to be Moses and Elias did then appear unto the Apostles 5. David saith I will not die but live and declare the works of the Lord and yet David is dead and was buried therefore it is his Soul that liveth 6. The wise man saith that when a man dieth then shall the dust that is Eccl. 12.7 his body return to the Earth and the Spirit shall return to God that gave it and being with God it cannot be dead but remain immortal for ever 7. When Lazarus died he is said to be carried up by the Angels into Abrahams bosom i. e. in respect of his Soul Luke 16.22 for his Body was not carried up into his Bosom And so Dives being in torments must be understood in respect of his Soul for it is said that being dead he was buried in respect of his Body and therefore the Souls both of the good and of the bad do still remain immortal 8. Our Saviour saith Fear not them which kill the Body but are not able to kill the Soul therefore the Soul is immortal whenas all the strength of man Mat. 10.28 and all the power of Hell is not able to kill it 9. The hope of Glory and Reputation and the desire that every man hath of the continuance and perpetuity thereof how vain soever it be yet doth it carry a great evidence of the Immortality of our Soules 10. The impression of that vice which robbeth a man of the knowledge of humane Justice and is alwaies opposite to the Justice of God and indelibly imprinted in every mans Conscience doth infallibly conclude that the Justice of God requireth the same should be chastised after death and therefore that our Soules must needs be immortal 11. In the Book of Wisdom it is most plainly said the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God and there shall no torment touch them Sap. 3.1 2 3. in the sight of the unwise they seemed to die but they are in peace A place so plain that sense can desire no plainer And many more Reasons might be produced to confirm this Truth but these are sufficient demonstrations to shew unto you that although man in respect of his being in this life is altogether Vanity yet simply considered he is to be eternal and to have a perpetual Being because God never made man to have an end and to be reduced to nothing but as the wise man saith he created all things and much rather man that they might have their being Sap. 1.14 And what madness is it therefore that men will not believe this Truth especially considering it is most certain that the remembrance of their end and the shortness of their time here how their dayes do pass away like a Weavers shuttle or like a Post that tarrieth not will alwaies be such a corrasive to their Souls as will put an end to all their earthly Comforts whenas nothing in the world is left us to rejoyce in but in that thing only which is perpetual and remaineth ours for ever But then here you must understand that besides the prime Eternity which is God there is a twofold perpetuity of men That all men both good and bad shall remain and be perpetually 1. The one by our Unition with God which is perfect felicity 2. The other in our Separation from God which is the Extreamest Misery And Seeing the Souls of men are immortal and do naturally affect Eternity as not only Divinity sheweth but also the soundest Philosophers have sufficiently attested and every mans Conscience in the expectation of his reward for his Actions be they good or bad perswadeth him to believe it is most certain that those wicked worldlings which desire nothing but the Honours and the Prosperity of this present Life and those incredulous Hereticks both of the former times and of this present Age which against their Consciences do withstand this Truth shall notwithstanding be perpetual either in their Union with God or in their Separation from God and as it is the greatest Comfort of a Christian man to believe that he shall be everlastingly with God in all happiness so it is not the least torment unto a damned soul to consider that he shall be for ever and ever in Torments separated from God And therefore the Errour is not that men do seek for perpetuity which they shall be sure to have but that they seek the same amiss The twofold error of men in seeking perpetuity 1. Seecking it too late Either not that which is with their Union and Fruition of God or if that then either not as they should or not where they should seek it that is either not in the due time or nor in the right place where it may be found as 1. For the time many seek it but too late and so they miss it because that now is the time acceptable ex hoc momento pendet aeternitas and our perpetuity either with God or without God either in Joy or in Torments dependeth upon our demeanour in this present and little short time that we have here to live 2. For the Place you may see how most men purchase Lands build Castles gather Riches 2. Seeking it in the wrong place heap up Treasures and so lay down such Foundations of perpetuity here on earth as if they were to live here for ever and they do so rely upon these transient things and mortal men as if they were immortal Gods and so they seek for their perpetuity in the Regions of Vanity and they would find perfect Felicity in this Valley of Misery but as the Israelites by joyning themselves to Baal-peor separated themselves from El shadai the Almighty God so these men by seeking Eternity in these vanities shall never be able to find it and to be united with it because Eternity and Felicity are not to be found here on earth For as the Apostle saith we have here no continuing City and we are but as Pilgrims and strangers here in this world and our perpetuity is to be expected not in this life but in the life to come And so by this large Introduction that I have made you see that these words of the Prophet are not to be understood of man simply considered but of man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in respect of his State and Condition in this life for though man be to abide for ever yet as he is in this life verily every man And to prove this unto you you shall find the wisest King and the most learned Preacher that aver Israel had assuring you that there is nothing here in this world but vanity and vexation of Spirit and that you might the sooner believe this Truth he doubleth and trebleth his words saying Vanity of Vanities all is Vanity that is nothing else but meer vanity And lest proud Man should think that this is meant of Gold and Silver and the like inanimate things of this world or
our people and to fight against God's enemies that have long laboured to overthow his Church as we read of some Bishops of this Kingdom that have been driven to do the like and if these men might do these things without blame as they did why may not the same man be both a Bishop and the Kings Counsellour both a Preacher in the pulpit and a Justice of the peace on the Bench and yet the callings not confounded though the same man be called to both offices for you know the office of a Lawyer is different from the office of a Physitian and the office of a Physitian as different from the duty of a Divine and yet as Saint Luke was an excellent Physitian and a heavenly Evangelist and S. Paul as good a Lawyer as he was a Preacher for he was bred at the feet of Gamaliel as was Master Calvin too as good a Civilian as he was a Divine for that was his first profession so the same man may as in many places they do and that without blame both play the part of a Physitian to cure the body and of a Divine to instruct the soul and therefore why not of a Lawyer when as the Preachers duty next to the teaching of the faith in Christ is to perswade men to live according to the rules of Justice and Justice we cannot understand without the knowledge of the Laws both of God and men and if he be obliged to know the Law why should he be thought an unfit man to judge according to the Law But. CHAP. IX Sheweth a full answer to four special Objections that are made against the Civil jurisd ctions of Ecclesiastical persons their abilities to discharge these offices and desire to benefit the Common-wealth why some Councils inhibited these offices unto Bishops that the King may give titles of honour unto his Clergy of this title LORD not unfitly given to the Bishops proved the objections against it answered six special reasons why the King should confer honours and favours upon his Bishops and Clergy 1. IF you say the office of a Preacher requireth the whole man and where the whole man is not sufficient to one duty for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ob. 1 2 Cor. 2.16 then certainly one man is never able to supply two charges I answer that this indefinite censure is uncertainly true Sol. and most certainly false as I have proved unto you before by many examples of most holy men that discharged two offices with great applause and no very great difficulty to themseves for though Saint Matthew could not return to his trade of Publican because that a continued attendance on a secular business would have taken him from his Apostolate and prove an impediment to his Evangelick ministration yet Saint Peter might return to his nets as he did without blame because that a temporary imployment and no constant secession can be no hinderance to our Clericall office No man is alwayes able to do the same thing when there is no man that can so wholly addict himselfe to any kinde of art trade or faculâ—y but that he must sometimes interchangeably afford himselfe leisure either for his recreation Vt quemvis animo possit sufferre laborem or the recollection of strength and abilities to discharge his office by the undertaking of some other exercise which is to many men their chiefest recreation as you see the husband-mans change of labour doth still inable him to continue in labour and the Courtier cannot alwayes wait in the same posture nor the Scribe alwayes write nor the Divine alwayes study Change of labour is a kinde of recreation but there must be an exchange of his actions for the better performance of his chiefest imployment and that time which either some Gentlemen Citizens or Courtiers spend in playing hawking or hunting onely for their recreation the better to inable them to discharge their offices why may not the Divine imploy it in the performance of any other duty different but not destructive or contradictory to his more special function especially considering that the discharging of those good duties to give counsell to do justice to releive the distressed and the like are more acceptable recreations unto them as it was meate and drink to Christ to do his fathers will then the other fore-named exercises are or can be to any others John 4.34 and considering also that where the Bishop or Pastor hath great affairs and much charge he may have great helpes and much aid to assist him You will allow us an hour for our recreation why will you not allow us that hour to do justice Ob. 2. 2. If you say they are spirituall men and therefore cannot have so great a care of the temporall State and Common-wealth Sol. 1. The ability of the Clergy to manage civil affaires Ignat. Epist ad Ephes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I answer that as now the Common-wealth is the Church and the Church is the Common wealth and have as good interest therein and better we hope then many of the Common-wealth have in the Church and they should be as able to unde stand what is beneficiall to the Common-wealth as any other for Ignatius saith that Kings ought to be served by wise men and by those that are of great understanding 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and not to be attended upon by weak and simple men and if Kings must be served by such men then certainly the service of God is not to be performed by Weavers and Taylors and others like Jeroboams Priests but it will require men of great abilities learning and understanding in all businesses whatsoever such as are indeed well able to discourse De quolibet ente And they have very unprefitably consumed themselves with their time in their head-pain vigils and heart-breaking studies in traversing over all the Common-wealths of the world if they have learned nothing The Clergy of better abilities to benefit the Common-wealth then many others that now sway it whereby they may benefit their own Common-wealth or do understand less what belongeth unto the good of their Countrey especially in matters of equity and right then illiterate Burgesses and meere Chapmen for if you read but the bookes of the Prophets you shall finde how plentifull they are in the precepts of peace in the policies of war and in the best counsels for all things which concern the good of the Common-wealth and do not the Divines read the Histories of all or most other Common-wealths how else shall they be inabled to propose unto their people the example of Gods justice upon the wicked and his bounty and favour unto the observers of his Lawes throughout all ages and in all places of this world and will you deprive the King of the assistance of such instruments for the government of his people The imployment of the Bishops in civil affaires is the good of the Common wealth that are stronger
to set down how the factious and malicious Preachers of the rebâ—llious Cities either neglect to pray at all or pray most seditiously and unchristianly for their own Liege Lord and gracious King and therefore the curse of Judas lights upon them that their prayer is turned into sin which should make them pray that Judas his end should not fall unto them But we that desire to follow the Apostles Precept considering the greatnesse of his cares and charge thaâ— he doth undergo and the multitude of dangers that he is lyable to will most heartâ—ly pray to God both in our Morning and our Evening Prayers both at our sitting and at our rising from our meat Vt vivat Rex exurgat Deus dissipentur inimici that God would give his Angels charge over him to preserve him in all his wayes that he dash not his foot against a stone that his enemies may be cloathed with shame and that he may flourish as the Lilly that he may raign long and happily here and raign for ever in Heaven this shall be my prayer for ever CHAP. XVIII The persons that ought to honour the King and the recapitulation of one and twenty Wickednesses of the Rebels and the faction of the pretended Parliament 3 The persons that must honour the King 3. HAving seen the Person that is to be honoured and the honour that is due unto him we are now to consider in the last place who are to honour him included in this word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 honour ye him which being unlimited and indefinite is equivalent to an universal and so Saint Paul doth more plainly express it Rom. 13.1 saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Let every soul be â—ubject to the higher powers which is an Hebrew Ideome or Synecdochical speech s gnifying the whole man the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being usually taken in Scripture pro toto composito for the whole man composed of body and soul as where it is said Gen. 46 62·27 Act. 2. that Jacob went down into Aegypt with 70 soules and S. Peter by one Sermon converted 3000 soules and the abstract word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is here taken 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to shew that our subjection obedience and honour which we are to ascribe unto our King must be not as hypocrites render it in shew from the â—eeth outwa d but really and indeed ex animo from our soules and the bottome of our hâ—arts as Aquinas glosseth it and the concrete 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 added unto it makes it the more energetical to shew that all mortal men none excepted are ob iged to do this honour and to yield this subjection unto their King for seeing every man both spiritual and temporal and every sex both man and woman and every degree of men young and old rich and poor one with another hath an immortal soul as well as a mortal body it must needs follow that all cujuscunque gradûs sexûs conditionis are obliged both in soule and body to honour and obey their King And yet it is strange to see how many men can exempt themselves and grant a dispensation unto their soules for the performance of this duty The Pope and his Clergy would be freed from the subjection of Kings for the Pope will be freed because he hath a power above all powers to depose Kings and to dispose of their Kingdomes at his pleasure and the Popish Clergy will perform no duty unto their King because their Function is spiritual but to all these I may truly say as our saviour doth to the lewd servant ex ore tuo out of the Fathers whom they acknowledge and out of their own Authors they are confuted for Saint Chrysostome saith that whether he be an Apostle or Evangelist or Prophet Seu quisquis tandem fuerit or whosoever else he be Pope Cardinal or Deacon he is commanded to be subject to the higher power and that you may see what power he meanes he pointeth out the same by the symbol that is of him that carryeth the sword which you know must be the secular Prince and not the spiritual Pope and so not onely Euthym. Theophylact Oecumenius and other Greek Commentators do avouch but also those Epistles which are recorded by Binius and quoted by the Bishop of Durham as Leo 1. ep 26. 35. Simplicius 1. ep 4. Felix 3. ep 2. Anastasius 1. ep 78. Pelagius 1. ep 16. Martinus 1. ep 3. Agatho 1. ep ad Herac. Hadrian 1. ep ad Constant do make this most manifest unto vs and therefore Espencaeus convinced by such a cloud of witnesses confesseth very honestly that the Apostle here Espenc in Tit. 3. 1. Digres 10. p. 5. 13. Paris 1568. The wickednesses of the pretended Parliament shewed by their actions Docet omnes credentes mundi potestatibus esse subjectos nempe sive Apostolus sive Evangelista c. ut tenet Chrysost Euthym. qui non Graeci And as the Popelings will be free so the Presbyterians and the faction of this Parliament will be as free as they and because every wickednesse laboureth to exceed that which preceeded these do not agree with the Catholiques as Herod and Pilate did to crucifie Christ in the same conclusion and tenet of exemption but they will go a note beyond Ela and surmount both Jesuite and Pope and therefore they not onely dishonour and disobey their King but they have violated and incroached upon all his rights and assumed the same into their own hands for to recapitulate some of their choycest wickednesses 1. As the Church of Rome and the Jesuites teach in Aphorismis confessariorum ex Doctorum sententiis collectis p. 249. that Rex potest per rempublicam privari ob tyrannidem si non faciat officium suum cum est causa aliqua justa eligi alius à majore parte populi which falshood their own Divines confute when Royard saith Rege constituto non potest populus jugum subjectionis repellere so these men maintain that diabolical tenet that the Regal power is primarily in the collective body and derived to the king cumulativè not privatiuè and therefore upon the kings neglect or male-administration it comes back again to the collective body in whom it resideth suppletivè to discharge the royal duty when the king faileth to do the same and then the king so falling from his right they may refuse obedience and if they see cause which they can soone do they may depose him from his office which impudent falshood I have fully confuted in this Treatise 2. They say the Regall Majesty is a humane creature or the ordinance of men primarily and therefore may be deposed by men when as Cunerus could say Sive electione sive postulatione vel successione vel belli jure princeps fiat principi tamen facto divinitùs potestas adest and therefore they have no power to take away that which God
and perfect Eternity to which all men naturally have a propensity and desire to be united but yet cannot because they know him not and therefore is that Precept to know him so often urged The reason why we know not so much of God as should make us happy And the reason why we know not so much of God as we should and which should make us happy is because we know not our selves we know not our own vanity and misery for the nearest way to bring us to Eternity is to understand our own vanity and the first step to happiness is to know our selves to be unhappy and that this unhappiness was derived unto us by that sad accident of sin which separated us from God who is felicity and eternity and made us wholly to become vanity and replenished with all misery and therefore 2. The very Philosophers could tell us that to know our selves is the ready way both to know God 2. To konw our selves the best way to know God and to enjoy God For as he that knoweth God will never relie on himself so he that knoweth himself will alwaies seek to rely on God because he seeth his own vanity his weakness and his frailty to be such and so great that he cannot subsist without God and therefore Socrates seeing this sentence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Know thy self engraven upon the Portal of the Temple of Apollo and considering with himself that there could be no access unto God but through his House and no entrance into the House but by the Door and then seriously musing with himself why this Sentence should be set upon the door he concluded that the readiest way to come to God was to know himself and therefore he left the course and practise of other Philosophers that searched into the motions of the Heavens and the influence of the Planets and applied their studies rerum cognoscere causas to understand the causes of all natural things which they conceived was the only thing that could make them happy and bring them to enjoy the summum bonum and he gave himself wholly to learn the knowledge of himself and he conceived there was no folly comparable to this to be painful and diligent to know all other things and to be ignorant and know nothing of himself to study Arts and Sciences and to forget himself and therefore non se quaesiverit extra but he employed all his time and his pains to know himself because he conceived that the knowledge of himself would be more beneficial to him than the knowledge of all other physical things whatsoever For which cause and no other the Oracle seeing him preferring the moral Philosophy before the Natural pronounced him the wisest man in Greece not because his knowledge was more compleat or his sufficiency greater than others but because his knowledge of himself was far better than the knowledge of others that studied other things and neglected to understand themselves And no marvel that the Oracle should proclaim him for the wisest man that doth best know himself because it is not only very good and profitable but also a very hard and difficult thing for a man fully and truly to know himself that is to know Not only the quiddities and the qualities both of his body and of his soul which notwithstanding in themselves are most admirable and excellent if we consider 1. The Parts and composition of the Body which as the Prophet saith are fearfully and wonderfully made yea so admirably composed that Galen saith Galenus de usu partium 1. The admirable structure of mans body the true expression or the tight Anatomization of them is as an holocaust or Sacrifice most acceptable to God that hath by that excellent composure of this incomparable structure shewed his own most incomprehensible wisdom as you see the least finger and the least Joynt of any Finger hath his use and cannot be spared by any means 2. That far more noble part of man that Spark of heavenly fire 2. The difficultie of understanding the particularities of the Soul and immortal spirit which is his Soul in the Original Essence Faculties Operations Use End and the like almost infinite Points thereof wherein and about which the best Philosophers have so puzled themselves that they rather bewrayed their own Ignorance than truly expressed any point of the most necessary knowledge of this Substance as learned Suarez in his voluminous work de Anima sheweth and Aristotle himself confesseth when he saith that the more knowledge a man hath of these things the more occasion of doubting is offered unto him which made him as many men think to define the Soul to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 corporis phisici organici vitam habentis potentia which is ignotum per ignotius a definition harder Arist de Anima l. 2. c. 1. tex 6. Cicero l. 1. Tuscul q. What man should chiefly know concerning himself or at least as hard to be understood as the thing defined Whenas Cicero reading 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 translateth the same to signifie a continued and perpetual motion which is far short of the right definition of the Soul But especially to know mans Original how he came into the world his duty what he should do and how he should behave himself while he continueth in the world his state and condition how he standeth in relation to his God that made him preserveth him and giveth to him all that he hath while he liveth in this world and what shall become of him when he dieth and departeth out of this world these and the like Considerations concerning man are hard to know and few men do learn them which is the reason that few do attain to Eternal Life Yet as the Poet saith Plagae dant Animum What effects Afflictions do work in us And as S. Greg. saith Oculos quos culpa claudit poena apperit the eyes which sin and transgressions have blinded afflictions and punishments have opened because as the Greek proverb saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Persecutions bring Instructions and suffering teacheth understanding as the Children of Jacob being questioned and afflicted in Egypt about their Brother whom they had sold unto the Ishmaelites had their eyes opened and their sin which for so many years they had buried in the Grave of Forgetfulness and in the Pit where they had thrown their Brother is now revived and makes them to confess and to say one to another We are verily guilty concerning our Brother in that we saw the anguish of his Soul when he besought us and we would not hear Gen. 42.21 therefore is this distress come upon us and so Crosses and Afflictions do reduce our sins unto our remembrance and extort Confession of their Misdeeds from many others And therefore the Prophet David either upon the consideration of Absolons unnatural Rebellion and Persecution of him What moved
1. The Body which we tread upon Saccus stercorum saith S. Bernard a sack full of dust to say no worse and a Magazine of all Diseases Coughes Agues Feavers Gouts and what not and when these have satisfied and feasted themselves upon our bodies what are our bodies but a feast for Worms And the Soul though it be a pure Spirit as it proceeded from God yet as it is now 2. The Soul traduced from our Parents as many Divines think it is or as it is infused into our flesh as others do believe and remaineth in our bodies all the Faculties thereof are corrupted the Understanding is darkned with ignorance the Memory dulled with forgetfulness and the Will defiled with Misse-affections And so as Earth is good and Water is good yet being mingled together they do make a dirty Puddle and neither of them can be said to be then a pure Element so the body and soul of man though both were good in their Originals and good in their own kind yet now being both coupled together as Mezentius coupled the dead bodies to the living they are both marred and become so deformed by corrupting one another and associating themselves in their desires that now the eyes are the burning-glasses of Concupiscence and lusting after our neighbours Wives Lands and Goods the Tongue is a Razor of detraction to defame and slander our own Mothers Sons the Throat is an open Sepulchre the Hands Engines of violence to rob wound and kill the Heart a Mint of all Villanies the Feet swift to shed bloud and the whole man is become a Beast saith the Psalmist and a Devil Psal 74. John 6.70 saith our Saviour for one of you is a Devil And so you see that all the whole man if he be but meer man as he is begotten of flesh and bloud in his best is but vanity in his next inquity and in his worst consideration a meer misery and so miserable that being but meer man he hath little cause with the Philosopher to thank God that he was made a man when it had been better for him as out Saviour saith of Judas that he had never been made and never born Mark 14.21 And therefore if we labour not to become more than men that is to be like Bacchus That we should labour to become more than meer men bis genitus as the Poets faign of him to be born again of another Mother the spouse of Christ and so to become double men and to consist of the old man begotten of mortal Seed and of the new man that is begotten by the immortal Seed of Gods Spirit we shall never be happy and never otherwise than as I said vanity and misery for though the old man be never so Glorious and never so honourable the Off-spring of Kings and Princes and though outwardly it appears never so beautiful without blemish yet if the Inner man of the heart that is begotten by Gods Spirit be not found out 1 Cor. 3.3 the other is but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 flesh as the Apostle termeth it and flesh is an Epithere given to Beasts by the Prophet and that by way of disparagement too where he saith their horses are but flesh and which is viler Esa 31.3 all flesh is grass that soon withereth and rotteth and becometh the Dung of the earth 1 Cor. 15. and the Apostle saith that flesh and bloud shall not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven because that as I shewed you before flesh and bloud being but meer vanity which is the most opposite to Eternity they can inherit nothing but eternal misery 3 Point 3. As totus homo so omnis homo vanitas every man is vanity that is not only the Fool but also the wise man for there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever but as the fool dieth so dieth the wise man therefore the wise man concluded Eccl. 2.15 16. that this also is vanity And so likewise the young man as well as the old man the rich as well as the poor and the strong as well as the weak the heroick Achilles as well as base Thersites may soon die and vanish away to nothing How all the world is round and all things in the world in a perpetual motion And to be brief you see how the gallant Courtier and the Royal Majesty are no more exempted from vanity than the poorest Clown and meanest Subject for as Eternity is said to be an intelligible sphaere whose Center is every where and his circumference no where but in it self as I shewed to you before out of Trismegistus so the form of the whole world is sphaerical and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or little world which is man in state and condition is also sphaerical and round even as round as a hoop or rather indeed a meer circular-center without any circumference at all and as the primum mobile the first wheel of all the Sphaeres of this whole frame is ever in motion and by that motion we see that part which is now the highest within a dozen hours to become the lowermost so suddenly is the change of the highest things even so it is in all things than are under the Sun there is a perpetual motion and that motion changeth all things which made holy Job to say a Saying worthy to be remembred that although man is but of few dayes few indeed God knoweth and those few dayes are full of troubles and that we all know yet in those few dayes he cometh forth like a Flower that is by little and little and he is cut down that is in a moment he flieth also as a shadow that is very swiftly and never continueth in one stay but is still divolved from one condition to another For our blessed Lord God and loving Father Job 14.1 2. out of his wise Providence and secret love to man hath so tempered all the Accidents and the whole course of mans life with such proportion and equal counterpoyze of occurrents that ever and anon Joyes and Sorrows are mixt together good haps and sad tidings succeed one another as for example David as it were to day is a poor Shepherd The vicissitude of King Davids condition keeping his Fathers Flock and pulling away his sheep out of the Lions Claws and as it were to morrow he is magnified in the Court of Saul he is matched with the Kings Daughter and saluted for the Kings Son in Law and his epithalamium is Saul killed his thousands and David his ten thousands yet presently he fleeth as a banished man and he is prosecuted and persecuted as a Partridge is hunted upon the Mountains but within a while he is crowned King and reigneth in a short space over all Israel even from Dan to Beersheba and as a gallant Conqueror overcometh all his enemies round about him yet that Glory must not last long but his own not only
societatem verumetiam quae ad Divinam religionem In this Kings and Princes do serve God as they are commanded by God if they do command as they are Kings in their Kingdoms those things that are good and honest and prohibit the things that are evil not only in causes that do properly appertain to civil society but also in such thâ—ngs as belong and have reference to Religion and Piety And when they do so the Bishops and Priests be they whom you will should observe their Commands That the Bishops Priests ought to submit themselves to the lawful commands diâ—ections of their Kings civil Governours and submitt themselves in all obedience to their Determinations and censures For Moses was the civil Magistrate and the Governour of the people and as he received them from God so he delivered unto the people all the Laws Statutes and Ordinances that appertained to Religion and to the Service of God And when Aaron erected and set up the golden Calf to be worshipped and so violated the true Religion and Service of God Moses reproved and censured him and Aaron though he was the High Priest of God and the Bishop of the people yet as a good example for all other Priests and Bishops he submitted himself most submissively unto Moses the chief Magistrate and said Let not the anger of my Lord wax hot Exod. 32.22 And I would the Pope would do so likewise And therefore though we say the Judge is to be preferred before the Prince in the knowledge of the Laws and the Doctor of Physick in prescribing potions for our health and the Pilot in guiding his Ship which the King perhaps cannot do Yet it cannot be denied but the King hath the commanding power to cause all these to do their duties and to punish them if they neglect it So though the King cannot preach and may not administer the holy Sacraments nor intrude himself with Saul and Vzzia to execute the Office of the Priest or Bishop yet he may and ought to require and command both Priests and Bishops to do their duties and to uphold the true Religion and the Service of God as they ought to do and both to censure them as Moses did Aaron and also to punish them as Solomon did Abiathar if their offence so deserve when they neglect to do it and both Priests and Bishops ought like Aaron and Abiathar to submit themselves unto their censures CHAP. VII The Objections of the Divines of Lovaine and other Jesuites against the former Doctrine of the Prince his authority over the Bishops and Priests in causes Ecclesiastical answered And the foresaid truth sufficiently proved by the clear testimony of the Fathers and Councils and divers of the Popes and Papists themselves BUt against this Doctrine of the Prince his authority to rectifie the things that are amisse and out of order in the Church of God Obj. the Jesuites and their followers tell us Spirituales dignitates praestantiores essâ— secularibus seu mundanis dignitatibus That the Spiritual Dignities are more excellent than those that are worldly When as these two Governments Gen. 1.16 Rom. 13 1â— And though the light of the Church be the greater yet that proves nor but that the King should be the prime and chief Governor of the Church the one of the Church and the other of the Common-wealth are like the two great Lights that God hath made the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night and the Government of the Church must needs be acknowledged to be the Day and to have the greater light to guide and to direct it The Apostle telling us plainly that now the Gospel being come and the Church of Christ established the night is past or far spent and the day is at hand and come amongst us And the Government of the Secular State is like the Moon that ruleth the Night and receiveth her cleerest light from the Sun as all Christian Kingdoms do receive their best light and surest Rules of Government from the Church of God which is the pillar and the ground of truth But To these that thus make the Civil Government subordinate to that which is Spiritual as both the Papists and our Fanatick-Sectaries here amongst us like the old doting Donatists would do and so abridge and deprive the Christian Prince of his just right and jurisdiction over the affairs and persons of the Church I answer Sol. 1. That Symbolical propositions examples parables comparisons and similitudes can prove nothing they may serve for some illustrations but for no infallible demonstrations of truth Isidorus in Glossa in Gen. ut citatur In the Scourge of Sacriledge 2. I say that Isidorus a popish Doctor preferreth the Government of the Kingdom before the Priesthood by comparing the Kingdom unto the Sun and the Priesthood unto the Moon 3. I say that Theodore Balsamon a good School-man saith Nota Canonem Dicit Spirituales dignitates esse praestantiores secularibus sed ne hoc eò traxeris ut Ecclesiasticae dignitates praeferantur Imperatâ—riis quia illis subjiciuntur You must note that when the Canon saith the Spiritual dignities are more excellent than the Secular Balsamon in Sexta Synodo Canone 7. you must not so understand it as to prefer the Ecclesiastical Rule or Dignities before the Imperial State because they are subject unto it and so to be ruled by it 4. And lastly I say that the Regal Government or Temporal State and civil Government of the Common-wealth is not meerly secular and worldly as if Kings and Princes and other civil Magistrates were to take no care of mens souls and future happiness which they are bound to do and not to say with Cain Nunquid ego custos fratris Am I obliged to look what shall become of their souls But they are called Secular States and civil Government because the greatest though not the chiefest part of their time and imployment is spent about Civil affairs and the outward happiness of the Kingdom even as the Ecclesiastical persons are bound to provide for the poor and to procure peace and compose differences among neighbours and the like civil offices though the most and chiefest part of their time and labour is to be spent in the Service of God and for the good of the souls of their people And so Johannes de Parisiis another man of the Roman Church Johannes de Parisiis Can. 18. doth very honestly say Falluntur qui supponunt quod potestas regalis sit Corporalis non Spiritualis quod habeat curam corporum non animarum quod est falsissimum They are deceived which suppose that the Regaâ— power is only corporal and not spiritual and that it hath but the care and charge over the bodies of his Subjects and not of their souls Which is most false Obj. 2. They say as I have said even now that similitudes and examples nihil
Athanasius said unto the Emperour Jovinian Conveniens est pro principe studium amor rerum divinarum It is meet and convenient for a good Prince to study and love Heavenly things because that in so doing his heart shall be alwaies Theodoret l. 4. c. 3. as Solomon saith in manu Dei in the hand of God and Saint Cyrill tells the Emperours Theodosius and Valentinian that Ab ea quae erga Deum est pietate Prov. 21.1 reipublicae vestrae status pendet the state and condition of their Common-wealth doth wholly depend according to that piety and Religion which they bear towards God Cardanus de sapientia lib. 3. Because as Cardan truely saith Summum praesidium Regni est justitia ob apertos tumultus Religio ob occultos Justice is the best defence of a Kingdom and the suppressor of open tumults because righteousness exalteth a Nation and Religion is the only Protector and safely against all secret and privy Machinations Minut. Fael in Oâ—tav because as Minutius Foelix saith What the Civil Magistrate doth with the sword of justice to suppress the nefarious doers and actours of wickedness Religion rooteth out and suppresseth the very thought of evil The want of the fear of God the only thing that maketh Rebells which a Godly and a Religious man feareth as much and more then a wicked and prophane man doth dread the punishment of his offence and so Religion Piety and the fear of God keepeth the very hearts and souls of the subjects from swelling against their Soveraign and from the least evil thought of Rebellion and it is the want of the fear of God and true Religion whatsoever men pretend that makes Rebels and Traytors in every place because the true Religion tels us plainly Rom. 13.1 that every soul that is every man unfainedly from his heart should be subject to the â—â—gher Powers And the true Religion teacheth us as Tertull Tertul. ad Scapul saith Colere Imperatorem ut hominem à Deo secundum solo Deo minorem To acknowledge and to serve the Emperour and so our King and our Prince as the next person to God and inferior to none but to God When as he is Omnibus major solo Deo minor above all men and below none but only God How requisite it is for Kings to have a care to preserve Religion And therefore it is most requisite that all Kings and Princes should have care of the true Religion and the service of God and with the Prophet David to build Temples and Churches for him that hath given their Crowns and Thrones unto them and to provide maintenance for those servants of God that serve at his Temple as they do for those that serve themselves and so both to be Religious themselves and to see that their subjects so far as it lieth in them should be so likewise and this their own piety and goodness in the service of God will make them famous amongst all posterities and their names to shine as the Sun when as Saint Ambrose saith Ambrosius Epist 32. Nihil honorificentius quà m ut Imperator filius Dei dicatur nothing can be more honorable then that the Emperour or King should be named and called the Son of God The fruits and benefits of maintaining true Religion in a kingdom which is a more glorious Eulogie then Homer could give to the best Heroes of all Greece or that Alexander Julius Caesar or the like could atchieve by all their military exploits or the best domestick actions that they have done and their making provision for the Teachers of the true Religion and the promoters of Gods service the Bishops and Ministers of Christ his Church which makes their subjects both Loyall and obedient unto them and also Religious towards God will preserve the peace and procure the happiness of their Kingdoms How many former kings were very zealous to uphold Religion And according as God hath given this Authority and laid this charge upon all Kings and Princes to have a care of his Religion and the Ministers of his Church so we find very very many both in former times and also of latter years and so both of Gentiles Jews and Christians that were exceeding zealous for the Honor of God and the upholding of them that served at his Altar 1. Gentile kings as 1. The Gentile Kings as Pharaoh King of Egypt that in the extremity of that dearth which swallowed the whole Land he made provision for Gods Priests The great bounty of king Croesus to the god Apollo and to his Priests so that they neither wanted means nor were driven to sell their Lands And so Croesus King of Lydia was so wounderfull zealous of the Honor and the worship of the god of Delphos and so bountifull to Apollo's Priests that Herodotus saith that he made oblation of three thousand choice Cattel such as might lawfully be offered and caused a great stack of wood to be made wherein he burnt Bedsteads of Silver and Gold and Golden Maysors with purple rayment and Coats of exceeding value and he laid the like charge upon the Lydians that every man should consecrate those Jewels which he possessed most costly and pretious from which their Sacrifice when as the streams of liquid and molten Gold distrained in great abundance he caused thereof to be framed half flates or sheards the longer sort as he intituled them of six handfull the shorter of three and a hand breadth in thickness amounting to the number of an hundred and seventeen Whereof four were of fined Gold weighing two Talents and a half and the rest of whiter Gold that weighed two Talents likewise he gave also the similitude of a Lion in tried and purged Gold and two Books very fair and stately to see to the one framed of Gold weighing eight Talents and a half with the additionall of twenty four pounds and the other of Silver And he presented likewise four silver Tunns two drinking Cups the one of Gold and the other of Silver and silver Rings with the shape and form of a woman three Cubits high and withall he offered the Chains Girdles and Wastbands of the Queen his wife and to the Priests of Amphiaraus he gave a shield and a speare of solid Gold and a quiver of the same metall all which saith mine Author he offered in hope to purchase thereby unto himself the gracious favour and good-will of that god and Herodotus l. 1 clio if he was so magnificent and bountifull to the Priests and Temple of that god which was no god how Royall think you would he have been if he had known the true God and our Saviour Jesus Christ So Cyrus and Darius KingS of Persia and of Babylon made such royall decrees for the re-edifying of the Temple at Jerusalem Ezra 1.7 c. 6.5 c. 8.9 and the Worshipping of the God of Daniel and his three
brought all them that followed him and his wayes to the like perdition And so Nimrod Esau and Ismael falling away from God and Jeroboam setting up his golden gods and many other Kings and Princes neglecting their duties apostatizing from God and misleading their people brought them in like manner to their utter ruine And as many times the people are brought to their ruine by the evil example Scilicet in vulgus manant exemplaregentum utque ducum lituos sic mores castra sequuntur Claud. 1. Stilic and wicked Government of their Prime-Leaders when as the Poet saith Regis ad exemplum totus componitur orbis And the Souldiers would imitate Alexander in his stoopings and in his vices as well and sooner than in his vertues So many times and oftner too they are brought to the same pass the same pathes of perdition through the lewd examples and neglect of the subordinate Magistrates of the Common-wealth and the Governours and Ministers of the Church of God As when the Princes Esay 1.23 Zephant 3.3 or Nobility are rebellious and companions of Thieves or as Zephany saith like Lions and the Judges are evening-Wolves that judge not the fatherless neither doth the cause of the widdow come unto them And when the Prophets are leight and treacherous persons and the Priests have polluted the Sanctuary and have done violence to the Law either by corrupting it Prov. 29.18 with their false glosses or locking it up in prison and not publishing the same unto the people for where there is no vision the people perish saith the Wise-man And so by their false teaching or no teaching they thrust forward the poor people into perdition And therefore Kings and Princes to whom God in the first place hath committed the Soveraignty and Charge both of Church and Common-wealth Exod. 18.21 ought not only to chuse such Judges and Magistrates as Jethro described unto Moses Able men fearing God men of truth and hating covetousness But when the Cathedrals and Parochial-Churches are built and beautified for God's Worship and for the people of God to meet in them to serve God What manner of Judges and Bishops Kings ought to chuse as they ought to be they should also take care and see that such Bishops and Priests as S. Paul describeth in 1 Tim. 3.2 c. be setled in those Churches to worship God and to bring the people to do their duties that they may attain to eternal life Lest that which S. Hierom complained of in his time should be true in our time That the Altars shined with Gold and pretious Stones Bernard ad Abbat Cluniacen Sed ministrorum nulla erat electio There was no good choice made of good Ministers whereby it was said That they had golden Chalices but woodden Priests as S. Bernard saith it was not much better in his dayes there was not such care taken for good Ministers as they should do For as in Nature we see every thing for its Creation requires a Divine hand and a Miraculous power to produce it but the same being once produced God's hand is not so conspicuous but he leaves it to the soyl as it were to stand and grow by the innate vertue planted in it So it seems to fare with Religion it self which is such a superstructure above Nature that although it be planted by God as both the Jewish and Christian Religion were with signs and wonders and a strong miraculous hand yet men must now conserve it by those ordinary means that God appointed the Church of Christ being like the Garden of God in Eden which the Lord made and then set it to our Parents to keep it and to dress it And though this Religion which at first is thus powerfully planted by God and is the principal Pillar that upholdeth States and makes all Kingdoms happy yet after the inward vertue of the Doctrine of Christ the Bishops and Priests are the main props and the ordinary means that God hath appointed to uphold his Religion and to continue his Service in his Church because Religion can neither plant it self nor sustain it self alone and what support soever it hath from the Prince or the Laws of any Nation yet the Bishâ—ps and Priests are as it were the soul of that power in the execution thereof when as all the substance circumstance and ceremonies have their life from them and our consent and belief in their holy Calling is that which doth and should keep us from the singularity of our own misguided imaginations And therefore that Prince that is truly religious Kings ought to have a special care to chuse good Bishops and hath a special care of God's Service must likewise with King David and as good King Charles ever had have a special care to see that godly and learned Bishops and Priests be appointed in God's Church to instruct his people And you know what S. Paul saith That a Bishop must be blameless the husband of one wife vigilant sober of good behaviour given to hospitality apt to teach not given to wine no striker not greedy of filthy lucre but patient not a brawler not covetous one that ruleth well his own house having his children in subjection with all gravity not a novice or a young new Divine lest being lifted up with pride as young men commonly are he fall into the condemnation of the Devil Moreover 1 Tim 2.1.2.2 4 5 6 7. he must have a good report of them that are without lest be fall into reproach and the snare of the Devil All which large description of those parts and vertues that every Bishop and faithful Minister of God's Church ought to have may for order and method sake be reduced into these two Heads Levit. 8.8 which are the Vrim and the Thummim that Moses put upon the Breast-plate of Aaron and for which he did so earnestly pray that God would grant them unto all the Tribe of Levi saying Let thine Vrim and thy Thummim be with thy holy one or with the man of thy mercy And they signifie The two special vertues that ought to be in every Bishop and Priest 1. The uprightness of his life and conversation 2. The sincerity of his doctrine teaching of his people For so Moses sheweth that Levi did as every Bishop and Priest should do 1. Carry himself most dutifully and obedient in his life and all his actions Vertue 1 towards God as when God proved him at Massa and strove with him at the waters of Meriba he said unto his father and to his mother I have not seen him neither did he acknowledge his brethren nor knew his own children Verse 9. but he observed Gods word and kept his Covenant and preferred the keeping of God's Laws and walking dutifully according to his will before father or mother wife or children which every Christian and especially every Christian Bishop and true Levite ought to do 2. To teâ—ch Jacob the
and many Acts to pass to justify and to make good and Lawful the Taking away Leasing Selling and Alienating the Tythes Lands Houses and Possessions of the Church and of our High Priest Jesus Christ from his servants to be inherited by lay persons and many other Acts of Parliaments have been made since that time to the same purpose which very thing we conceive as I have shewed to be very High Sacriledge and a robbing of Jesus Christ and the obstructing of his service and we fear the cause of the perishing of many souls And therefore how the Shield of the Pope's Authority that was the first Foster-Father of this execrable and accursed title of Impropriation or the power of King Henry the 8th that would expunge the Pope's Sacriledge with a greater Sacriledge and be the second Patron of this Bastard brood or all the pretences of the now detainers of the Tythes and portion of Christ and the Lands Houses and Possessions of the Church by these Humane Laws can bear off the blow of Gods wrath and turn aside the fierceness of his vengeance when in the day of his fury he shall powre out the full vial of his indignation upon the head of all Sacrilegious persons and upon the children and posterity of them that have devoured the Lords inheritance and laid wast his dwelling place I can no waies understand neither do I know how to give them any comfort or counsel but to advise them to a full and timely Restitution of that which otherwise will be their utter destruction Quia non remittitur peccatum August ad Maced Epist 54. donec restituatur oblatum cum restitui potest The sin shall never be remitted and blotted out of Gods book until the Tythes and goods of Gods Church be restored when men can restore them and will not do it CHAP. XVIII Of the second part of the Stipend Wages and Maintenance of the Ministers of the Gospel which is the Oblation Donation or Free-wil-offering of the people for to uphold and continue the true service of God and to obtain the blessings of God upon themselves and upon their labours which Donations ought not to be impropriated and alienated from the Church by any means YOu have heard of the first part of the Ministers maintenance the second part consisteth in the voluntary Oblations or Free-wil-offerings of the people which the Lord requireth should be done according as every one in his own heart thought good to bestow upon the service of God and what they did offer in this kind was most acceptable in the sight of God For this is a Principal Branch of that Honor which we yield unto God by and with our substance which we are injoyned to do Prov. 3.9 Because what we relieve the poor with is not so much our alms as their exigence which as necessity exacts it so it is soon passed and as quickly perisheth but those Donations that were given for the service of God as they savour of a more inward and deeper piety so they are of a more lasting substance and besides the eternal Treasures which men do thereby lay up for themselves they do provide for the perpetuity of Religion unto the after-ages of men and may be justly said to Honour God not only in themselves but in all those likewise which they gain by their Donations to Honor him And it is strange and marvellous to consider how liberal and how free the people of old time were in their Donations and Free-wil-offerings to maintain the Worship of God and to do any thing that did any wayes appertain to his service for if you look into the 36. Chapt. of Exod. vers 5. you shall find how Bezaleel and Aholiab spake unto Moses saying The people bring much more then enough for the service of the work which the Lord hath commanded to be made Exod. 36.5 6 7. and Moses gave commandment and caused it to be Proclaimed through the Camp that they should bring no more for that they had already brought enough and too much So they that returned out of Babylon were as ready and as willing to offer up their gifts and free-wil-offerings for the service of the Temple as their Forefathers were for the erecting of the Tabernacle Neh 7.70 c. 10.33 as you may see it in the books of Ezra and of Nehemiah But the Christians of the Primitive Church were so zealous herein that they exceeded all that went before them in their Donations and Free-wil-offerings for the service of God and the increase of the Christian Religion for they sold their Lands and Possessions and laid the prizes thereof at the Apostles feet and had all things in common among themselves And Pope Vrban the I. Platin. in Vrban instituted Vt ecclesias praedia ac fundos fidelibus oblatos episcopus reciperet partireturque proventus clericis omnibus viritim nihilque cujuspiam privatum esset sed in commune bonum That the Bishops should receive the Churches Possessions and grounds offered to the Faithful and that the profits thereof should be divided by the Clergy man by man and that nothing should be of private propriety to any one but in common amongst them all And Gratian tels us that by a decretal Epistle unto all the Bishops he decreed that none should presume to alienate ought of the Church Revenues under the pain of Excommunication And Pope Lucius the I. about twenty years after Vrban directed an Epistle to the Bishops of Spain and France to the same purpose And though the malice of Dr. Burges towards the Bishops will not suffer him to yield Vide Flor. hist ad an 186. Matth. Westm that King Lucius gave the Lands of the Idol-Priests unto the Christian Bishops yet is it clear enough out of Antiquit. Brit. and Armachanus that Lucius endowed the Christian Church with more Lands and Revenues then the Idol-Priests injoyed And afterwards while it was permitted by the Imperial Laws for every one to Collate upon the Church whatsoever he would without exception Cod. l. 1. titulo 5. l. 1. their Donations were so great that the Kings and Emperours conceived it fit with Moses to grant a prohibition that they should not offer any more nor bestow any Lands or Goods upon the Church without some special licence and toleration from the Civil Magistrate for fear that the Church if this freedome of Donations should still continue would have sucked out all the blood from the veins and the marrow out of the bones of the politick body and so leave the Common-Wealth deprived of their Lands like Pharaohs lean and evil-favoured Cows and the Church like those that were fat and wel-liked And therefore they enacted the Statute of Mortmain that was a supersedeas against these too-liberal contributions and the Emperour Justinian enacted that no Legacy bequeathed unto the Church exceeding the value of five hundred Crowns should be good in Law without a special licence from the
new thing but a true saying and therefore our Saviour biddeth us to Take heed of false Prophets and of rebellious spirits that as Saint John saith went from us but were not of us but are indeed the poyson and Incediaries both of Church and Common-wealth 4. Much obliged for many favours unto their Governours 4. These Rebels had received many favours and great benefits from their Governours for they were delivered è lutulentis manuum operibus as Saint Augustine speaketh and as the Prophet saith They had eased their shoulders from their burthens and their hands from making of pots they had broken the Rod of their oppressors and as Moses tells them they had separated them from the rest of the multitude of Israel Numb 16.9 and set them near to God himself to do the service of the Tabernacle of the Lord and therefore the light of nature tells us that they were most ungrateful and as inhumane as the brood of Serpents that would sting him to death which to preserve his life would bring him home in his bosome And it seems this was the transcendencie of Judas his sin and that which grieved our Saviour most of all that he whom he had called to be one of his twelve Apostles whom he had made his Steward and Treasurer of all his wealth and for whom he had done more then for thousands of others should betray him into the hands of sinners for if it had been another saith the Psalmist that had done me this dishonour I could well have born it but seeing it was thou my familiar friend which didst eat and drink at my table it must needs trouble me for though in others it might be pardonable yet in thee it is intolerable and therefore of all others he saith of Judas Vae illi homini woe be unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed it had been better for him he had never been born as if his sin were greater then the sin of Annas Caâ—aphas or Plate But the old saying is most true Improbus à nullo flectitur obsequio no service can satisfie a froward soul no favour no benefit no preferment can appease the rebellious thoughts of discontented spirits And therefore notwithstanding Mâ—ses had done all this for Corah yet Corah must rebell against Moses So many times though Kings have given great honours unto their subjects made them their Peers their Chamberlains their Treasurers and their servants of nearest place and greatest trust And though Aaron the High-Priest or Bishop doth impose his hands on others and admit them into Sacred Orders above their brethren to be near the Lord and bestow all the preferment they can upon them yet with Corah these unquiet and ungratefull spirits must rebell against their Governours For I think I may well demand Which of all them that now rebell against their King have not had either Grand fathers Fathers or themselves promoted to all or most of their fortunes and honours from that Crown which now they would trample under their feet Who more against their King then those that received most from their King Just like Judas or here like Corah Dathan and Abiram I could instance the particulars but I passe So you see who were the Rebels most ungrateful most unworthy men CHAP. II. Sheweth against whom these men rebelled that God is the giver of our Governours the severall offices of Kings and Priests how they should assist each other and how the people laboureth to destroy them both SEcondly we are to consider against whom they rebelled 2. Part against whom they rebelled 2. Points discussed and the Text saith Moses and Aaron and therefore We must discusse 1. Qui fuére who they were in regard of their places 2. Quales fuére what they were in regard of their qualities 1. In regard of their places we find that these men were 1. The chief Governours of Gods people 2. Governours both in temporal and in spiritual things 3. Agreeing and consenting together in all their Government 1. They were the prime Governours of the people Moses the King or Prince to rule the people and Aaron the High-Priest to instruct and offer Sacrifice to make attonement unto God for the sins of the people and these have their authority from God for though it sometimes happeneth that Potens the Ruler is not of God as the Prophet saith Hos 8.4 They have reigned and not by me and likewise modus assumendi the manner of getting authority is not alwayes of God but sometimes by usurpation cruelty subtlety or some other sinful means yet Potestas the power it self whosoever hath it is ever from God for the Philosopher saith Magistra ûs originem Aristot Pâ—lit lib. 1. c 1. Ambros Ser. 7. esse à natura ipsa And Saint Ambrose saith Datus à Deo Magistratus non modo malorum coercendorum causâ sed etiam bonorum fovendorum in vera animi pie aete honestate gratiâ And others say the Sun is not more necessary in Heaven then the Magistrate is on Earth for alas how is it possible for any Society to live on earth cùm vivitur ex rapto when men live by rapine and shall say Let our strength be to us the law of justice therefore God is the giver of our Governours and he professeth Per me regnant Reges And Danâ—el told Nebuchadnezzar Vide etiam c. 2. v. 37. That the most high ruleth in the Kingdome of men and he giveth it to whomsoever he will Dan 4.25 2. These two men were Governours both in all temporal and in all spiritual things as Moses in the things that pertained to the Common-wealth and Aaron in things pertaining unto God And these two sorts of Government are in some sort subordinate each to other and yet each one intire in it self so that the one may not usurp the office of the other for 1. The spiritual Priest is to instruct the Magistrates 2 Governours both in temporal and spirituall things and to reprove them too if they do amisse as they are members of their charge and the sheep of their sheep-fold And so we have the examples of David reproved by Nathan Achab by Elias Herod by John Baptist and in the Primitive Church Euseb l 6. c. 34. Sozomen lib. 7. of Philip the Emperour repenting at the perswasion of Fabian and Theodosius senior by the writings of S. Ambrose 2. The temporal Magistrate is to command and if they offend to correct and condemn the Priests as they are members of their Common-wealth Rom. 13. Bernard ad Archiepis Senonensem for Saint Paul saith Let every soul be subject to the higher powers and if every soul then the soul of the Priest as well as the souls of the People or otherwise Quis eum excepit ab universitate as Saint Bernard saith and so Theodoret Theophylact and Oecumenius are of the same mind And the examples of Abiathar deposed by Solomon and
a greater than Solomon Christ himself not refusing the censure of Pilate though for no fault Saint Paul appealing unto Caesar Caecilian judged by the Delegates of Constantine Flavianus by Theodosius and all the Martyrs and godly Bishops never pleading exemption from their persecutors do make this point beyond all question 3. Governours well agreeing in their government 3. These two Governours were not onely consanguinei two brethren for so were Cain and Abel to whom totus non sufficit orbis but they were also consentanei like the soul and body of man of the same sympathy and affection for the performance of every action For the Church and Common-wealth are like Hippocrates twins so linked together as the Ivie intwisteth it self about the Oak that the one cannot happily subsist without the other but as the Secretary of nature well observeth That the Marygold opens with the Sun and shuts with the shade even so when the Sun-beams of peace and prosperity shine upon the Common-wealth then by the reflection of those beams the Church dilates and spreads it self the better as you may see in Acts 9.31 and on the other side when any Kingdom groaneth under civill dissention the Church of Christ must needs suffer persecution And therefore to this end that the Prince and Priest might as the two feet of a man help each other to support the weight of the whole body and to bear the burthen of so great a charge God at the first severing of these offices which before were united in one person as the Poet saith of Anius Rex idem hominum Phoebique Sacerdos and as the Apostle saith of Melchisedech that he was both a King and the Priest of the most high God did chuse two natural brethren to be the Governours of his people and that quod non caret mysterio Aaron was the eldest and yet Moses was the chiefest to signifie as I take it that they should rather help and further each other then any wayes rule and domineer one over the other because that although Aaron was the eldest brother and chief Priest yet Moses was the chief Magistrate and his brother's god as God himself doth stile him and therefore this should terrorem incutere and teach him how to behave himself towards his brother and though Moses was the chief Magistrate yet Aaron was the chief Priest and his eldest brother which had not lost like Reuben the prerogative of his birth-right and this should reverentiam inducere work in Moses a respect unto his brother's age and place And truly there is great reason why these two should do their best to support and protect each other for the government of the people is as we may now see a very difficult and miraculous thing no lesse then the appeasing of the Surges of the raging Sea as the Prophet sheweth when he saith That God ruleth the rage of the Sea and the noyse of his waves and the madness of his people And the Rod of government is a miraculous Rod as well that of Aaron as that of Moses for as Moses Rod turned into a Serpent and the Serpent into a Rod again so the Rod of Aaron of a dry stick did blossome and bear ripe Almonds to shew how strange and wonderful a thing it is either for Prince or Priest to rule an unruly multitude too much for any one of them to do and therefore God doth alwayes joyn both of them together as the Psalmist sheweth Thou leddest thy people like sheep by the hand of Moses and Aaron And besides if these two do not assist and protect each other they shall be soon suppressed one after another of their own people for if the Prince which is to be our Nursing-Father be once subdued then presently the Priest shall be destroyed and when he hath lost his power our power shall never be able to do any good and if the Priest which prayeth and preacheth to direct the King be trampled under foot As soon as men have overthrown their Priests they will presently labour to destroy their king it hath been found most certain that after they have thrown away the Miter they have not long retained the Scepter And therefore King James of ever blessed memory of a sharp conception and sound judgement was wont to say No Bishop no King unlesse you mean such a King as Christ was when the Jewes crowned him with Thorns and bowing their knees said Hail King of the Jews that is Rex sine Regno a King without power like a man of straw that is onely made to fright away the birds For the people are alwayes prone to pull out their necks from the yoke of their obedience and would soon rebell if the Priests did not continually preach that Every soul should be subject to the higher powers as we see now by experience how apt they are to rebell when factious Preachers give them the least incouragement And therefore as this rebellion of Corah so every other though they begin with one yet they aym at both and strive to overthrow aswell the one as the other for so my Text saith They angred Moses in their Tents and Aaron the Saint of the Lord. And therefore these two should be as Hippocrates twins or indeed like man and wife indissolubly coupled and coherent together without distraction and cursed be they that strive to make the division for whom God hath thus united together no man should put asunder And here you may observe the method of their Rebellion The method of their Rebellion the Text saith Moses and Aaron yet Moses sheweth they began with Aaron for when their Rebellion was first discovered Moses doth not say What have I done against you but What is Aaron that you should murmure against him to shew unto us that although Moses was the first they aymed at in their intention yet he was the last they purposed to overthrow in the execution Quia progrediendum à facilioribus as the Devil began with the woman the weaker vessel that he might the easier overthrow the stronger so the enemies of God and his Church do alwayes seek first to overthrow the Priest and then presently they will set upon the Prince And therefore as Moses here Virgil. Aeneid lib. 2. so all Magistrates every where should remember that Jam tua res agitur through our sides they may smart and our wounds may prove dangerous unto them because you shall never read they began to shake us but they fully intended to root out them for if the fear of God and the honour of the King must go together as Saint Peter sheweth it must needs follow that they will but dishonour and disobey their King that have cast away the fear of God and it is most certain that when they drive God out of their hearts as the Gergezites drove Christ out of their Coasts Little fear of God in them that expell their Priests out of their societies
all kings Ang. de Civit. Dei l. 4. c 33. illius jussu reges constituuntur And by whose command men are born by his command Kings are made And S. Augustine more plainly and more fully saith God alone is the giver of all earthly Kingdomes which he giveth both to the good and to the bad neither doth he the same rashly and as it were by chance because he is God but as he seeth good Pro rerum ordine ac tempore in respect of the order of things and times which are hid from us but best known unto himself and whosoever looketh back to the original of all governments he shall find that God was the immediate authour of the Regal power God the immediate authour of Monarchy and but the allower and confirmer of the Aristocratical and all other forms of government which the people erected and the Lord permitted lest the execution of judgement should become a transgression of justice for as Homer saith Hom. Odyss α. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And Aristotle tells us Aristot Polit. l. 1. c. 8. that the Regal power belonged to the father of the family who in the infancy of the world was so grandevous and long-liv'd that he begat such a numerous posterity as might well people a whole Nation as Cain for his own Colony built a City and was as well the King as the father of all the Inhabitants and therefore Justin saith very well that Principio rerum Justin l. 1. Gentium nationúmque imperium penes reges erat The rule of Nations was in the hands of Kings from the beginning and the Kingly right pertaining to the father of the family the people had no more possibility in right to choose their Kings then to choose their Fathers and to make it appear unto all Nations that not onely the Kings of Israel but all other Heathen Kings are acknowledged by God himself to be of divine institution Jerem. 43.10 Esay 45.1 he calleth Nebuchadnezzar his servant and Cyrus his annointed And therefore though I do not wonder that ignorant fellows should be so impudent Jo. Goodwin in his Pamphlet of Anti-Cavalierism p. 5. as to affirm The King or kingly government to be the Ordinance or Creation or creature of man and to say that the Apostle supposeth the same because he saith Submit your selves to every Ordinance of man for the Lords sake whether it be unto the King c. whereas he might well understand that the same act is oftentimes ascribed aswel to the mediate as to the immediate agent as Samuel's annointing of Saul and David Kings denieth not but that God was the immediate giver of their Kingdomes and the Authour of that regal power 1 Sam. 10. for God annointed Saul Captain over his inheritance and by the mouth of Nathan he telleth David that he annointed him King over Israel 2 Sam. 12. and Solomon acknowledgeth that the Lord had set him on the Seat of his Father David 1 Reg. 2. and Abijah in the person of God saith unto Jeroboam 1 Reg. 11. I will give the Kingdome unto thee 1 Sam. 11.15 and yet it is said that all the people went to Gilgal and made Saul King before the Lord and the men of Juda annointed David King of Juda 2 Sam. 5. and Zadock the Priest and Nathan the Prophet annointed Solomon King that is God annointed them as Master of the substance and gave unto them regal power in whom is all power primariò per se and the Prophets annointed them as Masters of the Ceremony and declared that God had given them that power And therefore the power and authority of Kings is originally Constituere regem est facere ut regiam potestatem exerceret Pinedas de reb Solom c. 2. and primarily as Saint Paul saith the Ordinance of God and secondarily or demonstratively it is as Saint Peter calleth it the ordinance of man when the people whose power is onely derivatively makes them Kings not by giving unto them the right of their Kingdomes but by receiving them into the possession of their right and admitting them to exercise their royal authority over them which is given them of God and therefore ought not to be withstood by any man And this Anti-Cavalier might further see that Saint Peter meaneth not that the King is the creature of man or his Office of mans Creation but that the Lawes and Commands of Kings though they be but the Commands and Ordinances of man yet are we to obey the same for the Lords sake because the Lord commandeth that Every soul should be subject to the higher powers Or if this will not satisfie him because the Greeks word is not so plain for this as the English yet let him look into Pareus that was no friend to Monarchy and he shall find that he doth by seven speciall reasons prove Pareus in Rom. c. 13. p. 13. 27. that the authority of Kings is primarily the Ordinance of God and he quoteth these places of Scripture to confirm it Proverbs 8.15 2 Chron. 19.6 Psalm 81.6 Joh. 10.34 Genes 9.6 1 Sam. 15. 1 Kings 12. 2 Kings 9. Dan. 2.21 Job 34.30 Eccles 10.8 And to this very objection he answereth that the Apostle calleth the Magistrate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an humane Ordination or Creation not causally because it is invented by man and brought up onely by the will of men but subjectively because it is born and executed by men and objectively because it is used about the government of humane society and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in respect of the end because it is ordained of God for the good and conservation of humane kind and he saith further that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 appellatio the Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ad Deum primum autorem nos revocat sheweth plainly that God is the first author of it for though the Magistrate in some sense as I shewed may be said to be created that is ordained by men yet God alone is the first Creatour of them as Aaron though he was ordained the high-Priest by Moses yet the Apostle tells us None taketh this office upon him but he that is called of God as Aaron was Yet I do admire that Buchanan or any other man of learning to satisfie the people or his own peevish opinion will so absurdly deny so divine and so well known a verity and say that any Kings have their Kingdomes and not from God so flatly contrary to all Scripture CHAP. VII Sheweth the Reasons and Examples that are alledged to justifie Rebellion and a full answer to each of them God the immediate Authour of Monarchy Inferiour Magistrates have no power but what is derived from the superiour And the ill successe of all rebellious Resisting of our Kings The allegation to justifie Rebellion BUt to prove their absurdities they still alledge that the inferiour Magistrates as the Peers and Counsellours of Kings
Example answered it is most impertinently alledged for Ezechias was the lawful King of Juda and the King of Assyria had no right at all in his Dominions An impertinent example but being greedily desirous to enlarge his territories he incroached upon the others right and for his injustice was overcome by the sword in a just battell and therefore to conclude from hence that because the King of Juda refused to obey the King of Assyria therefore the inferiour Magistrates or Peers of any Kingdome may resist and remove their lawful Prince for his tyranny or impiety surely this deserves rather fustibus retundi quà m rationibus refelli to be beaten with rods then confuted with reasons as Saint Bernard speaketh of the like Argument And whereas they reply that it skilleth not whether the Tyrant be forreign as Eglon and the King of Assyria were or domestique as Saul Achab and Manasses were The ubsurdity of their replication because the domestique is worse then the forreign and therefore the rather to be suppressed I will shew you the validity of this argument by the like The seditious Preachers are the generation of vipers nay farre worse then vipers because they hurt but the body onely and these are pernicious both to body and soul therefore as a man may lawfully kill a viper so he may more lawfully kill any seditious Preacher Quia Dare absurdum non est solvere argumentum But to omit their absurdity let us look into the comparison betwixt domestique and extranean Tyrants and we shall find that domestique Tyrants are lawfully placed over us by God who commandeth us to obey them and forbiddeth us to resist them in every place for the Scripture makes no distinction betwixt a good Prince and a Tyrant in respect of the honour reverence and obedience that we owe unto our superiours as you see the Lord doth not say Touch not a good King and Obey righteous Princes but as God saith Honour thy father and thy mother be they good or bad so he saith Touch not the King resist not your Governours speak not evil of the Rulers be they good or be they bad and therefore Saint Paul when he was strict y charged for reviling the wicked high-Priest answered wisely I wist not brethren that he was Gods High-Priest for if I had known him to be the true High-Priest I would not have spoken what I did because I know the Law of God obligeth me to be obedient to him that God hath placed over me Bad kings to be obeyed as well as the good be he good or bad for it is Gods institution and not the Governours condition that tyeth me to mine obedience So you see the mind of the Apostle he knew the Priest-hood was abolished and that he was not the lawful High-Priest therefore he saith God shall smite thee thou whited wall But if he had known and believed him to be the true and lawful High-Priest which God had placed over him he would never have said so had the Priest been never so wicked because the Law saith Thou shalt not revile thy Ruler But for private robbers or forreign Tyrants God hath not placed them over us nor commanded us to obey them neither have they any right by any Law but the Law of strength to exact any thing from us and therefore we are obliged by no law to yield obedience unto them neither are we hindred by any necessity either of rule or subjection but that we may lawfully repell all the injuries that they offer unto us Example answered 3 3. For the peoples hindring of King Saul to put his son Jonathan to death I say that they freed him from his fathers vow non armis sed precibus not with their weapons Saul was contented to be perswaded to spare his son but by their prayers when they appealed unto himself and his own conscience before the living God and perswaded him that setting aside his rash vow he would have regard unto justice and consider whether it was right that he should suffer the least damage who following God had wrought so great a deliverance unto the peohle as Tremelius and Junius in their Annotations do observe Gregor in 1 Reg. 4. And Saint Gregory saith The people freed Jonathan that he should not die when the King overcome by the instance of the people spared his life which no doubt he was not very earnest to take away from so good a son Example answered 4 4. Touching Ahikam that was a prime Magistrate under King Jehoiakim I say that he defended the Prophet not from the Tyranny of the King but from the fury of the people for so the Text saith The hand of Ahikam Jerem. 26.24 that is saith Tremelius the authority and the help of Ahikam was with Jeremy that They that is his enemies should not give him into the hands of the people which sought his life to put him to death because Ahikam had been a long while Counsellour unto the King and was therefore very powerful in credit and authority with him The act of Ahikam no colour for Rebellion And you know there is a great deal of difference betwixt the refraining of a tumultuous people by the authority of the King and a tumultuous insurrection against the King That was the part of a good man and a faithful Magistrate as Ahâ—kam did this of an enemy and a false Traytor as the opposer of Kings use to do 5. For the defection and revolting of the ten Tribes from Rehoboam Example answered 5 their own natural lawful King unto a fugitive and a man of a servile condition and for the Edomites Lybnites and others that revolted against King Joram 2 Chron. 21. 2 Reg. 14.19 and that Conspiracy which was made in Jerusalem against Amazia I answer briefly That the Scriptures do herein as they do in many other places set down rei gestae veritatem non facti aequitem the truth of things how they were done not the equity of the things that they were rightly done and therefore Actions commanded to be done are not to be imitated by us unl sse we be suâ—e of the like commandement Non ideò quia factum legimus faciendum credamus ne violemus praeceptum dum sectamur exemplum We must not believe it ought to be done because we read that it was done lest we violate the Commandement of God by following the example of men as Saint Augustine speaketh for though Joseph sware by the life of Pharaoh the Midwives lyed unto the King and the Israelites robbed the Aegyptians and sinned not therein yet we have no warrant without sinne to follow their examples Besides God himself had foretold the defection of the ten Tribes for the sinne of Solomon and he being Lord proprietary of all his donation transferreth a full right to him God is the right owner of all things and therefore may justly dispose any Kingdom on
Commons which I wish all men would remember how affectionately he desired it to hasten to relieve that bleeding Kingdom yet still they protracted and neglected their redresse and at last passed such Votes made such Orders and procured such Acts as rather respected themselves and their posterity to get all the land and goods of the Rebels to themselves that were the Adventurers than the relieving of us that were distressed and would as I told some of the House of Commons rather increase the Rebellion than any wayes quench that destroying flame And this was as it succeeded and as you see hereby most likely intended a most detestable Plot for the kindling of that Rebellion and continuing of that bloody War in Ireland without which they knew this Rebellion in England could never have gained so much strength as it hath 2. By their large expression of what Religion they protested to defend 2. To gain all Sectaries to their side not the Protestant Religion as it is established by Law and expressed in the 39. Articles of the Church of England but as it is repugnant to Popery and taught perhaps by Burton Burges Goodwin Burrows or the like Amsterdamian Schismaticks they opened the gap so wide and made Heaven-gate so broad that all Brownists Anabaptists Socinians Familists Adamites and all other New-England-brood and Out-landish Sectaries whatsoever that opposed Popery might return home and joyn with them as they have done since to overthrow our established Church and State And this Plot to increase their own strength was as craftily done and is as Detestable as the other which to weaken the King in England caused a Rebellion in Ireland 3. By their illegall compelling 3. To descry their own strength and forcible inducing of all the people in the Kingdom to take the same or to be adjudged ill-affected and popish and after the Lords had rejected the imposing of it they by their Declaration which shewed That what person soever would not take it was unfit to bear Office either in Church or Common-wealth prevailed in this Plot so that they descryed the number of their own Party they understood their own strength and they perceived thereby many things which they knew not before for now they had with David numbred Israel and so far as the wit and policy of the Devil had instructed them they had searched into the secrets of all hearts 4. Having compelled the people to take it 4. To insnare all the simpler sort to adhere unto them they have hereby insnared all the simpler sort and tender consciences to stick unto them when they tell them and presse it upon their souls That they have made a Protestation to maintain the Priviledges of Parliament and the Liberty of the Subject and therefore they are bound to adhere to the Parliament to the uttermost of their power and so by this equivocall Protestati n they have seduced thousands into their Rebellion and led them blindfold unto destruction But to let you see not the sincerity of their hearts The mystery of their iniquity but the mystery of their iniquity by this their Protestation you shall never find them urge it unto others or remembring it themselves For the defence of the Kings Person Crown or Dignity or for the liberty of any Subject but only such Subjects as will be Rebels with them For how can they be said to defend any of these when they do their very best to destroy His Person and deprive him of all his Royal Dignities and to plunder and imprison all true Subjects for being true Subjects unto their King Whereby you see how these Rebels are likewise perjured and have weaved this Protestation like a Spiders web That the rebels are all perjured through which themselves might passe when they pleased and like Vulcans Net to catch the simpler sort to adhere most eagerly to their Designs and so it is but a circle of all subtilties and not unwittily questioned An protestatio Parliamentaria deterior sit juramento cum c. For if there be any thing injoyned to be done by that Protestation which was unlawful to be done before the Protestation was taken it is no more to be justified by that Act than any other unlawful thing is by a rash and wicked vow and it ought not to be urged to do mischief and if there be nothing to be injoyned thereby but what was every mans duty before there was but small need to draw any argument from any Protestation but if they intended to draw men from the duty of alleageance to which they were legally sworn all men understood to do somewhat which the ignorant did not understand then such a voluntary Protestation might do the deed for they have protested to maintain the Priviledges of Parliament And yet the wisest of us now may justly protest we cannot tell what those Priviledges are or how far they should extend in the judgement of the House of Commons for they are multiplied like the Rats of Egypt And as Pharaohs lean Kine did eat up all his fat Cows Priviledges of Parl. multiplyed and are like Pharaohs kine so these meager Priviledges have eaten up all our goodly Laws And therefore the unlimited universality of these Priviledges in the Protestation extending it self as far as the caetera in the Canonical Oath was but a mischievous plot in the Contrivers to catch the simple to adhere unto them And it is a madness in any man that hath legally sworn to defend the King's Person Crown and Dignity which he knoweth and hath irregularly protested to maintain the Priviledges of Parliament which he knoweth not immediately to draw his sword against his known Soveraign or to Rebel against his well-known lawful Authority in the behalf of some thing he knoweth not what but is told by these men It is a Priviledge of Parliament O ye unwise among the people When will you understand Who hath bewitched you that you should not believe the truth CHAP. VII Sheweth how the Faction was inraged against our last Canons What manner of men they chose in their new Synod And of six special Acts of great prejudice unto the Church of Christ which under false pretences they have already done 3. The condemning of our last Canons 3. FOr the Canons that were last made I must confess my self and many others of my Brethren were very averse unto our sitting to make any at that time yet many Reasons were shewed us that we might sit and we had the Judges of the Common-Laws opinion under their hands shewed us for the legality of our sitting and conclude such Canons as might be for the glory of God and the good of his Church but of those that are made though I assure my self the worst of them is not so ill as they alleadge nor near so bad as most I might say the best of their illegall Orders yet there were many of us that never gave our votes
in the blood of so many faithful Christians do sing with the Psalmist Psal 58 9. The righteous rejoyce when they see this vengeance they shall wash their feet in the blood of the ungodly for as Solomon saith The tender mercies of the wicked are meer cruelty Prov. 12.10 And I believe the first inventers of that Design to root out all the Papists in Ireland and to get that Act to purchase all the Lands of the Rebels had tasted too much of this bitter root of such destructive Doctrine whereby you see how the Religion of these men robbes us of our Estates keeps no faith with us and takes away our lives 7. Though among the works of God every flower cannot be a Lilly 7. They would have a party among all men both in Church and Common-wealth Gal. 5 6. Col. 3.11 every beast cannot be a Lyon every bird cannot be an Eagle and every Planet cannot be a Phoebus yet in the School of these men this is the doctrine of their to be new erected Church that with God there is no respect of persons and neither Circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision but whether they be bond or free masters or servants Jew or Gentile Barbarian Scythian a country-Clown or a Court Gallant rich or poor it is all one with God because these Titles of Honour Kings Lords Knights and Gentlemen are no entities of Gods making but the creatures of mans invention to puffe him up with pride and not to bring him unto God and therefore though for the bringing of their great good work to passe they are yet contented to make the Earl of Essex their General and Warwick their Admiral and so Pym and Hampden great Officers of State yet when the work is done their Plot perfected and their Government established then you shall find that As now they will eradicate Episcopacie and make all our Clergie equall as if all had equally but one talent and no no man worthier than another so then there should be neither King Lord Knight nor Gentleman but a parity of degrees among all these holy brethren And to give us a taste of what they mean as the Lords concurrence with them inabled them to devour the Kings power so they have since with great justice prevailed with the House of Commons to swallow up the Lords power and have most fairly invaded their priviledge when they questioned particular Members * As my Lord Duke and my Lord Digbie 8. They would have no man to pray for temporal things Matth. 33 34. Matth. 6.11 9. Not to say the Lords Prayer 10. Not to say God Speed you 2 John 10.11 12 Not to pray for the Malignants 1 John 5.16 for words spoken in that House and then the whole House when they brought up and countenanced a mutinous and seditious Petition which demanded the Names of those Lords that consented not with the House of Commons in those things which that House had twice denied 8. Because our Saviour saith Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and the righteousnesse thereof and all these things that is meat drink and cloathes and all other earthly things 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 shall be cast unto you and again Be not carefull for to morrow they teach their Proselytes that they ought not to pray by any means for any of these things whereas Christ biddeth us to say Give us this day our daily Bread 9. They cannot endure to say the Lords Prayer for that 's a Popish superstition but their Prayers must be all tautologies and a circular repetition of their own indigested inventions 10. You must not say God speed you to any neighbour or any traveller lest he intends some evill work and then you shall be partaker of his sin 11. They will not allow any of their Disciples to pray for any of the Reprobates and therefore they do exceedingly blame us and tear our Liturgie because we say That it may please thee to have mercy upon all men 12. Because Christ saith Call no man father on earth for one is your Father which is in Heaven the child must not call him that begat him and nurseth him his father nor kneel unto him to ask him blessing nor perform many other such duties which the Lord requireth and the Church instructeth her children to do to this very day and this foolish Doctrine of calling no man Father no man master or Lord and the like in their sense because they understand not the divine meaning of our Saviour's words hath been the cause of such undutifulnesse and untowardnesse such contempts of superiours and such rebellions to Authority as is beyond expression when as by their disloyalty being thus bred up in them from their cradle they first despise their father then their Teachers then their King and then God himself CHAP. IX Sheweth three other speciall points of Doctrine which the Brownists and Anabaptists of this Kingdom do teach 13. BEcause they can find no Text in Scripture when as the Alcoran is not so impudently hellish as to justifie the action for to warrant men to absolve our consciences from any Oaths that we have voluntarily taken for the performance of any businesse I cannot say that they do professedly teach but I do hear they do usually practise this most damnable sin as that Master Marshall and Master Case did absolve the Souldiers taken at Brainceford from their Oath which they took never to bear Arms against his Majesty which is a sin destructive both to body and soul when their Perjury added to their Treason makes them two-fold more the children of hell than they were before and if they be taken again they can expect nothing but their just deserved death and therefore I do admire that any man can challenge the name of a Divine which doth either preach or practise a point so devilish 14. They think sacriledge to be no sin Acts 20.34 1 Thes 2.9 1 Cor. 1.12 14. Because Saint Paul saith These hands have ministred to my necessities and to them that were with me and again Labouring night and day because we would not be chargeable to any of you we preached unto you the Gospel of God and because the rest of the Apostles and Disciples were Fishermen Tradesmen or professours of some Science either liberal or mechanick as Saint Luke was a Physician Joseph a Carpenter and the like who did live by their manual crafts and were chargeable to none of their people but sought them and not theirs to win their souls to God and not their monies unto themselves therefore they think it no robbery to take away all the revenues of the Church nor sacriledge to rob the Clergy of all the means they have because they should either labour for their livings as the Apostles did or live upon the peoples Almes as many poor Ministers do to the utter undoing of many souls in many distressed and most miserable Churches But because this revenue of
were many times swayed by the heads of the most powerfull faction The case of our affairs p. 17. How powerfull factions have procured Parliaments to doe most unjust things Turba tremens sequitur fortunam ut semper odit damnatos Juven Satyra 10. When Kings were most powerfull they could get the Parliaments to yeeld to what Statutes they thought best when the Lords or faction were most powerful they forced their Kings to make what Statutes they liked best which are instances rather of their unsteady weaknesse then of their just power when forsaking the guidance of their lawfull head they suffered themselves to be led by popular pretenders as when Canutus prevailed by his armes he could have a Parliament to resolve that his title to the Crown was the best when Hen. 4. had an army of 60000 men he could have a Parliament to depose Rich. 2. and confer the Crown upon himself when Edw. Duke of Yorke grew powerfull he could have a Parliament to determine the reigne of Hen. 6. and leave him only the name of king for his life but give the very Kingdome unto the Duke under the names of Protector and Regent and then he could procure the Parliament to declare that Hen. 4. Hen. 5. and Hen. 6 were but kings de facto non de jure so Rich. the 3. as meere an Usurper as any could notwithstanding procure a Parliament to declare him a lawfull king and Hen. 7. could procure the forementioned acts that were made in favour of Edw. 4. and Rich. 3. to be annulled and Hen. 8. could have a Parliament to justifie and authorize his divorces and Queen Elizab. could have a Parliament to make it high treason for any man to say that the Queen could not by Act of Parliament bind and dispose the rights and titles which any person whatsoever might have unto the Crown when as we know it was adjudged in Hen. 7. that no Act of Parliament nor yet an Attainder by Parliament can disable the right heire to the Crown because the descent of the Crown upon him purges all disabilityes whatsoever and makes him every way capable thereof Thus as the Parliaments when they were most prevalent caused their kings unwillingly to yeeld many things against right so the kings growing most powerfull prevailed to work the Parliament to consent to very unjust conclusions and therefore it is inconsequent to say this exclusion must be just because it is past by an Act of Parliament The case of our affaires p. 20. And therefore as in the 15 yeare of Edw. 3. the king being unwillingly drawn to consent to certain Articles prejudiciall to the Crown and to promise to seale the Statute thereupon made lest otherwise his affairs in hand might have been ruinated which we conceive to be just in like manner now the king very unwillingly drawn to passe this Act for the exclusion of the Clergy which is most prejudiciall both to the Crown and the Church and a mighty dishonour unto God himself lest otherwise more mischiefe might have followed when he hoped that this would have appeased the fury of that prevalent faction which now the kingdome seeth it did not Another Statute was made the same year reciting the former matter Statutes unwillingly procured from the king repealed that was enacted in these words It seemed to the said Earls Barons and otherwise men that since the Statute did not of our free will proceed the same to be void and ought not to have the name nor strength of a Statute and therefore by their counsell and assent we have decreed the said Statute to be void c. So I hope our Earles and Baron and the rest will be so wise and so just both to the king and to the Church that seeing this Statute proceeded not of the kings free will as I beleeve their own conscience knoweth and do presume His Majesty will acknowledge they likewise will consent that the king may make it void again §. Certaine Quaeres discussed but not resolved the end for which God ordained Kings the prayse of a just rule Kings ought to be more just then all others in three respects and what should most especially move them to rule their people justly AND here I must further craue leave to be resolved in certain Quaeres and doubts wherein I would very gladly be satisfied for seeing as I told you before there are some rights of royalty which are inseperabilia à majestate which the king ought not and which indeed he cannot grant away as there be some things which he may forgoe though he need not I demand Quaere 1 1. Whether any positive Act Statute or Law that is either ex diametro or ex obliquo either directly or by consequent or any other way contradictory or transgressive to the Law of God ought to be kept and observed wherein I beleive and constantly maintain that it ought not and I say further that by the Word of God not any Lay men be they never so noble never so learned and never so many but the Clergy be they never so poore and never so much dis-esteemed ought to be the resolvers of this point what is repugnant and what consonant to the Law of God Malach. 2.7 because the Priests lips must preserve knowledge and the people must seek the Law at his month therefore it may be conceived no Statute can be rightly made that is not assented to and approved as all our former Statutes were by the Bishops that are the chiefest of the Clergy to be no wayes contrary to the Law of God Quaere 2 2. Whether the king that is an absolute Monarch to whom God hath committed the charge and government of his people can without offence to God change this forme of government from a Monarchicall to an Aristocraticall or a Democraticall forme of government which may be beleived he cannot because though as I shewed out of Saint Augustine the worser forme invented by man may lawfully be changed into a better yet the best which is onely and primarily ordained by God cannot be changed into a worser without offence Quaere 3 3. Whether the king can passe away that power authority and right which God hath given him and without which he cannot govern and protect his people that God hath committed under his charge wherein it may be conceived he cannot because God must discharge him from the charge that he imposed upon him before he can be freed and excused from it but as the Bishop on whom the Lord hath laid the charge of soules cannot lay aside this charge when he pleaseth so no more can the King lay aside the charge of the Government nor paâ—t with that power and right * Otherwise then by substitution Rege absente durante beneplacito or quamdiu se benè gesserint substituti whereby he is inabled to govern them and without which he cannot governe them untill God that laid this charge
these Rebels not out of any love to shed bloud but out of a desire to preserve Peace not for any natural inclination to diminish their Nobility by their decollation but from an earnest endeavour to suppresse the community from unnatural Rebellion ut poena in paucos metus ad omnes that the punishment of some might have bred fear in the rest What effects the Kings clemency wrought and that fear of the King in them might keep his good Subjects from fear of being undone by them But all the World seeth our King is more merciful and hath sought all this while to draw them with the cords of love which hath bred more troubles to himself more afflictions to us and made them the more cruel and by their Oaths and Protestations Leagues and Covenants to do their best to bring the King and all his loyal Subjects into fear if they may not have their own desires But we are not afraid of these Bug-beares because we know this hath been the practice of all Rebels to linke themselves together with Leagues and Covenants as in the conjuration of Cateline and the holy league in France and the like and many such Covenants and Leagues have been made with Hell to the utter destruction of the makers as when more then forty men vowed very solemnly and they intended to do it very cunningly that they would neither eat nor drinke until they had killed Paul for so they might be without meat until the day of judgement Act. 23.12 if they would keep their Oath and so these Covenanters may undo themselves by such hardening their faces in their wickednesse The Rebels Covenants shew they are grown desperate because this sheweth they are grown desperate and are come to that pass that they have little hope to preserve their lives but by the hazarding of their soules as if they thought the Devil for the good service they desire to do him to overthrow the Church to destroy thousand souls may perchance do them this favour to preserve their lives for a time to bring to passe so great a worke whereas we know the Church is built upon a Rock and God hath promised to defend his Anoynted so that all the power of hell shall never prevail against any of these Wherefore to conclude this point seeing God hath put a sword into the hand of the king and the King bears not the sword in vain Rom. 13.4 but though it be long in the sheath he can draw it out when He will and recompence the abuse of His lenity with the sharpnesse of severity let us fear or if you would not fear do well saith the Apostle return from your Rebellion V. 3. and from all your wicked wayes and you may yet finde grace because you have both a merciful God and a gracious king 2. To have an high and good esteeme of our King and to make others to have the like 2 Sam. 15.6 2. As we are to feare so we are to reverence our King that is to have an high esteeme of His Majesty and to manifest the same in our termes speeches and communications accordingly to gain the love of the rest of His Subjects towards Him and not as Absolon did by cunning and sinister expressions to steale away the hearts and affections of His People for to make mention of him either in our prayers or Sermons or in any other familiar talke so as if he were a friend to Popery an enemy to the Gospell and carelesse of Justice and the like as too many of our Sectaries most falsely and most malitiously have done is rather to vilifie and disgrace him to work an odium against him and a tediousness of him then to procure an honourable esteeme and reverence of him Cassiodorus saith stipendium tyranno penditur praedicatio non nisi bono Principi Tribute is due to Tyrants and ought to be paid unto them but honour and reverence much more to a good Prince Rom. 12.14 Matth. 5.44 and the spirit of God bids us bless them that persecute us and our Saviour saith blesse them that curse you that is speak well of Tyrants that oppress us and speak not ill of them that speak ill of you especially if they be your Magistrates or your King whom 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you are commanded to honour even with the same word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 therefore no doubt but with the same honour as we are commanded to honour our Father and our Mother The fifth Commandment is the most obliging of all the Commandments of the second Table Ephes 6.2 How the heathens honoured their kings C. Tacitus lib. 14. Seneca de benefic l. 30. The reason of their reverence because the King is our Politicall Father and is therefore commanded to be reverenced by this precept which as the Divines observe is of greater moment and more obliging then any of the rest of the Commandments of the second Table not onely because it keepeth the first place of all these precepts but is also the first Commandment with promise as the Apostle observeth And not onely the Scriptures command us thus to honour and to reverence our King but the very Heathens also did so reverence them that they did adore the Statues and Images of their Kings and Caesars as Tacitus reporteth and it was Treason for any man to pull away or violate them that fled unto them for sanctuary yea it was capitall for a man that had the Image of his Prince stamped in silver or ingraven in a Ring to go to any uncleane or unseemly place and therefore Seneca saith that under the Empire of Tiberius a certain Noble man was accused of Treason for moving his hand that had on his finger a Ring whereon was ingraven the portraiture of the Prince unto his privie parts when he did urine and the reason of this great reverence which they bare unto their Princes was that they beleived there was in Kings 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some divine thing which above the reach of man was ingraffed in them and could not be derived from them Raderus Comment in Quint. Curt. for so Raderus tells us that this divine Majesty or celestiall sparke was so eminent in the countenance of Alexander that it did not onely terrifie his enemies but also moved his best Commanders and greatest Peeres to obey his commands and the like is reported of Scipio Africanus A Macedonian Law and I finde the Macedonians had a Law that besides the Traitors condemned to death five of their next Kinsfolkes that were convicted of conspiracy against their King and a Gentleman of Normandy confessing to his Frier how such a thought came once in his minde to have killed King Francis the first A Gentleman hanged for his thought but repenting of his intention he resolved never to do it the Frier absolved him of his sin but told the King thereof and he sent him to his
Parliament who condemned and executed him for his thought Philip the first of Spain seeing a Falcon killing an Eagle commanded his head to be wrung off saying let none presume above their Soveraigne and in the Raigne of Henry the fourth of England one was hanged drawn and quartered in Cheapside London for jesting with his son that if he did learne well he would make him heire of the Crowne meaning his owne house that had the Signe of the Crowne to prove the Proverbe true non est bonum ludere cum sanctis it is not safe jesting with Kings and Crowns and it is lesse safe to resist them if you will believe wise Solomon And I have read of another King that passing over a river his Crowne fell into the water one of his water-men lept in and dived to the bottome and taking up the Crown put it upon his head that it might not hinder his swimming and so brought it to the King again who rewarded him well for his pains but caused his head to be chopt off for presuming to weare his Crown And all this is but an inanswerable argument to condemne our Rebels that neither reverence the Majesty of their King nor respect the commandment of their God 3. 3. Obedience Obedience is another principall part of that honour which we owe unto the king and this obedience of the inferiours joyned with the direction of the superiors doe make any state most successefull but when these are divorced The marriage of obedience and authority and the issue Aeschylus All must be obedient then nothing goeth right in that Common-wealth for so the Sages of Greece exprest it by the marriage that Jupiter made between 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whose child brought forth betwixt them was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to shew unto us that when authority is married to obedience and obedience proves a dutifull and good wife to authority the fruit of that match will be happinesse to the whole Kingdome And therefore if we would be happy we must be obedient and our obedience must be universall in all things in the Lord. Jussa sequi tam velle mihi quà m posse necesse est Lucan l. 1. So the people say unto Joshua all that thou commandest us we will do Josh 1.16 and all must do it the greater aswell as the lesser the noble man as well as the meane man yea rather then the meane man for though Rebellion in any one is as the sin of witchcraft yet in a vulgar man it may admit of vulgar apologies but in a man of quality in noble men in Courtiers bred in the Kings house Noble mens Rebellion more abominable to God and man then any other in the Kings service and raised by the Kings favour it is Morbus complicatus a decompound sin a transcendent ingratitude and unexpressable iniquity the example more spreading and the infection more contagious because more conspicuous and the giddy attempts of an unguided multitude are but as Cardinal Farnesius saith like the Beech tree without his top soon withered and vanishing into nothing without leaders when they become a burthen unto themselves and a prey unto others therefore the contradiction of Corah Dathan and Abiram that were so eminent in the congregation was a sin so odious unto God that he would have destroyed all Israel for their sake as now he punisheth all England for the sins of those noble men that have rebelled against their King Rom. 13.1 and were alwayes like Sejanus as wayward pleased as opposed And therefore St. Paul saith that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 every soul must be subject to the higher power and he saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you must needs be subject or be obedient Rom. 13.5 Obedience pressed by a three fold argument and he presseth this obedience with many arguments as 1. From Gods ordinance because God hath set them over us and commanded us to be obedient unto them and therefore whosoever resisteth them warreth against God 2. From mans Conscience which telleth us Rom. 13 4. that he is the minister of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for good and therefore virtutis amore if we have any love to goodnesse we ought to obey our King 3. For feare of vengeance because he beareth not the sword in vain but is v. 4. How we ought to behave our selves towards wicked Kings 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evill therefore this obedience to our King is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a thing of indifferency but of necessity for be our King for his Religion Impious for his government unjust and for life licentious as cruell as Nero as prophane as Julian and as wicked as Heliogabalus yet the Subjects must obey him the Bishops must admonish him the counsell must advise him and all must pray for him but no mortall man that is his Subject hath either leave to resist him or license to reject him unless they reject the ordinance of God and so fight against God and you know 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is hard to vanquish God It is truly said by a learned Bishop si bonus est Princeps nutritor est tuus Ardua res homini est mortali vincere numen Why God sendeth evil kings if thy King be good he is thy nursing Father and it is a great happinesse to his Subjects sin malus est tentator est tuus but if he be evill he is either for the punishment of thy sins or for the triall of thy faith and therefore receive thy punishment with patience or thy triall without resistance and Aquin saith tollenda est culpa cessabit tyrannorum plaga do thou take away thy sins and God will soon take away thy punishment otherwise as for our sins we do often suffer droughts floods unseasonable weather sicknesses plagues and many other evills of nature ita luxum avaritiam deminantium tolerare debemus so when God setteth up hypocrites or tyrants to reigne over us to be the scourges of his wrath and the rods of his fury we must not struggle against God but rest contented to indure the vices of our rulers as a just punishment of our wickednesses saith Cornelius Tacitus * Et Michael Palatinus Hungariae dicebat rege coro nato etiamsi bos esses nobis obtemperandum est Bonfin dec 4. lib. 3. Foure kindes of obedience 1. Forced obedience Rom. 12.1 1 Sam. 15.22 But here you must observe that there are diverse kindes of obedience especially 1. Coacta 2. Caca. 3. Simulata 4. Ordinata 1. Forced 2. Foolish 3. Faigned 4. Well ordered 1. The first is a forced and compelled obedience meerly for feare of wrath as Children learne or Slaves do their duty for fear of the rod and this is better then resâ—stance though nothing like to that obedience which S. Paul calleth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because this
whom the choice of inferiour Magistrates belongeth the power of the subordinate officers neither Peeres nor Parliament can have Supremacy the Sectaries chiefest argument out of Bracton answered our Lawes prove all Soveraignty to be in the King Pag. 70 § The two chiefest parts of the Regall Government the foure properties of a just war and how the Parliamentary Faction transgress in every property Pag. 74 CHAP. XIII Sheweth how the first Gouernment of Kings was arbitrary the places of Moses Deut. 17. and of Samuel 1 Sam. 8. discussed whether Ahab offended in desiring Naboths Vineyard and wherein why absolute power was granted unto Kings and how the diversities of Gouernment came up Pag. 78 § The extent of the grants of Kings what they may and what they may not grant what our Kings have not granted in seven speciall prerogatives and what they have granted unto their people Pag. 83 CHAP. XIV Sheweth the Kings grants unto His People to be of three sorts Which ought to be observed the Act of excluding the Bishops out of Parliament discussed the Kings Oath at His Coronation how it obligeth him and how Statutes have been procured and repealed Pag. 88 § Certain quaeries discussed but not resolved the end for which God ordained Kings the praise of a just rule Kings ought to be more just then all others in three respects and what should most especially move them to rule their people justly Pag. 92 CHAP. XV. Sheweth the honour due to the king 1. Feare 2. An high esteem of our king how highly the Heathens esteemed of their kings the Marriage of obedience and authority the Rebellion of the Nobility how haynous 3. Obedience foure-fold divers kindes of Monarchs and how an absolute Monarch may limit himselfe Pag. 98 CHAP. XVI Sheweth the answer to some objections against the obeying of our Soveraigne Magistrate all actions of three kindes how our consciences may be reformed of our passive obedience to the Magistrates and of the kings concessions how to be taken CHAP. XVII Sheweth how tribute is due to the king for six speciall reasons to be paid the condition of a lawfull tribute that we should not be niggards to assist the king that we should defend the Kings Person the wealth and pride of London the cause of all the miseries of this Kingdome and how we ought to pray for our king Pag. 116 CHAP. XVIII The persons that ought to honour the king and the recapitulation of 21 wickednesses of the Rebells and the faction of the pretended Parliament Pag. 121 CHAP. XIX Sheweth how the Rebellious faction have transgressed all the ten Commandments of the Law and the new Commandement of the Gospell how they have committed the seaven deadly sins and the foure crying sins and the three most destructive sins to the soul of man and how their Ordinances are made against all Lawes equity and conscience Pag. 213 CHAP. XX. Sheweth how the rebellious Faction forswore themselves what trust is to be given to them how we may recover our peace and prosperity how they have un-king'd the Lords Annointed and for whom they have exchanged him and the conclusion of the whole Pag. 127 PSAL. 39.5 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Verily every man living or in his best estate is altogether Vanity Sela. OUR Blessed Lord and Saviour saith the night cometh John 9.4 when no man can work therefore I must work the Works of him that sent me whilst it is day and S. Paul tels us the time will come when men will not endure sound Doctrine but after their own lusts they shall heap to themselves Teachers that is 2 Tim. 4.3 Teachers enough in every place and every time so the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifieth but what kind of Teachers shall they heap unto themselves the Apostle tels you they shall be teachers after their own lusts that is such Tub-teachers of the new Order as will study rather to satisfie their lusts and to preach what they please best than to edifie their soules And I believe all wise men see that time is now and not till now fully come therefore it behoves all the true Teachers to bestir themselves to work the works of him that sent them while it is day while they have any time and while there is any true Light yet remaining before the sad night and darksom clouds of Errours and Heresies be grown so far and to prevail so much against the Truth that you shall scarce find any place or person where or by whom the new lights may be confronted and the old Truth confirmed unto us So it behoveth me and it is my duty to employ my Talent to the uttermost of my power against these false Prophets of the Great Antichrist that is now come into the world and by these heaps of his Emissaries laboureth quite to overthrow the Church of Christ And as Clement recordeth that when Barnabas came to Rome to preach the Gospel of Christ and divers rejected it he briefly said In vestra potestate est vel recipere quae annuntiamus vel speruere It is in your choice either to receive what we teach or to reject it but we may not be silent and not speak quod vobis expedire novimus what we know to be expedient and necessary for you quia nobis si taceamus damnum est vobis quae dicimus si non recipiatis pernicies est Ciem Recog l. 1. p. 6. so say I. And therefore that you may be somthing and so happy I beseech you listen to these words that testifie that in your selves you are nothing but Vanity For verily every man And the nearest way to exchange this Vanity for Eternity and so to make us happy that are in misery is to know our own vanity and to understand our own misery For Knowledge saith Hugo Card. is the way to God and understanding saith the Prophet David Psal 49.12 20. is that which distinguisheth and differenceth man from beast for man though he be never so great in honour never so powerful in place and never so rich in wealth yet if he hath no understanding he is compared to the beasts that perish And the two chiefest parts which are like the Body and Soul of all the Knowledge that makes us happy are these two Precepts so much commended and so often urged unto us even by the Heathens themselves that yet notwithstanding were destitute of all true Knowledge that could make them happy because they knew rightly neither of those two things that they so much commended which were 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Know God 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Know thy self For John 17.3.1 to know God the only way to make us happy 1. Our Saviour tels us this is eternal Life to know God i.e. to know the Father to be the only true God and whom he hath sent Jesus Christ For the Heathens knew that God alone is the summum bonum and the only true
might presently enjoy that happy Life and Socrates smiled upon his Hemlock that his Adversary gave him to dispatch his life while he assured himself that it would send him from this mortal Frailty unto eternal felicity And not only these particular men and the like learned Philosophers and wisest sort of men but we read also how those famous Nations of the Brachmans Indians Persians and indeed all other Pagans whatsoever had this desire of Immortality and Eternity imprinted in their hearts by the pen of Nature And no marvel Why they desired perpetuity for as thou canst not like so well of the longest Lease of thy House or Lands as of the Free-hold and Perpetuity so there can be no true rest nor any satisfying content in any transient thing but only in that which is perpetual for when we have improved our Ambition to our own content even to the height of our hearts desire and have attained to so much happiness as this world can afford us and are become the only men both in Court and Countrey both in Church and State and as able to do so much in the Ecclesiastical Affairs as Ensebius Bishop of Nicomedia could do with Constantius the Arian Emperor and as much in the Political State as Haman could do with Ahasuerus Sejanus with Tiberius or Hebraem Bassa with Saladine the Great Turk who were the only Favourites that were most powerful with these great Monarchs and as dearly beloved of them as Ephestion was of Alexander or more than this could we come to be the Pope that challengeth to be the Head of the Church or to be such a Monarch as was Alexander Nebuchaduezzar or the most Illustrious of all the Rom. Emperours yet then we may be cut off with Belshazzar in the midst of our dayes or if we can be permitted to spin the Thread of our Lives to the fulness of years yet at last and that soon enough time and age will take us down and we shall bring our years to an end even as a Tale that is told and then as Job saith the eye that saw us shall see us no more and the men that feared us shall fear us no more but seeing that as Solomon saith a living Dog is better than a dead Lion the poor living Snakes that are now trode upon by the Tyrants and Oppressors of this world may then tread upon the Graves and trample upon the necks of their greatest persecuters even as Diogenes did upon those buried Kings and Princes amongst whom he sought for the bones of King Philip but could not distinguish them from the bones of a Peasant But what of that What matter of all this when as the Divinity of the School of Epicures is that after death there remaineth nothing of us to be any waies prejudiced nor any thing any waies at all and the Doctrine of the Stoicks is nothing different when as Seneca though he seemed to be a friend to that Principle of the Immortality of the Soul yet this is one of his proper Aphorismes that non potest esse miser qui nullus est he cannot be a wretched man that is no man and to shew that after death there is no more tidings of any man he writes unto Martia quod mors omnium est solutio ultra quam mala nostra non exeunt How many men denied the immortality of the soul and the life that is to come that death is the resolution and period of all things beyond which our evils cannot extend and Cicero tels us that his friend Atticus was hardly perswaded to believe the immortality of the Soul and before him Cebes in Plato was of the same mind and Dicaarchus that as Cicero saith wrote three Books of the mortality of the soul and Panetius whom Cicero in all his Offices doth so much commend and so often imitate and divers Philosophers as Epicurus and Democritus that lived in the time of Alexander the Great were in like manner so blinded by the devil as not only to doubt but also to believe this damnable Doctrine Plin. Nat. Hist l. 2. c. 7. Arnob. in Oct. and Pliny judgeth this Doctrine to be puerile deliramentum a childish simplicity and so likewise Cecilius as Arnobius testifieth calleth these Tenets of the Christians Anniles Christianorums Fabulas old wives Fables and Nicephorus writeth that Synesius the Platonist quoad alia quae Christiani profitentur promptum se facilem praebuit Nicephorus l. 14. c. 55. approved well of all other points that the Christians professed sed Resurrectionis doctrinam nefandam ac detestandam judicavit but the Doctrine of the Resurrection he liked not and the Poets cried out with Theocritus Non est Spes ulla sepultis But as Catullus saith though Soles occidere redire possunt Catul. ad Los◠p. 3. the Sun and Moon may lie down and rise again yet nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux nox est perpetua una dormienda when once our short life is fallen down we shall have one perpetual night to sleep and so Lucretinus and Enninus and many more were of the same faith And which is wonderfull in the School of Christ we finde some of the same minde as of old time Hymenaeus and Philetus with whom joyned the Valentinians Corpocratians Cerdonians Gnosticks Marcionites Selucians Manichees Hieraclites Priscillianists and the rest of that litter as Saturninus Basilides Secundus Marcus Appelles and some of the Popes themselves with John the 23 and Leo the 10. that as they were transcendently wicked so they were wickedly tainted with this errour and liked not of this truth and many more of their associates in these our own dayes that following Hobbs his Leviathan have fallen away from the faith and as if per 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 animarum the souls of these Hereticks had entred into their bodies they will neither believe the resurrection of the body nor the immortality of their souls and therefore they labour not for their union with this Eternity Yea and that which is more to be admired such is the corruption of our nature and the madness of our mindes that although the continual sight and most sensible apprehension of our vanity and the shortness of our lives in this world mingles all our best wine with most bitter waters and puts a stop unto our pleasures and many sad thoughts into our heads and perplexities into our hearts yea though it seemeth that there is in a man a kinde of inclination and disposition of nature and an earnest desire to continue and perpetuate his being and that it is a thing universally religiously because it is the principal foundation of all Religion and peaceably received and concluded throughout all the Christian world especially by an outward and publick profession that the soul of man is immortal and shall so continue for ever and that there shall be a resurrection of the body and another life after this yet seriously and
inwardly in their hearts not onely the Epicures The many worldly professours of the Christian Religion do believe neither the immortality of the soul nor the resurrection of their bodies nor any other life after this life and the Hereticks aforenamed and the Sadduces the greatest Lords of the Jews that did not stick with open mouth to deny it but also the greatest part of these our Christian Professours as I fear do believe neither the immortality of the soul nor the resurrection of the dead nor any other life after this the short life of their vanity For is it possible that men should be so haughty and so proud so covetous and such oppressours of their Neighbours so sacrilegious and such robbers and spoylers of God himself as we see men are so as the Poet saith Vnde habent cura est paucis sed oportet habere Is it possible I say they should be such if they did believe that their souls are immortal that after this momentary life of their vanity their bodies shall awake and rise out of their graves and that Christ shall come to judge them according to the works they have done in this life and as he saith himself To render unto every one as his deeds shall be No surely it cannot be that they do believe these things but as the Fool whatsoever he profest with his mouth to deceive the world yet said in his heart There is no God so they whatsoever they say in words yet factis negant their deeds tell us to their faces that they do but dissemble and deceive themselves but they cannot deceive God nor all wise men that will rather believe their own eyes in what they see them do than their words in what they say they do believe What a persidious fellow Carbo was And therefore as when Carbo swore any thing in the Senate the Senators and the people of Rome presently sware they did not believe him So when these sacrilegious persons and thefe grievous oppressours of the poor and the rooters out of the innocent from their possessions do profess that they believe these things What Apolloâ—orus dreamed I do profess unto you that I believe them not But as Apollodorus the Tyrant dreamed that he was taken and flead by the Scythians and his heart thrown into a boyling Caldron should say unto him I am the cause of all this mischief so I say The hearts of these men deceive them for as the Wise man saith The heart is deceitfull above all things and for a man to deceive himself is the worse deceit in the world for excepting the worst of thoughts which is the thought of the Fool that said in his heart There is no God there cannot be a more brutish and perverse thought than to imagine that the soul perisheth when the body is dissolved for what need we care what evil we do what need we fear what Judge condemn us or why should we abstain from any of our desires if our souls dye when our bodies are dead But to shew you that whatsoever they say yet they do not believe in any eternal being either of body or soul after the end of this their vanity The former point proved I pray you look into an excellent Book though sleighted by some Fanatick spirits where the Wise-man sheweth how the prophane worldlings and the worldly Atheists do make this conclusion of their incredulity to be the ground and foundation of all their impieties for they say but not aright Our life is short and tedious and in the death of a man there is no remedy neither was there any man known to have returned from the grave for we are born at all adventure and we shall be hereafter as though we had never been for the breath in our nostrils is as smoak which being extinguished our body shall be turned into ashes and our spirit shall vanish as the soft air Sap. 2.1 2 3. This is their saith and therefore they make this conclusion saying Come let us injoy the good things that are present and let us speedily use the creatures like as in youth Cap. eod v. 6 7 8 9.10 11 let us fill our selves with costly Wine and Oyntments and let no flower of the Spring pass by us let us crown our selves with Rose-buds before they be withered let none of us go without part of his voluptuousnesss for this is our portion and our lot is this Let us oppress the poor righteous man let us not spare the widow nor reverence the ancient gray hairs of the aged let our strength be the Law of Justice and let us lye in wait for the righteous And this was the very reasoning of Sardanapalus Ede bibe lude post mortem nulla voluptas There is no felicity after death therefore soul take thine ease sit down and be merry and I fear it is the occasion of so much wickedness in many men and of such a deluge of sin in these dayes that doth overflow both the Church and Commonwealth to the destruction and ruine of many thousand souls that in their hearts they scarce believe their souls to be immortal or that there shall be ever any resurrection of their bodies or any account to be given for what they do for so you see the reason why they oppress the poor and rob both God and man and satisfie themselves with all kinde of delights because their breath in their nostrils is as smoak which being extinguished their bodies shall be turned into ashes and their spirit as they suppose shall vanish as the soft air And truly I think the conclusion very good if there were any truth in the premises for though Plato and Socrates and Seneca and the like vertuous men did so much love vertue for the very beauty of vertue and did hate vice onely for the ugliness of vice and Anselimus is reported to have said he had rather to be vertuous though severely punished for it than be vicious though never so highly rewarded yet because these Ejaculations spring from more than ordinary knowledge no less than some sparks of the motions of Gods Spirit which God sometimes wrought in the hearts of the Heathens and much more in Anselimus that was a Christian It is contrary to all shew of reason that a man The incredulity of the life to come the cause that men commit much wickedness which believeth the mortality of the soul should have any desire to be vertuous or any fear to be most vicious unless it be onely for fear of some Temporal punishment For if our time be but a very shadow that soon passeth away and after that our end there is no returning why should I endure so much labour and suffer so much want or want so much pleasure as the reach of my wit or the laws of my strength can any wayes afford me or why should I abstain from any vice from any villany and fast and weep and
mourn and go in sackcloath and ashes if after one moment of time I shall be reduced to nothing and be never more questioned and neither rewarded for my good deeds nor punished for my evil doings Therefore I think that this Atheistical conceit of the annihilation of the soul and the incredulous thought of the immortality thereof is the main cause of so much wickedness as is now raging in the world And on the other side if men did but seriously think and faithfully believe that after this short time of a few dayes pilgrimage our souls shall remain for ever and receive either everlasting joyes if they do well or eternal punishments if they do evil I do assure my self that men would have some care for the time to come and like Moses choose rather to suffer a momentary affliction with the people of God Heb. 11.25 than to enjoy the plesures of sin for a season and so engage themselves to endure the punishment of sin for ever The necessity of rooting out this incredulity And therefore to root out so pestilent an errour and to confirm so necessary a truth as is the doctrine of the Immortality of the soul for the perpetuating of man all wise men that had any love of goodness in them and all the holy men of God both in the Old and New Testament and all the Fathers of the primitive Church and their successours the Bishops and other godly Preachers to this very day have been carefull to preach this truth and have shewed themselves very punctual and plentifull in this point for to let pass what Ovid saith Morte carent animae Ovid. Metam Tibul. l. 4. Propertius Claud. Manilius l. 4. Plato in Tim. Cicero de repub somâ—o Scip. l. 1. Tusc quest and what Propertius saith Sunt aliquid manes laethum non omnia finit luridaque evictos effugit umbra rogos and what Claudian saith Haec sola manet bustoque superstes evolat and to pass over the testimony of Pherecides that was Master unto Pythagoras and of Socrates and Plato and Cicero and the rest of the Philosophers and Orators that with unanswerable arguments have maintained the souls of men to be immortal and so likewise to pass by the unanimous consent of the Fathers that were so plain and so plentifull to prove the same as you may see in S. Clement Recog l. 1. Iren. l. 2. c. 63. 64. cont Valent. Tertul. de res carnis S. Aug. dogmat Eccles c. 16. Arnobius de fide resur and the rest of them almost in every place I finde the Prophets and our Saviour himself and his Apostles be very exact and diligent to declare the same and to prove it so fully that the most incredulous heart if it were not filled with all blindness could not conceive the least thought against it Yet because the Devil is still tempting men to incredulity and to doubt of these things and is still so powerfull with these worldlings that he quite blindeth them so that they cannot see the clearest light nor understand the plainest truth Therefore to undeceive these silly souls that do so miserably deceive themselves we are still bound to defend and vindicate these truths and in that respect I likewise shall not think much to produce some few Reasons that the Devil himself cannot answer to make it manifest that although man in this life is altogether vanity and but a blast of no continuance as hereafter I shall shew unto you yet God made man to be perpetual for God made all things that they might have their being and especially man not to be reduced to nothing and he made the soul of man immortal and never to dye but to live for ever For Arguments proving the immortality of the Soul and the life to come 1. Moses tells you that when God had framed and made man of the dust of the earth He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and so man became a living soul and not a dying soul or a soul that should dye but such a soul as should live for ever because the soul is the cause of our natural spiritual and eternal life whence the Latines do call the soul Life 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quia vivificat corpus dum adest seipsam cum abest á corpore And when God threatned Adam that if he did eat of the forbidden fruit Or surely dye Gen. 2.17 he should dye the death that death signifieth not the death of the soul or the annihilation of the body but the dissolution or separation of the soul from the body that as it was made out of the dust so it might return to the dust again which while the soul remained in it unseparated it could not return and this St. Paul sheweth plainly when he saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If our earthly house be dissolved that is 2 Cor. 5. dis-joynted as a house that we pull down is separated one part from another but not destroyed so is the soul separated from the body and neither of them destroyed and reduced into nothing but the soul remaineth still immortal for ever and as God saith Gen. 3.19 the body returneth to the dust from whence it was taken 2. It is said that Abel being unnaturally murdered by his blood-thirsty Brother vox sanguinum clamabat ad deum and the Hebrew word saith Collerus signifieth ex ingenti animi dolore exclamare to cry out with a vehement grief of mind queritando vociferari and to complain with a most lamentable voice therefore surely his crying soul was still alive though his slaughtered body was lain dead 3. God saith unto Moses I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob and the God of your Fathers therefore Abraham Isaac Exod. 3.15 and Jacob and the rest of their Fathers were still alive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 secundum aliquid and that is in respect of their Souls because as our Saviour saith unto the Sadduces God is not the God of the dead but the God of the living and the bodies of these men that were turned to dust could not be said either to be alive or to be Abraham Isaac or Jacob therefore Abraham Isaac and Jacob were still alive in respect of their Soules 4. Moses is said to have died in the Land of Moab and to be buried in a valley over against Beth-peor and yet S. Matth. saith Deut. 34.5 6. Mat. 17.3 that when Jesus was transfigured on the Mount Moses and Elias appeared to the Apostles talking with Christ therefore Moses was dead and not dead and was buried and not buried 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. dead in respect of his body and living in respect of his Soul and so Moses and Elias were still alive and they themselves in respect of their Souls and not their shadows or phantasmes which can no waies be faid
to supplant others to advance himself and he cares not how nor how many others he maketh poor to make himself onely rich Aug. de verb. Dom. Ser. 17. And yet this is not all for you may remember what St. Augustine saith Quid est diu vivere nisi diu torqueri nam vita presens est aerumnosa quam humores tumidant dolores extenuant ardores exsiccant aera morbidant escae inflant jejunia macerant Augustinus joci dissolvunt tristitiae consumunt solicitudo coarctat securitas hebetat divitiae jactitant paupertas dejicit juventus extollit senectus incurvat infirmitas frangit maror deprimit post haec omnia mors intermit universis gaudiis finem imponit ita cum esse desserit nec fuisse putetur And you may remember also that Job tells you and Seneca tells his friend Lucilius the very same that vivere est militare the life of man is a warfare here upon earth and Lucan saith Nulla fides pietasque viris qui castra sequuntur Whether this be true or no let the Warrior himself and not I be the Judge but for what Job saith you may see it literally verified throughout all the world and all Christendome now to become the shambles of Christian blood The many miserable Wars of these last centuries of years even in Christendome The which men if you consider their Civil breeding and their much teaching in the School of Christ that doth so straitly forbid all ambition and all revenge and so earnestly enjoyn all men to love one another you may admire that as Jerusalem justified Samaria so the pretended Christian should justifie the bloody Turks or men-eating Canibals that glut themselves upon buried carkasses and do use as the Poet saith Pinguescere corpore corpus and are therefore deemed by the more civil Nations to be but the remote prodigies of lost humanity For If you now let your thoughts to consider and your eyes to wander throughout all the Christian Kingdomes of Spain France Germany Poland Sweden Italy and the rest of the neighbouring Nations that profess to believe in the same Jesus Christ and do hope to be coheirs of the same Kingdome of heaven they shall see most of these men striving to be not homicidae cucurbitarum the cutters down of Cucumbers as St. Aug. stiled the Manichaeans but Homicidae Christianorum the bloody killers of many good Christians and so make Rivers of blood and Hills of Christian carkasses And how he that shed his blood to redeem those carkasses will judge of this I am atfraid to speak and tremble to think of it And yet you must not think that I say this to retard the courage or to blunt the Swords of our gallant Souldiers that have just causes to make War for when wickedness groweth so wilfull as to seek our lives that desire to live in peace or to rob us of our livelihood lands or goods that God hath justly given us then you must know that out God is the God of War as well as the God of Peace and his name is the Lord of Hosts and he will make his sword drunk with blood and will strengthen our hands if we trust in him to scatter all those people that delight in War and to destroy those Enemies that maliciously labour for our destruction What Wars the Author blameth But I blame all shedding of Christian blood in any War either to plant Religion which should be done by preaching and not by fighting which in seeking to make them Christian men will make them no men or dissembling hypocrites in stead of faithfull believers or else to satisfie the ambition of any man that desires to inlarge his Dominion and so unjustly to wrong his neighbours when as every man from the King unto the beggar should be contented with what God hath justly given him and that policy can never be justified which is not every way consonant to equity or especially for any subjects put of a rebellious discontent or ambitious desire to usurp the Power and Authority of their Soveraign to turn the sweet waters of Peace to become rivers of Christian blood This is that warfare which I chiefly discommend as the greatest of all vanities But 3. If the Sword or Bullet in this warfare taketh not man away 3. His egress yets Age and Sickness will soon summon him to his death and dissolution and till then his whole life is spent inter suspiria lachrymas betwixt sighs and tears troubles of minde and distempers of body and a thousand such sad accidents that will soon bring hoc vitrium corpusculum this our frail and brittle body and our distressed life to a miserable death and when we dye or as the Psalmist saith When the breath of man goeth forth he shall turn again to his earth and then all his thoughts Psal 146.3 and all his high designs and vain conceits perish and then it will appear which till then proud man will not believe that the life of man is but a flower that soon withereth a smoak that soon vanisheth and a bubble that suddenly falleth or as others say a shadow a dream a nothing And it were well for many men if as their great thoughts either on some deep plots of state or how to hook unto themselves their neighbours inheritance or to wreak their malice on their poor brethren or the like 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Castles in the air as Aristophanes calleth them do vanish into nothing when their soules part with their bodies so likewise their bodies and their soules should then with their Thoughts return to nothing But that cannot be for that now mans soul must pay for all his evil thoughts and suffer for all the wicked works and the great wrongs that he hath done and though à corpore vermis é vermibus foetor his body turnes to worms and those wormes yield such Sent as all the Spices of Arabia cannot keep away yet the living spirit of every wicked man that cannot and shall not die must now for his unrepented evil be hurried into the dreadful Regions of all horror where it must live and lie for ever and ever to suffer unsufferable and unconceivable torments a life that lives not and a death that dies nor And so you see that man is Vanity and a wicked man in misery worse than vanity And therefore Reason should perswade you all to labour to become more than men that is more than meer men and to desire to be born again not of flesh and bloud but of water and of the Spirit of God that you may be brought again to that Union and Communion with God which you had when we were first made by God 2. The Prophet saith that totus homo vanitas all the whole man that is both his Body and his Soul is vanity for what is this body of ours but a piece of earth 2 Point That whole man is vanity
them as Josias did when they left the world yet we find that many famous men while they lived have been quite forgotten for want of Writers when they were dead For how should we have known the valour of Hector and Achilles and the wisdom of Nestor and Ulisses if Homer had not recorded the same unto posterity Or how should we have understood the Piety of Constantine and the Clemency of Theodosius if Eusebius and other Ecclesiastical Writers had not declared the same unto us And of those that have been as happy in the Trumpeters of their Fame as themselves have been Famous in the Actions of their Lives we see that as Death took away the Authors so time hath wasted away their Writings and as the Poet saith What wonder we that Writings fail When stately Tombes do wear The very Stones consume to noughts With Titles they did bear Or be it granted that a man might truly say I shall live when I am dead and as Ovid saith Perque omnia secula Fama Si quid hobent veri vatum prae sagia vivam Ovid. Metamorph l. 12. in fine Nomenque erit indelebile nostrum My name shall remain indelible among the Posterities yet if you do attentively weigh the most infinite spaces of Eternity you shall find that the prolonging of our Names on earth can yield us no great Felicity for if we compare the stay of one moment with ten thousand years they have some proportion though it be but very small but this number of years how oft soever it be multiplied yet it is no way comparable to Eternity because limited things may in some sort be compared among themselves but that which is infinite admitteth no comparison at all saith Boetius And therefore the longest Fame be it as long as you can imagine Boetius de consol Phil. l. 2. c. 8 yet it is but of a very short continuance And 2. It is of a very small Extent For you may learn by Astronomical Demonstrations that the compass of the whole earth in comparison of the Heaven is no bigger than a Pins Point and of this earth not above the fourth part is known to be inhabited saith Ptolem. and that which is inhabited is distinguished by many Nations of different Languages Fashions and Conversations whereby it happeneth that the same Fact which in some Countrey is laudable in another place is punishable therefore our Fame and Glory must be penned up in a very narrow bound commonly within the compass of one Nation For if it should go further yet the difficulty of travel over many Seas the diversity of Speeches so hard to be understood and the scarcity of Traffick to be generally transported will never permit our Fame to spread it self very far For if the Glory of the Roman People in the time of Cicero when it was most flourishing and they were Terrarum Domini Masters of most places that they knew yet did not passe beyond Mount Caucasus that lieth betwixt Scythia and the Indians as the Orator confesseth then certainly the Glory and Fame of any particular man can never penetrate where the Glory and Trophies of such a Glorious Nation could not pass And therefore all the Honour of this world and the greatest Fame of the Noblest men whether it be for Birth Wealth Valour Learning or what you will yet can it neither last long nor extend it self very far and therefore must it needs be a very great Vanity And so you see that every man in his most Honourable estate is Vanity Nay more than that Point 4 4. The most excellent state is thought to be that which is most powerful in Authority to rule and command all others but the Vanities that are incident and attendant on this state would require a Volume to display them I will only say what Horace hath most truly and you may daily see how that Saepius ventis agitatur ingens Pinus Et decidunt Turres feriuntque summos Fulmina Montes And so you see that every man in his best estate let his state be what you will yet he is but Vanity Nay that is not all For Point 5 5. Every man living is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 omnimoda Vanitas altogether vanity and this is one degree of Calamity further than all the rest For to consider that every man is vanity is bad enough but to be vanity in our best estate is worse and in that estate to be altogether vanity is worst of all because this sheweth unto us that man is but meer Vanity and nothing else but vanity or vain in all that he is and vain in all that he doth as 1. Vain within and vain without vain in his Body and vain in his Soul 2. Vain in his thoughts vain in his words and vain in all his works And 3. Not only totaliter vanitas wholly vanity but also universa vanitas all vanity so that there is no vanity in the world that can be named or found out but you may find the same in man as Pride is vanity and you may find enough of that in man lies are vanities and most men are so addicted and delighted either to invent lies to hear lies or to relate lies that you shall almost finde nothing in most men but lies and so of all other vanities whatsoever they be they are to be found in man Antoninus for methods sake ranketh them into three special Series 1. Iustalitatis Antoninus part 1. tit 2. c. 8. Sect. 3. of instability which the Preacher handleth from the first Chapter unto the fourth Chapter 2. Iniquitatis of iniquity whereof the Preacher treareth from the fourth Chapter unto the twelfth Chapter 3. Paenalitatis of penalty which the said Preacher setteth down in the last verse of the twelfth Chapter For God shall bring every work into judgement with every secret thing whether it be good or whether it be evil Others terme the first degree of Vanities to be the vanity of our Creation The second degree they call the vanity of our Condition The third is the vanity of our Dissolution 1. Touching the vanity of our Creation God put no trust in his servants saith holy Job that is he trusted them not with such a stability Job 4.18 or he made them not so absolute that they should be independent and free from all possibility of falling and therefore seeing that nihil est omne quod ex nihilo est all in themselves are nothing which are made of nothing as Origen saith this possibility to vary and to be reduced to their first privation and non-entity is nothing else but an innate vanity or a momentary nothing if they be not still upheld and sustained by their Creator who as the Apostle saith Beareth up all things with his mighty word Heb. 1. or with the word of his power that is Jesus Christ Yet 2. The vanity of our Creation was but comparative as the creature stood in collation with Gods infinite