wind and tempest Can they Marshal out the host of heaven or put the Constellations in array or command the stars in their courses to make resistance for them Can they bind the influences of Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion or bring forth Mazzaroth or conduct Arcturus and his sons Are they able to stand before a jealous God and to support themselves in the presence of a consuming fire When a fire is kindled in his anger and shall burn to the lowest Hell and shall consume the earth and set on fire the mountains Are they able to sustein the fierceness of his anger Who among them can dwell with the devouring fire who among them can dwell with everlasting burnings Briefly and plainly to lay the case before you This people had heard with their ears of the drowning of the old world Their fathers had told them of the fire and brimstone which devoured the Cities of Sodom and Gomorrha They had been witnesses of the plagues brought upon Egypt They beheld the fire that consumed Nadab and Abihu They stood by when the earth opened and swallow'd up Dathan and covered the congregation of Abiram Thousands had fallen beside them and ten thousands at their right hand for their ingratitude and rebellion and yet they behave themselves so as hath been represented Judge in your selves was it wisdome thus to requite the Lord Were they or were they not a foolish people and unwise We have now seen the case of Israel the wickedness of their folly and the folly of their wickedness hath been in some measure displayed before us And who is it that doth not feel his indignation rise against this people Ah sinful people ah people laden with iniquity ah Seed of evil doers O ingrateful stiff-necked brutish nation do they thus requite the Lord that made that redeemed that established them Shall not his soul be avenged on such a nation as this Let God arise let his enemies be scattered It is but just and equal That he should consume them in a moment and blot out their remembrance from under heaven Nay but who art thou O man that judgest another and dost the same things thinkest thou that thou shalt escape the judgment of God Alas how easy is it in a figure to transfer all that hath been spoken to our selves to our selves of this Auditory to our selves of this Kingdome in every capacity private and publick Ecclesiastical and Civil 1. Hath not God dealt with us as he dealt with Israel 2. Have not we requited him as they requited him come now and let us briefly reason together For Gods dealing let us examine our selves upon the heads of enquiry here propounded by Moses in this song Hath he not 1 made 2 redeemed 3 established us in every sence and every capacity 1. Hath he not made us is not he the Creator and preserver of every individual person is not he the disposer of nations the ordainer and orderer of Governments the framer of Churches in the world In every one of these respects it is evidently true which is delivered by the Psalmist It is he that hath made us and not we our selves we are his people and the sheep of his pasture As for our personal being and better being was it not from him that we received our bodies our Souls our Christianity all things pertaining unto life and Godliness His eyes did see our substance yet being imperfect and in his book were all our members written He poured us out like Milk and curdled us like Cheese cloathed us with skin and flesh fenced us with bones and sinews he breathed into us life and spirit saying unto us Live he stamped his Image upon us and made us live the life of men he commanded and we were born of Christian Parents and baptized and regenerated into the life of Christians Hath he not made us Nay doth he not make us and that every moment by susteining and upholding our being by the word of his power by reteining our spirits and preserving our souls and life by his perpetual visitation by his protection and by his provision There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retein the spirit All the wit and industry and ability of all men upon earth nay of all creatures in Heaven and earth cannot make one grain of any one of that infinite variety of things which are of necessity or of convenience to the being or preservation of men And this is so evident upon the shallowest consideration that S. Paul at Lystra when the Priest of Jupiter supposing him to be Mercurius would have sacrificed to him appealed to this instance as Gods witness against the depth of heathenish darkness He left not himself without witness in that he gave rain from Heaven filling our hearts with food and gladness So that in this respect our case is parallel Hath not God dealt with us as with Israel Hath he not made us as to our personal and private condition Again if we consider our selves in our national publick capacity in reference to the political frame of our Government Civil and Ecclesiastical hath he not made us It was in reference to this that Moses asked this question and to help their understandings in the consideration of it for an answer in the words immediately following he calls upon them to search into their antiquities to reflect upon their original and their progress Remember saith he the days of old and consider the years of many generations Ask thy Fathers and they will tell thee thy Elders and they will shew thee And now I say unto you Have you not heard long ago how he hath done it and of ancient days how he hath formed it How he hath formed the state of this Island and reformed it how he never gave over working hewing and fabricating the inhabitants thereof till he had framed them into a glorious Christian Kingdom from a most barbarons savage scattered heathen people How oft did the Almighty Potter bring the stubborn matter to the wheel overturning overturning overturning To civilize the Britains he brought in the Romans then tried the Britains again When that would not frame to his hand he brought in the Saxons and upon them the Danes then tried the Saxons again and lastly he brought in the Normans nations os various tempers customs religions languages caused nation to rise against nation c. he committed them one with another and among themselves he mixed and blended them by many a terrible combat and collision he polish'd the roughness of them by the leaven of the Gospel he fermented and matured and sweetned them till by his powerful word light was brought out of darkness out of a multitude of disorders and confusions sprang forth a noble well-tempered form of Government System of Laws Civil Ecclesiastical equal at least to those of any other people harmoniously conspiring if duly executed to conserve all estates orders
in his actions and if so he deserves either good or evil and if there be deserts there must be rewards and if there be rewards there must be a Judgment So then so sure as thou art an understanding creature so sure there is a Judgment to come Once more Reward is answerable to desert and desert is only in what is free and what is free in man is the ways of his heart wherefore they are to be brought to Judgment and if any then all for no reason can be fancied why some should be brought to Judgment and others not Wherefore if it be sure that God is in Heaven and that Man hath an understanding soul then it is also sure that for all these things God will bring thee to Judgment that God shall bring to judgment every secret thing And now how sure and evident are these things more sure and more plain if we will attend than any other truths in the world for there is not any known truth which doth not evict the truth of these things We know a truth because we plainly and evidently understand the composition or division of the notions in a Proposition or the Deduction of a Proposition from some others therefore if we know any truth we presuppose that we have souls which understand the notions of things and if souls which understand these notions then to be sure they are not bodies no combination of fire and air and earth and water no disposirion of insensible atomes can cause the subject to apprehend and judge to reason and discourse and if they be no bodies then they are not subject to corruption It is evident therefore that our souls are understanding and also immortal deserving and capable of future Judgment And as evident it is also that there is a soveraign Power a God that governs and will Judge the Earth This is not a Rhetorical undertaking but a just and measured truth there is not anything in the world from whence these two may not be plainly and evidently evicted viz. a Godhead from the Creature and thine own Immortality from the discovery of a Godhead The world which thou seest had it a beginning or had it not if it had a beginning he is thy God that made it if it had no beginning then there are past as many myriads of years as minutes of time which is infinitely more absurd to grant than to say thou hast as many hands as fingers as many wholes as parts If then at any time we find our selves to doubt of these things it is not because we are the beaux esprits or forts esprits our doubting proceeds from dulness and the want of that strong reason to which we do pretend the things are certain in themselves and evident He is not far from any one of us in whom we live and move and have our being and the Light of nature discovered our Immortality not only to Philosophers but even to the Heathen Poets to him that fung to us that We are also his off-spring So that now thy pretences are all taken off and every imposture of the heart discovered Return then once again into thy bosome and take account of thy apprehensions The day of the Lord is coming and stealing upon thee as a thief in the night the day of Judgment the great and terrible day A day of darkness and of gloominess a day of a whirlwind and a tempest a day of anguish and tribulation Where wilt thou hide thy self O that 's impossible Where shall we go then from his presence shall we call to the Mountains to fall upon us How wilt thou appear O that 's intolerable for our God is a consuming fire What wilt thou do when the day of Judgment comes and this may be the hour this minute thou mayest be smitten and hurried hence to Judgment Thousands have fallen besides us and ten thousands at our right hand and why may not we be next The time of our particular Judgment cannot be far away and why may we not reasonably apprehend the approach of the General Judgment either of this World or at leastwise of this sinful Nation Our Lord Christ indeed tells us that of the day and hour of the final Judgment Knoweth no man Yet he hath given us the signs of his coming The Apostles have left us Characters of the last days the Prophets have declared the manner and apparatus of the coming of the Lord to Judgment We read that when the Disciples admired the stones and the buildings of Herod's Temple at Jerusalem Christ told them That the day was coming when there should not be left one stone upon another upon this the Disciples ask him privately three Questions 1. When shall these things be 2. What shall be the sign of thy second coming And 3. of the end of the World As for the precise moment of these things he denies to tell it them Nay he professes that as he was the Son of Man he did not know it But for the other two he condescends to their curiosity he tells them the signs of his coming and of the end of the World and that they shall be such as these You shall hear saith he Matth 24. of Wars and rumours of Wars Nation rising against Nation and Kingdom against Kingdom There shall be Traytors and false Prophets Saying Lo here is Christ Behold a new Messias in the Wilderness Lo there is Christ Behold he is at a Conventicle in the secret Chambers He tells us that iniquity shall abound and the love of many shall wax cold that he shall hardly find faith on the earth as it was in the dayes of Noe they ate they drank till the floud came and swept them all away so shall the coming of the Son of Man be He tells us Luke 21. there shall be Famines and Earthquakes Pestilence and fearful sights great signs from Heaven in the Earth distress of Nations great perplexities the Sea and Waves roaring Mens hearts sailing them for fear looking after those things that are coming upon the Earth Concerning the last dayes St. Paul tells us that there shall be perilous times that on one hand there shall be a sort of men that shall be lovers of themselves Covetous Proud Boasters Ranters and Blasphemers On the other hand there shall be a Race of heady high minded Traytors having a form of godliness creeping into houses leading captive silly women They shall despise Dominion and speak evil of Dignities they shall be Separatists from the Church and false pretenders to the Spirit These saith St. Jude are they that separate themselves sensual having not the Spirit St. Peter tells us that in the last times there should be a loose prophane a bold Atheistical Gigantick race of scoffers walking after their own lusts saying Where is this God of Judgment let him make speed and hasten his work that we may see it Where is the promise his of coming since the fathers fell asleep all
up in chains that he should exclude them from the benefit of Repentance and reserve them to the Judgement of the Great Day That he should allow this priviledge to lapsed men that he should reveal himself to them that he should make them understand their duty and their interest that he should set before them good and evil happiness and misery the desire and the detestation of humane nature that he should by all means court and wooe them to that which all men naturally desire and discourage and divert them from that which they naturally abhorr That after all this he should not prevail in such a case as this that they should scornfully reject the end of all their hopes that they should studiously pursue the object of all their fears This is that rational wonder that I am now to lay before you To manifest this wonder a little more explicitely let us consider the advantages of Nature and the Motives from Scripture to bring men to repentance The grounds and fundamental elements of the Doctrine of Repentance are these The Being Attributes of God The immortality of the Souls of men The principles of Synteresis The terrours of natural Conscience The forecasts of vengeance The apprehension and desire of an Attonement And all these are manifest from the Dictates and discoveries of the Light of Nature The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth his handy work They speak it loud they spread it largely they proclaim it constantly Their sound is gone out into all the world there is no speech or language but their voice is heard among them The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen even his eternal power and God-head Concerning his providence in governing the world St. Paul tells the men of Lyftra and the Priest of Jupiter that he did not leave himself without witness amongst the Heathen The whole earth is full of his righteousness and all the people see his glory So that a man shall say Verily there is a reward for the righteous doubtless there is a God that judgeth the earth He is not far from any one of us in whom we live and move and have our being He is the Father of Spirits and we are his off-spring Surely there is a spirit within a man and that spirit immortal deriving from Him who only hath immortality And these things have asserted themselves with so great evidence that they have been generally acknowledged by all sorts of heathen Authors Philosophers Historians Orators and Poets Moreover they shew the Lam of Synteresis written in their hearts they have consciences accusing or excusing they find themselves concluded under sin and are perplexed and tormented under the apprehensions of an offended God For Conscience condemned by its own witness is very timorous and always fore-casteth grievous things The starting of Alexander when he had killed his friend and of Nero when he had destroyed his mother The confusions of Tiberius when he wrote from Capreae to the Senate concerning the death of Sejanus The fore tastes of an avenging Nemesis described by heathen Orators and Historians The passions ascribed to Medea and Hercules and Orestes c. by the Poets The Rites and Sacrifices of all the Pagan world The prodigious ways of expiations devised to make their attonement with their imaginary Deities offended They were all of them the products of natural Conscience exerting it self in such a disquisition as is delivered by the Prophet Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord or bow my self before the high God shall I come fore him with burnt offerings with calves of a year old will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or ten thousand rivers of oyl shall I give my first-born for my transgression the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul All these and many more are the Indications of Nature the incitements and provocations of natural Conscience to bring men to repentance But beside these common Motives the persons of the Text whether they were the Jews and Inhabitants of Jerusalem at the time of the destruction of it by Titus and Vespasian or any that called themselves Christians they had a clearer and more glorious light to guide them they had far more efficacious and noble Motives to 〈◊〉 and urge them to repentance the Light and Motives of the Holy Scriptures There it is that the Power and Wisdom and Goodness and Severity of God are gloriously displayed the immortal Nature and sinful condition of the souls of men the rewards and punishments of this life and of the world to come are clearly discovered The elements of the Doctrine of Repentance the Motives to it are there explained and applyed mixt and combined a 1000 several ways The Scriptures of the Old and the New Testament are nothing else but a Systeme of various powerful Methods to bring men to repentance This is the general aim and common scope of all the Doctrines the Histories the Logick and Rhetorick of the Book of God This was Noah's Text upon which he preached to the old world 120 years Upon this errand God sent all the Prophets rising early and sending them they said Turn again now every one from his evil way This was the message of him that was the voice of one crying in the wilderness Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand Our Lord Christ and his seventy Disciples and his twelve Apostles they all with one voice infisted upon this Theme and when the Holy Ghost himself descended he likewise drove at this conclusion Repent therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out when the time of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. The time would fail me if I fhould attempt in any measure to lay before you the declarations promises threatnings exhortations dehortations reasonings expostulations instances of mercies and of judgements delivered in the Scriptures to bring men to repentance To this end God hath declared himself slow to anger gracious and merciful He hath said that he would have no man perish He hath sworn that he doth not desire the death of the wicked but had rather that he should turn and live He considers our frame and his ways are equal He is ready to pardon to pardon iniquity transgression and sin though they are as scarlet to make them white as snow if they be a cloud to scatter them like a cloud Wherefore let the wicked forsake his ways and the unrighteous his imaginations and return unto the Lord. On the other side to break the hardness of the hearts of men to rouze them up from their impenitency he declares his justice and asserts his propriety in vengeance Vengeance is mine and I will repay it He protests that he will by no means acquit the guilty that he is of
Death the Sun was eclipsed the Moon being at the Full. To indicate the place of his Nativity at the time of his Birth a new Star was made on purpose Health and Sickness Life and Death and Hades gave in their testimonies by their obedience to his word Yet once more he shook the Heavens and sent down the Holy Spirit upon his followers he shook the Earth also he tore the Rocks and opened the Graves and at his powerfull voice the bodies of the Saints arose And lest it should be said He raised others but himself he could not raise As he finished the Great Mystery of Christianity by his Death so also he proved the truth of it by his Resurrection As he died for our Sins so he rose again for our Justification for our Justification is in the Belief of that and all other the Mysteries of Christianity These and many more are heads of Arguments which whoever duly considers and understands will certainly believe the Gospel propter veritatis Evidentiam 2. It remains only to shew that whosoever doth truly believe the Gospel shall infallibly be saved Propter Bonitatis or Virtutis Excellentiam Because it is the Power of God to salvation to every one that believeth In speaking of which Argument I need not go about to prove that the Power of the Gospel is the Power of God in which respect it is called the Hand or Arm of the Lord the Sword of the Spirit the Grace of God bringing Salvation and the like Neither shall I stand upon a Comparison of the Gospel with the Grecanical or Judaical Institutions a man may believe all that ever was written by Philosophers and yet doubt whether there is or can be such a thing as Salvation yea or no. A man may believe whatever is explicitcly and expresly delivered in the Law of Moses and yet not be saved But my intention is barely and nakedly this By a short Reflexion upon the Way and Method of the Actions of Mankinde and the Discoveries and Contents of the Gospel well known to those that hear me to manifest the truth of this Proposition That every man that believeth the Gospel i. e. that truly and actually abideth in that belief shall infallibly be saved Because whosoever frames his Actions according to the Rules and Principles the Precepts and Prescriptions of the Gospel shall infallibly be saved And because it is of the nature of man to frame his Actions according to his Actual and persevering Judgement and Belief The Nature and Essence of man consists in his Understanding and for a man not to follow the stedfast and constant the actual and final dictate of his Understanding is impossible in Nature and indeed implies a Contradiction He that believes that there is neither God nor Devil Heaven nor Hell Salvation nor Damnation And that he hath not an Immortal Soul i. e. a Soul to save such a man If at least he hath attained to those great accomplishments of Rudeness and Incivility will make it his business to fill up his measure of Debaucheries and Impieties will think it Brave perhaps and Witty to Blaspheme God and scoff at Religion will make it a matter of Gallantry and noble Courage and Resolution to challenge God to damn him or bid the Devil take him Body and Soul will spend his time in Revelling and Drunkenness in Chambering and Wantonness Expecting and hoping to die like a beast he will be sure to live like one And in conclusion will finde himself disappointed of this glorious hope this goodly noble manly expectation and that his Miscreancy and the errour of his Judgement hath betrayed him into eternal misery Whilest on the other side he that believes the Declarations and Promises and Threatnings of the Gospel will have his fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life He that firmly and stedfastly believes that the Soul which Actuates his body is an Immortal Being a subsistence which shall and must endure to all eternity That after Death he must appear before the Tribunal of God and Christ to answer for the things done in the body That from thence he shall be transmitted to a state either of Eternal Happiness or Eternal Misery either to be entertained in the Vision of God in the fellowship of Saints and Angels with Joy unspeakable and full of Glory Or secluded from the sight of God and treated with the Devil and his Angels with torment unconceivable unexpressible and that to all Eternity This man if he might gain all the Profits and Honours and Pleasures if he might decline all the afflictions of this world will not lose his own Soul Frustra blanditiae venitis ad hunc frustra nequitiae venitis ad hunc Considering that light and momentany things bear no proportion to the exceeding weight and moment of those which are Eternal he will forthwith endeavour to lay hold upon Eternal Life and make haste to escape the Wrath to come And to that end he will devour all difficulties and neglect no means or opportunities He that believes that the only way to Happiness is the way to Holiness That without holiness no man shall see God That no unclean thing shall enter there That the Impious the Unjust the Intemperate the Lascivious continuing so shall never enter into the Kingdom of Heaven This man will endeavour to purifie himself to mortifie all his carnal lusts and affections to cleanse himself from all filthiness of Flesh and Spirit and to perfect holiness in the fear of God Again he that believes and considers the Corruption and Impotence of his natural Condition and the design of Christs coming into the world what he hath already done and what he is still in doing for him How that himself and every man is by nature a childe of wrath that Sin reigns in his mortal body that he lies under a bondage from which he cannot redeem a Guilt from which he cannot acquit himself That no flesh is justified in the sight of God Whosoever I say doth believe this concerning himself and on the other side concerning Christ that to this end was he born and for this cause came he into the world that he might save sinners That the world through him might be saved That to this end and this end only he descended from Heaven This was the end of his Conversation upon Earth his Life and Doctrine his Preaching and Example This was the end of his Crucifixion Resurrection Ascension and Session at the Right hand of God That by the sufferings of his Life and the inestimable value of his Blood the world might be Justified and Redeemed from the Guilt of their sins rescued from the miseries of the world to come And that by the operation of his Doctrine and Example and the power of his Intercession the world might be sanctified Delivered from the Dominion of sin purified and prepared to be admitted to the
SEVEN SERMONS PREACHED BY The Right Reverend Father in GOD SETH Lord Bishop of Sarum The Second Edition DIEV ET MONDROIT HONI SOIT QV MAL Y PENSE Printed for James Collins at the Kings Arms in Ludgate Street LONDON Printed for James Collins at the Kings Arms in Ludgate-street M. DC LXXIV THE CONTENTS I. AGainst Resistance of Lawfull Powers on Rom. 13. 2. And they that resist shall receive to themselves Damnation Preached at White-hall Novemb. 5. 1661. II. Against the Antiscripturists on 2 Tim. 3. 16. All Scripture is given by Inspiration of God Preached at White-hall Feb. 20. 1669 70. III. Concerning the Sinfulness Danger and Remedies of Infidelity on Heb. 3. 12. Take heed Brethren lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God Exhort one another daily Preached at Whitehal Feb. 16. 1667 68. IV. A Sermon Preached before the Peers in the Abby-Church at Westminister Octob. 10. 1666. on Eccles. II. 9. But know that for all these things God will bring thee to Judgment Rejoyce O young man c. V. A Sermon concerning the Strangeness Frequency and desperate Consequence of Impenitency Preached at Whitehall April 1. 1666. soon after the great Plague on Revelat. 9. 20. And the rest of the men which were not killed by the Plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands VI. A Sermon against Ingratitude Preached at Whitehall Feb. 26. 1664 65. some time before the great Plague on Deut. 32. 6. Do you thus requite the Lord O foolish people and unwise VII An Apology for the Mysteries of the Gospel A Sermon Preached at Whitehall before the King Feb. 16. 1672 73. on Rom. 1. 16. For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of christ for it is the Power of God to Salvation to every one that believeth Against Resistance of Lawful POWERS ROM xiii 2. And they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation AMongst all the stratagems of the Devil tending to the undermining of Religion and the subversion of the souls of men though there cannot be any more unreasonable yet there was never any more unhappily successful than the creating and fomenting an Opinion in the World That Religion is an enemy to Government and the bringing Sincerity and Zeal in Religion into jealousie and disgrace with the Civil Powers It was by this jealousie blown into the heads of the High Priests and the Sanhedrim amongst the Jews and of Herod and Pontius Pilate that Christ himself the Captain of our Salvation the Autbor and Finisher of our Faith was accused condemned and executed on a Tree By this the Apostles were haled before the Governours of Provinces forced from one City to flee unto another for this they endured bonds and imprisonment and sundry kinds of death It was through this fancy that the Christians for three hundred years together endured the rage of Heathen Emperours being destitutel afficted and tormented Our Lord Christ was traduced as an enemy to Caesar a man refractary to the Roman Laws and a Nonconformist to the Religion and Laws of his Country The Apostles were charged as disturbers of the publick peace with turning the world upside down The Primitive Christians were accounted enemies to the Commonwealth adverse and malevolent to the Empire and the Christian Religion it self was bruited and surmised to have something in it offensive and dangerous to the Civil Government as appears not only by the Edicts of Healthen Emperours but also by the Apologies of Clemens Alexandrinus Justin Martyr Tertullian Athenagoras c. Neither was it thus only of old before the Roman Empire was become Christian but even since the time of Constantine down to our Fathers days nay to our own we shall find the Devil still managing the same pretence carrying on the same Antichristian mystery of iniquity which began to work in the time of our Lord Christ and his Apostles Those that prosess to know the Arcana Imperii and publickly proclaim themselves to the World to be qualified for Molders of Commonwealths and Dictatours to Princes are the Writers of Politicks Machiavel abroad and others nearer home some of these pretending discoveries of things unknown to all our Fathers if they be strictly analysed will be found to resolve their whole mystery into this one pretence That Religion in the height and exaltation of it is prejudicial to Policy and that to be a thorow-paced a sincere and zealous Christian is to be dangerous to the State As the remedy for which evil they have thought fit and necessary to enervate the Principles of all Religion so far as to remove the Doctrine of Good and Evil the Immortality of the Soul the Rewards and Punishments of the World to come that so Religion may appear wholly to derive from Policy How destructive these Doctrines are not only to the souls of men in reference to the World to come but to the interests of this life the regular and secure acquisition and enjoyment whereof are entirely derived from the great and everlasting Ordinance of Government I am not now called to speak But surely it cannot be unnecessary to endeavour to state this Question to search into the grounds of this pretence to examine thorowly from whence all this clamour these fears and jealousies whence all this mighty scandal hath arisen The Gospel of our Saviour is not like the Alcoran which hates the light and abhors a strict examination of the Principles whereon it stands When the Jews contended with our Saviour and opposed his Doctrine he desired to bring the matter in question to a rational decision John x. The Question there was Whether he were the Son of God And he propounds them this fair 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Verse 37. If I do the works of my Father believe me if I do not believe me not And I verily as a Minister of Christ though the meanest of ten thousand am bold in the power and through the evidence of the truth of the Gospel to say Let the Adversaries of Religion search and look let them employ their Wit their Industry their Logick if any thing can be found in the Principles of Christianity prejudicial to the power of just and lawful Magistrates Nay moreover if it be possible for Men or Angels to state the Rights of Civil Government upon clearer and firmer Principles to secure them by more powerful Obligations to urge them upon men by more efficacious Motives of Rewards and Punishments than those are which the very Foundations of Christianity do expresly propound then let the Gospel and the Ministers of it endure all that contempt and obloquy which these men desire to cast upon them And for the Foundations of our Religion there are those that tell us that Christianity is founded upon Cephas which is indeed by interpretation a Stone but the Apostle tells us Ephes. ii 20. that we are built upon the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles Jesus Christ himself being the chief
agony will possess thee O sinful soul when thou shalt be brought into a perfect apprehension of thy Judge and of thy self and he shall begin to order out before thee the things which he hath done when the whole Trinity shall begin to unfold its common work and that sacred Person blessed for ever upon whose shoulders the Judgment is laid shall unfold to thee his peculiar and thou must render a severe account of thy returns When the mystery of thy Creation shall be unveiled to thee When thou shalt apprehend throughly what it is to have been fetcht out of the dark and barren shade of an eternal privation to be put in a capacity of glory When he shall recount to thee the proceedings of his handy work the method of thy making the several articles and gradations of his Providence in the formation and information of thee How at first he poured thee out like milk and crudled thee cheese How he spun out thine arteries and veins and whilst thou wert yet in thy blood he said unto thee live How he guarded thee with muscles and strengthened thee with sinews and propt thee with bones and covered thee with skin furnished thee with organs endowed them with senses invested thee with reason crowned thee with freedom enlightned thee with principles of Science and Conscience bounded thee by his Precepts encouraged thee by his Promises restrained thee by his threatnings When he shall run over the benefits of thy daily preservation and rigorously examine what thou hast done for him When God the Son shall display to thee what he hath done and suffered for thee and shall set before thine eyes the great mystery of thy Redemption When he shall bring thee to apprehend the price that he has paid that ransom which thou hast not regarded When it will not be in thy power to pass over these considerations as now thou dost but they shall be forced into the essential center of thy Soul When thou shalt have a clear sight of the abasement of a God incarnate When thou shalt know how to be moved at the sight of a despised and an abused Godhead When he shall charge thee with the blewness of those stripes and the ghastliness of those wounds which thou hast made When he shall rehearse to thee the miseries of his life and the circumstances of his death When he shall recount to thee the woundings of the taunts and reproaches the smart of the whips the terrour of the agony which made him sweat great drops of blood the pricks of the thorns the piercing of the nails the launcing of the spear and the ineffable horror of the dereliction when he cried out in the bitterness of his soul My God my God why hast thou forsaken me And when he shall fiercely call upon thee to answer for the wounds that thou hast made to render him his blood that thou hast spilt to account to him for that life which thou hast bereft to shew him the fruit of all his pains and sufferings to present him thy returns for all these benefits and favours then tell me what thou wilt answer O stupid soul. How art thou provided to reply Wilt thou deny that he has done these things for thee or canst thou shew as much for him Hast thou returned him that being which he hath given thee and so been even with him in a form of words though that come infinitely short indeed Hast thou sacrificed thy self for his benefit or abased thy self for his commodity What wilt thou plead when thou art called The time is coming thy Judgment hastning thine account is unavoidable thy Judge inexorable Alas what could I have done for him what profit could I have brought him if I should have pined away in the exercise of Devotion and been eaten up with zeal If I should have spent my sabstance in Burnt-Offerings or Calves of a year old If I should have presented him with thousands of Rams or ten thousand Rivers of Oil To what purpose then should I end eavour that which I could not have performed Why should I trouble my self with vain attempts and spend my strength about that which I never could accomplish neither if I be righteous is he the better nor if I be wicked is he the worse our goodness extends not to him if thou sinnest what dost thou against him if thou be righteous what receiveth he at thine hand Is this then the evasion I need not stand to unfold the disingenuity the stupor and madness of this evasion However though these things shall be urged upon us they are not all these offer themselves in the consideration of the person of the Judge but are not all the matter of thy Judgment IV. For Thou shall be brought to Judgment for these things there is the matter of thy Judgment V. For All these things there is the extent Because this latter adds only a Modality to the former and I desire not to be over tedious we will put these two together And now we are descended from those less familiar Considerations to which we were forced to strein our understandings in the contemplation of our Judge into the compass of our own sphere to the survey of our own operations we are come from the incomprehensible ways of God to the ways of our own hearts Walk in the ways of thy heart c. and But know c. In the judgment of this life men are tryed by the works of their hands or the words of their mouths for theft or murder for slander or Treason men may be brought to Judgment but thought is free he has lived well that has carried his crimes close the crafry Politician and the conceealed Hypocrite escape There the case is quite contrary the Judgment takes in primarily the ways of the heart and the words and actions as they proceed from them Wherefore let us withdraw a space into our selves and endeavour to mete out the extent of that Proposition For all the ways of the hearts of men God will bring them to Judgment How would it trouble us to recount and bring to memory every thought but of one only day and how many disorders and irregularities should we find in such a reflection How do our thoughts flote upon our brains and we know neither whence they come nor what becomes of them When they are broken in upon our minds we cannot hold them and when they are gone from us as it was with Nibuchadnezzar's dream it is not in our power to recover them How many roving fancies present themselves unto us in a moment and how many sudden and imperfect Complacencies and distastes are raised by them Leave but thy self unbound unfixed by hearing or reading or business c. for an hour and then tell me what suppositions and consequences and resolutions thou hast made And how thou hast felt thy self to strein upon the borders of Lust or Envy of Pride or Anger of Discontent or Melancholy O
things continue as they were before And for the manner and Apparatus of his coming Our God shall come saith the Psalmist and shall not keep silence there shall go before him a devouring fire and a mighty Tempest shall be stirred up round about him Behold the Lord will come with fire saith the Prophet and with his Chariots like a Whirlwind to render his anger with fury and his rebukes with flames of fire The streams of Zion shall be turned into Pitch and the dust thereof into Brimstone the Earth thereof shall be burning Pitch the smoke thereof shall ascend day and night and shall not be quenched compare Revel 6. with Esai 34. The Kings of the Earth shall tremble the Captains and the mighty shall be horribly asraid the great men and the rich men shall hide themselves all the bond-men and all the freemen shall fly to the Rocks of the Mountains And soon after all this The Heavens shall be rivel'd as a scrowl the Earth and the Elements shall melt away for God shall arise to judge terribly the Earth Have not all these things come upon us the men of this Generation Is it weakness is it a vain and superstitious scrupulosity to call these things to our remembrance Have we no reason at all to apprehend the approach of a General Judgment either upon the World or upon our sinful Nation Do we not now envy those despised souls which have made their accounts ready We thought it madness to see them pine away with poenitential exercises and macerate themselves with mourning We thought it folly which they called Conscience for which they denyed themselves the pleasures and enjoyments of the World We fools counted their life madness and their latter end to be without honour But the time is coming when they shall be comforted and we shall be tormented Because he hath called and we have refused he hath stretched out his hand and we have not regarded He will laugh at our calamity and mock when our fear cometh When our destruction cometh as a Whirlwind when distress and anguish comes upon us May we not therefore give up our selves to the torments of our hearts and surrender up our souls unto Despair so Israel said there is no hope we will follow every one the devices of his heart after 20 30 or 40 years continuance in our courses 't is in vain to think of turning from them Our arrears are so far gone that there is no hope to discharge them and why should we trouble our selves with the thoughts of our Account Nay that which must come let it come and what is a few days respite to Eternity Let us eat and drink for to morrow we shall dye Let us go forth as at other times and shake our selves and scatter these troublesom apprehensions of future Judgment What if we should drink a little to drive away Melancholy Yes and fall perhaps and spew and rise no more Nay but I beseech you stay a little and consider consider at least in this your day the things which belong to your peace It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God Who among us can dwell with a devouring fire Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings Such careless and desperate resolutions are the advantages which the Devil aims at that he may sear our Consciences and seal us up in a final obduration But there is another kind of advantage which God and our Lord Christ and the Holy Spirit and the Gospel and the Ministers aim at That advantage which I told you of in the beginning of my Discourse That knowing the terror of the Lord they may perswade men And now what is it that they would perswade us that we will be contented to part with the tormenting fears of Judgment that we will condescend not to be miserable to all Eternity That we will accept of deliverance from the wrath to come that we will not neglect so great salvation nor trample on the bloud of the everlasting Covenant Behold God calls upon us Turn you turn you at my reproof why will you dye O House of Israel As I live saith the Lord I desire not the death of sinners Our Lord Christ calls upon us Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden and I will ease you In the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles he stood and cried Saying If any man thirst let him come unto me and drink The Spirit sayes come and whoever will let him come and take of the water of life freely The Gospel assures us That God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life Behold I set before you this day life and death blessing and cursing and as an unworthy Ambassadour in Christ's stead I pray you be reconciled to God take his yoke upon you his yoke is easie and his burden light embrace now the tender of the Gospel only repent and believe in the Lord Jesus accept him for your Saviour and your Lord. Your Prophet to instruct you your King to govern you your Priest to save you and you shall be saved Saved from the fears and horrours of a Guilty Conscience condemned by it s own witness Saved from the wrath of God and of the Lamb. You shall meet the Lord with Confidence We shall be able to stand with boldness in the Judgment to lift up our heads with joy because our redemption draweth near This is the way of save our own souls from perishing which is the General design of all our Preaching And this is the way to appease the wrath which is gone out against us and to preserve our Nation from destruction which is the particular and more immediate end of our present Humiliation whereof I am yet to speak THe hand indeed of the Lord hath been heavy upon us his wrath hath been kindled it hath waxed hot against the Sheep of his pasture and he hath plagued our Nation very sore His Judgments have been multiplied his strokes have been redoubled and for all this his anger 〈◊〉 not turned away but his hand is stretched out still Wars and Pestilences and those other fore-runners of Christ's coming to Judgment have been seen and felt amongst us and now when these have not been able to prevail To awaken a drowsie people to rowse up a Lethargic Nation to ferment a people setled upon their Lees God has made a new thing in the midst of us he hath wrought a work in our dayes which makes the ears of all that hear it to tingle A work not to be parallel'd perhaps in all the circumstances since the Creation of the World How hath the Lord covered the Daughter of our Zion with a cloud in his anger and hath cast down from Heaven to Earth the beauty of Israel and remembred not his footstool in the Day of his Anger he hath swallowed
or rather one and the same among themselves Can they explicate or imagine or comprehend any one of the infinite potential roots of the Number Three They say they cannot understand how Christ should be conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of a Virgin and therefore they deride it Can they therefore understand how they themselves have been conceived and born and nourished up And are they able to explain how and by what progress from a little water spilt upon a too luxurious ground there should spring forth such a Race of Titans such a Gigantick brood of fighters against Heaven of Scoffers at Religion Briefly they say they cannot comprehend how God and Man should be one Christ and therefore they contemn the Gospel and the Believers of it Can they therefore understand how the reasonable Soul and Flesh should be one man Either they themselves consist of two natures the one Corporeal the other Spiritual and Incorporeal or they do not If they have nothing in them Incorporeal can they understand and explain how sensless Atoms how stupid Matter and Local Motion should work themselves up to Sense and Cogitation Reflection and Discourse to Wit and Gallantry so as to make Jests and Ballads upon the Gospels If they consist not only of a Body but of a Soul a spiritual Soul also Can they explain by what 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 these two natures have been brought together by what bands and ligaments they are united and how the Communication betwixt them is performed In one word Can they explicate the Phenomena of Sense Imagination Memory Reason Wit and Bravery If they are able to perform these things let the world be made happy by their labours and let them receive the Paeans and Acclamations the Crowns and Garlands denyed to all that were before them But if they must be forced to confess that all these things are inexplicable unimaginable unintelligible and incomprehensible and will yet continue to despise the Mysteries of the Gospel only for that reason because they are inexplicable unintelligible incomprehensible let them not be offended at a poor despised Minister of the Gospel if he shall declare and testifie to all the World that these are not the Wits or Beaux Esprits or Forts Esprits that they are Flesh and not Spirit mere ordinary mortal Wights as others are that all their boasting is but empty noise and all they have to shew is a mere Deceptio visus that they may be Masters of some devices that are pretty skilfull in the Arts and Mysteries of Circulation and disguise but they are not such dreadfull Archimago's such mighty Conjurers as they pretend Let them therefore abandon their unreasonable Principle and be ashamed 2. But secondly as is the Principle upon which they contemn such are their Postulata the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Philosophers and Mathematicians call them that is to say the terms or demands upon which they pretend that they would cease to despise the Gospel and for want of which they do contemn it These Postulata are reducible to two Heads 1. Philosophical Demonstration Or 2. The sight of Miracles Signs and Wonders at their demand This is the pretence of the Wits of these Times if the truth of the Mysteries of the Gospel might be proved to them by Demonstration or if they might see a Sign they would believe This was the pretence at the time of the writing of my Text 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Jews required a Sign the Greeks i. e. the Gentiles sought after Wisdom 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and because they were disappointed of these the mystery of Christ Crucified was to the Jews a Scandal to the Greeks foolishness For brevity let us name these two 1. The Grecanick or Philosophical Postulatum 2. The Judaick or Semiotical Postulatum Now that the former of these proceeds from Ignorance and want of Learning and Understanding the later from Pride and Arrogance joyned with a blockish Stupidity That the former is disingenious the later disingenuous that both of them are irrational and absurd is evident 1. And first for the Grecanical Postulatum In the case of any Doctrine or question to refuse a proof that is Cogent and sufficient the only proof whereof a thing is capable and to hanker or seek after a Proof impossible or improper such as implies a Contradiction or such as the nature of the question will not bear This I say proceeds from Ignorance from want of Learning and Understanding and this is the case of the Grecanick or Philosophical Postulatum To give a rational or Philosophical Demonstration of the truth of the Gospel there are but three wayes imaginable in Nature By Arguments either 1. A Priori from the common Principles of Intelligence Or 2. A Posteriori from experiment and sensible observations And this latter way of arguing must be drawn either 1. From instances of things Novel and Anomalous in Nature things purposely designed for such Arguments Or else 2. It must be taken from the common and ordinary the standing and perpetnal Phenomena of Nature A Demonstration à posteriori by particular Instances of the Divine Power Wisdom and Goodness purposely designed for that end was the proof offered by Christ and his Apostles This they rejected To prove particular Mysteries Mysteries hidden from Ages and so declared and professed to be by the Promulgers by general and perpetual Phenomena of Nature is in nature impossible to perform and senceless to require To prove any thing concerning the Essence and Nature of God per causas by Arguments à Priori supposes causes precedent to the Essence of God himself and implies a Contradiction So then the Grecanick or Philosophical Postulatum proceeds from Ignorance and want of Learning and is at best disingenuous and Theoretically absurd 2. Again secondly concerning the Judaical or Semeiotical Postulatum After numerous or rather innumerable Attestations by Signs and Wonders notoriously known and by themselves acknowledged or sufficiently and authentically proved or delivered down by uncontroulable and irreproveable Tradition yet still to demand and require more Signs Signs of their own election accompanied with circumstances of their own prescription Is not this to tempt and limit the Almighty To make themselves Arbiters of the Emanations of his Power and Wisdom To suppose that those ought to be subservient to their wanton curiosity Is it not to expect that God himself should Lacquey after them to make him a doer of Tricks at their senceless and impudent demand Is not this an A sinine and an impious stupidity A composition of the highest degrees of Intellectual and Moral Absurdity which is imaginable Now therefore that this was and is and to the end of the world must ever now be the case of the Jewish or Semeiotical Postulatum is a so plain and evident In Confirmation of the Gospel Christ and his Apostles wrought far more and