with which the World assaults us in our course of Duty Thus the Crosse of Christ first shews us the necessity we have to renounce and Crucifie the World But to encourage and enable us to do so it does also shew us Secondly the certainty of a good issue in the doing it assures us that those who deny themselves forbidden satisfactions here that will be vertuous maugre all the baits and threats of Earth will embrace duty when it is laden with a Cross although so heavy as to crush out life and kill the body assures us that those lose not but exchange their lives shall save their Souls and that there is another World wherein their losses shall be made up to them and repaired with all advantage To the truth of this the Crosse of Christ is a most pregnant and infallible testimony For as by multitudes of Miracles Christ sought to satisfie the world that he was sent from God to promise all this and justified his Power to perform it by experiment raising some up from the dead so when they said he did his Miracles by Beelzebub he justified it further with his Life affirming that he was the Son of God now 't is impossible but he must know whether he were or no and consequently sent and able to do all he promised and resolv'd to do it also for our more assurance in himself that he would raise himself up from the dead within three dayes and saying this when he was sure he should be Crucified for saying so and sure that if he did not do according to his words he must within three dayes appear a meer Impostor to the world and his Religion never be receiv'd Now 't is impossible for him that must needs know whether all this were true or no to give a greater testimony to it than his Life For this that Blood and Water that flowed from his wounded side upon the Crosse which did assure his Death is justly said to bear witnesse to his being the Son of God and consequently to the truth of all this equal to the testimony of the Spirit whether that which the Spirit gave when he came from Heaven down upon him in his Baptisme or the testimony which he gave by Miracle for there are three that bear witnesse upon Earth the Spirit the Water and the Blood Thus by his Death Christ did bring Life and Immortality to light his choosing to lay down his own life for asserting of the truth of all this was as great an argument to prove it as his raising others from the dead and Lazarusâ—â— empty Monument and walking grave-cloathes were not better evidence than this Crosse of Christ. 3. Once more this Crosse not onely proves the certainty of a future state but does demonstrate the advantage of it and assures us that it is infinitely much more eligible to have our portion in the life to come than in this life That to part with every thing that is desirable in this World rather than to fail of those joyes that are laid up in the other that to be poor here or to be a spoyl to renounce or to disperse my wealth that so I may lay up treasures for my self in Heaven and may be rich to God never to taste any one of these puddle transient delights rather than to be put from that right hand where there are pleasures for ever more to be thrown down from every height on Earth if so I may ascend those everlasting Hills and mount Sion that is above that this is beyond all proportion the wisest course it does demonstrate since it shews us him who is the Son of God who did create all these advantages of Earth and prepare those in Heaven and does therefore know them both Who also is the Wisdom of the Father and does therefore know to value them yet for the joyes that were set before him choosing to endure the Crosse and despising the shame On that Beam he weigh'd them and by that his choice declar'd the Pomps of this World far too light that exceeding and eternal weight of Glory that the whole Earth was but as the dust upon the Ballance and despis'd it and to make us do so is both the Design and direct influence of the Cross of Christ. But as at first the Wise men of this World did count the Preaching of the Crosse meer folly to give up themselves to the belief and the obedience of a man that was most infamously Crucifyed and for the sake of such an one to renounce all the satisfactions suffer all the dire things of this Life and in lieu of all this onely expect some after Blessednesses and Salvations from a man that they thought could not save himself seemed to them most ridiculous So truly it does still appear so to the carnal reasonings of that sort of men who have the same objections to the Crosse of Christ as it would crucify the World to them and them to it as it would strip them of all present rich contents and give them certain evils with some promises of after good things which they have no tast for nor assurance of Now this being in their account folly then the contrary to this they must think wisdom as it is indeed the Wisdom of this World which Wisdom since it does design no further than this World and hath no higher ends than Earth and its Felicities it must needs put men upon minding the acquist and the enjoyment of these Earthly things for that is onely to pursue and to atchieve their ends to catch at and lay hold on their felicity and accordingly we see it does immerse them wholly in those cares So that it is no wonder if their God and Religion can get no attendance from them it being most impossible they should when Mammon hath engaged them in the superstitious services of Idolatry and when they sacrifice their whole selves to pleasure and make their bodies the burnt offerings of their Lusts and when Ambition even while it makes them stretch and climb and mount causes them also to fall low prostrate make their temper nature stoop lye down to every humour and to every vice they think themselves concern'd to court and please And though a man would think these so great boundlesse cares are very vain and foolish upon several accounts for common sense as well as Scripture does assure 〈◊〉 that this life and the Contents of it do not consist in the abundance of the things that we possess that it is all one whether my draught come out of a small Bottle or an Hogshead 〈◊〉 the one of these indeed may serve excesse and sicknesse better but the other serves my appetite as well the one may drown my Vertue but the other quenches thirst alike And every dayes experience also does convince us that the least crosse accident pain or affliction on our persons or some other that is seated neer our hearts or the least
fire kindles his sacrifice with the flames of Hell for so S. James does call those heats He that gives God any of his performances and hath a naughty Heart like Nadab and Abihu he presents his offering in an unhallowed Censer and all his holy worship will get nothing else from Heaven for him but a consuming fire as theirs did He that will offer any thing to God must take a care it be not tainted with such mixtures which spoil all the Religion making it not sincere and also spoil the Heart by making it not clean and undefiled The last remaining sense A Clean and undefiled Heart Of those things which our Saviour sayes defile the man some are meerly sins of the Heart such as may be consummated within the Soul and for the perpetration of which a spirit is sufficient to it self such are Pride especially spiritual pride the sin of those that think none holy as themselves and cast the black doom of Reprobation upon all that do not comply with their opinions and interests such also are uncontentednesse with our estates inward repinings at the dispositions of Providence concerning us black malice bitter envyings Now in these as the mind does need no outward members to consummate them requires no accessary organs to work them out so neither does it require any outward accessary guilt to make them liable to condemnation we know 't was one sin of the spirit onely that made Angels Devils If a foul body be abominable to the Lord shall a foul spirit be less odious he that defiles his Soul offends God in a much neerer concern of his because that speaks neerer relation to him then the body this was only his workmanship made out of Earth the Spirit was created out of himself a foul body is but filthy Clay but he that does pollute his Soul does putrefie the Breath of God and stains a beam of the Divinity The other sort of things that are said to come from the Heart and to Defile are those which S. Paul calls works of the Flesh such as if they be committed must be committed outwardly Murders Drunkennesse Revellings Revenge Wrath and Contentions Seditions Factions Schismes all Uncleannesses c. In these indeed the Heart can be but partiall Actor the utmost it can do is to desire and to intend them and to contrive and manage the designs of compassing them which yet Providence or the Innocence of others may put out of the reach of mans power or his own temporal fears may make him not dare to set upon them though he do cherish the desires Now if they beobstructed from committing most men use to conclude gently of their guilts while they do keep within the Heart the Execution of them is the onely thing that does look mortal and till the sin be perfected there is no death in it And truly I confesse that as it happens many times on a sudden surprize of soul when a bright gilded temptation strikes the heart and dazles the mind we see that the Will rushes on it instantly consents and wishes heartily yet within a while the Spirit does recover out of the surprize puts by the thrusts of fancy and the stabs of the temptation and that Will languishes and dies like a velleity as if it had been nothing but a woulding and now the man would not by any means consent to the commission In this case though there be a guilt to be repented of and cleansed with many tears yet this is Innocence in the comparison but if the Will purpose contrive and do its utmost it is the same to the man as if he had committed T were easie to demonstrate this that whatsoever evill thing a man intends and does fixedly resolve he is guilty of though he do nothing or though the thing he chance to do be never so much lawful Those sayings of S. Paul I know and am perswaded by the Lord Jesus that there is no meat unclean of it self but to him that esteemeth any thing unclean to him it is unclean Rom. 14. 14. and he that doubteth is damned if he eat v. 23. These could have no truth in them unlesse the heart by choosing and pursuing to the utmost any thing that it does judge unlawful incurr'd the guilt of that unlawfulness even to Damnation and all that meerly by it self without the Action which in that case had nothing sinful in it A weight that is upheld by a mans hand and otherwise would rush down to the earth does surely gravitate as much it is as heavy though it do not fall quite down as if it did and were it let alone it would A settled tendency a resolv'd inclination to sin that presseth with its utmost agitation is that weight which though it may perchance be stopt in its career yet it tends to the Abysse its center and will not rest but in that Pit that hath nor rest nor bottome the Heart in this case is as liable as it can be because here it hath done its worst and such a will shall be imputed to it self And now I need not tell those who are still designing sin or mischief in the heart although it never dares come out of those recesses how far they are removed from the goodnesse of God to Israel A Father finds a way to prove such souls have larger doses of Gods Vengeance who when he had asserted that the soul does not dye with the body and then was askt what it did in that long interval for sure it is not reasonable that it should be affected with any anticipations of the future Judgment because the business of the day of Judgment should be reserved to its own day without all prelibation of the sentence and the restitution of the Flesh is to be waited for that so both soul and body may go hand in hand in their Recompences as they did in their demerits joynt partners in the Wages as they were in the Works To this he answers The Soul does not divide all its operations with the Body some things it acts alone and if there were no other cause it were most just the Soul should there receive without the Body the dues of that which here it did commit without the Body That 's for the former sort of sins those meerly of the Heart And for the latter sort the Soul is first engaged in the commission that does conceive the sin layes the design of compassing and does contrive and carry on the machination and then why should not that be first in Punishment which is the first in the Offence Go now and reckon that thy outward grosse transgressions are the only dangerous and guilty ones and slight thy sins of Heart but know that while thy flesh is sleeping in the quiet Grave at rest and ease thy Spirit then 's in Torments for thy Fleshes sins and feels a far severer Worm than that which gnaws thy Body Poor Soul Eternity of Hell from Resurrection to For-ever
store of chapmen that Church I say may give encouragement to hope that God may be compounded with at easie rates that for a Surfet I may give a Meal and God will pardon it and let me have Wine too into the bargain for they allow afflicting of our Souls in Wine that some weeks change of Dyet may go for a change of Life for indeed these come up somewhat nearer the just value than some of their prices But though there be all the reason in the world they should let men out of Purgatory on what condition they please when themselves onely put them in and make the breath of a few Pater noster's quite blow out those flames which burn no where but in their Doctrines Yet when without any commission from Christ they make Attrition able to secure men from Hell and an Induâ—gence able to release them out of Purgatory when they make new conditions of Pardon that is new Gospel new wayes of application of Christs Merits and though our Saviour God when he found in his heart to dye for us yet in the Agonies of his Compassion could not find in his heart to give us easier terms of life than such as do require Contrition Humiliation and Amendment which they commute so cheaply with his Vicar We justly stand astonisht at such usurpation on Christ's Blood and Merits that does assign them at these rates I make no question but these easie expiations get them many Converts Rome from its first foundation grew from being an Asylum to the dissolute but they that go away upon such hopes 't is to be feared that easinesle betrayes them into sins from which those Expiations cannot rescue them and at once makes them Proselytes to Rome and Hell Nor are our trusts much more secure if we relye upon our opâ—s operatum too our little outward strictnesses unless the soul be engag'd except there be inward life of religion all those will not avail If I deny my self my meals give my self my sins that is so far from expiation that it aggravates I am an argument against my self that my crimes are incorrigible when I will have them though I cut off the instruments foments of them and though I meddle not with the temptations yet I seize the sins What S. Austin does say of Alms In meliùs vita mutanda per eleemosynas de peccatis praeteritis propitiandus est Deus non ad hoc emendus quodammodò ut semper liceat impune peccare This is applicable to these performances also our lives must be Reformed and so on that Repentance and these strictnesses God will be reconciled and our offences done away but he will not be brib'd by these to let us alone in them he is not gratified by such performances so as to wink at vices for their sakes and suffer us in our rebellions upon such compositions as these take a Reward to spare the Guilt Nor is he such a soft and easie God as to take them for payment of that infinite Debt we owe that which he bought off with the Blood of God shall not be ours at such unworthy prices The Prophet Micah seeking for a present to appease him with rejects all the Jewish rites though God prescrib'd them as insufficient in them all things of the like external kind Mic. 6. 6 7. Wherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow my self before the most high God shall I come before him with burnt-offerings with Calves of a year old Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of Rams or with ten thousand Rivers of Oyle shall I give my first-born for my Transgression the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul If I do offer up whole Hecatombs to God will that atone for having offered up too plentifully to my Genius Or if I do remove my Riots from my table to the Altar and change my few extravagant Dishes into whole Herds of thousand Sacrifices shall I by doing so remove the guilt too of my Luxuries If I give God ten thousand Rivers for my overflowing Cups will the Intemperance be washt away in those Or shall I think to expiate an adultery with a Child and for that momentary and unclean delight give up the lovely and first issue of my lawful Bed And who will be content to be his own Priest in such manner to pay such Sacrifices for his sins but yet that will not do as it cost more to Redeem Souls which not Rivers of Oyl can cleanse but streams must flow out of the Heart of Christ to do it nor the fruit of Mans body make a satisfaction for but the eternally begotten Son of the Divinity and none but the first born of God alone for thus expiation of sins was wrought Even so to make that expiation mine besides relyance on it I must transcribe the Copy of the Sufferings of that Son transplant the Garden of Gethsemane into my breast If his Soul be sorrowfull even unto Death my Soul must be Afflicted too Humiliations must prostrate me upon my face to deprecate that Fire and Brimstone burning Tempest that is the portion of the Sinners cup saith David O my Father let this Cup pass from me The lustful feavers of my blood must excern themselves in cold sweat of fear and grief in agonies of Penitence and my excessive draughts not onely make me to cry out I thirst but give me Vinegar and Gall to drink sorrow as bitter as my riotous egestions have been my Oaths that have struck through the Name of God must pierce my Soul with grief as pungent as his Thorns and Nayles In a word I must so Afflict my Soul as to crucifie the body of sin and nail it to his Crosse. And this is that which in its own proportion was required of the Jewes this Day here in the Text to the work of which Day how the Afflicting of the Soul in both the given senses does contribute was my Second and the next Enquiry Secondly What this Day was the Verse before the Text informs us it was their Day of Expiation or Atonement Now that the Jewes esteem Fasting and Humiliation expiatory Sacrifices appears from a Form of Prayer which even yet they use on such a day where he that fasted sayes O Lord the Governour of all the World I have now finished my Fast before thee thou knowest that when we had a Temple standing the man that sinned was bound to expiate it by a Sacrifice the Blood of which was poured out and the Altar consumed the Fat to make amends for his Offence but now by reason of our many wickednesses we have neither a Temple Altar or Priest to make Atonement for us I beseech thee therefore O Lord my God the God of my Fathers to accept of that little portion of my own Flesh and Blood which this dayes Fasting hath torn from me in lieu of a Sin-offering and be thou reconciled unto me for thy mercies sake Thus
the discourse of my own splendors which is all the use I can make of it the Eastern Rocks must send me Diamonds meerly to dart a line of light into anothers eyes which may return to me in a report that I have such fine Jewels and I have nothing else of all my sumptuous glories but the meer Eccho of their shine which is reflected and beat back to me in commendations With so much expence anxiety and sin I do provide onely for other mens discourses or it may be envyes Now these are none of my enjoyments and therefore I have nothing of them but the Lust and the desire As for those of the flesh the third remaining kind they seem indeed to be exempted from this reasoning the sensual person gorges his desires and in Solomons phrase makes his Soul enjoy good Yet the same Solomon salves that appearance too in saying when provisions encrease they are encreased that eat them and what good is there to the owners thereof saving the beholding of them with their eyes My broad and my cramb'd tables do not more enlarge or serve my appetite give me no satisfaction but only that of seeing many Dishes full and many men consuming them as if Luxury also were a lust of the Eye It hath been said indeed that the Eye is the Gluttons most unsatisfied and greedy part and it must needs be so if its lust lye to all that other men devour and if it crave not onely for the mans own stomack but for throngs of clients parasites and attendants And 't is too plain the other Twin Intemperance lusts by the same rules and laws It does not onely claim its seat in the Eye which makes it self a Judge of Liquors for the palate and does not choose them by the uses of their moisture but by their body by their air and by the mode and other Rules of the authentick standard Drinkers as if men thirsted in the fashion onely But this Eye also as the Ryotous mans did gapes for company and thirsts to see the Vice go round it drinks in nothing with so much delight as the Wine when a weaker Companion returns it back again in Vomit at that foul horrid spectacle it sparkles and triumphs Now 't were in vain to ask Solomons question What good is there in this or what enjoyment to urge that meats and drinks cannot give satisfaction to the Eye that hath no palate and then cry out Oh Prodigy that it should Lust thus As for the other kind of Ryots where with arts of Epicurism men contrive to feast and entertain their private Appetites and put a Patrimony into sauce for their own palates men sordidly Luxurious 'T is evident that these are studied to provoke men choose such VVines as they may â—â—gest drink and with elaborate condiments make forc't hunger as well as dishes so that the Ryotous design onely to Lust and the whole mystery of Luxury is to create desires Lastly for that one that hath ingrost the name of Lust it gives in a full Evidence against it self For the Adulterer much more irrational than the most greedy Miser is insatiate in desiring what he hath and his Lust will not use his remedy least so it should allay and quench the Lust And whil'st with so much feaver of desire he courts nothing else but the change and values that alone equall with all the discontents of this life all the miseries of that to come and will go to the Devil meerly for variety as it is plain Adultery hath nothing proper to it self but the desire is a meer loosnesse of the Fancy which ranges in wild lusts and which hath no enjoyment that 's peculiar to it but the lusting only so 't is also plain that this Lust must be endless for that principle of Change which gives it all its incitation must never let it rest for then 't is not variety S. John said therefore most expressively All that is in the World is Lust men only can desire here pursuing their desires just as they do their shadows no eagerness or hast can bring them nearer still they onely pursue yea like him that would hugg and force a Cloud his empty arms return upon his breast with strokes and while they seek to catch the object wound his bosom And thus it must be till we fix our passion there where only there is satisfaction even on God the object of the pious mans desire and my next part Nothing besides thee or with thee so it signifies also There is nothing upon Earth that I desire with thee Had he said Nothing without thee the emptiness of every thing below which the Lord and his Blessing is not in had made this his determination just and necessary But sure when God hath put other needs in my making and hath provided supplies for them those also are as just and necessary objects of desire while they are with and under him But yet he that had brought all his affections into Davids frame might well say he desired nothing upon Earth besides nothing with God for he had weaned his very Flesh and all the craving appetites of sense from their own objects and had fixt them upon God in all their strength and vigour My Soul saith he thirsteth for thee elsewhere my Soul gaspeth unto thee even as a thirsty Land and my flesh also longeth after thee Psal. 63. 1. How My Soul thirsteth for thee with thee indeed is the Well of Life But Thirst is an Appetite gasping a consequent defailance and impatience of the Body to both which the Soul is a meer stranger as it is also to the wayes by which the Body does desire for the Soul is drawn by moral engagements by perswasions and motives there is place for deliberation and Choyce in her Desires she can demur in her pursuits divert her Inclinations and quench a Desire with a Consideration but the Flesh pursues in a more impulsive manner is drawn and spurr'd on by such impetuous propensions as are founded in matter You can no more perswade a thirsty Palate not to thirst than you can woo a falling Stone to stay its hast or invite it to turn aside from its direction to the Center Yea but the Soul also exerts it self in all these appetites of flesh and matter and with all their violence when it looks on God when we have once had a taste or when indeed we but discern our needs of him whether our Temporal or Spiritual those of the Soul or Flesh all the desires of both then fly at him and with a tendency most close and uncontrollable then nothing besides him For all the appetites of Body croud into the Soul that they may catch at God that Thirsts and Gaspes And the Soul does put on the violent impetuous agitations of the Bodys Appetites My Soul thirsteth for thee and my Flesh also longeth after thee What Longing is whether an Appetite or Passion of the Flesh or Mind
inclines it draws the whole Man after it If any thing in us be crucified in a Conformity to Christ it must be this for in that death wherein Christ offered up himself upon the Crosse where although the Divine Nature gave the value 't was onely the Humane Nature made the Offering there it was the crucifying his own Will that above all other the ingredients made his Death a Sacrifice and the price of our Redemption God that had given him his Blood and Life might call for it again when and how he saw good and being due it was not properly a price that could be given him for sin but his free voluntary choice his being willing to endure the Agonies and Contempts of the Crosse his stabbing his own natural desires with a resolute determination Not my will but thine be done This his own Will was his own offering and such is ours if we be Crucified with Christ made conformable to his death if we present our selves a Sacrifice acceptable to the Lord for our will is not given up to him till it do perfectly comport with his but that it cannot do till we renounce our own desires till we have brought our selves to an indifference in outward things to such a resignation as she is storied to have had who being in her Sicknesse bid to choose whether she rather would have Health or Death made answer Vehementissimè desidero ut non facias voluntatem meam Domine this above all I desire that thou wilt not do my will I would have thee not do what I desire and would have So that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the whole of us the Spirit Soul and Flesh go to make up this person and the body of Sin is the Old man entire I whole I am nothing but a mass of guilts my Senses are the bands of wickednesse that procure for my evil inclinations my members are the weapons of unrighteousness my Body is a body of Sin and Death and the affections of my Soul are Lusts its faculties are the powers of Sin yea and the Spirit of my mind that Breath of God is putrefied that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Angel-part of me is fall'n and turn'd Apostate and however I be partly Son of Man and partly Son of God yet I am wholly Child of Wrath and so fit to be Crucified Which calls me to the next Enquiry to the nature of the duty here intended I am Crucified What is design'd by it S. Paul does perfectly declare Rom. 6. 6. Our old man is crucified with Christ that the body of Sin might be destroyed that we should no longer serve sin So that it means a through Repentance and abandoning of former evil Courses A Duty which there are few men but in some instants of their life think absolutely necessary and perswade themselves they do perform it At some time or other they are forc't to recollect and grow displeas'd and angry at their sins and have some sad reflections on them beg for mercy and forgiveness and do think of leaving them and when they have return'd to them again they shake the head and chafe and curse at their own weaknesse and renew their purposes it may be and do this as oft as such a Season as this is or other like occasions suggest it to or move them And with this they satisfie themselves and hope if God do please to take them hence in some such muddy gloomy fit of their Repentance all 's well Now shall we call this being Crucified are there Racks and Tortures in this discipline hath a Spear prickt them to the heart and no blood nor no water no tears gush out thence hath it made no issue for some hearty Sorrow to purle out Indeed I must confesse the Scripture does sometimes word the performance of this duty in expressions that are not so sower but of an easier importance as first put off the Old Man as if all were but Garment put it off I say not as they stript our Saviour in order to his Scourgings and his Crosse but intimating to us what an easie thing it is to cast off Sin for them who do begin with it betimes before it get too close to the heart 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. saith Theophyl even as easie as putting off thy Cloaths and thy Repentance is but as thy Shift thy change of life like changing thy Apparel But alas for all the easienesse which this expression hints where the sins also lye in the Attire as besides emulation pride vainglory great uncharitablenesse and inhumanity cruel injustice and oppression often do when many are undone through want of those dues which do furnish other men with the excesses of this kind when the sins therefore lye in the attire and they may put them off without a Metaphor yet it is so hard that it cannot be done sometimes the worth of a whole Province hangs upon a slender thread about a neck a Patrimony thrust upon one joynt of one least finger and these warts of a Rock or a Shell-fish with the appendages eat out Estates and starve poor Creditors for whom indeed they should command these stones to be made bread but that 's Miracle too stubborn for their Vertue And then how will they proceed to the next expression of this duty Circumcise your selves to the Lord and take away the foreskin of your hearts Jer. 4. 4. These are harder and more bloody words they differ in the pain and anguish that they put us to as much as to uncloath and flea would do It appears indeed this punishment of fleaing often went before the Crosse. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Ctesiâ—s of one having his Skin pull'd off he was Crucified And the scourges in some measure did inflict this on our Saviour when they put off his Cloaths they stript his Skin also left him no covering but some rags of that which whipping had torn from his flesh Yet this expression sounds harsher when it bids us circumcise the foreskin of our hearts and tear it from thence flea that When long conversation with the pleasures of a sin hath not onely given them Regallias but hath made them necessary to us so as that we cannot be without them when Custome craves with greater feaver than our thirst when if we want it we have qualms faintings of Soul as if the life were in that blood of the grape when men can part as easily with their own bowells as the Luxuries that feed them if you take away their dishes then you take their souls which dwell in them when the sins of the Bed are as needful and refreshing as the sleeps of it when to bid a man not look not satisfie his lustful eye is every jot as cruel as that other If thine eye offend thee pluck it out For if he must no more find pleasure in his sight he hath no use of it yea if this be indeed a kindnesse not to leave him Eyes
Headach Nay when the ambitious Usurper will not look just before him to see where he does place his steps on Precipices and Sword points to note how the Pyramids he does climb are made slippery with blood Pyramids did I say pointed Reeds rather things that have not strength to bear but onely sharpnesse to stab and where the man 's own weight makes his Upholders fail and wound him both together at once sink under him and pierce him thorough Nay we see many whose sins inflict themselves who may be truely said to bear their Iniquities yet choose those sins that bring their Plagues along with them for we see men with most excessive difficulty practise a vice onely that they may have the vice swallow sickness drink Convulsions and dead Paralyses foaming Epilepfies onely that all this may be easie to them And this is but one instance of the many that might be made just as the King of Pontus that ate Poyson that so he might be used to it Strange that a man should torture himself with all those deadly symptomes that Poyson racks the body with onely that he might eat Poyson yet just such is the Sinners Design and all the ease and pleasure he acquires at last in sinning is but familiarity of Poyson custome of Danger and acquaintance of Ruine Good God! that men should train and exercise themselves so for perdition that they should go through a discipline of torments to get an Habit of destroying themselves that they should work out their own condemnation with hardships and agonies that as if 't were too easie to goe down the hill to Hell the descent shall be made craggy and they force breaches into it and great headlong Precipices to make the way more painful and more dangerous to make the fall more wounding and more irrecoverable And what shall give a check where difficulty does provoke and torments do ingratiate Well But though Flesh be so short sighted and inconsiderate the mind might trash it by suggesting other sorts of punishments that do await transgression Why truely if rude unmannerly Conscience do sometimes thrust in the thoughts of Hell the Flesh which I told you is not terrified with any thing but what it feels now Conscience presents Hell as a thing of hereafter not till Death be past it satisfies Conscience with a Repentance of Hereafter before Death come I will be sorry for my sins and God is merciful Conscience being thus quieted and both Raines and Spur given to the Flesh it takes its full carier and leaves behind all thoughts of Repentance and indeed of God or Heaven the hope and joyes of which are the onely possible method that is left to take off the Man from his eager pursuit or to divert him in his course But as to that also that I may shew you the next heat The Mind that is immerst in body and hath been long accustomed to tast no pleasure but the carnal ones its fancy fill'd with those Ideas it does imbibe such a tincture of sensuality receives such an infusion of Flesh and is so impregnated with the fumes of Carnality which clog the Spirit that its complexion and temper is quite altered it is diluted and deprest and so grown stupid and unactive to all higher things Heaven and all after things it may be are the prejudice of such persons not their perswasions some thin conceptions of such things have been thrown into them but never were improved for their Mind hath otherwise been employed and they can have no appetite to them because they have never had any tast or relish of any thing but sensual And indeed that both longings after and thoughts of a better Life should be altogether dead in the carnal man is but a natural and necessary effect of the verge of his Delights For what motive is there in Heaven to stir up his appetite to whom Heaven it self would not be a place of Joy For I am verily perswaded were the Carnal man in those Eternal Mansions compast with streams of Glory it were impossible for him to take delight in them and he would grope for Paradise in the midst of Heaven As much impossible as for the most unlearned Ideot to satisfie himself with the pleasures of a Mathematical demonstration Let him have the Hecatombe and let Pythagor as be an Epicure on the dimensions of a Triangle the other hath no palate for these pleasures and indeed how could the unclean lascivious person please himself in the enjoyment of those Felicities that have no Sex Where they neither Marry nor are given in Marriage Or how the Riotous that Eats to eat eats to hunger and provoke not satisfie how will he content himself there where their happiness is they shall neither hunger nor thirst or the Incendiaries that love to set all on fire what should they do there where there are no flames but such as kindle Seraphins so that flesh and blood not only shall not but cannot enjoy the Kingdome of God And why then should they long after or think of it Nay I would this unhappy Age and an unlucky axiome of Aristotles did not convince that they do think there are no such things Sensual pleasures are corruptive of Principles saith he and indeed where Damnation is the conclusion 't is a much quieter and more easie thing for Men of Wit and Understanding to deny the Principles than granting them to lye under the torture of being lyable to such an inference they therefore that resolve to love this Life and all the sinful pleasures of it at the next step resolve there is no other Life And now this pamper'd and puft Flesh is got into the Psalmists Chair the Chair of Scorners and 't is one of the Luxuries of their life to scoff at them who are so foolish as to be Religious and to deny their flesh its present appetites and pleasures on such thin after-hopes here their Wit also is an Epicure and Feasts and Triumphs distates and professes in that chair 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Chair of Pestilences as the LXX translate and very truly for such men shed a Sphere of Contagion about them and their Discourses are effluvia of the Plague and the breath of Pestilence But how to get Flesh down out of this Chair that 's the difficulty yet that my Text will tell us for all this progress of the Flesh is trasht and checkt by Sufferings for He that hath suffered hath ceast from Sin Which how I will briefly shew you The Fleshes first art was by immersing it self in the full Lawfull use of Pleasures and by consequence in the immoderate to prevail with the Soul to find a gust in them and from a continued enjoyment to conclude them necessary and so from the importunities of a perpetual temâ—…d an accustomed satisfaction to think of nothing 〈◊〉 this life Now it is plain Affliction made this Art unpracticable for that it did do so was every
I was uncorrupt before him and esâ—hewed my own wickedness God hath not given us Authority to pick and choose our duties observe him where we like and leave the rest and when in the severe contritions of Repentance we come to judge our Lives we have no leave to spare a vice because custome hath made it our Companion and Iutimate or 't is as â—ear to us as the close inclinations of our hearts He that does so although he live a careful life in other things yet all his Innocence is onely this he hath a mind to but one sin and those he does not care for he forbears but that which pleaseth him that he commits And sure God is beholding to him that there is but one way of provoking which does take him and therefore must allow him what he hath an inclination to and pardon him because he does abstain from those he does not like I shall now onely add that in this case S. James's Aphorisme holds that Whosoever shall keep the whole Law and yet offend in one point onely he is guilty of all he that allows himself to break one Precept does keep none but shall be reckoned guilty of those things which he does not commit For whosoever keepeth the whole Law and yet thus offendeth in one point is guilty of all And then I need not prove such have no title to the goodness of the Text but may conclude if God be good to Israel it is to such as are of a Clean Heart And so I fall upon the subject Heart And here I must first caution not to think the Heart is set as if it were the entire and onely Principle by which a judgment might be past upon our doings as if our Actions so wholy deriv'd denomination from it that they were pure which came from a clean upright heart In opposition to which I shall not doubt to put That the external actions may have guilts peculiar to themselves such as are truely their own not shed into them by an evil mind and a man may be wicked in the uprightness of his heart when he does not intend any such thing but rather the clean contrary Our Saviour tells his Apostles The time will come that whosoever killeth you will think he doth God service Joh. 16. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he does offer an Oblation or Worship shall think his Murder Sacrifice that that would propitiate for other faults his Crime should seem Religion and attonement to him We have seen guilts put on such colours too and yet by these same actions which their hearts pursued with Holy aims out of a Zeal to God as S. Paul sayes Rom. 10. 2. they sacrificed themselves and their Nation to Gods Vengeance Once more S. Paul does find reason to call himself the chief of Sinners 1 Tim. 1. 15. for the commissions of that time of which he sayes that he served God with a pure Conscience v. 3. did what he was perswaded in his heart he ought to do pursued sincere intentions and after sayes he had lived in all good conscience before God untill that day Acts 23. 1. So that here was enough of the clean heart a good and a pure conscience and could his fiery persecutions by vertue of that flame within be Christian'd Holy Zeal Could his Pure Conscience make his Bloody hands undefil'd Oh no! 't was blasphemy and persecution and injury for all 't was Conscience for all his heart was clean from such intentions I was before a Blasphemer and a Persecuter and Injurious v. 13. We may not think to shroud foul actions under handsome Meanings and an Innocent mind a Conscientious man may yet be chief of sinners S. Paul was so he sayes and a clean Heart will not suffice alone Therefore Heart is put here accumulatively as that whose cleannesse must be added to the purity of Conversation to compleat it and it implies what elsewhere he does set down more expresly Clean Hands and a Pure Heart all which a clean Heart may be set to signifie because under Gods Holy Spirit it is the principal and onely safe agent in the effecting of the rest as that which onely can make the other reall valuable and lasting When a Disease hath once insinuated it self into the Vitals spread through the Marrow and seized the gatrisons of Life the Souls strong holds and after sallyes out into the outer parts in little pustles and unhandsome ulcers they who make application onely to those outward ulcers may perchance smooth and cure the skin make the unhandsomness remove and shift its seat but all that while the man decays the Forts of Life are undermin'd and sink the vitals putrefie and the whole Skin becomes but the fair Monument of its own rotten Inwards Just so we have a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an inward deep infusion a bed or seedplot of malignity which sometimes shews it self in outward grosse commissions but if we onely use the Lance or corrosive to these we may perchance make a man shift a sin thus it is possible that the profane may alter into Factious or contrary the profuse Proud man turn Covetous but till the ground of these be purg'd away the man 's not cur'd but onely the Disease is chang'd and he is as unsound as ever Gods severe Judgments that did lye so long so close upon us like strong repercussives may have stricken back the breakings out of former sins or inclinations But then no care being taken of the Heart the first heat sent them out again and Mercy made a restauration of Vices too But if the Heart once entertain a reall and sincere sense of Religion if it consent to thorough resolutions of Piety as far as the man discerns so far the Cure is perfected and such are fitted for Gods goodness for truely God is good to Israel even to those that are of such a clean Heart And so I fall upon them both together first in the former sense propos'd That Clean heart signifies sincere true-hearted men I have not onely the assurance of Translations and among them the Syriack but the Text it self does evince it because such onely are indeed of Israel for so our Saviour sayes Behold an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile Joh. 1. 47. One like the Father of them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Gen. 25. 27. a man unfeigned that did seem nothing he was not all Heart And such each Israelite each man that does expect an interest in that goodnesse which the Lord hath for Israel must be sincere and without guile 1. In his Conversation with Men I am not here to say Sincerity is much most generous when it looks like a disingenuous fear to be afraid of my own mind when my Heart dares not look into my Face or speak in my tongue but must lurk under a disguise of words or countenance that are assum'd and not its own Nor is it Secondly my businesse to say it is the greatest
hereafter in the Jerusalem that is above To the state of which glorious Light He bring us all who is the brightness of his Fathers Glory To whom be Glory and Dominion for ever and ever Amen SERMON III. VVHITE-HALL Second Wednesday in Lent LEVIT 16. 31. Ye shall Afflict your Souls by a Statute for ever THe words are one Single Precept concerning one part of the Celebration of a Day I shall not take the Precept asunder into parts for it hath none but shall frame my Discourse to Answer three Enquiries that naturally offer themselves to be consider'd from these words And they are 1. What the Importance of the thing commanded is what is required in this Injunction Te shall Afflict your Souls 2. What Usefulnesse and Efficacy this Duty had upon that time in which it was prescribed what the Afflicting of the Soul contributed to the work of that Day that it should be made so indispensable an ingredient of its performances tyed to it by a Statute for ever 3. Whether that for ever do reach us which is the Application and brings all home to us First What the Import of the thing commanded the Afflicting of the Soul is The Arab. and Targum of Jerusalem Translate it Fasting yea and a Learned Rabbine sayes that wheresoever these two words are put together that is meant And indeed they are often joyned in Scripture to express it Psal. 35. 13. I afflicted my Soul with Fasting And the Prophet Isaiah speaking of this Day in my Text sayes Is it such a Fast that I have chosen A day for a man to Afflict his Soul Isa. 58. 5. Somewhat a strange expression it is for Fasting does afflict the Body properly and yet we find the like too in the other Extream We read of pampering the Soul Psa◠78. 18. They required 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 meat for their Souls not to supply the Hunger of their Body that they had before but to indulge the Lusts of their mind they did not want food but variety Festival diet and a Table furnisht they would have and this luxuriancy and wantonness of Meat the Scripture calls meat for the Soul Such as God sayes in other places the Soul lusteth after Indeed forc't meats and things that please meerly by being rare and dear or by being extravagant these do not feed the Appetite but opinion and the mind it is the Soul onely that hungers after these Thus when I look after Wine in the glasse and make my Eye a Critique of its accidents and by the mode and fashion of it teach it to please or displease my judgment I do not here thirst after the cool moysture of it but the sparkling flame and do not drink the wine but the flavour and colour and this is all but notion Now certainly these are not proper objects for our appetites meat for the Body sayes the Scripture and it is the Stomack and not the Imagination that is hungry nor is it Fancy or the Soul that thirsts but 't is the Palate so that these are unnatural and monstrous satisfactions and appetites And yet to bring mens selves to this is one of the great masteries of Wit and Art to force themselves to find a relish in these things and then contrive them is a piece of skill which the advantages of parts and fortune are desireable mostly as they are useful to And a well studied Epicure one expert in the mysteries of Eating is a singularly qualified and most grateful person It were in vain to ask what else such men can be good for that being their Profession they are out at most other things Indeed the Soul that dwells in Dishes and is stew'd in its own Luxuries grows loose and does dissolve its sinews melt all its firmness of mind forsakes it the man is strong for nothing but for Lusts his faculties are choak'd and stifled they stagnate and are mir'd within him and there corrupt and putrefie And then what Cranes will force out thence and wind up such a Soul into the practises and expectations of Plety will make it mind and entertain the hopes and Duties of Religion what macerations what Chymistry will defecate a Spirit so incarnated and rectifie it into such a fineness as befits that state where all their blessednesse have no sensual relish but are sublimed into Divine and purely Spirituall Lord God! that thou shouldst shed a Rational Angelick Soul into us a thing next to the Being of thy Selfe and We make it employ it selfe to animate onely the organs of Intemperance and Gluttony and their appendant lusts Only inspire us how to be but more Sagacious indeed but more luxurious Bruits when thou hast set us here to train and discipline our selves for a condition of such glorious Joyes as are fit to entertain Souls of Reason with and to make them blessed which to enter upon our Bodies must drop from us our Souls must be clarified from Flesh and Flesh it self re fined into a Spirit that we should make our selves Antipodes to this walk contrary to all and so debase our spirits as that they are qualified for no other satisfaction but those of dull sense and carnality Adam fell his great Fall by Eating but ever since men fall further by riotous intemperate Eating He fell from Paradise and they from Reason the Man sinks into Beast and the Soul falls into very Flesh and hath no other faculties or appetites but fleshly ones Such people of all others are not to be raised up by Religion their fulness gives no place to that but does exclude it God did complain of this of old 32. Deut. 15. Je surun waxed fat and kicked that we may see they want no bruitish quality who do allow themselves the appetite of Bruits they that pamper themselves like to fed Horses will also neigh like them and kick even him that fed them thou art waxen fat thou art covered with fatness then he forsook God that made him and lightly esteemed the Rock of his Salvation When they came once where they did suck hony out of the Rock and Oyl out of the flinty Rock they could not mind the Rock of their Salvation Indeed this sensuality as it consumes Estates eats Time and all the faculties of the Mind so it devours all Religion too it hath not onely a particular opposition to some one duty as the other Vices have but by a direct influence it destroyes the whole foundation of Virtue and obedience to God I mean subordination of the lower appetite to Reason and Religion which it renverses quite and breeds an universal cachexy of the Soul as well as Body For ever since Adam did eat of the forbidden Fruit the carnal mind we know is neither subject to the Law of God neither indeed can be as S. Paul sayes Rom. 8. 7. because Gods Commands are restraints upon those things which Flesh desires eagerly Now therefore while that Mind is unsubdued it must needs lust
against the Spirit for those things that are forbidden nor endure to be limited which he that feeds it is so far from working towards that he does give it still more provocation and more power and makes the Flesh more absolute for it is clear that Plenty does encrease all its desires and their unruliness it ministers both vigor to it by which it is enabled to fulfil its lusts and it ministers aptness and incitation also both by custome of satisfaction and by adding heat which makes it more prone to rebell and more impossible to be kept under The progresse of this is apparent in the Scripture Exod. 32. 6. The People sate down to Eat and Drink and rose up to Play Lusum non denotasset nisi impudicum he means to play the wantons But Jeremy is plainer ch 5. 7. 8. How shall I pardon thee for this thy Children have forsaken me when I had fed them to the full they then committed Adultery and assembled themselves by troops in Harlots houses Nor stayes it there but does encrease as well as feed to an Excesse we may discerne that by the Wisemans Prayer 23. of Ecclesiast 6. O Lord Father and God of my Life let not the greediness of the Belly nor the lust of the Flesh take hold of me and give not over me thy Servant to an impudent mind Gyant-like he had called it in the verse before and sure the Wiseman in the Proverbs apprehended it as such and dreaded it accordingly as if Bellies full gorg'd were those Mountains which the Gyants cast up to storm Heaven on He lookt upon this Vice as that which would bid defiance to God and out him and therefore thinks it necessary to beseech the Lord not to afford him so much as would furnish Plenty Prov. 30. 8. Give me not Riches feed me with food convenient for me 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with an Allowance with no more than is sufficient for me least I be full and deny thee and say who is the Lord. It seems such persons know no other God besides their Belly nor is it any wonder if a Soul made Flesh cannot well apprehend a Deity that is a Spirit or beleeve it but thinks all notions of such beings to be contradiction when once by the suffusions of Carnality all the impressions of a Spirit are wrought out of it self And truly this is the most natural and certain way to become Atheists Whether this time that hath been almost alwayes set aside for strict Severities and to work out Repentance and if it be not so intended now I know not what pretence did call us hither for though there be some relaxation of the severer Dyet of this time sure there is no indulgence of that Penitence which the strictness of this time design'd and let some men talk what they please of the Intention of their Statutes yet these Assemblies certainly were not intended for the increase of Cattle and advance of Fishing these were for higher aims of Piety Now whether we employ it so much towards this as to afflict our Souls i. e. our Appetites and to revenge our superfluities upon our selves and to teach our desires to be denyed Or whether we do teach the Dyet of this season to be but a variety of Luxury and if the Law did not command it and so make it Pressure by giving it the inconvenience and the uneasiness of being duty and obedience our selves could make it be one of the changes of our Vice onely another course a diverse service of the same Riot and so defeat the Law by our obedience to it Or whether we do break the Law outright and to our superfluities add disobedience to Authority whether we do the one or other is not for me to say But if the Nation and we our selves have any sins to be repented of and we design this season for that use as sure some season must be so employed and why not this as well rather indeed than any other if we be not of those that would be glad to see all thrown again into Confusion glad to see a return of the same Vengeance as indeed a return of the same sins and the abuse of Mercies seem to call for it while men do live as if they thought God had wrought all these Miracles meerly to give them opportunity to serve their Vices or their other ends to put them in a way to get Places Estates and Dignities and by uncharitable gains hard hearted griping yea by false unworthy treacherous arts to heap up Wealth to raise their Families or feed their lusts These these cry out to God to renew his Commission to the Sword to passe through all the Land again and embowel it self in Church and State these call for it as loud as the harangueing prayers of Seditious Men and the Lord knows there are too many hands that would unsheath it if God do not interpose to hinder and well we have deserv'd he should But if we would endeavour to engage him by Repentance that will require the Afflicting of the Soul by some severities Do not mistake your selves Repentance as it cannot be wrought out amidst our courses that were contradiction to return and yet go on so also it will not be wrought out amidst the Comforts as we call the jollities of life Tertullian is very pleasant with those who did dislike that in their Penitencies they were by the Church prescrib'd to put off Mirth and put on Sackcloth and take Ashes for Bread Come sayes he reach that Bodkin there to braid my Hair and help me now to practise all those Arts that are in Mode to attire it give me the washes of that Glasse the blushes of that Paper the foyles which that Box hath to beautifie and dress my Cheeks come and set out and dress my Table too let me have Fowl with costly forc't and not a natural Fat or let me have cramb'd Fish and cramme my Dishes also get me chearful Wines too and if any one ask why I do thus indulge my self why I will tell him I have sinn'd against my God and am in danger of Perdition and therefore I am in great trouble I macerate do you not see the signs of it and excruciate my self I take these fearful careful wayes that I may reconcile God to me whom I have offended Alas to humble ones self thus in fulnesse and to afflict the Soul in chearful plenties is such a thing as none but he that sinks under the surfeit of those Plenties understands I 'm sure the Lord when he required his People to repent required them then to discipline and use severities upon themselves they were to fast or dye God took the execution for whatsoever Soul it be that shall not be Afflicted that same day shall be cut off from among his People 23. Levit. 29. Even cut off by God himself And I do verily perswade my self that one great cause why men that have sometimes thoughts
when he cannot give a Lamb for his Transgression he gives some of himself he offers Hunger for Shewbread and Thirst for a Drink offering he consecrates a Meal instead of a Beast and sheds a sower fasting sigh for Incense and this he hopes God will accept as Sacrifice And truely the Text sayes no day of Expiation could be kept without it Noâ— does the Scripture want great instances of its effect towards Atonements of Gods wrath How when Judgment was given on a Nation or Person and Execution going out against them yet this rever'st the Sentence Ahab is a great proof of this 1 King 21. 27. And it came to passe when Ahab heard those words that he rent his Clothes and put Sackcloth upon his flesh and Fasted and lay in Sackcloth and went softly And the Word of the Lord came unto Elijah the Tishbite saying Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before me Because he humbleth himself before me I will not bring the evil in his dayes One Fasting-day secured a Life the weaknesses it brought upon the body upheld it against all Gods threats Vengeance pronounc't and coming out against him falls to ground if Ahab humble and Afflict his Soul Gods stretcht out Arm will not strike Sackcloth nor wound through Fasting Garments One fit of it removes his Judgments a whole Age and had it been sincere and persevering how had it wip't them out to everlastingnesse Nineve is another instance of the practice and successe of this even among the Heathens Nor should it seem to have lesse Efficacy among Christians The Primitive Fathers call these severities Satisfaction for sin and Compensations the Price with which they are bought off the things that cover them and blot them out and which Propitiate and appease God for them not in their sense who force up these Expressions to a strange height of meaning and yet have quite beat down the Practise as to the publique wholesome use of them out of the Church But though these sayings assign not the Power and just Efficacy of that discipline in it self yet they do the acceptance and effect of it by virtue of Christs Satisfaction A Fainting Body cannot bear indeed the weight of our iniquities nor will lowest prostrations in the dust bury them in the dust or Tears alone blot out our Guilt but Christ having done that which is effectual to all this and requiring no more of thee to make that thine as he does every where most solemnly avow but faithfull humbling of thy self in an afflictive sorrow for what 's past and so to mortifie as to work out Repentance the doing this is doing what he does require and consequently will accept These satisfie the Command and therefore God though not by a condignity of performance yet as Conditions which his Covenant of Grace hath set us which when they are fulfilled then God is satisfied thy sins are expiated and thou art pardoned And so in this lower sense these are thy Satisfactions with which God is well pleased And thus these self Afflictions of the Sinner supply Gods Indignation and divert it They leave no place nor businesse for it and by these short severities upon himself he does make void he does expunge the Sentence of eternal Torments saith Tertullian As thou becomest severe against thy self so will the Lord abate of his severities and he will spare and he will pitty thee in that he sees thou wilt not spare thy self How can he choose but be appeased towards thee when he shall see thee executing his Sentence even upon thy own self and punishing his Enemies although they be thy Members so that by this means thou dost censure thy self into Gods Absolutions afflict thy self into his Pardons and dost condemn thy self into eternal Life Our Church sayes the same thing That in the Primitive Church there was a Godly Discipline that at the beginning of Lent such persons as were notorious sinners were put to open Pennance and punished in this world that their Souls might be saved in the Day of the Lord and she does wish if her wishes be of any force and value when her Orders and Constitutions are not that Discipline could be restored But this I shall not presse if all those whom the Primitive Church Condemned or S. Paul sentenced were so used if every Schismatick that lyes tearing himself and others off from the Lords Body were rejected and if the Fornicator that joyns himself to his unclean Accomplice were disjoyned from Christ and not suffered to make his members be the members of an Harlot if every scandalous debauching offender that lyes corrupting Christs Body spreading contagion thrusting the gangreen forward were cut off and these and all the rest delivered up to Satan alas what part would Christ have left of his own Body Sed illos defendit numerus junctaeque umbone phalanges and that I fear too in more senses than the Poet means Therefore I shall not urge the Churches Wish but only see whether the Statute in the Text sayes any thing to this and whether the for ever do reach us Which is my third and last Enquiry Thirdly Divers of the Jews Rites are said to be and be prescribed for ever although those very Rites and the whole oeconomy of their Covenant were to be chang'd and cease among other reasons as the Fathers say because they foresignifie and point at things in the new Covenant which were to last till Covenants and Rites shall be no more and so their meaning and signification was to be for ever Now truely that their Expiation Performances those which I am upon did so the whole Epistle to the Hebrews is employ'd to prove the Margent of your Bibles in this Chapter so refer you to the places that I shall not need to make it out Christ did fulfill the Temple and the Altar part yea and the refuse outcast part of the Atonement satisfied the Religion and the contempt of that dayes offices He was the whole true Expiation Now does this Expiation as theirs did require afflicting of the Soul in its attendance or was that but a Ceremony of their Rite and though a Jew must mourn and Fast to see his sin killing a Beast and when he does behold his wickednesse eating up a Goat for a Sin offering he must deny himself his daily bread and suffer thirst if his Iniquities drink but the blood of Bullocks yet when we behold ours embrew themselves in the Blood of the Son of God not onely lay hands and confessions on his head but drive Thorns into it make him cry out almost despair and Dye we need not be concern'd so much as to do ought of that either in order to the better Celebration of that Expiation or on the very day of it Indeed if we consider most mens practises it would appear most probable that if we were to expiate our sins as the Jews did by sacrificing of our Flocks not of our Jesus
midst of these severities when God breaks in in Comforts into them The Glory of the Lord appears in that Cloud too that is upon the penitent sad heart when he is drencht in tears the Holy Ghost the Comforter does move upon those waters and breaths Life and Salvation into them and he who is the Unction pours Oyle into those wounds of the Spirit and we are never neerer Heaven than when we are thus prostrate in the lowest dust and when our Belly cleaveth unto the ground in humble penitence then we are at the very Throne of Grace And this our light Afflicting of the Soul which is but for a moment does work for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of Glory To which c. SERMON IV. VVHITE-HALL October 12. 1662. JOHN XV. 14. Ye are my Friends if ye do whatsoever I Command you THe words are a conditional Assertion of Christ's concerning his Apostles and in them all Christians And they do easily divide themselves into two parts The First is a positive part wherein there is a state of great and Blessed advantage which they are declared to be in present possession of In these words Ye are my friends In which there are two things that make up that advantage 1. a Relation 2. the Person related to Friends and My friends The Second is a Conditional part wherein there are the terms upon which that possession is made over and which preserve the Right and Title to them in these words If ye do whatsoever I command you in which there are two things required as Conditions I. Obedience If ye do what I command you II. That Obedience Universal If ye do whatsoever I command you The first thing that offers it self to our consideration is the Relation Friends It is a known common-place truth that a Friend is the most useful thing that is in whatsoever state we are It is the Soul of life and of content If I be in prosperity We know abundance not injoy'd is but like Jewells in the Cabinet uselesse while they are there It is indeed nothing but the opinion of Prosperity But 't is not possible to enjoy abundance otherwise than by communicating it a man possesseth plenty onely in his Friends and hath fruition of it meerly by bestowing it If I be in adversity to have a person whom I may intrust a trouble to whose bosome is as open and as faithful to me as 't is to his own thoughts to which I may commit a swelling secret this is in a good measure to unlade and to pour out my sorrow from me thus I divide my grievances which would be insupportable if I did not disburthen my self of some part of them Now there is no bosome so safe as that where friendship lodges take God's opinion in the case Deut. 13. 6. If thy Brother the Son of thy Mother or thy Son or thy Daughter or the Wife of thy bosome or thy Friend that is as thine own Soul This is the highest step in the Gradation And there is all the reason in the world for though Parent and Child are as neer one to other as any thing can be to part of it self Husband and Wife are but two different names of the same one yet these may become bitter and unkind A Parent may grow cross or a Child refractory a Mother may be like the Ostrich in the Wildernesse throw off her bowels with her burthen and an ungracious Son is constant pangs and travail to his Mother his whole life gives her after-throws which are most deadly Dislikes also may rest within the Marriage-Bed and lay their heads upon two wedded Pillows but none of these unkindnesses can untie the Relation that ends not where the bitternesse begins he is a Parent still though froward and a Child though stubborn but a true Friend can be nothing but kind it does include a deerness in its essence which is so inseparable from it that they begin and end together A man may be an Husband without loving but cannot be a lover that is a Friend without loving And sure to have no one friend in this Life no one that is concerned in any of my interests or me my self none that hath any cares or so much as good wishes for me is a state of a most uncomfortable prospect The Plague that keeps Friends at a distance from me while I live out of the sphere of my infection and after gives me Death hath yet lesse of Malignity than this that leaves me the Compassions the Prayers all the solitary comforts all indeed but the outward entertainments of my Friends that though it shut the Door against all company yet puts a Lord have Mercy on the Door But this I now described hath none of that hath no good wishes nothing else but hate is worse than a perpetual Pestilence Yet neither is this state so comfortlesse in respect of this life as not to have a Friend in the concernments of the Life to come none that hath so much kindnesse for my Soul as every man hath for his Enemies Beast which if he see fallen in a Ditch he will at least give notice that it may be helpt out thence No one that when a sin like to that Falling sickness in the Gospel and it is such indeed without a Parable is casting me into the Water quenching my parts my Reason and the Immortal spark within me or throwing me into the Fire raising Lascivious heats within which after will break out into Hell fires none yet that will stretch out his hand to catch me or to pull me out None that does care to see me perish-to Eternity or that values my Soul which yet did cost the Blood of God at a word speaking This is to be like Dives in the Flames to whom they would not lend the help of the tip of a finger or give the kindness of a drop of Water I am as it were on the other side the Gulfe already Here is the use of Friendship the only noble one that 's worthy of that blessed quality When I have one that will be an assistant Conscience to me who when that within me sleeps or is benummed will watch over my actions will testifie them to my Face will be as faithful to me as the Conscience should be hold a Glasse to my Soul shew me the stains and the proud tumours the foul Ulcers that are there and then will fret and rub or prick lance and corrode to cure those tumours and do off those spots such an one is a familiar Angel Guardian is truely of that blessed Heavenly rank and onely lesse than the Friend in the Text the Person related to and my next part My Friends There are three things from which men use to take the measures of a Friend First From the good things he bestows on them He that thinks to keep friendship alive onely with air that gives good words but parts with nothing that entertains onely
another now and then she must not count her self her Husbands Friend though she give him the greatest share in her affections no she is but a bosome Enemy And so any one vice allowed is a paramour sin is whoredom against Christ and our pretended friendship to him in all other obediences is but the kindness and the caresses of an Adulteress the meer hypocrisie and treachery of love If it be necessary to the gaining of Christ's friendship that thou do his commands 't is necessary that thou do them all that thou divorce thy self from thy beloved sin as well as any other Because his Friendship does no more require other obedience than it does that but is as inconsistent with thy own peculiar vice as with the rest Indeed it is impossible that it should bear with any they being all his murderers If thou canst find one sin that had no hand in putting Christ to Death one vice that did not come into the garden nor upon Mount Calvary that did not help to assassin thy Saviour even take thy fill of that But if each had a stab at him if no one of thy vices could have been forgiven had not thy Jesus dyed for it canst thou expect he should have kindness for his Agony or friendship for the man that entertains his Crucifiers in his heart If worldly cares which he calls Thorns fill thy head with Contrivances of Wealth and Greatness of filling Coffers and of platting Coronets for thee as the thorns did make him a Crown too wouldst thou have him receive thee and these in his bosome to gore his Heart as they did pierce his Head If thou delight in that intemperance which filled his deadly Cup which Vomited Gall into it can he delight in thee That Cup which made him fall upon his face to deprecate will he partake in as the pledge of mutuall love He that sunk under could not bear this load of thine when it was in his Cross upon his shoulders will he bear it and thee in his armes when thou fallest under it When thou wilt cast a shameful spewing on his glory too if he own such a Friend Thou that art so familiar with his Name as thou wer't more his Friend than any in the world whose Oaths and imprecations Moses sayes strike through that Name which they so often call upon thou mayst as well think his heart did attract the Spear that pierced it and the Wound close upon its head with unions of Love as that he hath kindness for thee If Christ may make Friendship with him that does allow himself a sin he may have fellowship with Belial For him to dwell in any heart that cherisheth a vice were to descend to Hell again But as far as those Regions of Darkness are from his Habitation of Glory and the Black Spirits of that place from being any of his Guard of holy Myriads so far is he from dwelling with or being friend to him that is a friend to any wickedness to him that will not do whatever he commands And now if these conditions seem hard if any do not care to be his Friend upon these terms they may betake themselves to others Let such make themselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousnesse A Friend indeed that hath not so much of the insincerities as many great ones have For this will furnish them with all that heart or lust can wish for all that necessity or wantonnesse proposeth to it self to dress out pomp or vice But yet when with enjoyment the affections grow and become so unquiet work them so as not to let their thoughts or actions rest make them quicken themselves and like the motions of all things that go downwards tending to the Earth increase by the continuance grow stronger and more violent towards the end then when they are most passionate it fails them And having filled their life with most unsatisfied tormenting cares it leaves them nothing but the guilt of all When their great Wealth shall shrink into a single sheet no more of it be left but a thin shroud and all their vast Inheritances but six foot of earth be gone yet the iniquity of all will stick close to them and this false Friend that does it Self forsake them will neither go along nor will let its pomp follow them raises a cry on them as high as Gods Tribunal the cry of all the Blood all the oppressed rights that bribery till then had stifled the groans of all those Poor that greatness covetousness or extortion had groun'd and crush't the yellings of those Souls that were starv'd for want of the Bread of life which yet they payed for and the price of it made those heaps which will that day appear against their Friends and Masters and prove their Adversaries to eternal Death Let others joy in Friends that Wine does get them such as have no qualification to endear them but this that they will not refuse to sin and to be sick with their Companions Men that do onely drink in their affections as full of friendship as of liquor and probably they do unload themselves of both at once part with their dearness and their drink together and alike I know not whether it be heats of mutual kindness that inflame these draughts and the desires of them so as if they did drink thirst but sure I am that these hot draughts begin the Lake of fire Let others please themselves in an affection that Carnality cements These are warm friendships I confess but Solomon will tell us whence they have their heat Her house saith he doth open into Hell and Brimstone kindles those libidinous flames There are strait bands fetters in those affections indeed for the same Wiseman sayes The Closets of that sinner are the Chambers of Death That none that go unto her return again or take hold of the paths of life it seems she is a friend that takes most irreversible dead hold she is not onely as insatiate but as inexorable as the Grave and the Eternal Chains of Fate are in those her embraces But God keep us from making such strict Covenants with Death from being at friendship with Hell or in a word that I say all at once with any that are good Companions onely in sinning Such men having no virtue in themselves must needs hate it in others as being a reproach to them and therefore they are still besieging it using all arts and stratagems to undermine it and having nothing else to recommend them into mens affections but their managery of vice no way to Merit but by serving iniquity they not onely comply with our own evil Inclinations that so they may be grateful and insinuate into us but they provoke too and inflame those tendencies that they may be more useful to us having no other means to work their ends And then such friends by the same reason must be false and treacherous and all that we declaime
frighted into Resurrection and more the Hypostatick Union seem'd rent by them the God to have forsaken his own person And can the sinner hope to stand this shock will the courage of his Iniquity make his heart harder than those Rocks more insensible than the Grave and better able to endure than he that was a God and will you dye into this state eternally which it was necessary for him to have the assistance of Divinity in his person that he might be able to endure one day and which yet notwithstanding made one day intolerable The sum is this a person so desiring death and yet so dreading it and sinking under the essayes of it and this person the Son of God and that dread meerly because there was sin in the Death for if this were not in the cause no Martyr but had born death with more courage but that Son of God all this as it does leave no Reason for the sinners choyce of death Eternal so neither doth it leave a possibility of bearing it And if so give me leave in God's Name to Expostulate the last imployment of these words Why will ye dye After this killing prospect while the damp of it is on you let my Bowells debate with you which yearn more over you than they did over my Beloved Son in whom I was well pleased when I have sent my onely Son God one with my own Self to be made Man that he might suffer what was necessary to be suffer'd to preserve you from eternal sufferings when I have laid on him that was brought up with me from everlasting and that was daily my Delight all your Iniquities and my own Indignation that so you might be freed from both When I have found out made an Expiation with which I am more pleased than ever your transgressions offended me which hath quite blotted out your sins and my Displeasure when your Redemption from death is made the Ransom paid the Price is in my hand why do you then refuse your selves your own Eternal Blessednesse which was thus dearly purchas'd and is ready for you Why will you seize that Indignation which you are redeemed from and force those sufferings on your selves which have been laid already and inflicted on another 'T is a small thing that you refuse me the return of my Expence that which I gave my Son for but do you renounce Happinesse because my Love and Blood is in it and will you dye because you may and I desire you should live when my Son went from the essential felicities of my bosome to embrace Agonies and dy'd for you why will you also dye as you have slain his Person will you Crucifie his Kindnesse too and crucifie your selves rather than have it and having us'd him most despightfully will you therefore use his favours so and not let his Death and Passion do you any good contemn his methods of Salvation his divine Acts of making you for ever Blessed is your Saviour and Life it self so hateful to you and after such Redemption of your persons is there no redemption of your Will from perishing nothing of value that can bribe your choyce against it nothing that can betroth you into a desire of Life and take you off from your resolves to dye had I set no advantage on the other side if sin had sweetned misery to your palate it had been no such great despite and contradiction to Appetite but when Heaven and the Joyes of God are in the Scale against it to prefer Misery is Wretchless beyond aggravation Oh why will you rather dye Those very things that tempt your Wills were they abstracted from the death they do inveigle you into were they sincere and innocent if they were set against that Life that blessed life immortal Life would vanish quite in the comparison when you should see they are but frolicks of delight that never take you but when you are tun'd up to them in moods and fits and the complacencies you take in them are but starts of Appetite that swells and breaks out to them and then falls again and so the pleasures dye even in the birth and therefore cannot satisfie indeed do but disquiet an immortal appetite such as man's is so that it were impossible to choose a life these rather although there were no misery annex't to them if you consider'd For it were to resolve that a few drops were more than an immence Ocean of Delight a Moment longer than Eternity a Part were bigger than the Whole an Atome greater than an Infinite Now there is nothing then that can prefer these to your choyce but the Death only and Oh will ye without and against all Temptation Will ye dye O thou my Soul take other Resolutions thou feest the things that men with so much care and sin provide to make their lives delightful here although successe answer their care are vain and helpless things and life it self as vain and I must dye and drop from them and therefore be thou sure to take a care their treacherous comforts do not make me dye into the everlasting want of them and of all comforts The Artificial pleasures of the Palate whether in meats or drinks forc't tast's that do at once satisfie and provoke the Appetite will rellish ill when I begin to swallow down my spittle but sure I am I am invited to the Supper of the Lamb to drink new Wine with Christ in my Father's Kingdom The fatted Calf is dressing for my Entertainment and shall I choose to be a while a Glutton with the Swine rather than the eternall Guest of my Father's Table and Bosom and refuse these for a few sick Excesses which would end in qualms and gall and vomits if there were no guilt to rejolt too and which will kindle a perpetual Feaver The Honours and the Glories of this Life will loose their shine when I am going to make my Bed in the Dark in a black lonely desolate hole of Earth my Gayeties must dye when I must say to Corruption thou art my Father and to the Worm thou art my Mother and my Sister And if there were pride or ambition in them their Worm will never dye that Pride will make me fall as low as Lucifer that Glory will go out into utter darknesse and that Ambition change my Honour into everlasting Shame Envy and Torment But sure I am that there are Glorious Robes and Thrones and Scepters in God's promises and let thy gayety my Soul be in the Robe of Immortality the Throne of thy Ambition that of Glory When I shall lye tortur'd or languishing in my last Bed Palaces and Possessions will no more relieve me than the Landskip of them in the Hangings can do it And if there were Covetousness Bribery Sacriledge or Injustice in them I shall be carryed out of these and have no other Habitation assigned me but with the Devil and his Angels shall inherit and possesse nothing but the Almighty's
whose signatures are more expresse indeed upon the Flesh than those of any other yet whose impulses are so quick and so surprizing as they were Spirit I shall not now enquire but sure if the Flesh long it should be for some carnal object for that is proportion'd to it Flesh and the Creature use to close indeed and they imbibe each other as if they knew to fill and satisfie each other yea some there are that have brought down their Souls to the propensions of Flesh have given to their very Spirits an infusion of carnality for they mind onely fleshly things But by the rates of David's practise it should seem the pious man does the just contrary sublimes his Flesh into a Soul drains all the carnal Appetites out of it weans it from all its own desires and teacheth it those of the Spirit onely makes it long for God Now he whose flesh is defaecated thus and as it were inur'd to the condition which it shall put on when it awakes from its corruption as if it were already in that place whose happinesse and desires have no use of Body and were in that state where their Bodies neither hunger or thirst for these he hath translated from his flesh 't is his Soul onely thirsts and that for God As if he were indeed like Angells now how can this man desire any thing on Earth besides thee Lord who is and does already what they are and do in Heaven where we have nothing but thee But notwithstanding this exalted temper though we should arrive at this Seraphick constitution of desires and though God hath now made himself to us the proper object of these appetites for since God struck the Rock for us which Rock was Christ since the true Bread came down from Heaven if our Flesh long for God there is a satisfaction ready he hath made his Flesh be meat indeed if our Soul thirsts for God he can furnish drink for a Soul the Blood of God But yet while this Soul so journs in this earthly tabernacle the man will still want other supplyes and may be not desire them or can he choose indeed For they that tell us stories of some men whose hungers and thirsts after God as they devour'd all other desires in them so also gave themselves no other satisfaction but panem Dominum that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Supersubstantial daily Bread the Lord these men I say would find it hard to make out how bare Species could nourish and sustain a bodily life Yea Christ himself when he was upon the Earth did hunger and although it was his meat to do his Father's Will yet when he was an hungered Angels came and ministred unto him and then may not our earthly needs desire something besides him That while we are upon the Earth all those necessities are in our constitution is certain but that we need not desire for them or any thing besides Him is as certain Because to them that desire him all these things shall be added they are annext by Promise Matt. 6. 33. it is for such to be solicitous who would have something they must have alone something that cannot come along with God But if I be assur'd that all my needs shall be supply'd in him I need desire nothing besides him now this Promise he must perform for he that when he put Man in a state of Immortality in Paradise provided him a Tree of Life that might for ever furnish and sustain him For that Age also that he does design a man a being for his Service here upon the Earth he must allow him necessaries for his being and his Service otherwise he can nor serve nor be And then if they be certain what need he desire them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith S. Chrysostome These are not objects for our careful wishes but our trusts and confidences we may assure our selves of these if we have him these are his Appendages and then why should I put them with him into my Devotions when my Soul lyes gasping towards God in Prayer my desires seizing on his Blessednesses to take them off from him and to make my desires turn aside to little earthly things and fix them there is to affront not my God onely but my Prayer too and when these things are sure seems to betray a mind too Earthly and too apprehensive of these needs Surely I were most strangely necessitous or strangely greedy if both God and that which shall be added to him were not enough for me More wretched or else more unsatisfied than Hell if the Almighty were not sufficient for me if he be my provision than I need desire nothing besides him But yet Necessities will crave Hunger does croak aloud Thirst makes the insensate Earth to gasp as if with open mouth it gap'd not onely to receive but begg Gods showers and God expects to be intreated for these things He feeds but those young Ravens that do call upon him and the young Lions roar to him and seek their meat at God The Eyes of all things wait on him for that yea this our Psalmist in this very Psalm desires other things and Christ himself hath put into his little Summary these needs and these desires Give us this day our daily bread and my Text does but regulate not exclude these desires if we shall read it in the old Translation there is none upon Earth that I desire in comparison of thee 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There 's none or nothing that I desire or delight in equally with thee like thee so we translate the same word v. 5. I shall not doubt to begg what my needs crave But if God and any the most signal earthly advantage stand in competion and I cannot have one with the other his Providence or his Commands have made them inconsistent that I will not desire with him then he shall be my Choyce alone Rather Obedience and my God than any satisfaction how desirable soever This is the Touchstone of a Pious mans desires 't is not unusual for inclinations to things below more to possesse our thoughts employ our faculties than any other and we are far more sensible of their impressions more busie in the pursuit and more tender in our cares of them But if upon contest betwixt God and our Inclinations upon debate betwixt a Pleasure and Command we can decree for God and for Obedience pass Sentence with the Precept we are safe here the desire is not inordinate 'T is a known instance and you may have seen a tender Mother spending almost her whole time in caressing her little Infant you would think she had Eyes for no uses but to view it and that she had her Arms and Breasts but to embrace and suckle it to whom these are so wholly given up as if they had no part for any other as the Husband had no share in her entertains and caresses of whom are far more
Experience of our selves and others we should find that just according to the rate of virtuous inclinations and dispositions of heart to part with sin so are men prepar'd for the belief of Christ so are their oares and regards of his Religion He that is honestly inclin'd opens his Soul to Christianity for it speakes to his heart 't is right to the grain of his Soul he looks upon the Promises as made to him and layes them up as Gods encouragements of his inclinations every thing in the Gospel fits the temper of his mind And he that is but pretty well disposed that loves Virtue for the most part but does allow himself some one corruption he alwayes hearkens to Religion where it sets it self against those Vices which he hates but as to his own particular evil inclination there he is a little Infidel cannot perswade himself that God will be so stern against a single pleasure that one petty indulgence should be so considerable that it should provoke to those extremities the Bible threatens and can by no means believe S. James that he that offends in one poynt thus is guilty of all And they upon whose constitutions there are weights and Plummets that incline them to some vicious courses and by loose Education have those pronenesses of temper pamper'd and by having their inclinations follow'd and indulg'd taught them to crave then to get head and to command and then by conversation with others that mind nothing but satisfaction of those bents of the Bruit part that allow themselves all the desires of constitution are come to swill the pleasures profits and the Honours that do wait on those practises Or whosoever by whatever steps arrive at an habit of doing thus and a great liking of them and so to improbity of Heart to utter aversations of the strictnesses of Piety all which they have lived so out of 'T is known that not enduring to be bound up in those narrow paths of Piety and Virtue they burst all the obligations to them seek little things to cavil at or to deride hopeing with those their poyson'd Arrows through the skirts and the Extreamer parts to send a Wound into the very Vitals of Religion for they aim at the Heart when they pretend to strike onely the out Lap of its Garments and to say all at once grow down right Atheists And though as once at Corinth now again the World by Wisdom knows no God there being Skill and Manage in this Mystery of Infidelity and it requires Study Wit and Parts yet they proceed just by the Method of King David's Fool first he sayes in his heart there is no God before he say it in his thoughts and opinions He wishes it and so comes to believe it the Atheisme is rooted in the Seat of the Affections and it branches thence into the Mind at least into the Mouth and finding Hell the greatest check to their Delights which they cannot determine with themselves to leave and to repent of therefore because they will not quench it with their tears they study how to put it out with Arguments And meerly for this reason that they will not live like Men they resolve therefore to believe that they shall dye like Beasts But alas they must live for ever with the Devil and his Angels if that Christ whom they reject does not lay hold on them and rescue them from thence as he is in his passage to his Crosse the next Way we must prepare for him and my next part The Solemn dayes approaching will discover to you this Way namely the Passage from the Garden in Gethsemane to Golgotha There you will see he does begin his Journey with the Amazements of an Agony and ended it in something like the horrors and the outcryes of Despair he travailed under such a load as made his life gush out through all the parts of his whole Body the weight of it did make his Soul faint by the way and when he was upon the Tree crusht it out made it expire sooner than the stress of Nature would have done and forc't it to burst out away in Prayers and strong Cryes that so he might sooner escape from under that sad pressure And then do but consider and look on him under that representation which S. Paul does shew of him how all that time that he was creeping under that dire burden in that dolorous way he was meerly pressing on with all the hast he could to overtake us in our course and rescue us from Ruine For that Journey was a Race and we the prize 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I have been laid hold on saith he Phil. 3. 12. laid hold on in the Agonistick sense as in a Race he so expresses it And that he was laid hold on by these sufferings the Epistle to the Hebrews does evince 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Chrysostome in that Way he pursued me till he catcht me his Agony was but his strife to overtake me his Sweat the issue of his Race When he came down from Godhead in his Incarnation he pursued us then into our nature he laid hold of our Flesh and followed us from Heaven to the lowest parts of the Earth But when he went thus to his Crosse here he pursued us then into our guilts he laid hold of our sins and took them up and bore them on the Tree then he descended into Hell to follow us This as it was formally done once for all so in its virtue influence and blest effects 't is still in doing as to thee and me and all of us and the approaching Season is to represent it so Now sure we need no motives to prepare the way for him who runs that he may obtain our Salvation who though he laboured under such a dismal burden yet still presses on to catch us so to rescue us from sin and Hell If he think fit and can endure to strive thus I will make all ready and stand fair to have my guilt seized from me and to be laid hold on for my Blessednesse to be the Prize the Crown of all Christ's Agonies that which he thinks worthy with so much strugling to contend for Now the same Preparation is required here that made way for his other coming that is Repentance in one word a disposition and sincere desire of heart to part with every evil and corrupt affection to quit every sin Sin lying in the way made it so dreadfull God laid upon him the iniquity of us all and that weight threw him prostrate on the Earth and sunk him into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And yet if any were more galling 't was the weight of those that were clog'd with Impenitence this was more heavy more afflictive to him than his Crosse. To bewail this and the issues of it he left off to consider his own Sufferings and required others also to do so Weep not for me weep for your selves And sure it was for want
Revenge or Interest and that warm shine that kindles there pretended Angels of Light is but a flash of Hell a glory about a fiend Therefore afterwards none was more forward than S. Peter was to presse submission to the Magistrate though most unjustly persecuting for Religion talks of no Fire but the fiery trial then in Epist. 1. Cap. 4. and If ye suffer for the Name of Christ the Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you he knows what manner of Spirit such are of When they are in the place of Dragons then the Holy Ghost and God is with them when the darknesse of the shadow of death is on their Souls even then the Spirit of glory resteth on them Accordingly the after-Fathers urge the same not onely towards Heathen Emperours but relapst Hereticks and Apostates As Julian and Constantius Valens Valentinian and upon the same account S. Ambrose sayes Spiritus Sanctus id locutus est in vobis Rogamus Auguste non Pugnamus The Holy Spirit spake these words in you we beg O Valentinian we oppose not And S. Greg. Nazianzen sayes to do so was the Christian Law most excellently ordained by the Spirit of God who knew best to temper his Law with the mixture of what is profitable to us and honest in it self They knew what manner of Spirit that of Christianity was It does assume no power to inflict it self 'T is not commission'd to plant it self with violence or destroy those that refuse or oppose it It wages War indeed with vices not with men And in the Camp of our Religion as once in Israel there is no Sword found but with Saul and Jonathan his Son only the Princes Sword Our Spirit is the Dove no Bird of prey that nor indeed of gall or passion If Christian Religion be to be writ in Blood 't is in that of its own confessors only if mens false Opinions make no parties nor mischiess in the State we are not to make them Martyrs to their false opinions and if they be not so happy as to be Orthodox send them down to Hell directly tear out one anothers Souls to tear out that which we think an error Sure they must not root out smutted Corn that must not root out Poppy we may let that which is a little blasted grow if we must let the Tares and Darnel grow The Souldiers would not crucifie Christ's Coat nor make a rent there where they could find no seame But now men strive so for the Coat that they do rent his Flesh to catch it and to gain an inclosure of the name of Christians tear all other members from the Body of Christ care not to sacrifice a Nation to a supposed Error will attempt to purge away what they call drosse in a Furnace of consuming flame The Christian Spirit 's fiery tongues must kindle no such heats but his effusions call'd Rivers came to quench such fires Effusions that were mistaken for new wine indeed but never lookt like Blood Nor are they that retain to this Spirit those that have him call'd down on them in their Consecration impowered for such uses When Christ sent his Disciples to convert the World Behold saith he I send you forth as Lambs among Wolves And sure that does not sound like giving a Commission to tear and worry those that would not come into the Flock The Sheep were not by that impowered to devour the Wolves Our Lords directions to his Apostles when a City would not receive their Doctrine was shake off the dust of your feet let nothing of theirs cleave to you have no more to do with them cast off the very dust that setled on your Sandals as you past their Streets And surely then we must be far from animating to give ruine to and seize the Sword the Scepter and the Thrones of Kings if they refuse to receive Christ or his Kingdom or his Reformation or his Vicar If I must not have the dust of any such upon my feet I must not have their Land in my possession their Crowns on my head their Wealth in my Coffers their Blood upon my hands nor their Souls upon my Sword It will be ill appearing so when we come to give an account how we have executed our Commission and shall be askt did I send you to inflict the Crosse or preach it to save mens Souls or to destroy their lives yea and Souls too And when in those Myriads of Souls that have perisht in the desolations which such occasions have wrought their Blood shall cry from under the Altar as being sacrific'd to that duty and Religion which was the utmost that they understood it so be that there were no Treason to discolour it and they that did inflict all this appear but Christian Dioclesians and stand at that sad day in the train of the Persecutions on the same hand O then those Fires which these Boutefeus called for and kindled shall blaze out into everlasting burnings And now it may seem strange that they who most of all pretend the Spirit of Christ are yet of the most distant temper in the world from that of Gospel alwayes endeavouring to do that which our Saviour here checks his Disciples for proposing and did threaten Peter for attempting There are among ourselves that seem to live by Inspiration that look and speak as in the frame of the Gospel as if every motion were impulse from Heaven and yet as if Christ had fulfilled his promise to them without metaphor baptized them with the Holy Ghost and fire only that they might kindle fire and the unction of the Spirit did but add oyl to those flames as if the cloven Tongues of fire in which the Spirit did descend were made to be the Emblems of Division and to call for fire these mens life their garb their very piety is faction they pray rebell and murder and all by the Spirit 'T is true indeed they plead now what we seem to say that they should not be persecuted for not being satisfied in their Conscience so they mince their breaking of the Laws for which they suffer But do these know themselves what manner of Spirit they are of or are we bound not to remember when they had the Power how they persecuted all that would not do at once against their King their Conscience and the Law And we do thus far know what Spirit they are of that if they have not yet repented of all that then it is plain if they can get an opportunity they will do it all again nay they must by their Spirit think themselves obliged to do it But these are not all those that above all the World pretend to the Infallible assistance of the Spirit our Church is bold in her offices of this day to say do turn Religion into Rebellion she said it more severely heretofore and the attempts of this day warrant the saying when not
Custome that will ruine it eternally and when he shall bring against us an instance out of Hell here and the kindnesses of one among the Devils shall come in Judgement against us where we see the Rich man thought not of his own condemnation so much he thought of the averting that of his Brethren We might suppose a man in his condition could not consider any thing but his own Tortures O yes to preserve others from them yet when the man in Hell does so the men on Earth do think of nothing more than to entice others into them And is it not a strange Age then when to tempt is the only mode of kindnesse and men do scarcely know how to expresse themselves civil to their Friends but by pressing them to sin and so be sick with them as if this were the gentile use of Societies to season Youth into good Company and bring the Fashionable Vices into their acquaintance And 't is well if they stay there it happens so that Parts and Wit Faculties and Acquisitions do ingratiate men into these treacherous kindnesses and qualifie them for the desires and friendships of such persons as entertain them by softning them into loosnesse and then into prophannesse debauch their manners and then their Principles teach them to sport themselves with Vice and then with Holy things and after with Religion it self which is a greater Luxury than that their Ryots treat their Appetites withall the Luxury of wit And thus they educate them into Atheisme and these familiar Devils are call'd Acquaintances and Friends And indeed the Companions in sin a man would think should be dear friends such as pour an heart into one another in their common Cups shed Souls in their Lusts are friends to one another even into ruine and love to their own Condemnation are kind beyond the Altar-flames even to those everlasting fires such communications certainly cement affections so that nothing can divide them And let them do so but Lord send me the kindnesse of Hell rather one that will be a friend like this man in his Torments that with unsatisfied cares minded the reformation of his Friends Nay Father Abraham but if one went unto them from the dead they will repent which brings me to the Choice the second part If a Ghost should indeed appear to any of us in the midst of our Commissions it would certainly hurry us from our enjoyments and there are no such tyes and unions by which the advantages of sin do hold us fixt and joynted to them but the shake and tremble we should then be in would loosen and dissolve them all and make us uncling from them if we may believe discourses that tell us such a sight is able to startle a man however he be fixt by his most close Devotions for what the Jews were wont to say we shall dye because we have seen an Angel of the Lord from Heaven most men do fear if they should see the Spirit of a dead man from the Earth Indeed the affrights which men do usually conceive at the meer apprehension of such an apparition do probably arise from a surprise in being minded hastily of such a state for which they are not then prepared so as they would wish or hope to be to which they think that is a call for we shall dye said the Jews But not to ask the reason of this now but find the reason why our Rich man thinks when Moses and the Prophets cannot make a man repent such a Ghost should We have it v. 28. they do but discourse to us but one from the dead could testifie he could bear witnesse that it is so as they say speak his own sight and knowledge and therefore though they hear not Moses and the Prophets yet if one went unto them from the dead they will repent For First one from the Dead could testifie that when we dye we do not cease to be and he would make appear that our departing hence is not annihilation and so would dash the hopes of Epicures such as I was and I may fear they are who as they live like Beasts do think to dye so too and who are rational in this alone that they desire to be but Animal And all the rest of men whether worldly or sensual that enclose their desires and enjoyments within this life and above all the Atheist that dares not look beyond it all these would be convinc'd by such an evidence Indeed this would take away the main encouragement of all ungodlinesse which upon little reasonings how thin soever that there 's no life after this does quicken and secure it self Wisd. 2. and therefore every Sect of men that did prescribe Morality did teach an after life nothing was more believ'd among the Heathen Their Tribunal below where three most severe Judges were appointed meant the same thing with our last Assize and their Elizian fields were but Poetical Paradise their Phlegethon River of Fire was set to expresse our stream of Brimstone flame Thus Resurrection in fable made them vertuous the ghesse at it made Socrates dye chearful and though his hopes had faint weak Principles they had Heroick almost Martyr resolutions And on the other side of those that among them deny'd an after life though we are told that Epicurus was a vertuous man yet his Sect did give name to Vice and is still the expression for it and all that did espouse the Tenents of it did the vices too the Sadduces among the Jews are call'd Epicures not onely for opinions sake because they did make God a body and totally denyed his Providence as Zakuth sayes but Epicures also for their practise sake For they used to scoff at the Pharisees for afflicting themselves by Fasting and Austerities in this life 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when there is nothing at all of recompence for them in any life to come Yea and Josephus sayes of them they were the worst of all Sects living like savage Beasts towards one another and uncourteous to their own Sect us to strangers and this sayes he was but a natural effect of their Opinion which wholly denyed the Immortality of the Soul and all Rewards and Punishments after this Life which Principle one coming from the dead would rectifie and so contribute to Repentance Especially if Secondly that one were Lazarus if he that at the Supper of the Lamb sits next the Father of the faithful and the Friend of God in one of the higher Seats of Paradise in Abraham's Bosom if he would go and speak his knowledge of the Pleasures of that Bosom which he tasts and of the glories of that place and but compare them with the little gayeties of my Fathers House shew them the difference betwixt their Structures and that Foundation whose builder and maker God is betwixt the entertainments of their riotous Palates and the Festivals of the Blessed Trinity then sure they would disrellish those and catch at these
'T is true we are prity well reveng'd on them for setting us Examples so reproachful to us calling their Heroick Actions splendida peccata onely beauteous sins and well-fac'd wickednesses and we have a reason for it because they never heard of Christ whose Name and Merit 't is most certain is the onely thing that can give value and acceptance to mens best performances While on the other side we Christians comfort and secure our selves in our transgressions from this Child and from his Name But if this Child were set to raise us up from sin and to establish stronger arguments for a good life than the Heathen ever heard of more especial Divine engagements to vertue then if their Vertues were because they never heard of these engagements to them sins what censure will be past upon their Actions that know all those engagements and despise them a sharper certainly unlesse to defie knowledge and provoke against all Divine obligations all that God could lay shall prove more tollerable than to labour to obey without them without knowing why 'T is true they had not heard it may be of that Name than which there is no other Name under Heaven given unto men whereby they may be saved Yet they endeavoured in some measure to do that which He that owns that Name and wrought the Covenant of those Salvations does require We know that Name and have it call'd upon us and know too that be that names that Name that calls himself a Christian owns the being a retainer to the Holy Jesus must depart from iniquity otherwise it is no Name of Salvation to him yet we never mind the doing that and then which hath the better Plea the Heathen's sure were better though he were not vertuous And if so give me leave to tell you how not onely this Child but this Resurrection too is for our fall In the first Chapter to the Romans we shall find those Heathens when they did neglect to follow the direction of that Light within them by which they were able to discover in some measure the invisible things of God when they did no longer care to retain God in their knowledge then they quickly left off to be Men And when they ceast to hearken to their Reason they soon fell into a reprobate sense What was it else to change God into stocks and stones and Worship into most abominable wickednesse to make the Vilest creatures Deities and the foulest actions Religion to turn a disease into a God and a sin into Devotion a stupidity which nothing else but Gods desertion and reasons too could have betrayed them to and made them guilty of And then if by how much greater Light and means we have resisted we shall be proportionably more vile in the consequents of doing so keep at equal rates of distance from those Heathens that the aggravations of our guilt stand at from theirs Whether alas are we like to fall 'T is an amazing reflection one would tremble to consider how the Christian World does seem to hasten into that condition which S. Paul does there decipher You would think that Chapter were our Character But that we have reason to expect we shall fall lower into much more vile affections then those Heathens did as having fall'n down from a greater height then they Consider whether men do not declare they like not to retain God in their thoughts when they endeavour to dispute and to deride him too out of the World 'T is true they have not set up any sins or monsters in their Temples yet as they did But if they can empty them of God and Christ and their Religion and make room we may imagine easily whose Votaries they will be that live as if they thought themselves unhappy that they had not liv'd in those good Pagan dayes when they might have sinned with devotion been most wickedly Religious and most God-like in unchastities and other Villanies I dare say none of our fine Gentlemen or our great Wits would have been Atheists or irreligious then Think whether those are not already in that reprobate sense S Paul does speak of who have cast off all discriminating notions of good or evil who say in their hearts and affirm openly there are none such in truth and nature It would appear they were if we should try by those effects verse 29 30 31. or by that essential signature 32 vers they not onely commit such things but have pleasure in them that do them which because they cannot have from those commissions when they do not commit them therefore their debauched minds must be satisfied there is no evil in those doings and must reap the pleasure onely of such satisfactions That is have the satisfactions and pleasures onely of a Reprobate sense In fine because I dare not prosecute the Character Men sink so fast as if they were resolv'd to fall as far below Humanity as this Child did below his Divinity O do not you thus break Decrees frustrate and overthrow the everlasting Counsel of Gods will for good to you He set ordain'd this Child for your rising again Do not throw your selves down into Ruin in despite of his Predestinations He hath carried up your nature into Heaven plac'd Flesh in an union with Divinity set it there at the Right hand of God in Glory Do not you debase and drag it down again to Earth and Hell by Worldlynesse and Carnal sensuality Make appear this Child hath rais'd you up already made a Resurrection of your Souls and your affections they converse and trade in Heaven And that you do not degenerate from that nature of yours that is there Then this Child who is Himself the Resurrection and the Life will raise up your Bodies too and make them like his glorious Body by the working of his mighty Power by which he is able to subdue all things to himself To whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost be all Blessing Power and Praise Dominion and Glory for Evermore SERMON XIII WHITE-HALL Novemb. 17. 1667. St. JAMES IV. 7. Resist the Devil and he will flee from you THese Words are easily resolved into two parts The first a Duty and the second to incourage the performance an assurance of an happy issue in the doing it The First the Duty in these words Resist the Devil the happy issue in those other he will flee from you For the more practical and usefull handling of these parts I shall endeavour to do these three things 1. View the Enemy we are to resist the Devil see his Strengths and what are his chief Engines his main Instruments of Battery whereby he shakes and does endeavour to demolish the whole frame of Vertue in mens lives shatters and throws down all Religious holy Resolutions and subjects men to himself and Sin 2. See what we are to do in opposition to all this and how and by what means we must resist 3. Prove to them
similitude of a man cast out of his habitation who while he wanders through none but desert places seeking for a dwelling he is sure to meet with none but if he find an House that 's empty swept and garnished he hath found out not a receptacle onely but an invitation an house drest on purpose to call in and to detain Inhabitants He signifies that when a Temptation of the Devil is repell'd and himself upon some working occasion by a resolute act of holy courage thrown out of the heart as he finds no rest in this condition every place is desert to him but the heart of man is indeed Hell to him for he calls it torment to be cast out thence yea he accounts himself bound up in his eternal Chains of darknesse when he is restrained from working and engaging man to sin so while he goeth to and fro seeking an opportunity to put in somewhere if he find that heart from which he was cast out or any other heart 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so the word is idling not imploy'd or busied so it signifies such an heart is empty swept and garnish'd for him 't is a dwelling that 's drest properly to tempt the Devil fitted to receive him and his forces too prepared for him to Garrison and make a strong hold of whence he cannot be removed for he takes unto him seven other spirits more wicked than himself and they enter in and dwell there No doubt they are the Patron Guardian spirits of the seven deadly Sins their Tutelary Devils Some of those good qualities that are the attendants of Idleness you may find decypher'd in the Scripture S. Paul sayes when people learn to be idle they grow tattlers busie bodies speaking things which they ought not 'T is strange that Idlenesse should make men and women busy bodies yet it does most certainly in other folks affairs Faction than which nothing in the world can be more restlesse is nurst by it Where are States so censured so new modell'd as at certain of our Refectories places that are made meerly for men to spend their time in which they know not what to do with At those Tables our Superiours are dissected Calumny and Treason are the common are indeed the more peculiar entertainments of the places In fine where persons have no other imployment for their time but talking and either have not so much Vertue as to find delight in talking good things or not so much skill as to speak innocent recreation there they talk of others censure and back bite and scoff This is indeed the onely picquant conversation Gall is sawce to all their Entertainments And that you may know these things proceed from that old Serpent they do nothing else but hiss and bite T is the poison of Asps that is under their lips which gives rellish to their Discourses 't is the sting that makes them grateful venime that they are condited with More of the brood of this want of Imployment you may find at Sodome namely Pride and Luxury For saith Ezekiel This was the Iniquity of Sodom Pride fulness of bread and abundance of Idlenesse was in her and in her daughters And indeed the Idle person could not possibly know how to pass his hours if he had not Delicacies to sweeten some Wine to lay some asleep and the solicitous deckings of Pride to take up others But the studious gorgings of the inside and the elaborate trimmings of the outside help him well away with them Good God! that for so many hours my morning eyes should be lift up to nothing but a Looking-glasse that that thin shadow of my self should be my Idol be my God indeed to which I pay all the devotions I perform And when with so much care and time I have arrayed and marshall'd my self that I should spend as much more too in the complacencies of viewing this with eager eyes and appetite surveying every part as if I had set out expos'd them to my self alone and onely drest a prospect for my own sight and since Nature to my grief hath given me no eyes behind that I should fetch reliefs from Art and get vicarious sight and set my back parts too before my face that so I may enjoy the whole Scene of my self And why all this for nothing but to serve vain Ostentation or negotiate for Lust to dresse a Temptation and start Concupiscence And that the half of each day should be spent thus the best part of a reasonable Creatures and a Christians life be laid out upon purposes so far from Christian or reasonable And truly Luxury will easily eat the remainder up that sure Companion of Idlenesse For when the Israelites were in the Wildernesse where they could not eat but by Miracle and the Rock must give them drink yet having no Imployment they made Feasts They sate down to eat and drink and rose up to play Nor would eating to the uses of their nature serve them but they must have entertainments for their wantonnesse Had they been imployed to get their Bread their labour would have made their morsels sweet But since God as the Wise-man saies sent them from Heaven bread prepared without their labour they must have varieties to sweeten it they require him to prepare a Table also in the Wildernesse and furnish them with choice And although they had the food of Angels able to content every mans delight and agreeing to every tast and serving to the appetite of the eater it temper'd it self to every mans liking and what could they fancy more The latitude of Creatures the whole Universe of Luxury could do nothing else in every single morsel they had sorts Variety all choyce as if that Desert had been Paradise that Wildernesse the Garden of the Lord Yet so coy is Idlenesse so apt to nauseate that they abhor the constancy of being pleas'd And though they were not sated neither he that gather'd much had nothing over onely to his eating God as well providing for their Health and Vertue as Necessity and dieting their Temperance as he did their Hunger Yet their very liking does grow loathsome to them When their Bodies were thus excellently well provided for having no imployment nothing to take up their Minds and Entertain their Souls they require 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 meat for their Souls meat not to serve the uses of their bodies but to feed their fancies their extravagant minds Thus Idlenesse requires to be dieted And all this but to pamper and feed high mens inclinations so to make Temptations irresistible and by consequence Vice necessary It were easie to recount more of those wayes by which the Devil does make use of mens want of Imployment to debauch their lives and ruine all the hopes of Vertue in them S. Jâ—de findes more of its effects at Sodome They gave themselves over to Fornication and went after other flesh and are set forth for an
assaults and does expose the person to be taken by him But where he sees he is resisted heartily his offers are received with an abhorrency discerns Men are in earnest watch to avoid all opportunities and occasions and prepare and fortifie and arm against him there he will not stay to be the triumph of their Vertue We may know this by his Agents those that work under the Devil whom he hath instructed in the mysteries of waging his Temptations Where they are not like to speed and as to this they have discerning spirits they avoid and hate and come not near but study spite and mischief onely there The intemperate men are most uneasie with a person whom they are not able to engage in the debauch the rudeness and brutality of their excesses are not so offensive to the sober man as his staid Vertue is to them they do not more avoid the crude egestions shameful spewings of their overtaken fellows Riot than they do the shame and the reproach that such a man's strict Conversation casts on them which does in earnest make them look more foul and nasty to themselves In fine every Sinner shuns the Company of those whom he believes Religious in earnest 't is an awe and check to them they are afraid and out at it as their Great Master also is who when he is resisted must be overcome And as they that are beaten have their own fears also for their Enemies which are sure to charge close put to flight chase and pursue them so it seems he also is afraid of a sincere and hearty Christian for he flies him So he did from Christ 4. Mat. vers 11. and so the Text assures If you resist him he will flie from you And now although we all did once renounce the Devil and his works were listed Souldiers against him took a Sacrament upon it and our Souls the immortality of life or misery depend upon our being true and faithful to our selves and oaths or otherwise nor is there more required of us but resolution and fidelity onely not to be consenting to our Enemies Conquest of us not to will Captivity and Servitude Yet as if in meer defiance of our Vows and Interests we not onely will'd the ruine but would fight for it we may find instead of this resisting of the Devil most men do resist the Holy Ghost quench not the fiery darts of Satan but the Spirit and his flames by which he would enkindle love of God and Vertue in them If he take advantage of some warm occasion to inflame their courage against former follies heat them into resolutions of a change as soon as that ocasion goes off they put out those flames and choak these heats untill they die If he come in his soft whispers speak close to the heart suggest and call them to those joyes of which himself is earnest to all these they shut their ears can hear no whispers are not sensible of any sounds of things at such a distance sounds to which they give no more regard than to things of the same extravagance with the Musick of the Spheres Nay if he come with his more active methods as the Angels came to Lot send mercy to allure and take them by the hand as they did to invite and lead them out of Sodome if that will not Judgments then to thrust them out as they did also come with fire and brimstone to affright them they not onely like the men of Sodome do attempt a violence and Rape upon those very Angells but they really debauch the mercies and profane the Judgments having blinded their own Eyes that they might see no hand of God in either using thus unkindly all his blessed methods of reclaiming them till they have grieved him so that he forsake and leave them utterly As if they had not heard that when the Holy Spirit is thus forc'd away the evil spirit takes his place 1 Sam. 16. 14. As if they knew not that to those who close their eyes and stop their ears against the Holy Spirit 's motions till they are grown dull of hearing and blind to them God does send a spirit of slumber that they should not see nor bear and that for this dire reason that they may not be converted nor be saved Five times he affirms it in the Scripture Yea once more in words of a sad Emphasis 2 Thess. 2. 12 13. He sends them strong delusions that they may believe a lye that they all may be damn'd who believe not the truth but have pleasure in unrighteousnesse And that because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved Blessed God! Is it so easie for such sinners to believe and be converted that thy self shouldst interpose to hinder it and hide the possibilities of mercy from their eyes that they may never see them nor recover What can then become of those for whom God does contrive that they shall not escape when instead of those bowells that did make him swear he would not have the sinner die but would have him return and live he puts on so much indignation at such sinners as to take an order they shall not repent and take an order that they shall be damn'd And yet all this is onely to those men who being dull of hearing the suggestions of the Spirit and not willing to give entertainment to his holy motions grieve him so that they repell and drive him quite away and so by consequence onely make way for the Devil Whereas there are others that directly call him force him to them ravish and invade occasions to serve him Some there are that study how to disbelieve and with great labour and contrivance work out arguments and motives to persuade themselves to Atheisme Others practise discipline and exercise themselves to be engag'd in Vice Some dresse so as to lay baits snares to entrap Temptation that they may be sure it may not passe them Others feed high to invite and entertain the Tempter do all that is possible to make him come and to assure him that he must prevail when they have made it most impossible for themselves to stand and to resist Some there are indeed whom he does not overcome so easily but is put to compound with them takes them upon Articles for when he would ingage them to a sin to which he sees they have great inclinations with some fears he is fain to persuade them to repent when they have done to lay hold upon the present opportunity and not let the satisfaction escape them but be sorry after and amend For where these resolutions of Repentance usher in transgression there we may be sure it is the Devil that suggests those resolutions But if he can get admittance once thus by prevailing with a person to receive him upon purposes of after Penitence he is sure to prosper still in his attempts upon the same condition For Repentance
will wash out another sin if he commit it and so on And it is evident that by this very train he does draw most men on through the whole course of sin and life For never do they till they see themselves at the last stage begin repenting When they are to grapple with Death's forces then they are to set upon resisting of the Devil And when they are grown so weak that their whole Soul must be imployed to muster all its spirits all their strength but to beat off one little spot of phlegm that does befiege the avenues of breath the ports of life and sally at it and assault it once again and a third many times and yet with all the fury of its might cannot break through nor beat off that little clot of spittle when it is thus yet then are they to wrestle with and Conquer Principalities and Powers all the Rulers of the utter darknesse pull down the strong holds of sin within cast down imaginations and every high thing that did exalt it self against the knowledge of God and bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ and with those seeble hands that they are scarcely able to lift up in a short wish or prayer they must doe all this resist the Devil and take Heaven by force Now sure to put it off to such a fatal season is a purpose of a desperate concern In God's Name let us set upon the doing it while there is something left of Principle and vigor in us ere we have so griev'd God's Spirit that he do resolve to leave us utterly and before the Devil have so broke us to his yoke that we become content and pleas'd to do his drudgery We deceive ourselves if we think to do it with more ease when Constitution is grown weaker as if then Temptations would not be so strong For the Habits will be then confirm'd Vice grown Heroical and we wholly in the power of Satan dead and senslesse under it not so much as stirring to get out But if we strive before he have us in his clutches we have an Enemy that can vanquish none but those who consent to and comply and confederate with him those that will be overcome So that if we resist he must be Conquer'd and Temptation must be conquer'd too for he will flie and then by consequence must cease to trouble and molest us This is the sure way to be rid of Temptations to put to flight the great Artificer and Prince of them subdue and overcome him and our selves And to him that overcometh thus Christ will grant to sit with him on his Throne as He also overcame and sate down with his Father on his Throne To which c. SERMON XIV WHITE-HALL Last Wednesday in LENT 1667 8. PHILIPP III. 18. For many walk of whom I have told you often and now tell you even weeping that they are the Enemies of the Cross of Christ. THough many by the Crosse of Christ here understand any sort of Suffering for the sake of Christ or Religion it being usual with the Scripture to entitle Christ to every evil that befalls a man for doing of his duty yet others looking on it properly as that on which Christ himself suffered by the Enemies of the Crosse understand those that set themselves against the whole design and influence of Christ's Death upon it Now to name that in few words the Crosse of Christ not onely is one of the greatest Props on which our Faith of the whole Gospel leans which it establisheth the truth of as Christs Blood shed upon it was the sanction of the Covenant on Gods part who by that federal Rite of shedding Blood engag'd himself and we may certainly assure our selves he cannot fail to make good whatsoever he hath promised in that Covenant who would give the blood of his own only Son who was so holy and who was himself to Seal that Covenant and his Blood is therefore called the Blood of the Everlasting Covenant But besides this extrinsick influence of it all the blessed Mercies also of the Gospel are the Purchase of this Cross and all the main essential duties of the Gospel are not only Doctrines of the Crosse such as it directs and does inforce but the Crosse also hath an immediate efficacy in the working of them in us For S. Paul saith by the Crosse of Christ the World is Crucified to me and I unto the World On it the Flesh is also crucified with the Affections and Lusts And to say all that comprehensive Duty of the Gospel Self denyal is but another word for taking up the Crosse And then as for the Mercies of the Gospel on the Crosse the satisfaction for our sins was made the Price of our Redemption paid and that effected There was wrought our Reconciliation with our God Lastly that was the consideration upon which Grace was bestowed whereby we are enabled to perform our duty With good reason therefore S. Paul calls the Gospel 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the word or Doctrine of the Crosse so that the Enemies of the Crosse of Christ are in a word the Enemies of Christianity and so the blessed Polycarpe in his Epistle to these same Philippians seems to understand it And they that walk as Enemies to it are such as do not onely hate the Duties of the Gospel those especially which the Crosse directly does inforce but their course of life is order'd so as to break the very Frame and Power of Christianity they set themselves against all that Christ came to do upon and by the Cross resist and wage War with the Doctrines and by consequence oppose the mercies of it The words being thus explain'd I have no more to do but onely answer two Enquiries which they give occasion for The first is What sort of men those are that walk as Enemies to the Crosse and wherein their hostility does expresse it self The second is What the danger and the sadnesse is of that condition that they should make S. Paul think it necessary frequently to warn them of it and to do it now with so much passion For many walk saith he of whom I have told you often and now tell you even weeping c. First for the first And here I shall not strive to give you in a perfect list of all that walk as Enemies to the Crosse but shall take that which S. Paul hath made ready to my hands in the next words And first the Enemies which he brings up in the front are the Sensualists the Men whose God is their Belly Secondly they whose glory is in their shame Thirdly who mind Earthly things to which as being their consederates and neer allyes I shall add Fourthly those that he reckons up in the 1 Cor. 1. the wise men of this world First the Sensualists That Men who diligently mind the serving of their appetite in meats and drinks that study and
the unity of the Spirit nor sets into the rank of higher members in Christs body those who tear that body and themselves from it the factious those that will not be bound neither in bonds of peace nor of obedience but break all holy tyes that make commotions and rave and foame sute 't is the Legion that sends them and not the Holy Ghost He vvhom the spirit vvill call must not be under the reputation of a Vice but should be of a good report lest he fall into reproach and so into the snare of the Devil 1 Tim. 3. 7. i. e. lest he fall into reproach and then his teaching do so too and men learn to slight or not heed the doctrines of such a one as is under scandal for his life and so the Devil get advantage over them and do ensnare them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For to be to any an occasion of falling is to be the Devils snare Now Christ's Fishers of men those vvhom the Holy Ghost appoints to spred nets for the catching Souls to God their lives must not lay snares for the Devil and entangle Souls in the toyls of perdition Those also that come to you out of Ambition or of greediness of gain the spirit calls not neither He calls we see 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to a work so that they who feek more then they can well attend the labour of or are qualified for the work of they are not of his sending But of all men the Holy Ghost will least deal with the Simoniacal that come not to a work but to a market that contract with Patrons for the spirits call or worse than their master Simon vvould hire the Holy Spirit himself to say Separate me them The Successors of the Apostles have a Canonical return to these Your money perish with you They vvhom the Holy Ghost does call must have his gifts and temper St. Paul hath set all down to Timothy and Titus and those vvho minister in this employment if they vvill be vvhat he hath made them joynt Commissioners vvith him and his Co-workers they must order it so that he may vvork and act which he does not but where he calls nor does he call but those whom he hath qualified And 't is of those only whom he hath call'd that he says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Scparate The third particular the thing enjoyn'd And the Holy Ghost said scparate The separateness of the Functions of the Clergy the incommunicableness of their offices to persons not separated for them is so express a doctrinc both of the letter of the Text and of the Holy Ghost that sure I need not to say more though several heads of Probation offer themselves As first the condition of the callings which does divide from the Community and sets them up above it And here I might tell you of bearing rule of thrones of stars and Angels and other vvords of as high sense and yet not go out of the Scripture bounds although the dignitie did not die with the Scripture age or expire vvith the Apostles the age as low as Photius words it thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That Apostolical and Divine Dignity which the chief Priests are acknowledged to be possest of by right of Succession Styles vvhich I could derive yet lower and they are of a prouder sound than those the modest humble ears of this our age are so offended vvith But these heights it may be vvould give Ombrages although 't is strange that men should envy them to those vvho are only exalted to them that they may vvith the more advantage take them by the hands to lift them up to Heaven Those neernesses to things above do but more qualifie them to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Theoph. and to draw near to God on your behalf that those your Angels also may see the face of your father vvhich is in heaven and those stars are therefore set in Christs right hand that they may shed a blessing influence on you from thence 2. The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The VVork and labour of the vvork the one is the Text's and the other Saint Paul's vvord require a vvhole man and therefore a man separate and if Saint Paul one of our separated persons here vvho had the fulness of the Spirit and the fulness of Learning too that vvas brought up in the Schools and brought up in Paradise taught by the Doctors and taught by the mouth of the Lord in the third heaven snatcht from the feet of Gamaliel to the presence of God to have a beatifical Vision of the Gospel if after all this he cry out vvho is sufficient for these things sure they are not sufficient vvho in those little intervals vvhich their trades and necessities afford them fall into fits and frensies of Religion have a sharp Paroxysme of irregular convuls'd Divinity as if they vvere its 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 possest vvith their Theology till their vveariness and not knowing what to say do exorcise tâ—em But not to speak only to the wild fancies of this Age the Scripture says of the men of these callings they are taken from among Men and ordain'd for Men in things pertaining to God And such discriminations are evinc'd by all the expressions of a Church in Scripture 'T is call'd the body of Christ Now the parts of a body as vvhere they are so separate that they divide from one another they do not make a body but are an Execution so vvhere they are not separate in a diversitie of Organs for several faculties and operations it may be a dead Element as similar bodies are but cannot be that body vvhich Saint Paul describes 1 Cor. 12. VVhich is not one member but many vers 14. And if they were all one member where were the body vers 19. and indeed all that Chapter is inspired for this Argument In Christ's Church 't is as impossible that every one can be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an Overseer as that every part in the body can be an Eye and the vvhole frame of Man may be nothing else but a Tongue as vvell as every Christian may be a Preacher And if it might where indeed were the hearing as Saint Paul does ask The Church is also call'd a building and Gods house Now it is true that every Christian is by Saint Peter call'd a lively stone and all of them built up a Spiritual house an holy Priest-hood 1 Pet. 2. 5. and they all are a Royal Priest-hood an holy Nation a peculiar separate people vers 9. Yet all this is no more of priviledge than is affirmed in the very same vvords of the Iewish Nation Exod. 19. 6. Where yet God had his separated Levites Priests and High-priests too But sure 't is manifest enough that in this building as in others stones have their separate places and
does excommunicate them only in desire And again 2 Cor. 10. 6. and having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience when your obedience is fulfil'd It becomes therefore every one that hath good VVill for Sion to labour to fulfill his own obedience that so the Church may be empower'd to use Christ's Method for reforming of the rest And they that vvill not do so must know they shall not only answer for their sins but for refusing to be sav'd from them that they resist all medicine as men resolv'd that nothing shall be done towards their Cure as men that rather choose to perish and prefer destruction And for the seasons and degrees of putting this work into Execution Wisdom must be implor'd from that Spirit of VVisdom that calls unto this work The last Part VVhereunto I have called them The Nature of the calling of the Holy Ghost is a Subject that would bear a full discourse But waving those pretensions which Necessity and inward incitation do make to be the Calls of the Holy Ghost I shall positively set down that the call of God and of the Holy Ghost to any VVork or Office for I enquire not of his calling to a priviledge or state of favour is his giving abilities and gifts qualifying for that VVork or Office he call immediate when the gifts were so but mediate and ordinary when the abilities are given in his blessing on our ordinary labours 'T is so in every sort of things Exod. 31. 2. See I have call'd Bezaleel and I have fill'd him vvith the Spirit of God in VVisdome and in understanding and in knowledge and in all manner of VVorkmanship to devise cunning vvorks and to vvork in all manner of VVorkmanship and behold I have given him Aholiab and in the hearts of all that are vvise hearted I have put Vvisdom that they may make all that I have commanded thee And he repeats the same again Chap. 35. 30. adding that he hath put in his heart that he may teach both He and Aholiab so that giving this skill to vvork and teach is nam'd Gods calling So in another case the Lord does say of Cyrus I have call'd him Esay 48. 15. vvhich he explains in the 49. I have holden him by my right hand to subdue Nations before him to loose the loyns of Kings I have girded him So vvhen Isaiah saith the Lord hath call'd me from the VVomb or rather sayes that of our Saviour Isa. 49. 1. he tells you how ver 5. he form'd me and prepared me from the VVomb to be his servant to bring Jacob to him And throughout the New Testament as his Call to a priviledge is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his grace in allowing such a state of favour so his calls to a Work are his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his gifts enabling for it The Gifts of these Apostles by vvhich they vvere enabled for their Office and vvhich made up their call are set down those of Barnabas in the fore-cited 11 Act. He was a good man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost and Paul's call vvas a little Extraordinary If vve look into times vve shall find reason to believe those revelations in 2 Cor. 12. vvere given to Paul a little before this consecration of him in the Text. That Epistle vvas vvrit saith Baronius in the second year of Nero and this separation vvas in the second of Claudius as may be gathered also in some measure from the famine mention'd in the 28. verse of the 11. chap. betwixt these two vvere fourteen years now saith Saint Paul vvhen he vvrote that he had his revelation somewhat above 14. years before a little therefore before this solemnity Here vvas a call indeed call'd up to the third heaven to receive instructions for his Office and for ought he did know call'd out of his own body too that he might be the fitter for it whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell God knows verse 2. and that again verse 3. They vvhom Gods Spirit qualifies for Consecration to separate to these diviner Offices may be stil'd Angels well vvhen they are call'd from all regards or notices of any body that belongs to them their gifts and graces set them above the consideration of flesh In the entertainment of these qualifications the Soul is swallowed up so that it cannot take cognizance whether it have a body of its own and is not sensible of that deer partner of it self it is so onely sensible of this Employment 'T is not for an Apostle or for his Successor to think of things below vvith much complacency When these have all their uses all their glories on they but make pomp to dress the body vvhich an Apostle does not designe for nor knowes vvhether he be concern'd at all in He becomes something without a body and above the Earth vvho for a preparative must be taken up to Paradise and call'd from all commerce and all intelligence with his own body Saint Paul vvas call'd from Heaven to preach the Gospel but he vvas call'd to Heaven to qualifie him for this higher separation to an Apostle and Church Governour And now you see your calling Holy Fathers and to pass by such obvious unconcerning observations as at first sight follow that those vvho are not qualified are not call'd I shall onely take notice hence of the counter-part of this call the charge God takes upon him when he calls to this charge and that is he owns and will protect whom himself calls 'T was that he promised to the Pounder and â—od of your Order I the Lord have call'd thee and I will hold thine hand and I will keep thee Isaâ— 42. 6. And vvhen he said of Cyrus I have call'd him he said also he shall make his way prosperous Isai. 48. 15. And so he shall be the vvay vvhat it vvill for thus he said to Jacob I have called thee when thou goest through the VVater I am with thee and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee Isai. 43. 1 2. There was Experience of all this in one of the chief Princes of your Order vvhen the Apostles vvere scarce safe within their ship they vvere so toss'd with vvaves and fears yet if our Lord vvill call him Peter is confident he shall be safe even in the sea Lord if it be thou bid me come unto thee on the Water saith he and the Lord did but call him and he vvent down and walked on the vvater safely as if the swelling billows did only lift themselves to meet his steps and raise him up from sinking And vvhen his own doubts vvhich alone could vvere neer drowning him and he but call'd the Lord immediately he stretched out his hand and caught him He answers his call if vve answer ours if we obey vvhen he sayes come then vvill he come and save vvhen vve call to him And so Peter receiv'd no hurt but a rebuke O thou of little
to reform their lives and do resolve against their Courses yet repent of their Repentance their resolutions untwist and become frail as threads of Cobweb the first assault of a temptation does break through them is they do not use mortifications to work their aversations high and strong against their sins and fix their resolutions The universal sense of the whole Primitive Church does give me confidence in this perswasion who for that very reason in their penitential Excommunications did inflict such severities as 't is almost incredible that Christians would submit to yet they beg'd to be censur'd into and those had S. Paul for their precedent But now Repentances are but dislikes little short unkindnesses at our sins and wouldings to do better On some moving occasion if Gods hand or his Spirit lash it may be Tears will gush out of the Wound and we in angry sadness do intend against our vices but when that fit is over and the Flesh by indulgences prepared to make or answer a temptation we fall again and then it may be shake the head and curse the sin but yet again commit it if the invitation be fair And then are very sorry account our selves unhappy who lye under such a violent infirmity but act it still Now if we consider how it comes to passe that we go round like men inchanted in a Circle of Repenting and of Sinning we shall find it is for want of Discipline upon our selves for had we strove to make our humiliations more low and full of pungent sorrow the Soul would start and fly at the first glance of that which cost it so much anguish but who would fear to act that sin which puts him to so little trouble to repent of as a sad thought a sigh a wish and a loose purpose thin intention and that 's all Do not complain of the Infirmity of the Flesh for this and say thou wouldst live Spiritually but the frailty of thy sensual part betrayes thee its stings and incitations make thee start from duty and goad and force thee into actions which otherwise thou neither shouldst or wouldst commit 'T is thou thy self that arm'st thy Flesh with all its stings thou givest it strengths whereby it does subdue the Spirit thou waterest thy desires with Wines thou feedest them with strong meat and teachest them to crave thou cocker'st them with thy indulgence and thou dost treat Temptations to sin dost invite wickednesse and nourish the occasions of Ruin and then it is no wonder if thy resolutions be not strong enough there is no way but by Austerities to mortifie all inclinations that stir against the Spirit and by denying satisfactions to thy Appetite to calm and moderate thy affections to every thing below and then Temptations will have neither Aid nor Avenue But Secondly You shall Afflict your Souls cannot be meant onely that ye shall Afflict your Bodies the Spirit also must be troubled and we must rent the Heart as well as Garments that is indeed a Sacrifice fit for a Propitiation day for it is such a one as God will not despise Psal. 51. 17. and without which all others are but vain Oblations God may call safting the Afflicting of the Soul because it is the most appropriate and natural means to work it but when he calls it so he does intend it should produce it Austerities are humilificandi hominis disciplina as Tertull sayes Humiliation discipline but yet they have not alwayes that effect The Pharisee that fasted twice a week did not mortifie at all but his Humiliation made him lofty his emptinesse filled him with wind and puft him up and the Publican was more justified than he And late experiences have taught us that Fasting does not alwayes humble when it did gape for Soveraignty and did afflict them into Power onely when there attended it a sacra fames an hunger after Holy things and such as all the relicts of old Sacriledge could not allay but it devoured Church and State and yet crav'd still And the throat of these fasting men was an open Sepulchre indeed open to bury and that could no more be satisfied than the Grave But 't is not onely these demure impieties and those that are devont in wickednesse and act it in Religion and the Fear of God I have to speak against But in the generall If Fasting do not humble and those severities that wear the Flesh break not the heart too and make it contrite then they are lost upon us and do not profit us All these strictnesses of bodily and outward exercise as S. Paul calls it are acts of discipline prescribed to make the Sorrowes of Repentance more severe and operative and so to be the Correctives of the distempers of the Soul to quell the risings of the Appetite and Passions and bring the sensual part of us under obedience to Reason and Religion to make all calm and even in us and put us in the frame of Men and Christians of Rational and Pious Creatures And if they do not work this in us if the Soul do not meet in the performances they are not acceptable in themselves at all These are onely the mint anise and cummin of our Pieties and as Origen sayes the condimenta actuum the sauces of Religion not the main standing parts of it which he therefore that offers solitary gives God a Sacrifice of Sallads and thinks that will be a Sin-Offering They do mistake themselves who cherish any hope from having spent a day or Lent of abstinence if the Excesses of their vices be not made over and evacuated by it if they continue still full gorg'd with their iniquity or who think all is well they have atton'd by having bowed down the head like a bulrush if the Soul were not also humbled in them for as S. Paul does say I may give all my goods to feed the poor yet have no Charity and I may give my body to be burnt yet in those Martyr-fires there may be no heats of Love to God and then all these profit me nothing 1 Cor. 13. 3. So I may chasten my self too and yet not receive correction or be disciplin'd and then Gods punishments are still due to me That Church indeed which hath found out the easie expiation of Indulgences that hath the treasure of Christ's merits and all the supererogations of the Saints at her dispose and by Commission can issue them at pleasure out and apply those merits to mens uses not by Sacraments but by a Bull or Brief and not require Gospel conditions of Faith and Repentance in the persons that receive them but visiting a Church in Rome ascending the steps in such a Chappel in the Lateran on such a day shall give a plenary remission from sin and punishment the saying of such a Prayer over daily shall do it for fourscore thousand years could they but make a lease for men to live and sin out the indulgence too that would get them good