to be angry for this 4. 3. and after about the Gourd dost thou well to be angry for that he replies I do well to be angry even unto death How much worse a death then death is this life which so good men would so often change for death But if my case be St. Pauls case Quotidie morior 1 Cor. 15.31 that I die dayly that something heavier then death fall upon me every day If my case be Davids case Tota die mortificamur psa 44.22 all the day long we are killed that not only every day but every hour of the day something heavier then death fals upon me though that be true of me conceptus in peccatis I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me 51. 5. There I died one death though that be true of me natus filius irae I was born not only the child of sin but the child of the wrath of God for sin which is a heavier death yet Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis with God the Lord are the issues of death and after a Job and a Joseph and a Jeremy and a Daniel I cannot doubt of a deliverance and if no other deliverance conduce more to his glory and my good yet He hath the keyes of death Apo. 1.18 and he can let me out at that dore that is deliver me from the manifold deaths of this world the omni die and the tota die the every daies death and every hours death by that one death the final disolution of body and soul the end of all But then is that the end of all Exitus a morte Incinerationis is that dissolution of body and soul the last death that the body shall suffer for of spiritual deaths we speak not now it is not Though this be exitus a morte it is introitus in mortem though it be an issue from the manifold deaths of this world yet it is an entrance into the death of corruption and putrifaction and vermiculation and incineration and dispersion in and from the grave in which every dead man dies over again It was a prerogative peculiar to Christ not to die this death not to see corruption What gave him this privilege not Josephs great proportions of gums and spices that might have preserved his body from corruption and incineration longer then he needed it longer then three daies but yet would not have done it for ever What preserv'd him then did his exemption and freedome from original sin preserve him from this corruption and incineration 'T is true that original sin hath induc'd this corruption and incineration upon us 1 Câ—â— 15.33 If we had not sinn'd in Adam mortality had not put on immortality as the Apostle speaks nor corruption had not put on incorruption but we had had our transmigration from this to the other world without any mortality any corruption at all But yet since Christ took sin upon him so far as made him mortal he had it so far too as might have made him see this corruption and incineration though he had no original sin in himself What preserv'd him then did the hypostatical union of both natures God and man preserve his flesh from this corruption this incineration 't is true that this was a most powerful embalming To be embalm'd with the divine nature it self to be embalm'd with eternity was able to preserve him from corruption and incineration for ever And he was embalm'd so embalm'd with the divine nature even in his body as well as in his soul for the Godhead the divine nature did not depart but remain still united to his dead body in the grave But yet for all this powerful imbalming this hypostatical union of both natures we see Christ did die and for all this union which made him God and man he became no man for the union of body and soul makes the man and he whose soul and body are seperated by death as long as that state lasts is properly no man And therefore as in him the dissolution of body and soul was no dissolution of the hypostatical union so is there nothing that constrains us to say that though the flesh of Christ had seen corruption and incineration in the grave this had been any dissolving of the hypostatical union for the divine nature the Godhead might have remain'd with all the elements and principles of Christs body as well as it did with the two constitutive parts of his person his body and soul This incorruption then was not in Josephs gums and spices nor was it in Christs innocency and exemption from original sin nor was it that is it is not necessary to say it was in the Hypostatical union But this incorruptibleness of his flesh Psa 16 10. is most conveniently plac d in that non dabis Thou wilt not suffer thy holy one to see corruption We look no farther for causes or reasons in the mysteries of our religion but to the will and pleasure of God Mat. 11.26 Christ himself limited his inquisition in that Ita est even so father for so it seemed good in thy sight Christs body did not see corruption therefore because God had decreed that it should not The humble soul and only the humble soul is the religions soul rests himself upon Gods purposes and his decrees but then it is upon those purposes and decrees of God which he hath declared and manifested not such as are conceiv'd and imagin'd in our selves though upon some probability some verisimilitude So in our present case Act. 2.31.13.35 Peter proceeded in his sermon at Jerusalem and so Paul in his at Antioch they preached Christ to be risen without having seen corruption not only because God had decreed it but because he had manifested that decree in his Prophet Therefore does St. Paul cite by special number the second Psalme for that decree and therefore both St. Peter and St. Paul cite for that place in the 16. Psal for v. 10. when God declares his decree and purpose in the express word of his Prophet or when he declares it in the real execution of the decree then he makes it ours then he manifests it to us And therefore as the mysteries of our religion are not the objects of our reason but by faith we rest in Gods decree and purpose it is so O God because it is thy will it should be so so Gods decrees are ever to be considered in the manifestation thereof All manifestation is either in the word of God or in the execution of the decree and when these two concur and meet it is the strongest demonstration that can be when therefore I find those marks of Adoption and spiritual filiation which are delivered in the word of God to be upon me when I find that real execution of his good purpose upon me as that actually I do live under the obedience and under the conditions which are
then contract them in thy self and consider Gods speedy execution upon thy soul and upon thy body and upon thy soul and body together Was not Gods judgement executed speedily enough upon thy soul when in the same instant that it was created and conceiv'd and infus'd it was put to a necessity of contracting Original sin and so submitted to the penalty of Adam's disobedience the first minute Was not Gods judgement speedily enough executed upon thy body if before it had any temporal life it had a spiritual death a sinful conception before any inanimation If hereditary diseases from thy parents Gouts and Epilepsies were in thee before the diseases of thine own purchase the effects of thy licentiousness and thy riot and that from the first minute that thou beganst to live thou beganst to die too Are not the judgements of God speedily enough executed upon thy soul and body together every day when as soon as thou commitst a sin thou art presently left to thine Impenitence to thine Insensibleness and Obduration Nay the judgement is more speedy then so for that very sin it self was a punishment of thy former sins But though God may begin speedily yet he intermits again he slacks his pace and therefore the execution is not speedy As it is said of Pharaoh often Because the plagues ceased though they had been laid upon him Ingratum est cor Pharaonis Pharaoh's heart was hardned But first we see by that punishment which is laid upon Heli That with God it is all one to begin and to consummate his judgement When I begin I will make an end 1 Sam. 3.12 And when Herod took a delight in that flattery and acclamation of the people It is the voice of God and not of man Acts 12.22 the angel of the Lord smote him immediately the worms took possession of him though if we take Josephus relation for truth he died not in five days after Howsoever if we consider the judgements of God in his purpose and decree there they are eternal And for the execution thereof though the wicked sinner dissemble his sense of his torments and as Tertullian says of a persecutor Herminianus who being tormented at his death in his violent sickness cryed out Nemo sciat ne gaudeant Christiani Let no man know of my misery lest the Christians rejoyce thereat so these sinners suppress these judgements of God from our knowledge because they would not have that God that inflicts them glorified therein by us Yet they know their damnation hath never slept nor let them sleep quietly and in Gods purpose the judgement hath been eternal and they have been damned as long as the devil and that 's an execution speedy enough But because this appears not so evidently but that they may disguise it to the world and with much ado to their own Consciences Therefore their hearts are fully set in them to do evil And so we pass to our third Part. Part III. This is that perversness which the Heathen Philosopher Epictetus apprehends and reprehends That whereas every thing is presented to us Cum duabus sausis with two handles we take it still by the wrong handle This is tortuositas serpentis The wryness the knottiness the entangling of the Serpent This is that which the Apostle takes such direct knowledge of Rom. 2.4 Despisest thou the riches of Gods bountifulness and long-suffering not knowing that it leads thee to repentance St. Chrysostome's comparison of such a sinner to a Vulture that delights onely in dead carcases that is in company dead in their sins holds best as himself notes in this particular that the Vulture perhorrescit fragrantiam unguenti He loaths and is ill affected with any sweet savour for so doth this sinner finde death in that soveraign Balm of the patience of God and he dies of Gods mercy Et quid infelicius illis qui bono odore moriuntur says S. Augustine In what worse state can any man be then to take harm of a good air But as the same Father addes Numquid quia mori voluisti malum fecisti odorem This indisposition in that particular man does not make this air an ill air and yet this abuse of the patience of God comes to be an infectious poyson and such a poyson as strikes the heart and so general as to strike the heart of the children of men and so strongly as that their hearts should be fully set in them to do evil First then what is this setting of the heart upon evil and then what is this fulness that leaves no room for a Cure When a man receives figures and images of sin into his Fancie and Imagination and leads them on to his Understanding and Discourse to his Will to his Consent to his Heart by a delightful dwelling upon the meditation of that sin yet this is not a setting of the heart upon doing evil To be surpris'd by a Tentation to be overthrown by it to be held down by it for a time is not it It is not when the devil looks in at the window to the heart by presenting occasions of tentations to the eye nor when he comes in at the door to our heart at the ear either in lascivious discourses or Satyrical and Libellous defamations of other men It is not when the devil is put to his Circuit to seek whom he may devour and how he may corrupt the King by his Council that is The Soul by the Senses But it is when by a habitual custom in sin the sin arises meerly and immediately from my self It is when the heart hath usurp'd upon the devil and upon the world too and is able and apt to sin of it self if there were no devil and if there were no outward objects of tentation when our own heart is become spontanea insania voluntarius daemon Such a wilful Madness Chrysost and such a voluntary and natural Devil to it self as that we should be ambitious though we were in an Hospital and licentious though we were in a wilderness and voluptuous though in a famine so that such a mans heart is as a land of such Gyants where the Children are born as great as the Men of other nations grow to be for those sins which in other men have their birth and their growth after their birth they begin at a Concupiscence and proceed to a Consent and grow up to Actions and swell up to Habits In this man sin begins at a stature and proportion above all this he begins at a delight in the sin and comes instantly to a defence of it and to an obduration and impenitibleness in it This is the evil of the heart by the mis-use of Gods grace to devest and lose all tenderness and remorse in sin Now for the Incurableness of this heart it consists first in this that there is a fulness It is fully set to do evil such a full heart hath no room for a
Augustin collects arguments at least allusions from this variety of Copies but all these say it was but so many pieces of silver The Septuagints in their translation extend them to gold to so many crowns or such Josephus multiplies them to pounds so many pounds all think it too low a price for Joseph to be sold for twenty pieces of silver But yet if it were so this was not for nothing and for this selling his brethren had some pretence of excuse ne polluantur manus they would but sell him least their hands should be defiled with blood but we sell our selves ut polluantur manus therefore that our hands may be defiled with blood even with our own blood with the loss of our bodies which we consume by sin and of our souls which perish eternally by it Our Saviour Christ every drop of whose blood was of infinite value for one of our souls is more worth than the whole world and one drop of his blood had been sufficient for all the souls of 1000 worlds if it had been applied unto them was sold scornfully and basely at a low price at most not above six pound of our money but vve sell our selves and him too we crucifie him again every day for nothing when our sin is the very crucifying of him that should save us who shall save us Earthly Princes have been so jealous of their honours as that they have made it Treason to carry their pictures into any low Office or into any irreverend place Beloved whensoever we commit any sin upon discourse upon consideration upon purpose and plot the image of God which is engraved and imprinted in us and lodged in our understanding and in that reason which we employ in that sin is mingled with that sin we draw the image of God into all our incontinencies into all our oppressions into all our extortions and supplantations we carry his image into all soul places which we haunt upon earth yea we carry his image down with us to eternal condemnation for even in Hell uri potest non exuri Imago Dei says S. Bernard The image of God burns in us in hell but can never be burnt out of us as long as the understanding soul remains the Image of God remains in it and so we have used the image of God as witches are said to do the images of men by wounding or melting the image they destroy the person and we by defacing the image of God in our selves by sin to the painful shameful death of the Cross Gen. 31. Rachel and Lea complained of their father Laban thus He hath sold us and hath eat and consumed the money they lamented it much to see themselves sold and by their father and their father never the better for the bargain But still our case is worse than any the devil hath bought us and he he who hath bought us hath eaten and consumed the money he pretends to buy us by giving us pleasure or profit for our selves and then those very pleasures and those riches which he pretends to give us are his food and his instruments to effect his mischievous and tyrannous purposes upon us And therefore let no man think himself exempt from this challenge that he hath sold himself for nothing Let no man present his Dutals his Court-rolls his Bacus his good Debts his titles of honour his Maces or his Staves or his Ensignes of power and Office and say call you all this nothing Compare all these with thy soul and they are nothing Now whilest thou wallowest in all these here thou mayest hear God say Quid habes quod non accepisti What hast thou of all this which thou hast not received but when the Bell tols then he shall say in the voyce of that Bell Quid habes quod accepisti What hast thou of all that thou hast received Is not all that come to nothing and then thou that thoughtest thy self strong enough in purse in power in favour to compass any thing and to embrace many things shalt not finde thy self able to attain to a door-keepers place in the kingdome of heaven Let no man therefore take too much joy to apply to himself those words of the parable Filii saeculi The children of this world which grow rich are wiser than the children of light for it is but In generatione sua Wiser in their generation and how litle a while that generation shall last God knows and what fools they shall appear to be for all generations after we know They are called the wisest amongst men as the Serpent was called the wisest amongst Beasts that is still the fittest for the devil to work in to make his instruments and engines to desire a curse upon themselves and their posterity Let no man wrest Gods example to his purpose and say if he do sell himself for nothing he does but as God himself did and as David told him he did Psal 44. Thou sellest thy people without gain and doest not increase their price That was not for nothing God had his end in that neither was it an absolute sale but a short term God sels us over to sickness to tribulations to afflictions for sometime perchance for the whole term of this short life but all this is but to improve us and that we may be the fitter for him when he Takes us into his owne hand again in that surrender of our self In manus tuas when we shall deliver up our souls to him that gave them for here no propriety is Destroyed still here is meum tuum betwen God and me It is still my soul and still his soul and when God looked mercyfully towards Job then Satans lease expired God doth not give his saints â—or Nothing for sanguis Semen The blood of the Martyrs was the seed of the Church ye are bought with a price sayes the Apostle 1. Cor. 6. It is pretiore ye are pretiously bought even with the pretious blood of the onely Sone of God And for our temporall and secular value in Gods account we see how God expressed his care of the people when he diverted Sennachrib from afflicting them Esa 43. by turning him upon other wars I gave Egypt for thy ransome Ethiopia and seba for the because thou wast pretious in my sight and thou wast honourable and I loved the therfore will I give man for the and people for thy sake And this leads us in to the second part The Consolation that Though nay because we have sold our selves for nothing we shall be Redemed with out mony Into this part then there is at first a strange Enterance 2 Part. Therfore That therfore because we have sold our selves we should be redeemed Therefore because we have been prodigal we should be made rich But this Therfore this reason relates to the prise not to the worke of the Redemption Because it was for nothing that we were sold it
providence any care of particular actions those which doubt whether the history of Christ be true or no those doubting men that conform themselves outwardly with us because that may be true that we profess for any thing they know there may be a Christ they might be the worse for any thing they know if they left him out they might prove worse and in the mean time they enjoy temporal peace benefit of the Laws by this outward profession of theirs those men that sacrifice to Christ Jesus onely ne noceat least if there be such a God they should lose him for want of a sacrifice that worship Christ Jesus with a reservation of the pretended God that if he prove God at last they have done their part if he do not yet they are never the worse these men who if they come to Church think themselves safe enough but they are deceived The Militant and the Triumphant Church is all one Church but above in the triumphant Church there are other Church-wardens than here though he come to do the outward acts of religion if he do it without a religious heart they know him to be a Recusant for all his coming to Church here he shall be excommunicate in the triumphant there He praises not God he prays not to God he worships him not whatsoever he does if he have not considered it debated it concluded it to be rightly done and necessarily done If he think any thing else better done this is not well done Jacob had concluded it out of the contemplation of his former and present state Exul first he had been banished from his Countrey I came over Jordan Herein he was a figure of Christ he received a blessing â—rom his father and presently he must go into banishment Christ received presents and adoration from the Magi of the east and presently he submits himself to a banishment in Egypt for the danger that Herod intended Christs Banishment as it could not be less then four years so it could not be more then seven Jacobs was twenty a banishment and a long banishment Banishment is the first punishment executed upon man he was banished out of Paradise and it is the last punishment that we shall be redeemed from when we shall be received intirely body and soul into our Countrey into heaven It is true our life in this world is not called a banishment any where in the Scripture but a pilgrimage a peregrination a travell but peregrinatio cum ignominia conjunctu exilium he that leaves his Countrey because he was ashamed or afraid to return to it or to stay in it is a banished man Briefly for Jacobs case here S. Bernard expresses it well in his own est commune exilium there is one banishment common to us all in corpore peregrinamur a duo we travell out of our Countrey at least but Accessit speciale quod me pene inpatientem reddit quod cogarvicere sine vohis This was a particular misery in his banishment that Jacob must live from his father and mother and from that Country where he was to have the fruits and effects of that blessing which he had got He came away then and he came away poor Baculus in baculo with a staff God expresses sometimes abundance and strength in baculo in that word Oftentimes he calls plenty by that name the staff of bread But Jacobs is no Metaphorical staff it is a real staff the companion and the support of a poor travelling man When Christ enjoyns his Apostles to an exact poverty for one journey which they were to dispatch quickly S. Matthew expresses his commandment thus possess no monies nor two coats nor a shoe nor a staff S. Mark expresses the same commandment thus take none of those with you except a staff onely The fathers go about to reconcile this by taking staff in both places figuratively that the staff forbidden in Matthew should be potestas puniendi the power of correcting which the Apostle speaks of Num quid vultis vemam in virga 1 Cor. 4.21 shall I come to you with a rod or in love And that the staff allowed in Mark is potestas consolandi Psal 25.4 the power of comforting which David speaks of Virga tua baculus tuus ipsa me consolata sunt Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me Christ spoke this but once but in his language the Syriack he spoke it in a word that hath two significations Shebat is both Baculus defensorius and Baculus sustentatorius A staff of sustentation and a staff of defence God that spoke in Christs Syriack spoke in the Evangelists Greek too and both belong to us and both the Evangelists intending the use of the staff and not the staff it self 3. Matthew in that word forbids any staff of violence or defence S. Mark allows a staff of sustentation and support and such a staff and no more had Jacob a staff to sustain him upon his way Hath this then been thy state with Jacob that thou hast not onely been without the staff of bread plenty and abundance of temporal blessings but without the staff of defence that when the world hath snarl'd and barked at thee and that thou wouldst justly have beaten a dog yet thou couldst not finde a staff thou hadst no means to right thy self yet he hath not left thee without a staff of support a staff to try how deep the waters be that thou art to wade through that is thy Christian constancy and thy Christian discretion use that staff aright and as Christ who sent his Apostles without any staff of defence once Luke 22.36 afterward gave them leave to carry swords so at his pleasure and in his measure he will make thy staff a sword by giving thee means to defend thy self and others over whom he will give thee charge and jurisdiction in exalting thee Suus But herein in doing so God assists thee with the staff of others with the favour and support of other men Jacob was first in Baculo and in suo nothing but a staff no staff but his own truly his own for we call other staffes ours Hos 4.12 which are not ours My people ask counsell of their stocks and their staff teacheth them that is they have made their own wisdom their own plots their own industry their staff upon which they should not relye so we trust to a broken staff of reed 2 Reg. 18.21 on which if a man lean it will go into his hand and peirce it when God hath given thee a staff of thine own a leading staff a competency a conveniency to lead thee through the difficulties and encombrances of this world if thou put a pike into thy staff murmuring at thine own envying superiours oppressing inferiours then this piked staff is not thy staff nor Gods staff but it is Baculus inimici hominis and the envious man in the Gospel is
vow is included all the service that he could exhibite or retribute to God Now his staffe is become a sword a strong Army his one staff now is multiplyed his wives are given for staffes to assist him and his children given also for staffes to his age His own staffe is become the greatest and best part of Labans wealth In such plenty as that he could spare a present to Esau of at least five hundred head of cattell The fathers make Morall expositions of this That his two bands are his Temporall blessings and his spirituall And St. Augustin findes a tipicall allusion in it of Christ Aug. Baculo Crucis Christus apprehendit mundum cum duabus turmis duobus populis ad patrem rediit Christ by his staffe his Cross muster'd two bands that is Jews and Gentiles We finde enough for our purpose in taking it literally as we see it in the Text That he divided all his company and all his cattell into two troups that if Esau come and smite one the other might scape For then onely is a fortune full when there is somthing for Leakage for wast when a Man though he may justly fear that this shall be taken from him yet he may justly presume that this shall be left to him though he lose much yet he shall have enough And this was Jacobs increase and height and from this lowness from one staff to two bands And therefore since in God we can consider but one state Semper idem immutable since in the Devil we can consider but two states Quomodo cecidit filius Orientis that he was the son of the Morning but is and shall ever be for ever the child of everlasting death since in Jacob and in our selves we can consider first that God made man righteous secondly that man betooke himself to his one staff and his own staff The imaginations of his own heart Thirdly That by the word of God manifested by his Angels he returns with two bands Body and Soul to his heavenly father againe let us attribute all to his goodness and confesse to him and the world That we are not worthy of the least of all his Mercies and of all the Truth which he hath shewed unto his Servant for with my staff I passed over this Jordan and now I am become two bands A SERMON Preached at White-hall Serm. 13. April 19. 1618. SERMON XIII 1 Tim. 1.15 This is a faithfull saying and worthy of all acceptation That Christ Jesus came into the World to save Sinners of which I am the chiefest THE greatest part of the body of the old-Testament is Prophecy and that is especially of future things The greatest part of the new-Testament if wee number the peeces is Epistles Relations of things past for instruction of the present They erre not much that call the whol new-Testament Epistle For even the Gospells are Evangelia good Messages and that 's proper to an Epistle and the booke of the Acts of the Apostles is superscrib'd by Saint Luke to one Person to Theophilus and that 's proper to an Epistle and so is the last booke the booke of Revelation to the severall Churches and of the rest there is no question An Epistle is collucutio scripta saies Saint Ambrose Though it be written far off and sent yet it is a Conference and seperatos copulat sayes hee by this meanes wee overcome distances we deceive absences and wee are together even then when wee are asunder And therefore in this kinde of conveying spirituall comfort to their friends have the ancient Fathers been more exercised then in any other former almost all of them have written Epistles One of them Isidorus him whom wee call Peluciotes Saint Chrysostom's schollar is noted to have written Myriades Nicephor and in those Epistles to have interpreted the whole Scriptures St. Paul gave them the example he writ nothing but in this kind and in this exceeded all his fellow Apostles pateretur Paulus quod Saulus seceret saies St. Austin That as he had asked Letters of Commission of the State to persecute Christians so by these Letters of Consolation hee might recompence that Church againe which hee had so much damnified before As the Hebrew Rabbins say That Rahab did let down Jofuah's spies out of her house with the same cord with which she had used formerly to draw up her adultrous lovers into her house Now the holy-Ghost was in all the Authors of all the books of the Bible but in Saint Paul's Epistles there is sayes Irenaeus Impetus Spiritus Sancti The vehemence the force of the holy-Ghost And as that vehemence is in all his Epistles so amplius habent quae e vinculis as Saint Chrysostome makes the observation Those Epistles which were written in Prison have most of this holy vehemence and this as that Father notes also is one of them And of all them we may justly conceive this to be the most vehement and forcible in which he undertakes to instruct a Bishop in his Episcopall function which is to propagate the Gospell for he is but an ill Bishop that leaves Christ where he found him in whose time the Gospell is yet no farther then it was how much worse is he in whose time the Gospell loses ground who leaves not the Gospell in so good state as he found it Now of this Gospell here recommended by Paul to Timothie this is the Summe That Christ Jesus came into the World to save Sinners c. Division Here then we shall have these three Parts First Radicem The Roote of the Gospell from whence it springs it is fidelis sermo a faithfull Word which cannot erre And secondly we have Arborem Corpus the Tree the Body the substance of the Gospell That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners And then lastly fructum Evangelii the fruit of the Gospell Humility that it brings them who embrace it to acknowledg themselves to be the greatest sinners And in the first of these the Roote it selfe wee shall passe by these steps First that it is Sermo the Word That the Gospell hath as good a ground as the Law the new-Testament as well founded as the Old It is the word of God And then it is fidelis Sermo a faithfull Word now both Old and New are so and equally so but in this the Gospell is fidelior the more faithfull and the more sure because that word the Law hath had a determination an expiration but the Gospell shall never have that And againe It is Sermo omni acceptatione dignus Worthy of all acceptation not only worthy to bee received by our Faith but even by our Reason too our Reason cannot hold out against the proofes of Christians for their Gospell And as the word imports it deserves omnem acceptationem and omnem approbationem all approbation and therefore as wee should not dispute against it and so are bound to accept it to receive it not to
by the King to wait upon my L. of Doncaster in his Embassage to Germany First Sermon as we went out June 16. 1619. SERMON XX. Rom. 13.11 For now is our Salvation nearer then when we believed THere is not a more comprehensive a more embracing word in all Religion then the first word of this Text Now for the word before that For is but a word of connexion and rather appertains to that which was said before the Text then to the Text it self The Text begins with that important and considerable particle Now Now is salvation nearer c. This present word Now denotes an Advent a new coming or a new operation otherwise then it was before And therefore doth the Church appropriate this Scripture to the celebration of the Advent before the Feast of the Birth of our Saviour It is an extensive word Now for though we dispute whether this Now that is whether an instant be any part of time or no yet in truth it is all time for whatsoever is past was and whatsoever is future shall be an instant and did and shall fall within this Now. We consider in the Church four Advents or Comings of Christ of every one of which we may say Now now it is otherwise then before For first there is verbum in carne the word came in the flesh in the Incarnation and then there is caro in verbo he that is made flesh comes in the word that is Christ comes in the preaching thereof and he comes again in carne saluta when at our dissolution and transmigration at our death he comes by his spirit and testifies to our spirit that we die the Children of God And lastly he comes in carne reddita when he shall come at the Resurrection to redeliver our bodies to our souls and to deliver everlasting glory to both The Ancients for the most part understand the word of our Text of Christs first coming in the flesh to us in this world the latter Exposition understand them rather of his coming in glory But the Apostle could not properly use this present word Now with relation to that which is not now that is to future glory otherwise then as that future glory hath a preparation and an inchoation in present grace for so even the future glory of heaven hath a Now now the elect Children of God have by his powerfull grace a present possession of glory So then it will not be impertinent to suffer this flowing and extensive word Now to spread it self into all three for the whole duty of Christianity consists in these three things first in pietate erga Deum in religion towards God in which the Apostle had enlarged himself from the beginning to the twelfth chapter of his Epistle And secondly in charitate erga proximum in our mutual duties of society towards our Equals and Inferiors and of Subjection towards our Superiours in which that twelfth chapter and this to the eitghth verse is especially conversant And then thirdly in sanctimonia propria in the works of sanctification and holiness in our selves And this Text the Apostle presents as a forcible reason to induce us to that to those works of sanctification because Now our salvation is nearer us then when we believed Take then this now the first way of the coming Christ in person in the flesh into this world and then the Apostle of directs himself principally to the Jews converted to the faith of Christ and he tels them That their salvation is nearer them now now they had seen him come then when they did only believe that he would come Take the words the second way of his coming in grace into our hearts and so the Apostle directs himself to all Christians now now that you have bin bred in the Christian Church now that you are grown from Grace to grace from faith to faith now that God by his spirit strengthens and confirms you now is your salvation nearer then when ye believed that is when you began to believe either by the faith of your Parents or the faith of the Church or the faith of your Sureties at your Baptism or when you began to have some notions and impressions and apprehensions of faith in your self when you came to some degrees of understanding and discretion Take the word of Christs coming to us at the hour of death or of his coming to us at the day of Judgment for those two are all one to our present purpose because God never reverses any particular judgement given at a mans death at the day of the general Judgment take the word so this is the Apostles argument you have believed and you have lived accordingly and that faith and that good life hath brought salvation nearer you that is given you a fair and modest infallibility of salvation in the nature of reversion but now now that you are come to the approches of death which shall make your reversion a possession Now is salvation nearer you then when you believed Summarily the Text is a reason why we ought to proceed in good and holy wayes and it works in all the three acceptations of the word for whether salvation be said to be near us because we are Christians and so have advantage of the Jews or near us because we have made some proficiency in holiness sanctimony or near us because we are near our end and thereby near a possession of our endless joy and glory Still from all these acceptations of the word arise religious provocations to perseverance in holiness of life and therefore we shall pursue the words in all three acceptations In all three acceptations we must consider three termes in the Text First Quid salus what this Salvation is that is intended here Part. 1. and then Quid prope what this Distance this nearness is and lastly Quid credere what Belief this is So then taking the words first the first way as spoken by the Apostles to the Jews newly converted to the Christian Faith salvation is the outward means of salvation which are more and more manifest to the Christians then they were to the Jews And then the second Term Nearness salvation is nearer is in this That salvation to the Christian is in things present or past in things already done and of which we are experimentally sure but to the Jews it was of future things of which howsoever they might assure themselves that they would be yet they had no assurance when And therefore in the third place their Believing was but a confident expectation and faithfull assenting to their Prophets quando credidistis when you believed that is when you did only believe and saw nothing First then the first Terme in the first acceptation Salvation Salus is the outward means of salvation Outward and visible means of knowing God God hath given to all Nations in the book of Creatures from the first leaf of that book the firmament above to
enrich him As therefore those words Vers 16. A mans gift maketh room for him and bringeth him before great men are not always understood of Gifts given in nature of Bribes or gratifications for access to great persons but also of Gifts given by God to men that those Gifts and good parts make them acceptable to great persons so is not Grace of lips to be restrained either to a plausible and harmonious speaking appliable to the humor of the hearer for that 's excluded in the first part the root and fountain of all Pureness of heart for flattery cannot consist with that nor to be restrained to the good Offices and Abilities of the tongue onely though they be many but this Grace of lips is to be enlarged to all declarations and expressings and utterings of an ability to serve the Publick All that is Grace of lips And in those words of Osea We render the Calves of our lips is neither meant as the Jews say 14.13 Those Calves which we have promised with our lips and will pay in sacrifice then when we are restor'd to our Land of promise again Nor are those Calves of our lips only restrained to the Lip-service of Praise Heb. 14.15 and Prayer though of them also St. Paul understand them but they include all the sacrifices of the New Testament and all ways by which man can do service to God so here the Grace of lips reaches to all the ways by which a man in civil functions may serve the Publick And this Grace of lips in some proportion in some measure every man is bound in conscience to procure to himself he is bound to enable himself to be useful and profitable to the Publick in some course in some vocation Since even the Angels which are all Spirit be yet administring Spirits and execute the Commissions and Ambassages of God and communicate with men should man who is not made all soul but a composed creature of body and soul exempt himself from doing the offices of mutual society and upholding that frame in which God is pleased to be glorified Since God himself who so many millions of ages contented himself with himself in Heaven yet at last made this world for his glory shall any man live so in it as to contribute nothing towards it Hath God made this World his Theatre ut exhibeatur ludus deorum Plato that man may represent God in his conversation and wilt thou play no part But think that thou only wast made to pass thy time merrily and to be the only spectator upon this Theatre Is the world a great and harmonious Organ where all parts are play'd and all play parts and must thou only sit idle and hear it Is every body else made to be a Member and to do some real office for the sustentation of this great Body this World and wilt thou only be no member of this Body Thinkest thou that thou wast made to be Cos Amoris a Mole in the Face for Ornament a Man of delight in the World Because thy wit thy fashion and some such nothing as that hath made thee a delightful and acceptable companion wilt thou therefore pass in jeast and be nothing If thou wilt be no link of Gods Chain thou must have no part in the influence and providence derived by that successively to us Since it is for thy fault that God hath cursed the Earth and that therefore it must bring forth Thorns and Thistles wilt not thou stoop down nor endanger the pricking of thy hand to weed them up Thinkest thou to eat bread and not sweat Hast thou a prerogative above the common Law of Nature Or must God insert a particular clause of exemption for thy sake Oh get thee then this grace of lips be fit to be inserted and be inserted into some society and some way of doing good to the Publick I speak not this to your selves you Senators of London but as God hath blessed you in your ways and in your Callings so put your children into ways and courses too in which God may bless them The dew of Heaven falls upon them that are abroad Gods blessings fall upon them that travel in the world The Fathers former labors shall not excuse their Sons future idleness as the Father hath so the Son must glorifie God and contribute to the world in some setled course And then as God hath blessed thee in the grace of thy lips in thy endeavors in thy self so thy sons shall grow up as the Son of God himself did in grace and favour of God and man As God hath blessed thee in the fruit of thy Cattel so he shall bless thee in the fruit of thy Body and as he hath blessed thee in the City so he shall bless thee in the Field in that Inheritance which thou shalt leave to thy Son Whereas when children are brought up in such a tenderness and wantonness at home as is too frequent amongst you in this City they never come to be of use to the State nor their own Estates of any longer use to them That Son that comes to say My Father hath laboured and therefore I may take mine ease will come to say at last My Savior hath suffered and therefore I may take my pleasure My Savior hath fasted and therefore I may riot My Savior hath wept enough and therefore I may be merry But as our Savior requires Cooperarios that we be fellow-workers with him to make sure our salvation so if your Sons be not Cooperarii Labourers in some course of life to make sure their Inheritance though you have been called wise in your generation that is rich in your own times yet you will be called fools in your generation too that is ignominious and wretched in your posterity In a word he that will be nothing in this world shall be nothing in the next nor shall he have the Communion of Saints there that will not have the Communion of good men here As much as he can he frustrates Gods Creation God produced things of nothing and he endeavours to bring all to nothing again and he despises his own immortality and glorification for since he lives the life of a beast he shews that he could be content to die so too accepit animam in vano he hath received a soul to no purpose This grace of lips then this ability to do good to the Publick we are bound to have but we are not commanded to love it as we are the pureness of heart we must love to have it but we must not be in love with it when we have it But since the holy Ghost hath chosen to express these abilities in this word Grace of lips that intimates a duty of utterance and declaration of those abilities which he hath Habere te agnoscere ex te nihil habere To let it appear in the use of them that thou hast good parts and to confess that thou
Psalms of Deprecation and of Imprecation too how divers soever the nature of the Psalm be yet the Church hath appointed to shut up every Psalm with that one Acclamation Glory be to the Father and to the Son c. Whether I pray or praise depricate Gods Judgements from my self or imprecate them upon pods enemies nothing can fall from me nothing can fall upon me but that God may receive glory by it if I will glorifie him in it So that then in a useful sense Gloria Dei is Gloria Deo but yet more literally more directly the glory of God in this place is the glorious Gospel of Christ Jesus which is that which is intended and expressed in the next phrase which is the last Branch in this first acceptation of these words in facie The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ In facie When our Saviour Christ charged the Sadduces with errour it was not meerly because they were ignorant the Sadduces were not so Mat. 22.29 but Erratis nescientes Scripturas says Christ You erre because you understand not the Scriptures All knowledge is ignorance except it conduce to the knowledge of the Scriptures and all the Scriptures lead us to Christ Heb. 1.3 He is the brightness of his Fathers glory Sap. 2. 26. and the express image of his person The brightness of the everlasting light and the image of his goodness And to insist upon a word of the fittest signification Jo. 6. 27. Hillari Him hath God the Father sealed Now Sigillum imprimitur in Materia diversa A Seal graven in gold or stone does not print in stone or gold in Wax it will and it will in Clay for this Seal in which God hath manifested himself we consider it not as it is printed in the same metal in the eternal Son of God but as God hath sealed himself in Clay in the humane Nature but yet in Wax too in a person ductile pliant obedient to his will And there Signatum super nos Lumen vultus tui says David The light of thy countenance that is the image of thy self is sealed that is derived imprinted upon us that is Ps 4. upon our nature our flesh Signatum est id est significatum est Tertul. God hath signified this pretence manifested revealed himself in the face of Jesus Christ For that is the Office and service that Christ avows himself to have done O Father I have manifested thy Name that is thy Name of Father as thou art a Father for Qui Solum Deum novit Creatorem Cipri Judaicae mensuram prudentiae non excedit Knowest thou that there is a God and that that God created the world What great knowledge is this The Jews know it too Non est Idem nosce Deum opificem esse habere filium It is another Religion another point of Faith Chrysost to know that God had a Son of eternal begetting and to have a world of late making God therefore hath shin'd in no mans heart till he know the glory of GOD in the face of Jesus Christ till he come to the manifestation of God in the Gospel So that that man comes short of this light that believes in God in a general in an incomprehensible power but not in Christ and that man goes beyond this light who will know more of God then is manifested in the Gospel which is the face of Christ Jesus the one comes not to the light the other goes beyond and both are in blindness Christ is the Image of God and the Gospel is the face of Christ and now I rest nor in Gods picture as I find it in every Creature though there be in every Creatare an Image of God I have a livelier Image of God Christ And then I seek not for Christs face as it was traditionally sent to Agabarus in his life nor for his face as it was imprinted in the Veronica in the womans Apron as he went to his death nor for his face as it was described in Lentulus his Letter to the Senate of Rome but I have the glory of God in Christ I and I have the face of Christ in the Gospel Except God had taken this very person upon him this individual person me which was impossible because I am a sinful person he could not have come nearer then in taking this nature upon him Now I cannot say as the man at the Pool Hominem non habeo I have no man to help me the Heathen cannot say I have no God but I cannot say I have no man for I have a Man the Man Jesus him who by being Man knows my misery and by being God can and will show mercy unto me Rom. 13.12 The night is far spent says the Apostle the day is at hand Gregor Nox ante Christum Aurora in Evangelio Dies in Resurrectione Till Christ all was night there was a beginning of day in the beginning of the Gospel and there was a full noon in the light and glory thereof but such a day as shall be always day and overtaken with no night no cloud is onely the day of Judgement the Resurrection And this hath brought us to our last step to the consideration of these three terms 1. knowledge 2. glory 3. the face of Christ Jesus in that everlasting Kingdom For this purpose did God command light out of darkness that men might glorifie God in the contemplation of the Creatures and for this purpose hath God shin'd in our hearts by the Scriptures in the Church that man might be directed towards him here but both these hath God done therefore to this purpose this is the end of all that man might come to this light in that everlasting state in the consummation of happiness in Soul and body too when we shall be call'd out of the solitariness of the grave to the blessed and glorious society of God and his Angels and his Saints there Nazianzen Hoc verbo re-concinnor componor in alium virum migro with that word Surgite mortui Arise yee that sleep in the dust all my peeces shall be put together again Reconcinnor with that word Intra in gaudium Enter into thy Masters joy I am settled I am established Componor and with that word Sede ad dextram sit down army right hand I become another manner of man In alium virum migro another manner of Miracle then the same Father makes of man in this world Quodnam Mysterium says he What a Mystery is man here Parvus sum Magnus I am less in body then many Creature in the World and yet greater in the compass and extent of my Soul then all the World Humillimus sum Excelsus I am under a necessity of spending some thoughts upon this low World and yet in an ability to study to contemplate to lay hold upon the next Mortalis sum immortalis in a Body that may that
know those Wounds which were in Christs Body Ambr. Non esse Christi sed Latronis amare caepit then he began to love him perfectly when he found his own wounds in the body of his Saviour So he came to declare perfect faith Gregory in professing Christs innocence This man hath done nothing and perfect Hope in the Momento Mei Remember me in thy Kingdome and perfect Charity in this increpation and rebuking of his companion August He was as S. Augustine sayes Latro Laudabilis miraculis such a thief as deserved praise and afforded wonder but the best is the last that he was imitabilis that he hath done nothing but that we may do so too Idem if we will apprehend that grace that he did Assumamus vocem Latronis si non volumus esse Latrones If we will not steal our selves out of the number Idem to whom God offers his saving grace Ut sedeamus a dextris pendeamus a dextris let us be content to suffer but to suffer in the right Suffering as Malefactors is somewhat too much on the left hand though even that suffering do bring many to the right hand too But suffering for Schisme in pretence of Zeal suffering for Treason in pretence of Religion this is both to turn out of this world on the left hand and to remain on that hand for ever after in the world to come This thief hung on the right hand and was suddenly made a Confessor for himself a Martyr to witnesse for Christ a Doctor to preach to his fellow If the favour of a Prince can make a man a Doctor per saltum much more the mercy of Christ Jesus which gives the Sufficiency as well as the Title as he did in this Thief this new Doctor whose Doctrine it self is our next consideration Part. II. Doctrina This doctrine was the fear of God which was a pregnant and a plentiful common place for him to preach upon And upon such an occasion and such abundance of matter we have here one example of an extemporal Sermon This Thief had premeditated nothing But he is no more a precedent for extemporal preaching then he is for stealing He was a Thief before and he was an extemporal preacher at last But he teaches no body else to be either It is true that if we consider the Sermons of the Ancient Fathers we shall finde some impressions some examples of suddain and unpremeditated Sermons Saint Augustine some times eases himself upon so long Texts Ser. 10 de verbis Hpli as needed no great preparation no great study for a meer paraphrase upon this Text was enough for all his hour when he took both Epistle and Gospel Ser. de Sancto Latrone c. and Psalm of the day for his Text. We may see often in S. Bern. Heri diximus and Hesterno die fecimus mentionem that he preached divers days together In the second of those Sermons of Saint Basil which were upon the beginning of Genesis it seems that Basil preached twice in a day and in his Sermon de Baptismo it seemes that he trusted upon the Holy Ghost and his present inspiration Loquemar prout Sermo nobis dabitur in apertione oris I intend to speak so as the Holy Ghost shall give me utterance for the present But as S. Augustine says in another case Da mihi Paulum so Da mihi Basilios and Augustinos bring such preachers as Basil and Augustine were and let them preach as often as they will and let every man whose calling it is preach as often as he can but let him not think that he can preach as often as he can speak An inordinate opinion of purity brought some men to keep two Sabbaths a week and others two Lents every year and an opinion of a necessity of two Sermons every Sabbath and two hours every Sermon may bring them to an opinion that the sanctifying of the Sabbath consists in the patience of hearing Here was an extemporal Sermon but a short one he preaches nothing but the fear of God It is not De arcanis Imperii matter of State nor De arcanis Dei of the unrevealed decrees of God The Thief does not say to Christ Perage quod decreveris Thou hast decreed my conversion and therefore that decree must be executed that must necessarily be performed which thou hadst determined in thy Kingdom before thou camest from thence but he says Memento mei cum veneris Take such a care of me for my salvation and preservation and perseverance as that I may follow thee into that Kingdom into which thou art now going for our salvation is opened to us in that way which Christ hath opened by his death and without him we understand no assurance of election without his second going into his Kingdome we know nothing of that which he did before he came from thence This is then the fear of God Psal 11.10 Prov. 1.7 which those royall Doctors of the old Testament David and Solomon both preached and which this Primitive Doctor of the Primitive Church this new Convertite preached too That no man may be so secure in his election as to forbear to work out his salvation with fear and trembling for God saves no man against his will nor any man that thinks himself beholding for nothing after the first decree Dan. 11.38 There is a name of force of violence of necessity attributed to a God which is Mauzzim but it is the name of an Idol not of a true God The name of the true God is Dominus tzebaoth the Lord of Hosts a name of power but not of force There is a fear belongs to him his purposes shall certainly be executed but regularly and orderly he will be feared not because he forces us imprints a necessity a coaction upon us but because if we be not led by his orderly proceeding there he hath power to cast body and soul into hell fire therefore he will be feared not as a wilfull Tyrant but as a just Judge not as Mauzzim the god of Violence but as Dominus tzebaoth the Lord of Hosts Part 3. This then is his Doctrine and what 's his Auditory He is not reserved for Courts nor for populous Cities it is but a poor Parish that he hath and yet he thinks of no change but means to dye there and there he visits the poorest the sickest the wretchedest person the Thief He had seen divers other of divers sorts Mat. 27.38 revile Christ as deeply as this Thief They that passed by reviled him Praetereuntes they that did not so much as consider him reviled him They that know not Christ yet will blaspheme him if we ask them when and where and how and why Christ Jesus was born and lived and dyed they cannot tell it in their Creed and yet they can tell it in their Oathes they know nothing of his Miraculous Life of his Humble
that which we intend by his being justified a spiritu suo by his own spirit is not by the testimony that he gave of himself but by that Spirit that God-head that dwelt bodily in him and declared him and justified him in that high power and practise of Miracles When Christ came into this world as if he had come a day before any day a day before Moses his in principio before there was any creature for when Christ came there was creatures that could exercise any natural faculty in opposition to his purposes when Nature his Vicegerent gave up her sword to his hands when the Sea shut up her selfe like Marble and bore him and the Earth opened her selfe like a book to deliver out her dead to wait upon him when the winds in the midst of their own roaring could heare his voyce and Death it self in putrid and corrupt carkases could heare his voice when his own body whom his own soul had left abandoned was not abandoned by this Spirit by this Godhead for the Deity departed not from the dead body of Christ then was Christ especially justified by this Spirit in whose power he raised himself from the dead he was justified in Spiritu Sancto and in spiritu suo two witnesses were enough for him Adde a third for thy self justificetur in Spiritu tuo let him be justified in thy spirit God is safe enough in himself and yet it was a good declaratory addition that the Publicans justified God Luke 7.29 Mat. 2.19 Wisdom is safe enough of her self and yet Wisdome is justified of her children Christ is sufficiently justified but justificetur in Spiritu tuo in thy spirit To say If I consider the Talmud Christ may as well be the Messias as any whom the Jews place their marks upon if I consider the Alchoran Christ is like enough to be a better Prophet then Mahomet if I consider the Arguments of the Arrians Christ may be the Son of God for all that if I consider the Church of Rome and ours he is as likely to manifest himself in his own Word here as there in their word to say but so Christ may be God for any thing I know this is but to baile him not to justifie him not to quit him but to put him over to the Sessions to the great Sessions where he shall justifie himself but none of them who do not justifie him testifie for him in spiritu suo sincerely in their souls nay that 's not enough to justifie is an act of declaration 1 Cor. 2.2 and no man knowes what is in man but the spirit of man and therefore he that leaves any outward thing undone that belongs to his calling for Christ is so far from having justified Christ as that at the last day he shall meet his voice with them that cried Crucifie him and with theirs that cried Not Christ but Barabbas if thou doubt in thy heart if thou disguise in thine actions non justificatur in spiritu tuo Christ is not justified in thy spirit and that 's it which concernes thee most Christ had all this testimony more Visus ab Angelis Visus ab Angelis he was seen of Angels which is not onely visited by Angels serv'd by Angels waited upon by Angels so he was and he was so in every passage in every step An Angel told his mother that he should be born and an Angel told the Shepherd that he was born and that which directed the wise men of the East where to finde him when he was born is also believed by some of the Ancients to have been an Angel in the likeness of a Star When he was tempted by the Devil Angels came and ministred to him Mat. 4.2 but the Devil had left him before his own power Luke 22.43 had dissipated his In his Agony in the Garden an Angel came from heaven to strengthen him but he had recovered before and was come to his Veruntamen Not my will but thine be done He told Peter Mat. 26.53 he could have more then twelve legions of Angels to assist him but he would not have the assistance of his own sword he denies not that which the Devil sayes that the Angels had in charge that he should not dash his foot against a stone Mat. 4.6 but they had an easie service of it for his foot never dasht never stumbled never tripp'd in any way As soon as any stone lay in his way an Angel removed it Mat. 28.2 He rolled away the stone from the sepulchre There the Angel testified to the women that sought him not onely that he was not there that was a poor comfort but where he was He is gone into Galilee and there you shall finde him There also the Angel testified to the men of Galilee that look'd after him not onely that he was gone up that was but a poor comfort but that he should come again Acts 1.2 The same Jesus shall so come as he went There in Heaven they perform that service whilest he stayes there Heb. 1.6 which they are call'd upon to do Let all the Angels of God worship him and in judgement when the Son of man shall come in his glory all the holy Angels shall be with him in every point of that great compass in every arch in every section of that great circle of which no man knowes the Diameter how long it shall be from Christs first coming to his second visus ab Angelis he was seen he was visited he was waited upon by the Angels But there is more intended in this then so Christ was seen of the Angels otherwise now then ever before something was reveal'd to the Angels themselves concerning Christ which they knew not before at least not so as they knew it now For all the Angels do not alwayes know all things if they had there would have been no dissention no strife no difference between the two Angels Dan. 10. the Angel of Persia would not have withstood the other Angel 21 dayes neither would have resisted Gods purpose if both had known it S. Dionyse who considers the names and natures and places and apprehensions of Angels most of any observes of the highest orders of Angels Ordin supremi ad Jesu aspectum haesitabant the highest of the highest orders of Angels were amaz'd at Christs coming up in the Flesh it was a new and unexpected thing to see Christ come thither in that manner There they say with amazement Quis iste Isa 63.1 Who is this that cometh from Edom with dyed garments from Bozrah And Christ answers there Ego it is I I that speak in righteousness I that am mighty to save The Angels reply Wherefore are thy garments red like him that treadeth the wine-press and Christ gives them satisfaction calcavi You mistake not the matter I have trodden the wine-press and calcavi solus I have trodden the wine-press alone and of
Princes all the Homilies of our Fathers all the Body of Divinity is in these three Chapters in this one Sermon in the Mount Where as the Preacher concludes his Sermon with Exhortations to practice 7.24 whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and doth them so he fortifies his Sermon with his own practice which is a blessed and a powerful method for as soon as he came out of the Pulpit 8.1 as soon as he came down from the Mount he cur'd the first Leper he saw and that without all vain-glory for he forbad him to tell any man of it Divisio Of this Noble Body of Divinity one fair Limb is in this Text Where your treasure is there will your heart be also Immediately before our blessed Saviour had forbidden us the laying up of Treasure in this world upon this Reason That here moths and rust corrupt and thieves break in and steal There the reason is because the Money may be lost but here in our Text it is because the Man may be lost for where your Treasure is there your Heart will be also So that this is equivalent to that Mat. 16.26 What profit to gain the whole world and loose a mans own soul Our Text therefore stands as that Proverbial that Hieroglyphical Letter Pythagoras his Y that hath first a stalk a stem to fix it self and then spreads into two Beams The stem the stalk of this Letter this Y is in the first word of the Text that Particle of argumentation For Take heed where you place your Treasure for it concerns you much where your Heart be plac'd and where your Treasure is there will your Heart be also And then opens this Symbolical this Catechistical Letter this Y into two Horns two Beams two Branches one broader but on the left hand denoting the Treasures of this World the other narrower but on the right hand Treasure laid up for the World to come Be sure ye turn the right way for where your Treasure is there will your Heart be also Cor fixum First then We bind our selves to the stake to the stalk to the staff the stem of this Symbolical Letter and consider in it That firmness and fixation of the Heart which God requires God requires no unnatural things at mans hand Whatsoever God requires of man man may finde imprinted in his own nature written in his own heart This firmness then this fixation of the heart is natural to man Every man does set his heart upon something and Christ in this place does not so much call upon him that he would do so set his heart upon something as to be sure that he set it upon the right Object And yet truly even this first work to recollect our selves to recapitulate our selves to assemble and muster our selves and to bend our hearts intirely and intensly directly earnestly emphatically energetically upon something is by reason of the various fluctuation of our corrupt nature and the infinite multiplicity of Objects such a Work as man needs to be called upon and excited to do it Therefore is there no word in the Scriptures so often added to the heart as that of intireness Toto Corde Omni Corde Pleno Corde Do this with all thine heart with a whole heart with a full heart for whatsoever is indivisible is immoveable a Point because it cannot be divided cannot be moved the Centre the Poles God himself because he is indivisible is therefore immoveable And when the heart of man is knit up in such an intireness upon one Object as that it does not scatter nor sub-divide it self then and then onely is it fixed And that 's the happiness in which David fixes himself not in his Cor paratum My heart is prepared O God my heart is prepared for so it may be prepared even by God himself and yet scattered and subdivided by us But in his Cor fixum My heart is fixed Psal 57.7 O God my heart is fixed Awake my glory awake my Psaltery and Harp I my self will awake early and praise thee O Lord among the people A Triumph that David return'd to more then once for he repeats the same words with the same pathetical earnestness again Psal 108.1 So that his Glory his Victory his Triumph his Peace his Acquiescence his All-sufficiency in himself consisted in this That his heart was fixed for this fixation of the heart argued and testified an intireness in it When God sayes Fili da mihi Cor My Son give me thy heart God means the whole man 1 Cor. 12.17 Though the Apostle say The eye is not the man nor the ear is not the man he does not say The heart is not the man the heart is the man the heart is all and Exod. 10.8 as Moses was not satisfied with that Commission that Pharaoh offered him That all the men might go to offer sacrifice but Moses would have all their young and all their old all their sons and all their daughters all their flocks and all their herds he would have all So when Gods sayes Fili da mihi Cor My Son give me thy heart God will not be satisfied with the eye if I contemplate him in his Works for that 's but the godliness of the natural man nor satisfied with the ear with hearing many Sermons for that 's but a new invention a new way of making Beads if as the Papist thinks all done if he have said so many Aves I think all done if I have heard so many Sermons But God requires the heart the whole man all the faculties of that man for onely that that is intire and indivisible is immovable and that that God calls for and we seek for in this stem of Pythagoras his Symbolical Letter is this immovableness this fixation of the heart And yet even against this though it be natural there are many impediments We shall reduce them to a few to three these three First there is Cor nullum a meer Heartlesness no Heart at all Incogitancy Inconsideration and then there is Cor Cor Cor duplex a double Heart a doubtful a distracted Heart which is not Incogitancy nor Inconsideration but Perplexity and Irresolution and lastly Cor vagum a wandring a way faring a weary Heart which is neither Inconsideration nor Irresolution but Inconstancie And this is a Trinity against our Unity three Enemies to that fixation and intireness of the Heart which God loves Inconsideration when we do not Debate Irresolution when we do not Determine Inconstancy when we do not Persevere and upon each of these be pleas'd to stop your Devotion a few minutes Cor nullum The first is Cor nullum no Heart at all Incogitancy Thoughtlesness An idle body is a disease in a State an idle soul is a monster in a man 2 Thes 3.10 That body that will not work must not eat but starve that soul that does not think not consider cannot be said
to actuate which is the proper operation of the soul but to evaporate not to work in the body but to breathe and smoak through the body We have seen Estates of private men wasted by Inconsideration as well as by Riot and a soul may perish by a thoughtlesness as well as by ill thoughts God takes it as ill to be slighted as to be injur'd and God is as much slighted in Corde nullo in our thoughtlesness and inconsideration as he is oppos'd and provok'd in Corde maligno in a rebellious Heart There is a good nullification of the heart a good bringing of the heart to nothing For the fire of Gods Spirit may take hold of me and as the Disciples that went with Christ to Emmaus Luk. 24. were affected my heart may burn within me when the Scriptures are opened that is when Gods Judgements are denounced against my Sin and this heat may overcome my former frigidity and coldness and overcome my succeeding tepidity and lukewarmness and may bring my heart to a mollification 23.16 to a tenderness as Job found it The Almighty hath troubled me and made my heart soft for there are hearts of clay as well as hearts of wax hearts whom these fires of God his Corrections harden But if these fires of his these denunciations of his judgements have overcome first my coldness and then my lukewarmness and made my heart soft for better impressions the work is well advanc'd but it is not all done for Metal may be soft and yet not fusil Iron may be red hot and yet not apt to run into another mold Therefore there is a liquefaction a melting a pouring out of the heart such as Rahab speaks of 2.11 5.1 to Joshua's Spies As soon as we heard how miraculously God had proceeded in your behalf in drying up Jordan all our hearts melted within us and no man had any spirit left in him And when upon the consideration of Gods miraculous Judgements or Mercies I come to such a melting and pouring out of my heart that there be no spirit that is none of mine own spirit left in me when I have so exhausted so evacuated my self that is all confidence in my self that I come into the hands of my God as pliably as ductily as that first clod of earth of which he made me in Adam was in his hands in which clod of earth there was no kinde of reluctation against Gods purpose this is a blessed nullification of the heart When I say to my self as the Apostle professed of himself I am nothing and then say to God Lord though I be nothing 2 Cor. 12.11 yet behold I present thee as much as thou hadst to make the whole world of O Thou that mad'st the whole world of nothing make me that am nothing in mine own eyes a new Creature in Christ Jesus This is a blessed nullification a glorious annihilation of the heart So is there also a blessed nullification thereof in the contrition of heart in the sense of my sins when as a sharp winde may have worn out a Marble Statue or a continual spout worn out a Marble Pavement so my holy tears made holy in his Blood that gives them a tincture and my holy sighs made holy in that Spirit that breathes them in me have worn out my Marble Heart that is the Marbleness of my heart and emptied the room of that former heart and so given God a Vacuity a new place to create a new heart in But when God hath thus created a new heart that is re-enabled me by his Ordinance to some holy function then to put this heart to nothing to think nothing to consider nothing not to know our age but by the Church-Book and not by any action done in the course of our lives for our God for our Prince for our Country for our Neighbor for our Selves our selves are our souls not to know the seasons of the year but by the fruits which we eat and not by observation of the Publick and National Blessings which he hath successively given us not to know Religion but by the Conveniency and the Preferments to be had in this or in the other side to sit here and not to know if we be ask'd upon a surprize whether it were a Prayer or a Sermon or an Anthem that we heard last this is such a nullification of the heart such an annihilation such an exinanition thereof as reflects upon God himself for Respuit datorem Tertul. qui datum deserit He that makes no use of a Benefit despises the Benefactor And therefore A rod for his back qui indiget Corde Prov. 10.13 that is without a heart without consideration what he should do nay what he does For this is the first Enemy of this firmness and fixation of the heart without which we have no treasure And we have done with that Cor nullum and pass to the second Cor Cor Cor duplex the double the divided the distracted heart which is not Inconsideration but Irresolution This Irresolution Cor Duplex this Perplexity is intended in that Commination from God The Lord shall give them a trembling heart Deut. 28.65 this is not that Cor nullum that melted heart in which There was no spirit left in them as in Joshua's time but Cor pavidum a heart that should not know where to settle nor what to wish but as it follows there In the morning he shall say Would God it were evening and in the evening Would God it were morning And this is that which Solomon may have intended in his Prayer Give thy servant an understanding heart 1 Reg. 3.9 Cor Docile so S. Hierom reads it A heart able to conceive counsel for that 's a good disposition but it is not all for the Original is Leb shemmeany that is Cor audiens A heart willing to hearken to Counsel But all that is not all that is ask'd Solomon asks there a heart to discern between good and evil so that it is a Prayer for the spirit of Discretion of Conclusion of Resolution that God would give him a heart willing to receive Counsel and a heart capable to conceive and digest Counsel and a heart able to discern between Counsel and Counsel and to Resolve Conclude Determine It were a strange ambitious patience in any man to be content to be racked every day in hope to be an inch or two taller at last so is it for me to think to be a dram or two wiser by hearkning to all jealousies and doubts and distractions and perplexities that arise in my Bosom or in my Family which is the rack and torture of the soul A spirit of Contradiction may be of use in the greatest Counsels because thereby matters may be brought into farther debatement But a spirit of contradiction in mine own Bosome to be able to conclude nothing resolve nothing determine nothing not in my Religion not in
8. and bearing of our sicknesses Or to be no richer or no more provident then so To sell all and give it away Luc. 12. and make a treasure in Heaven and all this for fear of Theeves and Rust and Canker and Moths here That which is not allowable in Courts of Justice in criminal Causes To hear Evidence against the King we will admit against God we will hear Evidence against God we will hear what mans reason can say in favor of the Delinquent why he should be condemned why God should punish the soul eternally for the momentany pleasures of the body Nay we suborn witnesses against God and we make Philosophy and Reason speak against Religion and against God though indeed Omne verum omni vero consentiens whatsoever is true in Philosophy is true in Divinity too howsoever we distort it and wrest it to the contrary We hear Witnesses and we suborn Witnesses against God and we do more we proceed by Recriminations and a cross Bill with a Quia Deus because God does as he does we may do as we do Because God does not punish Sinners we need not forbear sins whilst we sin strongly by oppressing others that are weaker or craftily by circumventing others that are simple This is but Leoninum and Vulpinum that tincture of the Lyon and of the Fox that brutal nature that is in us But when we come to sin upon reason and upon discourse upon Meditation and upon plot This is Humanum to become the Man of Sin to surrender that which is the Form and Essence of man Reason and understanding to the service of sin When we come to sin wisely and learnedly to sin logically by a Quia and an Ergo that Because God does thus we may do as we do we shall come to sin through all the Arts and all our knowledge To sin Grammatically to tie sins together in construction in a Syntaxis in a chaine and dependance and coherence upon one another And to sin Historically to sin over sins of other men again to sin by precedent and to practice that which we had read And we come to sin Rhetorically perswasively powerfully and as we have found examples for our sins in History so we become examples to others by our sins to lead and encourage them in theirs when we come to employ upon sin that which is the essence of man Reason and discourse we will also employ upon it those which are the properties of man onely which are To speak and to laugh we will come to speak and talk and to boast of our sins and at last to laugh and jest at our sins and as we have made sin a Recreation so we will make a jest of our condemnation And this is the dangerous slipperiness of sin to slide by Thoughts and Actions and Habits to contemptuous obduration Part II. Now amongst the manifold perversnesses and incongruities of this artificial sinning of sinning upon Reason upon a quia and an ergo of arguing a cause for our sin this is one That we never assigne the right cause we impute our sin to our Youth to our Constitution to our Complexion and so we make our sin our Nature we impute it to our Station to our Calling to our Course of life and so we make our sin our Occupation we impute it to Necessity to Perplexity that we must necessarily do that or a worse sin and so we make our sin our Direction We see the whole world is Ecclesia malignantium Psal 26.5 a Synagogue a Church of wicked men and we think it a Schismatical thing to separate our selves from that Church and we are loth to be excommunicated in that Church and so we apply our selves to that we do as they do with the wicked we are wicked and so we make our sin our Civility And though it be some degree of injustice to impute all our particular sins to the devil himself after a habit of sin hath made us spontaneos daemones Chrysost devils to our selves yet we do come too near an imputing our sins to God himself when we place such an impossibility in his Commandments as makes us lazie that because we cannot do all therefore we will do nothing or such a manifestation and infallibility in his Decree as makes us either secure or desperate and say The Decree hath sav'd me therefore I can take no harm or The Decree hath damn'd me therefore I can do no good No man can assigne a reason in the Sun why his body casts a shadow why all the place round about him is illumin'd by the Sun the reason is in the Sun but of his shadow there is no other reason but the grosness of his own body why there is any beam of light any spark of life in my soul he that is the Lord of light and life and would not have me die in darkness is the onely cause but of the shadow of death wherein I sit there is no cause but mine own corruption And this is the cause why I do sin but why I should sin there is none at all Yet in this Text the Sinner assignes a cause and it is Quia non mutationes Because they have no Changes God hath appointed that earth which he hath given to the sons of men to rest and stand still and that heaven which he reserves for those sons of men who are also the sons of God he hath appointed to stand still too All that is between heaven and earth is in perpetual motion and vicissitude but all that is appointed for man mans possession here mans reversion hereafter earth and heaven is appointed for rest and stands still and therefore God proceeds in his own way and declares his love most where there are fewest Changes This rest of heaven he hath expressed often by the name of a Kingdom as in that Petition Thy kingdom come And that rest which is to be derived upon us here in earth he expresses in the same phrase too when having presented to the children of Israel an Inventary and Catalogue of all his former blessings he concludes all includes all in this one Et prosperata es in regnum I have advanced thee to be a kingdom which form God hath not onely still preserv'd to us but hath also united Kingdoms together and to give us a stronger body and safer from all Changes whereas he hath made up other Kingdoms of Towns and Cities he hath made us a Kingdom of Kingdoms and given us as many Kingdoms to our Kingdom as he hath done Cities to some other Gods gracious purpose then to man being Rest and a contented Reposedness in the works of their several Callings and his purpose being declared upon us in the establishing and preserving of such a Kingdom as hath the best Body best united in it self and knit together and the best Legs to stand upon Peace and Plenty and the best Soul to inanimate and direct it Truth
written whole books great Volumes of it may be without it In one word one word will not do it but in two words it is Aversio and Conversio it is a turning from our sins and a returning to our God It is both for in our Age in our Sickness in any impotencie towards a sin in any satiety of a sin we turn from our sin but we turn not to God we turn to a sinful delight in the memory of our sins and a sinful desire that we might continue in them So also in a storm at sea in any imminent calamity at land we turn to God to a Lord Lord but at the next calm and at the next deliverance we turn to our sin again He onely is the true Israelite the true penitent that hath Nathaniel's mark In quo non est dolus In whom there is no deceit For to sin and think God sees it not because we confess it not to confess it as sin and yet continue the practise of it to discontinue the practise of it and continue the possession of that which was got by that sin all this is deceit and destroys evacuates annihilates all Repentance To recollect all and to end all Christ justifies feasting he feasts you with himself And feasting in an Apostles house in his own house he feasts you often here And he admits Publicans to this feast men whose full and open life in Court must necessarily expose them to many hazards of sin and the Pharisees our adversaries calumniate us for this they say we admit men too easily to the Sacrament without confession without contrition without satisfaction God in heaven knows we do not less much less then they For Confession we require publike confession in the Congregation And in time of Sickness upon the death-bed we enjoyn private and particular Confession if the conscience be oppressed And if any man do think that that which is necessary for him upon his death-bed is necessary every time he comes to the Communion and so come to such a confession if any thing lie upon him as often as he comes to the Communion we blame not we disswade not we dis-counsel not that tenderness of conscience and that safe proceeding in that good soul For Contrition we require such a contrition as amounts to a full detestation of the sin and a full resolution not to relapse into that sin and this they do not in the Romane Church where they have soupled and mollified their Contrition into an Attrition For Satisfaction we require such a satisfaction as Man can make to Man in goods or fame and for the satisfaction due to God we require that every man with a sober and modest but yet with a confident and infallible assurance believe the satisfaction given to God by Christ for all mankinde to have been given and accepted for him in particular This Christ with joy and thanksgiving we acknowledge to be come to be come actually we expect no other after him we joyn no other to him And come freely without any necessity impos'd by any above him and without any invitation from us here Come not to meet us who were not able to rise without him but yet not to force us to save us against our wills but come to call us by his Ordinances in his Church us not as we pretend any righteousness of our own but as we confess our selves to be sinners and sinners led by this call to Repentance which Repentance is an everlasting Divorce from our beloved sin and an everlasting Marriage and super-induction of our ever-living God A SERMON Preached at VVHITE-HALL April 2. 1620. Serm. 10. SERMON X. ECCLES 5. There is an evil sickness that I have seen under the Sun Riches reserved to the owners thereof for their evill And these riches perish by evil travail and he begetteth a son and in his hand is nothing Ver. 12. 13. in Edit 1. In alia 13. 14. THe kingdom of heaven is a feast to get you a Stomach to that we have preached abstinence The kingdom of heaven is a treasure too and to make you capable of that we would bring you to a just valuation of this world He that hath his hands full of dirt cannot take up Amber if they be full of Counters he cannot take up gold This is the Book Hierm. which St. Hierome chose to expound to Blesilla at Rome when his purpose was to draw her to heaven by making her to understand this world It was the book fittest for that particular way and it is the Book which St. Ambrose calls Bonum ad omnia magistrum Ambros A good Master to correct us in this world a good Master to direct us to the next For though Solomon had asked at Gods hand onely the wisdom fit for Government yet since he had bent his wishes upon so good a thing as wisdom and in his wishes even of the best thing had been so moderate God abounded in his grant and gave him all kinds Naturall and Civil and heavenly wisdom And therefore when the Fathers and the latter Authours in the Roman Church exercise their considerations August whether Solomon were wiser then Adam then Moses then the Prophets then the Apostles they needed not to have been so tender as to except onely the Virgin Mary for though she had such a fulness of heavenly wisdom as brought her to rest in his bosome in heaven who had rested in hers upon earth yet she was never proposed for an example of natural or of civil knowledge Solomon was of all and therefore St. Austin sayes of him Prophetavit in omnibus Libris suis Solomon prophesied in all his books and though in this book his principal scope be moral and practique wisdom yet in this there are also mysteries and prophecies and many places concerning our eternal happiness after this life But because there is no third object for mans love This world and the next are all that he can consider as he hath but two eyes so he hath but two objects and then Primus actus voluntatis est Amor Aquinas Mans love is never idle it is ever directed upon somthing if our love might be drawn from this world Solomon thought it a direct way to convay it upon the next And therefore consider Solomons method and wisdom in pursuing this way because all the world together hath amazing greatness and an amazing glory in it for the order and harmony and continuance of it for if a man have many Manors he thinks himself a great Lord and if a Man have many Lords under him he is a great King and if he have Kings under him he is a great Emperor and yet what profit were it to get all the world and loose thy soule Therefore Solomon shakes the world in peeces he dissects it and cuts it up before thee that so thou mayest the better see how poor a thing that particular is whatsoever it be
that thou sets thy love upon in this world He threads a string of the best stones of the best Jewels in this world knowledge in the first Chapter delicacies in the second long life in the third Ambition Riches Fame strength in the rest and then he shows you an Ice a flaw a cloud in all these stones he layes this infamy upon them all vanity and vexation of spirit Vanitas Which two words vanity and vexation because they go through all to every thing Solomon applies one of them they are the inseparable Laeven that sowers all and therefore are intended as well of this Text as of the other text we shall by the way make a little stop upon those two words first how could the wisedome of Solomon and of the Holy Ghost avile and abase this world more then by this annihilating of it in the name of vanity for what is that It is not enough to receive a definition it is so absolutely nothing as that we cannot tell you what it is Let Saint Bernard do it vanum est quod nec confert plenitudinem continenti for who amongst you hath not room for another bagg or amongst us for another benefice nec fulcimentum innitentï for who stands fast upon that which is not fast it self and the world passeth and the lusts thereof Nec fructum laboranti for you have sowen much and bring in little yee eat but have not enough yee drink but are not filled yee are cloth'd but wax not warm Agg. 1.16 and he that earneth wages puts it into a bagg with holes midsummer runs out at Michalmas and at years end he hath nothing And such a vanity is this world least it were not enough to call it vanity alone simply vanity though that language in which Solomon and the Holy Ghost spoke have no degrees of comparison no superlative they cannot say vanissimum the greatest vanity yet Solomon hath sound a way to expresse the height of it another way conformable to that language when he calls it vanitatem vanitatum for so doth it Canticum Canticorum The Song of Songs Deus Deorum the God of gods Dominus dominantium The Lord of Lords Coeli Coelorum The Heaven of Heavens alwaies signifie the superlative and highest degree of those things vanity of vanities is the deepest vanity the emptiest vanity the veriest vanity that can be conceived Saint Augustin apprehended somewhat more in it but upon a mistaking Aug. Retract for accustoming himself to a Latin copy of the Scriptures and so lighting upon copies that had been miswritten he reads that vanitas vani antum O the vanity of those men that delight in vanity he puts this lowness this annihilation not only in the thing but in the Men themselves too And so certainly he might safely do for though as he saies in his Retractations his Copies milled him yet that which he collected even by that errour was true they that trust in vain things are as vain as the things themselves If Saint Augustin had not his warrant to say so from Solomon here yet he had it from his Father before who did not stop at that when he had said Man is like to vanity Psal 144.4.39.5 but proceeeds farther surely that is without all contradiction every Man that is without all exception in his best state that is without any declination is altogether vanity Let no man grudge to acknowledge it of himself The second man that ever was begot and born into this world and then there was world enough before him to make him great and the first good man had his name from vanity Cain the first man had his name from possession but the second Habel had his name from vacuity from vanity from vanishing for it is the very word that Solomon uses here still for vanity Because his parents repose no confidence in Habel for they thought that Cain was the Messias they called him vanity Because God knew that Habel had no long term in this world he directed them he suffered them to call him vanity But therefore principally was he and so may we be content with the name of vanity that so acknowledging our selves to be but vanity we may turn for all our being and all our well being for our essence and existence and subsistence upon God in whom onely we live and move and have our being for take us at our best make every one an Abel and yet that is but Evanescentia in nihilum a vanishing an evapourating When the Prophets are said to speak the motions Jer. 23.16 and notions the visions of their own heart and not out of the mouth of the Lord then because that was indeed nothing for a lye is nothing they are said in this very word to speak vanity And still 1 Cor. 8.4 where the Prophets have that phrase in the person of God provocaverunt me vanitatibus They have provoked God with their vanities the Chaldee Paraphrase ever expresseth it Idolis with their Idols and Idolum nihil est an Idol 1 Cor. 8.4 that is vanity is nothing Man therefore can have no deeper discouragement from enclining to the things of this world then to be taught that they are nothing nor higher encouragement to cleave to God for the next then to know that himself is nothing too This last of our selves is St. Pauls humility 2 Cor. 12.11 Esa 40.15 I am nothing The first of other Creatures is the Prophet Isaiahs instruction The nations are as a drop of the bucket as the dust of the ballance the Isles are as a little dust This was little enough but all nations are before him as nothing that was much less for the disproportion between the least thing and nothing is more infinite then between the least thing and the whole world But there is a diminution of that too they are all less then nothing and what 's that vanity in that place Nihilum in ane and that 's as low as Solomon carries them Vexatio Gen. 6.5 But because all the imaginations of the thoughts of mans heart are onely evil continually as Moses heightens the Corruption of man and therefore men are not so much affrighted with this returning to nothing for they could be content to vanish at last and turn to nothing there appears no harm to them in that that the world comes to nothing what care they when they have no more use of it and there appears an ease to them if their souls might come to nothing too therefore Solomon calls this world not onely nothing vanity but affliction and vexation of spirit Tell a natural voluptuous man of two sorts of torments in hell Poena damni and Poena sensus one of privation he shall not see God and the other of reall Torments he shall be actually tormented the loss of the sight of God will not so much affect him for he never saw him in his life not in the marking
against thy will that they have it thou givest then but art sorry that they to whom thou givest that which thou givest came so soon to it And then saepe infirmitatis servi efficimur we become slaves to our last sickness often Bernard oftentimes Apoplexies stupifie us and we are dull and Fevers enrage us and we are mad we are in a slavery to the disease Et servï non testantur says the law slaves have no power to make a Will Testare Liber Idem make thy Will and make it to be thy Will give it the effect and execute thy Will whilest thou art a free man in state of health restore that which is not thine for even that of which thou art true owner may be reserved to thy harm much more that Harm which is none of thine Every man may finde in himself that he hath done some sinnes which he would not have done if he had not been so rich for there goes some cost to the most sins his wantonness in wealth makes him do some his wealth hath given him a confidence that that fault would not be lookt into or â—hat it would be bought out if it were Some sins we have done because we are rich but many more because we would be rich And this is a spiritual harm the riches do their owners And for temporal harm if it were hard to finde in our own times examples of men which have incurr'd great displeasure undergone heavy calamities perished in unrecoverable shipwrack all which they had escaped if they had not been eminently and enormously rich we might in ancient history both profane and holy finde such precedents enough as Naboth was who if he had had no such vineyard as lay convenient for so much greater a person might have passed for an honest and religious Man to God and a good subject to the King without any indictment of blasphemy against either and never have been stoned to death 1 Reg. 21. The rich Merchant at Sea is afraid that every fisherman is a Pyrat and the fisherman fears not him And if we should survay the body of our penal Laws whensoever the abuse of them makes them snares and springes to entangle men we should see that they were principally directed upon rich men neither can rich men comfort themselves in it that though they be subject to more storms then other men yet they have better ground tackling they are better able to ride it out then other men for it goes more to the heart of that rich Merchant which we spoke of to cast his goods over board then it does to the fisherman to loose his boat Bernard Idem and perchance his life Sudat pauper foris It is true the poor mans brow sweats without Laborat intus dives the rich mans heart bleeds within and the poor man can sooner wipe his face then the rich man his heart Gravius fastidio quam ille inedia cruciatur the rich man is worse troubled to get a stomach then the poor man to satisfie his and his loathing of meat is more wearisome then the others desire of it Summe up the diseases that voluptuousness by the ministery of riches imprints in the body the battery that malice by the provocation of riches layes to the fortune the sins that confidence in our riches heaps upon our souls and we shall see that though riches be reserved to their owners yet it is to their harm Sickness As then the burden of that song in the furnace where all creatures were called upon to blesse the Lord was still praise the Lord ver 36. and magnifie him for ever And as the burden of that Psalm of thanksgiving where so many of Gods miracles are recorded is this for his mercy endureth for ever so the burden of Solomons exclamation against worldly things is still in all these Chapters vanity and vanity of vanities and vexation of spirit so he addes thus much more to this particular distemper of reserving Riches naturally disposed to do us harm That it is a sickness Mow Sanitas naturalis Bernard Nature abhors sickness and therefore this is an unnatural desire For whether we take this phrase of Solomon for a Metaphor and comparison that this desire of Riches is like a sickness that it hath the pains and the discomforts and the dangers of a sickness or whether we take it literally that it is a disordering a discomposing a distemper of the mind and so truely and really a sickness and that this sickness induceth nothing but eternal death nothing should make us more afraid then this sickness for the root of all evil is the desire of money And then if it be truely a sickness all the way and Morbus complicatus a dropsie and a consumption too we seem great but it is but a swelling for our soul is lean what a sad condition will there be when their last bodily sickness and this spiritual sickness meet together a sick body a sick soul will be but ignorant Physitians and miserable comforters to one another It is a sickness and an evil sickness Evil. there is a weight added in that addition for though all sickness have rationem mali some degrees of the evil of punishment in it yet sometimes the good purpose of God in inflicting a sickness and the good use of man in mending by a sickness overcome and weigh down that little dram and washes away the pale tincture of evil which is in it There is a wholsome sickness Et est sanitas quae viaticum ad peccatum health sometimes victuals us Basil and fuels us and armes us for a sin and we do those sins which Bernard if we were sick we could not do And then Mala sanitas carnis quae ducit ad infirmitatem animae It is an unwholsome health of the body that occasions the sickness of the soul It is true that in bodily Sickness Tua dimicant contra te arma Bernard It is a discomfortable war when thou fightest against thy self In ipso gemis in quo peccasti that that flesh in which thou hast sinned comes to vex and anguish thee that thy body is become but a bottle of rheum Thy Sinews but a bundle of thornes and thy bones but a furnace of vehement ashes But it thou canst hear God as St. Augustin did Ego novi unde aegrotes Ego novi uâ—de saneris I know thy disease Augustin and I know thy cure Gratia mea sufficit my grace shall serve thy turn Thou shalt come to that disposition of the Apostle too Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities because when I am weak 2. Cor. 12.10 then am I strong when thou art come to an apprehension of thy own weakness thou comest also to a recourse to him in whom onely is thy saving healthand recovery But this Sickness of gathering those riches which are reserved for our evil comes not to
he hath reserved by his parsimony and frugallity There is somtimes a greater reverence in us towards our ancient inheritance towards those goods which are devolved upon us by succession There is another affection expressed towards those things which dying friends have left us for they preserve their memories another towards Jewells or other Testimonies of an acceptation of our services from the Prince but still we love those things most which we have got with our own labour and industrey When a man comes to say with Jacob Gen. 32.10 with my staffe came I over Iordan now have I gotten two bands with this staffe came I to London with this staffe came I to Court and now am thus and thus increased a man loves those addisions which his owne Industry hath made to his fortune There are some ungratefull Natures that love other men the worse for having bound them by benefits and good turns to them but that were a new ingratitude not to be thankful to our selves not to love those things which we our selves have compassed We have our reason to do so in our great example Christ Jesus who loves us most as we are his purchase as he hath bought us with his bloud And therefore though he hath expressed a love too to the Angels in their confirmation yet he cannot be said to love the Angels as he doth us because his death hath wrought nothing upon them which were fallen before and for us so he came principally to save sinners the whole body and band of Angels are not his purchase as all mankind is This affection is in worldly men too they love their own gettings and those shall perish They have given their pleasant things for meat Chron. 1.11 to refresh their souls whatsoever they placed their heart upon whatsoever they delighted in most whatsoever they were loath to part withal it shall perish and the measure of their love to it and the desire of it shall be the measure of Gods judgement upon it that which they love most shall perish first In occupatione Those riches then those best beloved riches shall perish and that saith the text by evil travail which is a word that in the original signifies both Occupationem Negotiationem labour and Travail and afflictionem vexationem affliction and vexation They shall perish in occupatione then when thou art labouring and travailing in thy calling then when thou art harkening after a purchase and a bargain then when thy neighbors can impute no negligence thou wast not negligent in gathering nay no vice to thee thou wast not dissolute in scattering then when thou risest early lyest down late and eatest the bread of sorrow then shalt thou find not onely that that prospers not which thou goest about and pretendest to but that that which thou haddest before decaies and molders away If we consider well in what abundance God satisfied the children of Israel with Quails and how that ended we shall see example enough of this You shall eat saith God Num. 11.19 not one nor two daies nor five nor ten nor twenty but a whole moneth until it come out at your nostrils and be loathsome unto you here was the promise and it was performed for the plenty ver 31. that quailes fell a daies journey round about the Camp and they were two cubits thick upon the earth The people fell to their labour and they arose and gathered all that day and all that night and all the next day saith the Text 32. and he that gathered least gathered ten Gomers full But as the promise was performed in the plenty so it was in the course too whilest the flesh was yet between theïr teeth before it was chewed even the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people and he smote them with an exceeding great plague ver 33. Even whilest your money is under your fingers whilest it is in your purposes determined and digested for such and such a purpose whilest you have put it in a ship in Merchandice to win more to it whilest you have sow'd it in the land of borrowers to multiply and grow upon Mortgages and usury even when you are in the mid'st of your travail stormes at Sea theeves at land enviers at court informations at Westminster whilest the meat is in your mouthes shall cast the wrath of God upon your riches and they shall perish In occupatione then when you travail to increase them The Children of Israel are said in that place onely to have wept to Moses out of a lust and a grief for want of flesh God punished not that weeping it is a tenderness a disposition that God loves but a weeping for worldly things and things not necessary to them for Manna might have served them a weeping for not having or for loosing such things of this world is alwaies accompanied with a murmuring God shall cause thy riches to perish in thy travail not because he denies thee riches nor because he would not have thee travail but because an inordinate love an overstudious and an intemperate and overlaborious pursuite of riches is alwaies accompanied with a diffidence in Gods providence and a confidence in our own riches To give the wicked a better sense of this God proceeds often the same way with the righteous too but with the wicked because they do with the righteous least they should trust in their own riches We see in Iobs case It was not onely his Sons and daughters who were banquetting nor onely his asses and sheep and camels that were feeding that were destroyed but upon his Oxen that were ploughing upon his servants which were doing rheir particular duties the Sabaeans came and destruction in their sword His Oxen and his servants perished in occupatione in their labour in their travail when they were doing that which they should do And if God do thus to his children to humble them before-hand that they do not sacrifice to their own nets not trust in their own industry nor in their own riches how much more vehemently shall his judgments burn upon them whose purpose in gathering Riches was pricipally that they might stand of themselves and not need God There are beasts that labour not but yet furnish us with their wool alive and with their flesh when they are dead as sheep there are men that desire riches and though they do no other good they are content to keep good houses and that their Heire should do so when they are dead There are beasts that labour and are meat at their death but yield no other help in their life and these are Oxen there are men that labour to be rich and do no good with it till their death There are beasts that onely labour and yield nothing else in life nor death as horses and there are some that do neither but onely prey upon others as Lyons and others such we need not apply particularly there are all bestial
as they grant us and not to interpret this place of a temporal deliverance from Babylon but of the deliverance by the Messias And for the second which is the deliverance of the christians from the persecutions in the primitive times though the Christians did then with a holy cheerfulness suffer those persecutions when they could not avoid them without prevaricating and betraying the hour of Christ Jesus yet they did not wilfully thrust themselves into those dangers they did not provoke the Magistrate And the word which is here translated ye sold your selves vendictistis vos implies actionem spontaneam a free and voluntary action done by themselves and therefore cannot well be understood of the persecutions in the Primitive Church The third therefore as yet is the most usefull and most received so it is the most proper acceptation of the word that it is a deliverance from the bondage of sin to be wrought by Christ for as Saint Hierome says this Prophet Esay is rather an Evangelist than a Prophet because almost all that Christ did and said and suffered is foretold and prophetically antidated in his prophecy and almost all his prophecy hath some relation at least in a secondary sense of accommodation where it is not so primarily and literally to the words and actions and passions of Christ Following then this interpretation in general of the word that it is a deliverance from the wages of sin Death by Christ we may take in passing a short view of the miserable condition of man wherin he enwraped himself of the aboundant mercy of Christ Jesus in withdrawing him from that universal calamity by considering onely the sense and largeness and extention of those words in which the holy Ghost hath been pleased to express both these in this Text. For first the word in which our action is expressed which is Machar verdidistis ye have sold signifies in many places of Scripture dare proreatia a permutation an exchange of one thing for another and in other places it signifies Dedére upon any little attempt to forsake and abandon our defences and to suffer the enemy easily to prevail upon us so also it signifies Tradere not onely to forsake our selves but to concur actually to the delivering up of our selves and lastly it signifies Repellere to joyn with our enemies in beating back any that should come to our relief and rescue And then as we have so sold our selves for the substance of the Act as is expressed in that word Machar we have exchanged our selves at an undervalue and worse than that we have yeelded up our selves upon easie tentations and worse than that we have offered our selves exposed our selves invited the devil and tempted temptations and worse than that we have Rejected the succours and the supplies which have been offered us in the means and conduits and seals of his Graces As it stands thus with us for the matter so for the manner how we have done this that is expressed in that other word kinnan which signifies fecit as it is here Gratis for nought And in another place Frustra to no purpose for it is a void bargain because we had no title no interest in our selves when we sold our selves and it signifies temere rashly without consideration of our own value upon whom God had stamped his Image And then again it signifies Immerito undeservedly before God in whose jurisdiction we were by many titles had forsaken us or done any thing to make us forsake him So that our action in selling our selves for nothing hath this latitude That man whom God hath dignified so much as that in the Creation he imprinted his Image in him and in the Redemption he assumed not the Image but the very nature of man That man whom God still preserved as the Aple of his Eye and as he expresses himself often in the Prophets is content to reason and to dispute with man and to submit himself to any tryal whither he have not been a gracious God unto him That this man should thus abandon this God and exchange his soul for any thing in this world when as it can profit nothing to gain the whole world and loose our own soul and not exchange it but give it away thrust it off and be a devil to the devil to tempt the tempter himself to take it But then as the word aggravates our condemnation so it implies a consolation too for it is fructra That is unprovidently unthriftily inconsideratly vainly and that multiplies our fault but then it is invalidly and uneffectually too that is it is a void bargain and when our powerful Redeemer is pleased to come and claim his right and set on foot his title all this improvident bargain of ours is voided and reversed and not though but because we have sold our selves for nought we shall be redeemed without money For the other word in which the action of our Redeemer is expressed though it have somewhat different uses in the Scriptures yet it is evermore spoken of him Qui habet jus re dimendi no man by the Law could redeem a thing but he who had a title to that thing So the word is used where there are given Cities of refuge from the avengeâ— .. There the word is a redemptor from him that hath right to redeem his kinsmans blood to bring an Appeal and to prosecute for the death of his kinsman who was slaine So is the word used also where that Law is given c. If thy brother be impoverished he sell his possession then his redeemer c. That is he that is next to that land And so also when a man dyed without issue he who had the right and the obligation to raise seed to the dead man he was the redeemer I am thy kinsman saith Booz to Ruth but saith he Alius Redemptor magis propinquus Thou hast another Redeemer nearer in blood then I am How ill a bargain soever we made for our selves Christ Jesus hath not lost his right in us but is our Redeemer in all these acceptations of the world He is our sanctuary and refuge when we have commited spiritual murder upon our own Souls he preserves us and delivers us to the redemption ordained for us when we have sold our possessions our natural faculties He supplies us with grace and feeds us with his Word and cloaths us with his Sacraments and warms us with his Absolutions against all diffidence which had formerly frozen us up and in our barrenness he raises up seed unto our dead souls thoughts and works worthy of repentance All this thy Redeemer hath right to do when it pleases him to do it he does it sine argento without money when the now Casâ—ph signifies not onely money but Omne appeâ—ibile any thing that we can place our desires or cast our thougths upon This Redemption of ours is wrought by such means as the desire of man could never have fortuned upon
The Incarnation of God and then the death and Crucifying of that God so Incarnate could never have fallen within the desire nor wish of any man neither would any man oâ— himself ever have conceived That the Sacraments of the Church poor and naked things of themselves for all that the wit of man could imagine in them or allow to them should be such means to sâ—al and convey the graces which accompany this Redemption of our souls to our souls Divisio So then Having thus represented unto you a model and designe of the miserable condition of man and the abundant mercy of our Redeemer so far as those words which the Holy Ghost hath chosen in this text hath invited and led us That we may look better upon some pieces of it that we may take such a sight of this Redeemer here as that we may know Him when we meet Him at home at our house in our private meditations at His house in the last judgment I shall onely offer you two considerations Exprobrationem and Consolaâ—ionem First an exprobration or increpation from God to us And then a consolation or consolidation of the same God upon us And in the exprobration God reproches to us first our Prodigality that we would sell a reversion our possibility our expectance of an inheritance in heaven And then our cheapness that we would sell that for nothing Prodigality First then Prodigality is a sin that destroys even the means of liberality If a man wast so as that he becomes unable to releive others by this wast this is a sinful prodigality but much more if he wast so as that he is not able to subsist and maintain himself and this is our case who have even annihilated our selves by our proâ—useness For it is his mercy that we are not consumed It is a sin and a viperous sin it eats out his own womb The Prodigal consumes that that should maintain his Prodigality It is peccatum Biathana ton a sin that murders it self Now as in civil Prodigalities in a wastfulness of our temporal estate the Laws inflicts three kinds of punishment three incommodities upon him that is a Prodigal so have the same punishments a proportion and somethings that answer them in this spiritual prodigality of the soul by sin The first is bonis suis interdicitur He that is a Prodigall in the Law cannot dispose of his own Estate whatsoever he gives or sells or leases all is void as of a mad-man or of an Infant And such is the condition of a man in sin He hath no interest in his own natural faculties He cannot think he cannot wish he cannot do any thing of himself the venem and the malignity of his sin goes through all his actions and he cannot purge it The second incommodity is Testamentum non facit The Prodigal person hath no power allowed him by the Law to make a will at his death And this also doth an habitual sinner suffer For when he comes to his end he may dictate to a Notary and he may bid him write Imprimis I give my Soul to God my Body to such a Church my Goods to such and such persons But if those Goods be lâ—able to other debts â—he Legâ—tarie shall have no profit If the person be under excommunication he shall not lye in that Church If his soul be under the weight of unrepented sins God will do the devil no wrong he will not take a soul that is sold to him before The third Incommodity that a Prodigal incurrs by the Law is Exhaeredatus creditur He is presum'd to be disinherited by his father that whereas by that Law if the father in his Will leave out any of his childrens names and never mention him yet that child which is pretermitted shall come in for a childs part except the father have assigned a particular reason why he left him out If this childe were a Prodigal there needs no other reason to be assigned but Exhaeredatus Creditur He is presum'd to be disinherited And so also if we have seen a man prodigal of his own soul and run on in a course of sin all his life except there appear very evident signs of resumption into Gods grace at his end Exhaeredatus Creditur we have just reason to be afraid that he is disinherited If any such sinner seem to thee to repent at his end Faâ—eor vobis non negamus quod petit saith St. Augustin I confess we ought not to deny him any help that he desires in that late extremity Sed non praesumimus quia bene exit I dare not assure you that that man dyes in a good state he adds that vehemence non praesumo non vos fallo non praesumo I should but deceive you if I should assure you that such a man dyed well There was one good and happy Thief that stole a Salvation at the crucifying of Christ but in him that was throughly true which is proverbially spoken Occasio facit furem the oppotunity made him a thief and when there is such another opportunity there may be such another theif when Christ is to dye again we may presume of mercy upon such a late repentance at our death The preventing grace of God made him lay violent hands upon heaven But when thou art a Prodigal of thy soul will God be a prodigal too for thy sake and betray and prostitute the kingdome of Heaven for a sigh or a groan in which thy pain may have a greater part than thy repentance God can raise up children out of the stones of the street and therefore he might be as liberal as he would of his people and suffer them to be sold for old shoes but Christ will not sell his birth-right for a messe or pottage the kingdome of Heaven for the dole at a Funeral Heaven is not to be had in exchange for an Hospital or a Chantry or a Colledge erected in thy last will It is not onely the selling all we have that must buy that pearl which represents the kingdome of Heaven The giving of all that we have to the poor at our death will not do it the pearl must be sought and found before in an even and constant course of Sanctification we must be thrifty all our life or we shall be to poor for that purchase It is then an unthrifty a perplexed bargain when both the buyer and the seller loose our losse is plain enough for we loose our souls And certainly howsoever the devil be expressed to take some joy at the winning of a sinner howsoever his kingdome be thereby enlarged yet Almighty God suffers not his treason his undermining of man to be unpunished but afflicts him with more and more accidental torments even for that as a licencious man takes pleasure in the victory of having corrupted a woman by his solicitation but yet insensibly overthrows his constitution by his sin so the withdrawing of Gods Subjects from
his alleigance induces an addition of punishment upon the devil himself Consider a little further our wretchedness in this prodigality we think those Laws barbarous and inhumane which permit the sute of men in debt for the satisfaction of Creditors but we sell our selves and grow the farther in debt by being sold we are sold and to even rate our debts and to aggravate our condemnation We find in the history of the Muscovits that it is an ordinary detainder amongst them to sell themselves and their posterity into everlasting bondage for hot drink In one winter a wretched man will drink himself and his posterity into perpetual slavery But we sell our selves not for drink but for thirst we are sory when our appetite too soon decaies and we would fain sin more than we do At what a high rate did the blessed Martyrs sell their bodies They built up Gods Church with their blood They sowed his field and prepared his harvest with their blood they got heaven for their bodies and we give bodies souls for hell In a right inventary every man that ascends to a true value of himself considers it thus First His Soul then His life after his fame and good name And lastly his goods and estate for thus their own nature hath ranked them and thus they are as in nature so ordinarily in legal consideration preferred before one another But for our souls because we know not how they came into us we care not how they go out because if I aske a Philosopher whither my soul came in by propagation from my parents or by an immediate infusion from God perchance he cannot tell so I think a divine can no more tell me whither when my soul goes out of me it be likely to turn on the right or on the left hand if I continue in this course of sin And then for the second thing in this inventary Life the Devil himself said true skin for skin and all that a man hath will he give for his life Indeed we do not easily give away our lives expresly and at once but we do very easily suffer our selves to be cousened of our lives we pour in death in drink and we call that health we know our life to be but a span and yet we can wash away one inche in ryot we can burn away one inch in lust we can bleed away one inch in quarrels we have not an inch for every sin and if we do not pour out our lives yet we drop them away For the third peece of our self our fame and reputation who had not rather be thought an usurer then a beggar who had not rather be the object of envy by being great than of scorn and contempt by being poor upon any conditions And for the last of all which is our goods Seneca though our coveteousness appears most in the love of them in that lowest thing of all Adeo omnia homini cariora seipso so much does every man think every inferiour thing better than himself than his fame than his body than his soul which is a most perverse undervaluing of himself and a damnable humility yet even with these goods also as highly as he values them a man will past if to fuell and foment and maintain that sin that he delights in that which is the most precious our souls we undervalue most and that which we do esteem most though naturally it should be lowest our estate we are content to wast and dissipate for our sins And whereas the Heathens needed laws to restrain them from an expensive and wastful worship of their Gods every man was so apt to exceed in sacrifices and such other religious duties til that law Deus frugi Colunto Let men be thrifty moderate in religious expenses was enacted which law was a kind of mortmain and inhibition That every man might not bestow what he would upon the service of those Gods we have turned our prodigality the other way upon the devil whom we have made Haeredem in esse and our sole executor and sacrificed soul and life and fame and fortune all the gifts of God and God himself by making his religion and his Sacraments and the profession of his name in an hypocriticall use of them to be the devils instruments to draw us the easilyer and hold us the faster and what prodigality can be conceived to exceed this in which we do not onely mispend our selves Nihil but mispend our God The other point in this exprobration is that as we have prodigally sold our selves so we have inconsiderately sold our selves for nothing we have in our bargain diseases and we have poverty and we have unsensibleness of our miseries but diseases are but privations of health and poverty but a privation of wealth and unsensibleness but a privation of tenderness of Conscience all are privations and privations are nothing if a man had got nothing by a bargain but repentance he would think and justly he had got little but if thou hadst repentance in this bargain thy bargain were the better if thou couldst come to think thy bargain bad it were a good bargain but the height of the misery is in this that one of those nothings for which we have sold our selves is a stupidity an unsensibleness of our own wretchedness The Laws do annull and make void fraudulent conveyances and then the laws presume fraud in the conveyance if at least half the value of the thing be not given now if the whole world be not worth one soul who can say that he hath half his value it were not meerly nothing if considering that inventary which we spoke of before we had the worse for the better that were but an ill exchange but yet it were not nothing If we had bodies for our souls it were not meerly nothing but we finde that sin that sells our souls decays and withers our bodies our bodies grow incapable of that sin unable to commit that sin which we sold our souls for If we had fame and reputation for out bodies it were not nothing but we see that Heretiques that give their bodies to the fire are by the very law infamous and they are infamous in every mans apprehension If we had worldly goods for loss of fame and of our good name yet still it were not nothing but we see that witches who are infamous persons for the most part live in extreme beggery too So that the exprobration is just we have sold our selves for nothing and however the ordinary murmuring may be true in other things that all things are grown dearer our souls are still cheap enough which at first were all sold in gross for perchance an Apple and are now retailed every day for nothing Joseph was sold underfoot by his brethren but it is hard to say for how much some Copies have that he was sold for 20 pieces and some for 25 and some for 30 and S. Ambrose and S.
deservers God hath raised us we shall finde at least such a greatness in our selves as deserves a great thanksgiving but yet take thy self altogether at thy greatest and say with Jacob parvus sunâ— all this is but a little greatness but a poor riches but an ignoble honour In all this thou dost but wrap up a snow-ball upon a coal of fire there is that within thee that melts thee as fast as thou growest thou buildest in Marble and thy soul dwells in those mud-walls that have moldred away ever since they were made Take thy self altogether and thou art but a man and what 's that ask Aristotle says S. Chrysostome Chrysost and he will tell thee Animal rationale man is a reasonable Creature but ask God and he will tell thee Animal irreprehensible a man is a good man There was a man in the land of Hâ—z called Job an upright and just man that feared God All men truly men are Copies of this man And sine hac humanitate without being such a man as he whose man soever thou beest and whose master whosoever thou beest parvus es all is but a small matter considered together and at best Proe singulis But we may better discern our selves in singulis then in omnibus better by taking ourselves in pieces then altogether we understand the frame of mans body better when we see him naked than apparrelled howsoever and better by seeing him cut up than by seeing him do any exercise alive one desection one Anatomy teaches more of that than the marching or drilling of a whole army of living men Let every one of us therefore dissect and cut up himself and consider what he was before God raised him friends to bring those abilities and good parts which he had into knowledge and into use and into employment what he was before he had by education and study and industry imprinted those abilities in his soul what he was before that soul was infused into him capable of such education what he was when he was but in the list and catalogue of creatures and might have been left in the state of a worm or a plant or a stone what he was when he was not so far but onely in the vast and unexpressible and unimaginable depth of nothing at all But especially let him consider what he was when he lay smothered up in massa damnata in that leavened lap of Adam where he was wrapped up in damnation And then let him consider forward again that God in his decree severed him out in that lump and ordained him to a particular salvation that he provided him parents that were within the Covenant that should prepare and pour out a body for him that he himself created and infused an immortal soul into him that then he put a care in his parents perchance in strangers to breed him to a capableness of some course That then God took him by the hand and led him into the Court that there he held him by the hand and defended him against envy and practise that he hath clothed him with the opinions of good men that he hath adorned him with riches and with titles let a man stand thus and ruminate and spell over Gods several blessings to him sylable by sylable and he shall not onely say parvus sum when he considers himself at his growth and altogether but parvus eram I was too mean a subject for thee to look or work upon in the least of these expressings of thy goodness And thus it is whether we consider this goodness of God in miserationibus In his mercies or in veritate in his truth Miserationis Not that Gods mercy and truth are ever severed But we take his mercy to be that promise that covenant which out of his own free goodness he was pleased to make to man and which is grounded upon nothing but his own pleasure and we take truth and fidelity to be the performance and execution of those merciful promises which truth is grounded upon his promise Now for his mercies first though we say as truly as School terms can reach too Miserecordia presumit miseriam we can consider no mercy till something be miserable upon whom mercy may work and so cannot properly place mercy in God before the fall of man in such a respect yet though the work of creation were not a work of mercy being intended onely and wholly to his glory yet to create man in an ability to glorifie him in that way and that measure as he did this was a work of mercy because man had been less happy without that ability So that of this mercy to man of being dignified above all other creatures in the contributing to the glory of the Creator but especially of that mercy of electing certain men in whom he would preserve that dignity which others should forfeit of this general mercy mankind was not worthy of this particular mercy these particular men were not worthy for neither these men nor this mankind was then at all when God had this mercy upon them But for our understanding the goodness of God Veritates and thereby our own unworthiness it appears best in the consideration of his truth of the performance of these his promises for by the strength of his truth and fidelity in God is my soul raised to that that that which is ordinarily and naturally the terrour of the conscience of a sinner is the peace of mine that which is naturally a tempest is my calm that which is naturally a rock to shipwrack at is my Anchor to ride out all foul weather and that is the justice of God that which would shake and shiver my conscience if there were no mercy nor promise settles it now because there is a truth that that promise shall be performed to me Briefly God was merciful it was meer mercy in him to promise a Messias Christ Jesus when Adam was fallen but to give him when he had promised him was justice and truth and fidelity So that he applies Christ Jesus to me by the working of his blessed Spirit this is meer mercy but that when Christ is thus applied to me I have peace of conscience and an inchoation of the kingdom of heaven here this is his Justice and Truth and fidelity So that the next and immediate resting place for my salvation and my peace is the Justice of God Now for the expressing of his Largeness in exhibiting to us those blessings which belong to this promise It is an usefull consideration Numb 17. which arises out of that miraculous budding of the rodds of the Twelve tribes Gods promise goes no farther but that for that Man whom he would chuse virga germinabit His rod should bud forth but when Moses on the morrow went to loock how his promise was performed Levies rod had budded and blossomed and born perfect fruit In his mercys he exceeds his promises In his judgments he
the devil If God have made thy staff to blossom and bear ripe fruit in a night enriched thee preferred thee a pace this is not thy staff it is a Mace a mark of thy office that he hath made thee his Steward of those blessings To end this a mans own staff truly properly is nothing but his own natural faculties nature is ours but grace is not ours and he that is left to this staff of his own for heaven is as ill provided as Jacob was for this world when he was left to his own staff at Jordan when he was banished and banished in poverty and banished alone Thus far we have seen Jacob in his low estate Revertitur now we bring him to his happyness in which it is always one degree to make hast and so we will all is comprised in this that is was present Now I am two bands now it was first now quando revertitur now when he returned to his Countrey for he was come very near it when he speaks of Jordan as though he stood by it I came over this Jordan It is hard to say whether the returning to a blessing formerly possessed and lost for a while be not a greater pleasure then the coming to a new one It is S. Augustins observation that that land Aug. which is so often called the land of promise was their land from the beginning from the beginning Sem of whom they came dwelt there and though God restored them by a miraculous power to their possession yet still it was a returning and so the blessing is ever more expressed a return from Egypt a return from Babylon and a return from their present dispersion is that which comforts them still Christ himself had this apprehension clarifica me Glorifie me thou father Joh. 17.5 with that glory which I had with thee before the world was Certainly our best assurance of salvation is but a returning to our first state in the decree of God for our election when we can consider our interest in that decree we return Our best state in this life is but a returning to the purity which we had in our baptism whosoever surprises himself in the act or in the remorse of any sin that he is fallen into would think himself in a blessed state if he could bring his conscience to that peace again which he remembers he had the last time he made up his accounts to God and had his discharge sealed in the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ Jesus Cleanse thy self often therefore and accustome thy soul to that peace that thou mayest still when thou fallest into sin have such a state in thy memory as thou mayest have a desire to return to and the Spirit of God shall still return to thee Eccles 12.7 who lovest to receive it and at last thy spirit shall return to him that gave it and gave his own spirit for it Jacobs happiness appears first now quando revertitur Jubenrâ— Domino and now quando jubente Domino now when he returned and now when he returned upon Gods bidding God had said unto him Gen. 31.3 turn again into the land of thy fathers and I will be with thee Think no step to be directly made towards preferment if thou have not heard Gods voice directing the way Stre in usque stand upon the ways and inquire not of thy fathers but of the God of thy fathers which way thou shalt go for Gods voice may be heard in every action if we will stand still a little and hearken to it Remember ever more that Applica Ephod 1 Sam. 30.7 where David comes to ask counsell of the Lord he said to Abiathar Applica Ephod bring the Ephod and there David askes Shall I follow this company shall I overtake them when thou doubtest of any thing Applica Ephod take this book of God if to thine understanding that reach not home punctually to thy particular case thou hast an Ephod in thy self God is not departed from thee thou knowest by thy self it is a vain complaint that Plutrarch makes desectu oraculorum that oracles are ceased there is no defect of oracles in thine own bosome as soon as thou askest thy self how may I corrupt the integrity of such a Judge undermine the strength of such a great person shake the chastity of such a woman thou hast an answer quickly it must be done by bribing it must be done by swearing it must be done by calumniating Here is no defectus Oraculorum no ceasing of Oracles there is a present answer from the Devil There is no defect of the Vrim and Thummim of God neither If thou wilt look into it for as it is well said of the Morall Man Sua cuique providentia Deus every mans Diligence and discretion is a God to himselfe so it is well said of the Christian Father Augustin Rectaratio Verbum Dei a rectified Conscience is the word of God Applica Ephod bring thine Actions to the question of the Ephod to the debatment of thy conscience rectified and still shalt hear Jubentem Dominus or duni Revocantem God will bid thee stop or God will bid thee go forwards in that way Angeli But herein had Jacob another degree of happiness That the Commandement of God was persued with the Testimony of Angells Not that the voyce of God needs strength Teste me ipso witness my selfe was always witness enough and Quia os Domini Locutum The Mouth of the Lord hath spoken it was always seal enough But that hath been Gods abundant And overflowing goodness ever to succor the infirmity of Man with sensible and visible things unto the pillars in the Wilderness with the Tabarnacle after and with the temple and all the Misterious and significative furniture thereof after all So God leaves not Jacob to the general knowledge that the Angels of God protect Gods Children but he manifested those Angels unto him Occurrerunt ei the Angels of God met him The word of God is an infalible guid to thee But God hath provided thee also visible and manifest assistants the Pillar his Church and the Angels his Ministers in the Church The Scripture is thine onely Ephod but Applica Ephod apply it to thee by his Church and by his visible Angels and not by thine own private interpretation This was Jacobs nunc now when he was returned 2. Turmae returned upon Gods Commandement upon Gods Commandement pursued and testified by Angels and Angels visibly manifested now he could take a comfort in the contemplation of his fortune of his estate to see that he was two bands Here 's a great change we see his vowe and we see how far his wishes extended at his going out Gen. 28.20 If God will give me bread to eate and cloathes to put on so that I come againe unto my fathers house in safety then shall the Lord be my God In which
speake against it so neither should wee doe any thing against it as wee are bound to receive it by acknowledgment so wee are bound to approve it by conforming our selves unto it our consent to it shewes our acceptation our life our approbation and so much is in the first Part the Roote This is a faithfull Word and worthy of all acceptation And in the Second the Tree the Body the substance of the Gospell That Jesus Christ is come into the World to save Sinners First here is an Advent a coming of a new Person into the World who was not here before venit in mundum hee came into the World And secondly hee that came is first Christ a mixt Person God and Man and thereby capable of that Office able to reconcile God and Man And Christus so to a person anoynted appointed and sent for that purpose to reconcile God and Man And then hee is Jesus one did actually and really doe the office of a Saviour hee did reconcile God and Man for there wee see also the Reason why hee came Hee came to Save and whom hee came to Save to save Sinners And these will bee the branches and lymbs of this Body And then lastly when wee come to consider the fruit which is indeede the seede and kernell and soul of all virtues Humility then wee shall meete the Apostle confessing himselfe to bee the greatest Sinner not only with a fui that hee was so whilest he was a Persecutor but with a present sum that even now after hee had received the faithfull Word the light of the Gospell yet hee was still the greatest Sinner of which Sinners I though an Apostle am am still the chiefest First then the Gospell is founded and rooted in sermone Part 1. in verbo in the Word it cannot deserve omnem acceptationem if it bee not Gospell and it is not Gospell if it be not in sermone rooted in the Word Christ himselfe as he hath an eternall Generation is verbum Dei Himselfe is the Word of God And as he hath a humane Generation he is subjectum verbi Dei the subject of the Word of God of all the Scriptures of all that was shadowed in the Types and figur'd in the Ceremonies and prepared in the preventions of the Law of all that was foretold by the Prophets of all that the Soule of man rejoyced in and congratulated with the Spirit of God in the Psalms and in the Canticles and in the cheerefull parts of spirituall joy and exultation which we have in the Scriptures Christ is the foundation of all those Scriptures Christ is the burden of all those Songs Christ was in sermone then then he was in the Word The joy of those holy Persons which are noted in the Scriptures to have expressed their joy at the byrth of Christ in such spirituall Hymns and Songs is expressed so as that we may see their joy was in this That that was now in actu that was performed that was done which was before in sermone in the Promise in the Word in the Covenant of God They rejoyced that Christ was borne but principally that all was done so sicut locutus as God had spoken before that all should be done done of the seede of a Woman as God had said in Paradice done by a Virgin as God had said by Esai done at Bethlehem as he had said by Micheas and done at that time as he had said by Daniel Sicut locutus est sayes Zacharie in his exultation All is performed as he hath spoke by the mouth of the Prophets which have beene since the World began There in the Word the Gospell begins and there and there only it shall continue for ever as long as there is any spirituall seed of Abraham any men willing to embrace it and apply it as the blessed Virgin expresses it when her Soul magnifies the Lord and her Spirit rejoyces in God her Saviour sicut locutus as God hath spoken to our Fathers to Abraham and his seed for ever so then there never was there never must be any other Gospel then is in sermone in the written word of God in the Scriptures The particular comfort that a Christian conceives as it is determined and contracted in himself is principally in this that Christ is come his comfort is in this that he is now saved by him and he might have this comfort though Christ had never been in sermone though he had never been prophesied never spoken of before But yet the proof and ground of this comfort to himself that is the assurance that he hath That this was that Christ that was to save us and then the munition and artillery by which he is to overthrow the forces of the enemy the arguments and objections of Jews Gentils and Hereticks who deny this Christ in whose salvation he trusts to have then any such Saviour And then the Band of the Church the Communion of Saints by which we should prove That the Patriarchs and the Apostles our Fathers in the old and new Testament doe belong all to one Church this assurance in our self this ability to prove it to others this joyning of these two walls to make up the houshold of the faithfull This is not only that that the summe of the Gospel is risen in that Christ is come but in this that he is come sicut locutus est as God had spoken of him and promised him by the mouth of his Prophets from the beginning as he was in sermone in the word In the first Creation when God made heaven and earth that making was not in sermone for that could not be prophesied before because there was no being before neither is it said that at that Creation God said any thing but only creavit God made heaven and earth and no men so that that which was made sine sermone without speaking was only matter without form heaven without light and earth without any productive virtue or disposition to bring forth and to nourish creatures But when God came to those specifique formes and to those creatures wherein he would be sensibly glorified after they were made in sermone by his word Dixit facta sunt God spake and so all things were made Light and Firmament Land and Sea Plants and Beasts and Fishes and Fowls were made all in sermone by his word But when God came to the best of his creatures to Man Man was not only made in verbo as the rest were by speaking a word but by a Consultation by a Conference by a Counsell faciamus hominem let us make Man there is a more expresse manifestation of divers persons speaking together of a concurrence of the Trinity and not of a saying only but a mutuall saying not of a Proposition only but of a Dialogue in the making of Man The making of matter alone was sine verbo without any word at all the making of lesser creatures was in verbo
by saying by speaking the making of Man was in in sermone in a consultation In this first Creation thus presented there is a shadow a representation of our second Creation our Regeneration in Christ and of the saving knowledge of God for first there is in Man a knowledge of God sine sermone without his word in the book of Creatures Non sunt loquelae sayes David Psal 19. They have no language they have no speech and yet they declare the glory of God The correspondence and relation of all parts of Nature to one Author the consinuity and dependance of every piece and joynt of this frame of the world the admirable order the immutable succession the lively and certain generation and birth of effects from their Parents the causes in all these though there be no sound no voice yet we may even see that it is an excellent song an admirable piece of musick and harmony and that God does as it were play upon this Organ in his administration and providence by naturall means and instruments and so there is some kind of creation in us some knowledge of God imprinted sine sermone without any relation to his word But this is a Creation as of heaven and earth which were dark and empty and without form till the Spirit of God moved and till God spoke Till there came the Spirit the breath of Gods mouth the word of God it is but a faint twilight it is but an uncertain glimmering which we have of God in the Creature But in sermone in his word when we come to him in his Scriptures we finde better and nobler Creatures produced in us clearer notions of God and more evident manifestations of his power and of his goodness towards us for if we consider him in his first word sicut locutus ab initio as he spoke from the beginning in the Old Testament from thence we cannot only see but feel and apply a Dixit fiat lux that God hath said let there be light and that there is a light produced in us by which we see that this world was not made by chance for then it could not consist in this order and regularity and we see that it was not eternall for if it were eternall as God and so no Creature then it must be God too we see it had a beginning a beginning of nothing and all from God So we find in our self a fiat lux that there is such a light produced And there we may find a fiat firmamentum that there is a kind of firmament produced in us a knowledge of a difference between Heaven and Earth and that there is in our constitutions an earthly part a body and a heavenly part a soul and an understanding as a firmament to separate distinguish and discern between these So also may we find a congregenter aquae that God hath said Let there be a sea a gathering a confluence of all such means as are necessary for the attaining of salvation that is that God from the beginning settled and established a Church in which he was alwayes carefull to minister to man means of eternall happiness The Church is that Sea and into that Sea we launched the water of Baptism To contract this sine sermone till God spake in his Creatures only we have but a faint and uncertain and generall knowledge of God in sermone when God comes to speak at first in the Old Testament though he come to more particulars yet it was in dark speeches and in vails and to them who understood best and saw clearest into Gods word still it was but de futuro by way of promise and of a future thing But when God comes to his last work to make Man to make up Man that is to make Man a Christian by the Gospel when he comes not to a fiat homo Let there be a Man as he proceeded in the rest but to a faciamus hominem Let us make Man Then he calls his Sonne to him and sends him into the world to suffer death the death of the Crosse for our salvation And he calls the Holy Ghost to him and sends him to teach us all truth and apply that which Christ suffered for our souls to our souls God leaves the Nations the Gentiles under the non locutus est he speaks not at all to them but in the speechless creatures He leaves the Jewes under the locutus est under the killing letter of the Law and their stubborn perverting thereof And he comes to us sicut locutus est in manifesting to us that our Messias Christ Jesus is come and come according to the promise of God and the foretelling of all his Prophets for that is our safe anchorage in all storms that our Gospel is in sermone that all things are done so as God had foretold they should be done that we have infallible marks given us before by which we may try all that is done after All the word of God then conduces to the Gospel the Old Testament is a preparation and a poedagogie to the New All the word belongs to the Gospell and all the Gospell is in the word nothing is to be obtruded to our faith as necessary to salvation except it be rooted in the Word And as the locutus est that is the promises that God hath made to us in the Old Testament and the sicut locutus est that is the accomplishing of those promises to us in the New-Testament are thus applyable to us so is this especially Quod adhuc loquitur that God continues his speech and speaks to us every day still we must hear Evangelium in sermone the Gospel in the Word in the Word so as we may hear it that is the Word preached for howsoever it be Gospel in it self it is not Gospel to us if it be not preached in the Congregation neither though it be preached to the Congregation is it Gospel to me except I find it work upon my understanding and my faith and my conscience A man may believe that there shall be a Redeemer and he may give an Historicall assent that there hath been a Redeemer that that Redeemer is come he may have heard utrumque sermonem both Gods wayes of speaking both his voices both his languages his promises in the Old Testament his performances in the New Testament and yet not hear him speak to his own soul Ferme Apostoli plus laborarunt says S. Chrys It cost the Apostles and their Successors the preachers of the Gospell more paines and more labour ut persuaderent hominibus dona Dei iis indulta To perswade men that this mercy of God and these merits of Christ Jesus were intended to them and directed upon them in particular then to perswade them that such things were done they can beleeve the promise and the performance in the generall but they cannot finde the application thereof in particular the voice that is neerest us we least
the world and to rule the world when God plac'd him in 〈◊〉 Paradise He commanded him to dress Paradise and to keep Paradise when God plac'd him children in the land of promise he enjoyned them to fight his battails against Idolatry and to destroy Idolators to every body some errand some task for his glory and thou commest from him into this world as though he had said nothing to thee at parting but go and do as thou shalt see cause go and do as thou seest other men do and serve me so far and save thine owne Soul so far as the times and the places and the persons with whom thou doest converse will conveniently admit Gods way is positive and thine is privative God made every thing something and thou mak'st the best of things man nothing and because thou canst not annihilate the world altogether as though thou hadst God at an advantage in having made an abridgment of the world in man there in that abridgment thou wilt undermine him and make man man as far as thou canst man in thy self nothing He that qualifies himself for nothing does so He whom we can call nothing is nothing this whole world is one intire creature one body and he that is nothing may be excremental nailes to scratch and gripe others he may be excremental hairs for ornament or pleasurableness of meeting but he is no limb of this intire body no part of Gods universal creature the world Gods own name is I am Being is Gods name and nothing is so contrary to God as to be nothing Be something or else thou canst do nothing and till thou have said this saies our text that is done something in a lawful calling thou canst not sleep Stephens sleep not die in peace Sis aliquid propose something determine thy self upon somehing be profess something that was our first and then our second consideration is hoc age do seriously do scedulously do sincerely the duties of that calling Hoc Age. He that stands in a place and does not the duty of that place is but a statue in that place and but a statue without an inscription Posterity shall not know him nor read who he was In nature the body frames and forms the place for the place of the natural body is that proxima arcis superficies that inward superficies of the air that invests and clothes and apparals that body and obeys and follows and succeeds to the dimensions thereof In naturet he body makes the place but in grace the place makes the body The person must actuate it self dilate extend and propagate it self according to the dimensions of the place by filling it in the execution of the duties of it Plinie delivers us the history of al the great Masters in the art of painting L. 35. C. 3. He tels us who began with the extremities and the out lines at first who induc'd colors after that who after super-induc'd shadows who brought in Argutias vultus as he cals them not only the countenance but the meaning of the countenance all that so exquisitely that as he saies there Divinantes diem mortis dixerunt Physiognomers would tell a mans fortune as well by the picture as by the life he tels us quis pinxit quae pingi non possunt who first adventured to express inexpressible things Tonitrua perturbationes animas they would paint thunder which was not to be seen but heard and affections and the mind the Soul which produc'd those affections But for the most part he tels us all the way in what places there remained some of their pieces to be seen and copied in his time This is still that that dignifies all their works that they wrought so as that posterity was not only delighted but improv'd and better'd in that art by their works For truly that 's one great benefit that arises out of our doing the duties of our own places in our own time that as a perfume intended only for that room where the entertainment is to be made breaths upward and downward and round about it so the doing of the duties of the place by men that move in middle Sphears breath upwards and downwards and about too that is cast a little shame upon inferiors if they doe not so and a little remembrance upon Superiors that they should doe so and a thanksgiving to Almighty God for them that doe so And so it is an improvement of the present and an Instruction and a Catechisme to future times The duty in this Text is expressed and limited in speaking Cum dixisset When hee had said this he fell a sleepe and truly so literally so in speaking and no more it stretches far Many duties in many great places consist in speaking Ours doe so And therefore when Vices abound in matter of Manners and Schismes abound in matter of Opinions Antequam dixerimus hoc till wee have said this that is that that belongeth to that duty wee cannot sleepe Stephen's sleepe wee cannot die in peace The Judges duty lies much in this too for hee is bound not only to give a hearing to a Cause but to give an End a Judgement in the Cause too And so for all them whose duty lies in speaking from him who is to counsell his friend to him who is to counsell his Master in the family for Job professes that hee never refused the counsell of his Servant Antequam dixerint till they have said this that is still that that belongs to that duty they cannot sleep Stephen's sleepe they cannot die in peace and when wee ascend to the consideration of higher Persons they and wee speake not one language for our speaking is but speaking but with great Persons Acta Apothegmata their Apothegms are their Actions and wee heare their words in their deeds God whose Image and Name they beare does so If wee consider God as a second Person in the Godhead the Sonne of God God of God so God is Logos Sermo Verbum Oratio The Word Saying Speaking But God considered primarily and in himself so is Actus purus all Action all doing In the Creation there is a Dixit in Gods mouth still God sayes something but evermore the Dixit is accompanied with a Fiat Somthing was to be done as well as said The Apostles are Apostles in that capacity as they were sent to preach that 's Speaking But when wee come to see their proceeding it is in Praxi in the Acts of the Apostles In those Persons whose duty lies in speaking there is an Antequam dixerint in those where it lies in Action there is an Antequam fecerint till that be said and done which belongs to their particular callings they cannot sleepe Stephen's sleepe they cannot die in peace and therefore Non dicas de Deo tuo gravis mihi est Ambro. Ep. 17. say not of thy God that he lies heavy upon thee if he exact the duties of thy plaat thy hands Nec
dicas de loco tuo inutilis mihi est say not of thy place that it is good for nothing if thou must be put to doe the duties of the place in the place for it is good for this that when thou hast done that thou mayst sleepe Stephen's sleepe die in Peace Sis aliquid Be something that was our first and then hoc age doe truly the duties of that place without pretermitting thine own without intermedling with others which was our second and then our third consideration is Sis aliquis Be sombody be like sombody propose some good example in thy calling and profession to imitate Sis aliquis It was the counsell of that great little Philosopher Epictetus whensoever thou undertakest any action to consider what a Socrates or a Plato what a good and a wise man would doe in that Case and to doe conformably to that One great Orator Latinus Rufus proposed to himselfe Cicero for his example and Cicero propounded Demosthenes and hee Pericles and Pericles Pisistratus and so there was a concatenation a genealogie a pedegree of a good Orator Hieron Habet unumquodque propositum principes suos In every Calling in every Profession a man may finde some exemplar some leading men to follow The King hath a Josias and the beggar hath a Job and every man hath some But here wee must not pursue particulars but propose to all him whom our Text proposes Saint Stephen Stephanus and in him wee offer you first his name Stephen Stephen Stephanos is a leading an exemplar name a Significative a Propheticall a Sacramentall a Catechisticall name a Name that carries much instruction with it Our Countryman Bede takes it to be an Hebrew name and it signifies saith hee Normam vestram Your Rule Your Law To obey the Law to follow to embrace the Law is an acceptable service to God especially the invariable Law the Law of God himselfe But wee are sure that this name Stephen Stephanos signifies a Crowne to obey the Crowne to follow to serve the Crowne is an acceptable service to God especially the immarcessible Crown the Crown of Glory Nomen Omen scarce any man hath a name but that name is Legal and Historicall to him His very name remembers him of some rules and lawes of his actions So his name is legall and his name remembers him of some good men of the same name and so his name is historicall Nomina Debita In the old formularies of the Civill Law if a man left so many names to his Executors they were so many specialties for debts Our Names are Debts every man owes the world the signification of his name and of all his names every addition of honour or of office layes a new Debt a new Obligation upon him and his first name his Christian-Name above all For when new names are given to men in the Scriptures that doth not abolish or extinguish the old Jacob was called Jacob after God had called him Israel Gedeon Gedeon after he was called Jerubaal and Simon when he was Peter too was called Simon Changes of Office and additions of Honour must not extinguish our Christian Name The duties of our Christianity and our Religion must preponderate and weigh down the duties of all other places and for all together Saint Gregory presents us a good use of this diligence to answere our Names Quo quis timet magis ne quod dicitur non esset eo plus quam dicitur erit The more a man is afraid that hee is not worthy of the name hee beares whether the name of office or his Christian-Name the better Officer and the better Christian he will be for that feare and that solicitude and therefore it is an usefull and an applyable Prayer for great Persons which that Father makes in their behalfe Praesta quaesumus Domine ut quod in ore hominum sumus in conspectu tuo esse valeamus Grant O Lord that wee may alwayes be such in thine eyes as wee are in their tongues that depend upon us and justifie their acclamations with thy approbations And so far Stephens name as his name signifies the Law and as his name signifies the reward of fulfilling the Law a Crown hath carried us to the consideration of the duty of answering the signification of our names But then there are other passages in his History and Actions that carries us farther First then we receive Saint Stephen to have been Saint Paul's kinsman in the flesh and to have been his fellow pupill under Gamaliel Discipulus and to have been equall to him at least in the foundations in natural faculties and in the super-edifications too in learnings of acquisition and study And then to have had this great advantage above him That hee applied himselfe as a Disciple to Christ before Saint Paul did and in that profession became so eminent for all the Sects the Libertines themselves taking the liberty to dispute against him Act. 6.9 they were not able to resist the wisedome and the Spirit by which hee spake as that his Cosin Paul then but Saul envied him most and promov'd and assisted at his execution For upon those words but two verses before our Text That they that stoned Stephen laid down their clothes at Saul 's feet Saint Augustine sayes 7.58 In manu omnium eum lapidavit That it was Saul that stoned Stephen though by the hands of other executioners Men of the best extraction and families Men of the best parts and faculties Men of the best education and proficiencies owe themselves to God by most obligations Him that dyes to day God shall not only aske where is that Soule Is it as cleane as I made it at first No stayn of Sin or is it as clean as I wash'd it in Baptisme No sting No venome of original sinne in it Or is it as clean as I left it when wee met last at the Sacrament No guiltinesse of actuall sinne in it God shall not only aske this Where is that Soul Nor only aske where is that Body Is it come back in that Virginal integrity in which I made it Or is it no farther departed from that then Marriage which I made for it hath made it Are those Maritales ineptiae that we may put Luther's words into God's mouth the worst that is faln upon that body God shall not only ask for that Soul and that Body but aske also Where is that Wit that Learning those Arts those languages which by so good education I afforded thee Truly when a weake and ignorant man departs into any vicious way though in that case he doe adhere to the Enemy and doe serve the Devill against God yet he carries away but a single Man and serves but as a common Souldier But he that hath good parts and good education carries a Regiment in his person and Armies and munition for a thousand in himself Though then thy kinsmen in the flesh and
exaltation That as man needed God and God would suffer for man so God should need man and man should suffer for God that after Gods general Commission fac hoc vives do this and thou shalt live I should receive and execute a new Commission Patere hoc vives abundantius suffer this and you shall have life and life more abundantly Joh. 10.10 as our Saviour speaks in the Gospel that when I shall ask my soul Davids question Psal 116.12 Quid retribuam what shall I render to the Lord I shall not rest in Davids answer Accipiam Calicem I will take the cup of salvation in applying his blood to my soul but proceed to an Effundam Calicem I will give God a Cup a cup of my blood that whereas to me the meanest of Gods servants it is honor enough to be believed for Gods sake God should be believed for my sake and his Gospel the better accepted because the feal of my blood is set to it that that dew which should water his plants the plants of his Paradise his Church should drop from my veines and that sea that red sea which should carry up his bark his Ark to the heavenly Jerusalem should flow from me This is that that poures joy even into my gladness and glory even into mine honor and peace even into my security that exaltes and improves every good thing Colos 1 24. Phil 2.17 every blessing that was in me before and makes even my creation glorious and my redemption precious and puts a farther value upon things inestimable before that I shall fulfil the sufferings of Christ in my flesh and that I shall be offerd up for his Church 1 Pet. 2.21 though not for the purchasing of it yet for the fencing of it though not by way of satisfaction as he was but by way of example and imitation as he was too Whether that be absolutely true or no which an Author of much curiosity in the Roman Church saies Pâ—rrecta in legem Not itio ultima that Inter tot millia millium amongst so many thousand thousands of Martyrs in the Primitive Church it cannot be said that ever one lack'd burial I know not whence he raises that certainly no Martyr ever lack'd a grave in the wounds of his Saviour no nor a tomb a monument a memorial in this life in that sense wherein our Saviour speaks in the Gospel That no man shall leave house Mar. 10.30 or Brother or wife for him but he shall receive an hundred fold in this life Christ does not mean he shall have a hundred houses or a hundred wives or a hundred Brethren but that that comfort which he lost in losing those things shall be multiplied to him in that proportion even in this life In which words of our Saviour as we see the dignity and reward of Martyrdome so we see the extent and latitude and compass of Martyrdome too that not only loss of life but loss of that which we love in this life not only the suffering of death but the suffering of Crosses in our life contracts the Name and entitles us to the reward of Martyrdome All Martyrdome is not a Smithfeild Martyrdome to burn for religion To suffer injuries and upon advantages offerd not to revenge those injuries is a Court Martyrdome To resist outward tentations from power and inward tentations from affections in matter of Judicature between party and party is a Westminster Martyrdome To seem no richer then they are not to make their states better when they make their private bargains with one another and to seem so rich as they are and not to make their states worse when they are call'd upon to contribute to publick services this is an Exchange-Martyrdome And there is a Chamber-Martyrdome a Bosome-Martyrdome too Habet pudicitia servata Martyrium suum Hierome Chastity is a dayly Martyrdome and so all fighting of the Lords battails all victory over the Lords Enemies in our own bowels all chearful bearing of Gods Crosses and all watchful crossing of our own immoderate desires is a Martyrdome acceptable to God and a true copy of our pattern Stephen so it be inanimated with that which was even the life and soul and price of all Stephens actions and passions that is fervent charity which is the last contemplation in which we propose him for your Example that as he you also may be just paymasters in discharging the debt which you owe the world in the signification of your Names and early Disciples and appliers of your selves to Christ Jesus and humble servants of his without inordinate ambition of high places and constant Martyrs 1 Cor. 15.31 in dying every day as the Apostles speaks and charitable intercessors and Advocates and Mediators to God even for your heaviest Enemies We have a story in the Ecclesiastical story of Nicephorus and Sapricius formerly great friends and after as great Enemies Charitas Nicephorus relented first and sued often for reconciliation to Sapricius but was still refused he was refused even upon that day when Sapricius being led out to execution as a Martyr for the Christian religion Nicephorus upon the way put himself in his way and upon his knees beg'd a reconciliation and obtained it not The effect of his uncharitableness was this Sapricius when he came to the stake recanted and renounced the christian religion and lost the crown of Martyrdome and Nicephorus who came forth upon another ocasion professed Christ and was receiv'd to the Coronation of Martyrdome Though I give my body to be burned and have not charity it profiteth me nothing saies the Apostle but if I have not charity I shall not be admitted to that Sacrifice to give my body to be burnt St. Augustine seems to have delighted himself with that saying for he saies it more then once Si Stephanus non orasset if St. Stephen had not praid for Saul the Church had had no Paul and may we not justly add to that If Stephen had not praid for Saul Heaven had had no Stephen or Stephen had had no Heaven suffering it self is but a stubborness and a rigid and stupid standing under an affliction it is not a humiliation a bending under Gods hand if it be not done in charity Stephen had a pattern and he is a pattern Christ was his and he is our Example ut hoc dicam tibi at te primo audivi saies St. Augustine in Stephen's person to Christ Lord thou taughtest me this prayer upon the cross receive it now from me as the Father receiv'd it from thee then He prayed for his enemies as for himself and thus much more earnestly for them then for himself that he prayed for himself standing and kneeling for them Stephen was the Plantiff and when he comes to his Nolo prosequi and to release what hath the Judg to say to the Defendant If a potent adversary oppress thee to ruine to death if
thou pass away uncharitably towards him thou raisest an everlasting Trophee for thine enemy and prepar'st him a greater triumph then he proposed to himself he meant to triumph over thy body and thy fortune and thou hast provided him a triumph over thy Soul too by thy uncharitableness and he may survive to repent and to be pardoned at Gods hands and thou who art departed in uncharitableness canst not he shall be saved that ruind thee unjustly and thou who wast unjustly ruind by him shalt perish irrecoverably And so we have done with all those peeces which constitute our first part Sis aliquid profess something Hoc age do seriously the duties of that profession and then Sis aliquis propose some good man in that profession for thine immitation as we have proposed Stephen for general duties falling upon all professions And we shall pass now to our other part which we must all play and play in earnest that conclusion in which we shall but begin our everlasting state our death When he had said this he fell asleep Second part Mors impti Here I shall only present to you two Pictures two pictures in little two pictures of dying men and every man is like one of these and may know himself by it he that dies in the Bath of a peaceable he that dies upon the wrack of a distracted conscience When the devil imprints in a man a mortuum me esse non curo I care not though I were dead it were but a candle blown out and there were an end of all where the Devil imprints that imagination God will imprint an Emori nolo a loathness to die and fearful apprehension at his transmigration As God expresses the bitterness of death in an ingemination morte morietur in a conduplication of deaths he shall die and die die twice over So aegrotando aegrotabit in sicknesse he shall be sick twice sick body-sick and soul-sick too sense-sick and conscience-sick together when as the sinnes of his body have cast sicknesses and death upon his Soule so the inordinate sadnesse of his Soule shall aggravate and actuate the sicknesse of his body His Physitian ministers and wonders it works not He imputes that to flegme and ministers against that and wonders again that it works not He goes over all the humors and all his Medicines and nothing works for there lies at his Patients heart a dampe that hinders the concurrence of all his faculties to the intention of the Physitian or the virtue of the Physick Loose not O blessed Apostle thy question upon this Man 1 Cor. 15.55 O Death where is thy sting O Grave where is thy victory for the sting of Death is in every limb of his body and his very body is a victorious grave upon his Soule And as his Carcas and his Coffin shall lie equally insensible in his grave so his Soule which is but a Carcas and his body which is but a Coffin of that Carcas shall be equally miserable upon his Death-bed And Satan's Commissions upon him shall not be signed by Succession as upon Job first against his goods and then his Servants and then his children and then himselfe but not at all upon his life but he shall apprehend all at once Ruine upon himselfe and all his ruine upon himselfe and all him even upon his life both his lives the life of this and the life of the next world too Yet a drop would redeeme a shoure and a Sigh now a Storme then Yet a teare from the eye would save the bleeding of the heart and a word from the mouth now a roaring or which may be worse a silence of consternation of stupefaction of obduration at that last houre Truly if the death of the wicked ended in Death yet to scape that manner of death were worthy a Religious life To see the house fall and yet be afraid to goe out of it To leave an injur'd world and meet an incensed God To see oppression and wrong in all thy professions and to foresee ruine and wastefulnesse in all thy Posterity and Lands gotten by one sin in the Father molder away by another in the Sonne To see true figures of horror and ly and fancy worse To begin to see thy sins but then and finde every sin at first sight in the proportion of a Gyant able to crush thee into despair To see the Blood of Christ imputed not to thee but to thy Sinnes To see Christ crucified and not crucifyed for thee but crucified by thee To heare this blood speake not better things then the blood of Abel but lowder for vengeance then the blood of Abel did This is his picture that hath been Nothing that hath done nothing that hath proposed no Stephen No Law to regulate No example to certifie his Conscience But to him that hath done this Death is but a Sleepe Many have wondred at that note of Saint Chrysostom's Mors Piorum That till Christ's time death was called death plainly literally death but after Christ death was called but sleepe for indeede in the old-Testament before Christ I thinke there is no one metaphor so often used as Sleepe for Death and that the Dead are said to Sleepe Therefore wee wonder sometimes that Saint Chrysostome should say so But this may be that which that holy Father intended in that Note that they in the old-Testament who are said to have slept in Death are such as then by Faith did apprehend and were fixed upon Christ such as were all the good men of the old-Testament and so there will not bee many instances against Saint Chrysostome's note That to those that die in Christ Death is but a Sleepe to all others Death is Death literally Death Now of this dying Man that dies in Christ that dies the Death of the Righteous that embraces Death as a Sleepe must wee give you a Picture too These is not a minute left to do it not a minutes sand Is there a minutes patience Bee pleased to remember that those Pictures which are deliver'd in a minute from a print upon a paper had many dayes weeks Moneths time for the graving of those Pictures in the Copper So this Picture of that dying Man that dies in Christ that dies the death of the Righteous that embraces Death as a Sleepe was graving all his life All his publique actions were the lights and all his private the shadowes of this Picture And when this Picture comes to the Presse this Man to the streights and agonies of Death thus he lies thus he looks this he is His understanding and his will is all one faculty He understands Gods purpose upon him and he would not have God's purpose turned any other way hee sees God will dissolve him and he would faine be dissolved to be with Christ His understanding and his will is all one faculty His memory and his fore-sight ate fixt and concentred upon one object upon goodnesse Hee remembers that
hee hath proceeded in the sinceritie of a good Conscience in all the wayes of his calling and he foresees that his good name shall have the Testimony and his Posterity the support of the good men of this world His sicknesse shall be but a fomentation to supple and open his Body for the issuing of his Soule and his Soule shall goe forth not as one that gave over his house but as one that travelled to see and learne better Architecture and meant to returne and re-edifie that house according to those better Rules And as those thoughts which possesse us most awake meete us againe when we are asleepe So his holy-thoughts having been alwaies conversant upon the directing of his family the education of his Children the discharge of his place the safety of the State the happinesse of the King all his life when he is faln a sleepe in Death all his Dreames in that blessed Sleepe all his devotions in heaven shall be upon the same Subjects and he shal solicite him that sits upon the Throne the Lamb God for Christ Jesus sake to blesse all these with his particular blessings for so God giveth his beloved sleep so as that they enjoy the next world and assist this So then the Death of the Righteous is a sleepe first Ps 127.2 Somnus as it delivers them to a present rest Now men sleepe not well fasting Nor does a fasting Conscience a Conscience that is not nourish'd with a Testimony of having done well come to this Sleepe Eccles 5.11 but dulcis somnus operanti The sleepe of a labouring man is sweete To him that laboureth in his calling even this sleepe of Death is welcome When thou lyest downe thou shalt not be afraid saith Salomon Pro. 3.24 when thy Physician sayes Sir you must keepe your bed thou shalt not be afraid of that sick-bed And then it followes And thy sleepe shall be sweet unto thee Thy sicknesse welcome and thy death too for in those two David seems to involve all Ps 4.8 I will both lay me downe in Peace and sleep imbrace patiently my death-bed and Death it selfe So then this death is a sleepe as it delivers us to a present Rest Expergesactiâ— And then lastly it is so also as it promises a future waiting in a glorious Resurrection To the wicked it is far from both Of them God sayes I will make them drunke Jer. 51.39 and they shall sleepe a perpetuall sleepe and not awake They shall have no part in the Second Resurrection But for them rhat have slept in Christ as Christ sayd of Lazarus Lazarus Sleepeth but I goe that I may wake him out of sleep Jo. 11.11 he shall say to his father Let me goe that I may wake them who have slept so long in expectation of my coming 1 Thes 4.14 And Those that sleep in Jesus Christ saith the Apostle will God bring with him not only fetch them out of the dust when he comes but bring them with him that is declare that they have beene in his hands ever since they departed out of this world They shall awake as Jacob did and say as Jacob said Surely the Lord is in this place and this is no other but the house of God and the gate of heaven And into that gate they shall enter and in that house they shall dwell where there shall be no Cloud nor Sun no darkenesse nor dazling but one equall light no noyse nor silence but one equall musick no fears nor hopes but one equal possession no foes nor friends but and equall communion and Identity no ends nor beginnings but one equall eternity Keepe us Lord so awake in the duties of our Callings that we may thus sleepe in thy Peace and wake in thy glory and change that infallibility which thou affordest us here to an Actuall and undeterminable possession of that Kingdome which thy Sonne our Saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the in-estimable price of his incorruptible Blood Amen Serm. 16. A SERMON Preached at White-hall February 22. 1629. SERMON XVI Matth. 6.21 For where your Treasure is there will your heart be also I Have seen minute glasses glasses so short liv'd if I were to preach upon this text to such a glass it were enough for half the Sermon enough to show the worldly man his Treasure and the object of his heart For where your Treasure is there will your heart be also to call his eye to that minute glass and to tell him there flows there flies your treasure and your heart with it but if I had a secular glass a glass that would run an age if the two Hemesphears of the world were composed in the form of such a glass and all the world calcin'd and burnt to ashes and all the ashes and sands and atoms of the world put into that glass it would not be enough to tell the godly man who this treasure and the object of his heart is a Parot or a Stare docil a birds and of pregnant imitation will sooner be brought to relate to us the wisedome of a Council table then any Ambrose or any Chrisostome men that have gold and hony in their Names shall tell us what the sweetness what the treasure of heaven is and what that mans peace that hath set his heart upon that treasure As nature hath given us certain Elements and all bodies are composed of them and art hath given us a certain Alphabet of letters and all words are composed of them so our blessed Saviour in these three Chapters of this Gospel hath given us a Sermon of texts of which all our Sermons may be composed all the Articles of our Religion all the Canons of our Church all the injunctions of our Princes all the Homilies of our Fathers all the body of Divinity is in these three Chapters in this one Sermon in the mount where as the Preacher concludes his Sermon with exhortations to practise 7.24 whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and does them so he fortifies his Sermon with his own practise which is a blessed and powerful method for as soon as he came out of the pulpit 8.1 as soon as he came down from the mount he cured the first Leper he saw and that without all vain glory for he forbad him to tell any man of it Of this noble body of Divinity one fair limb is in this text where your treasure is there will your heart be also Imediately before our blessed Saviour had forbidden us the laying up of treasure in this world upon this reason that here moths and rust corrupt Divisio and theeves break in and steal there the reason is because the money may be lost but here in our text it is because the man may be lost for where your treasure is there will your heart be also so that this is equivalent to that Mat. 15.26 what profit to gain the whole world
and lose a mans own soul Our text therefore stands as that proverbial that Hieroglifical letter Pithagoras his y that hath first a stalk a stem to fix it self and then spreads into two beams The stem the stalk of this letter this y is in the first word of the text that particle of argumentation for take heed where you place your treasure for it concernes you much where your heart be placed and where your treasure is there your heart will be also and then opens this Symbolical this Catechistical letter this y into two hornes two beams two branches One broader but on the left hand denoting the treasures of this world the other narrower but on the right hand treasure laid up for the world co come be sure ye turn the right way for where your treasure is there will your heart be also First we bind our selves to the stake to the stalk to the staffe Cor fixum the stem of this Simbolical letter consider in it that firmness fixation of the heart which God requires God requires no unatural thing at mans hand whatsoever God requires of man man may find imprinted in his own nature written in his own heart This firmness then this fixation of the heart is natural to man every man does set his heart upon something and Christ in this place does not so much call upon him that he would do so set his heart upon something as to be sure he set it upon the right object and yet truly even this first work to recollect our selves to recapitulate our selves to assemble and muster our selves and to bend our hearts intirely and intensly directly earnestly emphatically energetically upon something is by reason of the various fluctuation of our corrupt nature and the infinite multiplicity of objects such a work as man needs to be called upon and excited to do it therefore is there no words in the Scripture so often added to the heart as that of Intireness Toto corde omni corde pleno corde do this withal thy heart with a whole heart with a full heart for whatsoever is indivisible is immoveable a Point because it cannot be denied cannot be moved the Center the Poles God himself because he is indivisible is therfore immoveable and when the heart of man is knit up in such an intirenes upon one object as that it does not flatter nor subdivide it self then and then only is it fixed And that 's the happiness in which David fixes himself not in his Cor paratim my heart is preparad O God my heart is prepared Psal 57 7. for so it may be prepared even by God himself and yet scattered and subdivided by us But in his Cor fixum My heart is fixed O God my heart is fixed awake my glory awake my Psaltery and Harp I my self will awake early Psal 108 1. and praise thee O Lord among the people A triumph that David returned to more then once for he repeats the same words with the same pathetical earnestness again so that his glory his victory his triumph his peace his acquiescence his al-sufficiency in himself consisted in this that his heart was fixed for this fixation of the heart argued and testified an intireness in it when God saies sili da mihi Cor my Son give me thy heart God means the whole man 1 Cor. 12.17 though the Apostle saith The eye is not the man nor the ear is not the man he does not say the heart is not the man the heart is the man the heart is all And as Moses was not satisfied with that Commission that Pharaoh offered him Exod. 10 8. that all the men might go to offer Sacrifice but Moses would have all their young and all their old all their Sons and all their Daughters all their flocks and all their heards he would have all so when God saies Fili da mihi cor my Son give me thy heart God will not be satisfied with the eye if I contemplate him in his works for that 's but the godliness of the natural man nor satisfied with the ear with hearing many Sermons for that 's but a new invention a new way of making beads as if the Papist think all done if he have said so many Aves I think all done If I have heard so many Sermons But God requires the heart the whole man all the faculties of that man for only that that is entire and indivisible is immoveable and that that God cals for and we seek for in this stem of Pithagoras his Symbolical letter is this immoveableness this fixation of the heart and yet even against this though it be natural there are many impediments we shall reduce them to a few to three these three First there is Cor nullum a meer heartlesness no heart at all incogitancy inconsideration and then there is Cor cor Cor duplex a double heart a doubtful a distracted heart which is not incogitancy nor inconsideration but purplexity and irresolution and lastly Cor vagum a wandring a wayfaring a weary heart which is neither inconsideration nor irresolution but inconstancy and this is a trinity against our unity three enemies to that fixation and intireness of the heart which God loves inconsideration when we do not debate irresolution when we do not determine inconstancy when we do not persevere and upon each of these Cor nullum be pleased to stop your devotion a few minuts This first is Cor nullum no heart at all incogitancy thoughtlesness An idle body is a disease in a state an idle soul is a monster in a man That body that will not work must not eat 2 Thes 3.10 but starve that soul that does not think nor consider cannot be said to Actuate which is the proper operation of the Soul but to Evaporate not to work in the body but to breath and smoak through the body We have seen estates of private men wasted by inconsideration as well as by riot and a soul may perish by a thoughtlesness as well as by ill thoughts God takes it as ill to be slighted as to be injur'd and God is as much slighted in Corde nullo in our thoughtlesness and inconsideration as he is opposed and provoked in Corde maligno in a rebellious heart There is a good nullification of the heart a good bringing of the heart to nothing for the fire of Gods spirit may take hold of me and as the Disciples that went with Christ to Emaus Luk. 24. were affected my heart may burn within me when the Scriptures are opened that is when Gods Judgments are denounced against my sin and this heat may overcome my former frigidity and coldness and overcome my succeeding tepidity and lukewarmness and may bring my heart to a mollification to a tenderness as Job found it The Almighty hath troubled me and made my heart soft for there are hearts of clay as well as hearts of wax hearts whom
kindled Num. 11.15 there and only their doth Moses attribute even to God himself the feminine sex and speaks to God in the original language as if he should have call'd him Deam Iratam an angry she God all that is good then either in the love of man or woman is in this love for he is expressed in both sexes man and woman and all that can be ill in the love of either sex is purged away for the man is no other man then Christ Jesus and the woman no other woman then wisdom her self even the uncreated wisdom of God himself Now all this is but one person the person that professes love who is the other who is the beloved of Christ is not so easily discern'd in the love between persons in this world and of this world we are often deceived with outward signs we often mis-call and mis-judg civil respects and mutual courtesies and a delight in one anothers conversation and such other indifferent things as only malignity and curiosity and self-guiltiness makes to be misinterpretable we often call these love but neither amongst our selves much less between Christ and our selves are these outward appearances alwaies signs of love This person then this beloved soul is not every one to whom Christ sends a loving message or writs too for his letters his Scriptures are directed to all not every one he wishes well to and swears that he does so for so he doth to all As I live saith the Lord I would not the death of a Sinner not every one that he sends jewels and presents to for they are often snares to corrupt as well as arguments of love not though he admit them to his table and supper for even there the Devil entred into Judas with a sop not though he receive them to a kiss for even with that familarity Judas betrayed him not though he betroth himself as he did to the Jews Osc 2.14 sponsabo te mihi in aeternum not though he make jointures in pacto salis in a covenant of salt an everlasting covenant not though he have communicated his name to them which is an act of marriage for to how many hath he said ego dixit Dii estis I have said you are Gods and yet they have been reprobates not all these outward things amount so far as to make us discern who is this beloved person for himself saies of the Israelites to whom he had made all these demonstrations of love yet after for their abominations devorc'd himself from them I have forsaken mine house Jer. 12.7 I have left mine own heritage I have given the dearly beloved of my soul into the hands of her enemies To conclude this person beloved of Christ is only that soul that loves Christ but that belongs to the third branch of this first part which is the mutual love The Affection but first having found the person we are to consider the affection it self the love of this text it is an observation of Origens that though these three words Amor Dilectio and Charitas love and affection and good will be all of one signification in the sctiptures yet saies he wheresoever there is danger of representing to the fancy a lascivious and carnal love the scripture forbears the word love and uses either affection or good will and where there is no such danger the scripture comes directly to this word love of which Origens examples are that when Isaac bent his affections upon Rebecca and Jacob upon Rachel in both places it is dilexit and not amavit Cant 5.8 and when it is said in the Cant. I charge you Daughters of Jerusalem to tell my well-beloved it is not to tel him that she was in love but to tell him quod vulneratae charitatis sum that I am wounded with an affection good will towards him but in this book of Pro. in all the passages between Christ and the beloved soul there is evermore a free use of this word Amor love because it is even in the first apprehension a pure a chast and an undefiled love Eloquia Dominis casta sayes David All the words of the Lord and all their words that love the Lord all discourses all that is spoken to or from the soul is all full of chast love and of the love of chastity Now though this love of Christ to our souls be too large to shut up or comprehend in any definition yet if we content our selves with the definition of the Schools Amare est velle alicui quod bonum est love is nothing but a desire that they whom we love should be happy we may easily discern the advantage and profit which we have by this love in the Text when he that wishes us this good by loving us is author of all good himself and may give us as much as pleases him without impairing his own infinite treasure He loves us as his ancient inheritance as the first amongst his creatures in the creation of the world which he created for us He loves us more as his purchase whom he hath bought with his blood for even man takes most pleasure in things of his own getting But he loves us most for our improvement when by his ploughing up of our hearts and the dew of his grace and the seed of his word we come to give greaâ—â—r cent in the fruit of sanctification than before And since he loves â—s thus and that in him this love is velle bonum a desire that his beloved should be happy what soul amongst us shall doubt that when God hath such an abundant and infinite treasure as the merit and passion of Christ Jesus sufficient to save millions of worlds and yet many millions in this world all the heathen excluded from any interest therein when God hath a kingdome so large as that nothing limits it and yet he hath banished many natural subjects thereof even those legions of Angels which were created in it and are fallen from it what soul amongst us shall doubt but that he that hath thus much and loves thus much will not deny her a portion in the blood of Christ or a room in the kingdome of heaven No soul can doubt it except it have been a witness to it self and be so still that it love not Christ Jesus for that 's a condition necessary And that is the third branch to which we are come now in our order that this love be mutuall I love them c. If any man loves not our Lord Jesus let him be accursed Mutual saies the Apostle Now the first part of this curse is upon the indisposition to love he that loves not at all is first accursed That stupid inconsideration which passes on drowsilie and negligently upon Gods creatures that sullen indifferency in ones disposition to love one thing no more than another not to value not to chuse not to prefer that stoniness that in humanity not to be
given man means and faculties to conceive and understand he hath limited our eyes with a firmament beset with stars our eyes can see no farther he hath limited our understanding in matters of religion with a starry firmament too that is with the knowledg of those things quae ubique quae semper which those stars which he hath kindled in his Church the Fathers and Doctors have ever from the beginning proposed as things necessary to be explicitely believ'd for the salvation of our souls for the eternal decrees of God and his unreveal'd mysteries and the inextricable perplexities of the School they are waters above the firmament here Paul plants and here Apollo waters here God raises up men to convey to us the dew of his grace by waters under the firmament by visible sacraments and by the word so preach'd and so interpreted as it hath been constantly and unanimously from the beginning of the Church And therefore this second day is perfited in the third in the congregentur aquae let the waters be gathered together God hath gathered all the waters all the waters of life in one place that is all the doctrine necessary for the life to come into his Church And then producet terra here in this world are produced to us all herbs and fruits all that is necessary for the soul to feed upon And in this third daies work God repeats here that testimony videt quod bonum he saw that it was good good that here should be a gathering of waters in one place that is no doctrine receiv'd that had not been taught in the Church and videt quod bonum he saw it was good that all herbs and trees should be produced that bore seed all doctrines that were to be proseminated and propagated and to be continued to the end should be taught in the Church but for doctrines which were but to vent the passion of vehement men or to serve the turns of great men for a time which were not seminal doctrines doctrines that bore seed and were to last from the beginning to the end for these interlineary doctrines and marginal which were no part of the first text here 's no testimony that God sees that they are good And In diebus istis if in these two daies the day when God makes thee a firmament shewes thee what thou art to limit thine understanding thy faith upon and the day where God makes thee a sea a collection of the waters showes thee where these necessary things must be taught in the Church if in those daies thou wilt not remember thy Creator it is an irrecoverable Lethargy In the fourth daies work let the making of the Sun to rule the day be the testimony of Gods love to thee in the sun-shine of temporal prosperity and the making of the Moon to shine by night be the refreshing of his comfortable promises in the darkness of adversity then remember that he can make thy sun to set at noon he can blow out thy taper of prosperity when it burns brightest Amos. and he can turn the Moon into blood Act. 2.20 he can make all the promises of the Gospel which should comfort thee in adversity turn into despair and obduration Let the first daies work which was the creation Omnium reptibilium and omnium volatilium of all creeping things and of all flying things produc'd out of water signifie and denote to thee either thy humble devotion in which thou saist of thy self to God vermis ege et non homo I am a worm and no man or let it be the raising of thy soul in that pennas columbae dedisti that God hath given thee the wings of a dove to fly to the wilderness in a retiring from or a resisting of tentations of this world remember still that God can suffer even thy humility to stray and degenerate into an uncomly dejection and stupidity and senselesness of the true dignity and true liberty of a Christian and he can suffer this retiring thy self from the world to degenerate into a contempt and despising of others and an overvaluing of thine own perfections Let the last day in which both man and beasts were made out of the earth but yet a living soul breath'd into man remember thee that this earth which treads upon thee must return to that earth which thou treadst upon thy body that loads thee and oppresses thee to the grave and thy spirit to him that gave it And when the Sabbath day hath also remembred thee that God hath given thee a temporal Sabbath plac'd thee in a land of peace and an ecclesiastical Sabbath plac'd in a Church of peace perfect all in a spirituall Sabbath a conscience of peace by remembring now thy Creator at least in one of these daies of the week of thy regeneration either as thou hast light created in thee in the first day that is thy knowledg of Christ or as thou hast a firmament created in thee the second day that is thy knowledg what to seek concerning Christ things appertaining to faith and salvation or as thou hast a sea created in thee the third day that is a Church where all the knowledg is reserv'd and presented to thee or as thou hast a sun and moon in the fourth day thankfulness in prosperity comfort in adversity or as thou hast reptilem humilitatē or volatilem fiduciam a humiliation in thy self or an exaltation in Christ in thy fift day or as thou hast a contemplation of thy mortality and immortality in the sixth day or a desire of a spiritual Sabbath in the seaventh In those daies remember thou thy Creator Juventutis Now all these daies are contracted into less room in this text In diebus Bechurotheica is either in the daies of thy youth or electionem tuarum in the daies of thy hearts desire when thou enjoyest all that thou couldest wish First therefore if thou wouldest be heard in Davids prayer Delicta juventutis O Lord remember not the sins of my youth remember to come to this prayer In diebus juventutis Ps 25.7 29.4 in the dayes of thy youth Job remembers with much sorrow how he was in the dayes of his youth when Gods providence was upon his Tabernacle and it is a late but a sad consideration to remember with what tenderness of conscience what scruples what remorces we entred into sins in our youth how much we were afraid of all degrees and circumstances of sin for a little while and how indifferent things they are grown to us and how obdurate we are grown in them now This was Jobs sorrow and this was Tobias comfort 1.4 when I was but young all my Tribes fell away but I alone went after to Jerusalem Though he lacked the counsail and the example of his Elders yet he served God for it is good for a man Thren 3.27 that he bear his yoke in his youth For even when God had delivered over
creature til we come so far Remember then the Creator and remember thy Creator for Tâ—um Quis magis fidelis Deo who is so faithful a Counsailor as God Basil Quis prudentior Sapiente who can be wiser than wisdome Quis utilior bono or better than goodness Quis conjunctior Creatore or neerer then our Maker and therefore remember him What purposes soever thy parents or thy Prince have to make thee great how had all those purposes been frustrated and evacuated if God had not made thee before this very being is thy greatest degree as in Arithmatick how great a number soever a man expresse in many figures yet when we come to number all the very first figure is the greatest and most of all so what degrees or titles soever a man have in this world the greatest and the foundation of all is that he had a being by creation For the distance from nothing to a little is ten thousand times more than from it to the highest degree in this life and therefore remember thy Creator as by being so he hath done more for thee than all the world besides and remember him also with this consideration that whatsoever thou art now yet once thou wast nothing He created thee ex nihilo he gave thee a being Ex nihilo there 's matter of exaltation yet all this from nothing thou wast worse then a worm there 's matter of humiliation but he did not create thee ad nihilum to return to nothing again and there 's matter for thy consideration and study how to make thine immortality profitable unto thee for it is a deadly immortality if thy immortality must serve thee for nothing but to hold thee in immortal torment To end all that being which we have from God shall not return to nothing nor the being which we have from men neither Bern. As St. Bernard sayes of the Image of God in mans soul uti potest in gehenna non exuri That soul that descends to hell carries the Image God in the faculties of that soul thither but there that Image can never be burnt out so those Images those impressions which we have received from men from nature from the world the image of a Lord the image of a Counsailor the image of a Bishop shall all burn in Hell and never burn out not only these men but these offices are not to return to nothing but as their being from God so their being from man shal have an everlasting being to the aggravating of their condemnation And therefore remember thy Creator who as he is so by making thee of nothing so he will ever be so by holding thee to his glory though to thy confusion from returning to nothing for the Court of Heaven is not like other Courts that after a surfet of pleasure or greatness a man may retire after a surfet of sin there 's no such retiring as a dissolving of the soul into nothing but God is from the beginning the Creator he gave all things their being and he is still thy Creator thou shalt evermore have that being to be capable of his Judgments Now to make up a circle by returning to our first word remember As we remember God so for his sake let us remember one another In my long absence and far distance from hence remember me as I shall do you in the ears of that God to whom the farthest East and the farthest West are but as the right and left ear in one of us we hear with both at once and he hears in both at once remember me not my abilities for when I consider my Apostleship that I was sent to you I am in St. Pauls quorum quorum ego sum minimus 1 Cor. 15.9 the least of them that have been sent and when I consider my infirmities 1 Tim. 1.15 I am in his quorum in another commission another way Quorum ego maximus the greatest of them but remember my labors and endeavors at least my desire to make sure your salvation And I shall remember your religious cheerfulness in hearing the word and your christianly respect towards all them that bring that word unto you and towards my self in particular far bove my merit And so as your eyes that stay here and mine that must be far of for all that distance shall meet every morning in looking upon that same Sun and meet every night in looking upon the same Moon so our hearts may meet morning and evening in that God which sees and hears every where that you may come thither to him with your prayers that I if I may be of use for his glory and your edification in this place may be restored to you again and may come to him with my prayer that what Paul soever plant amongst you or what Apollos soever water God himself will give the increase That if I never meet you again till we have all passed the gate of death yet in the gates of heaven I may meet you all and there say to my Saviour and your Saviour that which he said to his Father and our Father Of those whom thou hast given me have I not lost one Remember me thus you that stay in this Kingdome of peace where no sword is drawn but the sword of Justice as I shal remember you in those Kingdomes where ambition on one side and a necessary defence from unjust persecution on the other side hath drawn many swords and Christ Jesus remember us all in his Kingdome to which Serm. 20. though we must sail through a sea it is the sea of his blood where no soul suffers shiprwack though we must be blown with strange winds with sighs and groans for our sins yet it is the Spirit of God that blows all this wind and shall blow away all contrary winds of diffidence or distrust in Gods mercy where we shall be all Souldiers of one Army the Lord of Hostes and Children of one Quire the God of Harmony and consent where all Clients shall retain but one Counsellor our Advocate Christ Jesus nor present him any other fee but his own blood and yet every Client have a Judgment on his side not only in a not guilty in the remission of his sins but in a Venite benedicti in being called to the participation of an immortal Crown of glory where there shall be no difference in affection nor in mind but we shall agree as fully perfectly in our Allelujah and gloria in exelcis as God the Father Son and Holy Ghost agreed in the faciamus hominem at first where we shall end and yet begin but then where we shall have continuall rest and yet never grow lazie where we shall be stronger to resist and yet have no enemy where we shall live and never die where we shall meet never part TWO SERMONS to the Prince and Princess Palatine the Lady Elizabeth at Heydelberg when I was commanded
plura because they are more and so as the more beautiful and better proportioned a body is the more it draws the eye to look upon it so they are nearer quia potiora because they are better and so as the more evidence and light and lustre they have in themselves the easier things are discerned so they are nearer Plura quia manifestiora because they are more visible First how there should be more helps in the Christian religion then in the Jewish is not so evident at first for first if we consider the law to be salvation they had a vast multiplicity of laws scarse less then 600 several laws whereas the honor of the Christian religion is that it is verbum abbreviatum an abridgment of all into ten words as Moses cals the Commandements and then a re-abridgment of that abridgment into two love God and love thy Neighbour that is faith and works If we consider their laws to be their salvation they had more and if we consider their sacrifices to be their salvation they had more too for their Rabbins observe at least 50 several kinds of contracting uncleaness to which there were appropriated several expiations and sacrifices whereas we have only the sacrifices of prayer and of praise and of Christ in the sacrament for so it is the ordinary phrase manner of speech in the Fathers to call that a sacrifice not only as it is a commemorative sacrifice for that is amongst our selves and so every person in the congregation may sacrifice that is do that in remembrance of Christ but as it is a real sacrifice in which the Priest doth that which none but he does that is really to offer up Christ Jesus crucified to Almighty God for the sins of the people so as that that very body of Christ which offered himself for a propitiatory sacrifice upon the cross once for all that body and all that that body suffered is offered again and presented to the Father the Father is intreated that for the merits of that person so presented and offered unto him and in contemplation thereof he will be merciful to that congregation and applie those merits of his to their particular souls These are our sacrifices prayer and praise and Christ thus offered and how are these more then the Jews had they had more laws and more sacrifices and as many sacraments as we and if nearness of salvation consist in the plurality of these how is salvation nearer to us then to them quatenus plura in that first respects as the means are more as it is truly and properly said that there are more ingredients more simples more means of restoring in our dram of triacle or mithridate then in an ounce of any particular syrup in which there may be 3 or 4 in the other perchance so many hundred so in that receit of our Saviour Christ quicquid ligaveris in the absolution of the Minister that whatsoever he shall bind or loose upon earth shall be bound or loose in heaven there is more physick then in all the expiations and sacrifices of the old law There an expiation would serve to day which would not serve to morrow if it were omitted till the sun were set upon it it required a more severe expiation and so also an expiation would serve for one transgression which would not serve for another but here in the absosolution of the Minister there is a concurrence a confluence of medecines of all qualities purgative in confession and restorative in absolution corasive in the preaching of Judgments and cordial in the balm of the sacrament here is no limitation of time at what time soever a sinner repenteth nor limitation of sins whatsoever is forgiven in earth is forgiven in heaven salvation is nearer us in this respect that we have plura adminicula more outward and visible means then the Jews had because we may receive more in one action then they could in all theirs It is so also not only quia plura because we have more means Potiora but quia potiora because those means which we have are in their nature better more attractive and more winning The means as we have said before were their laws and their sacrifices and their sacraments and for their law it was lex interficiens non perficiens it was a law August that punished unrighteousness but it did not confer righteousness and their sacrifices being in blood if we remove from them their typical signification and what they prefigured which was the shedding of the blood of the lamb which takes away the sins of the world must necessarily create and excite a natural horror in man and an aversness from them Take their sacraments into comparison and then one of their sacraments Circumcision was limited to one sex it reached not to women and their other sacrament the passover was in the primary signification and institution thereof only a gratulatory commemoration of a temporal benefit of their deliverance from Egypt And therefore to constitute a judgment proportionably by the effects we see the law and the sacrifice and the sacraments of thy Jews did not much work upon foraign Nations it was salvation but salvation shut up amongst themselves whereas we see that the law of the Chrstians which is to conforme our selves to our great example and pattern Christ Jesus who if we would consider him meerly as man was the most exemplar man for all Theological vertues moral too that ever any history presented the sacrifices of Christians which are all spiritual therein more proportional to God who is all spirit and the sacraments of Christians in which though not ex opere operator not because that action is performed not because that sacrament is administred yet ex pacto and quando opus operamur by Gods covenant when soever that action is performed whensoever that sacrament is administred the grace of God is exhibited and offered nec fallaciter as Calvin saies well it is offered with a purpose on Gods part that that grace should be accepted we see I say that these laws and these sacrifices and these sacraments have gain'd upon the whole world for in their nature and in their attractiveness and in their applyableness and so in their effect they are potiora better and in that respect salvation is nearer us then it was to the Jews Manifestiora And so it is lastly quia manifestiora because they have an evidence and manifestation of themselves in themselves Now this is especially true in the sacraments because the sacraments exhibit and convey grace and grace is such a light such a torch such a beacon as where it is it is easily seen As there is a lustre in a precious stone which no mans eye or finger can limit to a certain place or point in that stone so though we do not assign in the sacrament where that is in what circumstance or part of that holy action
only in the earth nature and naturall reason do not produce grace but yet grace can take root in no other thing but in the nature and reason of man whether we consider Gods subsequent graces which grow out of his first grace formerly given to us and well employed by us or his first grace which works upon our natural faculties and grows there still this salvation that is this grace is near us for it is within us then the third term believing is either quando credidistis primum when you began to believe either in an imputative belief of others in your baptism or a faint belief upon your first Catechisings and Instrustions or quando credidistis tantum when you only professed a belief or faith and did nothing in declaration of that faith to the edification of others Salus First then salvation in this second sense is the internal operation of the holy Ghost in infusing grace for therefore doth St. Basil call the holy Ghost verbum Dei the word of God which is the name properly peculiar to the Son quia interpres filii sicut filius patris that as the Father had revealed his will in the Prophets and then the Son comes and interprets all that actually this prophecy is meant of my coming this of my dying and so makes a real comment and an actual interpretation of all the prophecies for he does come and he does die accordingly so the holy Ghost comes and comments upon this comment interprets this interpretation and tels thy soul that all this that the Father had promised and the Son had performed was intended by them and by the working of their spirit is now appropriated to thy particular soul In the constitution and making of a natural man the body is not the man nor the soul is not the man but the union of these two makes up the man the spirits in a man which are the thin and active part of the blood and so are of a kind of middle nature between soul and body those spirits are able to doe and they doe the office to unite and apply the faculties of the soul to the organs of the body and so there is a man so in a regenerate man a Christian man his being born of Christian Parents that gives him a body that makes him of the body of the Covenant it gives him a title an interest in the Covenant which is jus ad rem thereby he may make his claim to the seal of the Covenant to baptism and it cannot be denied him and then in his baptism that Sacrament gives him a soul a spiritual seal jus in re an actual possession of Grace but yet as there are spirits in us which unite body and soul so there must be subsequent acts and works of the blessed spirit that must unite and confirm all and make up this spiritual man in the wayes of sanctification for without that his body that is his being born within the Covenant and his soul that is his having received Grace in baptism do not make him up This Grace is this Salvation and when this Grace works powerfully in thee in the wayes of sanctification then is this Salvation neer thee which is our second term in this second acceptation propè neer This neerness which is the effectuall working of Grace Prope Heb. 4.12 the Apostle expresses fully That it pierceth to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit for though properly the soul and spirit of a man be all one yet divers faculties and operations give them somtimes divers names in the Scriptures Anima quia animat sayes St. Ambrose and spiritus quia spirat The quickning of the body is the soul but the quickning of the soul is the spirit If this Salvation be brought to this neerness that is this grace to this powerfulness thou shalt find it in anima in thy soul in those organs wherein thy soul uses thy body in thy senses and in the sensible things ordain'd by God in his Church Sacraments and Ceremonies and thou shalt find it neerer in spiritu as the spirit of God hath seal'd it to thy spirit invisibly inexpressibly It shall be neer to thee so as that thy reason shall apprehend it and neerer then that thy faith shall establish it and neerer then all this it shall create in thee a modest and sober but yet an infallible assurance that thy salvation shall never depart from thee Magnificabit anima tua Dominum as the B. Virgin speaks Thy soul shall magnifie the Lord all thy natural faculties shall be employed upon an assent to the Gospel thou shalt be able to prove it to thy self and to prove it to others to be the Gospel of Salvation And then Exultabit spiritus Thy spirit shall rejoyce in God thy Saviour because by the farther seal of sanctification thy spirit shall receive testimony from the spirit that as Christ is Idem homo cum te the same man that thou art so thou art Idem spiritus cum Domino the same spirit that he is so far as that as a spirit cannot be separated in it self so neither canst thou be separated from God in Christ And this this exaltation of Grace when it thus growes up to this height of sanctification is that neerness which brings Salvation farther than our believing does and that 's the last term in this part Believing Credidistis Now neerer then Believing neerer than Faith a man might well think nothing can bring Salvation for Faith is the hand that reaches it and takes hold of it But yet as though our bodily hand reach to our temporal food yet the mouth and the stomach must do their office too and so that meat must be distributed into all parts of the body and assimilated to them so though our faith draw this salvation neer us yet when our mouth is imployed that we have a delight to glorifie God in our discourses and to declare his wonderfull works to the sons of men in our thankfulness And when this faith of ours is distributed over all the body that the body of Christs Church is edified and alienated by our good life and sanctification then is this Salvation neerer us that is safelier seal'd to us then when we believed only Either then this quando credidistis when you believed may be refer'd to Infants or to the first faith and the first degrees thereof in men In Infants when that seminall faith or potentiall faith which is by some conceived to be in the Infants of Christian parents at their baptism or that actuall faith which from their parents or from the Church is thought to be applyed to them accepted in their behalf in that Sacrament when this faith growes up after by this new comming of Christ in the power of his Grace and his Spirit to be a lively faith expressed in charity then Salus proprior then is Salvation neerer than when they believed whether this belief were their
power to desire more then have that desire so enlarged satisfied And the Libera nos we shall not pray to be delivered from evil for no evil culpae or poenae either of sin to deserve punishment or of punishment for our former sins shal offer at us where we shall see God face to face for we shall have such notions and apprehensions as shall enable us to see him and he shall afford such an imparting such a manifestation of himself as he shall be seen by us and where we shall be as inseparably united to our Saviour as his humanity and divinity are united together This unspeakable this unimaginable happiness is this Salvation and therefore let us be glad when this is brought neer us Prope And this is brought neerer neerer unto us as we come neerer neerer to our end As he that travails weary and late towards a great City is glad when he comes to a place of execution becaus he knows be that is neer the town so when thou comest to the gate of death glad of that for it is but one step from that to thy Jerusalem Christ hath brought us in some neerness to Salvation as he is vere Salvator mundi in that we know that this is indeed the Christ Jo. 4.42 the Saviour of the world and he hath brought it neerer than that Eph. 5.23 as he is Salvator corporis sui in that we know That Christ is the head of the Church and the Saviour of that body And neerer than that Esay 43.3 as he is Salvator tuus sanctus In that we know He is the Lord our God the holy One of Israel our Saviour But neerest of all in the Ecce Salvator tuus venit Esa 62.11 Behold thy Salvation commeth It is not only promised in the Prophets nor only writ in the Gospel nor only seal'd in the Sacraments nor only prepared in the visitations of the holy Ghost but Ecce behold it now when thou canst behold nothing else The sun is setting to thee and that for ever thy houses and furnitures thy gardens and orchards thy titles and offices thy wife and children are departing from thee and that for ever a cloud of faintnesse is come over thine eyes and a cloud of sorrow over all theirs when his hand that loves thee best hangs tremblingly over thee to close thine eyes Ecce Salvator tuus venit behold then a new light thy Saviours hand shall open thine eyes and in his light thou shalt see light and thus shalt see that though in the eyes of men thou lye upon that bed as a Statue on a Tomb yet in the eyes of God thou standest as a Colossus one foot in one another in another land one foot in the grave but the other in heaven one hand in the womb of the earth and the other in Abrahams bosome And then vere prope Salvation is truly neer thee and neerer than when thou believedst which is our last word Take this Belief in the largest extent Credidistis a patient assent to all foretold of Christ and of Salvation by the Prophets a historical assent to all that is written of Christ in the Gospel an humble and supple and applyable assent to the Ordinances of the Church a faithful application of all this to thine own soul a fruitful declaration of all that to the whole world in thy life yet all this though this be inestimable riches is but the earnest of the holy Ghost it is not the full payment it is but the first fruits it is not the harvest it is but a truce it is not an inviolable peace There remaineth a rest to the people of God Heb. 4.9 sayes the Apostle they were the people of God before and yet there remained a rest which they had not yet not that there is not a blessed degree of rest in the Credidi a happy assurance in the strength of faith here but yet there remaineth a rest better than that And therefore sayes that Apostle there Let us labor to enter into that rest as though we have rest in our consciences all the six dayes of the week if we do the works of our callings sincerely yet all that while we labor and there remains a Sabbath which we have not all the week so though we have peace and rest in the testimony of our faith and obedience in this life yet there remains a rest a Sabbath for which we must labor for the Apostle in that place adds the danger Labor to enter into that rest sayes he lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief v. 11. He speaks of the people of God and yet they might fall He speaks of such as bad believed and yet they might fall after the example of unbelief as far as they that never believed if they labored not to the last and set the seal of final perseverance to their former faith To conclude all with the force of the Apostles argument in urging the words of this text since God hath brought salvation nearer to you then to them that believed nearer to you in the Gospel when you have seen Christ come there to the Jews in the Prophets where they only read that he should come and nearer to you then where you believed either seminally potentially and imputatively at our baptism or actually and declaratorily in some parts of your life by having persisted therein thus far and since he is now bringing it nearer to you then when you believed at best because your end grows nearer Eccles 12. now whilst the evill daies come not nor the year approach wherein thou shalt say I have no pleasure in them before the grinders cease because they are few and they wax dark that look out at the windows before thou go to the house of thine age and the mourners go about in the streets prepare thy self by casting off thy sins and all that is gotten by thy sins for as the plague is got as soon in linings as in the outside of a garment salvation is lost as far by retaining ill gotten goods as by ill getting forget not thy past sins so far as not to repent them but remember not thy repented sins so far as to delight in remembring them or to doubt that God hath not fully forgiven them and whether God have brought this salvation near thee by sickness or by age or by general dangers put off the consideration of the incomodies of that age or that sickness and that danger and fill thy self with the consideration of the nearness of thy salvation which that age and sickness and danger minister to thee that so when the best Instrument and the best song shall meet together thy bell shall towl and thy soul shall hear that voice Ecce salvator behold thy Saviour cometh thou maist bear a part and chearfully make up that musick with a veni Domine Jesu Come Lord Jesu come quickly
come now A Sermon Preached at St. Dunstans January 15. 1625. The First SERMON after Our Dispersion by the Sickness SERMON XXI Exod. 12.30 For there was not a house where there was not one dead GOd intended life and immortality for man and man by sin induc'd death upon himself at first When man had done so and that now man was condemned man must die yet yet God gave him though not an absolute pardon yet a long reprieve though not a new immortality yet a life of seven and eight hundred years upon earth And then misery by sin growing upon man and this long life which was enlarged in his favour being become a burden unto him God abridged and contracted his seven hundred to seventy and his eight hundred to eighty years the years of his life came to be threescore and ten and if misery do suffer him to exceed those even the exceeding it self is misery Death then is from our selves it is our own but the executioner is from God it is his he gives life no man can quicken his own soul but any man can forfeit his own soul And yet when he hath done so he may not be his own executioner for as God giveth life so he killeth says Moses there not as the cause of death for death is not his creature but because he employs what person he will and executes by what instrument it pleases him to chuse age or sickness or justice or malice or in our apprehension fortune In that History from whence we deduce this Text which was that great execution the sodain death of all the first-born of Egypt it is very large and yet we may usefully and to good purpose enlarge it if we take into our consideration spiritual death as well as bodily for so in our houses from whence we came hither if we left but a servant but a child in the cradle at home there is one dead in that house If we have no other house but this which we carry about us this house of clay this tabernacle of flesh this body yet if we consider the inmate the sojourner within this house Serm. 21. the state of our corrupt and putrified soul there is one dead in this house too And though we be met now in the House of God and our God be the God of Life yet even in this house of the God of Life and the ground enwrapped in the same consecration not only of every such house but let every mans length in the house be a house of every such space this Text will be verified There is not a house where there is not one dead God is abundant in his mercies to man and as though he did but learn to give by his giving as though he did but practise to make himself perfect in his own Art which Art is bountiful Mercy as though all his former blessings were but in the way of earnest and not of payment as though every benefit that he gave were a new obligation upon him and not an acquittance to him he delights to give where he hath given as though his former gifts were but his places of memory and marks set upon certain men to whom he was to give more It is not so good a plea in our prayers to God for temporal or for spiritual blessings to say Have mercy upon me now for I have loved thee heretofore as to say Have mercy upon me for thou hast loved me heretofore We answer a Beggar I gave you but yesterday but God therefore gives us to day because he gave us yesterday and therefore are all his blessings wrap'd up in that word Panis quotidianus Give us this day our daily bread Every day he gives and early every day his Manna falls before the Sun rises and his mercies are new every morning In this consideration of his abounding in all ways of mercy to us we consider justly how abundant he is in instructing us He writes his Law once in our hearts and then he repeats that Law and declares that Law again in his written Word in his Scriptures He writes his Law in stone-Tables once and then those Tables being broken he repeats that Law writes that Law again in other Tables He gives us his Law in Exodus and Leviticus and then he gives us a Deuteronomy a repetition of that Law another time in another Book And as he abounds so in instructing us in going the same way twice over towards us as he gives us the Law a second time so he gives us a second way of instructing us he accompanies he seconds his Law with examples In his Legal Books we have Rules in the Historical Examples to practise by And as he is every way abundant as he hath added Law to Nature and added Example to Law so he hath added Example to Example and by that Text which we have read to you here and by that Text which we have left at home our house and family and by that Text which we have brought hither our selves and by that Text which we finde here where we stand and sit and kneel upon the bodies of some of our dead friends or neighbors he gives to us he repeats to us a full a various a multiform a manifold Catechism and Institution to teach us that it is so absolutely true that there is not a house in which there is not one dead as that taking spiritual death into our consideration there is not a house in which there is one alive That therfore we may take in light at all these windows that God opens for us Divisio that we may lay hold upon God by all these handles which he puts out to us we shall make a brief survey of these four Houses of that in Egypt where the Text places it of that at home in which we dwell of this which is our selves where we always are or always should be within and of this in which we are met where God is in so many several Temples of his as are above and under ground So that this Sermon may be a general Funeral Sermon both for them that are dead in the flesh and for our selves that are dead in our sins for of all these four houses it is true and by useful accommodation applyable to all There is not a house where there is not one dead First then to survey the first House the House in Egypt Part 1. Pharaoh by drawing upon himself and his Land this last and heaviest plague of the ten the universal the sodain the midnight destruction of all all the first born of Egypt hath made himself a Monument and a History and a Pillar everlasting to the end of the world to the end of all place in the world and to the end of all time in the world by which all men may know that man how perverse soever cannot weary God that man cannot add to his Rebellions so many heavy circumstances but that God can
every mans first-born-childe is his zeal to the Religion and Service of God As soon as we know that there is a Soul that Soul knows that there is a God and a Worship belonging to that God and this Worship is Religion And is not this first-born childe dead in many of us In him that is not stirr'd not mov'd not affected for his Religion his pulse is gone and that 's an ill sign In him that dares not speak for it not counsel not preach for it his Religion lies speechless and that 's an ill sign In him that feeds not Religion that gives nothing to the maintenance thereof his Religion is in a consumption In a word if his zeal be quenched his first-born is dead And so for these three Houses That in Egypt that at home that in our selves There is not a house in which there is not one dead Part 4. The fourth House falling under this survey is this House in which we are met now the house of God the Church and the ground wrapped up in the same consecration and in this house you have seen and seen in a lamentable abundance and seen with sad eyes that for many moneths there hath scarce been one day in which there hath not been one dead How should there be but multiplicity of deaths why should it be or be looked to be or thought to be otherwise The Master of the house Christ Jesus is dead before and now it is not so much a part of our punishment for the first Adam as an imitation of the second Adam to die death is not so much a part of our debt to Nature or Sin or Satan as a part of our conformity to him who died for us If death were in the nature of it meerly evil to us Christ would have redeemed us even from this death by his death But as the death of Christ Jesus is the Physick of mankinde so this natural death of the body is the application of that Physick to every particular man who only by death can be made capable of that glory which his death hath purchased for us This Physick all they whom God hath taken to him have taken and by his grace received life by it Their first-born is dead the body was made before the soul and that body is dead Rachel wept for her children and would not be comforted because they were not If these children and parents and friends and neighbours of ours were not if they were resolved into an absolute annihilation we could not be comforted in their behalf but Christ who says he is the Life lest we should think that to belong only to this life says also that he is the Resurrection We were contracted to Christ in our Election married to him in our Baptism in the Grave we are bedded with him and in the Resurrection estated and put into possession of his Kingdom And therefore because these words do not only affect us with that sad consideration That there is none of these houses in whieh there is not one dead but minister withall that consolation That there is none so dad but may have a Resurrection We shall pass another short survey over all these Houses Thus far we have survey'd these four Houses Egypt our families our selves and the Church as so many places of Infection so many temporal or spiritual Pesthouses into which our sins had heaped powder and Gods indignation had cast a match to kindle it But now the very phrase of the Text which is That in every house there was one dead There was invites us to a more particular consideration of Gods mercy in that howsoever it were it is not so now in which we shall look how far this beam of mercy shines out in every of these houses that it is not so now There is not one dead in every house now but the Infection Temporal and Spiritual Infection is so far ceased as that not only those that are alive do not die as before but those whom we called dead are not dead they are alive in their spirits in Abrahams bosome and they are alive in their very bodies in their contract and inherence in Christ Jesus in an infallible assurance of a joyful Resurrection Now in the survey of the first sort of houses of Egypt Egyptus herein we are interrupted Here they were dead and are dead still We see clearly enough Gods indignation upon them but we see neither of those beams of mercy either that there die no more or that we have the comfort of a joyful Resurrection in them who are dead For this fearful calamity of the death of their first-born wrought no more upon them but to bring them to that exclamation that vociferation that voice of despairful murmuring Omnes Moriemur We are all dead men v. 33. And they were mischievous Prophets upon themselves for proceeding in that sin which induc'd that calamity and the rest upon them they pursued the children of Israel through the Red-sea and perished in it and then they came not to die one in a house but as it is expressed in the Story and repeated in the Psalms Exod. 14.28 Psal 106.10 There remained not so much as one of them alive so that in their case there is no comfort in the first beam of mercy that this phrase They were dead or They did die should intimate That now they did not die now Gods correction had so wrought upon them as that God withdrew that correction from them for it pursued them and accompanied them to their final and total destruction And then for the other beam of mercy of transferring them which seemed dead in the eyes of the world to a better life by that hand of death to present happiness in their souls and to an assured resurrection to joy and glory in their bodies in the communion of Gods Saints Moses hath given us little hope in their behalf for thus he encourageth his Countreymen in that place The Egyptians whom you have seen this day Exod. 14.13 you shall see no more for ever No more in this world no more in the world to come Beloved as God empayl'd a Goshen in Egypt a place for the righteous amongst the wicked so there is an Egypt in every Goshen neasts of Snakes in the fairest Gardens and even in this City which in the sense of the Gospel we may call The Holy City as Christ called Jerusalem though she had multiplied transgressions The Holy City because she had not cast away his Law though she had disobeyed it So howsoever your sins have provoked God yet as you retain a zealous profession of the truth of his Religion I may in his name and do in the bowels of his mercy call you The Holy City even in this City no doubt but the hand of God fell upon thousands in this deadly infection who were no more affected with it then those Egyptians to cry out Omnes Moriemur We can
from others upon whom we may depend to admit any dramms of the dregs of a superstitious Religion for it is a miserable extremity when we must take a little poyson for physick And so having made the right use of Gods corrections we shall enjoy the comfort of this phrase in this House our selves our first-born our Zeal was dead it was but it is not Lastly in this fourth House the House where we stand now the House of God and of his Saints God affords us a fair beam of this consolation in the phrase of this Text also They were dead How appliable to you in this place is that which God said to Moses Put off thy shoes for thou treadest on holy ground put off all confidence all standing all relying upon worldly assurances and consider upon what ground you tread upon ground so holy as that all the ground is made of the bodies of Christians and therein hath received a second consecration Every puff of wind within these walls may blow the father into the sons eys or the wife into her husbands or his into hers or both into their childrens or their childrens into both Every grain of dust that flies here is a piece of a Christian you need not distinguish your Pews by figures you need not say I sit within so many of such a neighbour but I sit within so many inches of my husbands or wives or childes or friends grave Ambitious men never made more shift for places in Court then dead men for graves in Churches and as in our later times we have seen two and two almost in every Place and Office so almost every Grave is oppressed with twins and as at Christs resurrection some of the dead arose out of their graves that were buried again so in this lamentable calamity the dead were buried and thrown up again before they were resolved to dust to make room for more But are all these dead They were says the Text they were in your eys and therefore we forbid not that office of the eye that holy tenderness to weep for them that are so dead But there was a part in every one of them that could not die which the God of life who breathed it into them from his own mouth hath suck'd into his own bosome And in that part which could die They were dead but they are not The soul of man is not safer wrapt up in the bosome of God then the body of man is wrapt up in the Contract and in the eternal Decree of the Resurrection As soon shall God tear a leaf out of the Book of Life and cast so many of the Elect into Hell fire as leave the body of any of his Saints in corruption for ever To what body shall Christ Jesus be loth to put to his hand to raise it from the grave then that put to his very God-head the Divinity it self to assume all our bodies when in one person he put on all mankinde in his Incarnation As when my true repentance hath re-ingraffed me in my God and re-incorporated me in my Savior no man may reproach me and say Thou wast a sinner So since all these dead bodies shall be restored by the power and are kept alive in the purpose of Almighty God we cannot say They are scarce that they were dead When time shall be no more when death shall be no more they shall renew or rather continue their being But yet beloved for this state of their grave for it becomes us to call it a state it is not an annihilation no part of Gods Saints can come to nothing as this state of theirs is not to be lamented as though they had lost any thing which might have conduced to their good by departing out of this world so neither is it a state to be joyed in so as that we should expose our selves to dangers unnecessarily in thinking that we want any thing conducing to our good which the dead enjoy As between two men of equal age if one sleep and the other wake all night yet they rise both of an equal age in the morning so they who shall have slept out a long night of many ages in the grave and they who shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord Jesus in the aire at the last day shall enter all at once in their bodies into Heaven No antiquity no seniority for their bodies neither can their souls who went before be said to have been there a minute before ours because we shall all be in a place that reckons not by minutes Clocks and Sun-dials were but a late invention upon earth but the Sun it self and the earth it self was but a late invention in heaven God had been an infinite a super-infinite an unimaginable space millions of millions of unimaginable spaces in heaven before the Creation And our afternoon shall be as long as Gods forenoon for as God never saw beginning so we shall never see end but they whom we tread upon now and we whom others shall tread upon hereafter shall meet at once where though we were dead dead in our several houses dead in a sinful Egypt dead in our family dead in our selves dead in the Grave yet we shall be received with that consolation and glorious consolation you were dead but are alive Enter ye blessed into the Kingdom prepared for you from the beginning Amen A SERMON Preached at the Temple SERMON XXII Esther 4.16 Go and assemble all the Jews that are found in Shushan and fast ye for me and eat not nor drink in three days day nor night I also and my Maids will fast likewise and so I will go in to the King which is not according to the Law And if I perish I perish NExt to the eternal and coessential Word of God Christ Jesus the written Word of God the Scriptures concern us most and therefore next to the person of Christ and his Offices the Devil hath troubled the Church with most questions about the certainty of Scriptures and the Canon thereof It was late before the Spirit of God setled and established an unanime and general consent in his Church for the accepting of this Book of Esther For not onely the holy Bishop Melito who defended the Christians by an Apology to the Emperor removed this Book from the Canon of the Scripture One hundred and fifty years after Christ but Athanasius also Three hundred and forty years after Christ refused it too Yea Gregory Nazianzen though he deserved and had the stile and title of Theologus The Divine and though he came to clearer times living almost Four hundred years after Christ did not yet submit himself to an acceptation of this Book But a long time there hath been no doubt of it and it is certainly part of that Scripture which is profitable to teach 2 Tim. 3.16 to reprove to correct and to instruct in righteousness To which purpose we shall see what is afforded
her ruine might have saved her Country but in her case if she had perished they were likely to perish too But she is safer then in that for first she had hope out of the words of the Law out of the dignity of her place out of the Justice of the King out of the preparation which she had made by Prayer which Prayer Josephus either out of tradition or out of conjecture and likelihood Records to have been That God would make both her Language and her Beauty acceptable to the King that day Out of all these she had hope of good success and howsoever if she failed of her purpose she was under two Laws of which it was necessary to obey that which concerned the glory of God And therefore Daniels confidence and Daniels words became her well Behold our God is able to deliver me and he will deliver me but if he will not I must not forsake his honor nor abandon his service And therefore Si peream peream If I perish I perish It is not always a Christian resolution Si peream peream to say If I perish I perish I care not whether I perish or no To admit to invite to tempt tentations and occasions of sin and so to put our selves to the hazard of a spiritual perishing to give fire to concupiscencies with licentious Meditations either of sinful pleasures past or of that which we have then in our purpose and pursuit to fewel this fire with meats of curiosity and provocation to blow this fire with lascivious discourses and Letters and Protestations this admits no such condition Si pereas If thou perish but periisti thou art perished already thou didst then perish when thou didst so desperately cast thy self into the danger of perishing And as he that casts himself from a steeple doth not break his neck till he touch the ground but yet he is truly said to have killed himself when he threw himself towards the ground So in those preparations and invitations to sin we perish before we perish before we commit the act the sin it self We perished then when we opened our selves to the danger of the sin so also if a man will wring out not the Club out of Hercules hands but the sword out of Gods hands if a man will usurpe upon Gods jurisdiction and become a Magistrate to himself and revenge his own quarrels and in an inordinate defence of imaginary honor expose himself to danger in duel with a si peream peream If I perish I perish that is not onely true if he perish he perishes if he perish temporally he perishes spiritually too and goes out of the world loaded with that and with all his other sins but it is also true that if he perish not he perishes he comes back loaded both with the temporal and with the spiritual death both with the blood and with the damnation of that man who perished suddenly and without repentance by his sword To contract this and conclude all If a man have nothing in his contemplation but dignity and high place if he have not Vertue and Religion and a Conscience of having deserved well of his Countrey and the love of God and godly men for his sustentation and assurance but onely to tower up after dignity as a Hawk after a prey and think that he may boldly say as an impossible supposition Si peream peream If I perish I perish as though it were impossible he should perish he shall be subject to that derision of the King of Babylon Quomodo Cecidisti Esa 14.12 How art thou faln from Heaven O Lucifer thou son of the morning How art thou cast down to the ground that didst cast lots upon the Nations But that provident and religious Soul which proceeds in all her enterprises as Esther did in her preparations which first calls an assembly of all her Country-men that is them of the houshold of the Faithful the Congregation of Christs Church and the Communion of Saints and comes to participate the benefit of publick Prayers in his house inconvenient times and then doth the same in her own house within doors she and her maids that is she and all her senses and faculties This soul may also come to Esthers resolution to go in to the King though it be not according to the Law though that Law be That neither fornicator nor adulterer nor wanton nor thief nor drunkard nor covetous nor extortioner nor railer shall have access into the Kingdom of Heaven yet this soul thus prepared shall feel a comfortable assurance that this Law was made for servants and not for sons nor for the Spouse of Christ his Church and the living Members thereof and she may boldly say Si peream peream It is all one though I perish or as it is in the Original Vecasher quomodocunque peream whether I perish in my estimation and opinion with men whether I perish in my fortunes honor or health quomodocunque it is all one Heaven and earth shall pass away but Gods word shall not pass and we have both that word of God which shall never have end and that word of God which never had beginning His Word as it is his Promise his Scriptures and his Word as it is himself Christ Jesus for our assurance and security that that Law of denying sinners access and turning his face from them is not a perpetual not an irrevocable Law but that that himself says belongs to us For a little while have I forsaken thee but with great compassion will I gather thee for a moment in mine anger I hid my face from thee for a little season but with everlasting mercy have I had compassion on thee saith the Lord Christ thy Redeemer How riotously and voluptuously soever I have surfeited upon sin heretofore yet if I fast that fast now how disobedient soever I have been to my Superiors heretofore yet if I apply my self to a conscionable humility to them now howsoever if I have neglected necessary duties in my self or neglected them in my Family that either I have not been careful to give good example or not careful that they should do according to my example and by the way it is not only the Master of a house that hath the charge of a Family but every person every servant in the house that hath a body and a soul hath a house and a Family to look to and to answer for yet if I become careful now that both I I my self will and my whole house all my family shall serve the Lord If I be thus prepar'd thus dispos'd thus matur'd thus mellow'd thus suppled thus entendred to the admitting of any impressions from the hand of my God though there seem to be a general Law spread over all an universal War an universal Famine an universal Pestilence over the whole Nation yet I shall come either to an assurance that though there fall so many thousands on this and on that
fixt the Almighty and immoveable God if it can be content to inquire after it self and take knowledge where it is and in what way it will finde the means of cleansing And so this second consideration The placing of this pureness in the heart enlarges it self also into the third branch of this part which is De Modo by what means this pureness is fix'd in the heart in which is involved the Affection with which it must be embrac'd Love He that loveth pureness of heart Both these then are setled Our heart is naturally foul Modus And our heart may be cleansed But how is our present disquisition Who can bring a clean thing out of filthiness There is not one Job 14.4 Adam foul'd my heart and all yours nor can we make it clean our selves Who can say I have made clean my heart There is but one way Prov. 20.9 a poor beggarly way but easie and sure to ask it of God And even to God himself it seems a hard work to cleanse this heart and therefore our prayer must be with David Cor mundum crea Create Psal 51.12 O Lord a pure heart in me And then comes Gods part not that Gods part begun but then for it was his doing that thou madest this prayer but because it is a work that God does especially delight in to build upon his own foundations when he hath disposed thee to pray and upon that prayer created a new heart in thee then God works upon that new heart and By faith purifyes it Act. 15.9 enables it to preserve the pureness as Saint Peter speaks He had kindled some sparks of this faith in thee before thou askedst that new heart else the prayer had not been of faith but now finding thee obsequious to his beginnings he fuels this fire and purifies thee as Gold and Silver in all his furnaces through Believing and Doing and suffering through faith and works and tribulation we come to this pureness of heart And truely he that lacks but the last but Tribulation as fain as we would be without it lacks one concoction one refining of this heart But in this great work the first act is a Renovation a new heart Coâ— Novâ—m and the other That we keep clean that heart by a continual diligence and vigilancy over all our particular actions In these two consists the whole work of purifying the heart first an Annihilating of the former heart which was all sin And then a holy superintendency over that new heart which God vouchsafes to create in us to keep it as he gives it clean pure It is in a word a Detestation of former sins and a prevention of future And for the first Chromakus Anno 390. Mundi corde sunt qui deposuere cor peccati That 's the new heart that hath disseised expelled the heart of sin There is in us a heart of sin which must be cast up for whilst the heart is under the habits of sin we are not onely sinful but we are all sin as it is truly said that land overflow'd with sea is all sea And when sin hath got a heart in us it will quickly come to be that whole Body of Death Rom. 7.24 which Saint Paul complains of who shall deliver me from the Body of this Death when it is a heart it will get a Braine a Brain that shall minister all Sense and Delight in sin That 's the office of the Brain A Brain which shall send for the sinews and ligaments to tye sins together and pith and marrow to give a succulencie and nourishment even to the bones to the strength and obduration of sin and so it shall do all those services and offices for sin that the brain does to the natural body So also if sin get to be a heart it will get a liver to carry blood and life through all the body of our sinful actions That 's the office of the liver And whilst we dispute whether the throne and seat of the soul be in the Heart or Brain or Liver this tyrant sin will praeoccupate all and become all so as that we shall finde nothing in us without sin nothing in us but sin if our heart be possest inhabited by it And if it be true in our natural bodies that the heart is that part that lives first and dyes last it is much truer of this Cor peccati this heart of sin for this hearty sinner that hath given his heart to his sin doth no more foresee a Death of that sin in himself then he remembers the Birth of it and because he remembers not or understands not how his soul contracted sin by coming into his body he leaves her to the same ignorance how she shall discharge her self of sin when she goes out of that body But as his sin is elder then himself for Adams sin is his sin so is it longer liv'd then his body for it shall cleave everlastingly to his soul too God asks no more of thee but fili da mihi cor Prov. 23.26 My son give me thy heart Because when God gave it thee it was but one heart But since thou hast made it Cor cor as the Prophet speaks a Heart and a Heart a double Heart give both thy Hearts to God thy natural weakness and disposition to sin The inclinations of thy heart And thy habitual practise of sin The obduration of thy heart cor peccans and Cor peccati and he shall create a new heart in thee which is the first way of attaining this pureness of heart to become once in a good state to have as it were paid all thy former debts and so to be the better able to look about thee for the future for prevention of subsequent sins which is the other way that we proposed for attaining this pureness detestation of former habits watchfulness upon particular actions Till this be done till this Cor peccati Peccata Minutiora this hearty habitualness in sin be devested there is no room no footing to stand and sweep it a heart so filled with foulness will admit no counsel no reproof The great Engineir would have undertaken to have removed the World with his Engine if there had been any place to fix his Engine upon out of the World I would undertake by Gods blessing upon his Ordinance to cleanse the foulest heart that is if that Engine which God hath put into my hands might enter into his heart if there were room for the renouncing Gods Judgements and for the application of Gods mercies in the merits of Christ Jesus in his heart they would infallibly work upon him But he hath petrified his heart in sin and then he hath immur'd it wall'd it with a delight in sin and fortified it with a justifying of his sin and adds daily more and more out-works by more and more daily sins so that the denouncing of Judgement the application of Mercies
else this is their Attrition and this is their enough for salvation A sigh of the penitent a word of the Priest makes all clean and induces an absolute pureness Thus some of the Ancients went too far They would pardon no sin after Baptism These new Men go not far enough They pardon all too easily Old Physicians thought all hurts in the heart presently mortal These new Physitians can pare off some of the heart and give it to Idolatry for so they say that the worship due to God may be given to a creature so it be not Tanquam Deo as that the Creature is thereby professed to be God and yet they confess that that worship which they give to the creature is idolatry but not that Idolatry say they which is forbidden in the commandment which is that that Creature so worshipped with the worship due to God be also believed to be God and so truely I believe it will be hard to finde any Idolatry in the world That they that worship any thing in representation of God do believe advisedly that representation to be very God But the true reason why no hurt received in the heart can be healed is quia palpitat because it is in perpetual motion If the heart lay still as other parts do so that medicinal helps might be applied to it and admitted by it there were more hope Therefore when we lay such a weight upon the heart as may settle it fix it give it a reposedness and acquiescence though it do receive some wounds though it be touched with some tentations it may be cured But is there any such weight as should so settle the heart the soul of Man This love of Pureness is that weight August Amor est pondus animae sicut gravitas Corporis As the weight of my body makes that steady so this love of Pureness is the weight and the ballast of my soul and this weight stays the palpitation the variation the deviation of the heart upon other objects which variation frustrates all endeavors to cure it The love of this pureness is both the ballast and the frait to carry thee steadily and richly too through all storms and tempests spiritual and temporal in this life to the everlasting Jerusalem If you be come to this love this love of pureness of heart never to lock up your door till you have carried out your dust never to shut your eyes at night till you have swept your conscience and cast your foulness into that infinite sea of the blood of Christ Jesus which can contract no foulness by it never to open your eyes in the morning but that you look out to glorifie God in the rising of the Sun and in his other creatures and in the peace and safety of your house and family and the health of your children and servants But especially to look inward and consider whether you have not that night mingled poyson with Gods Physick whether you have not mingled sloth and laziness in that which God gave you for rest and refreshing whether you have not mingled licentiousness in that which God gave you for a remedy against fornication And then when you shall have found that sin hath been awake in you even when your bodies were asleep be sure you cast not the Spirit of God into a sleep in you when your bodies are awake but that you proceed vigilantly in your several wayes with a fore-knowledge that there is every where coluber in via A Snake in the way in every way that you can take in every course of life in every calling there is some of the seed of the old Serpent presents it self And then if by Gods infallible word explicated in his Church Psal 119.104 which is Lucerna pedibus vestris The word is the light but the Church is the Lanthorne 2 Sam. 22.29 it presents and preserves that light unto you and though it be said Lucerna Dominus Apoc. 21.23 Thou O Lord art my light God himself And Lucerna Agnus The Lamb Christ himself is your light And lucerna mandatum Prov. 6.23 John 5.35 The commandments of God are your light yet it is also said of Iohn Baptist Lucerna ardens he was a burning and a shining light The Ministry of the Gospel in the Church is your light If by the benefit of this light you consider every step you make weigh every action you undertake this is that love of Pureness that Pondus animae the setling of the heart that keeps it from evaporating upon transitory things and settles it so as that it becomes capable of that cure which God in his Church in the Absolution of sins and seals of Reconciliation exhibits to it To recollect and contract that which hath been said This pureness is not a purifying pureness to correct and reform those things that appertain not to us nor it is not such a purified pureness as makes us Canonize our selves and think others Reprobates for all this is no pureness at all neither is it the true pureness if it be not in the heart for outward good works not done to good ends are impure nor is this pureness of heart acquired by any other means then by discharging the heart in a detestation of former habits and a sedulous watchfulness in preventing future attempts nor can this pureness of heart though by these means attain'd to be preserved but by this noble and incorruptible affection of Love that puts a true value upon it and therefore prefers it above all other things And this was the first of the two marks which we found to be upon that person that should be capable of the Kings friendship He that loveth pureness of heart And the other is that he have by honest industry fitted himself in some way to be of use to the publike delivered in that phrase Grace of lips He that loveth pureness of heart There 's his honesty for the Grace of his lips There 's his sufficiency The King shall be his friend There 's his reward his preferment Gratia labiorum Ordinarily in Scriptures where this word lips is not taken naturally literally narrowly for that part of the body but transferred to a figurative and larger sense either it signifies speaking onely as in Solomon As righteous lips are the delight of Kings and the King loveth him that speaketh right things That is Him in whose Counsels Prov. 16.13 and in whose relations he may confide and rely or else it is enlarged to all manner of expressing a mans ability to do service to that State in which God hath made his station and by lips and fruits of lips is well understood the fruit of all his good labors and endeavors And so may those words be well interpreted With the fruit of a mans mouth shall his belly be satisfied and with the encrease of his lips shall he be filled 18.20 That is his honest labors in a lawful calling shall
then whosoever wishes that it might be forgotten wishes that it had proceeded And therefore let our tongue cleave unto the roof our mouths if we do not confers his loving kindness before the Lord and his wonderful works before the Sons of men Then I say did his Majesty shew this Christian courage of his more manifestly when he sent the profession of his Religion The Apology of the Oath of Allegeance and his opinion of the Romane Antichrist in all languages to all Princes of Christendom By occasion of which Book though there have risen twenty Rabshakes who have rail'd against our God in railing against our Religion and twenty Shemeis who have raised against the person of his sacred Majesty for I may pronounce that the number of them who have bark'd and snarl'd at that book in writing is scarceless then fourty yet scarce one of them all hath undertaken the arguments of that book but either repeated and perchance enlarged those things which their own Authors had shovel'd together of that subject that is The Popes Temporal power or else they have bent themselves maliciously insolently sacrilegiously against the person to his Majesty and the Pope may be Antichrist still for any thing they have said to the contrary It belong'd only to him whom no earthly King may enter into comparison with John 17.12 the King of Heaven Christ Jesus to say Those that thou gavest me have I kept and none of them is lost And even in him in Christ Jesus himself that admitted one exception Judas the childe of perdition was lost Our King cannot say that none of his Subjects are fled to Rome but his vigilancy at home hath wrought so as that fewer are gone from our Universities thither in his then in former times and his Books abroad have wrought so that much greater and considerable persons are come to us then are gone from us I add that particular from our Universities because we see that since those men whom our Universities had bred and graduated before they went thither of which the number was great for many years of the Queens time are worne out amongst them and dead those whom they make up there whom they have had from their first youth there who have received all their Learning from their beggarly and fragmentary way of Dictates there and were never grounded in our Schools nor Universities have prov'd but weak maintainers or that cause compar'd with those men of the first times As Plato says of a particular natural body he that will cure an ill Eye must cure the Head he that will cure the Head must cure the Body and he that will cure the Body must cure the Soul that is must bring the Minde to a temperature a moderation an equanimity so in Civil Bodies in States Head and Eye and Body Prince and Council and People do all receive their health and welfare from the pureness of Religion And therefore as the chiefest of all I chose to insist upon that Blessing That God hath given us a Religious King and Religious out of his Understanding His other Virtues work upon several conditions of men by this Blessing the whole Body is blest And therefore not only they which have been salted with the salt of the Court as it is said of the Kings Servants but all that are salted with the salt of the Earth Ezra 4.24 Matth. 5.13 Mark 9.50 as Christ calls his Church his Apostles all that love to have salt in themselves and peace with one another all that are sensible of the Spiritual life and growth and good taste that they have by the Gospel are bound to praise him to magnifie him for ever that hath vouchsafed us a Religious King and Religious out of Understanding Many other happinesses are rooted in the love of the Subject and of his confidence in their love his very absence from us is an argument to us His continual abode with us hath been an argument of his love to us and this long Progress of his is an argument of his assurance of our loyalty to him It is an argument also of the good habitude and constitution to which he hath brought this State and how little harm they that wish ill to it are able to do Mamertinus Maximiano upon any advantage Hanc in vobis fiduciam pertimescunt This confidence of his makes his home-enemies more afraid then his Laws or his Train'd-Bands Et contemnise sentiunt cum relinquuntur When they are left to their own malignity and to do their worst they discern in that how despicable and contemptible a party they are Cum in interiora Imperii seceditis when the King may go so far from the heart of his Kingdom and the enemy be able to make no use of his absence this makes them see the desperateness of their vain imaginations He is not gone from us for a Noble part of this Body our Nation is gone with him and a Royal part of his Body stays with us Neither is the farthest place that he goes to any other then ours now when as the Roman Orator said Nunc demum juvat orbem terrarum spectare depictum Eumenius cum in illo nihil videmus alienum Now it is a comfort to look upon a Map of the World when we can see nothing in it that is not our own so we may say Now it is a pleasant sight to look upon a Map of this Island when it is all one As we had him at first and shall have him again from that Kingdom where the natural days are longer then ours are so may he have longer days with us then ever any of our Princes had and as he hath Immortalitatem propriam sibi filium sibi similem as it was said of Constantine a peculiar immortality not to die because he shall live in his Son so in the fulness of time and in the accomplishment of Gods purposes upon him may he have the happiness of the other Immortality and peacefully surrender all his Crowns in exchange of one a Crown of immortal glory which the Lord the righteous Judge lay up for him against that day To conclude all and to go the right way from things which we see to things which we see not by consideration of the King to the contemplation of God since God hath made us his Tenants of this World we are bound not only to pay our Rents spiritual duties and services towards him but we are bound to reparations too to contribute our help to society and such external duties as belong to the maintenance of this world in which Almighty God hath chosen to be glorified If we have these two Pureness of heart and Grace of lips then we do these two we pay our Rent and we keep the world in reparation and we shall pass through all those steps and gradations Ambros which St. Ambrose harmoniously melodiously expresses to be servi per timorem to be the servants of
Rule Whensoever thou enter prisest any action says he consider what Socrates what Plato that is what a wise and religious man would have done in that case and do thou so This way our Saviour directs us Ja. 13.15 I have given you an example It is not only Mandatum novum but exemplum Novum That ye should do even as I have done unto you And this is the way that the Apostle directs us to Phil. 3.13 Brethren be followers of me and because he could not be always with them he adds Look on them which walk so as you have us for an example Love the Legends the Lives the Actions and love the sayings the Apopththegms of good men In all tentations like Josephs tentations Gen. 39.9 love Josephs words How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God In all tentations like Jobs tentations love the words of Job Job 2.10 Shall we receive good at the hands of God and shall we not receive evil In all tentations like to Shidrachs and his fellow-Confessors Dan 3.17 love their words Our God is able to deliver us and he will deliver us but if not we will not serve thy god nor worship thine image Certainly without the practise it is scarce to be discern'd what ease and what profit there is in proposing certain and good Examples to our selves And when you have made up your profit that way rectified your self by that course then as your Sons write by Copies and your Daughters work by Samplars be every Father a Copy to his Son every Mother a Samplar to her Daughter and every house will be an University O in how blessed a nearness to their Direction is that Child and that Servant and that Parishioner who when they shall say to Almighty God by way of Prayer What shall I do to get eternal life shall hear God answer to them by his Spirit Do but as thou seest thy Father do do as thou seest thy Master do do as thou seest thy Pastor do To become a precedent govern thy self by precedent first which is all the Doctrine that I intended to deduce out of this second Proposition Sicut Deus As God commanded light out of darkness so he hath shin'd in our hearts God did as he had done before and so we pass from the Idem Deus and the Sicut Deus to the Quid Deus What that is which God hath done here He commanded light out of darkness Quid Deus The drowning of the first world and the repairing that again the burning of this world and establishing another in heaven do not so much strain a mans Reason as the Creation a Creation of all out of nothing For for the repairing of the world after the Flood compared to the Creation it was eight to nothing eight persons to begin a world upon then but in the Creation none And for the glory which we receive in the next world it is in some sort as the stamping of a print upon a Coyn the metal is there already a body and a soul to receive glory but at the Creation there was no soul to receive glory no body to receive a soul no stuff no matter to make a body of The less any thing is the less we know it how invisible how intelligible a thing then is this Nothing We say in the School Deus cognoscibilior Angelis We have better means to know the nature of God then of Angels because God hath appeared and manifested himself more in actions then Angels have done we know what they are by knowing what they have done and it is very little that is related to us what Angels have done what then is there that can bring this Nothing to our understanding what hath that done A Leviathan a Whale from a grain of Spawn an Oke from a buried Akehorn is a great but a great world from nothing is a strange improvement We wonder to see a man rise from nothing to a great Estate but that Nothing is but nothing in comparison but absolutely nothing meerly nothing is more incomprehensible then any thing then all things together It is a state if a man may call it a state that the Devil himself in the midst of his torments cannot wish No man can the Devil himself cannot advisedly deliberately wish himself to be nothing It is truely and safely said in the School That whatsoever can be the subject of a wish if I can desire it wish it it must necessarily be better at least in my opinion then that which I have and whatsoever is better is not nothing whithout doubt it must necessarily produce more thankfulness in me towards God that I am a Christian but certainly more wonder that I am a Creature it is vehemently spoken but yet needs no excuse which Justin Marter says Ne ipsi quidem Domino fidem haberem c. I should scarce believe God himself if he should tell me that any but himself created this world of nothing so infallible and so inseparable a work and so distinctive a Character is it of the Godhead to produce any thing from nothing and that God did when he commanded light out of darkness Moses stands not long upon the Creation in the description thereof no more will we When there went but a word to the making it self why should we make many words in the description thereof We will therefore onely declare the three terms in this Proposition and so proceed first God commanded then he commanded light and light out of darkness For the first that which we translate here commanded is in St. Pauls mouth the same that is Moses Dixit and no more God said it But then if he said it Cui dixit to whom did he say it Procopius asks the Question and he answers himself Dixit Angelis He said it to the Angels For Procopius being of that opinion which very many were of besides himself that God had made the Angels some time before he came to the Creation of particular Creatures he thinks that when he came to that he call'd the Angels that they by seeing of what all other Creatures were made might know also of what stuff themselves were made of the common and general nothing Some others had said that God said this to the Creature it self which was now in fieri as we say in the School in the production ready to be brought forth Athanasius But then says Athanasius God would have said Sis Lux and not Sit Lux He would have said Be thou O Light or appear and come forth O Light and not Let there be Light But what needs all this vexation in Procopius or Athanasius When as Dicere Dei est intelligere ejus practicum Dionysius Carthus when God would produce his Idaea his pre-conception into action that action that production was his Dixit his saying It is as we say in School Actus indicativus practici intellectus Gods outward
Declaration of an inward purpose by execution of that purpose that his Dixit his saying R. Moses It is sufficiently expressed by Rab Moses In Creatione Dicta sunt voluntates In the act of Creation the Will of GOD was the Word of God his Will that it should be was his saying Let it be Of which it is a convenient example which is in the Prophet Jonah 2.10 The Lord spake unto the Fish and it vomited Jonah upon the dry Land that is God would have the Fish to do it and it did it God spake then in the Creation but he spake Ineffabiliter says St. Aug. August without uttering any sound He spake but he spake Intemporaliter says that Father too without spending any time in distinction of syllables But yet when he spoke Aliquis ad fuit as Athanasius presses it Athan. surely there was some body with him there was says he VVho Verbum ejus ad fuit ad fuit Spiritus ejus says he truly the second Person in the Trinity his Eternal VVord and the third Person the Holy Ghost were both there at the Creation and to them he spoke For By the Word of the Lord were the heavens framed and all the host of them Spiritu oris ejus Job 33.4 by that Spirit that proceeded from him says David The Spirit of God hath made me 26. 13. and By his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens So that in one word thou who wast nothing hast employed and set on work the heart and hand of all the three Perâ—ons in the blessed and glorious Trinity Father Son and Holy Ghost to the making of thee and then what oughtest thou to be and to do in retribution and not to make thee that which thou art now a Christian but even to make thee that wherein 〈◊〉 wast equal to a worm to a grain of dust Hast thou put the whole Trinity to busie themselves upon thee and therefore what shouldst thou be towards them But here in this branch we consider not so much not his noblest Creature Man but his first Creature Light He commanded and he commanded Light And of Light we say no more in this place but this that in all the Scriptures in which the word Light is very often metaphorically applyed it is never applyed in an ill sence Christ is called a Lyon but there is an ill Lyon too that seeks whom he may devour Christ is the serpent that was exalted but there is an ill serpent that did devour us all at once But Christ is the light of the world and no ill thing is call'd light Light was Gods signature by which he set his hand to the Creation and therefore as Princes signe above the Letter and not below God made light first in that first Creature he declared his presence his Majesty the more in that he commanded light out of darkness There was Lumen de Lumine before light of light very God of very God an eternal Son of an eternal Father before But light out of darkness is Musick out of silence It was one distinct plague of Egypt darkness above and one distinct blessing that the children of Israel had light in their dwellings But for some spiritual Applications of light and darkness we shall have room again when after we shall have spoken of our second part our Vocation as God hath shin'd in our hearts positively we shall come to speak of that shining comparatively That God hath so shin'd in our hearts as he commanded light out of darkness And to those two Branches of our second part the positive and comparative Consideration of that shining we are in order come now In the first part we were made in this second we are mended Part II. in the first we were brought into this world in this second we are led through it in the first we are Creatures in this we are Christians God hath shin'd in our hearts In this part Divisio we shall have two Branches a positive and a comparative consideration of the words First the matter it self what this shining is and it is the conversion of Man to God by the ministry of the Gospel and secondly how this manner of expressing it answers the comparison As God commanded light out of darkness so he hath shin'd in our hearts And in the first the positive we shall pass by these few and short steps first Gods action Illuxit he shine it is evidence Manifestation And then the time when this day breaks when this Sun rises Illuxit he hath shin'd he hath done enough already Thirdly the place the sphere in which he shines the Orb which he hath illumin'd in Cordibus if he shine he shines in the heart And lastly the persons upon whom he casts his beams in Cordibus nostris in our hearts And having past these four in the positive part we shall descend to the comparative as God commanded light out of darkness so he hath shin'd in our hearts 1. Lucet First then for Gods action his working in the Christian Church which is our Vocation we consider man to be all to be all Creatures Mar. 16.15 according to that expression of our Saviour's Go preach the Gospel to every Creature and agreeable to that largeness in which he receiv'd it Colos 1.23 the Apostle delivers it The Gospel is preached to every Creature under heaven The properties the qualities of every Creature are in man the Essence the Existence of every Creature is for man so man is every Creature And therefore the Philosopher draws man into too narrow a table when he says he is Microcosmos an Abridgement of the world in little Nazianzen gives him but his due when he calls him Mundum Magnum a world to which all the rest of the world is but subordinate For all the world besides is but Gods Foot-stool Man sits down upon his right hand and howsoever God be in all the world yet how did God dwell in man in the assumption of that nature and what care did GOD take of that dwelling that when that house was demolished would yet dwell in the ruines thereof for the Godhead did not depart from the dead body of Christ Jesus in the Grave And then how much more gloriously then before did he re-edifie that house in raising it again to Glory Man therefore is Cura Divini ingenii Tertul. a creature upon whom not onely the greatness and the goodness but even the study and diligence of God is employed And being thus a greater world then the other he must be greater in all his parts and so in his lights and so he is for instead of this light which the world had at first Man hath a nobler light an immortal a discerning soul the light of reason Instead of the many stars which this world hath man hath had the light of the Law and the succession of the Prophets And instead of that Sun which
must that does that did dye ever since it was made I carry a Soul nay a Soul carries me to such a perpetuity as no Saint no Angel God himself shall not survive me over-live me And lastly says he Terrenus sum Coelestis I have a Body but of Earth but yet of such Earth as God was the Potter to mold it God was the statuary to fashion it and then I have a Soul of which God was the Father he breath'd it into me and of which no matter can say I was the Mother for it proceeded of nothing Such a Mystery is man here but he is a Miracle hereafter I shall be still the same man and yet have another being And in this is that Miracle exalted that death who destroys me re-edifies me Mors veluti medium excogitata Cyril ut de integro restauraretur homo man was fallen and God took that way to raise him to throw him lower into the grave man was sick and God invented God studied Physick for him and strange Physick to recover him by death The first faciamus hominem the Creation of man was a thing incomprehensible in Nature but the Denuo nasci to be born again was stranger even to Nicodemus who knew the former the Creation Joh. 4.3 well enough But yet the Immutabimur is the greatest of all 1 Cor. 15.57 which St. Paul calls all to wonder at Behold I shew you a Mystery we shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed A Mystery which it Nicodemus had discern'd it would have put him to more wonder then the Denuo nasci to enter into his mothers womb as he speaks to enter into the Bowels of the Earth and lie there and lie dead there not nine months but many yeers and then to be born again and the first minute of that new Birth to be so perfect as that nothing can be better and so perfect as that he can never become worse that is that which makes all strange accidents to natural Bodies and Bodies Politike too Scientia all changes in man all revolutions of States easie and familiar to us I shall have another being and yet be the same man And in that state I shall have the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus Of which three things being now come to speak I am the less sorry and so may you be too if my voice be so sunk as that I be not heard for if I had all my time and all my strength and all your patience reserv'd till now what could I say that could become what that could have any proportion to this knowledge and this glory and this face of Christ Jesus there in the Kingdome of Heaven But yet be pleased to hear a word of each of these three words and first of Knowledge In the Attributes of God we consider his knowledge to be Principium agendi dirigens The first proposer and Director This should be done and then his Will to be Principium imperans the first Commander This shall be done and then his Power to be Principium exequens the first Performer This is done This should be done this shall be done this is done expresses to us the Knowledge the Will and the Power of God Now we shall be made partakers of the Divine Nature and the Knowledge and the Will and the Power of God shall be so far communicated to us there as that we shall know all that belongs to our happiness and we shall have a will to doe and a power to execute whatsoever conduces to that And for the knowledge of Angels that is not in them per essentiam for whosoever knows so as the Essence of the thing flows from him knows all things and that 's a knowledge proper to God only Neither doe the Angels know per species by those resultances and species which rise from the Object and pass through the Sense to the Understanding for that 's a deceiveable way both by the indisposition of the Organ sometimes and sometimes by the depravation of the Judgment and therefore as the first is too high this is too low a way for the Angels Some things the Angels do know by the dignity of their Nature by their Creation which we know not as we know many things which inserior Creatures do not and such things all the Angels good and bad know Some things they know by the Grace of their confirmation by which they have more given them then they had by Nature in their Creation and those things only the Angels that stood but all they do know Some things they know by Revelation when God is pleased to manifest them unto them and so some of the Angels know that which the rest though confirm'd doe not know By Creation they know as his Subjects by Confirmation they know as his servants by Revelation they know as his Councel Now Erimus sicut Angeli says Christ There we shall be as the Angels The knowledge which I have by Nature shall have no Clouds here it hath that which I have by Grace shall have no reluctation no resistance here it hath That which I have by Revelation shall have no suspition no jealousie here it hath sometimes it is hard to distinguish between a respiration from God and a suggestion from the Devil There our curiosity shall have this noble satisfaction we shall know how the Angels know by knowing as they know We shall not pass from Author to Author as in a Grammar School nor from Art to Art as in an University but as that General which Knighted his whole Army God shall Create us all Doctors in a minute That great Library those infinite Volumes of the Books of Creatures shall be taken away quite away no more Nature those reverend Manuscripts written with Gods own hand the Scriptures themselves shall be taken away quite away no more preaching no more reading of Scriptures and that great School-Mistress Experience and Observation shall be remov'd no new thing to be done and in an instant I shall know more then they all could reveal unto me I shall know not only as I know already that a Bee-hive that an Ant-hill is the same Book in Decimo sexto as a Kingdom is in Folio That a Flower that lives but a day is an abridgment of that King that lives out his threescore and ten yeers but I shall know too that all these Ants and Bees and Flowers and Kings and Kingdoms howsoever they may be Examples and Comparisons to one another yet they are all as nothing altogether nothing less then nothing infinitely less then nothing to that which shall then be the subject of my knowledge for it is the knowledge of the glory of God Gloria Dei Before in the former acceptation the glory of God was our glorifying of God here the glory of God is his glorifying of us there it was his receiving here it
so heavy nor so discomfortable a curse in the first as in the latter shutting not in the shutting of barrenness as in the shutting of weakness Esa 37 3. when Children are come to the birth and there is not strength to bring forth It is the exaltation of misery to fall from a near hope of happiness And in that vehement imprecation the Prophet expresses the highth of Gods anger Give them O Lord what wilt thou give them Osc 9 14. give them a mis-carrying womb Therefore as soon as we are men that is inanimated quickned in the womb though we cannot our selves our Parents have reason to say in our behalves Wretched man that he is who shall deliver him from this body of death for Ro. 7.24 even the womb is the body of death if there be no deliverer It must be he that said to Jeremy 1. 5. Before I formed thee I knew thee and before thou camest out of the womb I sanctified thee We are not sure that there was no kind of ship nor boat to fish in nor to pass by till God prescribed Noah that absolute forme of the Ark that word which the holy Ghost by Moses uses for the Ark is common to all kinds of boats Thebah and is the same word that Moses uses for the boat that he was exposed in that his mother laid him in an Ark of bullrushes Exo 2.3 But we are sure that Eve had no Midwife when she was delivered of Cain therefore she might well say Possedi virum a Domino Gen. 4.1 I have gotten a man from the Lord wholly intirely from the Lord it is the Lord that hath enabled me to conceive the Lord hath infus'd a quickning soul into that conception the Lord hath brought into the world that which himself had quickned without all this might Eve say my body had been but the house of death and Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis To God the Lord belong the issues of death But then this Exitus a morte is but Introitus in mortem this issue Exitus a moribus mundi this deliverance from that death the death of the womb is an entrance a delivering over to another death the manifold deaths of this world We have a winding sheet in our Mothers womb that grows with us from our conception and we come into the world wound up in that winding sheet for we come to seek a grave And as prisoners discharged of actions may lie for fees so when the womb hath discharged us yet we are bound to it by cords of flesh by such a string as that we cannot go thence nor stay there We celebrate our own funeral with cries even at our birth as though our threescore and ten years of life were spent in our Mothers labor and our Circle made up in the first point thereof We beg one Baptism with another a sacrament of tears and we come into a world that lasts many ages but we last not In domo patris saies our blessed Saviour speaking of heaven multae mansiones Jo. 14.2 there are many and mansions divers and durable so that if a man cannot possess a martyrs house he hath shed no blood for Christ yet he may have a confessors he hath been ready to glorifie God in the shedding of his blood And if a woman cannot possess a virgins house she hath embrac'd the holy state of marriage yet she may have a matrons house she hath brought forth and brought up children in the fear of God In domo patris In my Fathers house in heaven there are many mansions but here upon earth Mat. 8 20. The Son of man hath not where to lay his head saies he himself No terram dedit filiis hominum How then hath God given this earth to the Sons of men He hath given them earth for their materials to be made of earth and he hath given them earth for their grave and sepulture to return and resolve to earth but not for their possession Heb. 13.14 Here we havh no continuing City nay no Cottage that continues nay no we no persons no bodies that continue Whatsoever moved St. Hierome to call the journies of the Israelites in the wilderness Exo. 17.1 Mansions the word the word is nasang signifies but a journie but a peregrination even the Israel of God hath no mansions Gen. 47 9. but journies pilgrimages in this life By that measure did Jacob measure his life to Pharaoh The daies of the years of my pilgrimage And though the Apostle would not say morimer that whilst we are in the body we are dead yet he saies peregrinamur 2 Cor. 5 6. whilst we are in the body we are but in a pilgrimage and we are absent from the Lord. He might have said dead for this whole world is but an universal Church-yard but one common grave and the life and motion that the greatest persons have in it is but as the shaking of buried bodies in their graves by an earthquake That which we call life is but Hebdomada mortium a week of deaths seaven daies seaven periods of our life spent in dying a dying seaven times over and ther 's an end Our birth dies in Infancy and our infancy dies in youth and youth and the rest die in age and age also dies and determines all Nor do all these youth out of infancy or age out of youth arise so as a Phenix out of the ashes of another Phenix formerly dead but as a wasp or a serpent out of carrion or as a snake out of dung our youth is worse then our infancy and our age worse then our youth our youth is hungry and thirsty after those sins which our infancy knew not and our age is sorry and angry that it cannot pursue those sins which our youth did And besides all the way so many deaths that is so many deadly calamities accompany every condition and every period of this life as that death it self would be an ease to them that suffer them Upon this sense does Job wish 10. 18. that God had not given him an issue from the first death from the womb Wherefore hast thou brought me forth out of the womb O that I had given up the Ghost and no eye had seen me I should have been as though I had not been And not only the impatient Israelites in their murmuring would to God we had died by the hands of the Lord Ex. 16.3 in the land of Egypt but Eliah himself when he fled from Jezabel and went for his life as that Text saies under the juniper tree requested that he might die and said It is enough now O Lord take away my life 1 Reg. 19.4 So Jonah justifies his impatience nay his anger towards God himself Now O Lord take I beseech thee my life from me for it is better for me to die then to live And when God ask'd him dost thou well
evidences of adoption and spiritual filiation then and so long as I see these marks and live so I may safely comfort my self in a holy certitude a modest infallibility of my adoption Christ determins himself in that the purpose of God because the purpose of God was manifest to him S. Pet. S. Paul determine themselves in those two waies of knowing the purpose of God the word of God before the execution of the Decree in the fulness of time It was prophecied before said they it is perform'd now Christ is risen without seeing corruption Now this which is so singularly peculiar to him that his flesh should not see corruption at his second coming his coming to Judgment shall be extended to all that are then alive their flesh shall not see corruption because as the Apostle saies and saies as a secret as a mystery behold I shew you a mystery we shall not all sleep 1 Cor. 15.51 that is not continue in the state of the dead in the grave but we shall all be changed In an instant we shall have a dissolution and in the same instant a redintegration a recompacting of body and soul and that shall be truly a death and truly a resurrection but no sleeping no corruption But for us who dy now and sleep in the state of the dead we must all pass this posthume death this death after death nay this death after burial this dissolution after dissolution this death of corruption and putrefaction of virmiculation and incineration of dissolution and dispersion in and from the grave When those bodies which have been the children of royal Parents and the Parents of royal Children must say with Job 17.14 to corruption thou art my Father to the worm thou art my Mother my Sister Miserable riddle when the same worm must be my mother my sister my self Miserable incest when I must be married to mine own mother and sister and be both Father and Mother to mine one mother and sister beget and bear that worm which is all that miserable penury when my mouth shall be silled with dust and the worm shall feed and feed sweetly upon me 24.20 When the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction if the poorest a live tread upon him nor the poorest receive any contentment in being made equal to Princes for they shall be equal but in dust 23.24 One dyeth at his full strength being wholly at ease and in quiet and another dies in the bitterness of his soul and never eats with pleasure but they ly down alike in the dust and the worm cover them 24.11 The worm covers them in Job and in Esai it covers them is spread under them the worm is spread under thee and the worm covers thee There is the mats and the carpet that lie under and there is the state and the canopy that hangs over the greatest of the Sons of men Even those bodies that were the Temples of the holy Ghost come to this dilapidation to ruine to rubbish to dust Even the Israel of the Lord and Jacob himself had no other specification Esa 41.14 no other denomination but that vermis Jacob thou worm of Jacob. Truly the consideration of this posthume death this death after burial that after God with whom are the issues of death hath delivered me from the death of the womb by bringing me into the world and from the manifold deaths of the world by laying me in the grave I must die again in an incineration of this flesh and in a dispersion of that dust that all that monarch that spread over many nations alive must in his dust lie in a corner of that sheet of lead and there but so long as the lead will last and that private and retired man that thought himself his own for ever and never came forth must in his dust of the grave be published and such are the revolutions of graves be mingled in his dust with the dust of every high way and of every dunghil and swallowed in every puddle and pond this is the most inglorious and contemptible villification the most deadly and peromptory nullification of man that we can consider God seems to have carried the declaration of his power to a great heighth when he sets the Prophet Ezechiel in the vally of dry bones 37. 1. and saies Son of man can these dry bones live as though it had been impossible and yet they did the Lord laid sinews upon them and flesh and breathed into them and they did live But in that case there were bones to be seen something visible of which it might be said can this this live but in this death of incineration and dispersion of dust we see nothing that we can call that mans If we say can this dust live perchance it cannot It may be the meer dust of the earth which never did live nor never shall it may be the dust of that mans worms which did live but shall no more it may be the dust of another man that concerns not him of whom it is asked This death of incineration and dispersion is to natural reason the most irrecoverable death of all and yet Domini Domini sunt exitus mortis unto God the Lord belong the issues of death and by recompacting this dust into the same body and re-inanimating the same body with the same soul be shall in a blessed and glorious Resurrection give me such an issue from this Death as shall never passe into any other death but establish me in a Life that shall last as long as the Lord of Life himself And so have you that that belongs to the first acceptation of these words unto God the Lord belong the issues of Death That though from the womb to the grave and in the grave it self we passe from Death to Death yet as Daniel speaks The Lord our God is able to deliver us and he will deliver us And so we passe to our second accomodation of these words Unto God the Lord belong the issues of Death That it belongs to God and not to Man to passe a Judgement upon us at our Death or to conclude a dereliction on God's part upon the manner thereof Those Indications which Physitians receive Part. 2. Liberatio in morte and those praesagitions which they give for death or recovery in the Patient they receive and they give out of the grounds and rules of their Art But we have no such rule or art to ground a presagition of spiritual death and damnation upon any such Indication as we see in any dying man we see often enough to be sorry but not to despayr for the mercies of God work momentanely in minuts and many times insensibly to by-standers or any other then the party departing and we may be deceived both wayes we use to comfort our selves in the death of a friend if it be testifyed that he went away like
nobis esse hic as St. Peter said there It is good to dwell here in this consideration of his death and therefore transfer we our Tabernacle our devotion through some of these steps which God the Lord made to his issue of death that day Take in his whole day from the hour that Christ eat the passover upon Thursday to the hour in which he died the next day Make this present day Conformitas that day in thy devotion and consider what he did and remember what you have done Before he instituted and celebrated the sacrament which was after the eating of the passover he proceeded to the act of humility to wash his Disciples feet even Peters who for a while resisted him In thy preparation to the holy and blessed sacrament hast thou with a sincere humilty sought a reconciliation with all the world even with those who have been averse from it and refused that reconciliation from thee If so and not else thou hast spent that first part of this his last day in a conformity with him After the sacrament he spent the time til night in prayer in preaching in Psalms Hast thou considered that a worthy receiving of the sacrament consists in a continuation of holiness after as wel as in a preparation before If so thou hast therein also conformed thy self to him so Christ spent his time till night At night he went into the garden to pray and he prayed prolixius He spent much time in prayer Luc. 22.24 How much because it is literally expressed that he praied there three several times and that returning to his Disciples after his first prayer and finding them asleep said could ye not watch with me one hour Mat. 26.40 it is collected that he spent three houres in prayer I dare scarce ask thee whither thou wentst or how thou disposedst of thy self when it grew dark and after last night If that time were spent in a holy recommendation of thy self to God and a submission of thy will to his that it was spent in a conformity to him In that time and in those prayers was his agony and bloody sweat I will hope that thou didst pray but not every ordinary and customary prayer but prayer actually accompanied with shedding of tears and dispositively in a readiness to shed blood for his glory in necessary cases puts thee into a corformity with him About midnight he was taken and bound with a kiss Art thou not too conformable to him in that Is not that too literally too exactly thy case At midnight to have been taken and bound with a kiss from thence he was carried back to Jerusalem first to Annas then to Caiphas and as late as it was there he was examined and buffeted and delivered over to the custody of those officers from whom he received all those irrâ—sions and violences the covering of his face the spitting upon his face the blasphemies of words and the smartness of blows which that Gospel mentions In which compass fell that Gallicinium that crowing of the Cock which called up Peter to his repentance How thou passedst all that time last night thou knowest If thou didst any thing then that needed Peters tears and hast not shed them let me be thy Cock do it now now thy Master in the unworthyest of his servants looks back upon thee Do it now Betimes in the morning as soon as it was day the Jews held a Councel in the high Priests house and agreed upon their evidence against him then carried him to Pilate who was to be his Judg. Didst thou accuse thy self when thou wak'dst this morning wast thou content to admit even fals accusations that is rather to suspect actions to have been sin which were not then to smother justifie such as were truly sins then thou spendst that hour in conformity to him Pilat found no evidence against him therefore to ease himself to pass a complement upon Herod Tetrarch of Galilee who was at that time at Jerusalem because Christ being a Galilean was of Herods jurisdiction Pilat sent him to Herod rather as a mad man then a malefactor Herod remanded him with scorns to Pilat to proceed against him this was about 8 of the Clock Hast thou been content to come to this inquisition this examination this agitation this cribration this pursuit of thy conscience to sift it to follow it from the sins of thy youth to thy present sins from the sins of thy bed to the sins of thy board and from the substance to the circumstance of thy sins that 's time spent like thy Saviours Pilat would have sav'd Christ by using the priviledg of the day in his behalf because that day one prisoner was to be delivered but they chose Barrabas He would have sav'd him from death by satisfying their fury with inflicting other torments upon him scourging and crowning with thorns loading him with many scornful ignominious contumelies but this redeem'd him not they press'd a crucifying Hast thou gone about to redeem thy sin by fasting by alms by disciplines mortifications in the way of satisfaction to the justice of God that will not serve that 's not the right way We press an utter crucifying of that sin that governs thee and that conforms thee to Christ Towards noon Pilat gave Judgment and they made such hast to execution as that by noon he was upon the Cross There now hangs that sacred body upon the cross re-baptiz'd in his own tears sweat and embalm'd in his own blood alive There are those bowels of compassion which are so conspicuous so manifested as that you may see them through his wounds There those glorious eyes grew faint in their light so as the Sun asham'd to survive them departed with his light too And there that Son of God who was never from us yet had now come a new way unto us in assuming our nature delivers that soul which was never out of his Fathers hands into his Fathers hands by a new way a voluntary emission thereof for though to this God our Lord belong these issues of death so that considered in his own contract he must necessarily dy yet at no breach nor battery which they had made upon his sacred body issues his soul but emisit he gave up the Ghost as God breath'd a soul into the first Adam so this second Adam breath'd his soul into God into the hands of God There we leave you in that blessed dependancy to hang upon him that hangs upon the cross There bath in his tears there suck at his wounds lie down in peace in his grave till he vouchsafe you a Resurrection an ascension into that Kingdome which he hath purchas'd for you with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood Amen FINIS