all its passions At other times you do not see the soul but some froth and weeds of it as the gray part of the Sea is not to be called Sea 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some scurf and foam and weeds that lye on the top of it So then to this spiritualizing of the soul and recovering it to the simplicity of its essence their main precepts were to quell and suppress 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Maximus Tyrius speaks that turbulent prachant common people of the soul all the irrational affections and reduce it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into a Monarchy or regal government where reason might rule Lord and King For whensoever any lower affection is suffered to do any thing there saith Philoponus we do not work like men but some other creatures Whosoever suffer their lower nutritive faculties to act freely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 these men are in danger to become trees that is by these operations they differ nothing from meer plants So those that suffer their sensitive appetites lust and rage to exercise at freedom are not to be reckoned men but beasts 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. then only will our actions argue us men when our reason is at the forge This was the aim and business of Philosophy to keep us from unmanning our selves to restore reason to its scepter to rescue it from the tyranny of that most atheistical usurper as Iambl calls the affections and from hence he which lived according to those precepts of Philosophy was said both by them and Clement and the Fathers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and in Austin Secundum intellectum vivere to live according to the guidance of the reasonable soul Which whosoever did saith Plotinus though by it in respect of divinity he was not perfect yet at last should be sure to find a gracious providence first to perfect then to crown his natural moderate well tempered endeavour as Austin cites it out of him L. 10. de civit Dei This whose course and proceedings and assent of the soul through these Philosophical preparations to spiritual perfection is summarily and clearly set down for us in Photius out of Isidorus Philosophically observed to consist in three steps 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The first business of the soul is to call in those parts of it which were engaged in any forraign fleshly imployment and retire and collect it self unto its self and then secondly it learns to quit it self to put off the whole natural man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it s own fashions and conceits all the notions all the pride of humane reason and set it self on those things which are nearest kin to the soul that is spiritual affairs and then thirdly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it falls into holy enthusiasms and spiritual elevations which it continues till it be changed and led into the calm and serenity above the state of man agreeable to the tranquillity and peace which the Gods enjoy And could the Philosophers be their own Scholars could they exhibit that felicity which they describe and fansie they might glory in their morality and indeed be said to have prepared and purged the soul for the receit of the most pure and spiritual guest But certainly their speculation out-ran their practice and their very morality was but Theorical to be read in their books and wishes far more legible than in their lives and their enjoyments Yet some degrees also of purity or at least a less measure of impurity they attained to only upon the expectation and desire of happiness proposed to them upon condition of performance of moral precepts for all things being indifferently moved to the obtaining of their summum bonum all I say not only rational agents 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Andronicus saith on the Ethicks which have nothing but nature to incite them to it the natural man may upon a sight and liking of an happiness proposed on severe conditions call himself into some degrees of moral temper as best suiting to the performance of the means and obtaining of the end he looks for and by this temper be said to be morally better than another who hath not taken this course to subdue his passions And this was evident enough among the Philosophers who were as far beyond the ordinary sort in severity of conversation as depth of learning and read them as profitable precepts in the example of their lives as ever the Schools breathed forth in their Lectures Their profession was incompatible with many vices and would not suffer them to be so rich in variety of sins as the vulgar and then whatsoever they thus did an unregenerate Christian may surely perform in a far higher measure as having more choice of ordinary restrainment from sin than ever had any heathen for it will be much to our purpose to take notice of those ordinary restraints by which unregenerate men may be and are curbed and kept back from sinning and these saith Austin God affords to the very reprobates Non continens in ira suas misericordias Much to this same purpose hath holy Maximus in those admirable Sections 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where most of the restraints he speaks of are competible to the unregenerate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. 1. Fear of men 2. Denunciation of judgments from Heaven 3. Temperance and moral vertues nay sometimes other moral vices as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 vain glory or ostentation of integrity 4. Natural impressions to do to others as we would be done to 5. Clearness of judgment in
moral men seem to me in as good if not better case than the other term of comparison the careless negligent debauch't men For upon their grounds is it not as easie for the converting spirit to enter and subdue one Lucifer one proud Devil in the heart otherwise pretty well qualified as to deal with a whole legion of blasphemous violent riotous railing ignorant Devils I have done all with the confutation of this loose groundless opinion which if 't were true would yet prove of dangerous consequence to be preached in abating and turning our edge which is of it self blunt and dull enough toward goodness nay certainly it hath proved scandalous to those without as may appear by that boast and exultancy of Campian in his Eighth reason where he upbraids us English-men of our abominable Lutheran licentious doctriâ—e as he calls it Quanto sceleratior es tanto vicinior gratiae and therefore I do not repent that I have been somewhat large in the refuting of it as also because it doth much import to the clearing of my discourse for if the meer moral men be farthest from Heaven then have I all this while busied my self and tormented you with an unprofitable nay injurious preparation whereas I should have prescribed you a shorter easier call by being extremely sinful according to these two Aphorisms of Hippocrates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The strongest bodies are in greatest danger and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and height of a disease is the fittest opportunity for a miraculous cure But beloved let us more considerately bethink our selves let us study and learn and walk a more secure probable way to Heaven and for those of us which are yet unregenerate though we obtained no grace of God but that of nature and reason and our Christianity to govern us yet let us not contemn those ordinary restraints which these will afford us let us attend in patience sobriety and humility and prayers the good time and leisures of the spirit let us not make our reasonable soul our profession of men of Christians ashamed of us let not the heathen and beasts have cause to blush at us let us remain men till it may please him to call us into Saints lest being plunged in habitual confident sinning that Hell and Tophet on Earth the very omnipotent mercy of God be in a manner foiled to hale us out again let us improve rack and stretch our natural abilities to the highest that although according to our thirteenth Article we cannot please God yet we may not mightily provoke him Let every man be in some proportion to his gifts Christs Baptist and forerunner and harbinger in himself that whensoever he shall appear or knock he may enter lodge and dwell without resistence Lastly after all thy preparations be not secure if the bridegroom will not vouchsafe to rest with you all your provision is in vain all the morality and learning and gifts and common graces unless Christ at last be born in us are but embryo's nay abortives rude imperfect horrid 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Philosopher dies in his nonage in whom Christ was never born The highest reach of years and learning is but infancy without the virility and manhood of the spirit by which we are made perfect men in Christ Jesus Wherefore above all things in the world let us labour for this perfection let us melt and dissolve every faculty and spirit about us in pursuit of it and at last seal and bless and crown our endeavours with our prayers and with all the Rhetorick and means and humility and violence of our souls importune and lay hold on the sanctifying Spirit and never leave till he hath blessed and breathed on us O thou mighty controuling holy hallowing Ghost be pleased with thine effectual working to suppress in us all resistence of the pride of nature and prepare us for thy kingdom of grace here and glory hereafter Now to him which hath elected us hath created and redeemed us c. The X. Sermon JOHN vii 48. Have any of the Pharisees believed on him IT is observable from History with what difficulty Religion attempts to propagate and establish it self with the many what Countenance and encouragement it hath required from those things which are most specious and pompous in the World how it hath been fain to keep its dependencies and correspondencies and submit to the poor condition of sustaining it self by those beggarly helps which the World and the flesh will afford it Two main pillars which it relies on are Power and Learning the Camp and the Schools or in a word authority of great ones and countenance of Scholars the one to force and extort obedience the other to insinuate belief and assent the first to ravish the second to perswade One instance for all if we would plant Christianity in Turky we must first invade and conquer them and then convince them of their follies which about an hundred years ago Cleonard proposed to most Courts of Christendom and to that end himself studied Arabick that Princes would joyn their strength and Scholars their brains and all surprize them in their own land and language at once besiege the Turk and his Alcoran put him to the sword and his religion to the touchstone command him to Christianity with an high hand and then to shew him the reasonableness of our commands Thus also may we complain but not wonder that the Reformation gets ground so slow in Christendom because the forces and potent abettors of the Papacy secure them from being led captive to Christ as long as the Pope is riveted so fast in his chair and as long as the rulers take part with him there shall be no doubt of the truth of their religion unless it please God to back our arguments with steel and to raise up Kings and Emperours to be our Champions we may question but never confute his supremacy Let us come with all the power and Rhetorick of Paul and Barnabas all the demonstrations of reason and spirit yet as long as they have such Topicks against us as the authority of the Rulers and Pharisees we may dispute out our hearts and preach out our Lungs and gain no proselytes all that we shall get is but a scoffe and a curse a Sarcasm and an Anathema in the words next after my text This people which know not the law are cursed there is no heed to be taken to such poor contemptible fellows To bring all home to the business of the text Let Christ come with all the enforcement and violence and conviction of his spirit sublimity of his speech and miracles all the power of Rhetorick and Rhetorick of his power so that all that see or hear bear witness that never man spake as this man yet all this shall be accounted but a delusion but an inchantment of some seduced wretches unless the great men or deep scholars will be pleased
important documents of the Text our righteousness and faith may exceed that of the Pharisees Mat. v. 20. our preaching and walking may be like that of Christs in power and as having authority and not as the Scribes Mat. vii 29. and we not content with a floating knowledge in the brain do press and sink it down into our inferiour faculties our senses and affections till it arise in a full harvest of fruitful diligently working faith It was Zenophanes his phansie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that God was all eyes and all ears but breathed not there was no use of that in him and so is it with us who are always exercising our knowledge powers to see and hear what e're is possible but for any breath of life in us any motion of the spirit we have no use of it it is not worth valuing or taking notice of nothing so vulgar and contemptible in them that have it nothing of which we examine our selves so slightly of which we are so easily mistaken so willingly deceived and nothing that we will be content to have so small a measure of A little of it soon tires us out 't is too thin aery diet for us to live upon we cannot hold out long on it like the Israelites soon satiated with their bread from Heaven nothing comparable to their old food that Nilus yielded them Numb xi 5. We remember the fish that we did eat in Egypt but now our soul is dryed away there is nothing but this Manna before our eyes as if that were not worth the gathering Pythagoras could say that if any one were to be chosen to pray for the people to be made a Priest he must be a vertuous man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Iamblicus because the Gods would take more heed to his words and again that many things might be permitted the people which should be interdicted Preachers It was the confirmation of his precepts by his life and practice 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that made Italy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all the Country his School and all that ever heard him his Disciples Nothing will give such authority to our doctrine or set such a value on our calling as a religious conversation He that takes such a journey as that into Holy Orders must go on 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 according to his 15. Symbolum must not return to his former sins as well as trade saith lamblicus the falling into one of our youthful vices is truly a disordering of our selves and a kind of plucking our hands from the plow A Physician saith Hippocrates must have colour and be in flesh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of a good promising healthy complexion and then men will guess him a man of skill otherwise the patient will bid the Physician heal himself and having by his ill look a prejudice against his Physick his phansie will much hinder its working You need no application He again will tell you that the profession suffers not so much by any thing as by rash censures and unworthy professors In brief our very knowledge will be set at nought and our gifts scoffed at if our lives do not demonstrate that we are Christians as well as Scholars No man will be much more godly for hearing Seneca talk of providence nor be affected with bare words unless he see them armed and backt with power of him that utters them Consider but this one thing and withal that my doctrine is become a proverb and he is a proud man that can first draw it upon a Scholar his learning and his clergy make him never the more religious O let our whole care and carriage and the dearest of our endeavours strive and prevail to cross the proverb and stop the mouth of the rashest declamer That Comedy of Aristophanes took best which was all spent in laughing at Socrates and in him involved and abused the whole condition of learning though through Alcibiades his faction it miscarried and mist its applause once or twice yet when men were left to their humour 't was admired and cried up extremely Learning hath still some honourable favourers which keep others in awe with their countenance but otherwise nothing more agreeable to the people then Comedies or Satyrs or Sarcasms dealt out against the Universities let us be sure that we act no parts in them our selves nor perform them before they are acted Let us endeavour that theirs may be only pronunciations a story of our faults as presented in a scene but never truly grounded in any of our actions One wo we are secure and safe from Wo be to you when all men shall speak well of you we have many good friends that will not â—et this curse light on us O let us deliver our selves from that catalogue of woes which were all denounced against the Pharisees for many vices all contained in this accomplisht piece Ye say but do not Mat. xxiii 4. And seeing all our intellectual excellencies cannot allure or bribe or wooe Gods spirit to overshadow us and conceive Christ and bring forth true and saving faith in us let all the rest of our studies be ordered in a new course let us change both our method and our Tutor and having hitherto learnt God from our selves let us be better advised and learn our selves from God Let us all study all learning from the spring or fountain and make him our instructer who is the only Author worth our understanding and admit of no interpreter on him but himself The knowledge of God shall be our vision in heaven O let it be our speculation on earth Let it fill every conceit or phansie that we at any time adventure on It is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the last work in which all the promises all our possible designs are accomplished O let us in part anticipate that final revelation of him lest so sudden and so full a brightness of glory be too excellent for the eyes of a Saint and labour to comprehend here where the whole comfort of our life is what we shall then possess And if all the stretches and cracking and torturing of our souls will prevail the dissolving of all our spirits nay the sighing out of our last breath will do any thing let us joyn all this even that God hath given us in this last real service to our selves and expire whilst we are about it in praying and beseeching and importuning and offering violence to that blessed spirit that he will fully enlighten and enflame us here with zeal as well as knowledge that he will fill us with his grace here and accomplish us with his glory hereafter Now to him that hath elected us hath created us and redeemed us c. The XI Sermon Matth. X. 15. It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment then for that City THE whole new Covenant consists of these two words Christ and Faith Christ
offer of himself in the not taking home and applying Christ to our souls And this is done either by denying to take him at all or by taking him under a false person or by not performing the conditions required or presumed in the making of the match They that deny to take him at all are the prophane negligent presumptuous Christians who either never hearken after him or else are so familiar with the news as to underprize him have either never cheapned Heaven or else will not come to Gods price like Ananias and Sapphira perhaps offer pretty fair bring two parts of their estate and lay them at the Apostles feet but will give no more fall off at last for a trifle and peremptorily deny Christ if they may not have him on their own Conditions Some superfluities some vanities some chargeable or troublesom sins perhaps they can spare and those they will be inclinable to part withal but if this will not serve Christ must seek for a better Chapman they stand not much upon it they can return as contentedly without it as they came And this arises from a neglect and security a not heeding or weighing of Gods justice and consequently undervaluing of his mercies They have never felt God as an angry Judge and therefore they now scorn him as a Saviour they have liv'd at such ease of heart that no legal terrour no affrightments or ghastly representations of sin can work upon them and if the reading of the law that killing letter have been sent by God to instruct them in the desperateness of their estate to humble these libertine souls to the spirit of bondage and so school them to Christ they have eyes but see not ears but hear it not they are come to this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. i. 28. a reprobate sense or as it may be rendred an undiscerning mind not able to judge of that which is thus read and proposed to it or again a sense without sense not apprehensive of that which no man that hath eyes can be ignorant of nay in Theod. phrase 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an heart that will reverberate any judgement or terrour receiving no more impression from it then the Anvil from the hammer violently returns it again smooth'd somewhat over perhaps by often-beating but nothing softned Nay if the law cry too loud and by an inward voice preach damnation in their bowels and resolve to be heard before it cease then do they seek out some worldly employment to busie themselves withal that they may not be at home at so much unquietness they will charm it with pleasures or overwhelm it with business as Gain when his Conscience was too rough and rigid for him Gen. iv went out from the presence of the Lord ver 16. and as 't is observed built Cities v 17. got some of his progeny to invent Musick v. 21. perhaps to still his tumultuous raving Conscience that the noise of the hammers and melody of the Instruments might outsound the din within him as in the sacrifices of Molock where their children which they offered in an hollow brazen vessel could not choose but howl hideously they had timbrels and tabrets perpetually beating whereupon Tophet where these sacrifices were kept is by Grammarians deduced from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tympanum to drown the noise of the childrens cry these I say which will not be instructed in their misery or better'd by the preaching of the law which labour only to make their inward terrors insensible to skin not cure the wound are Infidels in the first or highest rank which deny to take him at all will not suffer themselves to be perswaded that they have any need of him and therefore let him be offered for ever let him be proclaimed in their ears every minute of their lives they see nothing in him worth hearkning after and the reason is they are still at home they have not gone a foot abroad out of themselves and therefore cannot lay hold on Christ He that never went to school to the law he that was never sensible of his own damned estate he that never hated himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will never receive never accept of Christ Secondly some are come thus far to a sense of their estate and are twing'd extremely and therefore fly presently to the Gospel hearing of Christ they fasten are not patient of so much deliberation as to observe whether their hands be empty they are in distress and Christ must needs save them suddenly they lay hold as soon as ever they hear a promise and are resolved to be saved by Christ because they see otherwise they are damned And these take Christ indeed but under a false person either they take the promises only and let Christ alone or take Christ the Saviour but not Christ the Lord. Are willing to be saved by him but never think of serving him are praying for ever for Heaven and glory but never care how little they hear of grace the end they fasten on the Covenant they hug and gripe with their embraces but never take the condition of repentance and obedience this is not for their turn they abstract the cheap and profitable attributes of Christ his Priestly office of satisfaction and propitiation but never consider him as a King and so in a word lay hold of the estate before they have married the husband which they have yet no more right to then a meer stranger for the communicating the riches of a husband being but a consequence of marriage is therefore not yet made over till the marriage which is the taking of the husbands person be consummate And this I say is a second degree of infidelity somewhat more secret and less discernable when by an Errour of the person by taking Christ the Saviour for Christ the Lord or his promises abstracted from his person we believe we shall be saved by him but deny to be ruled desire to enjoy all the priviledges but substract all the obedience of a Subject In the third place they which have accepted and received the true person of Christ as a Master as well as a Jesus they which have taken him on a resolved vow of performing this condition of homage and obedience are not in event as good as their engagements when they think the match is fast and past danger of recalling when they seem to have gotten a firm title to the promises and are in a manner entred upon the goods and estate of their husband they do begin to break Covenant and either wholly substract or else divide their love they married him for his wealth and now they have that they are soon weary of his person they came with the soul of an harlot looking only what they should get by him and now they have many other old acquaintances they must needs keep league with their self-denial their humility their vows of obedience were but arts and stratagems that
it or as the same word is rendred Eccles xxviii 3. no pardon no remission wrought by it a bare going down into the grave that no man is better for It doth even frustrate the sufferings of Christ and make him have paid a ransom to no purpose and purchased an inheritance at an infinite rate and no man the better for it Again Christ is not only contemn'd but injur'd not only slighted but robb'd he loses not only his price and his thanks but his servant which he hath bought and purchased with his blood For redemption is not an absolute setting free but the buying out of an Usurpers hands that he may return to his proper Lord changing him from the condition of a captive to a subject He which is ransomed from the Gallies is not presently a King but only recovered to a free and tolerable service nay generally if he be redeemed he is eo nomine a servant by right and equity his Creature that redeemed him according to the express words Luke i. 74. That we being delivered might serve him Now a servant is a possession part of ones estate as truly to be reckoned his as any part of his inheritance So that every unbeliever is a thief robs Christ not only of the honour of saving him but of one of the Members of his family of part of his goods his servant nay 't is not a bare theft but of the highest size a sacriledge stealing an holy instrument a vessel out of Gods Temple which he bought and delivered out of the common calamity to serve him in holiness Luke i. 74. to be put to holy special services In the third place Faith may be considered in reference to God the Father and that 1. as the Author or fountain of this Theological grace 2. as the commander of this duty of believing and either of these will aggravate the unbelievers guilt and add more articles to his indictment As God is the Author of faith so the Infidel resists and abandons and flies from all those methods all those means by which God ordinarily produces Faith all the power of his Scriptures all the blessings of a Christian education all the benefits of sacred knowledge in sum the prayers the sweat the lungs the bowels of his Ministers in Christs stead beseeching you to be reconciled 1 Cor. v. 20. spending their dearest spirits and even praying and preaching out their souls for you that you would be friends with God through Christ All these I say the Infidel takes no notice of and by his contempt of these inferiour graces shews how he would carry himself even towards Gods very spirit it it should come in power to convert him he would hold out and bid defiance and repel the omnipotent God with his omnipotent charms of mercy he that contemns Gods ordinary means would be likely to resist his extraordinary were there not more force in the means then forwardness in the man and thanks be to that controuling convincing constraining spirit if ever he be brought to be content to be saved He that will not now believe in Christ when he is preached would have gone very near if he had lived then to have given his consent andjoyn'd his suffrage in crucifying him A man may guess of his inclination by his present practices and if he will not now be his Disciple 't was not his innocence but his good fortune that he did not then betray him 'T was well he was born amongst Christians or else he might have been as sowr a prosest enemy of Christ as Pilate or the Pharisees an unbelieving Christian is for all his livery and profession but a Jew or Heathen and the Lord make him sensible 〈◊〉 his condition Lastly consider this duty of faith in respect of God the Father commanding it and then you shall find it the main precept of the Bible 'T were long to shew you the ground of it in the law of 〈◊〉 the obscure yet discernable mention of it in the moral law 〈◊〉 transcendently in the main end of all and distinctly though â—ot clearly in the first Commandment he that hath a mind to see may find it in Pet. Baro. de praest dignit div legis 'T were as â—â—â—som to muster up all the commands of the Old Testament which exactly and determinately drive at belief in Christ as generally in those places where the Chaldee Paraphrase reads instead of God Gods Word as Fear not Abraham for I am thy shield say they thy word is thy shield which speaks a plain command of faith for not to fear is to trust not to fear on that ground because Gods Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Word Joh. i. 1. i. e. Christ is ones shield is nothing in the world but to believe and rely and fasten and depend on Christ Many the like commands of Faith in Christ will the Old Testament afford and the new is nothing else but a perpetual inculcating of it upon us a driving and calling entreating and enforcing wooing and hastning us to believe In which respect the Schools calls it also necessary necessitate praecepti a thing which though we should be never the better for we are bound to perform So that though faith were not able to save us yet infidelity would damn us it being amongst others a direct breach of a natural a moral nay an Evangelical Commandment And so much for the danger of infidelity considered positively in relation to the Subject whom it deprives of Heaven the Object Christ and his offers in the Gospel which it frustrates and lastly the Author and commander of it God the Father whom it resists disobeys and scorns You will perhaps more feelingly be affected to the loathing of it if we proceed to the odious and dangerous condition of it above all other sins and breaches in the world which is my third part its comparative sinfulness It shall be more tolerable c. And this will appear if we consider it 1. in it self 2. in its consequences In it self it is fuller of guilt in its consequences fuller of danger then any ordinary breach of the moral Law In it self so it is 1. the greatest aversion from God in which aversion the School-men place the formalis ratio the very essence of sin it is the perversest remotion and turning away of the soul from God and getting as far as we can out of his sight or ken the forbidding of all manner of commerce or spiritual traffick or correspondence with God as may appear by that admirable place Heb. X. 38. The just shall live by faith but if any man draw back my soul hath no pleasure in him and verse 39. We are not of them which draw back unto perdition but of them that do believe to the saving of the soul Where the phrase of drawing back oppos'd here to faith and believing is in the original 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a cowardly pusillanimous subducing of ones self a
intent to their study from medling at all with this science about the soul for he plainly tells them in his first de anima 't is too hard for any ordinary capacity and yet in the first of the Metaph. he defines the wise man to be one who besides his own accurate knowledg of hard things as the Causes of the soul c. is also able to teach any body else who hath such an habit of knowledg and such a command over it that he can make any Auditor understand the abstrusest mystery in it So then out of his own words he is convinced to have had no skill no wisdom in the business of the soul because he could not explain nor communicate this knowledg to any but choice Auditors The truth is these were but shifts of pride and ambitious pretences to cloak a palpable ignorance under the habit of mysterious deep speculation when alas poor man all that which he knew or wrote of the soul was scarce worth learning only enough to confute his fellow ignorant Philosophers to puzzle others to puff up himself but to profit instruct or edifie none In the third place concerning happiness he plainly bewrays himself to be a coward not daring to meddle with Divinity For 1 Eth. c. 9. being probably given to understand or rather indeed plainly convinced that if any thing in the world were then happiness must likely be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the gift of God bestowed on men yet he there staggers at it speaks sceptically and not so magisterially as he is wont dares not be so bold as to define it and at last does not profess his ignorance but takes a more honourable course and puts it off to some other place to be discust Where Andronicus Rhodius his Greek Paraphrase tells us he meant his Tract 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 about Providence but in all Laertius his Catalogue of the multitude of his writings we find no such title and I much suspect by his other carriages that the man was not so valiant as to deal with any so unwieldy a subject as the Providence would have proved Sure I am he might if he had had a mind to it have quitted himself of his engagements and seasonably enough have defined the fountain of happiness there in Ethicks but in the 10. c. it appears that it was no pretermission but ignorance not a care of deferring it to a fitter place but a necessary silence where he was not able to speak For there mentioning happiness and miserableness after death where he might have shewed his skill if he had had any he plainly betrays himself an arrant naturalist in defining all the felicity and misery to be the good or ill proof of their friends and children left behind them which are to them being dead happiness or miseries 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of which they are not any way sensible But of what hath been spoken it is plain that the heathen never looked after God of their own accord but as they were driven upon him by the necessity of their study which from the second causes necessarily lead them in a chain to some view of the first mover and then some of them either frighted with the light or despairing of their own abilities were terrified or discouraged from any farther search some few others sought after him but as Aristotle saith the Geometer doth after a right line only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as a contemplator of truth but not as the knowledg of it is any way useful or conducible to the ordering or bettering of their lives they had an itching desire to know the Deity but neither to apply it as a rule to their actions nor to order their actions to his glory For generally whensoever any action drove them on any subject which intrenched on Divinity you shall find them more flat then ordinary not handling it according to any manner of accuracy or sharpness but only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 only as much use or as little as their study in the search of things constrained them to and then for most part they fly off abruptly as if they were glad to be quit of so cumbersom a subject Whence Aristotle observes that the whole Tract de causis was obscurely and inartificially handled by the ancients and if sometimes they spake to the purpose 't was as unskilful unexercised fencers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they lay on and sometimes strike a lucky blow or two but more by chance then skill sometimes letting fall from their pens those truths which never entred their understandings as Theophilus ad Aulo observes of Homer and Hesiod that being inspired by their Muses i. e. the devil spake according to that spirit lyes and fables and exact Atheism and yet sometimes would stumble upon a truth of Divinity as men possest with Devils did sometimes confess Christ and the evil spirits being adjured by his name came out and confest themselves to be devils Thus it is plain out of the Philosophers and Heathen discourses 1. Of God 2. The soul 3. Happiness that they were also ignorant as ignorance is opposed to piety or spiritual wisdom which was to be proved by way of premise in the 2. place Now in the third place for the guilt of their ignorance that it was a perverse gross malicious and unexcusable ignorance you shall briefly judge Aristotle 1 Met. 2. being elevated above ordinary in his discourse about wisdom confesses the Knowledg of God to be the best Knowledg and most honourable of all but of no manner of use or necessity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. No knowledg is better then this yet none more unnecessary as if the Evidence of truth made him confess the nobility of this wisdom but his own supine stupid perverse resolutions made him contemn it as unnecessary But that I may not charge the accusation too hard upon Aristotle above others and take as much pains to damn him as the Colen Divines did to save him we will deal more at large as Aristotle prescribes his wise men 1 Met. and rip up to you the unexcusableness of the heathen ignorance in general 1. by the authority of Clemens who is guest to be one of their kindest patrons in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where having cited many testimonies out of them concerning the unity he concludes thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Seeing that the Heathen had some sparks of the divine truth some gleanings out of the written word and yet make so little use of it as they do they do saith he shew the power of Gods word to have been revealed to them and accuse their own weakness that they did not improve it to the end for which it was sent that they encreased it not into a saving knowledg where by the way the word weakness is used by Clement by way of softning or mercy as here the Apostle useth ignorance when he
might have said impiety For sure if the accusation run thus that the word of God was revealed to them and yet they made no use of it as it doth here in Clem. the sentence then upon this must needs conclude them not only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 weak but perverse contemners of the light of Scripture Again the Philosophers themselves confess that ignorance is the nurse nay mother of all impiety 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. whatsoever an ignorant man or fool doth is unholy and wicked necessarily ignorance being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a species of madness and no mad-man being capable of any sober action so that if their ignorance were in the midst of means of knowledg then must it be perverse if it had an impure influence upon all their actions then was it malicious and full of guilt 2. Their chief ground that sustained and continued their ignorance proves it to be not blind but affected which ground you shall find by the Heathen objection in Clem. to be a resolution not to change the religion of their fathers 'T is an unreasonable thing say the Heathens which they will never be brought to to change the customs bequeathed to them by their ancestors From whence the Father solidly concludes that there was not any means in nature which could make the Christian Religion contemned and hated but only this pestilent custom of never altering any customs or laws though never so unreasonable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. 't is not possible that ever any nation should hate and fly from this greatest blessing that ever was bestowed upon mankind to wit the knowledg and worship of God unless being carried on by custom they resolved to go the old way to Hell rather then to venter on a new path to Heaven Hence it is that Athenagor as in his Treaty with Commodus for the Christians â—oâ—ders much that among so many Laws made yearly in Rome there was not one enacted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that men should forsake the customs of their fathers which were any way absurd From whence he falls straight to their absurd Deities as if it being made lawful to relinquish ridiculous customs there would be no plea left for their ridiculous gods So Eusebius Praep. l. 2. makes the cause of the continuance of superstition to be that no man dared to move those things which ancient custom of the Country had authorized and so also in his fourth book where to bring in Christianity was accounted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to change things that were fixt 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. and to be pragmatical friends of innovation and so 't is plain they esteemed St. Paul and hated him in that name as an Innovator because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection Acts 17. 18. So Acts the 16. 21. St. Paul is said to teach customs which were not lawful for them to receive nor observe being Romans because saith Casaubon out of Dio 't was not lawful for the Romans to innovate any thing in religion for saith Dio this bringing in of new Gods will bring in new Laws with it So that if as hath been proved their not acknowledging of the true God was grounded upon a perverse resolution not to change any custom of their fathers either in opinion or practice though never so absurd then was the ignorance or as St. Paul might have called it the idolatry of those times impious affected not a natural blindness but a pertinacious winking not a simple deafness but a resolved stubbornness not to hear the voice of the charmer which we might further prove by shewing you thirdly how their learning or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which might be proved an excellent preparative to religion their Philosophy which was to them as the Law to the Jews by their using of it to a perverse end grew ordinarily very pernicious to them 4. How that those which knew most and were at the top of prophane knowledge did then fall most desperately headlong into Atheism as Hippocrates observes that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and St. Basil that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the most perfect constitution of body so of the soul is most dangerous if not sustained with good care and wisdom 5. How they always forged lies to scandal the people of God as Manetho the famous Egyptian Historian saith that Moses and the Jews were banished out of Aegypt 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because of an infectious leprosie that overspread the Jews as Theophilus cites it and Justine out of Trogus and also Tacitus and the Primitive Christians were branded and abomined by them for three special faults which they were little likely to be guilty of 1. Atheism 2. Eating their Children 3. Incestuous common using of women as we find them set down and confuted by Athen. in his Treaty or Apology and Theophilus ad Autol c. 6. By their own confession as of Plato to his friend when he wrote in earnest and secretly acknowledging the unity which he openly denied against his conscience and the light of reason in him and Orpheus the inventer of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 professing and worshipping 365 Gods all his life time at his death left in his will 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that however he had perswaded them all the while there was indeed but one God And lastly how these two affections in them admiration and gratitude admiration of men of extraordinary worth and gratitude for more then ordinary benefactions done either to particular men or Nations were the chief promoters of idolatry making the Heathens worship them as Gods whom they were acquainted with and knew to be but men as might be proved variously and at large If I could insist upon any or each of these it would be most evident what I hope now at last is proved enough that the ignorance of those times was not simple blind ignorance but malign perverse sacrilegious affected stubborn wilful I had almost said knowing ignorance in them which being the thing we first promised to demonstrate we must next make up the Proposition which is yet imperfect to wit that ignorance in these Heathen in Gods justice might have provoked him to have pretermitted the whole world of succeeding Gentiles which I must dispatch only in a word because I would fain descend to Application which I intended to be the main but the improvident expence of my time hath now lest only to be the close of my discourse The ignorance of those times being of this composition both in respect of the superstition of their worship which was perverse as hath been proved and the prophaneness of their lives being abominable even to nature as might farther be shewed is now no longer to be called ignorance but prophaneness and a prophaneness so Epidemical over all the Gentiles so inbred and naturalized among them that it was
Gentiles is here meant by Gods commanding them we are to rank the commands of God into two sorts 1. common Catholick commands and these extend as far as the visible Church 2. peculiar commands inward operations of the spirit these are both priviledges and characters and properties of the invisible Church i. e the Elect and in both these respects doth he vouchsafe his commands to the Gentiles In the first respect God hath his louder trumpets 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Matth. xxiv 31. Mat. XXIV 31 which all acknowledge who are in the noise of it and that is the sound of the Gospel the hearing of which constitutes a visible Church And thus at the preaching of the Gospel 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all the Heathens had knowledge of his Laws Acts l. 25. and so were offered the Covenant if they would accept the condition For however that place Acts i. 25. be by one of our writers of the Church wrested by changing that I say not by falsifying the punctuation to witness this truth I think we need not such shifts to prove that God took some course by the means of the Ministery and Apostleship to make known to all nations under Heaven i. e. to some of all nations both his Gospel and commands Rom. X. 18. the sound of it went through all the earth Rom. x. 18. Psal XIX 4. cited out the xix Psal verse 4. though with some change of a word their sound in the Romans for their line in the Psalmist caused by the Greek Translators who either read and rendred 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or else laid hold of the Arabick notion of the word the loud noise and clamor which hunters make in their pursuit and chase Mar. XIV 9. So Mark xiv 9. This Gospel shall be preached througthout the world Mar. XVI 15. So Mark xvi 15. To every creature Matth. xxiv 14. in all the world Mat. XXIV 14 and many the like as belongs to our last particular to demonstrate Besides this God had in the second respect his vocem pedissequam which the Prophet mentions a voice attending us to tell us of our duty to shew us the way and accompany us therein And this I say sounds in the heart not in the Ear and they only hear and understand the voice who are partakers as well of the effect as of the news of the covenant Thus in these two respects doth he command by his word in the Ears of the Gentiles by giving every man every where knowledge of his laws Just l. 24. and so in some Latin Authors mandare signifies to give notice to express ones will to declare or proclaim And thus secondly doth he command by his spirit in the spirits of the elect Gentiles by giving them the benefit of adoption and in both these respects he enters a covenant with the Gentiles which was the thing to be demonstrated with the whole name of them at large with some choice vessels of them more nearly and peculiarly and this was the thing which by way of doctrine we collected out of these words but now commands Now that we may not let such a precious truth pass by unrespected that such an important speculation may not float only in our brains we must by way of Application press it down to the heart and fill our spirits with the comfort of that doctrine which hath matter for our practice as well as our contemplation For if we do but lay to our thoughts 1. the miracle of the Gentiles calling as hath been heretofore and now insisted on and 2. mark how nearly the receiving of them into covenant concerns us their successors we shall find real motives to provoke us to a strain and key above ordinary thanksgiving For as Peter spake of Gods promise so it is in the like nature of Gods command which is also virtually a promise it belonged not to them only but it is to you and your children and to all that are afar off even as many as the Lord our God shall call Acts II. 39. Acts ii 39. From the first the miracle of their calling our gratitude may take occasion much to enlarge it self Pag. 158. 'T is storied of Brasidas in the fourth of Thucidides that imputing the victory which was somewhat miraculous to some more then ordinary humane cause he went presently to the Temple loaded with offerings and would not suffer the gods to bestow such an unexpected favour on him unrewarded and can we pass by such a mercy of our God without a spiritual sacrifice without a daily Anthem of Magnificats and Hallelujah's Herodotus observes it is as a Proverb of Greece 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pag. 59 that if God would not send them rain they were to famish for they had said he no natural fountains or any other help of waters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but what God from above sent Pag. 130. So faith Thucidides in the fourth of his History there was but one fountain within a great compass and that none of the biggest So also was Aegypt another part of the Heathen world to be watered only by Nilus Herod p. 62 and that being drawn by the Sua did often succour them and fatten the Land for which all the neighbours fared the worse for when Nilus flowed Pag. 61 the neighbouring Rivers were left dry saith Herodotus You need not the mythology the Philosophers as well as soyl of Greece had not moisture enough to sustain them from nature if God had not sent them water from Heaven they and all we Gentiles had for ever suffered a spiritual thirst Aegypt and all the Nations had for ever gasped for drought if the sun-shine of the Gospel had not by its beams call'd out of the Well which had no bucket 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 living or enlivening water John 4. 6. But by this attraction of the Sun these living waters did so break out upon the Gentiles that all the waters of Jury were left dry as once the dew was on Gideons fleece and drought on all the earth besides Judg. vi 37. Judg. VI 37. And is it reasonable for us to observe this miracle of mercy and not return even a miracle of thanksgiving Can we think upon it without some rapture of our souls Can we insist on it and not feel a holy tempest within us a fsorm and disquiet till we have some way disburthened and eased our selves with a powring out of thanksgiving That spirit is too calm that I say not stupid which can bear and be loaded with mercies of this kind and not take notice of its burthen for besides those peculiar favours bestowed on us in particular we are as faith Chrysostome Tom. 4. P. 824. in our audit of thanksgiving to reckon up all the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all those common benefactions of which others partake with us
precious receipt administred to all find not in all the like effect of recovering yet from hence is neither the Physick to be under-prized nor the Prescriber the matter is to be imputed sometimes to the weakness and peevishness of the Patient 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he cannot or will not perform the prescriptions sometimes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the fault is to be laid on the stubbornness and stoutness of the disease which turns every medicine into its nourishment and so is not abated but elevated by that which was intended to asswage it as Hippocrates defines it medicinally in his Book 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So then by way of Use Pag. 2. If we desire that these commands this covenant offered to all men every where may evidence it self to our particular souls in its spiritual efficacy we must with all the industry of our spirits endeavour to remove those hindrances which may any way perturb or disorder or weaken it in its working in us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hippoc. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. saith Hippocrates you must furnish your self before-hand with a shop of several softning plaisters and take some one of them as a preparative before every Sermon you come to that coming to Church with a tender mollified waxy heart you may be sure to receive every holy character and impression which that days exercise hath provided for thee lest otherwise if thou should'st come to Church with an heart of ice that ice be congealed into Crystal and by an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the warmth of Gods word not abate but encrease the coldness of a chill frozen spirit and finding it hard and stubborn return it obdurate O what a horrid thing is it that the greatest mercy under Heaven should by our unpreparedness be turned into the most exquisite curse that Hell or malice hath in store for us That the most precious Balm of Gilead should by the malignity of some tempers be turned into poyson that the leaves which are appointed for the healing of the Nations should meet with some such sores which prove worse by any remedy that the most soveraign 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or lenitive in the world should only work to our obduration and the preaching of the word of mercy add to the measure of our condemnation this is enough to perswade you by an horror into some kind of sollicitude to prepare your souls to a capability of this cure to keep your selves in a Christian temper that it may be possible for a Sermon to work upon you that that breath which never returns in vain may be truly Gospel happy in its message may convert not harden you to which purpose you must have such tools in store Hippocrat ibidem which the Physician speaks of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 instruments of spiritual surgery to cut and prune off all luxuriant cumbersom excrescences all rankness and dead flesh which so oppress the soul that the vertue of medicine cannot search to it And for this purpose there is no one more necessary of more continual use for every man every where then that which here closeth my Text Repentance And so I come to the second respect the universality of the persons as it refers to the matter of the command repentance every man every where to repent And here I should shew you that repentance both generally taken for a sorrow for sin containing in it virtually saith also so the Baptism of repentance is interpreted Acts XIX 4. Acts xix 4. John baptized with the Baptism of repentance saying unto the people that they should believe c. and more specially in this place taken for the directing of our knowledge to practice and both to Gods glory as hath been shewn is and always was necessary to every man that will be saved 1 â—â—st c. 4. For according to Aristotles rule 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 noting both an universality of subject and circumstance is a degree of necessity and therefore repentance being here commanded 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is to be judged a condition necessary to every man who answers at the command i. e. who expects his part in the covenant of salvation this I say I might prove at large and to that purpose vindicate the writings of some of the Fathers especially of Clemens who I am almost confident is groundlesly cited for bestowing salvation on the Heathen without exacting the condition of faith and repentance which now 't were superfluous to insist on 2. Urge it both to your brains and hearts and by the necessity of the duty rouse and enforce and pursue you to the practice of it But seeing this Catholick duty is more the inspiration of the Holy Ghost then the acquisition of our labours seeing this fundamental Cardinal gift comes from the supreme donor seeing nature is no more able spiritually to reinliven a soul then to animate a carcass our best endeavour will be our humiliation our most profitable directions will prove our prayers and what our frailty cannot reach to our devotions shall obtain And let us labour and pray and be confident that God which hath honoured us with his commands will enable us to a performance of them and having made his covenant with us will fulfil in us the condition of it that the thundering of his word being accompanied with the still voice of his spirit may suffer neither repulse nor resistance that our hearts being first softned then stamped with the spirit may be the images of that God that made them that all of us every where endeavouring to glorifie God in our knowledg in our lives in our faith in our repentance may for ever be glorified by him and through him and with him hereafter Now to him that hath elected us hath created redeemed c. The XIV Sermon Rom. I. 26. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections IN this most accurate Epistle that ever the Pen of man could lay title to in which all the counsels and proceedings and methods of God in the work of our salvation are described our Apostle in his discourse goes on the same way that God is said to do in his Decree lays the foundation of it as low and deep as possible begins with them as it were in Massa and though they were already Romans and Christians yet before he openeth Heaven gates to them and either teaches or suffers them to be Saints he stays them a while in the contemplation of their impurity and damn'd neglected estate of the stock they come from looks upon them as polluted or troden down in their own blood as the phrase is Ezek. xvi 6. He plows and harrows and digs as deep as possible that the seed which he meant to sow might be firm rooted that their Heaven might be founded in the Center of the earth and their faith being secur'd by the depth of its foundation might encrease miraculously both in height and fruitfulness
so gag'd 't will mutter and will be sure to be taken notice of when it speaks softliest To define in brief what this law of nature is and what offices it performs in us you are to know that at that grand forfeiture of all our inheritance goods truly real and personal all those primitive endowments of soul and body upon Adams rebellion God afterwards though he shined not on us in his full Image and beauty yet cast some rays and beams of that eternal light upon us and by an immutable law of his own councel hath imprinted on every soul that comes down to a body a secret unwritten yet indeleble Law by which the creature may be warn'd what is good or bad what agreeable what hurtful to the obtaining of the end of its creation Now these commands or prescriptions of nature are either in order to speculation or practice to encrease our knowledg or direct our lives The former sort I omit as being fitter for the Schools then Pulpit to discourse on I shall meddle only with those that refer to practice and those are either common which they call first principles and such are in every man in the world equally secundum rectitudinem notitiam saith Aquinas every one doth both conceive them in his understanding what they mean and assent to them in his will that they are right and just and necessary to be performed and of this nature are the Worship of God and justice amongst men for that lumen super nos signatum in Bonaventures phrase that light which nature hath seal'd and imprinted on our souls is able to direct us in the knowledge of those moral principles without any other help required to perswade us or else they are particular and proper to this or that business which they call conclusions drawn out of these common principles as when the common principle commands just dealing the conclusion from thence commands to restore what I have borrowed and the like And these also if they be naturally and directly deduced would every man in the world both understand and assent to did not some hindrance come in and forbid or suspend either his understanding or assent Hindrances which keep him from the knowledge or conceiving of them are that confusion and Chaos and black darkness I had almost said that Tophet and hell of sensual affections which suffers not the light to shew it self and indeed so stifles and oppresses it that it becomes only as hell fire not to shine but burn not to enlighten us what we should do but yet by gripes and twinges of the conscience to torment us for not doing of it And this hindrance the Apostle calls ver 21. the vanity of imaginations by which a foolish heart is darkned Hindrances which keep us from assenting to a conclusion in particular which we do understand are sometimes good as first a sight of some greater breach certain to follow the performance of this So though I understand that I must restore every man his own yet I will never return a knife to one that I see resolved to do some mischief with it And 2. Divine laws as the command of robbing the Aegyptians and the like for although that in our hearts forbid robbing yet God is greater then our hearts and must be obeyed when he prescribes it Hindrances in this kind are also sometimes bad such are either habitude of nature custom of Country which made the Lacedemonians esteem theft a vertue or again the tyranny of passions for every one of these hath its several project upon the reasonable soul its several design of malice either by treachery or force to keep it hood-winkt or cast it into a lethargy when any particular vertuous action requires to be assented to by our practice If I should go so far as some do to define this law of nature to be the full will of God written by his hand immediately in every mans heart after the fall by which we feel our selves bound to do every thing that is good and avoid every thing that is evil some might through ignorance or prejudice guess it to be an elevation of corrupt nature above its pitch too near to Adams integrity and yet Zanchy who was never guest near a Pelagian in his 4. Tome 1. l. 10. c. 8. Thesis would authorize every part of it and yet not seem to make an Idol of nature but only extol Gods mercy who hath bestowed a soul on every one of us with this character and impression Holiness to the Lord which though it be written unequally in some more then others yet saith he in all in some measure so radicated that it can never be quite changed or utterly abolished However I think we may safely resolve with Bonaventure out of Austin against Pelagius Non est parum accepisse naturale indicatorium 't is no small mercy that we have received a natural glass in which we may see and judge of objects before we venture on them a power of distinguishing good from evil which even the malice of sin and passions in the highest degree cannot wholly extinguish in us as may appear by Cain the voice of whose conscience spake as loud within him as that of his brothers blood as also in the very damn'd whose worm of sense not penitence for what they have done in their flesh shall for ever bite and gripe them hideously This Light indeed may either by first blindness or 2. delight in sinning or 3. peremptory resolvedness not to see be for the present hindred secundum actum from doing any good upon us He that hath but a vail before his eyes so long cannot judge of colours he that runs impetuously cannot hear any one that calls to stop him in his career and yet all the while the light shines and the voice shouts and therefore when we find in Scripture some men stupified by sin others void of reason we must not reckon them absolutely so but only for the present besotted And again though they have lost their reason as it moves per modum deliberationis yet not as per modum naturae their reason which moves them by deliberation and choice to that which is good is perhaps quite put out or suspended but their reason which is an instinct of nature a natural motion of the soul to the end of its creation remains in them though it move not like a Ship at hull and becalmed is very still and quiet and though it stir not evidently yet it hath its secret heavs and plunges within us Now that the most ignorant clouded unnurtured brain amongst you may reap some profit from this Discourse let him but one minute of his life be at so much leisure as to look into his own heart and he shall certainly find within him that which we have hitherto talkt of his own soul shall yield him a Comment to my Sermon and if he dare but once to open his eyes
shall shew him the law and light of nature in himself which before he never dreamt of Of those of you that ever spared one minute from your worldly affairs to think of your spiritual there is one thought that suddenly comes upon you and makes short work of all that spiritual care of your selves You conceive that you are of your selves utterly unable to understand or think or do any thing that is good and therefore you resolve it a great pain to no purpose ever to go about so impossible a project God must work the whole business in you you are not able of your selves so much as either see or move and that is the business which by chance you fell upon as soon as shook off again and being resolved you never had any eyes you are content to be for ever blind unless as it was wont to be in the old Tragedies some 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some new supernatural power come down and bore your foreheads and thrust and force eyes into your heads 'T is a blessed desire and gracious humility in any one to invoke God to every thought they venture on and not to dare to pretend to the least sufficiency in themselves but to acknowledge and desire to receive all from God but shall we therefore be so ungratefully religious as for ever to be a craving new helps and succours and never observe or make use of what we have already obtained as 't is observed of covetous men who are always busied about their Incomes are little troubled with disbursements 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without any proportion betwixt their receipts and expences Shall we be so senseless as to hope that the contempt of one blessing will be a means to procure us as many I told you that God had written a law in the hearts of every one of you which once was able and is not now quite deprived of its power to furnish with knowledge of good and evil and although by original and actual and habitual sin this inheritance be much impaired this stock of precepts drawn low yet if you would but observe those directions which it would yet afford you if you would but practice whatever that divine light in your souls should present and commend to you you might with some face petition God for richer abilities and with better confidence approach and beg and expect the grace that should perfect you to all righteousness In the mean time bethink your selves how unreasonable a thing it is that God should be perpetually casting away of alms on those who are resolved to be perpetually bankrupts how it would be reckoned prodigality of mercies to purchase new lands for him that scorns to make use of his inheritance As ever you expect any boon from God look I conjure you what you have already received call in your eyes into your brains and see whether your natural reason there will not furnish you with some kind of profitable though not sufficient directions to order your whole lives by bring your selves up to that stay'dness of temper as never to venture on any thing till you have askt your own souls advice whether it be to be done or no and if you can but observe its dictates and keep your hands to obey your head if you can be content to abstain when the soul within you bids you hold you shall have no cause to complain that God hath sent you impotent into the world but rather acknowledge it an unvaluable mercy of his that hath provided such an eye within you to direct you if you will but have patience to see such a curb to restrain and prevent you if thou wilt only take notice of its checks 'T is a thing that would infinitely please the Reader to observe what a price the Heathens themselves set upon this light within them which yet certainly was much more dimmed and obscured in them by their idolatry and superstition then I hope it can be in any Christian soul by the unruliest passion Could ever any one speak more plainly and distinctly of it then the Pythagoreans and Stoicks have done who represent conscience not only as a guide and moderator of our actions but as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a tutelary spirit or Angel or genius which never sleeps or dotes but is still present and employed in our behalf And this Arrian specifies to be the reasonable soul which he therefore accounts of as a part of God sent out of his own essence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a piece or shread or as others more according to modest truth call it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a ray or beam of that invisible Sun by which our dull unactive frozen bodies after the fall were warmed and re-inlivened Now if any one shall make a diligent inquisition in himself shall as the Philosopher in his Cynical humour light a candle to no purpose or as the Prophet Jeremy seek and make hue and cry after a man through all Jerusalem and yet not meet with him if I say any body shall search for this light in himself and find all darkness within then will you say I have all this while possest you with some phansies and Ideas without any real profit to be received from them you will make that complaint as the women for our Saviour We went to seek for him and when we went down all was dark and emptiness They have taken him away and I know not where they have laid him Nay but the error is in the seeker not in my directions he that would behold the Sun must stay till the cloud be over he that would receive from the fire either light or warmth must take the pains to remove the ashes There be some encumbrances which may hinder the most active qualities in the world from working and abate the edge of the keenest metal In sum there is a cloud and gloom and vail within thee like that darkness on the face of the deep when the earth was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without form and void Gen. i. 2. or like that at Lots door among the Sodomites or that of Aegypt thick and palpable and this have we created to our selves a sky full of tempestuous untamed affections this cloud of vapors have we exhaled out of the lower part of our soul our sensitive faculty and therewith have we so fill'd the air within us with sad black meteors that the Sun in its Zenith the height or pride of its splendor would scarce be able to pierce through it So that for to make a search for this light within thee before thou hast removed this throng and croud of passions which encompass it and still to complain thou canst not meet with it were to bring news that the Sun is gone out when a tempest hath only masked it or to require a candle to give thee light through a mud-wall Thou must provide a course to clear the sky and then thou shalt not need to
of it to be for ever a solliciting and worshipping of darkness as Socrates was said to adore the clouds this is such a sottishness that the stupidst element under Heaven would naturally scorn to be guilty of for never was the Earth so peevish as to forbid the Sun when it should shine on it or to slink away or subduce it self from its rayes And yet this is our case beloved who do more amorously and flatteringly court and woo and sollicite darkness then ever the Heathens adored the Sun Not to wander out of the sphere my Text hath placed me in to shew how the light of the Gospel and Christianity is neglected by us our guilt will lie heavy enough on us if we keep us to the light only of natural reason within us How many sins do we daily commit which both nature and reason abhor and loath How many times do we not only unman but even uncreature our selves Aristotle observes that that by which any thing is known first that which doth distinguish one thing from another à priore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is to be called the beginning or cause of that thing and that the light of reason distinguishing one action from another being the first thing that teaches me that this is good that otherwise may from thence be termed the beginning of every reasonable action in us and then where ever this cause or beginning is left out and wanting there the thing produced is not so called a positive act or proper effect but a defect an abortion or still-born frustrate issue and of this condition indeed is every sin in us Every action where this law within us is neglected is not truly an action but a passion a suffering or a torment of the creature Thus do we not so much live and walk which note some action as lie entranced asleep nay dead in sin by this perversness 't is perpetual night with us nay we even die daily our whole life is but a multiplyed swoon or lethargie in which we remain stupid breathless sensless till the day of death or judgment with a hideous voice affrights and rouses us and we find our selves awake in Hell and so our dark souls having a long while groped wilfully in the Sun are at last lead to an everlasting inevitable darkness whither the mercy or rayes of the Sun can never pierce where it will be no small accession to our torment to remember and tremble at that light which before we scorn'd Thus I say do we in a manner uncreate our selves and by the contempt of this law of our creation even frustrate and bring to nothing our creation it self and this is chiefly by sins of sloth and stupid sluggish unactive vices which as I said make our whole life a continued passion never daring or venturing or attempting to act or do any thing in Church or Commonwealth either toward God or our Neighbour and of such a condition'd man no body will be so charitable as to guess he hath any soul or light of reason in him because he is so far from making use of it unless it be such a soul as Tully saith a Swine hath which serves it only instead of salt to keep it from stinking For 't is Aristotles observation that every one of the elements besides the earth was by some Philosopher or other defin'd to be the soul Some said the soul was fire some that 't was air some water but never any man was so mad as to maintain the earth to be it because 't was so heavy and unweildy So then this heavy motionless unactive Christian this clod of earth hath as I said uncreatured himself and by contemning this active reason within him even deprived himself of his soul Again how ordinary a thing is it to unman our selves by this contempt of the directions of reason by doing things that no man in his right mind would ever have patience to think of Beloved to pass by those which we call unnatural sins 1. so in the highest degree as too horrid for our nature set down in the latter end of this Chapter for all Christian ears to glow and tingle at and I had hoped for all English spirits to abhor and loath To pass these I say our whole life almost affords minutely sins which would not argue us men but some other creatures There be few things we do in our Age which are proper peculiar acts of men one man gives himself to eating and drinking and bestows his whole care on that one faculty which they call the vegetative growing faculty and then what difference is there betwixt him and a tree whose whole nature it is to feed and grow Certainly unless he hath some better imployment he is at best but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a plant-animal whose shape would perhaps persuade you that it hath some sense or soul in it but its actions betray it to be a meer plant little better then an Artichoak or Cabbage another goes a little higher yet not far doth all that his sense presents to him suffers all that his sensitive faculties lust and rage to exercise at freedom is as fierce as the Tyger as lustful as the Goat as ravenous as the Wolf and the like and all the beasts of the field and fowls of the air be but several Emblemes and Hieroglyphicks concurring to make up his character carries a wilderness about him as many sins as the nature of a sensitive creature is capable of and then who will stick to compare this man to the beasts that perish For 't is Theophilus his note that the cattle and beasts of the field were created the same day with man Gen. i. 25. to note 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the brutish condition of some men and that therefore the blessing was not bestowed on them but reserved for the man which should have the dominion over them verse 26 28. In sum every action which Reason or Scripture or Gods spirit guides not in us is to be called the work of some other creature of one of these three sorts either earthly the work of a plant or sensual the work of a brute or thirdly above the condition of both these devillish Thus do you see the sin of the contempt of the light of nature which although it be dimm'd in us by our corruption yet shined so bright in the Heathen that they were left without excuse in the Jews that even their own hearts accused them for their rebellions and in us Christians that unless we move according to its directions we are fallen below the condition of men almost of creatures 'T were now superfluous farther to demonstrate it our time will be better spent if we close with some use of it and that will prove manifold 1. by way of caution not to deifie or exalt too high or trust in this light of nature It was once a perfect glorius rule but is now
a guest in their hearts we go to Church and so did they to their Temples we pray and they sacrificed they washed and bathed themselves before they durst approach their deities and we come in our best cloths and cleanest linen but for any farther real service we mean towards God there for any inward purity of the heart for any sincere worship of our soul we are as guiltless as free from it we do as much contemn and scorn it as ever did any Heathen Again what man of us is not in some kind guilty even of their highest crime Idolatry Some of them took the brain to be sacred 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Athenaeus and therefore hearing some cry God help when one sneezed the ignorant sort worshipt that noise as an expression of a Deity in the brain and so as senslesly many of us deify our own brains and adore every thing that ever comes out of them Every conceit of ours must be like the birth of Jupiters brain a Minerva at least be we never so ignorant or mechanical every device every fancie of our own especially in matters of Religion is straight of Divine Authority and having resolved our selves the children of God every crochet we fall upon must be necessarily Theopneust and inspired and others accused for irreligious or singular that will not as soon give homage to it In sum every imagination becomes an Image and the Artificer deifies his own handy-work forgetting that he made it as 't is described in the 13. of Wisd toward the end and this is one kind of Idolatry Again who is there that hath not some pleasure in his heart which takes place of God there They had their Sun and Moon most glorious creatures their Heroes whose vertues had even deified their memory and silly men they admired and could not choose but worship The Devil and a humor of superstition customary in them fee'd and bribed the law in their hearts to hold its peace and not recall them But how basely have we out-gone their vilest worships How have we outstript them Let but one appearance of gain like that golden calf of the Israelites a beautiful woman like that Venus of the Heathens nay in brief what ever Image or representation of delight thy own lust can propose thee let it but glance or glide by thee and Quis non incurvavit Shew me a man that hath not at some time or other faln down and worshipt In sum all the lower part of the soul or carnal affections are but a picture of the City of Athens Acts xvii 16. Wholly given to Idolatry The basest unworthiest pleasure or content in the world that which is good for nothing else the very refuse of the refuse Wisd xiii 13. is become an Idol and hath its shrines in some heart or other and we crouch and bow and sacrifice to it and all this against the voice of our soul and nature within us if we would suffer it to speak aloud or but hearken to its whisperings 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Philoponus Nature only bids us feed our selves with sufficient lust brought in superfluity and pleasure But this only by the way lest you might think that part of my Sermon concerning the Heathens contempt of this law did belong little to you and so might have been spared Lastly not to lade every part of my former discourse with its several use or application take but this one more If this Light shines but dimly within us then let us so much the more not dare contemn it That Master that speaks but seldom then surely deserves to be obeyed he that is flow in his reproofs certainly hath good reason when he falls foul with any body If Craesus his dumb son in Herodotus seeing one come to kill his father shall by violence break the string of his tongue that formerly hindred his speech and he that never spake before roar out an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sir kill not Craesus I wonder not that the Persian held his hand a very Barbarian would be amazed and stopt by such a prodigy it must needs be an odious thing when the child which can scarce speak expresses indignation Wherefore if ever our bestial soul that of our sense shall seduce us to any thing that our manly soul that of our reason which is now somewhat decrepit and dim-sighted shall yet espy and find fault with if in any enterprize this natural law within us shall give the check let us suddenly remove our project and not dare to reject such fatherly sage admonishments if all the means in the world can help to avoid it let us never fall into the snare And if at thy audit with thy own soul and examination of thy self amongst the root of thy customary ignorant sins and O Lord deliver me from my secret faults if in that heap and chaos thy own heart can pick out many of this nature and present them to thee which it before forewarned thee of then let the saltest most briny tear in thy heart be called out to wash off this guilt let the saddest mortified thought thou canst strain for be accounted but a poor unproportionable expiation Think of this seriously and if all this will nothing move you I cannot hope that any farther Rhetorick if I had it to spare would do any good upon you Only I will try one suasory more which being somewhat rough may chance to frighten you and that is the punishment that here expects this contempt and that a dismal hideous one all the wild savage devourers in the wilderness Vile affections which punishment together with the inflicter and manner of inflicting it are the last parts of my discourse of which together in a word God gave them up to vile affections A punishment indeed and all the Fiends of Hell could not invent or wish a man a greater there is not a more certain presage of a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or total subversion of body and soul nor a more desperate prognostick in the world 'T is observed in Photius as a sure token that Jerusalem should be destroyed because punishment came upon it in a chain every link drew on another no intermission or discontinuance of judgments 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. A single judgment that brings no train after it is cheaply entertained and is therefore called not a calamity but a visitation but when one plague shall invade shall supplant another when the pestilence shall fright out the famine and the sword pursue the pestilence that neither may slay all but each joyn in the glory of the spoyl then must the beholder acknowledge 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that God is resolved to make them the scene of his rage not only of his wrath Thus also in the spiritual 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the estate of the soul some sins may be suffered to invade us and stick as did the Amorites to goad our sides
as motion beginning in the centre diffuses it self equally through the whole sphere and affecteth every part of the circumference and the flesh of the child waxed warm where the flesh indefinitely signifieth every part of it together and in the spiritual sense the whole soul and this is when the inward principle when the habit enters Then for acts of life one perhaps shews it self before another as the child first sneezed seven times a violent disburthening it self of some troublesom humors that tickle in the head to which may be answerable our spiritual clearing and purging our selves by Self-denial the laying aside every weight Heb. xii 1. then opened his eyes which in our spiritual creature is spiritual illumination or the eye of Faith these I say may first shew themselves as acts and yet sometimes others before them yet all alike in the habit all of one standing one conception one plantation in the heart though indeed ordinarily like Esay and Jacob the rougher come out first We begin our spiritual life in Repentance and contrition and with many harsh twinges of the Spirit and then comes Faith like Jacob at the heels smooth and soft applying all the cordial promises to our penitent souls In brief if any judgment be to be made which of these graces is first in the regenerate man and which rules in chief I conceive Self denial and Faith to be there first and most eminent according to that notable place Matth xvi 24. where Christ seems to set down the order of graces in true Disciples Let him deny himself and take up his cross that is forgo all his carnal delights and embrace all manner of punishments and miseries prepare himself even to go and be crucified and then follow me that is by a lively faith believe in Christ and prize him before all the world besides and indeed in effect these two are but one though they appear to us in several shapes for Faith is nothing without Self-denial it cannot work till our carnal affections be subjected to it Believe a man may and have flesh and fleshly lust in him but unless Faith have the pre-eminence Faith is no Faith The man may be divided betwixt the law of his members and the law of his mind so many degrees of flesh so many of spirit but if there be constantly but an even balance or more of flesh then spirit if 3 degrees of spirit and 5 of flesh then can there not be said to be any true Self-denial and consequently any Faith no more then that can be said to be hot which hath more degrees of cold then heat in it In brief 't is a good measure of Self-denial that sets his faith in his Throne and when by it faith hath conquered though not without continual resistance when it hath once got the upper hand then is the man said to be regenerate whereupon it is that the regenerate state is called the life of Faith Faith is become a principle of the greatest power and activity in the soul And so much for these 4 Queries from which I conceive every thing that is material and directly pertinent to instruct you and open the estate of a new creature may be resolved And for other niceties how far we may prepare our selves how co-operate and joyn issue with the spirit whether it work irresistibly by way of physical influence or moral perswasion whether being once had it may totally or finally be lost again and the like these I say if they are fit for any I am resolved are not necessary for a Countrey Auditory to be instructed in 'T will be more for your profit to have your hearts raised then your brains puft up to have your spirits and souls inwardly affected to an earnest desire and longing after it which will perhaps be somewhat performed if we proceed to shew you the necessity of it and unavailableness of all things else and that by way of Use and Application And for the necessity of renewedness of heart to demonstrate that I will only crave of you to grant me that the performance of any one duty towards God is necessary and then it will prove it self for it is certain no duty to God can be performed without it For 't is not a fair outside a slight performance a bare work done that is accepted by God if it were Cain would deserve as much thanks for his sacrifice as his brother Abel for in the outside of them there was no difference unless perhaps on Cain's side that he was forwardest in the duty and offered first Gen. iv 3. But it is the inside of the action the marrow and bowels of it that God judges by If a sum in gross or a bag sealed up would pass for payment in Gods audit every man would come and make his accounts duly enough with him and what he wanted in gold for his payment should be made up in counters But God goes more exactly to work when he comes to call thee to an account of thy stewardship he is a God of thoughts and a searcher of the heart and reins and 't will then be a harder business to be found just when he examines or clear when he will judge The least spot and blemish in the face of it the least maim or imperfection in the offering the least negligence or coldness in the performance nay the least corruption in the heart of him that doth it hath utterly spoiled the sacrifice Be the bulk and skin of the work never so large and beautiful to the eye if it come not from a sanctified renewed gracious heart it will find no acceptance but that in the Prophet Who hath required it at your hands This is not it that God is taken with or such as he commanded it may pass for a complement or a work of course but never be valued as a duty or real service Resolve thy self to dwell no where but in the Church and there like Simeon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Euseb plant thy self continually in a Pillar with thy eyes and words fixt and shot up perpetually towards Heaven If there be not a spirit within thee to give light to the eyes to add sighs and groans to the voice all this that thou hast done is nothing but as a blind mans pretensions to sight and a dumb mans claim to speech and so in like manner in all our duties which the world and carnal men set a price on And the reason is because every spiritual seeming work done by a natural man is not truly so 't is nothing less then that which it is said to be his prayers are not prayers lip-labour perhaps but not devotion his serving of God is formality not obedience his hope of Heaven not a hope but a phancy If God or Satan a judge or a tempter should come to reason with him about it he would soon be worsted never be able to maintain his title to it
In brief the fairest part of a natural man that which is least counterfeit his desire and good affections to spiritual things which we call favourably natural desires of spiritual obedience these I say are but false desires false affections 1. They have no solidity or permanency in the will only fluid and transitory some flight sudden wishes tempests and storms of a troubled mind soon blown over the least temptation will be sure to do it They are like those wavering prayers without any stay of faith Jam. 1. 6. like a wave of the sea driven by the wind and tost 2. That being which they have is counterfeit they are not that which they are taken for We are wont to say that acts are distinguished by their objects he sees truly which judges the thing to be that that it is 't is true indeed that another man sees he that takes blew for green but he does not see truly so also he only willeth a good thing that wills that in it which is truly good Now the natural man when he is said to chuse spiritual things as Heaven Happiness and the like he desires not a spiritual but a carnal thing in desiring Heaven he desires somewhat that would free him from misery in happiness a natural or moral good that would be acceptable to any creature under Heaven and so a Turk will desire paradise and that very impatiently in hope that he shall have his fill of lust there Generally you may mark that in such desires of spiritual things 't is some carnality that moves unregenerate men somewhat it is that may please the flesh and then 't is not the spiritual but the carnal part of it that is their object which they woo and make love too which you may judge of by this that they are frequent and importunate in their wishes for glory seldom or never for grace though that also may be wished for carnally to make us more renowned and better esteemed in the world For the most part I say they desire glory for that will make them happy and out of danger of worldly misfortunes remission of sins for these lie heavy on their consciences and give them many a twinge that they would fain be eased of but seldom petition for grace as if holiness without other conveniencies or gains were not worth the having And this arises from hence that our love of Christ grows by sending out and fastning our affections on him as an object fittest for our turns that will advantage us most but not by receiving in his Image and shape into our souls this indeed would make us not only love but imitate him and having once tasted long after him this would sanctifie our souls whereas the other doth but only satisfie our greedy affections By what hath been said 't is plain enough though it might be much more amplified that grace is of absolute necessity to performance of any holy work acceptable to God that without it whatsoever is done in spiritual matters is carnal not indeed spiritual but equivocally and absurdly so called The natural mans desires of Heaven are not desires of Heaven his faith no faith his believing of the Scripture infidelity because he doth not apply them particularly to himself to obey them In sum when he prayes hopes or give alms he does somewhat indeed and 't is well done of him but he doth not truly either pray or hope or give alms there is some carnality in them that hath poysoned them and quite altered the complexion the constitution and inward qualities of the work And then indeed how impatient should every Christian be of this Coloquintida within him There 's mors in ollâ as the Prophet once spake that 's death in the pot that so infects and kills every thing that comes out of it How should we abhor and loath and detest this old leaven that so besowres all our actions this Heathenism of ungenerate carnal nature which makes our best works so unchristian To insist longer upon this were but to encrease your thirst not to satisfie it to make you sensible of that marasmus and desperate drought that hath gone over your souls but not to help you to any waters for the cure that shall come next as the last work of this exercise to be performed in a word Having learnt what this new creature is and how absolutely necessary to a Christian O let us not defer one minute longer to examine our estates whether we are yet renewed or no and by the acts which we daily perform observe whether the sanctifying habit be as yet infused into our souls If the grounds of our best duties that which moves us in our holiest actions be found upon search to be but carnal if a careful religious education custom of the place which we live in fear of humane laws nay perhaps a good soft tender disposition and the like be the things that make thee love God and perform holy duties and not any inward principle of sanctity within thee I counsel thee to think better of thine estate and consider whether the like motives had it so hapned that thou hadst been born and brought up in Turky might not have made thee worship Mahumet I would be sorry to be rigid I fear thou wilt find they might well then a new course must be taken all thy former heathen carnal or at best good moral life all thy formal performances the best of thy natural desires must be content to be rank't here with circumcision and uncircumcision availing nothing there is no trust or confidence to be placed on these Aegyptian staves of reed Es xxxvi 6. And then if thou wilt not live heartless for ever if ever thou meanst to move or walk or do any thing you must to that Creator of Spirits and Lover of Souls and never leave solliciting till he hath breathed another breath into your nostrils another Soul into your Soul you must lay your self at his feet and with all the violence and Rhetorick and humility that these wants will prompt thee to and woo and importune the Holy Spirit to overshadow thee to conceive all holy graces spiritually in thee and if thou canst not suddenly receive a gracious answer that the Holy Ghost will come in unto thee and lodge with thee this night yet learn so much patience from thy beggarly estate as not to challenge him at thy own times but comfortably to wait his leisure There is employment enough for thee in the while to prepare the room against his coming to make use of all his common graces to cleanse and reform thy foul corruptions that when the Spirit comes it may find thee swept and garnish't All the outward means which God hath afforded thee he commands thee to make use of and will require it at thy hands in the best measure even before thou art regenerate though thou sin in all thy unregenerate performances for want of inward sanctitie yet 't is
lookt it over in the gross 't is time to survey it more particularly in its parts and those are two 1. The sin of Atheism and the subjects in which it shews it self There shall come in the last dayes scoffers 2. The motive and impellent to this sin a liberty which men give themselves to walk after their own lusts And first of Atheism and the subjects in whom it shews its self In the c. Where you may note that the words being in a form of a prophecy do note a sort of people which were to come in respect of St. Peter who writes it And though in its first aspect it refer to the period of the Jewish Nation and destruction of Jerusalem takes in the parallel state of things under the last age and dotage and declination of the world Accordingly we see at the 24. of St. Matthew the prophecy of both as it were interwoven and twisted into each other so that what St. Peter saith shall be we may justly suspect is fulfilled amongst us his future being now turned into a present his prophecy into a story In the Apostles times when Christianity was in the cradle and wanted years and strength to move and shew it self in the world there were but very few that would acknowledge it many sects of Philosophers who peremptorily resolved themselves against this profession joyn'd issue with the Apostles in assiduous disputation as we may find in the 17. of the Acts. Amongst those the Epicureans did plainly deny that there was any God that governed the world and laught at any proof that Moses and the Prophets could afford for their conviction And here a man might think that his prophecy was fulfilled in his own dayes and that he needed not to look beyond that present age for store of scoffers Yet so it is that the infidelity which he foresaw should in those last ages reign confidently in the world was represented to him in a larger size and uglier shape then that of the present Philosophers The Epicurean unbelief seem'd nothing to him being compared to this Christian Atheism where men under the vizard of religion and profession of piety are in heart arrant Heathens and in their fairest carriages do indeed but scoff and delude and abuse the very God they worship Whence the note is that the profession of Christianity is mixed with an infinite deal of Atheism and that in some degree above the Heathenism of the perversest Philosophers There were in St. Peters time Epicureans and all sects of scoffers at Christianity and yet the scoffers indeed the highest degree of Atheism was but yet a heaving it would not rise and shew it self till the last daie 'T is worth observing what variety of stratagems the Devil hath alwaies had to keep us in defiance with God and to nourish in us that hostility and enmity against Heaven which is so deep and predominant in himself He first set them a work to rebel and fortifie themselves against God and make themselves by building of a Tower so impregnable that God himself could not be able to disperse them Gen. xi 4. Afterwards when by the punishment and defeating of that design the world was sufficiently instructed that no arm of flesh no bodily strength could make resistance against Heaven when the body could hold out in rebellion no longer he then instructs the inward man the soul to make its approaches and challenge Heaven Now the soul of man consisting of two faculties the Understanding and the Will he first deals with the Understanding and sets that up against God in many monstrous fashions first in deluding it to all manner of Idolatrous worship in making it adore the Sun the Moon and the whole Host of Heaven which was a more generous kind of Idolatry Afterwards in making them worship Dogs and Cats Onions and Garlick for so did the Egyptians and this was a more sottish stupid affection a man would wonder how the Devil could make them such fools Afterward he wrought still upon their understanding in making them under pretence of two laudable qualities admiration and gratitude admiration of any kind of vertue and gratitude for any good turn to deifie and worship as gods any men which had ever done either their Nation or private persons any important good or favour So that every Heros or noble famous man as soon as he was dead was worshipt 'T were long to shew you the variety of shifts in this kind which the Devil used to bring in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Gentiles i. e. their worshipping of many Gods In brief this plot lasted thus till Christianity came into the world and turn'd it out of doors and at Christs Resurrection all the gods of the Heathen expired However the Devil still stuck close to that faculty of the soul which he had been so long acquainted with I mean the understanding and seeing through the whole world almost the Doctrine of Christ had so possest men that he could not hope to bring in his Heathen gods again he therefore hath one design more on the understanding seeing 't is resolved to believe Christ in spight of heathenism he then puzzles it with many doubts about this very Christ it is so possest with He raises up in the first ages of the Church variety of Heresies concerning the union of his natures equality of his person with the Father and the like and rung as many changes in mens opinions as the matter of faith was capable of There was no truth almost in Christianity but had its Heretick to contradict and damn it Now since at last reason and truth and the power of Scripture having out-lived in a good degree fundamental error in opinion hath almost expuls'd the Devil out of the head or upper part of the soul the Understanding his last plot is on the heel i. e. the Will and Affections and that he hath bruised terribly according to that prophecy Gen. iii. 15. He deals mainly on our manners and strives to make them if it be possible sinful beyond capability of mercy And this design hath thrived with him wonderfully he hath wrought more opposition against God more heresie against Christ in our lives then ever he was able to do in our doctrine In a Kingdom where the custom of the Country and education hath planted purity of faith in the understanding he there labours to supplant and eradicate charity and devotion in the will and crucifies Christ more confidently in our corrupt heathenish practises then ever the Jews did in their incredulity And on this plot he hath stuck close and insisted a long while it being the last and most dangerous stratagem that the policy of Hell can furnish him with to corrupt and curse and make abominable a sincere belief by an Atheistical conversation And this doth prove in general that 't is the Devils aim and from thence probably the Christians curse to have more hostility against God in
the first verse of the Psalms there be steps and rounds and gradations of a sinner specified 1. Walking in the counsel of the ungodly 2. Standing in the way of sinners 3. Sitting in the seat of the scorner The two first being degrees in his motion several stages of his journey to this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or top pitch of sinning in the last Walking in the counsel of the ungodly is the first entrance to his course and he that hath such a rise as this hath a great advantage of all other sinners he will perform his race with speed and come suddenly to his goal This deliberate walking in the wayes and with the companions and contrivers of ungodliness this partaking and prosecuting of the counsels the enjoying this familiarity with sin proves a strong engagement to continue and persevere and delight in its acquaintance Yet because walking is a laborious motion and will tire the sinner in time he is fain to betake himself to an easier posture and that is standing in the way of sinners continuing in a still sober quiet stupid tranqillity of sinning standing like a Mercury's post in the midst of a rode never removed or stirred an inch though never so justled by the passengers Let all the contrary vertues never so thwart and cross him he hath fixed his station and neither force nor allurements shall make him move Yet because standing also is a painful posture with which the valiantest legs will at last be nummed if not tyred he hath in the last place his chair of ease and state and here he sets up his rest here he sins with as much Majesty as delight 1. In cathedrâ as a feat of greatness lording it and sinning imperiously commanding every spectator to follow his example of scoffing at God and goodness 2. In cathedrâ as a seat of authority sinning doctorally and magisterially by his practise defining the lawfulness of these scoffs even setting up a school of Atheism And 3. in cathedrâ as a seat of rest and ease and pleasure which he is resolved never to rise out of which he hath reposed himself in that he may laugh at ease and without any pains or trouble or charges blaspheme God for ever And for the most part indeed he proves as bad as his resolution having once given himself this licence of laughing at and deriding Religion he seldom ever recovers himself to a sober countenance like men whose custom of scoffing hath made wry-mouthed he lives and continues and for the most part dyes scoffing He comes as it were laughing into hell and seldom forsakes this habit of prophaneness till horror hath put smiling out of date There is not a sin in the world that sits closer to him which hath once entertained it and he that is once a merry Atheist seldom if ever proves a sad sober Christian He is seated in his chair of scorning and contemns the mercy of that spirit that should take him out of it Thus you see that walking in the steps and standing in the way i. e. following the commands of their own lusts they are soon arrived to the pitch of Atheists to the chair of scorners and then there is but little preferment more that they are capable of unless they will strive with Lucifer for preeminence in hell or else challenge Rabshakeh to rail or Julian to blaspheme But this is the highest degree of scoffers and I hope the devil hath but few such valiant bold forward Champions in the world since Julian or Lucian's time And therefore I hope I have prickt no mans conscience here whilst I have spoke of them but I have formerly proved that there be some lower tamer secret degrees of Atheism which every man may chance to spy in some angle or corner of his soul some implicite artificial wayes of scoffing or abasing God which most of us are guilty of and 't will be worthy our pains to shew how these seeds are warmed and cherished and animated by a licentious life Hippocrates observes of the Scythians that they do not swathe themselves nor bind in their loins with any kind of girdle but go with their bodies very loose that they may ride the easier which is the only exercise they use and from hence saith he they grow so corpulent and fleshy so bread and bulky that they are both ugly and unweildy an eye-sore to others and cumbersome to themselves those accessions which in other people extend themselves proportionably in length and breadth in height as well as bulk in them grow all into thickness so that you shall see a Pygme in stature as big as a Gyant in the girt Thus is it with those whose affections are not ruled and restrained in order and within limits are not swathed and kept in have not some set terms of temperance and other vertues beyond which they suffer not themselves to fly out If I say these affections within us be by the owners left ungirt to their own freedom they will never grow upward toward Heaven they will still be dwarfish of small growth in Religion but yet like those Scythians they will run into a strange bulk and corpulence into some unweildy mishapen forms of Atheisin or the like Certainly they will grow into a greater breadth then the reasonable soul will be able to manage unless the spirit vouchsafe to come down and contract and call it into bounds it will encrease beyond all proportion beyond all acknowledgment of God or Religion We are used to say in nature that all moist things are apt to be conteined in other terms but hardly in their own the water is easily cooped up in a glass or bucket where there are bounderies to keep it in but being let loose on a table or a floor it flyes about and never stayes again till it meet with some Ocean or hollow place which may inclose and bestow the consistency on it which it has not of it self Thus may you see a river whilst it is kept within the channel go on in its stream and course very soberly and orderly but when it hath over-swelled the banks which before kept it in then doth it run about the pastures scorns to be kept within any compass Thus is it with the soul of man if it be ordered within terms and bounds if it have a strict hand held over it if it be curb'd and brought to its postures if it have reason and grace and a careful tutor to order it you shall find it as tame a creature as you need deal with it will never straggle or stray beyond the confines which the spirit hath set it the reason is because though it be in it self fluid and moist and ready to run about like water yet Deus firmavit Aquas God hath made a firmament betwixt the waters as he did Gen. i. 7. i. e. he hath establisht it and given it a consistency that it should not flow or pour it self out beyond its
place But if this soul of man be left to its own nature to its own fluid wild incontinent condition it presently runs out into an Ocean never stayes or considers or consults but rushes head-long into all inordinacy having neither the reins of reason nor God to keep it in it never thinks of either of them and unless by chance or by Gods mercy it fall into their hands 't is likely to run riot for ever Being once let loose it ranges as if there were neither power on earth to quell nor in Heaven to punish it Thus do you see how fluid how inconstant the soul is of its own accord how prone it is how naturally inclined to run over like a stream over the banks and if it be not swathed and kept in if it be left to the licentious condition of it self how ready is it to contemn both Reason and God and run head-long into Atheism Nay we need not speak so mercifully of it this very licentiousness is the actual renouncing of Religion this very walking after their own lusts is not only a motive to this sin of scoffing but the very sin it self A false Conception in the womb is only a rude confused ugly Chaos a meer lump of flesh of no kind of figure or resemblance gives only disappointment danger and torment to the Mother 'T is the soul at its entrance which defines and trims and polishes into a body that gives it eyes and ears and legs and hands which before it had not distinctly and severally but only rudely altogether with that mass or lump Thus is it with the Man till Religion hath entred into him as a soul to inform and fashion him as long as he lives thus at large having no terms or bounds or limits to his actions having no form or figure or certain motion defined him he is a Mola a meer lump of man an arrant Atheist you cannot discern any features or lineaments of a Christian in him he hath neither eyes to see nor ears to hear nor hands to practise any duty that belongs to his peace Only 't is Religion must take him up must smooth and dress him over and according to its Etymon must religare swathe and bind up this loose piece of flesh must animate and inform him must reduce him to some set form of Christianity or else he is likely after a long and fruitless travel to appear a deformed monstrous Atheist But not to deal any longer upon Simile's lest we seem to confound and perplex a truth by explaining it I told you the licentious voluptuous life was it self perfect Heathenism For can you imagine a man to be any but a Gentile who hath abandoned all love all awe all fear all care of God any one of which would much contract and draw him into compass who hath utterly put off every garb of a Christian who hath enjoy'd the reins so long that now he is not sensible or at least contemns the curb or snaffâ—le if he be but check't with it gets it in his teeth and runs away with it more fiercely The Heathen are noted not so much that they worshipt no God at all but that they worshipped so many and none of them the true Every great friend they had every delight and pleasure every thing that was worth praying for straight proved their God and had its special Temple erected for its Worship So that do but imagine one of them every day worshipping every God whom he acknowledged in its several Oratory spending his whole life and that too little too in running from one Temple to another and you have described our licentious man posting on perpetually to his sensual devotions worshipping adoring and sacrificing every minute of his life to some Idol-vanity and bestowing as much pains and charges in his prophane heathenish pleasures as ever the Gentiles did on their false gods or the most supererogating Papist on their true We are wont to say in Divinity and that without an Hyperbole that every commission of sin is a kind of Idolatry an incurvation and bending down of the soul to some creature which should alwayes be erect looking up to Heaven from whence it was infused like water naturally inclined to climb and ascend as high as the fountain or head from whence it sprang And then certainly a licentious life is a perpetual Idolatry a supineness and proneness and incurvation of the soul to somewhat that deserves to be called an Idol i. e. either in St. Pauls acceptation of it nothing an Idol is nothing 1 Cor. viii 4. or else in the most honourable signification only an Image or some rude likeness or representation of God We are the Image of God our selves and whatsoever is below us is but an imperfect draught of him containing some lineaments some confused resemblances of his power which created them have no being of their own but only as shadows which the light doth cast And therefore every love every bowe every cringe which we make to any creature is the wooing and worshipping of an Image at best in plain terms of an Idol nothing What degree then of Idolatry have they attained to who every minute of their lives bow down and worship make it their trade and calling for ever to be a solliciting some pleasure or other Some exquisite piece of sensuality to bless and make them happy which have no other shrines to set up but only to their own lust to which they do so crouch and creep and crawl that they are never able to stand up right again like those trees which the Papists talk of which by bowing to our Ladies house when in walks by the wood toward Loretto have ever since stood stooping Thus do you see how the latter part of my Text hath overtook the former the walking after his own lusts becomes a scoffer the licentious man proceeded Atheist and that with ease his very voluptuous life is a kind of Atheism and the reasons of this are obvious you need not seek or search far for them For first this walking in their own lusts notes an habit gathered out of many acts he hath walked there a long while and therefore now hath the skill of it walks on confidently and carelesly without any rub or thought of stopping And contrary to this the worship of God of which Atheism is a privation is an holy religious habit of Piety and Obedience Now we know two contrary habits cannot consist or be together in the same subject An habit and its opposite privation are incompetible light and darkness at the same time though they may seem to meet sometimes as in twilight but for two opposite positive habits never any mans conceit was so bold or phantastical as to joyn them you cannot imagine one but you must remove the other You may suppose a man distempered or weak which is a privation of health and yet suppose him pretty healthy as long as his natural strength is able
are so raw and womanish that it would grieve one to behold a fair comely man-like Christian in shew betraying so much impotency in his behaviour even like the Emperour a spinning one who had undertaken to be a Champion for Christ led away and abused and baffled by every pelting paultry lust 'T is lamentable to observe what a poor cowardly degenerous spirit is in most Christians with how slender assaults and petty stratagems they are either taken captive or put to flight how easily in their most resolute undertakings of piety or vertue they are either vanquisht or caught The ordinariest coursest had-favouredst temptation that they can see affects and smites them suddenly they are entangled before they are wooed and the least appearance of any difficulty the vizard or picture of the easiest danger is enough to fright them for ever from any thought of Religion or hope of Heaven For a meer natural man that hath nothing but original sin or worse in him that hath received nothing from God and his parents but a talent in a broken Vessel a soul infected by a crazy body diseas'd as soon as born for an Heathen that hath nothing to subsist on but a poor pittance of natural reason but one eye to see by and that a dim one for a meer Barbarian or Gentile to be thus triumphed over by every Devil as an Owl by the smallest Bird in the air might be matter of pity rather than wonder And yet few of them were such cowards those very weapons that Nature had furnished them with being rightly put on and fitted to them stood many of them in very good stead There were few passions few sins of an ordinary size but a Philosopher and meer Stoick would be able to meet and vanquish And therefore 't is not so much natural as affected weakness not so much want of strength as sluggishness and want of care not so much impotency as numbness and stupidity of our parts which hath so extremely dis-abled those that take themselves to be the weakest of us The truth is we are willing to conceive that our natural abilities are quite perisht and annihilate and that God hath no ways repaired them by Christ because we will not be put to the trouble of making use of them We would spare our pains and therefore would fain count our selves impotent as sluggards that personate and act diseases because they would not work or the old Tragedians which could call a god down upon the Stage at any time to consummate the impossiblest Plot and therefore would not put their brains to the toil of concluding it fairly Certainly the decrepitest man under Heaven if he be but a degree above a Carcass is able to defend himself from an ordinary Flie 'T is one of the Devils titles to be Beelzebub the Prince of Flies and such are many of his temptations He that hath but life in him may keep himself from any harm of one of them but the matter is they come in flocks being driven once away they return again Muscaest animal insolens and the Devil is frequent in these temptations though you could repel them as fast as they come yet 't would be a troublesome piece of work it will be more for your ease to lye still under them to let them work their will So in time Fly-blows beget noysomness and vermine in the soul and then the life and death of that man becomes like that of the Egyptians or Herod and no plague more finally desperate than those two of Flies and Lice I am resolv'd there be many temptations which foil many jolly Christians which yet a meer natural man that never dream't of Scripture or Gods Spirit might if he did but bethink himself resist and many times overcome Many acts of uncleanness of intemperance of contempt of superiours of murther of false-dealing of swearing and prophaning that cheap unprofitable that untempting and therefore unreasonable sin Many acts I say of these open abhominable sins which either custome or humane Laws make men ashamed of and the like the very Law of Reason within us is able to affront and check and conquer That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Methodius calls it that Law born with us Naturale judicatorium saith Austin against Pelagius Lux nostri intellectus say the Schoolmen out of Damascen Nay 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith the Stoick the promise that every one makes to nature the Obligation that he is bound in when he hath first leave to be a man or as Hierocles on the Pythagorean Verses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That Oath that is coaetaneous and co-essential to all reasonable natures and engages them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. not to transgress the Laws that are set them This is I say enough to keep us in some terms or compass to swathe and bind us in to make us look somewhat like men defeat the Devil in many a skirmish But how much more for a Christian who if it were by nothing but his Baptism hath certainly some advantages of other men For one that if he acknowledge any worships the true God never went a fooling after Idols which was the Original of the Heathens being given up to vile affections Rom. 1. for one that lives in a civil Countrey among people that have the faces and hearts of men and Christians made as it were to upbraid his wayes and reprove his thoughts for one that is within the sound of Gods Law and Light of his Gospel by which he may edifie more than ever Heathen did by thunder and lightning for one that cannot chuse but fear and believe and love and hope in God in some measure or kind be he never so unregenerate for him I say that hath all these outward restraints and perhaps some inward twinges of Conscience to curb and moderate him to be yet so stupid under all these helps as never to be able to raise up one thought toward heaven to have yet not the least atome of Soul to move in the ways of godliness but to fall prostrate like a Carkass or a Statue or that Idol Dagon with his feet stricken off not able to stand before the slightest motion of sin or if a lust or a phansie or a devil be he the ugliest in Hell any thing but God appear to him presently to fall down and worship This is such a sottish condition such an either Lethargy or Consumption of the Soul such an extream degree of weakness that neither original sin that Serpent that despoiled Adam nor any one single Devil can be believed to have wrought in us but that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Platonicks call it A popular Government of sin under a multitude of Tyrants which have for so long a while wasted and harassed the Soul so that now it is quite crest-faln as that legion of Devils Mar. V. 3. which dwelt among the Tombs in a liveless cadaverous
before our eyes are not able by the perspective of faith to behold that which easily we might all our wants relieved all our injuries revenged all our wounds bound up in the day of the resurrection but all our life long we repine and grumble and are discontented as men without hope and whilst we do thus what do we but act the part of these Atheists here in my Text scoffing and saying Where is the promise of his coming in the next verse to my Text. This very impatience and want of skill in bearing the brunts of this our warfare is but a piece of cowardly Atheism either a denying or mocking at the resurrection Every sigh is a scoff every groan a gibe every fear a sly art of laughing at the stupidity of those who depend upon the fulfilling of the promise of his coming Lastly say we what we will we live as if there were no resurrection as Sadduces if not as Atheists all our designs look no further then this life all our contrivances are defeated and frustrate in the grave we manage our selves with so little understanding that any spectator would judge by our actions that 't is no injury to compare us to the beasts that perish and never return again Certainly if we had any design upon Heaven or another life we would here make some provision for it Make our selves friends of our unrighteous Mammon that when we fail they may receive us into everlasting habitations i. e. use those good things that God hath given us with some kind of providence that they may stand us in stead when we have need of them i. e. not only as instruments to sin for that is to get us more enemies but as harbingers to be sent before us to Heaven 'T was a bitter Sarcasm of the fool to the Abbot on his death-bed that the Abbot deserved his staff as being the verier fool of the two that being straight to die to remove his Tent to another world he had sent none of his houshold-stuff before him The truth is we live generally as men that would be very angry much displeased if any should perswade us there were a resurrection the very mentioning of it to us might seem to upbraid our ordinary practices which have nothing but the darkness of death and silence of the grave to countenance them I may justly say that many ignorant Heathens which were confident there was nothing beyond this life expected certainly with death to be annihilated and turn again into a perpetual nothing yet either for the awe they bore to vertue or fear of disgrace after death kept themselves more regularly lived more carefully then many of us Christians And this is an horrid accusation that will lye very heavy upon us that against so many illuminated understandings the ignorance of the Gentiles should rise up in judgment and the learned Christian be found the most desperate Atheist I have been too large upon so rigid a Doctrine as this and I love and pray God I may always have occasion to come up to this place upon a more merciful Subject but I told you even now out of Lev. xix 17. that 't was no small work of mercy 't was the most friendly office that could be performed any man to reprehend and as the Text saith Not to suffer sin upon thy neighbour especially so sly a covert lurking sin as this of Atheism which few can discern in themselves I shall now come to Application which because the whole Doctrine spoke morally to your affections and so in a manner prevented Uses shall be only a recapitulation and brief knitting up of what hitherto hath been scattered at large Seeing that the Devils policy of deluding and bewitching and distorting our Understandings either with variety of false gods or heresies raised upon the true is now almost clearly out-dated and his skill is all bent to the deforming of the Will and defacing the character of God and the expression of the sincerity of our faith in our lives we must deal with this enemy at his own weapon learn to order our munition according to the assault and fortifie that part most impregnably toward which the tempest binds and threatens There is not now so much danger to be feared from the inrode of Hereticks in opinion as in practice not so much Atheism to be dreaded from the infidelity of our brains as the Heathenism and Gentilism of our lusts which even in the midst of a Christian profession deny God even to his face And therefore our chiefest Frontiers and Fortifications must be set up before that part of the soul our most careful Watch and Centinel placed upon our affections lest the Devil enter there and depopulate the whole Christian and plant the Atheist in his room To this purpose we must examine what seeds are already sown what treachery is a working within and no doubt most of us at the first cast of the eye shall find great store unless we be partial to our selves and bring in a verdict of mercy and construe that weakness which indeed signifies Atheism When upon examination we find our lives undermining our belief our practices denying the authority of Scripture and no whit forwarder to any Christian duty upon its commands When we find Gods essence and Attributes reviled and scoffed at in our conversation his omnipresence contemned by our confidence in sinning and argued against by our banishing God out of all our thoughts his all sufficiency doubted of by our distrusts and our scorn to depend upon it When we perceive that our carriages do fall off at this part of our belief in Christ that he shall come again to be our Judge and by our neglect of those works especially of mercy which he shall then require of us shew that indeed we expect him not or think of him as a Judge but only as a Saviour When we observe our Wills resisting the gifts and falsifying the Attribute whilst our Creed confesses the Person of the Holy Ghost and see how little how nothing of the sanctifying spirit of the earnest of our regeneration is in our hearts and we still stupidly sensless of the want When we believe forgiveness of sins and that only upon condition of repentance and yet abhor so much as to hear or think of the performing of it or to make good that mercy to others which our selves challenge of God Lastly when we prove to our selves and all the world beside by our requiring of a present reward for all our goodness and ruling our Religion to our earthly profit by our impatience of any affliction by our heathenish neglect and stupidity and riot that we do not in earnest look for the resurrection to life When I say by a just but exact survey and inquest we find these so many degrees of secret Atheism in us then must we shrift and purge and cleanse and rinse our souls from these dregs of Heathenism then must we humble
our selves below the dust and not dare to look the veriest Gentile in the face 'till we have removed this plague from us And do thou O Lord assist our endeavours and by the violence of thy Spirit force and ravish us in our lives as well as belief to a sincere acknowledgment and expression of every minute part of that Religion which is purely Christian that we may adore thee in our hearts as well as our brains and being sanctified throughout from any tincture or colour or suspition of irreligion in either power of our souls we may glorifie thee here and be glorified by thee hereafter Now to him which hath elected us hath c. The XVII Serm. 2 Pet. III. 3. Scoffers walking after their own lusts IT is an excellent observation of Aristotles that rich men are naturally most contumelious most given to abuse and deride others which he expresses thus in the seventh of his Pol. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The contentment which they enjoy in the continuance of their worldly happiness the perpetual rest and quiet and tranquility which their plenty bestows on them makes them contemn and despise the estate of any other man in the world Upon this conceit saith the same Aristotle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that their happiness is elevated infinitely above the ordinary pitch that whatever contentments any other sort of people can glory or delight in is but some imaginary slight poor happiness that men are fain to solace themselves withal to keep them from melancholy all far enough below the size of their felicity which all agreeable circumstances have conspired to make exactly complete Hence it is that you shall ordinarily observe the rich man in this confidence of his opinion that no man is happy but himself either contemn or pity the poverty and improvidence and perhaps the sottishness of such spirits that can rejoyce or boast in the possession of wisdom knowledge nay even of Gods graces no object is more ridiculous in his eye then either a Scholar or a Christian that knows not the value of riches for saith Aristotle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Money is reckoned the price of all things else that which can easily purchase whatever else we can stand in need of and therefore the rich man if he could think Learning and Religion worth any thing having his money by him which is in effect every thing thinks he can call for them when he pleases In the mean he hath more wit then to forsake his pleasures and go to school to the Stoick to divest himself of his robes and put on the sowerness the rigid sad behaviour which the profession of Wisdom or Christianity requires He is better pleased in his present pomp then to go and woo that misery and ruggedness which the severity of discipline looks for Let silly beggars boast of the contents of Wisdom or hopes of Heaven at mihi plaudo domi his coffers at home are better companions then all the melancholy of books or sullen solaces of the spirit He hath learnt by experience that he ought to pity and contemn these fictions of delight which the Poets fetch from the fortunate islands to delude and cozen and comfort beggars his glory and pride and riches are happiness indeed and whatever else the poverty of the world can boast of are objects not of his envy but his scorn What we have hitherto noted to you concerning the rich man is applyable on the same grounds to any fort of people which have fixt upon any worldly content and resolved upon some one object beside which they will never value or prize any thing Thus the Epicure or voluptuous man who hath set up his Idol lust to whom he owes all his sacrifice and from whom he expects all his good fortune that hath fixt his Pillars and cast his Anchor and is peremptorily constant in his course that he is resolved for ever to walk in This man I say being possest with an opinion of the happiness which he is placed in like the Sun in his pride rejoyces to run his course and scorns any contrary motion that he meets or hears of and only observes the wayes of vertue and religion to hate and laugh at them and the farther he walks the deeper he is engaged in this humor of self-content and contempt of others of security and scoffing For this is the force and implicite argument covertly contained in the close of these words There shall come in the last dayes scoffers c. i. e. this resolution to walk on in their own lusts hath brought them to this pitch of Atheism to scoff and deride both God and Goodness There shall c. We have heretofore divided these words and in them observed and handled already the sin of Atheism together with the subjects in which it works Christians of the last times noted from this prophetick speech There shall come in the last dayes scoffers We now come to the second particular the motive or impellent to this sin a liberty which men give themselves and a content which they take to walk after their own lusts The second chapter of the Wisdom of Solomon is an excellent description of the Atheist and though it be of Apocryphal authority yet 't is of most divine Canonical truth I could find in my heart nay I can scarce hold from reading and paraphrasing the whole chapter to you 't is so solid so strong so perfect a discourse upon this theme it contains so many strains of Atheistical reason in opposition to godliness and the root and growth and maturity of this tree of knowledge and death that the clear understanding of that one place might suffice without any enlargement of proofs or expressions But for brevity sake and on promise that you will at your leisure survey it I will omit to insist on it only in the end of the 21. verse after all the expressions of their Atheistical counsels you have the reason or motive or first worker of all For their own wickedness hath blinded them their stupid perseverance in those dark wayes in that black Tophet on earth habituate custom of sinning had so thickned their sight had drawn such a film over their eyes that in the judgment of divine affairs they were stark blind they could see nothing in all the mystery of godliness which was worth embracing and therefore had no employment but to walk on after their own lusts and to scoff at those that were so foolishly friendly to them as to call them out of their way they were well enough acquainted with their own paths they could walk them blindfold and therefore had more wit then forsake the road for a nearer by-way The issue of all is this that a voluptuous course of life is a great promoter and advancer of Atheism there had never been so many scoffers in the Christian world had there not been also those that were resolute to walk after their own lusts In
and nourishment from the spirit is rather opprest then improved by such an overflow The Christian is thereby much hindred in his progress of good works and cannot serve the Lord with alacrity that so perpetually hangs down his head like a Bulrush Wherefore the Country rule is that that ground is best which is mellow which being crusht will break but not crumble dissolve but not excessively Hence I say the habituate believer need not suspect his estate if he find not in himself such an extremity of violent grief and humiliation as he observes in others knowing that in him such a measure of tears would both soil the face of his devotion and clog the exercise of it His best mediocrity will be to be habitually humbled but actually lively and alacrious in the wayes of godliness not to be too rigid and severe a tyrant over his soul but to keep it in a temper of Christian softness tender under the hand of God and yet man-like and able both in the performance of Gods worship and his own calling And whensoever we shall find our selves in either extreme either too much hardned or too much melted too much elevated or too much dejected then to pray to that Holy Spirit so to fashion the temper of our souls that we neither fail in humbling our selves in some measure for our sins nor yet too cowardly deject and cast down our selves below the courage and comfort and spiritual rejoycing which he hath prescribed us O Holy Lord we are the greatest of sinners and therefore we humble our selves before thee but thou hast sent thy Christ into the world to save sinners and therefore we raise up our spirits again and praise and magnifie thy name And thus much of this point and in brief of the first consideration of these words to wit as they are absolutely a profession of Paul himself to which end we beheld him in his double estate converted and unconverted In his unconverted state we found though a very great sinner yet not absolutely greater then those times brought forth and therefore we were to think of him relatively to his future estate and so we found him the greatest sinner that ever was called in the New Testament into so glorious a Saint Whence we observe the rarity of such conversions that though Saul were yet every blasphemous sinner could not expect to be called from the depth of sin to regeneracy and salvation and this we proved both against the ancient Romans and modern Censors of morality and applied it to the care which we ought to have of keeping our unregeneracy spotless from any reigning sin Afterward we came to Paul converted where we balk't the discourse of the condition of sin in the regenerate and rather observed the effect of it and in it that the greatness of his sin made as Paul so every regenerate man more eagerly to fasten on Christ Which being proved by a double ground we applied first by way of caution how that proposition was to be understood 2. by way of character how a great sinner may judge of his sincere certain conversion 3. by way of comfort to others who find not the effects of humiliation and the like in themselves in such measure as they see in others and so we have past through the first consideration of these words being conceived absolutely as St. Pauls profession of himself we should come to the other consideration as they are set down to us as a pattern or form of confessing the estate and applying the salvation of sinners to our selves which business requiring the pains and being worthy the expence of an entire hour we must defer to a second exercise Now the God which hath created us hath elected redeemed called justified us will sanctifie us in his time will prosper this his ordinance will direct us by his grace to his glory To him be ascribed due the honour the praise the glory the dominion which through all ages of the world have been given to him that sitteth on the Throne to the Holy Spirit and Lamb for evermore The XIX Sermon 1 Tim. I. 15. Of whom I am the chief IN all Humane writings and Learning there is a kind of poverty and emptiness which makes them when they are beheld by a judicious reader look starved and crest-faln their speeches are rather puft up then fill'd they have a kind of boasting and ostentation in them and promise more substance and matter to the ear then they are able to perform really to the understanding whence it falls out that we are more affected with them at the first hearing and if the Orator be clear in his expression we understand as much at the first recital as we are able to do at the hundredth repetition But there is a kind of Excellency in the Scripture a kind of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or sublimity above all other writings in the world The reading of every section of it leaves a sting in the mind and a perpetual conceit of a still imperfect understanding of it An intelligent man at every view finds in it a fresh mystery and still perceives that there is somewhat beyond not yet attain'd to like men digging in mines the deeper he dives he finds the greatest treasure and meets with that under ground which looking on the outward turf or surfice he never imagined to have been there This I observe unto you to shew you the riches both of all and especially of this Scripture whereinto the deeper I dig the more oar I find and having already bestowed one hour in the discussing of it without any violence or wresting or wire-drawing find plenty of new materials We have already handled the Words at large in one consideration as they are a profession of Paul himself I will not repeat you the particular occurrents We now without any more delay of preface come to the second consideration of them as they are spoken by Paul respectively to us i. e. as they are prescribed us for a form of confessing the estate and applying the salvation of sinners unto ourselves teaching each of us for a close of our Faith and Devotion to confess Of all c. Where first the cadence or manner how Paul falls into these words is worthy to be both observed and imitated the chief and whole business of this verse being the truth the acceptable truth of Christs Incarnation with the end of it the saving of sinners He can no sooner name this word sinners but his exceeding melting tenderness abruptly falls off and subsumes Of all sinners c. If there be any thing that concerns sinners I am sure I have my part in that for of that number I am the chief The note by the way briefly is That a tender conscience never hears of the name of sinner but straight applies it to it self It is noted by Aristotle the master of Human Learning that that Rhetorick was very thin and unprofitable very poor and like