implies Tender compassions even beyond those of Mother Bowels of Mercies not one Mercy but a cluster of them nor those common ones promiscuously scattered on good and bad but such as concern our Souls and better life which the Illative Particle Therefore implies sending us back to the former part of this Epistle wherein the Apostle had at large discoursed of God's infinite Mercies from all Eternity prepared for us of our Predestination Election Justification in Christ and the like These are those Bowels of Mercies by which the Romans and we are conjured The Mercies of God indeed for who but He could bestow them And who so hard a Flint whom such soft Feathers cannot break Who such an Adamant whom the Bloud of God shed for him cannot soften Who as he gave Himself for us may well expect we should offer up our selves unto Him Which leads me to the main Duty of the Text in these words That ye present your Bodies c. And here the first thing to be considered is What we are to present unto God to wit Our Bodies and those first in the most strict and literal sense as being the most visible part of our Christian Sacrifice the Organs of our Souls whereby they both work and discover their Operations There is indeed a hidden man of the heart as St. Peter calls it 1 Pet. 3. 4. whose inward Oblations are as invisible as that God to whom they are made and only discernable by that Eye to whom all things are naked But there must be something visible that must take and affect ours The smoak of our Incense must yield a pleasing odour to Men as well as to God and the fire of our Sacrifice blaze out on the Altar There are who would exempt their Bodies from the Service of God God say they is a Spirit and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth and Evangelical worship is Spiritual worship These Men are so Angelical that they forget themselves to be Men and yet St. Paul will tell them that the very Angels themselves have their knees Phil. 2. 10. and we find that Holy Men have ever employ'd them in the Worship of God and yet never thought their Worship the less spiritual for all that The Prophet David calls for falling down and worshipping and kneeling before the Lord Nay our Lord Himself in his prayers lay prostrate on his body and bowed his head on the Cross with adoration as much as languor thereby teaching us that our addresses to God are not the less spiritual for being mannerly 'T is true indeed that an humble Body and a stiff unpliant Soul doe ill suit together The service of That like the Mint and Cummin is not to be left out while the inward devotion of the Soul like the weightier matters of the Law claims the precedency and is the main part of our Sacrifice without this the bowels thereof will not be sound and entire but like Caesar's portentous Sacrifice want a heart or resembling that hypocritical one of him in Lucian who presented his Deity with an Oxes bones covered with the Hide when the Flesh and Entrails were gone But St. Paul has made up the Christian Sacrifice full and compleat 1 Cor. 6. 20. Glorifie God in your body and in your spirit and he has given us a very good reason why each of them should be employ'd because both are God's both bought with a price and therefore 't is no less than such a kind of Sacriledge as was that of Ananias and Saphyra to keep back any part of this price to make any reserve where all is God's Our Bodies and Souls cannot be parted here and 't is the Devil that would fain divide them And therefore well knowing that God would be glorified in both he required but one part of Christ for his share only the homage of his outward Man being assured that if God had not both he would have neither But not to trouble you with the proof of so clear a truth let it be our endeavour so to present each part to God that it may be acceptable And first Our Bodies The Psalmist prophetically bringing in Christ into the World shapes him a Body A Body hast thou prepared me Psal. 40. 5. For what end and purpose It follows ver 7. To doe thy will O God And we must endeavour so to fit and prepare ours that by them God's will may be done too And that we shall doe by making them as much as in us lyes Spiritual and Angelical active and nimble in the Service of God by laying aside every weight that clogs and renders them unapt for that service by keeping them under and making them servants to those Souls which have a natural right over them by preserving these garments of the Soul unspotted from the world and by the flesh so far should we be from presenting God with Bodies worn out in the drudgery of Sin and Satan and which have as it were pass'd through the fire to Moloch to whom our Souls like Mezentius guests in the Poet are ty'd as to so many loathsome Carkasses Bodies not of God's making but of our own ours indeed appropriated to us but not such as the Apostle here beseecheth us to offer up unto God But then 2. As our Souls doe as far exceed our Bodies as Jewels doe their Caskets so should our main care be for them so to adorn and enrich them with all spiritual graces that they may be fit presents for God For if our Souls which are but like Salt to keep our Bodies from Corruption shall themselves be rotten and unsavoury wherewith shall they be seasoned Now as these have their fleshly part too which must be mortified and consumed so have they their spiritual part which must be refined St. Paul calls it the spirit of our mind Eph. 4. 23. wherein we are chiefly to be renewed viz. the superior faculties of Reason and Understanding which we are to offer up unto God as the purest part of our Sacrifice and which is properly our Reasonable service For God who is a God of Understanding is to be worshipped purâ mente in those faculties which carry in them a more express character of his Image and whereby we doe in a more especial manner partake of the divine Nature as we doe by our Reason which in a Heathen's expression is nothing else but Deus in humano corpore hospitans And this we give up to Him when we wholly resign it up to his Wisedom when we sacrifice this our Isaac at the foot of his Altar We give Him our Wit by maintaining his Truths and our Memory by treasuring them up We give Him our Thoughts by meditating on his Word and Works Our Wills by thoroughly conforming them to his Will and our Affections by setting them on things above 3. And this is properly that Sacrifice which the Text enjoyns us alluding to that manner of Worship which was ever in
wrought before us How should we be ravished at a second Transfiguration and say with the Apostles who beheld it It is good for us to be here Should Christ ascend up again into Heaven in our sight as he did in that of his disciples and followers should we not need an Angel as they did to check us for our too much gazing And yet let me tell you that such a prospect as that would not be more glorious than of a Christ nailed to his Cross nor yet perhaps so usefull It would rather raise our curiosity than inflame our affections rather amaze and astonish than benefit us The Text therefore gives us a more advantageous one of Him It bids us look on him as pierced and pierced even for us who pierced him It bids us view this Sun of Righteousness more glorious in himself more benign to us in his Setting than in his Rising More beautifull in his Eclipse than in his full Lustre To look unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our Faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross and despised the shame and to consider him who endured such contradiction of sinners against himself This was the aim of all St. Paul's preaching We preach Christ crucified 1 Cor. 1. 23. This the top of his Knowledge I determined not to know any thing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified 1 Cor. 2. 2. This his only Glory God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ Gal. 6. 14. And here to our joy and comfort may we view him Redeeming us from the curse of the Law Gal. 3. 10. Abolishing in his flesh the Enmity the Law of Commandments Ephes. 2. 14 15. Blotting out the hand-writing of Ordinances that was against us and nailing it to his Cross Col. 2. 14. Reconciling the World to Himself making our peace expiating our offences satisfying the Justice of an offended God repairing our loss and restoring us to a better condition than we had forfeited by our Transgression In a word vanquishing Hell and opening Heaven for us And ought not this to be matter of glorying to us Can any sight be more worthy our beholding Any object more deserve to be lookt on than such a one as this At this time especially when the Church solemnly invites us to this Spectacle When as St. Paul speaks Gal. 3. 1. Jesus Christ is evidently set forth crucified among us This the Text prophetically tells us Christ's crucifiers should doe and indeed All that expect to have their part in the Merit of his Death and Passion must doe that is by a serious and often-repeated Meditation have Christ crucified always before their eyes For we are not to look upon the words of my Text only as a Prophecy but as a necessary Duty obliging us to fix our eyes constantly on this object Christ pierced for us and that we may the better doe it let us take a more particular and exact view of Him and consider Him as pierced both in his Body and in his Soul In every Member of That in every Faculty of This the better to estimate his Sufferings and raise our Devotion and Admiration Consider we then Christ as pierced 1. In his Body Let us behold the Man as Pilate exposed him to the eyes of the Jews all in Bloud all as it were one Wound pierced in every part of his Body His Head torn with thorns his Face bruised with buffetings his Shoulders crusht with the weight of that Cross which he first bare before it bare Him His Back plowed up with Whips his Feet and Hands bored with Nails and his very Heart pierced with the point of the Spear I am not able to paint out those dire Sufferings Christ endured in his Body but must draw a Veil over them and leave them to your own Meditations And yet this is but the least part of what our Lord suffered for us that which our bodily eye can discern All this is but the outward piercing and but as it were skin-deep in comparison of the piercing of his 2. Soul For what is the pain of the Body to that of the Soul And this had its piercing too What Simeon said of the Mother by way of Prophecy That a Sword should go through her Soul Luke 2. 35. was more signally verified of the Son of God The Arrows of the Almighty did not only stick in his Flesh but pierced his very Soul through That Bloud which streamed from him in his Agony was not so much the Bloud of his Body as of his very Soul And 't was this piercing which drew that sad and lamentable complaint from Him Matth. 26. 38. My Soul is exceeding sorrowfull even unto death Surely it was the apprehension of somewhat more horrible than either Pain or Death that made him so heavy and sorrowfull of Soul Evils are wont to crucifie the Mind in the expectation rather than in the suffering It is a double misery both to fear and undergo it God hath mercifully provided this ease for our Souls in the often ignorance of things that happen that they streighten not our Thoughts ere they load our Backs Who of us embraceth not Pain before Perplexity How often doe we groan and cry for a ready dispatch in our lingerings Defiring rather to dye than to feel or fear death and live Yet was our Saviour both terrified and crucified Terrified in the apprehension of Wrath and in the perpession of Death crucified Not only the sorrows of Death but the very pains of Hell came about him and God's dereliction was that which made up the greatest part of those pains Mat. 27. 46. My God my God why hast thou forsaken me was That which most tortured Him Christ's Enemies had now mocked scourged pierced Him so that from head to foot every Member was deformed and dislocated yet He opened not his mouth He is silent and patient at all the violence Man offered him He only complains of the absence of his God He bewails not what He feels but what He misses and could have endured any misery that could not abide to want his God And what a loss think we was this to want the presence and favour of God though but for a moment which where it is perpetual does in the judgment of Divines make up the greatest part of Hell But you will say How could God forsake Christ unless Christ forsook Himself Certainly God and Man were so unchangeably so inseperably combined in Him that so strict an Union could not possibly suffer the least Divulsion or Desertion True indeed And therefore the Godhead at this time denied the Manhood not his Person but his Patronage not his Presence but his Protection Divinity here winks and withdraws it self from Humanity that our Lord might now be bereft of all comfort and favour who took upon Him to sustain the wrath of all Well then might his Soul be heavy unto death
Church when they cannot make them of their Religion I doe not think that those Christianos nuevos those new Christians as they call them in Spain That is such as the Inquisition has made Christians of Mahumetans doe much love the Religion they turn to and much less those who turn them to it by employing Fire and Faggor These indeed are undeniable Evidences of cruelty in them that use them but slender Motives of credibility to beget belief in them that suffer by them And this way will not fail to multiply enemies instead of procuring friends to any Cause though never so good For as Persecution to the true Church is but as the Pruning to the Vine which gains in its bulk and fruit what it loseth in a few luxuriant branches lopt off so even Heresies themselves thrive by being prun'd too the cropping of these Weeds does but serve to thicken them the bloud of the Devil's Martyrs proves as much the Seed of his Synagogue as that of Gods Saints does of his Church and the destroying of the Persons of Hereticks supposing them such does but add life to their Cause And indeed what encouragement have Men to receive a Religion from their Oppressors or how can they think that they who torture and kill their Bodies are really concern'd to save their Souls And while the felicities of another World are recommended to them only by such as doe deprive them of all in this we cannot wonder at their little appetite to embrace them or to find the oppress'd Indians protest against that Heaven where the Spaniards are to be their Cohabitants Add we to all this That such Motives as these can never demonstrate Truth For how successfull soever their force proves yet it cannot prove the Doctrines true For by that argument it proves the Religion it goes about to settle true It proves that that which it destroys was true before while it prevailed and had the power And then such a testimony is given to the truth of Christianity which Heathenism had before and Turcism hath since And thus you see how all violent ways to propagate the Faith cannot be acceptable to God the Father as being directly contrary to his Nature and Will nor yet to his Son since they cross the very end and design of his coming into the World his Doctrine and Practice Fly in the very face of Religion it self and can never serve their turn who make use of it From all which it follows That they who pursue such ways neither know God the Father nor his Son Jesus Christ. I know what is commonly said by some who practice this way of compulsion in excuse and defence of it That many who serve God at first by compulsion may come after to serve him freely That these sorts of Conversions doe not augment the number of Saints but they diminish that of Hereticks That although some among them may prove bad Converts themselves yet they have Families to be saved that their Children may make good Christians and though the stock be naught yet the branches may be sanctified But the answer hereunto is easie That neither good Intents nor casual Events can justifie unreasonable Violence which instead of rendering Men orthodox Christians makes them rather Atheists Hypocrites and Formalists For being constrained to practice against Conscience they soon come at last to lose all Conscience Nor are Men to owe the Salvation of Souls to any unwarrantable proceedings because they must not doe any present evil in prospect of any future good This was another gross error of these persons in the Text as I am now to show you in the next place 2. The Jews here thought their Zeal to the Temple and their Ritual Observances so invincibly meritorious that no crime could defeat it And we see how apt many Christians are to ascribe so much to the force of a good meaning as if it were able to bear the stress and load of any sins that can be laid upon it A good purpose shall hallow all they doe and make them boldly rush into the most unchristian practices in prosecution of what some call The good old Cause others The Catholick Faith For how doe Men swallow down the deadliest Poyson Perjury Sacriledge Murther Regicide and the like in confidence of this their preservative and say grace over the foulest sins How many have made themselves Saints upon that account that would never have been such upon any other And how much Religion groans under the Reproach of all those Evils which zeal and good meanings have consecrated is notorious to all the World Men call the over-flowing of their gall Religion and value their Opinions so high and their eagerness in abetting them that they think the propagating of them so important a service to God as will justifie all they doe in order to this end Now not to speak of their Error in the choice of their Opinions That of many opposite one only can be the Right my present business shall be to shew you 1. The Impiety and 2. The Danger of this strong delusion in respect of that Malignant influence it has on Practice For the clearing of which two things we are to observe That to the making an Action good and warrantable these three things are requisite 1. A good Intention in the Doer 2. That the Matter of the Action be in it self good and 3. That it be rightly circumstantiated For a failure in either of these three things quite vitiates the whole Action 1. The first thing necessary to a good Action is a good Intention in the Doer This we learn from Matth. 6. 22. If thine Eye that is thy Intention for so Interpreters generally understand it be single thy whole Body shall be full of light Be the matter of an Action never so good yet if a Man's aim and intention in the doing of it be not so all is stark naught For Actus moralis specificatur ex fine And Finis dat speciem in moralibus And as the End is the first thing that sets an Agent a working so is it the last that perfects its work Nay so valuable in the sight of God is a good Intention where-ever it be found That as He sometimes prevents an evil Act in him in whom He discovers a good Intention as in Abimilech so does He sometimes reward a good Purpose tho' it proceeds not to act as in David T is true that a good End alone does not justifie any action but it is as true that there can be nothing good or tolerable without it And although a good meaning doth not wholly excuse yet an evil one wholly condemns it But then 2dly Besides a good Intention two things more are requisite to the making an Action good 1. That the Matter of it be such 2. That it be rightly circumstantiated 1. That the Matter thereof be good For our Intention as our zeal must be always in a good thing And a thing is then
esse omnino non videtur is most true in matter of Piety Here 't is the same thing not to be as not to be doing Nor was it without reason that the Stoick observing one given over to a Lethargy of Ease and Idleness pronounceth him morally dead and makes his Epitaph Vacia hic situs est so does Saint Paul her that lives in pleasure That she is dead while she liveth 1 Tim. 5. 6. And surely we may well conclude him sick in Religion whose Pulse beats slow and dead when it ceases and to have a name only that he lives Rev. 3. 1. 3ly Those things we count living that move of themselves not like an Engine or Automatum Alienis mobile nervis Compelled service to God is but a lame offering and as unacceptable in the Gospel as it was in the Law Heathens counted it an ill presage when their sacrifices did not as it were court their own deaths nor will ours pass for any better in the sight of God if they come with reluctancy and dragg'd as it were to his Altar The word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here implies a voluntary Act an offering-up of our selves not a being offered up God who gives us all things freely does Himself also love a chearfull giver Lastly Our Sacrifice will then be a living one when 't is offered up in Faith and Love For as Faith is the true life of a Saint The Just shall live by faith says the Prophet Habac. 2. 4. so without that 't is impossible to please God says our Apostle Heb. 11. 6. Our gifts will be as unacceptable without our persons as Cain's was And where there is no Love our hand only presents them not our heart the only true Altar that sanctifies our gifts But then 2ly As our Sacrifice must be a living so a holy one For without holiness it can never please a holy God And we find that for want of this necessary qualification he often disclaims nay seems to abhorr what Himself had commanded in the time of the Law Now to make our Sacrifices holy two things shadowed to us by legal Sacrifices are requisite 1. That they be entire and that in all their parts For as God would not then endure a maimed Sacrifice Levit. 22. 22. Mal. 1. 8. so neither will he now away with it The whole Spirit Soul and Body all and every part must be God's Lust must not have the Eye nor Folly the Ear Oppression must not have the Hand nor Covetousness the Heart There is no serving God by halves no serving Him and Mammon too The true Mother would not suffer the Child to be divided nor will our heavenly Father his 'T was Ananias and Saphira's sacriledge to keep back part of what they had once voluntarily offered up and 't will be no less in us too 2. The Sacrifices of the Law were to be pure and separate from common use Levit. 3. 1. and 12. 5. such our Apostle makes Christ our Sacrifice undefiled and separate from sinners Heb. 7. 26. and without spot says St. Peter 1 Pet. 1. 19. such must ours be too spotless pure and separate from the world the least touch of that will pollute it And as we are to keep our selves unspotted from the world Jam. 1. 27. so are we likewise to hate even the garment spotted by the flesh Jude v. 23. In a word We must cleanse our selves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit ere we presume to present our selves unto God Now as Holiness in the Gospel-sense commonly signifies the whole complexum of Duties and Graces so has it sometimes there a distinct peculiar signification both as to the Body and to the Soul And here according to the observation of a late excellent Annotator the Purity of the Body is particularly designed in opposition to the Uncleannesses practised by the Gentiles and applauded by the Gnosticks A sort of Christians if they might deserve that name whose practices made the name of Christ to be abhorred by the soberer Jews And indeed whosoever shall look into the first Chapter of this Epistle and there observe what manner of lives the Heathen Romans led will allow this Interpretation as most pertinent to the scope of our Apostle For when they did no longer like to retain God in their knowledge they quickly left off to be men and when they ceased to hearken to their natural reason they soon fell into a reprobate sense For they not only changed God into Stocks and Stones but their Worship into most abominable Wickedness not only made the vilest Creatures Deities but the foulest Actions Religion they turned a Passion and a Disease into a God and Sin into Devotion They thought it a most sacred thing to prostitute their Bodies and their very Altar-fires did kindle those foul heats whence Uncleanness is so often called Idolatry in Scripture Practices taken up and even out-done by viler Christians and that in the first and purest times of the Gospel and frequently objected to them by the Jews who could boast and that with some colour of truth that their Doctrine was opposed not so much by sharp Intellectuals as by debauch'd Morals And not only the Jews but Heathen Philosophers also as Hierocles for one could make the same objection and upon the same score detest the Religion of Christians or rather as he mistook it the Wickednesses of the Gnosticks which made the name of Christ to be evil spoken of throughout the whole World and are indeed directly opposite to the Spirit of Christ which is a Spirit of Purity and to the Rule of the Gospel which every where forbids us to walk in the lust of concupiscence as did the Gentiles who knew not God and which commands every Christian to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour there being no Vice so dishonourable to a Man as that of fleshly impurity which turns him into a Beast making him have as foul a Name as a Body as loathsome a Character as a Carkass rendring him despised by all Men and not the least by himself when David fell into this sin at his repentance he prays for his free spirit once again he found that thereby he had lost not only the Spirit of God but of a Man being asham'd of himself and afraid of his servants The strange woman's house says Solomon leads to death and sure a death 't is where the poor wretch is not less corrupt than if he were buried and that ditch he mentions is no less noisome than the Grave He goeth on and tells us That her house leads to hell and doubtless 't is a part of it where there is not only the stench but the heat of it all its Attendants whether sin or punishment the blackness and the flames withall being found in it 'T is not for this place to describe what such persons deserve and endure The very reproof of this sin must consist of such foul things as a
have found out a platform of Government among the fallen Angels who though their Principles be crooked yet being obey'd by Wills as crooked observe an irregular Rule and a perverse Order even in Hell so Sin rules in us too by Principles For there is saith St. Paul a Law of Sin But then 't is such a Law as if it should be Treason for any Subject not to Murther his Natural Prince or Adultery not to Ravish or Blasphemy not to take God's Name in vain 'T is such a Law as if two Anti-Tables should be written which should make it Sin not to break the Commandments Lastly Let the Apostle tell you what Law it is 'T is a Law of the Members warring against the Law of the Mind and not only warring but bringing it into Captivity Rom. 7. 23. Sin herein far exceeding the Author of it For he only aspir'd to be like the Highest but Sin hath made an inversion in the Soul advancing Sense into the Chair of Reason and placing the Beast above the Man And though it may leave us to a natural liberty in moral actions for 't is harsh to think that Justice and Temperance are but guilded Sins yet for actions of Grace it has so glewed and settered the Soul that it cannot possibly mount up to Heaven 2. Next for Death Men have made a Covenant with that saith the Scripture and if Contract be not enough we reade Wisd. 1. v. 14. of a Kingdom of Death so that Christ did not only find us Captives but Captives slain Teneo à primordio homicidam culpam says Tertullian Adam's Throat was our open Sepulchre who in that fatal Apple did not only murther his Children like Saturn but like Thyestes in the Tragedy did eat them After that Transgression there pass'd an Act upon us It is appointed for all Men once to dye Nay it were a degree of happiness to dye but once if nothing remained for punishment for nothing can suffer nothing But we were to be raised to another Death and like drowsie Malefactors that had lain down with their Sentence were to be awakened out of sleep to be put upon the Rack 3. The Scripture almost every-where styles the Devil the Prince of this World His Kingdom had enlarg'd its self from that place about which the Schools dispute to every rebellion and disorder of the Soul where as in a conquer'd Province per cupiditates regnavit saith St. Augustine He reigned by his Proconsul Sins There also making himself the Prince of Darkness by our ignorance and the Prince of the Air by raising Tempests through all the Regions of Man and exercising an universal and absolute Power over him For such was his power in the World when the Saviour of it came into it There was then a general defection from God Satan's Synagogue had in a manner swallowed up God's Church who had but one corner of the World left him and therein for a long time but a moving Tabernacle and when a fix'd habitation but one house wherein a very few to serve him while the Devil's Temples were every-where crowded with Priests and Sacrifices and his Altars smoak'd in all places with Incense so that the Earth and the fulness thereof seem'd now his and he though cast out of Heaven to have reveng'd himself in some sort of God by thus dispossessing him as it were of the Earth Nor was the Devil's power more Universal than 't was Absolute over men's Bodies and over their Souls too Their Bodies he possest and tormented at pleasure insomuch that his very Priests might have receiv'd Death with as much ease as they did his Oracles entring into Men as he did into the Hoggs hurrying them violently into perdition commanding Parents to make their Sons and Daughters pass through the fire to him tearing and bruising those he had got into and casting them sometimes into the water and sometimes into the fire Nor did he tyrannize less over Men's souls than bodies blinding their understanding putting out the light of natural reason in them first corrupting their Judgments and then their Manners from Error in judgment the passage being natural and easie to Error in practice and accordingly St. Paul tells us how vain men became in their imaginations even to worship the Creature instead of the Creator to change the glory of the uncorruptible God into Images made like to corruptible Men and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things which made God give them up to all manner of uncleanness as you may reade at large Rom. 1. 21 c. In such slavery had the Devil not only Heathens his own people as I may call them but even the Jews themselves God's chosen people who after so many Miracles of Power and Mercies so many excellent Statutes and Ordinances to direct them in the true manner of his Worship as had not been delivered to any Nation besides did not for all this fall short of the worst of Heathens either in matter of erroneous judgment or vitious practices The profane Sadducee had corrupted all good Manners and the hypocritical Pharisee perverted the Law by his false Glosses and Comments on it so that when our Saviour appeared on Earth an universal deluge of Wickedness had over-spread the face of it And thus all Mankind being the Devil 's by right of Conquest 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 taken by him as it were in War the true import of that word and bound fast to him with his Chains of darkness of gross error and vitiousness 't was high time for the Son of God to come down to rescue miserable Men from these several Captivities which he did three manner of ways 1. By Commutation 2. By Conquest and 3. By way of Ransome or Purchase 1. By Commutation For when we were prisoners to Death by sin God made an exchange delivered his Son over to it for us became our Scape-goat like the Ram substituted in the place of Isaac and as the Apostle speaks tasted death for every man that we might not be devoured and swallowed up by it 2. By Conquest as it referrs to Power and thus our Lord offered violence to Hell snatcht us as brands out of its fire and rescued us as so many preys out of the teeth of the roaring Lion delivering us from the power of darkness and translating us into his kingdom vanquishing death and him that had the power of death the Devil and treading him under our feet And not content with that he spoiled principalities and powers making a shew or as the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 imports an example of them openly and triumph'd over them in himself or in his Cross. 3. By way of Purchase or Ransome as it referrs to Justice Thus Christ made a perfect satisfaction to God by laying down a price for us and paying the very utmost farthing of our debt and so came not only to give us an Example as Socinians
Christ by the instigation of the Devil shed tears by the effusion of the Holy Ghost and as they had cruelly wounded him to the death they were penitently and mercifully by his Word and Spirit themselves wounded with Repentance unto life Which piercing as it was in part accomplished in those few Converts fore-mentioned so shall it have its fuller and more perfect fulfilling on the whole Nation of the Jews when they shall see their error and be all turned unto Christ as St. Paul tells us Rom. 11. 11 32. I heartily wish it may as no doubt it was intended be fulfilled in us too and that my Sermon may have the same effect on you that it had on Peter's Auditors That looking on Him whom we also have pierced we may with them be pierced at the heart too We find that at our Lord's crucifixion all Nature mourned all the Creation groaned Rom. 8. 22. The Sun put on blacks the Earth trembled the Rocks cleft asunder and it were strange if we of all God's creatures should remain insensible and express no sorrow when we behold the Lord of Nature suffering and for us too What a shame were it for us that the dumb inanimate Creatures should upbraid us as the Children their fellows in the Market-place Matth. 11. 17. We have mourned to you and ye have not wept Let us then bear our part in this Quire of Mourners but with this difference that our Mourning be not so much outward as inward not so much in the face as in the heart a heart pricked with sorrow for having pierced Christ and not so much for the smart as out of the sense of our Sin not so much for our selves as for him for his sake whom we have crucified for no Tears prevail with God but such as are wept over Jesus Christ If he be not the flame in our Breasts that melts our Hearts if he be not the Object that draws forth our Tears though we should weep Bloud our Bloud shall be but as Water spilt upon the ground If we grieve and not in and for Christ our grief will be but Hypocrisie at least but Formality This is the Sorrow this the Mourning which our piercing of Christ calls for as a proper effect of the Spirit of Grace and Supplication and it must come in at the Eye For the way to be pierced with Christ is to look upon him Iisdem quibus videmus oculis flemus The Eye is the instrument both of Sight and Sorrow That must affect the Heart What the Eye never sees the Heart as we say never rues If the Understanding be not convinced of Sin our Hearts will never be moved at it Sight of Sin must precede Sorrow for it The Prodigal first came to himself ere he returned to his Father Look we then to Christ but let us reflect upon our selves too that our Eyes may dissolve into Tears without which Christ's Bloud shall not wash away our guilt of having spilled it Let us sorrow but with a sorrow according to God such as may work in us repentance unto Salvation for having crucified the Author of it and then we may look upon Him to our comfort 3. With an Eye of Faith which is another prospect here mainly intended For the looking on in the Text is an Allusion to the beholding of the brazen Serpent a Type of Christ crucified on the Cross as himself tells us Joh. 3. 16. It was not the brazen Serpent it self but their looking upon it that cured the bitten Israelites It was their Faith that did it which came in at their Eye though it usually does at the Ear and gave it a healing quality As it was not the Woman's touch but her Faith that drew out Vertue from Christ to stanch her issue of bloud It is the generally received opinion that the Souldier who pierced Christ one Longinus was when he did that act blind but by vertue of that pretious Bloud which sprang on his Eyes from our Saviour's side he had his Sight restored and was hereupon converted and after became a Bishop of Cappadocia and in the end died a Martyr What truth there is in the History I know not but very much surely there is in the Application If by Faith we will look upon him whom we have pierced that Sight shall not only clear our Eyes to discern but touch our Hearts and dispose them to embrace a Saviour No spiritual Cure to be wrought on us without our Faith We find that Christ in all his miraculous Cures of diseased Persons still required their Faith as a necessary preparative to their healing as if Omnipotency it self could doe nothing without the Patient's belief nor will the diseases of our Souls be ever remedied without the concurrence of ours too The Prophet Elijah by applying the Members of his Body to those of the dead Child fetcht it again to life Let us stretch every part of Christ pierced to our Souls and they will soon be revived be they never so dead in trespasses and sins 4. We are to look upon Christ pierced with an Eye of Love This we know naturally comes in at the Eye too Oculi sunt in amore duces Now as there is no such Attractive of Love as Love so never was there any such Love as that of Christ in dying for us It was our Sin that gave Him his Wounds but it was his Love that made him receive them And we may reade that Love to use the Prophet Esay's expression in the Palms of his hands that were stretcht out for us upon his Cross In the Prints of the nails which could never have enter'd Him had not his Love made them a passage And in the point of the Spear which lets our Eyes into the very Bowels of his tender Love and Compassion towards us Well may each of us say with the Holy Martyr Ignatius My Love was crucified for me If the Jews that stood by Him when he was about to raise Lazarus said truly Behold how he loved him when he shed but a few Tears out of his Eyes much more truly may we say of Him Behold how he loved us for whom He shed his very Heart-bloud the utmost Expression of Love as Himself tells us Joh. 15. 13. Greater Love than this hath no Man to bestow his life for his friends and yet greater love than this did he shew forth by laying down his life for us who were his Enemies I say by laying it down for no man had power to take it from him Joh. 10. 18. It was his own pure Love not any force that compell'd him to dye for us And therefore our Obligation to love him ought to be so much the stronger by how much his suffering for us was more free and voluntary 5. Lastly Let us look on Him whom we have pierced with infinite Joy and Exultation not for that we have pierced Him which ought to produce a quite contrary Passion in us
thereof and yet all this still dull and flat till he quickens it with an active Verb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which he wrought in Christ when he raised him up from the dead An act proper to God the Father who is entitled to it ver 33. and by St. Paul too Gal. 1. 1. Yet so as that he has communicated this Power to his own Son Joh. 10. 17 18. and 5. 21 26. As the Father raiseth up the dead and quickneth them even so the Son quickneth whom he will who had a Power to lay down his life and to take it again to dissolve the Temple of his Body and in three days to raise it up so that Christ here did as much rise as was raised up and this the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in St. Luke imports a Verb of an active signification implying a Power in himself to rise and in that respect a certain argument of his being the co-essential and con-substantial Son of God as the Apostle concludes him hence to be Rom. 1. 4. in spight of all those his adversaries who by denying him this Power prove themselves worse enemies to him than the Jews were who robb'd him of his Life whereas these of his Divinity also as far as in them lyes III. The principal and sole Agent then in this great Work was God the Father and the Son And such an Agent was necessary since the task was so difficult the knot which Death had tied being so hard required no less than a God to unloose it Now by Death here is meant not only a seperation of Soul and Body though that be the most natural import of the word but all those sad things that preceded as so many Prologues to his last Tragedy styled Propassiones All those ingredients in the bitter cup he drank of Such as were Christ's natural apprehensions of the terrors of Death the curse of the Law the load of our Sins upon him and a lively sense of God's wrath due to those Sins which put him into an Agony and made him sweat great drops of bloud and to close up all the bitter pangs of that cruel death he underwent to satisfie God's Justice All which are compar'd here to the Pangs of a Woman in travail from which God at last freed him by raising him up to a life uncapable of pain or sorrow making him forget his former Sufferings as a Woman does her Pains when delivered of her Child Joh. 16. 21. This is implied in the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But because to loose the Pains seems a hard expression and unloosing properly denoting the untying of some knot and so supposing some chain or cord wherewith Christ was bound and which God dissolved which the following word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seems to make good some conceive it better to interpret the word Pains by Bonds as the Syriack does calling them Funes Sepulchri those adamantina mortis vincula in the Poet And the rather because the Psalmist promiscuously useth these words Psal. 116. 3. The snares of Death compassed me round about and the pains of Hell gat hold upon me Both of them signifie no more but the power of death those Shackles and Manacles which the Angel of the Covenant struck off from himself and then from us which could no more hold him than the withy bands could Sampson herein a Type of Christ being but as Flax and Tow to him who was the Power of God and though he might suffer himself to be entangled yet could not possibly be holden of them And that 1. In respect of the Truth of God's Word viz. those many Predictions and Types of Christ's Resurrection which else must have been voided The Predictions are many and clear relating to this point That of Esay 53. 8. That Christ should be taken from his prison That of Hosea 6. 2. After two days will he revive us and in the third day he will raise us up and we shall live in his sight see Esay 26. 19. But most expresly that of the Prophet David Psal. 16. 10 11. That his flesh should rest in hope and that God would not suffer his Holy One to see Corruption which Prophecy could not be apply'd to David himself as St. Peter here in the Verses immediately following tells his Auditors because he did see Corruption but only to Christ who did not and who did rise the third day according to the Scriptures Luk. 18. 33. As for those Types too which shadow forth Christ's Resurrection they are many and exactly representative of it As Adam's awaking from sleep a Type of the second Adam's from death Sarah's conceiving when old Isaac's being sacrificed and yet living Gen. 22. 12. An express figure of Christ's Resurrection Heb. 11. 14 17 Joseph's being taken out of the Pit and lifted up out of the Dungeon as Jeremy was too and Daniel out of the Den of the Lions Dan. 6. 23. And more clearly by Christ's own application Jonah's being taken out of the belly of the Whale Mat. 12. 40. All which Types would be meer shadows without their substance and insignificant Types if they had wanted their Anti-types and should not exactly have answer'd them which they could not doe if Christ could have been holden by the pains or cords of death 2. Not possible by reason of that indissoluble tye of Christ's Personal Union so strait that Christ's Body even in the Grave was inseparably united to the Deity which drew it to it For although Death could dissolve his Natural yet not his Personal Union and therefore necessary it was that his Body and Soul should be re-united that so he might become a perfect Man which could not be without his rising 3. Not possible in respect of God's immutable Decree so determining it which being still of force nothing could render ineffectual God had anointed his Son from all Eternity as to be a Prophet and a Priest so a King to accomplish the work of Man's Redemption none of which Offices could be fully executed but upon supposition of his rising from the dead 1. The preaching of the Gospel was to follow that Luk. 24. 47. 2. As was also the preaching of Repentance and Remission of sins through his bloud the Expiation whereof as well as our Justification the not imputing our Sins to us was an effect of his Resurrection Rom. 4. 25. Who was delivered for our Offences and raised again for our Justification God having declared by raising his Son from the dead that he had accepted of his Death as of a sufficient ransome for our Sins For if Christ had remained still under the power of Death his satisfaction could not have been perfect neither could he have applied the Vertue thereof to us And in like manner was Christ's Resurrection our Justification For Christ being our true pledge after he had satisfied for us by his Death returning unto Life gives us a clear Evidence and affords us a
turn'd Men into destruction to say Come again ye Children of Men. If the Disputer of this World the conceited Rationalist should deny a possibility of a return from a privation to a habit a re-production of the same thing once corrupted Let me ask him why that God who created our Bodies out of nothing cannot be able to recall them out of something For since even Philosophy its self will grant that in every dissolution the parts dissolved doe not perish the Materials still continuing All the Skill here will be but to join and reunite the scattered parcels Quasi non majoris miraculi sit animare quà m jungere Tertullian's reasoning here is very concluding and we cannot resist the argument Utique idoneus est reficere qui fecit quanto plus est fecisse quam refecisse initium dedisse quà m reddidisse Ita restitutionem carnis faciliorem credas institutione An Artificer can take a Watch or Clock asunder and put it together again and shall not the great Creator be able to doe as much here to re-unite what he has severed having still reserved the loose scattered pieces and fragments The separation of our Bodies and Souls by death as 't was violent so their desire of re-union being natural shall not be frustrated They are incompleat Substances in that state and long for their perfection which is their re-union for by that are the spirits of just Men departed made perfect and God will not leave them in an imperfect condition lest a power and inclination should for ever be in the root and never rise up to fruit This may suffice to silence though not to satisfie Natural reason especially if we consider that many Philosophers have had strong apprehensions of a Resurrection upon the dissolution of the World by fire a reduction of all things to a better state as Seneca terms it Nor was there any Article of the Faith more generally believed among the Jews than this as appears by Joh. 12. 24. and Act. 23. 8. The Patriarchs were certain of it witness their great care before their death to have their Bones carried away by the Children of Israel out of Egypt that they might be buried in Abraham's Field out of a hope no doubt of being the first that by vertue of Christ's Resurrection might rise from the dead as 't is very probable they were of the Number of those many Saints which arose and came out of their Graves after his Resurrection and went into the holy City and appeared unto many Matth. 27. 53. But then to the Faith of a Christian nothing is so easie as a Resurrection since God's Word clearly tells us That Christ is our Resurrection and our Life Joh. 11. 25. and that our life which is now hid with him in God shall one day be revealed Colos. 3. 3. That God is not the God of the dead but of the living Matth. 22. 32. Nay the Lord of dead and living Rom. 14. 9. For that he will one day raise them up to life again For the dead Bodies of Saints while they lye rotting in the Grave being still united to Christ as his Body there was to the Deity cannot be for ever separate from him the Members must at last be joined to their Head If the first-fruits be risen the whole lump shall follow Not one hair of our head shall perish He that numbers the sand of the Sea numbers our dust nor can the least Attom escape him All our members are written in God's book He that puts our tears into his bottle locks up the pretious dust of his Saints in his Cabinet can recall our dispers'd Ashes and require our Bloud of every Beast that has drunk it fetch those several parcels of us which have been buried in a thousand living Graves and been made a part of those Graves which have devoured them God can make the Earth cast out her dead cause the Sea to disgorge them and our dry bones to gather together as in Ezekiel's Vision ch 37. He that calleth all the Stars by their names knows his by name for their names are written in Heaven and will call them by their names as he did Lazarus bid them come forth and by bidding enable them to doe so in spight of all their bands Now that we may be of the number and partake of the lot of these happy ones we must hear Christ's voice here calling us to repentance and newness of life that we may hear that with comfort which shall hereafter call us to Judgment and be able to answer it with joy and confidence Here we are Let us be sure of our part in the first Resurrection that the second death may have no power over us All shall one day be raised All must one day appear before the Judgment-seat of Christ good and bad But there is a Resurrection of damnation for these and for those of life Both shall come out of their Dungeons but the one like Pharaoh's Baker to an Execution the other like his Butler to an Exaltation The former shall have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the latter only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sinners shall arise but the godly be quickned How happy would it be for wicked Men if they should never have been born or should never rise again since they shall rise no otherwise than as drowsie Malefactors who lying down with their Sentence are afterwards awakened to be set on the Rack But 't is not so with the Godly who sleeping in Christ doe rest in hope I would not have you ignorant Brethren concerning them which are asleep says St. Paul that ye sorrow not even as other which have no hope For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him What doest thou fear then O good Christian Sin Behold the Resurrection of thy Redeemer publishes thy discharge Thy Surety has been arrested and cast into the prison of his Grave for thee Had not the utmost farthing of thine Arrearages been paid he could not have come forth But now that thou seest he is come forth now that the summ is fully satisfied what danger can there be of a discharged debt Or is it the Wrath of God thou dreadest Wherefore is that but for Sin And if thy Sin be defrayed that quarrel is at an end And if thy Saviour suffered it for thee how canst thou fear to suffer it in thy self Surely that infinite Justice hates to be twice paid He is risen and therefore he hath satisfied Who is he that condemneth It is Christ that died yea rather that is risen again Rom. 8. 34. Lastly Is it Death that affrights thee Behold thy Saviour overcoming Death by dying and triumphing over it in his Resurrection And canst thou fear a conquered Enemy What harm is there in this Serpent but for his sting The sting of death is sin And when thou seest
that pull'd out by thy powerfull Redeemer how can it now hurt thee It may possibly hiss at but it cannot bite thee Look upon the Serpent lifted up for thee on the Cross and this Serpent's sting if it has any to wound it can have none to kill thee If thy Saviour has not quite destroy'd this thine enemy at least he has brought it under and made it subject like the Gibeonites if not banished 't is enslaved and made now instrumental to Christ's Kingdom Loose thou then the bands of thine iniquity and those of death which Christ has broken shall no more be able to hold thee than they could doe him Death in its most affrighting shapes to thee is but a scare-crow 't is but the shadow of death while God is with thee Nay 't is but an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a going out a departing in peace to a Holy Simeon 'T was no more between God and Moses but go up and dye as 't was said to another Prophet up and eat Ever since our Lord has swallow'd death up in victory our Tombs become Death's Graves more than ours Sepulchrum non jam mortuum sed mortem devorat says a Father Our Bodies are not lost in the Earth but laid up to be improved like Porcellane-dishes which the ground does not consume but refine In the Transfiguration that body of Moses which was hid in the valley of Moab appeared glorious in the Mount of Tabor And though we appear now like Aaron's dry rod yet that dry rod shall at last bud and bring forth fruit unto glory The Israelites garments indeed in the Wilderness waxed not worse for wearing but though our Bodies which are the garments of our Souls doe so and are rent and torn by afflictions and death yet God can and will mend them Nay when these Temples of the Holy Ghost we carry about us are dissolved he will so build them up that as it was said of the first and second Jewish Temples Haggai 2. 9. the glory of our latter houses shall be greater than that of the former Diruta stante Major Troja fuit God will bless us as he did Job more at our latter end than at our beginning and Exalt us as he did Christ by our Sufferings If with him we drink of the brook in the way tast of his Cup he will lift up our heads too We shall be like him as now He is A golden Head and Members of Clay suit not well together This is our great comfort that Christ is risen for if the Head be above water the Body is safe Joseph is alive said Jacob and that news revived the drooping Patriarch So when we hear that Christ our elder Brother the first-begotten from the dead is alive too let us take courage go and find him out seek him not in the Grave He is not there he is risen and why should we seek the living among the dead but in Heaven where he now is and set our affections on things above and not on things below It befits us not to lye in our Beds of ease and pleasure to lye sleeping there when Christ is up such a spiritual Lethargy does not suit with a Resurrection How are we conformable to Him if when He is risen up we remain still in the Grave of our Corruptions How are we Limbs of his Body if while He hath perfect dominion over death death hath dominion over us if while he is alive and glorious we lye rotting in the dust of death O let us then rouse our selves up this day with the Lion of the Tribe of Judah Let this be our Resurrection-day too and that it may be so let it be our Passion-day also as it is our Lord's For as he rose this day for us so does he now this day dye for us too And although St. Paul tells us Rom. 6. 9. That Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more and that death hath no more dominion over him or to speak in the Language of the Text that he be not holden of it yet in regard of the constant vertue and benefit of his Death and Passion he may be said to dye daily for us who receive him worthily in the Blessed Sacrament Let me then bespeak you in the words of St. Thomas utter'd upon another occasion Joh. 11. 16. Let us also go and dye with him Dye with him unto sin that we may live unto God through him Rom. 6. 9 10. Let us feed on him by Faith flock like true Eagles to his Holy Carcass and eat thereof that we may live This is the way to be raised to glory Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my bloud hath Eternal life is even now in possession of it and I will raise him up at the last day says Christ himself Joh. 6. 54. The very touch of the Prophet Elias's bones Ecclesiasticus 48. 5. could raise up a dead Man to a Temporal and shall not the sense and application of Christ crucified be able to quicken us who are dead in trespasses and sins to a spiritual and immortal Life O let us then be planted with him in the likeness of his Death that we may be also in the likeness of his Resurrection Rom. 6. 5. Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus that great Shepherd of the Sheep through the bloud of the Everlasting Covenant make you perfect in every good work to doe his Will working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ To whom with the Father c. Amen Soli Deo gloria in aeternum A SERMON Preached on Whit-sunday JOHN XVI 7. Nevertheless I tell you the truth it is expedient for you that I go away for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you but if I depart I will send him unto you WE find the Disciples here in a very sad and disconsolate Condition Christ had told them that He was going his way to Him that sent Him V. 5. and thereupon Sorrow had filled their hearts V. 6. And no marvel for they were to be separated from one who hitherto had been their only comfort and support Had we been under the same circumstances we should no doubt have equally resented that loss They had had the happy advantage of beholding his glorious Miracles wrought by his All-powerfull Voice in the cure of Diseases in the confusion of Devils and the raising of the Dead They had heard those his ravishing Discourses which forc'd his most implacable Enemies in spight of all their prejudice against Him to confess That never Man spake as He did They had been Eye-witnesses of that Eminent Holiness that pure and unspotted Innocence which gave beauty and lustre to all his actions and of that glory too which discovered Him to be the only Son of God full of Grace and Truth And now unless we can suppose them void of all natural affection and
remembrance again Joh. 14. 26. He admonisheth and directeth us his Clients how to order and solicit our own business what Evidences to produce how to manage and plead them making up our failings by his Wisdom and not only so but as the word Paraclete here imports he intercedeth also with God for us not in such a manner as Christ is said to doe whom St. John also calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our Advocate with the Father 1 Joh. 2. 1. For as much as that Bloud which He shed for us on the Cross speaks for us better things than that of Abel and continually pleads our Pardon before the Tribunal of God but the Holy Ghost is said to make intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered because he stirreth us up to Prayer prompting and teaching us also how to pray as we ought to doe in all our Necessities So that as Christ is the first Advocate by working our Reconciliation with God so is the Spirit our other or second one by testifying and applying the same unto our Souls 2dly He is our Advocate not only in respect of God but of Men too by maintaining our Cause against the World against Tyrants and Persecutors 1. Against the World as oft as it accuseth us by false and slanderous Calumniators laying to our charge things we never did The Spirit in this case maketh us not only plead our Innocency but rejoyce in the Reproaches of Christ count our selves happy in this that it is not such low marks as we are which the malice of the World aimeth at but the Spirit of glory and of God which resteth upon us who is on their part evil spoken of 1 Pet. 4. 14. 2dly Against Tyrants and Persecutors Whence it is that our Saviour Mat. 10. 19. bids his Disciples not be concern'd what they should speak when they should be delivered up to Men because it should be given them in that same hour what they should speak And he adds vers 20. It is not ye that speak but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you And we know how that God in all Ages did by the mouths of Infants maintain his Truths to the shame and confusion of Tyrants who endeavour'd to suppress them But here it may be objected Was not the Holy Ghost given to the Jewish Church before the coming of Christ Did He not comfort and support them under a long and tedious expectation of his appearance Was He not then a Teacher of the Faithfull and when that Cloud of Witnesses suffered for the Cause of the God of Jacob when they were sawn in pieces and stoned was not the Holy Ghost their Advocate as well as the Martyrs under the Gospel Did He not speak by the Mouth of Daniel when cast to the Lions and of the three Children who chanted out the Praises of God in the midst of the flames of the firey furnace How then does our Lord say here If I go not away the Comforter will not come to you since so many Ages before He was come and as a Comforter too For Resolution hereof we are to observe That although the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity be equally the Principles of all those Acts they produce without according to the received Maxim of the Schools yet with a considerable difference in relation to those three distinct Oeconomies or Dispensations towards the Church That of the Father lasted till the Coming of Christ in the Flesh yet so as that in that space of time 't is generally believed that the Son of God did sometimes appear as to Abraham Jacob and Joshua being a kind of Essay or Prelude to his Incarnation and the Holy Ghost did then also impart some degree of Efficacy to the Faithfull However This is properly to be reckoned the Oeconomy of the Father The second was That of the Son from his Incarnation to his Ascension yet so as that the Father made his voice to be heard at Jordan and Mount Tabor This is my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased hear ye Him As at another time in the Audience of the People Joh. 12. 28. I have both glorified it and will glorifie it again Then also did the Holy Ghost appear in the form of a Dove yet still this is to be accounted the Oeconomy of the Son That of the Holy Spirit commenced from his Descent upon the Apostles and shall last unto the end of all things Differing herein from the other two That in the two first Dispensations Men's senses were usually affected with some extraordinary miraculous and sensible Objects God the Father shewing himself in a Cloud and Pillar of Fire giving out his Oracles from between the Cherubins consuming the burnt-offerings with Fire from Heaven and filling the Sanctuary with his Glory And the Son of God conversing so familiarly with Men that it made St. John say That which was from the beginning which we have heard which we have seen with our eyes which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the word of life declare we unto you Whereas I say All was as it were visible and palpable here 'T was far otherwise in the Dispensation of the Spirit The Heavens were not seen to part nor was God's terrible Voice heard in the Air no Shechinah no Glory or sensible Mark of the Presence of the living God in his Temple For which reason the third Person in the Trinity has the Special Name of Spirit given Him For as He is styled Holy in respect of that Sanctification he worketh in us though that same Title belongs also to the other two Persons as having the same Spiritual Essence yet the Holy Ghost bears the name of Spirit in regard of his altogether Spiritual Dispensation and those Graces he imparts to each faithfull Soul which are Heavenly and Spiritual such as are the Knowledge of the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven and his inward Vertues and Consolations As for Knowledge it was so weak and imperfect under the Ancient Oeconomy that in respect of that our Lord preferrs the least in the Kingdom of Heaven i. e. the meanest Christian to all the Prophets not excepting the Baptist himself Nor can it be deny'd but that the very first Principles and Rudiments of Christianity do far surpass the highest Attainments of the Law The Jews were under a Cloud and the Doctrine of the Prophets was but as a light shining in a dark place All was then Shadow or rather Night and Moses his Veil was over the Eyes of the whole Nation God made himself known to the Jews as the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob not as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ of whom They had a very wrong Notion looking upon him as the Conqueror of the World such was the very Apostle's fancy of him and that even after his Resurrection Act. 1. The ineffable Mystery of the Trinity that of Godliness which without controversie is great God manifested
with their several Actions and Operations All which clearly demonstrate their Existence For the first Their Creation may be gathered though it be not set down in express terms from the first and second Chapters of Genesis where they are styl'd the Host of Heaven an usual Title afforded to all Creatures in Scripture-language but in a more especial manner appropriated to Angels as 't is by the Psalmist Psal. 148. 2. and most suitable to them in regard of their great Power and exact Order And so all Expositors allow it 'T is true indeed there is no such express mention of the Creation of Angels in Moses's Writings as in those of the other Holy Pen-men which he omits not so much as some would have it to prevent Idolatry in the Israelites who had they known Angels would have been apt to have ador'd them as for these two Reasons 1. Because Moses applies himself to the simple Capacity of that People and describes the Creation of visible and sensible things leaving spiritual as above their lower apprehensions and 2dly lest Men should think God needed the help of Angels either in the production or disposition of other Creatures As if the Fabrick of the World had been too great a Task for Himself alone to undertake as Heathens and some Hereticks also have fancied to the manifest derogation of the Divine Omnipotency But for what reason soever Moses forbore to speak out here the Psalmist is plain enough By the Word of the Lord were the Heavens made and all the Host of them by the breath of his mouth Psal. 33. 6. and clearer yet Psal. 104. 4. He maketh his Angels spirits and his Ministers a flaming fire And whereas our Apostle v. 4. tells us That God made the Worlds Colos. 1. 16. He explains the meaning of that expression by things visible and invisible and these invisible things by Thrones Dominions Principalities and Powers the usual Titles Angels are design'd by So void of all Reason as well as of Religion is that bold or rather impudent Assertion of the Author of the Leviathan concerning the Creation of Angels there is nothing delivered in Scripture 2. A second proof of the Existence of Angels may be taken from their sundry Apparitions both before and under the Law and in the first dawning of the Gospel There is nothing more certain than that under those several Dispensations especially at the beginning of them such Apparitions were very frequent Holy Men in those times had a familiar acquaintance and correspondency with Heaven 'T was no news then to see an Angel of God The Patriarchs scarce convers'd so much with Men as with blessed Spirits They were their Guests and their Companions of their Family and of their Counsel Nothing of importance was done either at home or abroad without their privity and direction And he must be a great stranger to the New Testament that finds them not there too very often among the Servants of God For though God had for a long time withdrawn from the Jews all means of supernatural Revelations yet at the first publication of the Gospel he began to restore them 'T was no marvel that when that wicked people became strangers to God in their Conversation God should grow a stranger to them in his Apparitions But when the Gospel approacht he visited them afresh with his Angels before he visited them with his Son Joseph Mary Zachary the Shepherds Mary Magdalen the gazing Disciples at the Mount of Olives Peter Philip Cornelius St. Paul St. John the Evangelist were all blessed with the sight of them In succeeding times 't is also very credible what Ecclesiastical Writers report That the good Angels were nowhit more sparing of their Presence for the comfort of Holy Martyrs and Confessors who suffered for the Name of Christ. I doubt not but Constant Theodorus saw and felt the refreshing hand of the Angel no less than he reported to Julian the Persecutor Nor do I question but that those retired Saints too of the prime Ages of the Church had sometimes such heavenly Companions for the Consolation of their forced Solitude as St. Jerome reports of them But this is evident too that the elder the Church grew the more rare was the use of these Apparitions as of all other Miracles Actions and Events not that the Arme of God is shortned or his Care and Love to his abated but that his Church being now setled in an ordinary way has no need of any extraordinary ones no more than the Israelites had of Manna when they were once got out of the Wilderness Nay such extraordinary ones now would perhaps be not useless only but dangerous and we may justly suspect those strange Relations of the Romanists concerning later Angelical Apparitions to Saints of their own Canonizing when we see them made use of to countenance Doctrines of Men. And yet notwithstanding their false play here 't is hard to say that all those instances which sober learned Men have given us of Modern Apparitions are utterly incredible But it has often fallen out indeed that Evil spirits have appeared in this wicked and corrupt Age more than good ones The frequent experience of later days gives in here its Evidence and 't is unreasonable wholly to reject it there being no other reason but this to doe so that our selves doe not see what others so peremptorily affirm they did which were to call in question all that our own Eyes have not been witnesses to and if we will believe nothing but what we see we may as well doubt whether there be Souls as Devils And yet so far as men's Eyes may discern Spirits they may doe it in those possessed Bodies they usurp For that such Possessions have been and still are in the World though more frequent in our Saviour's time than ours is as hard to deny as that there are Witchcrafts which yet many will not allow of and the Papists would take it ill we should deprive them of this one great Argument to prove the truth of their Doctrines who though they feign Possessions where there are none and conjure up imaginary Devils that they may have the credit to lay them yet this is no good reason to say there are no such things at all And this once granted as we must needs doe unless we will contradict all credible sensible Experience there will be no ground left to dispute the real Being of bad Angels which is an Argument of equal force to prove that there are good ones But then 3dly What if we do no longer now-a-days see Angels in visible shapes may we not discover them by their several actions and operations And do not these necessarily imply the Being of things Now besides the Testimony of Scripture which represents Angels standing moving talking and the like It is apparent that there are many effects in Nature which as they cannot be attributed to any natural Causes unless we will have continual
hominum sed propter homines quod est longè diversum They are God and Christ's Ministers but employ'd by them for the procuring and furtherance of the Elects Salvation So that their Looks and Services are directly levelled towards God and but glance and reflect from Him upon us All things says our Apostle even Thrones Dominions Principalities and Powers were created as by Him so for Him Col. 1. 16. For Him in the first and for our help and benefit in the second place And therefore they adore and ascribe glory to him Esay 6. 3. Luk. 2. 14. They stand in his presence ready to execute his Commands some of them being for this very reason says a School-man styl'd Thrones because they still attend on God's Hence the Ark of God's presence was between the two Cherubins Exod. 25. 22. And as the Psalmist in allusion to that place represents Him sitting between them Psal. 99. 1. so riding and flying upon them Psal. 18. 10. in regard of that quick and ready Obedience they perform to his Commands and to Christ as the Head of his Church as 't is ver 6. Let all the Angels of God worship him They proclaim'd his Conception Mat. 1. 20. and his Birth Luk. 2. 11. They Ministred to Him at his Temptation Mat. 4. 11. Comforted Him in his Agony Luk. 22. 43. Waited on Him at his Sepulchre Mat. 28. 2. At his Resurrection Mat. 28. Ascension Act. 1. And give glory to the Lamb now in Heaven Revel 5. 11 12. But as their chiefest and immediate Services are for God so by his appointment do they minister to his Elect to their Bodies and Souls 1. Their Bodies These are not without their care the very dead Bodies of Saints they have a care of Jude 9. much more of the living And our Lord deters Men from doing any hurt to his little ones by this argument that the Angels of God are appointed for their Guardians Mat. 18. 10. and when the Psalmist says There shall no evil befall thee nor any plague come nigh thy dwelling Psal. 91. 10. He gives the reason ver 11. For he shall give his Angels charge over thee to keep thee in all his ways They shall bear thee up in their hands lest thou dash thy foot against a stone It is impossible to describe the variety of their assistances to us here below One while they lead us in our way as they did Israel another while they fight for us as they did for Joshua They purvey for us as for Elias foretell our danger as to Lot Joseph and Mary and free us from it as they did St. Peter and the three Children They cure our Diseases as at the Pool of Bethesda They instruct us as they did Daniel and St. John The Law was given by them Act. 7. 53. and they were the first Preachers and Publishers of the Gospel Luk. 1. 31. ch 2. 10 11. And as God made them instruments to convey Knowledge to his Church so by the Ministry of the Church as it were in requital of that good Office the manifold Wisdom of God is made known unto them too Ephes. 3. 10. Do we run on in our own evil ways they resist us as they did Moses Balaam and St. John who would have adored them restraining our presumption as the Cherubin before the Gate of Paradise Does Satan tempt us to Sin they rebuke him and hinder him when he is most busie as in the case of Joshua the High Priest Zach. 3. 1. They remove our hindrances from good and our occasions of evil mitigate our temptations comfort us in our sorrows further us in our good purposes assist us in our devotions present our prayers and holy performances to God promote our conversion and rejoyce at it and as if this life were too narrow a bound for their Charity they extend it to the next carrying up our Souls to Heaven when our Bodies return to the Earth as they shall gather together the Elect of God at the last day when those Reapers shall separate the Tares for the fire and the Wheat for God's barn This is their Ministry to the Saints of God But what need of it some will say Is it not the Lord that ordereth all our steps And have we not Him for our help who never slumbereth nor sleepeth Did he need the Ministry of Angels in the Creation of the World and if not there why in the Government of it True indeed he needed it not nor does need it yet is he pleas'd to use it to manifest and illustrate the Order of his Providence in the conduct of his Creatures resigning some part of its administration and execution to them while he reserves the whole authority to himself Not out of any inability or necessity as Earthly Princes who make use of others Eyes and Hands in the managing of their affairs since they cannot be present every-where but by their Substitutes but to express his Wisdom in this Order and Power in this subordination and dependence of one Creature on another and of all upon himself Nor does that Wisdom more clearly appear any-where than in the choice of those instruments which he has design'd to govern the World under him The Kings of the Earth do not always observe the strict Rule of Justice in the distribution of Charges and Employments allowing something to Favour and something to Passion setting many times such persons over others as are fitter to be commanded than to command assigning blind Guides to the more clear-sighted But the All-wise God disposeth things in a far different manner He chuses out the noblest strongest and most enlightned Creatures to guide the meanest most infirm and least knowing makes his Angels so many Intelligences not only to move and turn about the Heavens but to regulate and steer the motions of all sublunary affairs So that the Ministry of Angels is so far from extenuating that it very much extolls the Goodness and Greatness of the Almighty towards us in the execution of his high and holy Providence It adds to God's glory and to the honour of Angels themselves to be employ'd by him in so many good and great Affairs It advances the order and beauty of the Universe while no creature in it is idle It begets a greater and more strict friendship between Men and Angels and affords us strong Consolation in having such a powerfull and mighty Protection For these and the like reasons it seems good to the Almighty to use the Ministry of Angels and as they are most zealous for his glory and the good of Mankind especially since 't is reconcil'd to God by Christ so is there not one amongst them but is most willing here to be employ'd All of them says the Text are Ministring spirits It has been a question much disputed whether every one Man have a particular Angel for his Guardian I find several of the Ancient Fathers most of the School-men and
quarrels and divisions For this gives all men an equal right to persecute as many as differ from them in Religion For by the same reason that I have a good opinion of my persuasion and call it true because I think it so Another who is as strongly convinc'd of the truth of his may justly and upon equal pretence doe the like It matters not where the truth or error lyes the mischief is still the same For so long as men continue in such a persuasion be it right or wrong they will be sure to act vigorously according to it And it is certain that they who use bad means to compass a good end against others doe arme them with the same power resolution and justice to employ the like when ever occasion serves against themselves And thus you see both the Impiety and the Mischief of pious but misguided Intentions which though not allowable in ordinary practice yet in cases extraordinary some think may be justify'd by that common Maxime That All great Actions have aliquid Iniqui something bad in them which publick advantage afterwards makes amends for How far this may go in State-policy I know not but I am sure it will not pass for good Divinity if our Saviour's word here may be taken or St. Paul's Rule be good Rom. 3. 8. That we must not doe evil that good may come of it Not any the least Moral Evil for the greatest either Temporal or Spiritual Good whatsoever Which Rule some finding too strict and severe for them and those designs they carry on as utterly inconsistent therewith usually plead the Examples of some holy Men in Scripture who having served God by strange violences of fact have for his glory laid hold on Instruments not fit to be used by a Christian As for example Jacob's telling a down-right lye to get his Father's blessing David's making use of Hushai as a spy Elias and Jehu's causing a sacrifice to be proclaimed to Baal with intent to destroy that Idol and its Worshippers and the like Instances of humane frailty which God was pleased to over-look and pardon in those that did them but never intended them as Patterns for us to imitate Many things have been done by good men in their heat which had God's approbation after they were done but not his Law to countenance the doing them and therefore can be no certain Rule for us to go by From what has hitherto been said we may now perceive what ill Commentators they are of those words of our Saviour Compell them to come in who put this sense upon them by threats and torments force them into the Church Than which Doctrine nothing certainly can be more unreasonable but the way of excusing it by a good meaning a fair pretence of advancing God's glory by any though never so bad means as if God would be served by taking in the Devil into his service Surely as the wrath of Man worketh not the righteousness of God so neither can any good end of his if carried on by bad instruments advance his glory He may make great allowances to the miscarriages of sincere but he will never doe it to the errors of such wicked Intentions as are besides his Commission yea and against his express Will and Command Now as this was the Jews and Heathens way so I could heartily wish that many Christians did not follow it The former to wit the Jews had still recourse to their Excommunications and both Jews and Gentiles fell to killing Christs servants out of equal Zeal and pious Intention no doubt The one for their Law and the other for their blind Superstition But neither of these two ways suit with true Christianity As for Excommunication which some Men are so apt immediately to fly to upon every trivial occasion they doe not well siconder what a dreadfull thing it is A forestalling of the great-day of Judgment It is the delivering up of a man to Satan a declaring him to be as a Heathen-man and a Publican one that has nothing to doe with the people of God but is to be cast out of their Church and Company Now as this is the last Remedy to reclaim Sinners by so is it but rarely to be made use of and but in cases extraordinary We do not find that our Lord Himself ever practised it nor any of his Apostles except St. Paul and he but in one Instance He bids us indeed Reject an Heretick after the first and second admonition Tit. 3. 10. Not presently anathematize much less kill him I would they were even cut off that trouble you says he Gal. 5. 12. It was but an I would I could wish it done And when himself did it it was but to one single person and that for an enormous crime Incest nor was it done at last but with much solemnity too by calling on the name of Christ 1 Cor. 5. 4. so seldom even scarce at all were these spiritual arms employed even by those who were Boanerges's Sons of thunder and surely knew best how to manage them And when they did it for the destruction of the flesh that is for the mortifying and destroying the old man for that only is meant there by flesh they did it for the saving of men's souls That their spirits might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus v. 5. Excommunications are such edge-tools as will cut their hands who have not skill to manage them but seldom or never hurt or hit those at whom they are lanc'd at randome Is it not then strange that some men should think to approve their Christianity by ruining that of their Brethren or to secure themselves of Heaven by keeping others out of it Though with these men in the Text they should think it a service to God to kill men's bodies methinks they should not think it one to destroy their Souls How the Council of Trent can be excused in this particular I understand not For who-ever looks into the Canons of that Council will find That as there is scarce any one there without its Anathema so that most of them are either for such matters as cannot deserve so heavy a Censure or for such plain Scripture-truths as deserve none being some of them of Christ's own Institution Nor are these Church-weapons for the most part Bruta Fulmina They carry a fatal Train after them Deposition Absolving Subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance to their natural and lawful Sovereigns who are thereupon abandoned to whosoever shall think it fit to kill them follow close upon them These Thunder-claps are not without their Thunder-bolts which will be sure to doe Execution one way or other either on men's Souls or on their Bodies if not on both So that when once People are devoted to Hell all the mischiefs of the Earth immediately pursue them The Instance of this Day 's intended work is an evident demonstration of this Truth For he who was a main Instrument in the
our Apostle here is so earnest and so concerned in asserting the necessity of a Resurrection which Heathens and Sadduces utterly denyed and many weak and seduced Christians scarce believed some affirming it already past others turning it into a mere Allegory The former he labours to convince by reasons fetch'd from nature The latter here in the Text by an argument ad hominem drawn from the particular interest of Christians who of all others should most suffer if their hopes should determine with this life A sad and uncomfortable Consequence would then follow to All but a most absurd one also to these Others should then be miserable but these of all others most miserable For If in this life c. we Christians we Apostles especially and Ministers of Christ should be of all men most miserable In which words you may observe 1. A false hope a hope in Christ in this life only with its effect misery and greater misery to Christians than to thers who upon such a supposition are pronounc'd of all men most miserable 2. A true hope a hope in Christ not in this life only with its effect also Happiness For if the other make its owners miserable and most miserable Then this by the Law of contraries happy and most happy Happy in this world as well as in the other Though there most because there is most happiness yet here too because here is some The first hope and its effects are more plainly exprest the second and its effects as necessarily imply'd and both of them together make up the full contents of the Text. I shall not consider the Parts so minutely as I have proposed them but draw out the substance of them into these three following Propositions which naturally result from the Text. 1. That they who have no other hope but what this life affords them are miserable 2. That upon supposition of no better hope all good Christians but the Ministers of Christ especially should be not only miserable but of all other men most miserable 3. That there is another Life to come the expectation whereof makes them who have it most happy both here and hereafter Of these in their order And first That they who have no other hope but And indeed how can they be otherwise since this life is so Our early tears prognosticate our future unhappiness and we come into this world with as much sadness as we go out of it with horror Some have curst the day of their birth with Job others have not thought fit to allow that Title but to those days wherein Martyrs have suffered Some Philosophers have affirmed that man's chiefest happiness had been not to have been born at all his next to have dyed as soon as born Nay the Scripture it self represents our Blessed Saviour groaning when he raised up Lazarus from the dead for this reason say some because he saw himself as it were oblig'd by his Sisters tears to fetch him back from the happiness of the other to the miseries of this wretched life Nor can I much wonder at their fancy who have conceited that our Souls were thrust into these our Bodies as into so many prisons since those which are most conveniently are but ill lodg'd there our Bodies at best being but so many hospitals if our Souls be any better for as diseases plague the one so passions and lusts as much torment the other And here should I declame on the miseries of humane life the common beaten theam even of those who know no other 't were easie to be Eloquent But not to speak of those accidents which befall it we need not charge our Miseries on our Fortune we owe them to our very Nature Every man is a several Enoch miserable by his very frame and make and 't were needless to borrow arguments from any thing but himself to prove him such or go about to demonstrate what he feels His own Experience shows him wretched in what he suffers and Reason will so even in what he enjoys The Evil he endures sadly afflicts him and the Good he possesses does not much affect him His Sorrows are many and great and his Joys but few and small Those come unmixt These at best but alloyed so that Man is wholly miserable and but half happy I shall not trouble my self to prove that he is miserable in what he suffers for he finds himself so but which I conceive more proper to my present purpose endeavour to demonstrate that the things of this life were they as high as fancied could never create any true satisfaction and consequently must leave a Man to misery even in that condition wherein he takes himself to be most happy And this will appear upon a threefold account 1. Because they are unsatisfactory 2. Because not lasting 3. Because upon supposition of no other life the continual fear of death would render the enjoyments of them most imperfect 1. Because they are unsatisfactory as not 1. bearing any proportion or fitness to the Soul They are material and This spiritual The Soul of Man being a substance of unbounded Desires can never be pleas'd but with what is infinite 2. And this dissatisfaction we receive from things here below appears then most when we come to a trial Our Enjoyment best confutes our Opinion of them then 't is we find that they are bigger in our eye than in themselves in our desire than in our review of them and that our expectations are far larger than our fruitions These Apples of Sodom shew fair and beautifull but the least touch turns them into dust and presently discovers all their painted beauty to be but Appearance and Illusion 3. Add we to this that there can be no surer mark of the dissatisfaction we find in the things of this life than that they presently cloy us Our continued enjoyment of the best of them tires us out as Happiness is said to have done Polycrates and Fortune Galba We must be beholding to their variety for their comfort nay to some evil to make us relish any good in them This is that which Heathens themselves have express'd in those Metamorphoses of their Gods thereby intimating that great Persons tired out with their own Happiness have been forc'd to descend to the Actions of their Inferiors to disguise themselves sometimes to ease themselves of the very burthen of their Honours and lay aside that Grandeur which importun'd them so that the perpetual presence of the same objects is scarce to be endured though they tire us no otherwise than as they are always the same And now let Philosophy tell us there is no vacuity in Nature Divinity and our own experience will assure us that there is nothing else in the things of it 2. But then secondly Were the things of this life never so full in themselves and satisfactory yet being not lasting all the satisfaction we find in them can be but as they are short and
much more troubled minds And without question the keenness of Christ's apprehension of what sin deserved was a high aggravation of what he suffered In which respect Christians also are more unhappy than the most bruitish men yea than the beasts that perish For whereas these feel their misery when it comes but doe not anticipate it those shall doe what the Devils deprecated continually torment themselves before the time and but with imaginary Evils if there be no such thing as a Hell Mortality and corruption would then make unreasonableness its self a priviledge and the Atheist would in this life be far happier than the best Christian and still happier than he is if he could bring himself to have as little reason as he has religion There is no doubt but that supposing no other life his enjoyments here would be so much the greater as his fears were less Thus the Hog makes good cheer in a tempest while Men make vows and prayers he is secure while the Philosopher looks pale and affrighted and owes that tranquillity to his stupidity which the others Philosophy and Reason shall but disturb 'T is certain that still as a man's apprehensions of another life have been less his enjoyment of this has ever been more free and full The Epicure who denied a God or at least his Providence did little trouble himself with his Anger while he fancied such a Deity as would not disturb men's pleasures so he might peaceably enjoy his own himself became as voluptuous as that God he made and so 't was his whole business to create himself an imaginary Paradise while he thought there was no real one This made such persons give themselves over to all licentiousness for their Principles being loose their Lives could not be strict while their opinions were so low of the Soul their care could not be but great for their Bodies The Immortality of the Soul once denied the concerns for it could not be much it being not probable that such men should please themselves with a pretence of vertue who deny'd the future rewards of it And from such premises that conclusion here mentioned by St. Paul could not but follow Let us eat and drink for to morrow we dye It is but reasonable to imagine that they who thought they should dye like beasts should live like them husband that life the best they could which should never return when once gone and make it as pleasant as they saw 't was short Which if there were no other life to come was no doubt a rational course and the highest wisedom And this supposed The Children of this World must needs be wiser than the Children of Light Martha's choice much better than Maries That Cardinal who said he would not change his part in Paris for that in Paradise appear as wise as we can imagine him Atheistical and those men's profession Malachi 3. That 't is a vain thing to serve the Lord and little profit to be found in keeping of his Ordinances were to be lookt upon as the highest reason The true Christian should be of all other the most unprofitable servant To be vertuous and to be vitious would be all one or rather to be vertuous would be but a trouble and a check to us nothing else but a subtle invention to debar our selves of the benefit of the good things of this world when no better were to be expected 2. The second thing I laid down in order to the proving the Christian more miserable than all other men upon supposition of no future state is this That the higher men's hopes are the greater their misery in their disappointment If hope but deferr'd vexes the Soul then hope utterly frustrated must needs confound it Which is so true that the higher we rise in our expectations the greater must our fall be when we find them defeated Now no profession bids higher than Christianity It bids the poorest beggar look upon himself as a King one born to a Throne and by filling him with expectations of a Sceptre which he shall never have turns that Heaven he strongly fansies into a fool's Paradise His fall from that place he so eagerly aspires to is like that of Lucifer from that he was once possess'd of He hopes to shine as a star in the firmament when his glory must suffer an eternal Eclipse Thus does he please himself with an empty title when he shall never enjoy the Inheritance and so in pursuance of a dream shall he lose the more solid comforts of this life and let go a substance to catch at shadows of good things to come if those good things be only in his Imagination if that death which puts an end to his misery shall add a greater one by for ever depriving him of his fancy'd enjoyments I shall add this one Consideration more that Christians as they are more miserable than other men by their Profession so do they make themselves yet more miserable by their severe Principles of Mortification and Self-denial debarring themselves of those Comforts and Satisfactions which others freely enjoy Thus shall the very Religion they profess persecute them more than another's rage and envy and while the World shall deprive them of things convenient for this life they shall do more of things necessary That shall deny them things lawfull They themselves things expedient too If Providence has given them a plentifull fortune their Religion shall forbid them the full and free use of it They must be poor in spirit in the height of honours low in their desires though never so high in wealth and plenty Thus in the midst of enjoyment do they scarce enjoy their Appetite must be curb'd in the opportunities of its utmost indulgence and while good things are presented to their view they must not reach out their hand to them neither touch taste nor handle nor use the World but as if they used it not In which respect as they suffer more than others so shall they enjoy less too while they lose the good things here and fail of those hereafter But here some may object That although there were no God nor life to come yet there is so much satisfaction in living according to the rules of right reason and vertue that even that consideration should oblige men to doe so and so make them most happy I confess that to live according to the rules of right reason is most agreeable to humane nature and conducing to happiness in this life and that they who keep closest to such rules should have a considerable temporal advantage over those that break them For sobriety temperance meekness chastity and the like do no doubt add as well to the pleasure as length of men's days and therefore Christians who best observe and practise those Vertues must needs upon this account enjoy themselves most in this World although they should fare no better than others in the next But to this it may be reply'd That
the World and is as ancient as Religion it self 'T was so before and under the Law Abel Noah Job sacrificed then And under the Law the Jews were expresly commanded so to doe Exod. 8. 20. 10. 26. And as Nature did of old so does it still prompt Heathens to this way of worship thereby doing homage to the great Creator and acknowledging him Lord of all things and themselves absolutely depending on Him For Almighty God from whom we had all our subsistence hath in all Ages required one thing of us back again that we should repay something as an acknowledgment that he deserv'd all and hence probably came the Original of Sacrifices But the Jews were instructed in another super-added meaning of that custome besides viz. That God was not only to be adored as a Lord but to be appeased as a Judge his Empire by being so owned was to be dreaded too When we slew our Beasts we were to remember that our selves deserv'd that death we inflicted and punished only what we were to have endured That innocent Beasts were to be offered up for guilty Men and what was due to the Sacrificer was to be laid on the head of the Sacrifice Et viles animas pro meliore damus Poor man whose sin hath brought him to so great a distance from his Maker that the very Beasts must set him nearer Sin hath strangely transform'd us that we are not to approach Heaven unless a Brute make way Man is plac'd in a strange order of being when 't is a disputable case whether Beasts are below or above him On the one hand we command them on the other they attone for us Here we give Laws to them There we beg pardon by them We feast upon and we sacrifice by them They are our luxury and they expiate it by them we sin and we pray who make up so much of our crime and our devotion too make up a great part of our guilt and then remove it Here God hath certainly represented unto us the meanness of sin by the vileness of the price that is paid for it and Man is fallen into an order below that out of which he takes his Intercessor But however the Jews or other Nations might think that Sacrifices could remove the guilt certainly they did but upbraid it and rather signifie our death than remove it It is not possible that the bloud of Bulls and of Goats should take away sin There is need of better bloud to satisfie the God that is offended and there must be other Purgations for the Conscience that is defiled The Law was in its Ways and Institutions too weak for so high a purpose It could little more than adumbrate what the Gospel did perform St. Paul who understood the Nature of Judaism handles that argument in all his Epistles especially in this and that to the Hebrews and there useth those terms which express not how the Law of Christ doth oppose that of Moses but how it doth exceed it how it does accomplish what that did barely signifie and by their figures expresses our duties He does not take away Sacrifice for without Sacrifice no Religion but only change it For the Law being changed it is necessary that the Sacrifice should be so too That what was before Carnal should now be wholly Spiritual That now Men should be sacrificed instead of Beasts That Innocence and Meekness should be the Dove or the Lamb and Lust the Goat The Heart the only Altar Mortification the Knife and Charity the true Fire In a word Devotion now is the proper Sacrifice of a Christian and Himself the Temple the Priest and Sacrifice too Whereby we may clearly see how much more favourably God deals with us Christians than he did with the Jews among whom certain persons had right to sacrifice and at certain places and times whereas now those distinctions are quite taken away every Christian being a Priest of a nobler order than that of Aaron and not confin'd either to time or place 2ly In that God requires not now of us such an expensive Devotion as formerly he did of the Jews no herds of Bulls and Rams nor Rivers of oil no such costly Sacrifice as Solomon offered up at the Dedication of the Temple and such as would perhaps undo us We need not go to the herds to fetch an Offering were we now to sacrifice as did the Jews the loss of a Beast would perhaps restrain us more than the sense of God's anger or our own demerit But here he that cannot give a Lamb for his Transgression may give some of himself offer hunger for shew-bread and thirst for a drink-offering consecrate a meal instead of a beast and shed a sowr fasting sigh for incense And such an easie way no doubt we will well like of who as we can object that legal Sacrifices were an insufficient expiation can at the same time quarrel with them too for being an expensive one When we rejoice that we are to be atton'd by a nobler Sacrifice we are better pleased perhaps that it is also a cheaper one But are our Beasts spared from the Altar think we only to glut our Tables Hath the great God remitted them only for the sake of our other God our Bellies Is our devotion chang'd only to gratifie our lusts or shall we be content to offer up to God what costs us nothing God did indeed once say That He did not eat the flesh of Bulls or drink the bloud of Goats But there is a sense in which he does doe both viz. when a poor Man feeds upon them Then do we attone for Gluttony when we feed the Hungry Restitution expiates for Injustice and Charity for Rapine And thus St. Paul calls Alms An odour of a sweet smell A sacrifice acceptable well-pleasing to God Phil. 4. 18. Heb. 13. 16. And not only our Charity but our Prayers our Faith our Praises our Obedience our Repentance and Mortification are in Scripture language Sacrifices too and such as without them all others are but abominations to the Lord Prov. 15. 8. Dead Carkasses not living Sacrifices which is the first property here required to render them acceptable I beseech you Brethren that you present your bodies a living Sacrifice And that 't will be 1. If it be a dying one The Beasts heretofore we know dyed when they were sacrificed Mortification is the life of a Christian If ye through the spirit do mortifie the deeds of the body ye shall live says our Apostle Rom. 8. 13. 2. A living That is A quick and active Sacrifice The Soul of a Christian as well as of a Man is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a kind of perpetual motion And therefore those Blessed spirits whose activity in God's service Christ proposeth to our imitation are by the Psalmist styled a flaming fire active and restless for God's glory That Maxim in Tully De natura deorum Qui nihil agit
modest man will scorn to name Surely such persons as these are not like to be a sweeter sacrifice to God than they are to themselves being scarce a proper Holocaust for the Devil Behold then what a severe Master our Lord is who forbids his Followers shame and filth will not suffer us to be the loathing of all the world and of our selves enjoyning us such a purity of body as will not only save our Souls but our Reputations too requiring of us a pure conscience a clear body and a fair fame and giving us such Laws as will secure unto us both health and honour and which is more render us acceptable to God as well as to all good men These Laws if we observe we shall then be fit Sacrifices for God and acceptable ones too especially if they have these Conditions in them 1. Purity I will wash my hands in Innocency O Lord and so will I goe to thine Altar Psal. 26. 6. 2. Humility implied in the very nature of the Sacrifice under the Law which was to be destroyed by the Fire or the Knife Humility does as it were waste and consume to nothing makes us as an Holocaust a whole Burnt-offering nothing in our selves nothing in respect of God and this exaninition exalts all God's graces in us He needs none of our Presents we enrich him not with them our goods and our persons are nothing unto him but we benefit our selves by a just apprehension of our own emptiness and unworthiness 3. Sincerity which sets a high value on our meannest gifts The Heathen Poet could put the question In Templo quid facit Aurum and he calls for Compositum jus fasque animi a true sincere heart and mind and with these says he farre litabo If we bring our Sheep to God's Altar and them alone we had as good leave them behind us as an unprofitable Carriage Wherewithall shall I come before the Lord with Burnt-offerings and Calves of a year old Will the Lord be pleased with Thousands of Rams or Ten Thousand Rivers of Oil No learn another Oblation He hath shewed thee O man what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God God looks into the inward Frame of the Heart and values not the offerer by the gift but the gift by the offerer 4. Lastly wilt thou offer up an odour of a sweet smell well-pleasing unto thy God Let thy Saviour's Merits perfume thy Sacrifices For if they be not sprinkled with the Bloud of this Lamb of God they will smell as rank as a Carkass There remains one thing more in the Text and that is that the Apostle here calls the Christian Sacrifice a Reasonable Service which seems to imply that lagal ones were in the Letter and as the Jews understood and practised them a Service scarce Reasonable Not that in its time it was altogether unreasonable For it had been commanded by God whose Will is Man's highest Reason as a service very fit for a carnal People who being as it were Children under the Pupillage of the Law were most taken with an External gaudy Pomp of Religion Besides that Sacrifices were Seals of the Jew's Covenant with God A solemn profession of gratitude for Mercies received and very proper Instruments to keep them from that Idolatry to which they were so naturally prone but only I say comparatively in opposition to the Christian way of worship which is so far above it For the Jewish service consisted in such things as had no suitableness to the Nature of God For what are Bloud and Smoak to the God of Spirits and were but shadows of better things but such shadows as did darken them and were mistaken for those very things of which they were but Types and so did hinder that very good they were intended to promote They did so quite defeat the End for which they were commanded that God often professeth with Truth and anger too that he did not command them at all As in Esay 1. 13. Incense is an Abomination unto me If ever it dare to approach Heaven it shall only serve as a Cloud to darken it New Moons Sabbaths and the Calling of Assemblies I cannot away with it is Iniquity even the solemn Meeting The Sabbath was grown to be that Day of whose Rest God was most weary It was a question which was most abominable to see their Altars swim with Bloud or their hands to be so full of it Their Devotions might vye Iniquity with their sins nor did they least provoke God when they thought they did most appease him And 't is observable that the greatest Sacrificers under the Law were mostly the greatest Sinners being so taken up with the Ceremony that they wholly neglected the Substance And therefore at best these things being but Relativi Juris and not for themselves when they came alone or with no better a retinue than those Sins aud Irregularities they did countenance no wonder if God removed them as he did the High Places if he cut them down as he did the Groves and stamp them to Powder like the abused Brazen Serpent especially when he saw that the Jews rested in them and made them the only considerable thing in their Worship as if God were to value a Man not by the greatness of his Soul but the largeness of his Ox that his only Excellencies were his Cattle and his Vertues those alone which grazed in his Pasture It was high time then for God to put an end to these Typical Services which were every where so grosly mistaken as if because they were expensive to Man they were to be accounted beneficial to God They thought as Himself complains Ps. 50. v. 13. That He did eat the flesh of Bulls and drink the bloud of Goats a ridiculous fancy Heathens had too as appears by Lucian who makes himself merry with it and 't is not improbable but that the grosser Jews had the like and accordingly they were made use of not only as an Attonement but as a Bribe to pacifie the Almighty by such a vile Trick Heaven in their Conceipt was to be reconciled by the Vices of the Earth by gifts to be corrupted that so by pardoning Men's sins he might share in them too Had not the Antecedent been abominable the Consequent had not been amiss If God would be luxurious with their Luxuries He was not to revenge them not to punish the sin He shar'd in nor to be angry with that guilt He did partake of and if He would be content to receive one part of the Rapine surely He could not in reason punish the other This in short may serve to shew how little reason there was in the legal Sacrifices in themselves barely considered And therefore we find that for a long time they were not commanded but freely offered by men out of their Zeal which alone recommended them unto God and
not any Excellency they had in their own Nature being not good but only in respect of what was worse It being better to sacrifice to God than to Devils nor otherwise than as Types of the Lamb slain from the Foundation of the World and did therefore vanish as soon as He was once offered upon the Cross Whereas true Religion remains still a Juge Sacrificium and is more lasting than the Heavens themselves which as it was long in the World before any Command came forth for Sacrifice So is it now most glorious when Jewish Altars are down 'T is not confin'd to time or place nor ever to be dispenc'd with as we find legal Sacrifices oft-times were And as 't is in the sight of God the best of all Sacrifices who requires Mercy and not bruitish Oblations so is it a most Reasonable Service being not founded in mera voluntate imponentis but in the Reason of the thing it self the Sacrifice not of a Brute Beast but of a man endued with Reason and withal most suitable to the Nature of God who as He is a Spirit will be worshipped in Spirit and in Truth and as He is a most wise God will not away with the Sacrifice of Fools Eccles. 5. 1. But will have the Evangelical as well as the Legal Sacrifices salted with salt our words and actions seasoned with discretion For we are fed with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well as with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well with the Rational as with the sincere milk of the Gospel so far is Christian Religion from divesting men of their reason that it strictly requires them to be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh them a reason of the hope that is in them 1 Pet. 3. 15. Being in it it self as 't is easie to demonstrate of all other the most Reasonale service and to present God with any other worship were but to offer strange Fire before him And now let me bespeak you in like manner as Naaman's Servants did their Master 2 Kings 5. 13. If the Lord had bid us do some great thing should we not do it Might he not require of us as of the Jews whole Herds of Cattle and Woods of Spices and Incense Nay which is more the Sacrifice of our Bodies in the most strict and severe Sense He might surely as being Lord of all but here we see He does not No other Bloud now to be shed but what St. Bernard calls sanguinem animi vulnerati that of a wounded troubled Spirit of a broken and contrite heart Slay thy lust and thou shalt offer him a Beast give him thy Reason or which is perhaps dearer to thee Thy Will and thou shalt sacrifice a Man to him He will accept thy Tears for drink-offerings and prefer thy very Fasts to meat-offerings Thou needest not appear before thy God empty while thou presentest thy self to him every part of thy Body and every faculty of thy Soul nay every thing thou possessest and which many times thou accountest more pretious than that very Soul of thine may be a Sacrifice and a far more acceptable one too than all the Beasts of the Forrest Give the Lord thy Heart and that will be the Fat of thy Sacrifice As thy Charity the true fire of it without which the Incense of thy Prayers and of thy Devotions will not smoak nor ever ascend up to Heaven nay without which Martyrdom it self will prove a vain and insignificant oblation and though thou shouldst give thy Body to be burnt yet thou shouldst be nothing In a word give thy God thy self and in such a manner as He requires thee to do it and thou canst give him no more and yet when all this is done no more than what he first gave thee Thus shalt thou make him Thine and be infinitely more thy self by being His. 'T is like laying up Treasure in the Temple which thereby becomes more sacred and more assured too But then in the last place let us remember that what we have once solemnly dedicated to God cannot without Sacriledge be alienated Our Bodies being once his they are no more then our own For to whom we yield our selves Servants to obey his Servants we are to whom we obey Rom. 6. 16. Our gifts here like God's must be without Repentance nor can we recall much less employ them to any other use either of the World or Satan as we cannot serve God and Mammon so neither ought we to give him the Lean and this the Fat of our Sacrifice If our God will not part stakes surely he will not content himself with the worser share Let us then give him all and that all will be our Heart and our Affections that when we appear before him our Souls may ascend up to him as the Angel did in the flame of the Altar and that Flame may still be kept alive upon it be a continual Sacrifice such as may never cease and we may do that constantly on Earth which shall be our Eternal Employment in Heaven still praise and adore our Creator Then shall he change these our Sacrifices into everlasting Temples for himself to dwell in what we now present him natural Bodies turn into spiritual and make these our vile ones like unto his glorious one Which God of his Infinite Mercy grant c. Amen Soli Deo Gloria in aeternum A SERMON ON ESAY V. 20. The former Part of the Verse Wo unto them that call Evil good and Good Evil. THE great Creator has never been wanting to Man in prescribing him such Laws as might be sufficient if obeyed to make him happy whether we consider him in the State of Primitive Integrity or out of it In the former God so left him in the hands of his own Councel as to make himself his own Rule Nature was to him instead of Revelation he had then the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil planted in him Conscience was his Oracle and Reason his Guide and to know his Duty was but to consult himself God did not only wind him up as a Watch to a regular Motion but did withal place in him a Sun-dial to set himself by if he should go false so that his very Essence and Rule was then so much the same that to transgress was not so much to break a Law as a Man Nor did he by his Fall wholly forfeit all his natural Advantages either to himself or his Posterity For though our first Parent brake the natural Tables as Moses afterwards did those of Stone yet from the scattered pieces thereof set together we may all of us though imperfectly spell out our Duty The worst of men are born with a certain Decalogue Their Souls are not mere Rasae Tabulae there is a Book of Conscience wherein the different Characters of Good and Evil are plainly legible and by the help of those practical Notions which make